Climate and Stuff

SOPA and stuff

2012-01-19T01:53:00.002Z

The US Laws are aimed at web sites outside the US apparently (sites in the US are well controlled)!
In my view you should abide by the laws of your place of residence - Just because Saudi has laws against drinking must no mean that it is illegal to drink in the UK. It must also not mean that the Saudi authoritories cannot demand that all alcoholics in the UK must be extradited to Saudi for trial.

So why is it possible for the US to demand the UK extradites a student who has broken no UK law - it is not illegal in the UK to show links to sites hosting movies and TV programmes (illegal). This is just what search engines do after all!

This is what has happened to Richard O’Dwyer - the UK has extradition agreements with the US and the media moguls have demanded extradition to the US for trial against THEIR laws
See UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer’s case:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/student-to-face-us-trial-over-tvshack-website-6289235.html
Other court cases have proven his web site was legal in the UK.

Does one search the world for the most sensitive nations and force everyone to adopt their laws?

If you are in the UK write to your MP about Richard O’Dwyer's case – extradition makes no sense for someone who has broken no current UK laws!

Let this one go and who knows what flood gates get opened.

WUWT learning exercise???.

2012-01-14T21:28:00.003Z

Joel Shore says: January 14, 2012 at 10:22 am

Bob Fernley-Jones says:

BTW, I think this here debate is the best form of “peer review”

No…It is evidence of how, outside of the scientific community, people can endlessly debate things that inside the scientific community would quickly and rightly be dismissed as nonsense.
The fact that this is still being debated despite the best attempts by some of us to inject correct science into the debate shows how many people seem unable to distinguish actual science from nonsense. This is particularly true when the nonsense aligns more with what they want to believe than the science does. – Anthony
REPLY: And this Joel, is where you fail miserably. The point of this is education. To learn people must make mistakes. The problem with the “scientific community” is that they poo poo and denigrate people like myself and those who frequent this blog for going through the learning process discussing things they consider off limits. The fact is though, that anyone who maintains a closed mind to re-evaluating anything is a lost soul, capable only of self affirmatiom and confirmation bias.
I could have prevented this post, knowing full well at the outset that it had serious problems, but then, nobody would have learned anything. Unlike you and the team, I prefer to allow such open debate, even if the debate shows just how wrong the idea can be. The real value is in the journey. I refer everyone to the conclusion of this discussion in Willis Eschenbach’s thread A Matter of Some Gravity
You’ve spent hours dominating this thread and the original, and many have learned something from it, some have not. But in honor of your pig-headedness displayed here, I’m closing the thread. The conversation can continue on the Willis essay linked above. Take a 24 hour time out before you try to take command of that thread too. – Anthony

=================

Has anyone changed their view because of this educational exercise?

=================

Are Adiabatic Lapse Rates Controlling Temperatures

2012-01-02T04:39:00.009Z

Adiabatic Lapse Rates
wiki
Types of lapse rates

There are two types of lapse rate:
Environmental lapse rate – which refers to the actual change of temperature with altitude for the stationary atmosphere (i.e. the temperature gradient)
The adiabatic lapse rates – which refer to the change in temperature of a parcel of air as it moves upwards (or downwards) without exchanging heat with its surroundings. The temperature change that occurs within the air parcel reflects the adjusting balance between potential energy and kinetic energy of the molecules of gas that comprise the moving air mass. There are two adiabatic rates:[6] Dry adiabatic lapse rate
Moist (or saturated) adiabatic lapse rate
http://www4.uwsp.edu/geO/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/atmospheric_moisture/lapse_rates_1.html
In "The Atmosphere" we discovered that air temperature usually decreases with an increase in elevation through the troposphere. The decrease in temperature with elevation is called the environmental lapse rate of temperature or normal lapse rate of temperature. Recall that the normal lapse rate of temperature is the average lapse rate of temperature of .65o C / 100 meters. The environmental lapse rate of temperature is the actual vertical change in temperature on any given day and can be greater or less than .65o C / 100 meters. Also recall that the decrease in temperature with height is caused by increasing distance from the source of energy that heats the air, the Earth's surface. Air is warmer near the surface because it's closer to its source of heat. The further away from the surface, the cooler the air will be. It's like standing next to a fire, the closer you are the warmer you'll feel. Temperature change caused by an exchange of heat between two bodies is called diabatic temperature change. There is another very important way to change the temperature of air called adiabatic temperature change.
http://daphne.palomar.edu/jthorngren/adiabatic_processes.htm
Make sure you notice that we are talking about moving air (rising or subsiding), not still air. The change in temperature of still air (that is, air that is not rising or subsiding) follows the Environmental Lapse Rate, which varies considerably, but averages about 6.5 deg C/1000 meters (3.6 deg/1000 feet). In still air, if you went up in a hot air balloon, carrying a thermometer and taking the air temperature every 1000 meters, on average the temperature would drop 6.5 degrees C every 1000 meters. The rate of temperature change as you rise in still air is not as great as the rate of change of rising air; that is, the air parcel does not cool off as fast.
For instance, the air temperature at sea level is 28 degrees C. Climb into your balloon, release the tethers, and go up 1000 meters in the still air. On average, the air temperature 1000 meters up will be _21.5___degrees C. If the air were rising, and the temperature at sea level was 28 degrees C, what would the temperature of the air be after it rose 1000 meters? 18C
http://www.sci.uidaho.edu/scripter/geog100/lect/05-atmos-water-wx/05-part-7-atmos-lifting-fronts/ch5-part-7a-atmos-liftin.htm
http://www.geographypages.co.uk/lapse.htm
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/climate/lapserates.html
People talk of adiabatit lapse rates as if they control the atmosperic temperatre. Why?
These lapse rates refer to moving a number of molecules from low pressure to high pressure and getting heated. No problem with that. BUT
For every molecule moved down to high press ure there must be a molecule moved from high to low. It cannot be a one way transport (obviously!).
So, in my books, the heating effect of falling molecules equals the cooling effect of rising molecules. Hence no effect.
So Why is it colder up a mountain than on the plains.
GHG free air absorbs litle of the available sunlight. Air with GHGs absorbs only at the known absoption frequencies and the proportion of theses frequencies in the TSI is relatively small. There is therefore little air heating due to sunlight.
However sunlight hits the ground and 70% gets absorbed and reradiated as heat at long wave infra red frequencies. These will heat the air via absoption. There is more close ground creating warming in a valley than on a hill hence it will be warmer.
NOW if there is a 1000 metre plateau will this be as warm as the valley below - if not, why not?

from WUWT
The adiabatic lapse rate is defined by the "gas Laws" not by gravity (other than of course high gravity gives high pressure!).
The adiabatic lapse rate requires that a fixed number of molecules be moved between pressure differences. Once at a new pressure the new temperature will stabilise to the surroundings (but that is not what adiabatic lapse rate is about).
However, for every molecule transported from high to low pressure there MUST be a molecule transported from low to high pressure. This means there is NO net flow of energy.
Where the atmosphere blends into a vacuum there can be no convective/conductive transfer of energy (there is nothing to transfer the energy to!)
Radiation is the only option. N2 H2 O2 etc. have little propensity to absorb radiation. Hoever they will get warm by transfer of heat from GH gasses. All hot bodies emit radiation (bb radiation).

At the other end of the air column you have similar problems. The ground/sea warms through absorption of the shorter wavelengths of TSI (where most of the solar energy is). The heat is radiated from the ground/sea as LWIR and by contact at the boundary between earth and atmosphere. The heat must be transferred from molecule to molecule by contact or by convection. A slow process. Conduction will be enhanced by high pressure, convection will be slowed.
The radiated energy is NOT significantly absorbed by O2 N2 H2 etc. no matter what the pressure. Even a solid glass fibre can be made extremely low loss 0.2dB per km and the molecules are pretty solidly packed http://www.fiberoptics4sale.com/wordpress/optical-fiber-loss-and-attenuation/ . Without a GHG this radiation would escape without attenuation straight to space. GHGs will "absorb" this LWIR at certain frequencies and re-emit it in all directions. The time for this energy to be "reabsorbed" in another molecule is dependent on the path length which is dependent on the proximity of other GHG molecules which is dependant on the pressure of the atmosphere.
The time taken for the radiation to bounce from molecule to molecule increases the time it takes for the energy to travel from ground to space.
The energy input to the system is at a constant rate. Slow down the output and the system gets hotter. A hotter system will radiate more energy (BB radiation).
Where does the energy from static pressure difference come in to this?

Of interest a measurement in 2001 was mad of downward LWIR was made in

Atmospheric longwave irradiance uncertainty: Pyrgeometers compared to an absolute sky-scanning radiometer, atmospheric emitted radiance interferometer, and radiative transfer model calculations.

http://www.patarnott.com/atms749/pdf/LongWaveIrradianceMeas.pdf

================

Measurement of night time downward radiation

So we know the solar output received in the dark is 0

We know that O2 and N2 have very very very little thermal radiation.
So where does all that downward radiation come from (at least 270W/sqm)
It can only be from GHGs.

During the day we receive about 380W/sqm

So the 270W/sqm is additional to the solar irradiance.

So the average night day temp difference is less than expected (no sideways conduction/wind required)

http://www.patarnott.com/atms749/pdf/GrantPettyDeathPhotons.pdf
Do O2 N2 CO2 radiate

N2 O2 absoptions are mainly rotational and thereefore mainly in the microwave region. There is not a great amount of radiation in these frequencies.

Cloud transmission (from above-FTIR looking down)

Transmission through the atmosphere. If GH effect exists then there should be mmissing parts of emission spectrum when looking at the earth. AND when looking up at the sky there should be higher levels of radiation at the same wavelengt as is missing when looking down. Is this the case? It seems so:

Confirmation of the Green House Effect

2011-11-24T01:28:00.012Z

The Effect of CO2 on IR

The Setup
Volume of trapped air in Vacuum Flask 541ml

Air is in a vacuum thermal flask made of double skin stainless steel designed for isolation of liquid from external temperature influence

IR Absorber used to collect IR is 18g matt black anodised corrugated aluminium rectangular block 40mm by 44mm

Distance from end of tube to top of absorber is 128mm

IR Transmitter is 49mm diameter matt black aluminium

Thermal conduction isolation provide by 135mm tube with internal convection cooling internal diameter 49mm

Air exchange isolation provided by low density polyethylene (LDPE “cling film”)

Test Set up

Method

1 Temperature recorded at 1 second intervals using an eight channel USB thermocouple interface

2 Apparatus set up as shown but with the IR transmitter isolated from the system. The Internal volume of the vacuum flask was filled with room temperature air (RH approx 50%). The flask then had 60ml of CO2 injected (3 lots of 20ml) (This increases the concentration of CO2 but not to the full 60ml as each injection would displace some of the already injected CO2).

3 IR Transmitter maintained at greater than 100C whilst thermocouple temperatures stabilised

4 When stability reached IR transmitter cooled to 101C and placed on top of tube

5 Temperature of IR transmitter maintained as stable as possible at approximately 100°C during the heating of the gas to greater than 25°C

6 The IR source was removed and the vacuum flask air replaced with room air (using a small fan).

7 The system was then cooled by placing ice cubes in a glass on the LDPE film on the vacuum flask.

8 The system was then reassembled but without the IR source.

9 The air temperature was the allowed to stabilise.

9 The test method was repeated until the air temperature was above 25°C

10 The Air in the flask was then enhanced with CO2 and cooled again, repeating the same method as above

11 The same method was also run (with CO2 and normal done in reverse order) on a previous occasion.

The Results:

1 Using the last 2 runs (room air then CO2 enhanced room air) and measuring the slope of temperature rise per second at around 25°C shows a significant increase with more CO2

2 Also the temperature array record a smaller spread with increased CO2.

Conclusion
CO2 in these two instances caused between 6 and 10% greater heating rate
The temperature gradient of the "air" is the reverse of what would be expected with convection or radiation (the higer up the flask the probe the cooler the air)

http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php
373K
Radiant emmittance: 1097.64 W/m2
Radiance: 349.389 W/m2/sr
Peak spectral radiance: 29.5722 W/m2/sr/µm
Wavelength of peak: 7.76877 µm

298k
Radiant emmittance: 447.186 W/m2
Radiance: 142.344 W/m2/sr
Peak spectral radiance: 9.62545 W/m2/sr/µm
Wavelength of peak: 9.724 µm

100C source is 135mm+125mm-45mm from top thermocouple
top thermocouple is 45 mm from re-radiator
The heating effect of the top 100C source is therefore reduced by 45^2/ 215^2

The green trace below is radiation from the 101C source.
The Blue trace is the upward long wave radiation from the 25C collector.

http://vpl.astro.washington.edu/spectra/co2pnnlimagesmicrons.htm

CO2 3 times more absorption at 4um than 15um

BB radiation curve shows that 4um absorption and 16um absorption are similar when sensitivity is considered

101C curve always adds less energy to CO2 than 25C re-radiator at 45mm Sensor. The difference will increase as the sensor distance from the re-radiator decreseas

Just How good Are Satellite Derived Temperatures (updated)

2011-11-05T14:17:00.004Z

Many changes have been made to satellite derive temperatures ( I have asked Spencer to explain the differences and unrecorded adjustments on many blogs. BUT never has he bothered to explain).
With the current BEST surface temperature slanging matches raging on the anti AGW blogs all eyes seem to be turning to the satellite record and opinions seem to suggest that these results are what everyone should be usingas the gold standard (mainly because they only show the last 8 year and these have a cooling trend!!)

What goes up must (in earth orbit) eventually come down.
NOAA-15 was once the satellite producing the temperature records (from 1998) however as the hardware progressively fails the data from the AQUA satellite has been used (data available from 2002)

This gave a 6 year overlap where the temperatures could be compared and corrected. This, according to Leif Svalgaard is what happens with the TSI measurements for solar activity.

