BEST and a growing controvery.

Some time ago it appeared that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Study was going to be a new review, critically supported by both those that believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and those more dubious about the quality of the data that had led to that conclusion. The first papers have been released, and the controversy over what they found, which seemed relatively minor at the beginning, is now starting to get some notice.

Bishop Hill has drawn attention to an article in the London Mail on line in which Dr. Judith Curry voices concern about the papers and the way the information was released. Up in Canada, Steve McIntyre is raising more points of concern in successive posts at Climate Audit. And within the comments at both sites there are further growing areas of contention being identified.

I have, as those who read the individual state reviews that have been posted here over the last two years (and which are listed down the left side of the page) my own concerns. I have sent these to the attention of the BEST Executive Director. To validate their reality I went back to each of the data tables used to generate the graphs for each state, and checked them for correctness. I found that at the beginning the curves for temperature variance with latitude, longitude , elevation and population had included the temperatures for the GISS stations in a state as well as the USHCN station data. This is a mistake, as the continuing study showed how different the two sets of data are. I have thus re-plotted the data using only temperatures for the USHCN set (both homogenized and for the TOBS data).

I will now go back and change the plotted graphs for each state to make sure that they are the correct ones, but this may take a few days, so in the mean time, please be patient.

In the meanwhile you might ponder this plot which is figure 4 from their paper on the Urban Heat Island Effect.

Map of stations in and near the United States with at least 70 years of measurements; red stations are those with positive trends and blue stations are those with negative trends. (The BEST Project).

Will Renewable Energy Rescue Us All - BP and the IPCC reviews

The people of the world are going to continue to use energy. The fundamental question that this future reality poses relates to the sources from which the energy will be produced. The vast majority of the current energy supply comes from fossil fuels, but, whether it is because of the belief that fossil fuels are going to be the cause of calamitous climate change, or because of the belief that viable production of fossil fuels cannot be sustained at increasing rate, there is a recognition that alternate and sustainable forms of energy are going to have to play an increasing role in the energy mix in that future. However the rate at which those energy supplies are brought into the mix, and the levels that they can achieve are subject to considerable discussion.

The 2011 BP Statistical Review of World Energy in recognizing this, added two new sets of information to their 2011 review of fuel use around the world. The first of these documents the amount of commercial electricity that comes from renewable sources, and the second covers the amount of biofuel that is produced each year. Looking at the amount of electricity generated, the greatest renewable source is currently hydro-electricity, for which BP reports:

Rising use of hydro-electricity around the World in million tons of oil equivalent (divide by 50 to get a rough measure of the equivalent in mb/d) (BP Statistical Review)

The report notes that the increase in the last year, at 5.3% this is twice the historical average, has come mainly through growth in the Asia Pacific region. Note also that this is for electricity generation, Biomass contributes more enery, but a lot is burned directly for heat.

NOTE THAT THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED

Other forms of electricity generation have also grown:

Growth in the supply of electricity from renewable sources in million tons of oil equivalent (BP Statistical Review)

The greatest growth has been in Europe, and the overall trend would appear encouraging. In terms of the liquid fuels that must be produced to replace petroleum products in transportation BP shows that ethanol is being most actively developed in the Americas, while in Europe the emphasis is on biodiesel. Combined the growth over the last decade is shown as follows:

Biofuel production in millions of tons of oil equivalent (again divide by 50 to turn this into a rough estimate in mbd). (BP Statistical Review)

To put these numbers into context, however, one needs to recognize how small a portion of the global supply that these supplies now meet. With a global demand getting close to 90 mbd, a biofuel supply that is just over 1 mbd is not currently making much impact, although if the growth rate of 13.8% in 2010, were to be sustained, it could start to have an impact in a few years.

If one looks at the global contribution to power, bearing in mind that the category of biomass includes everything from trees, through brush wood to dung requires some degree of husbandry to be sustainable, the distance that these technologies must grow before they are significant contributors can be realized.

