GWPF Newsletter: German Scientists Claim Climate Change Is Cyclical

'Global Cooling Coming Soon'

In this newsletter:

1) German Scientists Claim Climate Change Is Cyclical, Global Cooling Coming Soon
P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 1 August 2017

2) The UK Met Office's Model Muddle
GWPF TV, 3 August 2017

3) Germany's €300Billion Green Flop: Rising Consumption of Fossil Fuels Will See Further Increase In CO2 Emissions
Green Energy Wire, 2 August 2017

4) Reality Check: Germany Will Be Powered By Cheap Coal For Decades To Come
Reuters, 2 August 2017 

5) UK Govt's Green Energy Policy Blamed For Rising Energy Bills
The Daily Telegraph, 2 August 201

6) Green Tory Madness: Renewable Energy Subsidies To Treble In Five Years
The Daily Telegraph, 3 August 2017

7) Matt Ridley: Britain's Energy Policy Keeps Picking Losers
The Times, 31 July 2017

Full details:

1) German Scientists Claim Climate Change Is Cyclical, Global Cooling Coming Soon
P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 1 August 2017

The dominant climate cycles have persisted for a long time: “This allows to predict cooling until 2070 AD.”

In a just published study in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, German scientists Horst-Joachim Lüdecke and Carl-Otto Weiss have used a large number of temperature proxies worldwide to construct a global temperature mean over the last 2000 years, dubbed G7, in order to find out more about the sun’s role on climate change.

Their results drop a huge surprise on the laps of scientists who have long believed the earth is warming due to human-emitted CO2.

The analysis by the German scientists shows the strongest climate cycle components as 1000, 460, and 190-year periods. The G7 global temperature extrema coincide with the Roman, Medieval, and present optima, as well as the well-known minimum of AD 1450 during the Little Ice Age.

Correlation 0.84

Using further complex analyses, they constructed a representation of G7, which shows a remarkable Pearson correlation of 0.84 with the 31-year running average of G7.

The authors used extensive local temperature proxy data [2 – 6] together with Britain’s Hadley CRU temperature records since 1870 and the recent satellite measurements, and combined them to make up the global temperature time series G7 for the last 2000 years.


In accordance to the definition of climate, the blue curve in the paper’s Fig. 3, shown above, depicts the climate history as the 30-year running average of the grey curve. Noteworthy, the historically known temperature extrema are well reproduced by the blue climate curve: The Roman Optimum (~0 AD), the Medieval Optimum (~1000 AD), the Present Optimum, as well as the Little Ice Age (~1500 AD),

Also the pronounced minimum of 1450 AD, when the vines in southern France were killed by cold. Also clearly shown by the climate curve is the warming from 1850 to 1995.

The detailed analysis of the local records show in general a multitude of peaks, the authors say, and the G7 however shows only 3 dominant peaks, which correspond to cycles known from local studies, of approx. 1000, 500, 200-year periods. The combination of local records to a global record apparently averages out local cycles and emphasizes global cycles.

The sum of these three dominant cycles (red curve in Fig. 3) reproduces the measured climate (blue curve in Fig. 3) with a remarkable correlation of 0.84.

In particular the sum of the three cycles shows the temperature increase from 1850 to 1995 as a result of the three natural cycles, the German researchers say, adding: “Thus one can conclude that CO2 plays only a minor role (if any) for the global climate.”

Lüdecke and Weiss note that the present maximum of the cycle sum corresponds well with the world temperature stagnation since 1995 AD, the stagnation unexplained by current climate models. As the dominant cycles have persisted for an extended time, one can assume that they will persist for the near future. They write: “This allows to predict cooling until 2070 AD.”

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2) The UK Met Office's Model Muddle
GWPF TV, 3 August 2017

The Met Offices’ model-based rainfall forecasts have not stood up to empirical tests, and do not seem to give better advice than observational records.
 

click on image to watch the video

In July this year, scientists from the UK Meteorological Office released a new study estimating the risk of UK regions suffering a record-breaking monthly rainfall between the months of October and March.

Vikki Thompson, Met Office: We want to understand the chance of these extreme rainfall events in our current climate and the likelihood of exceeding the rainfall levels that we have seen so far. We have used the new Met Office supercomputer to run many simulations of the climate, using a global climate model.

But rather than producing an estimate of the risk based on the observational record, they claimed that computer models provided a far more useful and accurate result to inform policymakers about what to prepare for.

A Met Office infographic explaining the work even shows the historical data being thrown into a waste bin

Vikki Thompson, Met Office: This is the first time that we have used what we have called the UNSEEN method, which stands for Unprecedented, Simulated, Extremes, Using Ensembles.