My complaint is that there is a LARGE error in data between AQUA and NOAA-15 and no attempt to reconcile the differences is made or explanations given.
Indeed The UAH team handling the data seem to adjust data at a whim.
For example: for channel 05 AQUA between the dates of 2010-07-03 and 2011-10-01 data missing in the earlier plot suddenly appeared in the later plot (from 2009-02-01 to 2009-02-03 and on 2010-11-25 and 2010-11-26 Why and how? Also in my data the earlier records were one day adrift !! (could have been me however)

People are quibbling about discrepancies of 0.12 K/decade but looking at the comparison between NOAA-15 data and AQUA this 0.12K/decade is the discrepancies produced by the two satellites and modified by the same team.

Chan 05
.

From the above plot during the overlap period:
NOAA warming is 3.27e-5K/day = 0.119K/decade
AQUA warming is -1.95e-5K/day = -0.0712K/decade
Also of interest is the two plots for the same series but obtained at different times red and blue in the plot these seem to have been revised without explanation (by up to .08K)

Looking at CH 4 data, the current data on their web site runs from 2002 to 2008 (with the last 6 monts failing) The data that was available (NOAA?) went from 1998 to 2011 and despite this being the longer record is not used on their Discover website.

Again the slope over the valid overlap period is:
AQUA 1.0404e-5K/day = 0.0380K/decade
NOAA 1.1879e-4K/day = 0.434K/decade

Another series CH06

AQUA -4.2323e-5K/day = -0.154K/decade
NOAA -1.7595e-4K/day = -0.642K/decade

Chan 10

AQUA -6.59e-5K/day = -0.2345K/decade
NOAA -9.58e-4K/day = -0.3411K/decade

Chan 13

AQUA -2.1174e-4K/day = -0.754K/decade
NOAA -1.4831e-4K/day = -0.528K/decade

Another plot shows that CHLT (NOAA defunct) and CH04 (recently AQUA defunct) had peaks and troughs occurring at the same time. However comparing CH04 to Sea Surface temperature the temperature of the sea changes BEFORE the air temperature by a couple of months. HOW?

Absolute temperature differences
( CH4 NOAA) - (CH4 AQUA)=-2K
( CH5 NOAA) - (CH5 AQUA)=-0.11K
( CH6 NOAA) - (CH6 AQUA)=-0.99K
( CH10 NOAA) - (CH10 AQUA)=-0.279K
( CH13 NOAA) - (CH13 AQUA)=0.062K

Conclusion

There seems to be many more problems with satellite temperatures than with surface temperatures. Why then are these held up as being the golden standard???

Schnare snared, Horner cornered. ATI Gate?

2011-11-02T20:35:00.001Z

Two very "interesting documents from the UVa

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/ATI-UVA-support-memorandum.pdf
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/ATI-UVA-Kast-affidavit.pdf

original here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/02/michael-mann-wades-into-the-uva-thicket-as-intervenor/#comment-785765

Schnare seemingly lies about his employment
Schnare and Horner show signs of illegally releasing Mann Emails despite agreeing not to share!

WUWT Revisionism double standards - updated

2011-09-21T02:58:00.002+01:00

Richard Allan says: September 20, 2011 at 9:27 am

I was surprised that this paper was mis-interpreted as suggesting negative cloud feedback. This is a basic error by the author of the post that has been highlighted by many contributors including Roy Spencer.

REPLY: Dr. Allan, thank you for visiting and for your correction. Please note that I’ve made an update to the post, removing the word negative from the headline and including why I interpreted the paper to demonstrate a negative feedback for clouds. I welcome your thoughts. It seems to me that if clouds had a positive feedback, the dips in 1998 and 2010 in your figure 7 would be peaks rather than deep valleys.
...- Anthony

Bishop Hill and the skeptical cookbook

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Anthony Watts

Oh this is fun, Bishop Hill catches John Cook’s “Skeptical Science” in a revisionism gaffe using The Wayback Machine.
===========================

And of course the factual post converted to a "learning" exercise:
Its snowing CO2 in the antarctic!!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/09/co2-condensation-in-antarctica-at-113f/

My post on Curry point out that watts and his ilk have been demanding peer review by blog. They get it with Best ... and then complain bitterly about Best pre-publishing - you just cannot win!

thefordprefect | November 1, 2011 at 9:07 am |

Watts
you/your accolytes have been calling for peer review by blog for a very long time (recent postings):
Peer review is dead, long live blog review
Posted on September 21, 2011 by Anthony Watts
By Marc Hendrickx writing in ABC’s The Drum
An opportunity for online peer review
Posted on March 27, 2011 by Anthony Watts
I have been asked to present this for review by readers here, and to solicit critical comments for the purpose of improving the presentation.
Now, apart from the press release what is the difference with the BEST release?
From my reading the press release is all about try to stop them misrepresenting the information (as happened with the CRU emails).
Why are you so critical of best when they seem to be doing what you want (e.g. listening to McIntyre)?

More on Bart, FFTs and Cloud vs temperature

2011-09-19T00:51:00.004+01:00

To me it seems that the plot has been lost on CA were discussions revolve around FFTs iFFT convolutions etc.

Is there a relation ship between cloud (Net_tot-SW_clr) and temperature or temperature and cloud?

How about a few simple plots:

The first uses data filtered with a Hodrick-Prescott filter of 1 and plots temperature anomaly against (Net_tot-SW_clr) sorted .

The second removes any filtering:

As can be seen the is a slight rising trend.

So now reverse the axis and plot cloud cover vs temperature anomaly (sorted) These are Duff!!

So there does seem to be a temperature and (Net_tot-SW_clr) relationship. But which is the forcing????

FFTs Cloud feedback and Stuff

2011-09-12T18:09:00.002+01:00

Many "sums" have been done using FFTs and convolution.
It started out with Spencer:

Changed to this with "Bart"

However there seems to me to be problems with all of this.

1. the data being used is from 10 years only
2. the data from clear to cloudy sky is not simultaneous
3. the data is average over 1 month so can never be safely used to subtract clear from cloudy - the data is smeared over 1 month and can never be data from the same region.
3a. Albedo of soil and water are very different- cloud over water will show a large TOA flux difference wheras the cloud over land will show less outward going flux.
water albedo= 0.02 approx (at some angles)

ground albedo = 0.1 to 0.5
Clouds albedo = 0 to 0.8
Wiki
4. What about the "insulating" effect of clouds at night. Shouldn't this be included in any flux calculations?
5. There is no way the data available from Spencer/Dessler/Bart can show the accurate change in flux due to clouds

the Plots below are simple spectrums using the FFT function in excel. Note that any thing over 60 years period has very little resolutuion. and these are from 200 year records not 10 year!!.

Also when doing FFT on a non infinite series the trend should be removed before the fft transform is applied as the termination of data at either end causes problems. Using a FFT windowing function will also improve performance.

Comparison between data with a trend and detrended data:

Ocean albedo calc
http://snowdog.larc.nasa.gov/jin/rtset.html

Measurement of ground albedo
http://www.cuepe.ch/html/biblio/pdf/ineichen%201990%20-%20ground-reflected%20radiation%20and%20albedo%20(se).pdf

Variation/validation of Albedo
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.6930&rep=rep1&type=pdf

More on IR water penetration depth

2011-09-08T02:53:00.000+01:00

Using a similar setup to the previous posting different filtering methods have been used to see if pentration depth can be tested.

In test 1 a heat sink was placed in the tube preventing any visible light entering the water. The stable temperature of the heatsink was 100C The tube was ventilated from just above the transparent seal above the water to just below the heatsink. at the top of the tube. The bulk of radiation entering the water would be radiated from the bottom of the heatsink

In test 2 the heat sik was replaced with a 1cm deep tray of water. This should effectively remove any LW IR leaving only visible light. The tube was again ventilated.

The temperature plots with depth are shown together with the rate of change of temperature with depth.

Not very conclusive although it appears that 100C blackbody is significantly attenuated below 6mm of depth. (the final 2 thermocouples showing the leakage of the thermos heating the water (possibly)

The visible light seems to be adding significantly to the water at a depth of 55mm.

Note that there seems to be no explanation for the dips in reading of temperature. The apparatus was not disturbed and no light change occurred. (one of the dips - at 24mins was caused by the filter water being replaced with cool water)

McIntyre and Acolyte Vigilantyism

2011-09-04T12:11:00.005+01:00

The unsupported accusations against Jones, Mann etc continues unabated on the "auditing " site
"Did he add any "
"The prima facie evidence "
"this particular finding of the Inquiry Committee clearly does not follow "
"Watch the pea here, "
"It seems to me that “Professor” Jones "
"I use *might* because it is still not clear that any offense was actually "
"The academics did not describe the conduct as it was. Instead, they misdescribed the conduct and then made findings unsupported by the evidence"

etc.
etc.

Never mind the evidence - Hang em High:

"thefordprefect Posted Sep 4, 2011 at 5:38 AM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Trial by Lynch Mob is just sooo American

------------------

thefordprefect Posted Sep 4, 2011 at 5:54 AM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Wiki

Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that arise in communities, such as charivari, riding the rail, and tarring and feathering. Lynchings have been more frequent in times of social and economic tension, and have often been means used by the politically dominant population to oppress social challengers.

=================

Then of course there is the poor Phil post.

This is just unbelievable. Apparently Jones lost kgs of weight, and aged 10 years just to comply with media management instigated by Neil Wallis.
This is a truly despicable post by someone who claims only to want the truth!!!!

================

If McIntyre is really a climate auditor then should he not be auditing papers such as the Spencer & Braswell paper?? The Cern Cloud report???

No, Perhaps his cognitive function has been clouded by hatred of all things Mann and Jones!

thefordprefect Posted Sep 4, 2011 at 6:21 AM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
McIntyre if you really are a climate auditor then should he not be auditing papers such as the Spencer – Braswell paper?? The Cern Cloud report???
There are so many from both sides.
I suppose you will be reposting all the hide the decline emails soon. It must be over a week since you mentioned these!!!!!

=================
thefordprefect

Posted Sep 7, 2011 at 7:13 AM
Permalink
Reply

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Collected here are data from different past plots on the spencer and braswells discover page

There are many revisions:

Some due to satellite changes (but if temperatures from satellites are accurate then shouldn’t temperature a a fixed altitude be the same from satellite to satellite?)

Some just terminate

Some are just revised by a few 100ths K why? if this is such a clean data source?
Satellites do not give a global snapshot at a time they are a moving window taking hours? days? to complete a global sweep

Is the satellite data corrected for local time?

If satellites recording temp are so variable how can anyone use them to determine the effect of clouds? As far as I’m aware the global temperature derived from satellites is adjused for cloud cover!!!!

Temperatures are derived from someone’s models that derive temperature from radiation+mods for intervening layers etc. Is this really better than surface measurements

How far does IR penetrate Water? (failed?)

2011-08-22T21:39:00.001+01:00

An attempted experiment to measure how far IR penetrates (tap) water (UK variety)

Problem points:

The wide necked Vacuum flask turns out to be a wide necked flask!
The high frequency cut off of the IR pass filter is not known (this was purchased from Edmund Optical)
The High intensity Low votage Halogen lamp is not the sun and has a peak output at the red end of solar spectrum (3500K cf 5000K)

Test setup

Thermocouples are placed away from the light input at distances below the water surface of

1mm
3mm
11.2mm
18.5mm
39.5mm

Tube and filter 50mm diameter

2 runs made with and without the IR pass (visible stop) filter:
These produce 2 outputs:

The Filter
Using a camera as a lightmeter and looking at the halogen source the filter reduces the exposure (mainly visible) by a factor of 110.
The light source.
20 watts = perhaps 10 watts into tube and 1 watt (unfiltered) into water

What they show
The spectrum of the bulb is not generated from a hot enough filament. The heating effect of filtered and unfiltered light is very similar.
Unfiltered heating does not predominate at greater depths (it is virtually the same as IR "only")
At a 39mm depth heating effect has little effect over the leakage throught the faulty vacuum flask.

What I would have thought.
Despite the limitations I would have expected significantly greater heat imput (faster temp rise ) at depth with unfiltered light.

Suggestions?

More Arctic Sea Ice!

2011-07-31T13:21:00.008+01:00

The plots below suggest that the rate of decrease is the same as previous years. However the starting area was lower over winter. This suggests a minimum extent of 4.6e6 sqkm

However comparing the 2 images from 2011 and 2007 created by
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
The seems to be more chance of a lower minimum than 2007 if the freeze does not start earlier.

McIntyre - the downward spiral into the gutter + more posts that may never make it!

2011-07-20T01:52:00.007+01:00

Just so much unsubstantiated crud. Climate AUDIT should audit itself!
Notice how McIntyre never ACTUALLY accuses anyone - innuendo is sufficient for the accolytes to pick it up and embelish it.

"Covert” Operations by East Anglia’s CRU

Steve McIntyre Posted Jul 15, 2011 at 7:47 AM
I wonder how much Outside Organisation contributed to misdirecting the police about international security services, and thus the involvement of Counter-Terrorism officers.

Posted Jul 14, 2011 at 3:47 PM
Remember the apparent disinformation about Russian intelligence agencies. 18 months later, there isn’t (to my knowledge) a shred of evidence for this theory. Nonetheless, this was fed into the press and quickly accepted as gospel by the climate science community. Remember Pierrehumbert’s fulminations at Dot Earth about this. And Andrew Weaver’s talk about international conspiracy. I wonder how much of this stemmed from Outside Organisation’s intervention.

Posted Jul 15, 2011 at 7:02 AM
I agree that the reference to “mobile phone conversations” – of which there isn’t a shred of evidence and was not under discussion at the time = suggests (but doesn’t prove) a connection to Neil Wallis and Outside Organisation, as this surely seems like a specific embellishment that they would have added to the legend being disseminated to the climate science community and to the public.

R.S.Brown Posted Jul 14, 2011 at 7:36 PM
It takes little, if any, imagination to join up the dots between Mr. Willis’s employment by the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) and the spectacular failure of the East Anglia police in investigating the who, what, when and where of the unauthorized release of the Climategate materials
Steve McIntyre Posted Jul 14, 2011 at 10:10 PM
One of the main elements of the disinformation campaign in early December was what may have been the planting of stories that blamed Climategate on Russian security elements. One of the pieces of “evidence” that supposedly pointed to “sophisticated” hackers was East Anglia’s claims to have had a “sophisticated” security system – a claim that seems to be viewed now as a fabrication. I wonder how much Outside Organisation had to with disseminating the idea of “Russian security services”.

