One impact of the cold spell

It was, perhaps, an unscripted comment but I was watching the “ABC News” with Diane Sawyer tonight, and after the story of the intense cold over the country, she turned to the reporter and asked if this was compatible with global warming. His answer was along the lines of “if it was just the United States then it might be considered to be just weather, but given that it also covers China and Europe, perhaps it is indicative of something else.”

And thus another chink in the armor surrounding discussions of climate change. It is all very well to make predictions about how warm the world is going to get, and to try and frighten politicians into changing policies on the basis of alarming predictions of the effects of global warming , but the problem comes when those predictions fail to come to pass. It is all very well for folk to state, as George Monbiot does that this is not the case.

Even their premise – that the Met Office "confidently predicted a warmer than average winter for Britain" - is wrong. Here's what it actually said:

Early indications are that it's looking like temperatures will be near or above average. But there's still a one in seven chance of a cold winter – with temperatures below average.

No confidence there, no certainty, and no single prediction.

I guess he and I don’t speak the same language, since I read the Met Office prediction as being that there is an 87% chance of a warm winter – which this surely isn’t. But when you’ve tied yourself as tightly to the global warming mantra as he has, it is going to be hard to face up to the reality that perhaps it isn’t so.

Instead we are at a point where businesses are being closed in Europe to conserve fuel.

The national grid was forced to reduce the supply to companies in the North West and East Midlands shortly after issuing its second warning in three days that the system was running out of gas. Demand in recent days has been 28 per cent above seasonal norms and is likely to increase today, when temperatures could fall to minus 22C (-8F) in some areas after what was expected to be the coldest night of the winter so far.

and in a reminder to the EPA Administrator that cold can be a killer there is the possibility of up to a million sheep being lost because of the continued cold in the Scottish Highlands.

And it is not just farm animals that suffer, again in contrast with the EPA Administrator's views, data is now available on how many folk die due to the increased cold, and why.

Last year's low temperatures saw the highest number of "excess deaths" - the number of those who perished over and above what is normal for the time of year - for nearly a decade.
The 40,000 "excess deaths" in England and Wales represented a rise of nearly 50% from the previous year. In the South East, where people were perhaps least prepared for a cold snap, deaths nearly doubled.

This is not just a theoretical debate being carried out based on computer models and controlled publication of only papers favorable to one position. But this is a real ongoing situation where those who rely on the predictions that have been made must now face the actual reality of what is happening.

Now it is true that one winter does not, alone, make the climate change story untenable. But given that there has to be a reason for this, and it is not evident in the climate models on which so much has been invested, then it is fair to ask why not? It is reasonable to ask what is causing this drop in temperature, and to question whether whatever is causing this cold has not, in the last decade, been working in the opposite sense to cause warming. And if my comment from a year ago relating the a change in attitude toward an unconditional acceptance of global warming theories is beginning to be validated, then I think that the questioning will intensify somewhat when the costs of a colder period are added up.

The problem goes beyond the immediate short-term, because the predictions for providing energy for power and heat, and the quantities of natural gas that would be required are proving inadequate in the face of the current situation. This is the “knock-on” consequence of putting too much faith in the models. There has been talk of the need to apply the Precautionary Principle, in taking steps to ensure that increases in carbon dioxide levels in the air do not lead to global warming and the consequences that are increasingly exaggerated in order to drive the debate. There has been too little talk of the precautions that should be taken if the theory is wrong and we will need more fuel rather than less. Or, in this case, more salt, since there are problems in the countries where supplies are proving inadequate.

Police in the Republic are set close a swathe of major roads over the weekend as supplies of salt to keep them open finally run out.

As the Irish government was last night accused of dismally failing to deal with the crisis, even more severe weather is forecast for the next 72 hours. Thousands of schools will not now reopen until well into next week at the earliest.

Local authorities are likely to run out of salt in just two days, raising fears that gardai may be forced to close roads.

In reality the winter will, after a while, be over, and the debate will continue. What the current weather has done, as the ABC comments illustrate, is to break the mind set that unquestioningly accepts the climate change mantra. Just how badly that break has been is going to become evident in the coming months. (Note how I become very nervous of making a prediction).