To get their estimate, they ran thousands of climate simulations and found that there was a seven per cent risk of a record monthly rainfall in Southeast England in any given winter.

But this result does not give any better information than what could be obtained using a piece of paper, rather than a £97 million super computer.

The seven per cent chance of a month between October and March exceeding the record for that month in any year is equivalent to a new record being set every 86 months.

New monthly records were set twice in the 216 October-March months between 1980 and 2015. Therefore the ‘risk’ of a new record for monthly rainfall is 5.5% per year, according to the record.

Although the researchers claim that the climate has changed, the results for the two preceding 36 year periods in the 20^thCentury record suggest similar results.

Between 1944 and 1979, there were three new record monthly rainfalls – an 8.7 per cent chance of any month in a year exceeding the existing record.

And between 1908 and 1943, there were 4 record events – a risk of 14.5%.

The risk of monthly rainfall exceeding the monthly record in the Southeast of England has not risen, contrary to many claims..

The existing monthly rainfall records for October, November and December were set in 1987, 1939 and 1915, and the records for February and March were set in 1951 and 1947.

Therefore, the Met Office computer models do not give any more reliable insight than the historical data.

And recent history suggests that the Met Office is over-reliant on computer modelling.

CH4 News, April 2012. Britain is facing its most severe water shortage 1976. Now, another seventeen counties have been added to the official English drought zone.

This new research follows the Met Office’s prediction of the continued drought conditions that affected much of the UK in late 2013.

January 2014 was the wettest on record for that month. Rain and floods caused widespread disruption and flooding.

Only a few years earlier, the Met Office predicted that the summers of 2008 and 2009, would bring average temperatures, and drier than normal conditions. But far from the ‘barbecue summer’ the British public had been told to expect, both summers were cold and wet.                  

And Met Office’s winter predictions have been no better than its summer forecasts. In 2008, they predicted the trend of mild winters would continue. But the winter of 2008/9 was the coldest for a decade.

The following year, they repeated their prediction, and the winter of 2009/10 was the coldest for 30 years.

One reason for these mistakes maybe an assumption of anthropogenic global warming, built into the Met Office’s forecasts.

In early 2007, Scientists at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre claimed that year’s average global temperature was likely to be the highest on record.

They claimed that the model they had produced had a 0.06 degree centigrade margin of error.

But by the summer, it was announced that the world’s temperature had fallen. The Met Office retired its old model, and announced a new one. But that warming didn’t appear, and prompted many to point out that the Met Office’s models were consistently running much warmer than observations.

Increasingly, seasonal, annual, decadal, and century-long forecasts are being provided to policymakers and planners, providing the basis of import decisions and policies.

These model-based forecasts have not stood up to testing, and do not seem to give better advice than observational records.

3) Germany's €300Billion Green Flop: Rising Consumption of Fossil Fuels Will See Further Increase In CO2 Emissions
Green Energy Wire, 2 August 2017

Germany’s rising consumption of oil, gas and lignite in the first half of 2017 indicates that the country of the Energiewende will see another increase in CO2 emissions in 2017 after a rise in 2016, said Agora Energiewende head Patrick Graichen.

“The data translates to a one-percent increase of energy-related emissions, compared to the same period last year. This corresponds to about 5 million tonnes of CO2,” Graichen told Clean Energy Wire. New data released by energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen (AGEB) saw energy consumption in Germany increase 0.8 percent in the first half of 2017, due to positive economic development and slightly cooler weather at the beginning of the year. “The hope that 2017 emissions will be below last year’s levels fades visibly. Rather, this is ground for concern that – just like in 2016 – we will see emissions rise in 2017,” said Graichen.

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4) Reality Check: Germany Will Be Powered By Cheap Coal For Decades To Come
Reuters, 2 August 2017 

Burning coal for power looks set to remain the backbone of Germany's energy supply for decades yet, an apparent contrast to Chancellor Angela Merkel's ambitions for Europe's biggest economy to be a role model in tackling climate change.
 
Merkel is avoiding the sensitive subject of phasing out coal, which could hit tens of thousands of jobs, in the campaign for the Sept. 24 election, in which she hopes to win a fourth term.
 
Although well over 20 billion euros are spent each year to boost Germany's green energy sector, coal still accounts for 40 percent of energy generation, down just 10 points from 2000.
 
To avoid disruption in the power and manufacturing sectors, coal imports and mines must keep running, say industry lobbies, despite the switch to fossil-free energy.
 
"(Coal) makes a big contribution to German and European energy supply security and this will remain the case for a long time to come," the chairman of the coal importers' lobby VDKi, Wolfgang Cieslik told reporters last week.
 
He also stressed it was crucial for steel manufacturing in Germany, the seventh biggest producer in the world, that use a quarter of the country's coal imports.
 