Posted Jul 18, 2011 at 5:12 PM
As I reported last year, I was interviewed by a Counter Terrorism officer who had been seconded to Norfolk Constabulary to work on the East Anglia emails. I wonder if Neil Wallis had any involvement in getting Counter Terrorism officers working on East Anglia emails rather than Al Qaeda or such.

pat Posted Jul 17, 2011 at 6:44 PM
the local norfolk newspaper, Eastern Daily Press, which covered wallis and UEA (only to give cover) is owned by a big media company called Archant. here’s the Board:
Richsrd Jewson, Chairman
He is HM Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk and also Chairs the Council for the University of East Anglia.
Richard chairs the remuneration and nominations committees
Adrian Jeakings Chief Executive
He is a governor of Norwich School and a member of the Audit Committee of the University of East Anglia…
Mike Walsh Director
He has had extensive involvement in the charity sector as Worldwide Board member of WWF, Vice Chairman of the British Red Cross, and completed his six-year term as Chairman of the UK Disasters Emergency Committee in March 2011.
http://www.archant.co.uk/about_board.aspx

mpaul Posted Jul 18, 2011 at 9:49 AM
It would seem that one of Wallis’ singular talents was is knowing how to pay-off the Police http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/07/17/158069.html . This raises important questions about the unusual and unaccounted for payment by UEA to the Norfolk Police Authority http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/6/22/whats-up-with-norfolk-police.html

. There needs to be a call for a complete explanation of Wallis’ activities while employed by the UEA.

my latest which seems to be in moderation again!!! I'm sure the only blogs to not censor comments (wuwt and ca) cannot be selecting posts!

Walt Man Posted Jul 20, 2011 at 12:48 PM
How do you KNOW that Neil Wallis was requested explicitly by UEA as you IMPLY in your header.
As far as any information is available UEA Employed Outside Organisation to get their point of view to the press.
Wallis was surely provided by Outside Organisation as a suitable person from OO to do the requested work. NOBODY KNEW that he was implicated in hacking at THAT TIME. Can you prove differently?
When your “mineral” prospecting company requires an accountant, do you check the future to see if the accountant provided by an accounting firm will be or has been (but not discovered yet) fiddling the books of another organisation?
Your talents must be amazing, or you are making unsubstantiated accusations!
----
Eric Posted Jul 20, 2011 at 1:19 PM
I read no such implication in the header. Wallis is toxic and we now have evidence that he was hired, through OO, as UEA’s reputation manager. That is all that the header says, and that is enough to merit further investigation.
----
thefordprefect Posted Jul 20, 2011 at 4:40 PM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Eric Posted Jul 20, 2011 at 1:19 PM I read no such implication in the header. Wallis is toxic and we now have evidence that he was hired, through OO, as UEA’s reputation
University of East Anglia had used Neil Wallis”
“The University of East Anglia was not the only UK institution that employed Wallis”
“That their first instinct was to seek counsel from a former News of the World editor”
“reputation management” problem and the sort of advice that they needed could be obtained from a former News of the World editor (let alone one with Wallis’ baggage).”
Only the first statement has an ounce of truth. The rest are just wrong – the UEA employed OO, OO provided their consultant Wallis. As said above “When your “mineral” prospecting company requires an accountant, do you check the future to see if the accountant provided by an accounting firm will be or has been (but not discovered yet) fiddling the books of another organisation?”
=======
Another never to emerge from moderation perhaps!!!
-Walt Man Posted Jul 22, 2011 at 7:49 AM

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Martin Brumby Posted Jul 22, 2011 at 7:10 AM
Blimey Mate, you are now accusing the notw as a bunch of dishonest hacks before they were even KNOWN to be such.
My company has employed a firm of accoiuntants. I do not KNOW who is actually doing my accounts – it varies from year to year. They certainly do not send me the CVs of this person. The CV is not even likely to say “I have worked in phone hacking” is it? I put my trust in the accountants company. Not the tea boy who probably presses the button on the computer to roll out the 2 accounts documents and the submission to HMRC. I even managed to do it last year (saved £900!!)
UEA employed an agency to get their view to the press. OO has/had plenty of famous names on the books. Why should they not trust the person OO allocates to do this simple job? What is so difficult to understand about this?
===============
That one made it - how about this:
thefordprefect Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 4:29 AM | Permalink | Reply
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Richard Drake Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Reply
What if the person ‘recruiting’ him for UEA knew some of the darker parts of his past, and that this would guarantee he wouldn’t step out of line? That’s the hunch I’ve had.

ZT Posted Jul 22, 2011 at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Reply
It appears that British officials are selected exclusively for blackmail potential these days. (Similar to the system employed at the UN).

hro001 Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 2:02 AM | Permalink | Reply
It seems that Wallis was … hmmm … not home alone.

“What if”
“Hunch”
“It appears”
“It seems”

Where’ the EVIDENCE for any of this.

I know for a fact Elvis may be alive
It is absolutely certain that area 51 possibly houses alien artifacts
There is incontrovertible evidence that the moon landings were possibly staged!

=====
Off moderation so posted but how long will it last before deletion!?

walt man
Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 5:27 AM | Permalink | Reply

How times change:

Steve McIntyre, posted on Jan 12, 2010 at 11:35 PM
You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect.

This leads to indignation that such a comment can be made (no mention that it was presumed a private email.

Now you plaster all over the web comments where it is stated that Jones brush with suicide was a put up job to get the sympathy vote. Did no one see him present his case to parliament – was he shown by Wallis how to starve himself. Did Wallis show him how to dye his hair just the right side of grey to match his pallid complection. Did Wallis give him acting lessons to get just the right amount of quaver in his voice?

YOU PEOPLE AMAZE ME
and just recently
YOU PEOPLE DISGUST ME.
========
Well this got posted then everything got deleted and the whole thread now in disarray. Well done McIntyre!

walt man
Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Reply
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Run???? It took almost 3 months for this to surface. Wouldn’t it have been better to say this after perhaps 1 month for maximum impact?

From The Sunday Times February 7, 2010
Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself “several times”. He acknowledged similarities to Dr David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had “sexed up” evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Richard Drake Posted Jul 23, 2011 at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Reply
The very fact you equate someone’s death with a threat of suicide if someone asks someone too many awkward questions shows the moral vacuum in which you are operating.

What!!!
A natural death. A private comment to others:

“Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news !”

That’s it, all of IT, how on earth do you misinterpret this comment? The moral vacuum that I work in is that I at least believe that my grandchildren deserve a better world to live in. That those equatorial dwellers deserve a homeland that is inhabitable.
I unfortunately also believe that it is probable that Man can destroy the environment!

Revisionism in the satellite Temperatures

2011-06-25T17:44:00.002+01:00

http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Danny Braswell, NSSTC Control the data

No problem with this (it presumably corrects errors from an older satellite) But if this had been done by CRU/Giss etc. it would have headlined on WUWT and CA with statements that this proves that the data and its controllers cannot be trusted!

One interesting one is CH4 (final plot) thewhole of the last years data (not shown on plot) has been deleted - why?

Mcintyre and censorship

2011-06-18T22:15:00.000+01:00

As McIntyre ages he becomes more irrascable. Just so many posts disappear from the blog that it eventually collapses in on itself with orphaned posts, and time-mixed posts, and confusion.

A post that will never see the light of day:!
in reply to david jay who queried if I thought the IPCC should filter for conflicts of interest.

thefordprefect

Posted Jun 18, 2011 at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Reply

Your comment is awaiting moderation.
David Jay
It should be held to the same standards as blog writers.
from 2003
The Company has operations in Canada and Guyana, and its entire operating activities are related
to the exploration, development and production of petroleum and natural gas.
Stephen McIntyre, B.Sc., B.A.
Position Strategic Advisor
Age 56
Experience Steve has more than 28 years of experience in the mineral business. He is the former
President of Dumont Nickel Inc., and was President of Northwest Exploration Company
Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc. During his career, Steve has
been the President and Chairman of other resource companies as well.

Schnare vs UVA - The Impossible Request

2011-06-12T15:52:00.002+01:00

The impossible request:

January 6, 2011

Dear Rector Wynne:

We the undersigned citizens and residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in coordination with the Environmental Law Center of the American Tradition Institute, ...

Subject Matter

We seek materials that Dr. Michael Mann produced and/or received while working for the University of Virginia and otherwise while using its facilities and resources, as specifically enumerated in the Attachment. We seek these records from a backup server identified already by the University as part of a related search, as detailed, below.

15. The scope of this request is to reach any and all data, documents and things in your possession, including those stored or residing on any of the specified or referenced (see FN 1, supra) computers, hard drives, desktops, laptops, file servers, database servers, email servers or other systems where data was transmitted or stored on purpose or as a result of transient use of a system or application in the course of day to day research or product processing work that is owned or contracted for by you or any of your officers, managers, employees, agents, board members, academic departments, divisions, programs, IT department, contractors and other representatives.

2. As used herein, the words "record", "records", "document" or "documents" mean the original and any copies of any written, printed, typed, electronic, or graphic matter of any kind or nature, however produced or reproduced, any book, pamphlet, brochure, periodical, newspaper, letter, correspondence, memoranda, notice, facsimile, e-mail, manual, press release, telegram, report, study, handwritten note, working paper, chart, paper, graph, index, tape, data sheet, data processing card, or any other written, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed or graphic matter now in your possession, custody or control.

...

1. All documents that constitute or are in any way related to correspondence, messages or e-mails sent by Dr. Michael Mann to, or received from, any of the following persons:
(a) Dr. Caspar Ammann,
(b) Dr. Raymond Bradley,
(c) Dr. Keith Briffa,
(d) Dr. John Christy,
(e) Dr. Edward Cook,
(f) Dr. Thomas Crowley,
(g) Dr. Roseanne D' Arrigo,
(h) Dr. Valerie Masson-Delmotte,
(i) Dr. David Douglass,
(j) Dr. Jan Esper,
(k) Dr. Melissa Free,
(l) Dr. Chris de Freitas,
(m) Dr. Vincent Grey,
(n) Dr. James Hack,
(o) Dr. Malcolm Hughes,
(p) Dr. Eystein Jansen,
(q) Dr. Phil Jones,
(r) Dr. Thomas Karl,
(s) Dr. Otto Kinne,
(t) Dr. A. T.J. de Laat,
(u) Dr. Murari Lal,
(v) Dr. Stephen Mackwell,
(w) Dr. Glenn McGregor,
(x) Stephen McIntyre,
(y) Dr. Ross McKitrick,
(z) Dr. Patrick Michaels,
(aa) Dr. Jonathan Overpeck,
(bb) Dr. Tim Osborn,
(cc) Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.,
(dd) Dr. Benjamin Santer,
(ee) Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt,
ff) Dr. Stephen Schneider,
(gg) Dr. Olga Solomina,
(hh) Dr. Susan Solomon,
(ii) Dr. Kevin Trenberth,
(jj) Dr. Eugene Wahl,
(kk) Dr. Edward Wegman,
(ll) Dr. Thomas Wigley,
(mm) Dr. Vincent Gray, and
(nn) All research assistants, secretaries or administrative staff with whom Dr. Mann worked while he was at the University of Virginia.

========================

Response to the impossible request:
January 25, 2011
Mr. Christopher C. Horner
Dr. David W. Schnare
Del. Bob Marshall
Environmental Law Center at the American Tradition Institute
...
Dear Mr. Horner, Dr. Schnare and Del. Marshall:
I write in response to your request, dated January 6, 2011, under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records relating to Dr. Michael Mann and others. The University previously informed you that it was taking the extension allowed by FOIA in which to respond to
your request.
After careful review, we have determined that your request does not comply with FOIA’s requirement to “identify the requested records with reasonable specificity.” Va. Code §2.2- 3704(B). The opening pages of your letter appear to direct the University to a specifically identified back-up server believed to contain certain e-mail relating to Dr. Mann. See Horner Ltr. at 1-2. Indeed, your letter appears to suggest that the fees associated with your request should be minimal because of the narrow target of your request. The Attachment to your letter, however, appears to request that the University conduct a broad search for documents encompassing more than a twelve-year period (Attach. Instr. ¶ 1); stored at any location (Attach. Instr. ¶ 14); and within a scope you describe as follows ...
As you likely know, the University of Virginia is made up of 11 schools in Charlottesville, and the College at Wise in southwest Virginia. It offers 51 bachelor's degrees in 47 fields, 84 master's degrees in 67 fields, six educational specialist degrees, two first-professional degrees
(law and medicine), and 57 doctoral degrees in 55 fields. The University currently has more than 14,000 employees and has had tens of thousands more “employees, agents . . . contractors and other representatives” during the past 12-year time period.
...

In response to your request for an estimate of costs, we believe it will cost at least $8,500 to process your FOIA request. We would request this minimum payment in advance of commencing our review of the requested records. There is no way for the University to predict the volume of records that are, in fact, responsive to your request and that are not protected from disclosure. Under FOIA, you will be responsible for the actual cost of producing the requested records, even if that cost exceeds the above estimate and the payment of your deposit.
...

====================

February 7, 2011

Dear Mr. Schnare:

I am responding to your January 31 letter, pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, to the Rector of the University of Virginia. That letter was in response to our January 25 letter seeking clarification of your Freedom of Information Act request of January 6, 2011.

These issues undoubtedly are familiar to you. They are substantially the same issues we discussed with you in response to your FOIA requests for similar records on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in May and June 2010. They also are substantially similar to the issues we discussed with your colleague, Delegate Marshall, in response to his FOIA request for similar records in October 2010. Indeed, you will note that the estimate of costs above is identical to the estimate we supplied to Delegate Marshall in October 2010 for searching the same records. In response to our prior cost estimates to both you and Delegate Marshall, we received no further communication or payment of the costs indicating a desire for the University

to proceed with those requests.

