the climate brief Accurate Reporting of Climate Science

It's probably fair to say most people's understanding of the UK government's flagship energy efficiency policy, the Green Deal, is hazy at best - with a fair few myths popping up in the press to confuse the sketchy picture the government's given of the plan so far.

But now, Building Magazine has revealed that the government is consulting with critics to see how the plan to help householders improve their homes' energy efficiency could be improved following concerns about how many people will actually sign up to the scheme, and whether it will help those who need it most.

While there appear to be some real concerns with the plans, other objections have obviously been invented in the pub and leaked to the papers. Here's our assessment of what are the 'probably not real' objections to the scheme, and the 'real deal' questions that remain.

Read more

Ofgem has published  new figures showing that energy bills continue to rise rapidly.

The figures also show that wholesale energy costs continue to make up the biggest chunk of consumer energy bills, expecially in the gas market - in 2012, wholesale gas and electricity costs made up 48 per cent of the average consumer's energy bill. 

Ofgem produces its  Supply Market Report  every year, examining the "difference between wholesale costs and standard tariff bills". According to Ofgem's estimates, wholesale energy costs on dual fuel use - which accounts for the majority of UK consumers - rose £80, from £555 in 2011 to £635 this year. At the same time, the average customer energy bill rose £140, from £1,170 to £1,310.

The amount consumers pay for gas continued to rise. The average gas bill in 2012 was £780 in May 2012, compared to £665 last year, with the wholesale cost of gas rising from £340 to £400 - despite the fact that companies used strategies to even out wholesale prices such as buying fuels in advance. Wholesale electricity costs are smaller, but also rose from £220 last year to £240. 

Ofgem also provides figures for how much other costs including VAT add to fuel bills. On a dual fuel bill, an average consumer paid £475 in 2011, rising to £515 in 2012 or 39 per cent. 

Read more

The Little Ice Age, a cooler period of the Earth's recent history, may have been a global event rather than confined to the northern hemisphere, according to a paper published last week.

Some climate skeptic blogs are  excited about this finding, and have taken it as a starting point to argue that the rise in global surface temperature over the last few decades is just a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, implying that it has nothing to do with, for example, man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. We asked one of the co-authors of the paper whether this is a valid interpretation.

The Little Ice Age ( LIA) was a period of colder than average temperatures and glacier advance between 16th and mid-19th centuries. This new paper adds to evidence suggesting that the LIA was a global event, rather than a regional event - something that is still under debate by scientists.

It documents temperature on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet dipped to around half a degree Celsius cooler than average between the years 1400 and 1800, according to a borehole record. This roughly coincides with a more pronounced cooling observed in records from Greenland, suggesting that the cooling was probably global in scale.

Because it suggests a global effect, this paper lends weight to theories that waning solar activity (the LIA coincides with a 70 year period of low solar activity called the 'Maunder Minimum') and/or climate-cooling volcanic emissions caused the LIA, rather than changes to oceanic currents.

Although the paper hasn't received any media coverage that we can see, climate skeptic bloggers highlighted the research, saying that its findings "imply that the 0.7C global warming since 1850 simply represents a recovery from the Little Ice Age."

Read more

We often hear about climate model projections for the future, or how climate model simulations have helped scientists explain particular climate phenomena. But how do the models actually work?

The Met Office has helpfully produced a video to answer that question. It describes how models split the earth into a 3D grid made up of horizontal and vertical boxes representing the atmosphere, land and ocean. The behaviour of oceans and gases in the atmosphere are represented by mathematical and physical equations, and are solved by supercomputers to calculate the climate in each grid-square over a series of small time steps.

The short video gives a handy overview of the basics. For more information on how climate models deal with processes too small to be modelled accurately, sources of uncertainty in climate models, and why scientists are confident that their models simulate global-scale climate features well, check out our Can we trust climate models? blog and this  Yale Environment 360 article.

Read more

It was clearly raining on Louise Mensch MP this morning. So much so that she  tweeted:

This prompted 'outrage,' she  tweeted a bit later, from "sandalistas in my timeline completely incapable of detecting a joke".

Well, as people who love joking about the difference between weather and climate, we certainly emitted an appreciative snort. In a similar vein, basically everything you need to know about weather and climate is contained in this video:

Read more

Climate skeptic columnist Christopher Booker returns to a familiar theme this week, with an attack on measures designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions. This week's instalment has an  antipodean theme as he criticises legislation to charge carbon dioxide emitters in both the  UK and  Australia.

What sources does Booker pick to back his argument that carbon dioxide is an imaginary threat? Well, he chooses a book by Australian skeptic geologist and mining magnate, Ian Plimer.

But does Plimer's work make a solid foundation for arguing that policies to cut carbon emissions are, as Aussie opposition leader Tony Abbott would say, "crap"?