Critics point to the irony in Merkel's tacit support for coal given that she criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for ditching the Paris climate accord after pledging to voters he would lift environmental rules and revive coal-mining jobs.
 
Apart from the environmentalist Greens, who want coal generation to end by 2030, none of the main political parties have set phase-out target dates.

Huge vested interests are stifling debate, whether it is potential job losses that alarm powerful unions or the effect on industrial companies relying on a stable power supply.

Industry figures show renewables accounted for 29 percent of power output in both 2015 and 2016, up from 7 percent in 2000. But plants burning imported hard coal still make up 17 percent and brown coal from domestic mines 23 percent of power output.

Cheap coal lets them run at full tilt when necessary while the weather dictates if wind and solar produce anything at all.

Full story 

5) UK Govt's Green Energy Policy Blamed For Rising Energy Bills
The Daily Telegraph, 2 August 2017
Steven Swinford, deputy political editor

Green taxes will cost households almost £150 from next year, British Gas has claimed as it blamed the Government for a huge rise in electricity bills for three million of its customers.

Britain’s biggest supplier announced that from September electricity prices will increase by 12.5 per cent, adding £76 to the typical annual bill.

The company said that the cost of green subsidies levied on bills has created “significant pressures” and suggested that it had no choice but to respond by raising prices.

However the ministers last night hit back by suggesting that the price rises are unjustified as it told the regulator to do more to safeguard vulnerable customers.

Government sources highlighted the fact that British Gas is also axing a £15 dual fuel discount currently enjoyed by 3.1 million of its customers from September.

Ministers claimed they have not ruled out imposing an energy price cap, although the measure appeared to have been abandoned after the Tories disastrous performance in the General Election.

The announcement by British Gas also added to mounting tensions in the Conservative Party over the current push for renewable energy.

Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has signalled that more wind farms may need to be built to power a new generation of electric cars under Government plans to ban the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles.

His plans are opposed by some Tory MPs, who accused the Government of punishing hard-working families with green taxes.

Owen Paterson, a Tory MP and former Environment Secretary, said: “It is the most regressive form of taxation since the Sherriff of Nottingham, transferring money from those who are the least well off to wealthy landowners and businesses. It’s robbing the poor to pay the rich.

“We are getting less and less competitive with countries like America, where lower energy prices mean that whole industries are coming back.

“We are going in the opposite direction. We should have a free market in technology. It would be very much mistaken to continue increasing subsidies to failed forms of renewables like wind.”

British Gas forecast that the cost of the subsidies, which are used to fund renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, will hit £149 next year having risen by by two-thirds since 2014.

The Office for Budget responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, has forecast that environmental levies will rise from £4.6billion in 2015-16 to £13.5billion by 2022.

British Gas also said that the cost of delivering energy to people’s homes will have increased by £25, equivalent to almost a fifth, by 2018. One senior Tory claimed that transmission costs have increased partly because wind farms and other renewable energy sources are located so far from where people live.

Full story

6) Green Tory Madness: Renewable Energy Subsidies To Treble In Five Years
The Daily Telegraph, 3 August 2017

Steven Swinford, deputy political editor

The cost of green taxes on energy bills will more than treble over the next five years, the official economic forecaster has said.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said that cost of the subsidies, which are levied on household and business energy bills, is expected to rise from £4.6billion in 2015-16 to £13.5billion in 2021-22.

It comes after British Gas claimed that green taxes will cost households £150 from next year as it blamed the Government for a huge rise in electricity bills.

British Gas forecast that the cost of the subsidies, which are used to fund renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, will hit £149 next year having risen by by two-thirds since 2014.

It announced that 3million of its customers on a dual fuel standard variable tariff will see their bill rise by an average of £76 to £1,120.

The figures will add to mounting tensions in the Conservative Party over the current push for renewable energy.

Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has signalled that more wind farms may need to be built to power a new generation of electric cars under Government plans to ban the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles. Asked about wind energy, he said that "we have no alternative to embracing new technology".

However some Tory MPs have warned that the taxes are "regressive" and will penalise those who can least afford it.

Full story
 

7) Matt Ridley: Britain's Energy Policy Keeps Picking Losers
The Times, 31 July 2017

The liberalised energy markets introduced by Nigel Lawson in 1982, embraced by the Blair government and emulated across Europe, delivered both affordability and reliability. But they were abandoned. All three parties share the blame for Britain’s policy fiasco.

Shortly before parliament broke up this month, there was a debate on a Lords select committee report on electricity policy that was remarkable for its hard-hitting conclusions. The speakers, and signatories of the report, included a former Labour chancellor, Tory energy secretary, Tory Scottish secretary, cabinet secretary, ambassador to the European Union and Treasury permanent secretary, as well as a bishop, an economics professor, a Labour media tycoon and a Lib Dem who was shortlisted for governor of the Bank of England.