=================

After a phone call:

From: David Schnare [mailto:vvvvv@wwwww.com] Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 11:51 AM To: Wilkerson, Elizabeth (epw3m) Cc: Chris.Horner@zzzzzz; DelegateBobMarshall@bbbbbbbbb

Subject: Follow up to Phonecon regarding VFOIA for records relating to Michael Mann
....

During our discussion I made the following points:

1. Having extensive experience in document production, we don't believe you will need to expend 340 hours to obtain, process and send us the documents on your server. Nevertheless, we will remit $8,500 and will seek return of unspent funds upon completion of the production.

The next UVA
From: Wilkerson, Elizabeth (epw3m) Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 12:50 PM To: DWSchnare@gmail.com Subject: Your request to the University of Virginia -- Michael Mann

Dear Dr. Schnare:

Thank you for your e-mail of Thursday, Feb. 10. I write to confirm our telephone conversation and to provide some answers to your questions.

We will begin review of the materials on the server within a week after receiving your check for $8,500. Please make the check to Rector and Visitors, University of Virginia, and send it to Penney Catlett in the Office of Public Affairs at the address in the signature line below.
==============

A "lets scare them" document

The Law Center of the American Tradition Institute
...
February 15, 2011
VIA EMAIL
The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
...

Dear Ms. Wilkerson:
...
As of this date, some 40 days after the initial request, the University affirms having identified the specific server upon which the documents we seek are stored. The department head of the unit using the server is on record with the media stating it would take no effort at all to produce the documents.

The University still, however, does not agree to initiate the required search and production until we provide a check for $8,500. Even in that instance, however, the University further refuses to offer or agree to a schedule upon which it will produce the records, instead indicating that it will only “begin” to access the documents with “a week” after receipt of the demanded fee, which on its face serves as a barrier to access and disclosure. Beyond that request for substantial, unsupported payment for an open-ended response with no schedule for production, the University offers us nothing more than that it would take over two months to

“review” those records if worked on full time, which the University also makes plain will not be the case. Further, the University refuses to commit to producing the records on a rolling basis, as we have requested.

At this point in the negotiations, and in light of the University's refusal to accede to any proposal we have made, we make a final request, after which we will be forced to seek judicial relief.

We would never seek to instruct you on the law, but bring to your attention Section 2.2-3704 of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, which states:

A public body may make reasonable charges not to exceed its actual cost incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for the requested records. No public body shall impose any extraneous, intermediary or surplus fees or expenses to recoup the general costs associated with creating or maintaining records or transacting the general business of the public body. (emphasis added)

In particular, we note the statute does not grant any reimbursement for the cost of reviewing or redacting the records.1

Regardless, the University demands charges that reflect “review of e-mails, and other documents on the server” and “review [of] them individually to determine whether they might be exempt from disclosure under state or federal law”. Elsewhere, you reaffirm that charges for these activities serve as the basis for much or most of your otherwise unsupported fee demand.

These activities are not reimbursable under the VFOIA, even though you admit they constitute the bulk of the fee you demand. As such, that demand is facially unreasonable and in contravention of the University's obligations under VFOIA.

We also note your express intention to provide Mr. Mann copies of the records that are being released under our request. Your decision to do so suggests that he is on an equal footing to we who seek these documents under the VFOIA, possibly because of some ownership of the records you ascribe to him. We would appreciate clarification of this but, regardless, as such, we expect that you will demand of him an equal fee for the records requested, and will assess us no more than half the actual cost of accessing, duplicating, supply and searching for the emails and related documents.

==========

February 17, 2011

David W. Schnare, Esq.

The Law Center of the American Tradition Institute

RE: Your Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Mr. Schnare:

This will respond to your letter of February 15, 2011, to The Rector and Visitors of the University, John O. Wynne, Rector, and Elizabeth Wilkerson of our Office of Public Affairs. Before I bring you up to date on the University’s response to your Freedom of Information Act (“Act”) request, allow me to correct a number of mistakes and inaccuracies in your letter.

First, your second paragraph infers that the University delayed in notifying you of the “specific server upon which the documents [you] seek are stored.” This inference is incorrect. As you may recall, the University sought to have you state whether your request was University-wide, an enormously broad and unrealistic request that we informed you did not meet the specificity requirements of the Act, or whether it was limited to the server. The fact of the existence of the server had long been known and was disclosed to you early on. I’m not sure when the “department head” is supposed to have said that it “would take no effort at all to produce the documents,” but the only context in which this statement would make sense would be in the period prior to the server’s being discovered when it was thought we likely had little or no responsive information to a request for Professor Mann’s materials.

There has been a pervasive tendency in your correspondence to mischaracterize as a refusal or denial every instance in which the University does not reject one of your requests and informs you that it is considering it and taking time to determine its feasibility. The alleged refusals in the second paragraph of your letter are illustrative of this. The University has stated that we will not commence the actual review and production of responsive documents until we receive a payment. The other inferences in this paragraph are incorrect. We have not refused to produce a “production schedule”; we have stated that a realistic one cannot be considered until the process of review and production commences. Moreover, we have not refused to produce responsive documents on a rolling basis; rather we have simply not yet addressed whether that would be feasible.

Needless to say, the first paragraph of the second page of your letter, which states that the University has refused “to accede to any proposal we have made,” is simply untrue.

In response to your interpretation of Va. Code § 2.2-3704, implicit in the “supplying” of requested records is the necessary review to assure that documents or portions of documents that cannot be disclosed because of the requirements of other state or federal laws is done,1 and that available exemptions are considered. Any other interpretation would make no sense in the overall context of the Act. I would also note that your interpretation of the narrowness § 2.2-3704 is not shared by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act Advisory Council.

Your request that we would charge Professor Mann for copies of documents you have requested pursuant to the Act has no basis in the Act itself. Professor Mann has not requested any records pursuant to the Act; you have. Nonetheless, we have made no decision about under what circumstances we would furnish copies of responsive documents to Professor Mann or whether we would offer to make these documents available for a reasonable copying fee. It may interest you to know that we extended the same courtesies to Patrick Michaels when his documents were requested as we have with Michael Mann.

Neither has the University made any decision to hire an outside firm to assist in responding to your request. Rather, we have told you that this is something we are considering.

I am also puzzled as to why you would think that we “have no idea of the number of documents” potentially responsive to your request. We have repeatedly told you that our estimate of the cost for responding and supplying those documents is based upon the volume of material on the server.

Finally, it strikes me that many of your requests and demands are more consistent with requests for production of documents under the applicable discovery rules in litigation than they are in responding to a request for public records under the Act, but that is another issue (and not an uncommon one, I might add, when lawyers get involved in requests pursuant to the Act).

Having made all of the above clarifications, I have conferred with those here who have been dealing with your request and can offer the following to meet some of your objections and complaints about the University’s response:

•

We are willing to commence work with your submission of the check in the amount of $2,000, as requested, with the corollary understanding that this would be sufficient to allow for 80 hours of accessing, duplicating, supplying, and searching for documents responsive to your request. Once this work is concluded, we can see what additional potentially responsive material may still exist.

•

We can agree to a rolling disclosure of responsive, non-exempt documents during the 80 hours of accessing, duplicating, supplying, and searching for documents responsive to your request.

Please let me know if this is acceptable. If so, we will commence work after receiving your check in the amount of $2,000 consistent with the understanding stated in the letter.

===========

March 28, 2011

David W. Schnare, Esq.

The Law Center of the American Tradition Institute

...

RE: Your Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Dr. Schnare:

I write to give you an update on the status of your Freedom of Information Act request and to seek further clarification from you as to how you wish to proceed.

As I noted would be the case in my letter to you of March 9, 2011, we commenced our review by limiting our initial search to messages sent by Michael Mann to, or received from, the persons identified on page 7 of your request and to the additional requested information on pages 10 and 11 of your request. Specifically, we have limited our initial search to paragraph 1(a) through 1(mm) on page 7 of your request, and to information requested in paragraphs 4 through 10 of that request. At this point we have segregated all potentially responsive documents from the 34,062 documents contained on the server. We have not yet begun review of those segregated documents to identify information that is truly responsive, exempt from disclosure, or confidential pursuant to other provisions of law. To date, the law students working on the project have worked a total of 40 hours, or half of the time covered by your initial payment of $2,000.

We will next proceed to conduct the review of the potentially responsive documents. I cannot estimate at this time how long that will take.

Regarding the other aspects of your request, I would note the following:

•

The information requested in paragraph 1(nn) of your request would involve a minimum of 200 additional people and would greatly expand the time needed for review and the potential cost of responding to your request. Because I would think that much of what would be discovered in the process of conducting the additional review called for by this subsection of your request would be redundant or trivial, I would urge you to withdraw this aspect of your request.

•

As noted in my letter to you of March 9, the different iterations of your request on pages 8 and 9 of that request appear redundant or overly general to allow for a focused response. Because of this, I would urge you to withdraw those aspects of your request as well.

We will proceed with review of the segregated potentially responsive documents until that task is either complete, or the remainder of your initial payment is exhausted

===========

April 6, 2011

David W. Schnare, Esq.

The Law Center of the American Tradition Institute

2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. # 186

Washington, D.C. 20006

RE: Your Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Dr. Schnare:

I am writing to follow up on your Freedom of Information Act request of January 6, 2011, for a wide array of records and documents concerning former University of Virginia faculty member Michael Mann. As I previously informed you, the University has identified 34,062 potentially responsive documents on the server we have previously agreed to be the sole repository of any possibly responsive material. We have now segregated from that mass of documents approximately 8,000 that are potentially responsive to your request and have been reviewing these documents for possible disclosure. As of today we have exhausted in this effort the initial payment you have made. Consequently, we will undertake no further review unless you wish to pay another installment on our original estimate of $8,500 (or wish to pay the remaining amount of that estimate).

To date we have reviewed approximately 1,000 of the roughly 8,000 documents potentially responsive to your request. I anticipate that a first group of responsive, non-exempt documents which may be lawfully disclosed will be released to you shortly.

If you wish continued review pursuant to your request, I would note that we currently have three law students working on the project who are now familiar with this request and efficient in processing it. They will be able to work only the next two weeks, however, because of academic commitments. It would therefore be to your advantage, if you wish to pursue this request further, to send me the further reimbursement of cost by overnight mail.

Finally, I would note that when we last spoke on March 29, you expressed no disagreement with the narrowing of your original request outlined in my letter to you of March 9, 2011.

==================

David W. Schnare, Esq. Ph.D.

April 7, 2011

BY ELECTRONIC MAIL

Dear Mr. Kast:

Thank you for your April 6, 2011, update on our FOIA request. Per your letter, you indicate that “we will undertake no further review unless you wish to pay another installment on our original estimate of $8,500.” This letter indicates that we wish to and will pay an additional installment, and on that basis ask that you continue your work to produce the responsive documents.

Our Institute has issued a check which I expect to receive today or tomorrow and which I will have delivered to you by an overnight delivery. As such, and, as you indicate, because your law students might otherwise lose valuable time on this effort, we ask that you keep them engaged in reviewing the documents as we transmit the check to you.

With regard to the narrowing of our request, we have not dismissed your proposal, but we wish to see the fruit of the initial delivery of documents before we commit to that narrowing. We look forward to receiving those and to moving to completion on this FOIA request.

==================

Reconstructions with limited signals

2011-06-08T01:17:00.003+01:00

Firs Set is using trend and the second is using cycles only
The minimum amplitude used is 0.03

Period years	amplitude	Offset months
0.5012	0	8.47
0.8395	0	2.82
0.8907	0	1.13
1.7692	0	0.92
1.9373	0	2.77
1.9906	0	5.72
2.0417	0	9.62
2.1095	0	10.57
2.2567	0	9.57
2.3139	0	6.72
2.5418	0	4.42
2.6735	0	2.47
2.7608	0	4.97
2.8737	0	2.52
3.1647	0	0.98
3.2734	0	6.37
3.4699	0	9.59
3.5777	0	3.07
3.7684	0	3.37
4.0192	0	6.87
4.7240	0	6.64
5.1020	0	5.57
5.2675	0	9.87
5.8528	0	6.67
5.9782	0	1.77
6.2558	0	4.37
6.6195	0	3.07
7.5727	0	3.22
8.3954	0	3.07
10.1027	0.034637599	6.87
11.0000	0.043331925	-75
11.8786	0	4.27
12.6922	0	4.77
14.8995	0.033178542	4.87
21.1000	0.046919237	4.37
35.0832	0	3.42
59.7500	0.107447989	3.07
110.2417	0	5.37
118.5000	0.048809315	95.17
290.2778	0	134.32
310.3644	0	-6.58
2508.2497	0	4.17
2508.3333	0	4.12

Period years	amplitude	Offset months
0.5012	0.036054	8.3
0.8395	0	2.9
0.8910	0	1.23
1.7692	0	0.95
1.9373	0	2.7
1.9911	0	5.8
2.0409	0	9.55
2.1091	0	10.55
2.2569	0	9.55
2.3139	0	6.75
2.5418	0	4.4
2.6714	0	2.35
2.7608	0	5
2.8746	0	2.55
3.1638	0	0.96
3.2734	0	6.55
3.4699	0	9.64
3.5794	0	3.15
3.7684	0	3.35
4.0150	0	6.75
4.7240	0	6.68
5.1061	0	5.5
5.2466	0	9.55
5.7274	0	6.65
5.9782	0	1.85
6.2516	0	4.35
6.6153	0	3
7.5693	0	3.2
8.4272	0	3.25
10.0693	0.030061	6.7
11.0000	0.038659	-69
11.7532	0	3.85
12.6336	0	4.55
14.9497	0.030069	5
21.2083	0.048414	4.45
35.6852	0	3.75
60.0833	0.119432	3.05
101.8333	0	96.15
110.2167	0	5.35
290.2778	0	134.3
317.0533	0.395701	2.3
2508.1661	0	4.15
2508.3333	0	4.1

The Total Cycle thing repeated

2011-06-07T04:31:00.004+01:00

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk".
Attributed to von Neumann

The spreadsheet is available on request (11MB)

A plot of all the amplitudes and frequencies used. The 11 year cycle is TSI The scatter of low frequency low amplitude signals gives the noise