Plimer's book is rougishly titled 'How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters', and suggests 101 questions for school children to ask their teachers about climate change, along with Plimer's own answers.

The book has received  poor reviews from climate scientists, and usefully, the Australian government's Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) actually bothered to provide  answers to the questions posed in Plimer's book based on up to date peer reviewed science.

Citing Plimer's book, Booker gives a "vivid illustration of how great is the threat posed to the planet by man-made CO2":

"If one imagines a length of the Earth's atmosphere one kilometre long, 780 metres of this are made up of nitrogen, 210 are oxygen and 10 metres are water vapour (the largest greenhouse gas). Just 0.38 of a metre is carbon dioxide, to which human emissions contribute one millimetre. Australia's share of this is 0.015 of a millimetre"

We guess that the implication here is that the relative proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is so small, it's too small to change the climate.

Considering the analogy, it's (roughly) right that 0.38 metres out of a kilometre would represent the proportion by volume of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plimer and Booker are a little out of date, and you can find the most up to date atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements here.

Read more

The  Daily Telegraph appear to be getting its spin on the government's upcoming Energy Bill in early. But in suggesting that the government are predicting a £200 rise in electricity bills as a result of "new subsidies" for low-carbon energy, it appears to have read the figures wrong.

A £200 rise in electricity bills?

The Telegraph's  online piece on the Energy Bill announcement, published yesterday, is headlined "Queen's Speech 2012: energy laws will send bills soaring". A shorter version appears on p.5 of today's paper, headlined "£200 a year for green power".

The piece suggests that "the new subsidies" introduced as part of the government's electricity market reforms will add around £200 to consumer electricity bills "over the next 15 years":

Government estimates suggest the new subsidies will put an extra £205 a year on the average household electricity bill over the next 15 years.

It has predicted domestic electricity figures will rise from £477 per year to £682 per year by 2026.

Read more

Last week  new research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggesting that a period of low solar activity about 2,800 years ago was associated with a sudden increase in windy weather in western Europe in late winter and early spring.

A Mail Online article uses this research to infer that we might now face ' global cooling' - adding to the ongoing series of articles the Mail has published that appear to be an attempt to dismiss man-made climate change.

Just as on a number of previous occasions in which the Mail has linked new research into the sun's effects on climate to the prospect of a ' new ice age' or ' mini ice age', the Mail's interpretation of the new scientific paper is plain wrong.

 The researchers involved studied lake sediments from Germany which were deposited around 2-3 thousand years ago. They find that during a period of very low solar activity called the 'Homeric minimum', which has already been associated with  cooling in west Europe, there was a sudden increase in windiness.

They also used climate model simulations to show that low solar activity leads to changes in atmospheric circulations patterns which cause cooling over northern and middle Europe and higher temperatures over Greenland - a finding which agrees with  previous studies.

Read more

Reading yesterday's headlines announcing the head of the Environment Agency's support for shale gas fracking, you could be forgiven for concluding that Lord Smith has joined the ranks of shale gas enthusiasts who have been so enthusiastically promoting the technology in the UK media over the last few months.

Attending Smith's speech at Royal Society of Arts yesterday evening, however, gave quite a different - and more interesting - picture.

The new kid on the block

Lord Smith echoed other analysts - including the head of Ofgem, as we covered last week - in suggesting that whatever the merits or otherwise of burning gas, the development of more gas capacity looks increasingly likely as renewables take time to come onstream at capacity, and nuclear power struggles to attract investment. Whilst gas is a lower-carbon fuel than coal, Smith expressed the fear that a drift into gas would "land us" with an array of gas-fired power stations which are likely to be around for some time.

Were significant shale gas resources available, this would of course become more likely. Recent estimates of the amount of shale gas available to in the UK aren't exactly definitive, but Lord Smith states that the amount of gas is "likely to be significant, even if it isn't huge." (Given Smith's job, this might offer an insight into likely conclusions from the British Geographical Society's forthcoming assessment of the onshore potential for shale gas in the UK).

Read more

The decline in Arctic sea ice is caused by human activity, researchers have concluded, but there's also a large role for the Arctic weather in determining the amount of ice that survives each year's melt season.

That's the conclusion of two new research papers which examine the issue of how Arctic sea ice is responding to climate change, which continues to attract media coverage and online discussion.

Over the past few weeks, as the sea ice melt season has begun, sea ice extent (a measurement which is roughly equivalent to area) has been higher than it has been for some time - at levels approaching the 1979 - 2000 average. This has given the usual speculation about how the sea ice will behave this year which accompanies the start of the melt season added impetus.

Sea ice extent neared the average towards the end of April. Source: NSIDC

Read more