Genuine heavyweights, in short. They were in general agreement: energy policy is a mess, decarbonisation has been pursued at the expense of affordability and, in particular, the nuclear plant at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is an expensive disaster. Their report came out before the devastating National Audit Office report on Hinkley, which said the government had “locked consumers into a risky and expensive project [and] did not consider sufficiently the risks and costs to the consumer”.

Hinkley is but the worst example of a nationalised energy policy of picking losers. The diesel fiasco is another. The wind industry, with its hefty subsidies paid from the poor to the rich to produce unreliable power, is a third. The biomass mess (high carbon, high cost and environmental damage) is a fourth.

The liberalised energy markets introduced by Nigel Lawson in 1982, embraced by the Blair government and emulated across Europe, delivered both affordability and reliability. But they were abandoned and, in the words of the Lords committee, “a succession of policy interventions has led to the creation of a complex system of subsidies and government contracts at the expense of competition. Nobody has built a power station without some form of government guarantee since 2012.”

All three parties share the blame. Labour’s Climate Change Act of 2008 made Britain the only country with mandatory decarbonisation targets, a crony-capitalist’s dream. The Lib Dems who ran the energy department for five years, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey, negotiated the disastrous Hinkley contract. The Tories reviewed the decision in 2016, by which time it was clear we had managed the unique feat of finding a technology that was untested yet already obsolete. They decided to go ahead anyway, missing the chance to blame the other parties for it. As the energy analyst Peter Atherton put it, the three parties “have managed to design possibly the most expensive programme for delivering nuclear power we could have come up with”.

The chief Lib Dem mistake was to ignore the shale gas and oil revolutions under way in America and assume that fossil fuel prices would rise from already high levels. By 2011, influenced by peak-oil nonsense and lobbied by professors of “sustainability”, the department of energy and climate change was projecting that the oil price would be between $97 and $126 per barrel in 2017. Today it is about $50 a barrel, roughly half the lowest of the 2011 projections. Gas prices were expected to be about 76p per therm by now, whereas they are actually about half that: 37p.

The shale revolution is gathering pace all the time. Britain has very promising shales and could prosper and cut emissions if it joins in, so let us hope the first wells about to be drilled in Lancashire by Cuadrilla, against the determined opposition of wealthy, middle-class protesters, prove successful. (No, I don’t have a commercial interest in shale.)

This forecasting mistake is behind much of the rising cost of Hinkley. In 2015 the whole-life cost of its power was expected to be £14 billion. Now it is £50 billion. Because consumers are on the hook to pay the difference between the wholesale price of electricity and the “strike price” for Hinkley, we must hope that the project is badly delayed, because that way our children will at least spend fewer years paying inflated electricity prices.

These bad forecasts, widely criticised at the time, make all strike prices horribly expensive, for onshore and offshore wind and solar as well. Lib Dem ministers kept saying at the time that subsidies for renewables and Hinkley would protect the consumer against “volatile” gas prices. Yes, they have done so: by guaranteeing high prices. Oh for a little downward volatility!

Britain’s industrial and commercial users now have some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world, which find their way to households in cost of living and a downward pressure on wages. American industry pays about half as much for its electricity as we do, and everyone benefits. Energy prices are not just any consumer price: they determine the prosperity of the entire economy.

Well, no use crying over spilt future money. What are we to do? Here is where it could get interesting. Almost nobody wants Hinkley to go ahead, apart from the contractors who get to build it. EDF and Areva, the French owner and developer, are in trouble over the only two comparable reactors in Europe. The one at Flamanville is still to start working, many years behind schedule. The French unions want Hinkley cancelled. Lord Howell of Guildford, the former energy secretary, wisely pointed out in the Lords that the key player is China, a partner in the project. Rather than cost, the government’s excuse for revisiting Hinkley last year was partly worries about security. This was a silly worry and bad diplomacy. However, it is not clear China wants to go ahead, and subtle negotiation could tease this out. The great prize for China was regulatory approval through Britain’s gold-standard “generic design assessment” process, which could unlock foreign markets and give a green light for a Chinese-built reactor at Bradwell in Essex.

But Lord Howell says the Chinese increasingly realise that the Hinkley design is a dead end, as costs escalate and delays grow. And they know that the future for nuclear power must lie in smaller, modular units, mass-manufactured like cars rather than assembled from scratch like Egyptian pyramids. Their “Nimble Dragon” design could slot into both the Hinkley and Bradwell sites, perhaps beside the larger Hualong design.

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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.