300 year and 60 year cycles superimposed on the constructed temperature record

A check to see if volcanic activity can be seen in the difference between actual HADCRUT3 and reconstruct

Remaider HADCRUT3-reconstruct with the used trailing moving average filtered and offset TSI

The reconstructed signal extended beyond the 2 ends of hadcrut3 note that the little ice age becomes a warm period using the 300year cycle

Acomparison of reconstruced cosines with no tren and reconstructed cosines + trend

Frequency/amplitude and phases of cosines + tsi used

Period years	amplitude	Offset months
0.5012	0.036054	8.3
0.8395	0.00624	2.9
0.8910	0.011773	1.23
1.7692	0.011506	0.95
1.9373	0.012512	2.7
1.9911	0.020375	5.8
2.0409	0.012712	9.55
2.1091	0.010769	10.55
2.2569	0.015195	9.55
2.3139	0.017313	6.75
2.5418	0.017742	4.4
2.6714	0.017162	2.35
2.7608	0.011035	5
2.8746	0.027285	2.55
3.1638	0.019767	0.96
3.2734	0.015463	6.55
3.4699	0.01479	9.64
3.5794	0.02302	3.15
3.7684	0.025772	3.35
4.0150	0.019124	6.75
4.7240	0.028562	6.68
5.1061	0.020193	5.5
5.2466	0.020888	9.55
5.7274	0.01294	6.65
5.9782	0.024963	1.85
6.2516	0.024229	4.35
6.6153	0.016764	3
7.5693	0.021827	3.2
8.4272	0.019945	3.25
10.0693	0.030061	6.7
11.0000	0.038659	-69
11.7532	0.013485	3.85
12.6336	0	4.55
14.9497	0.030069	5
21.2083	0.048414	4.45
35.6852	0.026464	3.75
60.0833	0.119432	3.05
101.8333	0.02669	96.15
110.2167	0	5.35
290.2778	0	134.3
317.0533	0.395701	2.3
2508.1661	0	4.15
2508.3333	0	4.1

How FOIs are used

2011-05-31T01:44:00.002+01:00

Climate Audit seem to be removing my posts as fast as I write them!
So here is stuff I posted about FOIs and requests for Draft Documents

Posted May 30, 2011 at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Reply
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
No but Holland has in no uncertain terms:

I understand that the Met Office acted as the Technical Support
Unit for Working Group I of the IPCC Third Assessment Report
published in 2001. Please can you tell me what electronic records
the Met office retain? As this is self-evidently environmental
information, this request is made under the Environmental
Information Regulations of 2004.

I order to minimise any effort required I am willing to restrict my
request to Chapter 2, entitled “Observed Climate Variability and
Change”. I am particularly interested in the first and second order
drafts of the chapter and the comments of the Expert and Government
Reviewers together with the annotated responses of the Lead Authors
and all email correspondence in connection with the chapter or
relating generally to the official assessment process.

While I will be happy to receive any information by email if, as I
expect, it is in electronic form, I would prefer it and would be
willing to wait a reasonable time, if you propose to promptly
publish all your TAR information it in its entirety on your website
as I understand to be a legal requirement of the Environmental
Information Regulations 2004, assuming that you possess the
information in electronic form.

Yours sincerely,

David Holland

Dear Department for Business, Innovation and Skills,

I refer to our previous correspondence (EIR 10/2038).

1. In your response dated 29 October 2010, you say that draft
information and internal communications have been withheld. Could
you please provide a full list of information that has been
withheld.

2. You have disclosed several letters/emails to Prof Beddington
that appear to have no responses. Could you please check to see if
you have missed the replies to these messages.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Montford

So apart from Holland, Cuccinelli, ATI, Montford, other FOIs not on the web there OBVIOUSLY have been no requests for drafts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

=======

And of course McIntyre also requests pre-publication stuff:
From UEA refusal:

Regulation 12(4)(d) is cited because the 1,001 composite data sets and the lists of sites from which the data is drawn was created in 2006 as a first ‘draft’ of work that was meant to be carried forward and refined with a view to future publication. Whilst there has been the passage of some time since the creation of the first set of 1,001 composite records, staff at the CRU have returned to this data recently as part of a project funded by NERC, which commenced in May 2010, that encapsulates this NW Eurasian tree-ring study, and which will be completed no later than October 2012. The data will be revised in the near future as the project moves towards publication of papers based on the work in constructing the composites

=======
Further uses of FOIs fom this site:
John Brown

26 November 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

I am making a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I
would like to know about any funds provided to the University of
East Anglia for climate-related research. For Financial Years
1999/00 to 2008/09 please provide the following information:

(a) a list of all grants/awards from the Met Office that were made
to the University for climate-related research, advice or
consultancy;

(b) For each of the items listed in response to (a), please
identify the total amount spent by financial year;

(c) For each of the listed in response to (a) & (b), please
identify the University Department, Unit, Team or researcher
responsible for undertaking the work.

Please provide the above information in electronic form.

Yours faithfully,

John Brown
==========
Was the info used or useful?
==========
James Snowdome

24 July 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to request, under the Freedom of Information Act, any
agreements between the Met Office and Peter Webster regarding the
use and/or release of climate date held by the Met Office
(including data that originally came from Phil Jones).

Best regards

Yours faithfully,

James Snowdome
==========
Was the info used or useful?
==========
James Snowdome

24 July 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

I request, under the Environmental Information Act, a copy of all
raw weather station data currently held by Phil Jones,

Where data is not able to be disclosed due to agreements
restricting access to the data I would like to receive a copy of
each agreement detailing which weather stations are restricted.

I would like data for all unrestricted weather stations regardless
of the above.

Yours faithfully,

James Snowdome

==========
How many people asked for this
==========
John Walker

25 November 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

Please supply a copy of the dataset that was used to create the
Climate Research Unit's temperature record.

Or failing that, details of where a copy of the dataset may be
obtained.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

=========
that's another one
=========
John Walker

5 December 2009
Dear University of East Anglia,

Please supply copies of the accounts for the Climatic Research Unit
for each of the last five years.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

==========
another financial prod
==========
John Walker

2 December 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

In view of Mr Jones's decision to step down:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

please supply copies of all correspondence relating to this
decision between Mr Jones and any other person.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

==========
Why!!!???
==========
John Walker

21 November 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

Please supply copies of all correspondence (including emails)
between Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU),
and Michael Mann from 1st January 2008 to the present date.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

==========
one of how many requests??
==========

John Walker

27 November 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,

Please supply copies of all correspondence (including emails)
between the UEA Chief Librarian and Phil Jones, Director of the
Climatic Research Unit (CRU), from 1st January 2008 to the present
date.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

===========
Its surprising Mr Walker does not request the time spent by Jones at the urinals!
===========
John Walker

26 December 2009
Dear University of East Anglia,

Reference:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cl...

The CRU receives money in the form of grants etc.

Please explain how this money is accounted for and give details of
the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that this money
is properly spent.

How is this money audited?

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

==========
was this useful?
==========

Dear University of East Anglia,

Please supply copies of all emails (addresses, subject lines and
main body) from or to members of the UEA council since 1st October
2009 that
include one, or more than one, of the following words/phrases:

'Common Purpose', 'PwC', 'KPMG', 'Charles Clarke', 'Climatic
Research Unit', 'Penn State', 'Jones', 'Mann', 'CRU', 'police',
'Norfolk Constabulary', 'Chief Constable', 'special branch', 'Julia
Middleton', 'David Bell', 'climategate', 'Monckton', 'cpexposed',
'stopcp', 'Oxburgh', 'Nurse'.

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

=========
yet another "show me all"
=========
Andrew Montford

24 May 2010
Dear Imperial College London,

Professor David Hand of the Department of Mathematics served on
Lord Oxburgh's inquiry into the Climatic Research Unit of the
University of East Anglia. I would like to receive copies of all
correspondence or other documents held by Imperial related to the
Oxburgh inquiry.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Montford
=========
yet another "show me all" trying to incriminate someone other than Jones!
=========
Andrew Montford

29 May 2010
Dear University of Reading,

I understand that Sir Brian Hoskins was involved in providing
advice to the University of East Anglia and others on the setting
up of Lord Oxburgh's inquiry into the Climatic Research Unit at UEA
in the wake of the release of emails from the unit last November.

I would like to receive copies of Sir Brian's emails in relation to
the East Anglia emails affair, including, but not restricted to:
the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry, Lord
Oxburgh's inquiry and Sir Muir Russell's Climate Change Emails
Review.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Montford

==========
Yet another try to incriminate people
==========

OK I'm bored with this so some numbers

ONLLY FROM THE SITE http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/
How many private FOIs have been sent?

Andrew Montford 48 FOIs
David Holland 28 FOIs
John Walker 311 FOIs (not all climate related)
John Brown 24 FOIs (not all climate related)
trevor cooper 2 FOIs

Met Office 50 FOIs found
University of East Anglia 50 FOIs found
UEA 121 FOIs found (Included: some from University of East Anglia)
CRU 98 FOIs found (Included UEA etc)
climategate 28 FOIs found (Included UEA etc)

============

UVA David Schnare and ATI
Thanks for the belated response. David Schnare Posted Jun 3, 2011 at 10:20
PM | Permalink | Reply
... We have asked for the Mann documents because we want to know what was
going on at that point in time. McIntyre is a private citizen, so he is not
subject to FOIA.
Your request to UVA is not limiting itself to just Mann and co-workers - indeed
I should like to point out this inconsistency in your comment and your FOI

"All documents that constitute or that are in any way related to correspondence,
messages or emails sent by Dr. Michael Mann to, or received from, any of the
following persons:
(x) Stephen McIntyre"

More significantly, he has made all his work about as public as possible.
He is also helping build the history. He is part of it too, but not in the same
way as Mann.
Your UVA FOI is not just requesting data,code documents it is requesting emails
and things - why. One can only assume this is to create another misinterpretation
the email type of scandal c.f. LEA. If not then why request such things? If
it is genuinely requesting the information for background then emails MUST be
requested from all others involved in the climate debate. Otherwise it is one
sided.
McKitrick, like McIntyre, is pretty much an open book. If someone had found
that he appeared to refuse to play nice in the sandbox, we’d take a look at
his work, but that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.
How do you know that McKitrick and others did no conspire to discredit invalidly
other's documents ?
Wegman is one for which we have requested his work. GMU gave it to us in
an extremely timely manner
"Timely manner"!!! the 2 fois are completely different kettles of
fish. One you demand a life history including any doodles made on the way. Wegman
you ask for very little (and get it!)
Singer is a colleague, but is an elder statesman as well. (That’s a nice
way to say he’s been retired a long time.) No one has questioned his work, and
his recent efforts are very public.
Mann's data had been deleted from their system. It was not until a disused
server was found could any data be retrieved. Being OLD does not make you honest!.
Indeed being old makes it more likely that you do not care what happens in the
future - you'll be dead! How can you say "no one has questioned his work"
that is just not true.
Lindzen is subject to FOIA, but who wants to take him on.
No one wants to take on the Mafia but that does not make it right to allow
them to escape punishment!
You didn’t mention Pat Michaels, also from UVA. ... he is an open
book and no one has seriously suggested any of his work or efforts reflect “political”
science or bad science or anything else.
I did not mention many people who disagree with AGW. That is what the ETC.
is for. He's an open book - yes he admitted to being funded 40% by the oil industry.
Do you not think that perhaps his emails may be of some slight interest (of
course he would have to be pretty dumb to have used UVA email system - but you
never know unless you request)
We believe that when the public pays a scientist to do science at a public
academic institution, they should not only have the opportunity to see all of
what they bought, but have a legal right to see how that work was done.
Fine, but do you not just purchase the final report and the data and calculation.
Do you really purchase his life?
Because Mann has been accused of less than honorable behavior, the public
has a right to know whether his papers reflect such behavior or exonerate him.
Is this accusation a legal one? Or is it a blogging one? Can I accuse all the
anti-AGW scientists similarly and cause you to then FOI their lives?
To me, sir, it appears you are going after one man for the purpose of discrediting
climate science.

Will you publicly state that you are honestly requesting the information solely
to understand the history?
Will you also publicly state that you have not been financed by parties (possibly
energy related) interested in disproving AGW?

... Is it a Trend (edited)

2011-05-24T01:50:00.011+01:00

The second half of "it's all cycles" post

The usual warning:
"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk".
Attributed to von Neumann

The elephant has been constructed!!

The spreadsheet is available on request (11MB)

This post examines the reconstruction of the HADCRUT3V temperature trend using cycles and a polynomial trend.

Over the HADCRUT period the fit is very sligtly better than cycles only
TSI has NOT been inverted to give the best fit (there is a definite minimum error - set to the levels used here) both a 10 year and 11 year further cycle is required to produce the best fit. The fit is chosen with various filter values applied to the TSI. A 38 month trailing average gives the best fit.

Note that TSI has been extended to the future by repeating an earlier cycle.

Also included here is a comparison plot where the cycles only and trend out put are compared. Divergence occurs pre 1850 and post 2010

So assuming these plots accurately predict the future!!!! the next 5 or so years should show which is "truth"

Long Term Plot

Comparison of plot with and without TSI (volcanic forcings also shown)

The Poynomial is:

y =0.00000024008x^3-0.00134007x^2 + 2.49324x -1546.54
X= date eg. 1850.167

Period years	amplitude	Offset months
0.5012	0.02791257	8.47
0.8395	0.006504311	2.82
0.8907	0.012030142	1.13
1.7692	0.011135157	0.92
1.9373	0.012108253	2.77
1.9906	0.019817414	5.72
2.0417	0.012781876	9.62
2.1095	0.010343775	10.57
2.2567	0.014687976	9.57
2.3139	0.016754467	6.72
2.5418	0.017169878	4.42
2.6735	0.017438215	2.47
2.7608	0.010679424	4.97
2.8737	0.026304239	2.52
3.1647	0.020652313	0.98
3.2734	0.016460943	6.37
3.4699	0.015744304	9.59
3.5777	0.022220303	3.07
3.7684	0.023943458	3.37
4.0192	0.019582555	6.87
4.7240	0.027640318	6.64
5.1020	0.02182499	5.57
5.2675	0.021641714	9.87
5.8528	0	6.67
5.9782	0.02566776	1.77
6.2558	0.022759327	4.37
6.6195	0.016595394	3.07
7.5727	0.02370424	3.22
8.3954	0.02139623	3.07
10.1027	0.034637599	6.87
11.0000	0.043331925	-75
11.8786	0.013113219	4.27
12.6922	0.021194863	4.77
14.8995	0.033178542	4.87
21.1000	0.046919237	4.37
35.0832	0.022348787	3.42
59.7500	0.107447989	3.07
110.2417	0	5.37
118.5000	0.048809315	95.17
290.2778	0	134.32
310.3644	0.016579178	-6.58
2508.2497	0	4.17
2508.3333	0	4.12

Is it A Cycle or ....