Relative contribution of different energy sources to global power in 2008 (IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy )

The BP review, while providing a widely referenced source of statistics about energy use at present, and in the past, does not cover future use, however. And the quantity of renewable energy that will be available plays a critical part in helping to plan for that future. It is thus of interest to note that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released a report on Renewable Energy. In the summary press release, the report is cited as showing how up to 77% of global energy could be achieved from renewable sources by 2050.

The report has already received some significant criticism but since it is useful to know how one can grow renewable energy to that level, that fast, I did follow up on one of the references. Steve McIntyre notes that it can be traced back initially to Chapter 10 of the report, and from there back to a paper that admits to the 77% only being achievable if nuclear power is shut down, no CCS power plants are built and there are drastic steps forward in the efficient use of energy. Since those are likely unrealistic I’m not going to chase after that. But what I do find interesting is where the IPCC anticipate that the growth will likely come from. And that can be found in this couple of charts, showing the progress to 2030, and then that achieved by 2050.

Anticipated growth in renewable energy sources to supplies in 2030 and 2050 (For comparative purposes the global electricity demand in 2008 is cited as 61 EJ/yrear). (IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy)

The IPCC report notes that in order for any meaningful progress to be made there must be significant policy changes as well as moves to ensure the adequate levels of innovation will be achieved that are required to make the progress assumed. (Which is in my book assuming that one can legislate technology, which as we have seen with the cellulosic ethanol story is not necessarily so). But one should also be cautious about the speed of politicial change. There is a lesson, for example, that has just emerged from the UK.

Back in 2007 the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in the UK commissioned a study on the coming of peak oil that has just been released, and which may explain the complacency of the UK Government. That report noted that while the UK is less dependant on oil to fuel its economy than other OECD nations, the oil that it does use is difficult to replace since it fuels some 70% of national transportation. The report looked at various time frames for peak oil (pre-2010; 2010 to 2015; mid 2020’s; late 2030’s) and concluded that only the first two would pose a problem. By increasing production from the FSU countries and increasing investment in production to meet demand the report justified the medium and long term scenarios. (However at the same time the report saw price remaining around $60/bbl, which is unrealistic already). The conclusions included the following:

•While global reserves are plentiful, it is clear that existing fields are maturing, the rate of investment in new and existing production is being slowed down by bottlenecks, the economic downturn and financial crisis and that alternative technologies to oil will take a long time to develop and deploy at scale;
•The UK economy would be initially relatively robust to higher prices; however, if peak oil happens before 2015 there would be negative economic consequences for some of the main importers of UK goods and services resulting in a negative impact on the UK economy in the longer term. If the peak happens later, it would be possible to mitigate the impact through greater end-use efficiency and the production of sufficient quantities alternative liquid fuels.
•Given the uncertainties around the timing of peak oil and its implications for the UK, there are no obvious additional policies the UK government should pursue to minimise the likelihood of a 'peak oil' scenario and to be prepared to mitigate its impacts in addition to those already in place.

In reviewing changes since the initial report, the summary notes that while not believing in a near term “peak” the authors do not preclude a risk of a supply crunch.

The Guardian article notes that the DECC minister is now starting to have a bit of a re-think. This is driven, apparently, by the rising concerns in industry about the growing signs that all in not as well in petroleum supply as the DECC report would have it. But the speed of bureaucratic change in thought means that it has taken four years to realize that there might be a problem. It doesn’t bode well for the adoption of forward thinking strategies. Unfortunately it doesn’t bode well for assuring that the world has enough energy for its needs either.

UPDATE: Bishop Hill has a post on the relatively incestuous relationship between those authoring the report, the trade associations for renewable energy in Europe and the UE management. Not that I am condoning that it any way, but it does give a measure of what may very well define the outer edges of what, if all buttons were pressed, might be achievable. However even the little that I have read and commented on shows that it is a hopelessly optimistic view of what can be achieved within the time frames assigned, and as a result Government which believes their predictions, and the populations that trust the Governments to take care of them, are going to be significantly dis-served.