Power Shortages, then and now

Today I’d like to chat, for just a minute, about the reliability of power supply, given the bitter cold that is covering both the United States and Europe. My Grandfather worked for the British National Coal Board in the telephone exchange at one of the mines at Ashington, in Northumberland. One of the ways in which he was paid was through regular deliveries of coal, which was dumped on the street outside the house once a month. Since he had been shot and gassed in the First World War, one of my chores, whenever I was there, was to load that coal from the street (where it formed a pile on the sidewalk) into the “coal hole,” and then wash down the steet, and holystone the edges of the steps. From the coal bin it was taken, a bucket at a time, into the house to feed the range, which sat in the living room downstairs. That fire also heated the oven, and the hot water with which, when I was very young, we were bathed in front of the fire. The range was the sole source of heat for the house. But with the regular delivery of coal, even if the power went off, the house would stay warm.

When we bought our current house, one of the things we made sure of was, even the house was all-electric, that there was a fireplace, and when we added on to the house we added a tile stove from Germany, that burns wood we obtain locally (though it can also burn coal). Thus when the power goes out (as it has for periods of time in winter and summer) we can keep the house warm enough to prevent things freezing. (We also used to use candles for light, but now have a variety of lights that can be either shaken or wound up that provide light, as well as the occasional flashlight). I was thinking of that situation this week, as the headlines in the UK worry about the supply of natural gas during the cold spell.

It is the problem that heating with natural gas and electricity have, over other fuels, in that the typical home owner has no storage capacity, and where natural gas is used for power generation neither does the power plant. Thus both are critically dependant on their being enough gas coming down the pipe to supply the fuel, when it is needed. However, to quote an example that I have used before from the book “Cape Wind” by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, that shows the increasing vulnerability of places such as New England as the balance that exists between available supply and demand narrows. The event occurred in mid January 2004 when there was a sudden cold spell that lasted over a week, and the story is told from the point of view of the Independent System Operator (ISO) that manages the supply for some 14 million folk, and is located in Holyoke, MA.

On January 14th the ISO had assurances that up to 10,000 megawatts would be available from gas-fired power plants as they anticipated demand rising to around 23,000 to 25,000 megawatts, as the temperature was anticipated to drop to minus ten degrees. But by 8:30 am on the first morning of the crisis, this began to change:

A trickle of phone calls began coming in to the Holyoke headquarters, all with pretty much the same bad news. Plant operators who relied on natural gas as their fuel reported that although their plants were in working order, there was no gas available for them to buy. It had all been taken by the companies responsible for providing gas for home heating.

By afternoon the trickle of “no gas” calls became a flood. . . . .During this all-time winter peak, when electricity was essential for the very survival of many New Englanders, roughly 7,200 megawatts of gas-fired generation was now unavailable. . . . .because they couldn’t find enough natural gas to buy.”

In the end crisis was averted by some load shedding, including closing the schools, but it illustrates the coming vulnerabilities that we face as our historic assumption that there will be enough power when we need it, suddenly starts to be significantly challenged. However, in this case, action was taken, and things no longer look as grim.

But this dependence on flows of gas through pipelines that can only accommodate a certain volume flow rate, means that in periods such as this where there is a sustained cold spell where both power atations and domestic users are increasing demand, it is possible that the supply cannot reach the volumes needed. In this case depending on LNG supplies is not a viable answer, since they, in turn, rely on the passage of tankers that can take days if not weeks to bring gas to a terminal where it can be reconverted and fed into the pipeline.

As with the case in New England, the initial cut-off’s of supply in the UK will be allocated to industrial users.

National Grid warned this week that the gas grid was close to running short of supplies.

Icis Heren, the gas consultancy, reckons that some industrial customers could be cut off within days if the cold weather continues.

“It is pretty tight. At one point on Monday, we were on a knife edge,” said Louise Boddy, managing director of Icis Heren. The exceptional cold, about 6C below the seasonal norm, has pushed gas demand up and is exposing Britain’s new dependency on imports of fuel.

And the situation is apparently not going to get better in the short term:

Much of the UK was blanketed in heavy snow this morning as the extreme weather headed south and forecasters warned that the country was on course for its coldest winter in 30 years.

The Met Office issued an alert warning that nearly half a metre of snow was due to fall in some areas, while freezing conditions spread after having brought chaos to the north of England and Scotland today.

Tony Waters, the Met Office chief forecaster, said: "This is expected to cause disruption to transport networks and could lead to problems with power supplies."

Unfortunately too few in the UK still have that pile of coal in the back shed to provide warmth, when the main power goes off.

Oh, and the Cape Wind project has just run into another roadblock as the National Park Service is considering the area for designation as a National Historic Site.
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