2011-05-23T02:26:00.003+01:00

Yet more on the "fun" project - not scientific!

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk".
Attributed to von Neumann

This post examines the reconstruction of the HADCRUT3V temperature trend using only cycles - ie. no increasing trend as previous posts.

Over the HADCRUT period the fit is pretty remarkable

For those who think that this must therefore show that the climate is cyclical remember the 313 year cycle peaks again in 1734

Of particular interest is TSI Using it inverted gives the best fit (there is a definite minimum error - set to the levels used here) both a 10 year and 11 year further cycle is required to produce the best fit.

There is a minimum for it non-inverted but this does not produce a s close a fit to HADCRUT.

Note that TSI has been extended to the future by repeating an earlier cycle.

As before there is a definite 60 year cycle required to give the best fit.

Period years	amplitude	Offset months
0.5010	0.042777927	8.4
0.8395	0.006721121	2.7
0.8910	0.011956496	1.23
1.7692	0.011506329	0.9
1.9373	0.012511862	2.75
1.9914	0.020307195	5.85
2.0401	0.013121261	9.45
2.1095	0.010688568	10.6
2.2573	0.015217979	9.6
2.3139	0.017312949	6.75
2.5418	0.017742208	4.4
2.6714	0.017960073	2.35
2.7608	0.01241483	4.95
2.8746	0.02728536	2.6
3.1638	0.019767012	0.96
3.2734	0.017009642	6.55
3.4699	0.014790104	9.58
3.5794	0.023019736	3.2
3.7684	0.025772472	3.35
4.0142	0.019228339	6.65
4.7240	0.026657551	6.64
5.1061	0.021538932	5.6
5.2466	0.016067587	9.55
5.7274	0.009953525	6.55
5.9782	0.023402958	1.85
6.2516	0.024228869	4.35
6.6070	0.015834147	2.95
7.5660	0.02278553	3.2
8.4405	0.021345634	3.35
10.0609	0.00919755	6.7
11.0000	0.0442959	12
11.5944	0.004951834	3.5
12.6169	0	4.55
14.9329	0.03287589	5
21.1833	0.049185788	4.5
35.8859	0.020848444	3.75
59.9167	0.118644507	3.05
101.8333	0.024368735	96
110.2167	0	5.35
290.2778	0	134.3
313.7089	0.392756974	2.3
2508.3333	0	4.15
2508.3333	0	4.15

Simulation stuff

2011-05-21T20:25:00.002+01:00

Just to see if the peak solar output can show up as a delayed sea temperature rise this is a PSPICE simulatution of sea (or something!)

A long timeconstant is used to simulate sea surface /atmosphere interface. A 10000 times shorter time constant is used to simulate the conduction in sea from surface to depths.
Input signal is TSI from 1700 to 2008
So using this so called simulation of solar TSI impact on sea it can be seen that up to 13 years delay from TSI peak at sea surface to peak subsurface.
You can also see that the time constants simply smooth the peaks of TSI to o.oo6% including over the 100-1830low tsi.
LTspice simulator free here

Suggestions for better real world data

Enercon Wind turbines and wind speed

2011-05-21T13:45:00.006+01:00

False statements are often made about wind turbines (very narrow range of speed over which power is produced; large turbines shut down at lower wind speeds; rare earths costing the earth.)

From the Enercon brochure:

ENERCON storm control
ENERCON wind turbines run with a special storm control feature.
Storm control enables reduced wind turbine operation in the event of
extremely high wind speeds, and prevents typical shutdowns which
cause considerable yield losses.

Power curve without ENERCON storm control

Illustration 1 shows that the wind turbine stops at a defined cutout wind speed V3. The reason is that a specified maximum wind speed has been exceeded. In wind turbines without storm control, this occurs, for example, at a wind speed of 25 m/s within a 20-second mean. The wind turbine only starts up again when the average wind speed drops below the cut-out wind speed or an even lower restart speed (V4 in the illustration; so-called strong wind hysteresis). In gusty wind conditions there may be a longer delay, which means that considerable yield losses are incurred.

Power curve with ENERCON storm control
The power curve diagram showing operation with ENERCON storm control (illustration 2) demonstrates clearly that the wind turbine does not shut down automatically when a certain wind speed Vstorm is exceeded, but merely reduces power output by slowing down the rotational speed. This is achieved by slightly pitching the rotor blades out of the wind. Once the wind speed drops, the blades turn back into the wind and the turbine immediately resumes operation at full power. This prevents yield-reducing shutdown and start-up procedures.

Data for a 7.5MW wind turbine Enercon E126

As can be seen from the plot and data useful power is available from 4 to 25 m/s

Enercon Control systems being electronic can synchronise to grid quickly and can even help the grid ride out a system fault.

NO Rare earths are required for the generator

NO gears are required for the main shaft of the generator

Staying connected when grid problems occur
Most transmission networks and ever more distribution grids require wind energy converters to remain connected to the grid in the event of grid short circuits. Like conventional power plants, wind turbines are not allowed to suddenly disconnect from the grid during voltage dips or overvoltage caused by grid problems. ENERCON wind turbines with the optional ENERCON UVRT feature have this capacity. No matter what type of short circuit occurs, ENERCON wind turbines can ‘ride through’ faults for several seconds, even if they were operating at rated power before the fault. This is also possible if the wind turbine voltage completely breaks down as a result of a power system failure. These outstanding power plant properties have been certified by independent institutes during actual grid fault testing. Flexible setting options offer maximum performance according to the respective grid operator’s specifications or to the project’s framework conditions.
Depending on the selected parameters, the wind turbine can feed in either mainly active or reactive power to maintain grid voltage. If necessary, voltage-dependent reactive current can even be supplied to the grid; this current can be maximum rated current as stipulated by the latest German grid code. If desired or required, fault ride-through is also possible without power feed-in. The ENERCON wind turbine remains in operation during the fault. After the grid problem has been resolved and grid voltage has been restored, the wind turbine can immediately resume power feed-in. Thus the ENERCON Undervoltage Ride-Through feature facilitates adaptable settings in order to meet grid standards (e. g. of the German
Association of Energy and Water Industries) and to maximise the amount of installable wind farm power.

ENERCON news

ENERCON WECs produce clean energy without neodymium

29.04. 2011

ENERCON wind energy converters (WECs) generate electricity in an environmentally friendly way without the use of the controversial element, neodymium. The gearless WEC design on which all WEC types – from the E-33/330 kW to the E-126/7.5 MW – are based includes a separately excited annular generator. The magnetic fields required by the generator to produce electricity are created electrically. By design, and unlike the majority of competing products, ENERCON WECs do without permanent magnets whose production requires neodymium.

Neodymium has made the headlines recently because its extraction partly involves significant environmental damage. China, where neodymium-containing rocks are quarried in mines, is the main supplier of this so-called rare earth element. According to investigations by Germany’s NDR TV station, separation of neodymium from mined rocks results in toxic waste products (Menschen und Schlagzeilen and Panorama television magazines aired on 27 and 28 April). In addition, radioactive uranium and thorium are released by the mining process. These substances find their way into the ground water, heavily contaminating plant and animal life. They are seen as harmful to humans. According to the reports, part of the locals at the neodymium production sites in Baotou in northern China are already seriously ill.

ENERCON feels that these environmental and health aspects support its choice of WEC design. “We are a high-tech company that sets great store by environmental protection,” says ENERCON Managing Director Hans-Dieter Kettwig. “Our choice to rely on separately excited generators was the right one, not only from a technological but also from an environmental point of view.” According to Kettwig, renewable energies need to be viewed in their entirety in order to offer a convincing alternative. Producing clean energy is one thing; however, sustainability in production is just as important.

The State of Fusion

2011-05-19T23:06:00.003+01:00

Edited from an interview with Professor Steve Cowley in The IET Engineering and Technology Magazine June 2011

JET has been in operation there since 1984, until it was shutdown last year for a refurbishment in preparation for its role as an ITER proving ground. The upgrade, which is now almost complete, includes installing a new beryllium tungsten wall and increasing its power output.

In 1997 they made fusion records of 16MW of power, the carbon walls were not suitable because they acted like a sponge and soaked up the tritium. That is when it was conceived that we would have the beryllium tungsten wall on ITER when it does its half a gigawatt of power.
We have to show that a beryllium tungsten wall can work on JET because it's never been used before. The other thing that we are doing with the upgrade is putting on more power, so when the JET comes back later this year it will be a different machine. So this next period of time with JET will be to start up with the new wall, ramp up the power so that we can get record breaking power into it, then put in a tritium fuel and break all the world's fusion records in 2015.

ITER is not very far off being the right size for a commercial reactor. We reason that a real commercial reactor will be less than 20 per cent bigger than ITER.

JET at full power can only do five seconds. The shots of JET are what we have used to extrapolate the performance of ITER - it was essentially designed around those 97 shots where we made 16MW.
It was not actually the 16MW shot that we designed ITER on, it was the 5MW for the full five seconds - you turn the machine on and it makes fusion for the full five seconds, then you turn the machine off and it stops.
We have no problem sustaining it, you just can't run JET for more than five seconds because the copper magnet gets really hot, all the systems get hot, and they won't last longer than five seconds at full power.
But ITER can because it's a superconducting machine that has its engineering systems designed to maintain a burst longer than that. It's not that the fusion can't go on longer than five seconds, it's just that the machine can't.
What we call the baseline of ITER is 500MW of fusion power for 400 seconds. But ITER could go on for thousands and thousands of seconds and some of the modes of operation that we have been working on at JET probably mean that, if we adopt them on ITER, we will do thousands of seconds.
Personally I think we should be more ambitious. I think we will probably get more out of ITER than that, but nobody wants to promise that. What we are promising I think is a fairly conservative estimate of how well it can perform. I am hoping that we will get more than 500MW and that the gain will go up to infinity. That

means you can turn off your external power sources and just let it cook itself.

We would like to bring down the turbulence inside the plasma even further. If you ask the physics reason that JET's performance has improved over time, it is because we are suppressing more and more of the turbulence inside.
Inside the plasma it is bubbling; it is 170 million degrees in the middle and 10,000 degrees at the edge. That huge temperature gradient is like applying heat to a saucepan, it bubbles away. And those bubbles are little turbulent eddies inside the plasma that causes the heat to lean out.
The less turbulence you have, the better the fusion reactor. The big success of the last two-and-a-half decades of JET's operation is a reduction in the turbulence. But we can go further. On MAST, for instance, we have regimes where there is almost no turbulence inside the plasma. That is the perfect confinement device.
The second big challenge is that every now and then the plasma will erupt and throw itself against the wall. You are storing several hundred mega joules of energy inside the ITER plasma and you don't want it to throw itself against the walls. So we have to have ways of making sure that doesn't happen in a commercial reactor.
We are working on ways for ITER, but by the end of the ITER project we had better have a very good idea when it's going to go unstable. Because when it does, and it is rare, it can damage the walls.

Some scientist says 'how can you have a sun in a bottle?' - I would say we have done that! That is what JET does. The temperature in the middle of JET is a reactor working temperature; it is a sun in a bottle.
That is not the difficulty. The difficulty is a sun in a bottle that is cheap enough that it will make electricity at the sort of cost you want to pay for your electricity. I don't know if we can solve that problem.
I know we can make a sun in a bottle, but I don't know if we can produce electricity at five cents a KWh. That is the challenge and these days, it is as much an engineering challenge as a physics challenge.

Waste from a fusion power station is an interesting problem. We produce helium, it is just ordinary helium. But the neutron that comes out when it strikes steel not only moves the atoms around, it can make some of the nuclei in the steel radioactive, so the steel becomes radioactive.
That is the only waste that we really worry about, that radioactive steel - we have designed a special sort of steel called a low activation steel, so the radioactivity is short lived.
So the analysis of our proposed power plant shows that at the end of the lifetime of a fusion reactor, the waste that you have is a thousand times less active than a fission plant and that it decays in 200 years to have the same radioactivity as coal.
Tritium itself is quite a hazardous substance. It's a radioactive gas with a half life of 12 years. You don't store much tritium at a fusion plant because you make tritium from lithium and you take that tritium and put it in the plant.
The neutron comes out of the plasma and goes into the wall. In the wall is this blanket of lithium, where the energy of the neutron is deposited and goes into your coolant to power your turbine. The neutron hits lithium and makes a tritium, which you have to take and put back in your plasma to make more fusion, so actually you make tritium and consume tritium.
If you've got a clever plant you actually keep very little tritium around, maybe a kilogramme, so if you ever had an accident the amount of tritium that could be released would be relatively small.
In the European Fusion Power plant design that we participated in, you wouldn't need anybody to be evacuated beyond the site boundary in the event of a worst case scenario.

We won't know if we are right about ITER until after 2025. But by 2030 we will have to start building the first energy production reactor, something we call Demo.
Demo won't have to be perfect, it's a prototype, and it's not the last word. But it will have to be good enough to produce day in and day out electricity, so it's a demonstration that fusion works.