Reading the Climategate books

The ongoing turmoil from the release of the Climategate papers continues. With the Guardian catching up with the rest of the British media and having finally got around to reading the e-mails, it begins to look as though the chances of this being swept under the rug, at least in the UK is becoming less likely. In the United States the administrators that were looking into the case against Professor Mann at Penn State have rendered an initial opinion. The fact that they did not completely exonerate him, but instead referred his conduct to a faculty committee is not quite as good a result for him as he appears to pretend. The quality of the judges means that they will be more disinterested in him personally, and likely more certain to consider the evidence. But it really depends on the individuals, and a couple of strong opinions either way can have quite an impact on the final outcome.

Were they wise they could do considerably worse than to read some of the books and articles that have now come out to explain both the background and some of the issues that have been revealed by the release of information. I was fortunate to get a copy of A.W. Montford’s book on “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” (not easily accessible yet in the USA) as well as Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller’s "Climategate: The CRUtape Letters.” Prior to reading these two I had just finished Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster,” and after reading that I read the “Climategate Analysis,” by John Costella . Then I read Climategate, and finished with Hockey Stick.


Now you might think that I oversaturated on information, but in fact each takes a somewhat different focus to the information, and two of them are more directed at events before Climategate, than the e-mails and programs themselves. So, as it happens, I was lucky in getting the books and reading them in the order that I did, because it gave a much better picture of some of the issues that are not all that evident in the day-to-day exchanges and comments that one see on the blogs and in the press. And, if you have the chance, I would recommend that you read them in a slightly different order to the one that I did. (And slightly guilty confession, both Booker’s and Montford’s books kept me reading far later in the night than I intended, until they were done). But start with Chris Booker’s.

One of the irritating habits of those who espouse the arguments of the AGW leading us to imminent catastrophe is that they claim that the issues are complex, and that you really have to be a climate scientist to understand them. Well, on a matter of fact, if you read these books you don’t have to have that pre-existing knowledge. For in reporting the stories, and explaining their impact and relevance, the information is clear, concisely given and explained in context. (On the other hand, to be mischievous, the critical papers on which much of the AGW crowd has fixated– the Mann, Bradley and Hughes paper in Nature of April 1998, and that in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999, which introduced the “Hockey Stick” shape to the historic global climate community– have been described as “obscure” in the Wegman Report, among other places).

Booker goes into some detail on the origins of the IPCC, and those who have moved it to the prominent place that it now holds in so many discussions relating to the global future. He goes through the operations of the IPCC, and their successive reports to the nations on the “state of the climate.” And he has some uncomfortable conclusions about the path that the British Government is following in its commitment to reducing the generation of greenhouse gases.

It is important that this issue be raised, because this is not some academic exercise, where a couple of faculty have been caught doing naughty things behind the potting shed. It is difficult to over-emphasize the impact that this topic has had on national governments around the world. And Europe has been in the forefront of modifying plans for its future, based on the predictions that have been presented, largely unchallenged, on the impact of the greenhouse gases. (And as a side note it is only this week that Ofgem, has warned that the planned future supply of energy to the United Kingdom is going to come up short, and sooner rather than later.)

One of the key pieces of information that has been used to justify the “precautionary principle” argument for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the MBH papers and their generation of the infamous “hockey stick” where global temperatures were shown to have declined since the year 1,000 AD until around 1900, when they suddenly started to rise at an ever increasing pace. This shape is not dissimilar to that of a hockey stick, with the shank being the slow decline over nine centuries, and the blade being the rising temperature. And it was assembled from a number of different proxies, one of which, a feature that the Penn State Review panel apparently missed, suddenly stopped working, but which was quickly hidden and glossed over in the formation of the telling image. A.W. Montford explains the criticality of this graph to the global warming argument.

