Since electricity cannot be stored (except with extreme difficulty) and thus must be generated as it is used, wind power is therefore in practice merely a supplement to natural gas (coal and nuclear are much less suitable as backup, because they cannot quickly respond to changes in wind speed as gas can) rather than a freely-standing power source.

Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and probably as greenhouse-emitting as coal once leaks are accounted for. Worse, since North Sea gas is running out, increased use of gas for electricity generation will put us at Russia’s mercy.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder oversaw a big expansion in both wind and solar power, and passed a bill committing his country to phase out nuclear power by 2021. Almost immediately after leaving office he got a job with NordStream AG, a company with a controlling stake controlled by the nationalized Russian gas company Gazprom.

If I had my way, he would have gone on trial for treason!

We felt that our closing paragraph was a fairly conclusive point:

Environmentalism is zombie politics. It is oblivious to human ambitions, desires and development, other than it seeks to devour them as it turns humans into copies of itself: lifeless, purposeless, walking corpses that would be better off dead. Human life is reduced to meeting necessity and politics becomes the process of managing subsistence rather than contesting ideas about possible futures. It turns humans against humanity.

It isn’t exactly ambiguous. Perhaps you didn’t read that far.

Oh and for a shameless blog pimp, here’s my take on the CRU team, including a dig at Ben who is not really a plonker but does step outside his expertise sometimes, like many of us do, heh:

http://softestpawn.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/rigourless-in-research/

Still not done an article on the isotope thing. Will do one day….

1. What are you trying to say?

2. Please read the links. You seem to have missed something.

3. “No-one is really suggesting that and agreement on 18th March 2018 is in the nick of time and on the 19th we’re all dead.”

We didn’t say that they were. They do say things like this, though:

“We have only four years left to act on climate change” – James Hansen. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-climate-change

“There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more. So, as we convene here, we carry great responsibilities, and the world is watching. If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late. – Gordon Brown. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/gordon-brown-we-have-fewer-than-fifty-days-to-save-our-planet-from-catastrophe-1805648.html

In his keynote speech of the South American visit The Prince will tell business leaders in Brazil nations have “less than 100 months to act” before the damage caused by climate-change becomes irreversible. – Prince Charles. http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/newsandgallery/news/hrh_warns_of_the_urgent_need_to_protect_the_environment_at_a_1876977673.html

in just 100 months’ time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change. – Andrew Simms. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions

4. We weren’t being selective at all, but on the contrary, very general. The point stands that the consequences of climate change remain logically distinct to the fact of anthropogenic climate change, yet they are routinely treated as equivalents. There are links beneath each of the 6 points that you can follow to get a better idea about what we’re trying to say. I can see that you’ve ignored them.

5. “Never heard that said in that way. Yes, the overwhelming majority of scientists who know something about the subject agree.” The point isn’t about what scientists agree on, but about what people say N-thousand agree on. You don’t seem to have understood the point.

6. “Pure unadulterated nonsense… It is the difference between driving down a leafy country road at 40 kph and careering towards a cliff edge at 200.”

Brilliant. A perfect parody of an environmentalist’s interpretation of the science.

1. So its obvious?
2. That isn’t how it works, and you know it. A few bluff characters (Imhofe, Lawson, Melanie Philips) who claim to see the blindingly obvious missed by those stupid scientists but on investigation don’t understand any of it use the standard trick of over-simplification and economy with the truth. So much easier to “understand” Anthony Watts and his concerns about surface stations, so much more difficult to understand why the raw data needs normalising: yet its the same thing. Have to work at understanding something and give up my SUV, or be spoonfed an answer and keep it. No brainer for too many.
3. Is politics not science, a well-meaning attempt to bring home the urgency of the situation. No-one is really suggesting that and agreement on 18th March 2018 is in the nick of time and on the 19th we’re all dead.
4. You’re being very selective. The vast majority agree on the key points. But science is by nature sceptical and asks questions, so OF COURSE there is wide debate on all sorts of parts of the theoretical basis. But not on the fundamentals: the world is warming, the warming is fast, CO2 is a plausible driver for said warming, it is the only plausible driver for said warming. That is pretty settled. Whether it will cause more and/or stronger hurricanes is not.
5. Never heard that said in that way. Yes, the overwhelming majority of scientists who know something about the subject agree. You disagree? And any lingering respect I might have will disappear if you mention Oregon.
6. Pure unadulterated nonsense. Environmental change is constant and inevitable, I haven’t heard anyone deny this. Excessively fast environmental change that is damaging the ability of our planet to sustain life is not healthy. It is the difference between driving down a leafy country road at 40 kph and careering towards a cliff edge at 200.

This whole “project” of research has been going on for what…20 years now? If we date it back to Hansen and his tenure at NASA let’s say. Well, all right, now you’d think that if we’ve had this long to worry about such a topic, we would be spending millions, if not billions on researching Climate. We would have the equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider or the International Space Station. We would be building simulators like Biosphere II to try and collect real world data.

But we don’t ! So far, this entire thing rests on a few software models! Where is all the research that has been funded by two decades of taxes? Al Gore goes around citing 1000 papers. I looked up those papers on Google and more than 95 percent of them are based on computer models. There is almost no primary research about global warming, or its effects. At best, most of it is hearsay or repeated “data” from other people who don’t really know what they are talking about!

The real “deniers” have to be this entire industry of “scientists” who even if taken at face value simply aren’t doing anything at all for Climate Change, or research…or whatever!

A week later, and he’s read a few executive summaries and browsed the Web a bit and can now talk confidently about the Stern Report and dismiss criticisms of the IPCC consensus as ‘mischief’ and ‘foolishness’ and ‘childish contrarian views’ and ‘zombie arguments’ – this despite acknowledging that ‘climate science is difficult’ and you get only a ‘relatively superficial understanding’ of it from a couple of days of reading about it.

What a plonker!

(Another excellent article, CR.)