The end to all our energy problems????? shale gas

2011-05-10T23:18:00.001+01:00

Explosive water anyone?

http://www.eenews.net/assets/2011/05/09/document_pm_01.pdf

Gasland trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zVyms7aer0&feature=player_detailpage

Downward Radiation From GHGs

2011-05-08T01:03:00.000+01:00

An interesting paper from 2006

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100737.pdf

MEASUREMENTS OF THE RADIATIVE SURFACE FORCING OF CLIMATE

[...]

The measurements have been obtained using commercial Fourier-transform

infrared (FTIR) spectrometers. These measurements have been used to quantify

the radiative flux associated with a number of greenhouse gases. It is this radiative flux that provides an additional source of warming for the planet’s surface, and ultimately is responsible for any change in climate. We

have provided the first direct measurements of the greenhouse effect for a number of trace gases in the atmosphere. These gases include trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), dichlorodifluoromethane (CFC-12), carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric acid (HNO3), and tropospheric ozone (Evans and Puckrin, 1994-1997; Puckrin et al., 1996). Not only do these results prove that an increase in the greenhouse effect is real, and that trace gases in the atmosphere are
adding a significant radiative burden to the energy budget of the atmosphere, but they also provide a means of validating the predictions that are made by global warming models (Ellingson et al., 1991).
[...]

4. CONCLUSIONS

Measurements of the downward radiative flux have been made for several

important greenhouse gases. At mid-latitudes in summer as compared to winter, our measurements show that the downward surface flux from H2O has doubled to 200 W/m2. The water increase causes a reduction

of the fluxes from the other greenhouse gases. These measurements show that the greenhouse effect from trace gases in the atmosphere is real and adds significantly to the radiative burden of the atmosphere. The greenhouse radiation has increased by approximately 3.52 W/m2 since pre-industrial

times. This compares favorably with a modeled prediction of 2.55 W/m2. Measurements such as these can provide a means by which to verify the predictions made by global warming models (Puckrin et al; 2004).

Nenana Ice Clasic - 2011

2011-05-06T23:33:00.005+01:00

Results are in for this year - The Tanana River officially broke up and the ice moved interrupting the timer on 4th May 2011 at 16:24. This is later than GW would predict!

Changing plot to assume that last few years are a recovery!

[ps. watts refuses to post (or read?) items from me. Consequetly the greatest scientific blog on the web still shows that he cannot subtract 2 dates to give the breakup in days fromstart of the year. -
Here’s the context of the date in comparison with all of the others since 1917. (I calculated this to be day 124.683 in 2011, please check)
Actual count is 123.6833
Never mind no one notices anyway - what watts says is the truth even if wrong! CO2 snow anyone! (see this post)]

Efficiency of power plant operating below capacity, start up times etc.

2011-05-03T23:18:00.004+01:00

First a combined cycle gas turbine - not known for its efficiency at less than 100% of rated output.

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/tech_docs/en/downloads/ger3574g.pdf
Fast starting and loading is characteristic of STAG combined-cycle generation systems. This enables them to operate in mid-range, with daily start peaking service as well as baseload.

Typically, STAG systems can achieve full load within one hour during a hot start and within approximately three hours for a cold start.

Multi-shaft STAG systems allow the gas turbines to start independently of the steam cycle and provide about 65% of the plant capability within 15–25 minutes, depending on the size of the gas turbine, for hot, warm, and cold starts, as illustrated in Figure 36.Single-shaft STAG systems are started and loaded to full capacity in about the same time period as the multi-shaft STAG systems. The startup sequence and load profile for the single-shaft systems differ because the gas and steam turbines are started as a single integrated unit and not as two separate units. Single-shaft STAG startup is illustrated in Figure 37.

Now one designed for variable output

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/aero_turbines/en/downloads/lms100_brochure.pdf
The LMS100 is the Right Solution:
Outstanding full- and part-power efficiency
Low hot-day lapse rate
High availability – aero modular maintenance
Low maintenance cost
Designed for cycling applications
No cost penalty for starts and stops
Load-following capability
10 Minutes to full power
Improves average efficiency in cycling
Potential for spinning reserve credits
Reduced start-up emissions
Synchronous condenser capability

From the House Of Lords.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/195/19507.htm

101. The first cost imposed by intermittency is that more plant has to be held in reserve to cope with short-term fluctuations in output. At present, National Grid, which operates the electricity system,[34] keeps a number of power stations running at less than their full capacity, providing about 1 GW of spinning reserve—that is capacity which can automatically respond to any shortfall in generation within seconds (Q 293).[35] The company also contracts with other stations to start generation quickly and has arrangements with industrial consumers to reduce their demand at short notice, in order to restore the level of spinning reserves as soon as possible after they are used. The company holds about 2.5 GW of this standing reserve (Q 293); 70% of this comes from generation, and 30% from industrial consumers (p 144).

102. As the amount of wind generation rises, the potential short-term change in wind output will also increase, and National Grid will have to hold more reserve to cope with this increase. The company told us that if renewables provided 40% of electricity generation—the share the company believes would be needed to meet the EU's 2020 energy target—its total short-term reserve requirements would jump to between 7 and 10 GW. Most of this would be standing rather than spinning reserves. This would add £500 million to £1 billion to the annual cost of these reserves—known as balancing costs—which are now around £300 million a year (Q 293). This is equivalent to around 0.3 to 0.7 pence per kWh of renewable output.

103. Estimates of balancing costs vary widely. The government has commissioned research from the consultancy SKM,[36] which estimated that if renewables provided 34% of electricity by 2020, with 27.1% from wind power, the extra cost of short-term balancing would be about 1.4 p/kWh of wind output[37] (Q 481). This equates to a total cost of £1.4 billion, well above that assumed by National Grid. Several pieces of evidence cited a 2006 report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC),[38] which had estimated the balancing costs with up to 20% of intermittent renewable output in Great Britain at 0.2-0.3 pence per kWh. Although the share of renewables in the SKM study was less than double that of UKERC, the balancing costs per unit were more than five times higher. In part, this may reflect higher fuel costs since the studies surveyed by UKERC were performed; but it will also reflect the greater challenges of dealing with larger shares of intermittent renewable generation.

So the costs of up to 20% wind is between £0.002 and £0.014 per kWh

The UK cost per kWh is approx £0.11

added 2011-11-24

WUWT Revisionism

2011-05-02T13:06:00.001+01:00

With all the noise that wuwt made about deleted pages on websites this happens:

Sidebar info

Watts Up With That?

WUWT Readers Join Stickey-Note Activism

5 hours ago

This now goes to:

Not Found

Apologies, but the page you requested could not be found. Perhaps searching will help.

Forcing the side panel to bring up more info gives:
WUWT Readers Join Stickey-Note Activism - After reading “Ten Rules for Liberty Guerillas” and getting an invite to the original “gas-roots” event on Facebook, I launched a Post-It Note Activism at ...

Hmm I wonder what that is about
No google cache
No web archive (seems to have disabled that in case someone back-checks his blog?)

Google cache now (20110503) working - this is the garbage written:

Posted on May 1, 2011 by mikelorrey
After reading “Ten Rules for Liberty Guerillas” and getting an invite to the original “gas-roots” event on Facebook, I launched a Post-It Note Activism at the Gas Pump event for WUWT’s facebook group members to join in.

Stickey-note messages can be simple and to the point.

The mission is: carry a pad of post-it notes with you in your car, with a magic marker pen, so any time you stop at the gas pump, check your oil, go shopping at the market, etc and see an outrageous price (like what it costs to fill your gas tank), that you put a stickey note there with a snappy, catchy slogan to bring attention to people what the cost of unneeded climate regulations and taxes on carbon, energy, etc. is upon everyones pocketbooks.

Change the narrative...

Since starting this event and promoting it through our Facebook group, some of our down-under readers are picking up the ball to fight the carbon tax there in the same way. Don’t COP It Australia! is now promoting the idea.

Don't COP It! Australia! Gets into the fun...

Stickey-note activism is now going viral, because anybody can do it. You dont need big signs, you dont need lobbying money, or to live near a state or provincial capital. You dont have to stand around in the cold shouting at passing cars and getting honked at for looking silly. The post-it messages are small and inexpensive, but placed in high value places where people are feeling the hurt the most: at the gas pump, where gas prices have gone up more than 25% in recent months as Obama has illegally shut down offshore drilling, in contempt of court orders. Keep your slogans less than 7 words, keep it clean, the post-it note doesnt vandalize or deface anything, and it will be seen by many people using the gas pump or food stand you have just shopped at.

How is that Hope & Change working out for you?

National grids reserves

2011-05-01T17:36:00.003+01:00

From wiki
There is generally about 1.5 GW of so called spinning reserve
NG pays to have up to 8.5 GW of additional capacity available to start immediately but not running, referred to as warming or hot standby, that is ready to be used at short notice which could take half an hour to 2 hours to bring on line
A similar amount of power stations (8–10 GW by capacity) are operable from a cold start in about 12 hours for coal burning stations, and 2 hours for gas fired stations

Short term and instantaneous load and generation response mechanisms

The national grid is organized, and power stations distributed, in such a way as to cope with sudden, unforeseen and dramatic changes in either load or generation. It is designed to cope with the simultaneous or nearly simultaneous failure of 2 × 660 MW sets
Spinning Reserve National Grid pays to keep a number of large power station generators partly loaded.
Pumped Storage Pumped storage as in Dinorwig Power Station is also used in addition to spinning reserve to keep the system in balance.

Frequency Service For large perturbations, which can exceed the capability of spinning reserve, NG (National Grid plc) who operate the national grid and control the operations of power stations (but does not own them) has a number of partners who are known as NG Frequency Service, National Grid Reserve Service or reserve service participants. These are large power users such as steel works, cold stores, etc. who are happy to enter into a contract to be paid to be automatically disconnected from power supplies whenever grid frequency starts to fall.
Standing Reserve Operating closely with NG Frequency Response is the National Grid Reserve Service now called STOR or Short Term Operating Reserve.[9] NG Standing Reserve participants are small diesel engine owners, and Open Cycle gas turbine generator owners, who are paid to start up and connect to the grid within 20 minutes from the time Frequency Response customers are called to disconnect. These participants must be reliable and able to stay on and run for an hour or so, with a repetition rate of 20 hours.

National Grid has about 500 MW of diesel generators on contract, and 150 MW of gas turbines with about 2,000 MW of disconnect-able load.[9]

Sources of intermittency on the UK National Grid The largest source of intermittency on the UK National Grid is the power stations; in fact, the single largest source is Sizewell B nuclear power station. Whenever Sizewell B is operating the entire 1.3 GW output is liable to stop at any time without warning. Its capacity is 2.16% of the national grid maximum demand, making it the single largest power source and therefore the largest source of intermittency. Despite this issue, NG readily copes with it using the methods outlined above including the use of diesel engines. An industry-wide rate of unplanned scrams (shutdowns) of 0.6 per 7000 hours critical means that such a shut-down without warning is expected to happen about once every year and a half.[11] However, no matter how low the rate of unplanned scrams, this is largely irrelevant - what matters is the fact that it can and does happen, and measures have to be in place to deal with it.

In 2008 both Sizewell and Longannet power stations both stopped unexpectedly within minutes of each other, in fact causing widespread power failures, as substations were tripped off using prearranged under-frequency relays.[12]

Reports of May 2008 outage
National grid http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/E19B4740-C056-4795-A567-91725ECF799B/32165/PublicFrequencyDeviationReport.pdf

Ofgem
http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Markets/WhlMkts/CustandIndustry/DemSideWG/Documents1/National_Grid_-_System_Events_of_27_May_for_DSWG_16_July.pdf

Wind and National Grid stuff

2011-05-01T16:29:00.004+01:00

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file15180.pdf

An example is given of a Eurostar train, which has a 5MW instantaneous change in demand when it goes from an accelerating phase to a coasting phase. This is compared to the largest fluctuation in an hourly interval observed from a large wind farm was only 20% of rated capacity. Thischange was also not an instantaneous change but a gradual reduction.

BM Start-Up

National Grid will offer BM Start-Up contractual arrangements to Generators for provision of 'energy readiness' capabilities that can be converted into timely energy utilisations, synchronised reserves or frequency response services.

Hot Standby
Following a generator’s start up preparation, it may be necessary to hold it for a period of time in a 'state of readiness' to generate at short notice. Under these circumstances, fuel will be used or energy taken to maintain this state of readiness. National Grid will offer 'hot standby' contractual terms to Generators who are able to maintain such a state of readiness and hence provide flexibility in the provision of timely energy utilisations, synchronised reserves or frequency response services.

Why is it needed?
An adequate Operating Margin is required at the day-ahead timescale, as contingent generation reserves in excess of forecast demand, to ensure that system security can be properly managed. BM Start-Up is used by National Grid in carrying out its residual balancing role to assist in ensuring sufficient plant availability on-the-day to meet demand plus reserve requirements.

Major Technical Requirements
BM Start-Up provider must:
Have the ability to take on warmth to reduce the time taken to synchronise to within Balancing Mechanism timescales.
Be able to maintain such a state of readiness to synchronise for an agreed period of time.

Fast Reserve

Fast Reserve provides the rapid and reliable delivery of active power through an increased output from generation or a reduction in consumption from demand sources, following receipt of an electronic despatch instruction from National Grid. Active power delivery must start within 2 minutes of the despatch instruction at a delivery rate in excess of 25MW/minute, and the reserve energy should be sustainable for a minimum of 15 minutes.
Fast Reserve is used, in addition to other energy balancing services, to control frequency changes that might arise from sudden, and sometimes unpredictable, changes in generation or demand.
Fast Reserve is procured via a monthly process and requires pre-qualification to establish a framework agreement prior to tendering.

http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/A2095E9F-A0B8-4FCB-8E66-6F698D429DC5/41470/NETSSYS2010allChapters.pdf

National Grid recognises the importance of climate change issues and that the government’s targets for growth in CHP and renewable generation are likely to lead to continuing increases in
embedded generation. It is important for National Grid to play its part in facilitating this by ensuring that any transmission issues arising are appropriately addressed. At present, no insurmountable transmission problems associated with accommodating new embedded generation projects are foreseen. Indeed, the properties of the interconnected transmission system are such as to facilitate embedded generation growth regardless of location.
Nevertheless, this does not preclude the potential need for reinforcements to the national electricity transmission system, the extent of which would be a function of the system location of the new plant. For example, the extent, and therefore cost, of transmission reinforcement would be a function of the volume of offshore wind located off the England and Wales coast or onshore wind located in Scotland. . There is considerable ongoing work in this area which is published by the Electricity Networks Strategy Group (ENSG):
http://www.ensg.gov.uk/index.php?article=126

National Grid’s responsibility in the Balancing Mechanism is to balance generation and demand and to resolve transmission constraints. The intermittent effect of wind (i.e. its output is naturally subject to fluctuation and unpredictability relative to the more traditional generation technologies) coupled with the expected significant diversity between regional variations in wind output means that, while the balancing task will become more onerous, the task should remain manageable. Provided that the necessary flexible generation and other balancing service providers remain available, there is no immediate technical reason why a large portfolio of wind generation cannot be managed in balancing timescales.
In the longer term, we do not think it likely that there will be a technical limit on the amount of wind that may be accommodated as a result of short term balancing issues, but economic and market factors will become increasingly important, most notably the potential impact of both the interim and enduring connect and manage regimes.