As some of you may have noted from earlier posts, I am convinced that there was a Medieval Warming Period (WMP), and that it was warmer than the present. It was followed by a Little Ice Age, which we have been leaving, as the globe has warmed for the last 150 – 200 years. But that is an embarrassment to the AGW argument, and thus the adulatory reception (obscure language non-besides) for the MBH papers, since they did away with the MWP and the need to explain why this warming was remarkable. As I said Montford’s book was the second to keep me awake into the wee hours (and this is not as though I hadn’t earlier spent time at both Climate Audit and RealClimate web sites reading a lot of the background information that is covered here). Chronologizing the events that led to the widespread acceptance of the curve (few of whose acolytes likely understand how it was derived) and explaining its problems while interweaving the story of how Steve McIntyre fought to get the data to show that it was in error, it is, as others have said, a fascinating detective story.

The Hockey Stick Illusion explains the underlying science and what principal components are, and a bit about their use and misuse as it relates to the MBH plots. These are the useful things to know, and not difficult to follow, and because the world has yet to recognize how critical these issues are in the proper understanding of the use and mis-use of climate proxies, it really helps to have it explained. (Ed note – I know a bit about this, and would have explained it slightly differently, but this way may be the best for the layman). The Climategate e-mails were released almost as this book went to press, and so there is only one chapter on their impact, at the end, that points out how much of the conjecture in the earlier chapters was validated, once the e-mails were available.

The CRUtape letters is more of a detailed analysis of those e-mails. It puts them into contextual relevance, with short “cheat sheets” at the beginning of the Chapters, so that you are prepared to understand the ramifications of the selected quotations from the individual e-mails, and thus gives a greater grasp of their meaning. There is a considerable amount of background information given in the book, that gives a contextual understanding of why some of the e-mails have the importance that they have. This is certainly true about the way that the rules were manipulated to allow unpublished papers to be cited in the IPCC reports, which they were not supposed to be. It is a fascinating story of collusion and the ways that the small cabal that controls the climate science debate work to exclude contrary opinions. (And then, of course, they claim that they are the victims of unprecedented PR campaigns against them, when their position has dominated the debate for years).

The alternate approach to that used in the CRUtape letters is to rely on the e-mails themselves to tell the story. That is much more the way in which John Costella tells the story. He also includes more on the Tiljander story ( a pet peeve of mine) without actually using her name, but gives the most complete recounting of that little episode. (Oh, and that summary is free).

Both ways are informative, and there is a lot to be gained by reading both. The machinations behind the scene are somewhat disappointing to read, you realize that there are qualified folk out there who, as a result of this bunch of . . (well the ICO in the UK did say that there have been crimes committed) have had their careers blighted. And sadly the way that the processes, which rely on trust, were blatantly misused with the compliance of journal editors as well as paper authors is a damning record of a shameful period in the history of this young science.

If there is one e-mail that puts this in context, it is this one from Ben Santer

There has been some additional fallout from the publication of our paper in the International Journal of Climatology. After reading Steven McIntyre’s discussion of our paper on climateaudit.com (and reading about my failure to provide McIntyre with the data he requested), an official at DOE headquarters has written to Cherry Murray at LLNL, claiming that my behavior is bringing LLNL’s good name into disrepute. Cherry is the Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at LLNL, and reports to LLNL’s Director (George Miller).

Pity that there weren’t more folk with that sort of a concern.

The full stories are still a long way from being told, but reading these books will give you the understanding to follow, as the issues continue to play out. The Guardian stories, for example, have not yet got around to grasping the implications of the way in which the data, the press, the public and the science, were manipulated and the impact that this will have on the overall message. Unfortunately the e-mails also show the complicity of several of the main media reporters in selling the story that the cabal were promoting. And while the British press are now in active pursuit of the story, that hasn’t happened in the United States – yet!