This site give a daily breakdown of the contribution of the various Renewable to California’s Total Demand.

The challenges of intermittency in North West European power markets

Wind turbine life cycle:
All the stuff anyone could ask for:
http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/wind-turbines-and-the-environment/life-cycle-assessment-(lca).aspx

The most recent Life Cycle Analysis is here for a 3MW Standard machine.

From the Vestas web page

Our aim is to develop an increasingly efficient range of turbines that produce energy as effectively as possible. In doing so, we constantly strive to minimise the consumption of raw materials used in manufacturing.

Wind power makes minimal environmental impact
Taking the long term view, the impact on the environment for a wind turbine life cycle of 20-25 years is minimal when compared to that from average European electricity production by other means. This is based on considerations such as:

Manufacturing of raw materials
Production of components
The wind turbine’s energy production
Decommissioning of the wind turbine

Of course, the use of raw materials in manufacturing a wind turbine has a negative impact on the environment – as does the production of any form of plant. Balanced against this is the fact that as much as 80 per cent of some turbines are recyclable. But most important of all are the undisputed positive environmental benefits that come from clean and renewable wind power.

For example, a V90-3.0 MW offshore wind turbine will pay for itself more than 35 times during its lifetime – producing 284,600 MWh over the course of 20 years in a good location. To put this in perspective, that’s equivalent to the combined average annual electricity consumption of more than 84,000 Danish households*.

*Source: Energy Statistics [Energistatistik 2004], published by the Danish Energy Authority [Energistyrelsen]

LCA reports and environmental product declaration

In keeping with our belief in transparency, we’ve published LCA reports on two of our wind turbine types – the V80-2.0 MW and V90-3.0 MW. The report for V80-2.0 MW was prepared in collaboration with the consulting firm Elsam Engineering A/S, with the life cycle assessment being prepared according to ISO 14040-43*. An external consultant conducted a critical review of the calculations. We have also produced an environmental product declaration (EPD) for the V90-3.0 MW wind turbine, which contains the most important conclusions from the LCA report.

*The reports lives up to all the standards in ISO 14040-43 with the exception of the examination by interested parties, which was not conducted.

Neodymium - no way

ENERCON news ENERCON WECs produce clean energy without neodymium
29.04. 2011
ENERCON wind energy converters (WECs) generate electricity in an environmentally friendly way without the use of the controversial element, neodymium. The gearless WEC design on which all WEC types – from the E-33/330 kW to the E-126/7.5 MW – are based includes a separately excited annular generator. The magnetic fields required by the generator to produce electricity are created electrically. By design, and unlike the majority of competing products, ENERCON WECs do without permanent magnets whose production requires neodymium.
Neodymium has made the headlines recently because its extraction partly involves significant environmental damage. China, where neodymium-containing rocks are quarried in mines, is the main supplier of this so-called rare earth element. According to investigations by Germany’s NDR TV station, separation of neodymium from mined rocks results in toxic waste products (Menschen und Schlagzeilen and Panorama television magazines aired on 27 and 28 April). In addition, radioactive uranium and thorium are released by the mining process. These substances find their way into the ground water, heavily contaminating plant and animal life. They are seen as harmful to humans. According to the reports, part of the locals at the neodymium production sites in Baotou in northern China are already seriously ill.
ENERCON feels that these environmental and health aspects support its choice of WEC design. “We are a high-tech company that sets great store by environmental protection,” says ENERCON Managing Director Hans-Dieter Kettwig. “Our choice to rely on separately excited generators was the right one, not only from a technological but also from an environmental point of view.” According to Kettwig, renewable energies need to be viewed in their entirety in order to offer a convincing alternative. Producing clean energy is one thing; however, sustainability in production is just as important.

From UK ofgem
http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/Policy/Documents1/Renewable%20Energy%20Strategy%20response.pdf
The scale of the challenge today

1.39. According to NGET, an increase in intermittent forms of generation such as wind will increase its balancing costs through reserve costs, frequency response, and constraints costs.2 NGET did not specifically measure the contribution made by wind to its System Operator costs in 2007-08, but it estimated that the reserve costs associated with the 2.5GW of installed wind capacity were around £17m. It further estimated that the additional costs of the 500MW of extra wind capacity that are expected to be operational in 2008-09 will increase its costs by a further £10m. The majority of this increase (£8m) would be spent on ensuring sufficient reserve generation, which is required due to the high error factor associated with wind forecasting, £2m of the increase would result from fast reserve and frequency response costs, and around £70k would be spent on constraint costs3.

1.40. It is likely that the annual cost of reserve will increase significantly as the proportion of wind generation increases. Predictions for future costs range from £4-£7.50 for each additional MWh of wind placed on the system4. A cost of £7.50/MWh applied to the projected level of wind capacity of 14 GW by 2014-15 would cost an additional £275m in balancing costs in that year (assuming a 30% load factor). By way of comparison, balancing costs for the whole system in 2008/09 are forecast to be around £530m. The challenge therefore, is to ensure appropriate incentives are in place to ensure these costs are managed and the available reserve capacity is used in the most efficient way. This is manageable under current arrangements.

From a FOI request real data for a 1MW machine

http://blog.silverford.com/2011/02/balloo-enercon-wind-turbine-bangor-northern-ireland-stats-figures-and-price/

£889,650 turbine cost

£434,583 planning and consultancy

maintenance cost €0.0055 per kilowatt hour - 12 year guarantee

As reported to Council in December 2009 a pay-back period of approximately 7-8 years has been calculated. This is based on a full capital cost of £890,000 and a basic provision of £30,000 to cover routine expenditure

Lots more info in link

Unwinding hide the decline

2011-04-28T22:21:00.000+01:00

Well worth a look

Oh Dear 4

2011-04-26T13:24:00.006+01:00

More vitriol allowed on WUWT wrt Santer
Smokey says: April 25, 2011 at 7:20 pm
...
True dat. Santer is a real vermin, one of the most despicable Climategate worms. This is a real indictment of the formerly great AGU, which has sold its soul to Mammon.
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John Blake says: April 25, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Santer remains a blinkered ideologue, concerned not to promote objective scientific inquiry but to make his Green Gang bones preparatory to foisting willfully ruinous damage on coal, oil, nuclear energy economies in Gaia’s name.

Whatever Luddite sociopathology drives climate cultists to sabotage human ease-and-comfort at every opportunity, Santer exhibits it in spades. Like Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. he is complicit in the most massive, savagely destructive fraud in human history
============================
Pamela Gray says: April 25, 2011 at 7:16 pm

I’ve been privy to the spectacle of seeing all kinds of accolades being directed to first class jerks. And have sometimes been at the receiving end of “jerk” intelligence and their special kind of superiority. It seems to be a fact of life that those who find being a jerk a rewarding way of life also tend to be at the top of a pile.
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And now showing at CA
Pete Posted Apr 26, 2011 at 3:50 AM
You are totally wrong on a number of counts. This body of work has massive impact on public policy and there is continuing public interest, and I would contend a requirement for full disclosure. The University is also a public body and receives grants for it’s work from numerous public sources.

Apart from this there are significant grounds to suspect dishonest or corrupt practice at this institution.
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and
Henry Posted Apr 27, 2011 at 5:39 AM
Almost all of these AGW nuts especially academics are card carrying communist the idea that their protecting the sanctity of private property is too funny.
============================
SteveGinIL Posted Apr 24, 2011 at 11:57 PM
...
Lying scientifically means fudging the data, mostly. And no other scientific filed [field?] would give that a pass.
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Anthony Watts says: June 2, 2011 at 6:19 pm

I’m now of the opinion that Nick Stokes is either disingenuous or deranged in his thought processes, such as selective memory.
=============================
Chris Colose
This is WUWT I guess…whatever

REPLY: This is Chris Colose, inexperienced student, http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~colose/ whatever. – Anthony
.......
You obviously know how I feel about you and your blog, and the level of scientific understanding here, so the insults are pointless. I will do my best to suspend my anger at some of the things people are spoon-fed (and that they actually eat) daily.

REPLY: You are right, your predictable insults are pointless, so stop it and take it up with Dr. Gray rather than dissing me for publishing his essay at his request. Consensus does not equal fact, and the moment consensus replaces empirically proven facts in science, science is lost. – Anthony

....
REPLY: He’s not at GISS, which is in NYC, he’s in Madison at UW, Home of McIdas and SEIU riots taking over the capital and all that. – Anthony

==================

Joshua says: August 29, 2011 at 11:57 am
....
…simply because you don’t like Pat Michaels and are too much of a coward to put your own full name to posts- Yes he made a gaffe, then corrected it, now move on.

OK. Pat Michaels isn’t a “coward” because he uses his own name when he writes a comment about only 8 bodies being “coughed up?”

Gaffe? Really? You call that a “gaffe?”

And I think that “scrubbed” is more accurate than “correction.” Did he make a statement about his original phrasing, or was his post just silently edited?

REPLY: Scrubbed would imply removal. Correction is changing words/spelling. Now if you have something to discuss about TV media, then discuss it, otherwise take a hike. I get tired of your thread jackings here. Note the policy page. Note there I state WUWT has a low tolerance level for people using taxpayer funded resources to spout snark from the comfort of anonymity. – Anthony

Hiding the Decline in full view

2011-04-22T05:59:00.000+01:00

From 2005
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/27/briffas-tornetrask-reconstruction/
http://climateaudit.org/2005/05/01/a-strange-truncation-of-the-briffa-mxd-series/

From 2006

http://climateaudit.org/2006/12/30/briffa-et-al-2001-more-on-divergence/
Briffa et al 2001 – More on Divergence
After several years of trying, Briffa and Osborn have finally listed the sites used in Briffa et al 2001 and related publications. Briffa had reported results on large networks of over 300 sites collected by Schweingruber. Schweingruber had archived over 400 sites at WDCP.

.... One of the first exercises that I carried out was to calculate a simple average of all the available ring width chronologies in the Briffa et al 2001 network (369 sites – 387 less the 18 unavailable sites.) In this case, I just used the Schweingruber chronologies without trying to re-do using RCS chronologies.

Here’s the result. As you see, there is a noticeable decline in the late 20th century – the “divergence problem.” If this is the average of a large sample of 369 sites, what are the odds that a random selection of say 8 sites has a sharp uptick in the late 20th century. Not very

AMSRE Sea Ice Plots 2011

2011-04-20T14:24:00.004+01:00

All base data from JAXA

This years area is following the same path as recent previous years - the area is increasing until the 1st week in May and then rapidly falling.Is this due to thin ice separating into small blocks which drift apart but stay above the 15% ice concentration? This would then be quicker to melt than large blocks.

A plot showing a few selected days changes over time - note that 7th May has a significant positive slope!

A plot of rate of change per day - area starts shrinking around 7th March and starts growing around 17th September

The usual Extent plot!

More on Astroturfing

2011-04-16T14:55:00.004+01:00

In no particular order:

Koch Involvement!

Leif Svalgaard on Its the sun what did it

2011-04-07T02:32:00.003+01:00

the video

Leif Svalgaard says: April 5, 2011 at 7:54 pm

This is well-trodden ground. Nothing new to add, just the same old, tired arguments. Perhaps a note on EUV: as you can see here (slide 13)
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2008ScienceMeeting/doc/Session1/S1_03_Kopp.pdf
the energy in the EUV band [and other UV bands] is very tiny; many orders of magnitude less than what shines down on our heads each day. So a larger solar cycle variation of EUV does not make any significant difference in the energy budget.

Leif Svalgaard says: April 6, 2011 at 10:16 am

It is not clear what his [Courtillot] theory is. I have come across two claims he makes: 1) the Earth’s magnetic field determines climate, and 2) cosmic rays determines climate. Now, it is of no use to discuss this if the influences are minor [because we are interested in the major drivers], so the issue is not if some subtle influence can be found by suitable massaging/filtering/torturing/misrepresentation etc of the [often dubious data and more dubious proxies], but whether such influence is large enough that is swamps anything else [otherwise we need no worry, e.g. if AGW is really larger than the solar influence, then who cares about the Sun]. The cosmic ray issue is clouded [no pun!] by the fact that the cosmic ray intensity is primarily controlled by the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, and not by the Sun [ignoring galactic changes, supernovae, aliens, etc]: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg the little wiggles are solar related, the big swing is not. Anyway, what should matter is what the GCR intensity actually is in the troposphere where clouds are formed and not what causes the GCRs. We do not have good measurements of GCRs before the 1950s [the early measurements back to the 1930s have uncertain calibration], but there have been no long-term changes in GCRs since then [the solar cycle changes are only a few percent anyway], e.g.
http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic%20Ray%20Count%20for%20Different%20Stations.png
. Also, solar activity [and the solar wind and magnetic flux, etc] right now is on par with what it was in the 19th century [ http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf , Figure 10], yet the climate is claimed to be significantly warmer now, contrary to what we would expect from a cosmic ray variation. So, for me, there is precious little observational evidence for the GCR theory.