Should We Be More Focused on Battling the Cold?

OK Im a fool and you are all brilliant.
The Greenland ice cores prove the Arctic was warm when Europe was warm during the Medieval Warming Period.
The Greenland ice core proves the Arctic was colder during the European Little Ice Age.
But today a warm Arctic causes extreme cold in Europe.
Please show me how stupid I am, and explain how today a warm Arctic can cause a cold Europe, while for at least the past 1000 years we know that not to be the case.
Some magical power of CO2 that fools like myself cant perceive.
If you believe ocean currents have changed ,they havent.
Thats an Instant FAIL.

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The cherry blossoms are late this year in DC...due to below average Feb/March temps. No blossoms yet but should start by Sunday we finally hit average temps (mid 60s). Peak blossoms maybe April 8-10 which gets close to the latest side of the expected date (March 15 - April 15). Thought I saw a Brit article saying the cold spring was due to climate change and ice shelf breaking or some such.

 

Fuller article on why the cold is not the problem in the UK, its how people deal with the cold. Its the guardian, not me, I don't judge.
Cold homes will kill up to 200 older people a day, warns Age UK | Society | The Observer

Which according to grumpy, the excess deaths are in the group that the government is set up to pay for insulation and energy, but somehow these people are not insulating there homes.

It doesn't sound like a government problem to me though.

 

Now this is a reasonable question, no cadavers, to illustrate the scientific method. Hopefully, it won't turn into a canine math exercise:

We have a claim that suggests a testable hypothesis. Now it turns out the creativity of each scientists is in how they approach testing the hypothesis. Someone else's approach could be equally valid yet subject to an equal 'peer review.'

So this is my proposed test of this hypothesis:

1. Find a climate record for Europe - I choose the UK.
   • The original article was published in the Telegraph and address UK tax policies.
   • We have English speaking, literate members with personal experience of recent UK climate.
2. Find a climate record the Arctic - we want to find Arctic weather data that would be associated with the UK
   • Account for the Coriolis effect, to find Arctic weather 'up wind to UK'.

So let's see what options exist:


It looks like Eastern Greenland climate data would be a good source for "Arctic" weather to test the hypothesis:

1. ". . . a warm Arctic can cause a cold Europe . . .
   • Any issues or concerns with the hypothesis?
2. Use UK climate records for "Europe"
3. Use Greenland climate records for "Arctic"
   • Any issues or concerns with these data?

Bob Wilson

 

If one is going to compare deaths due to current climate to deaths in a global climate change climate, one first has to decide what that weather is going to be. This is the hard part of global climate change. I like to imagine our climate as a marble in bumpy surface, we are currently in a local minimum (low point on the surface). If we continue to add energy to the system we will eventually perturb ourselves out of that low spot, and go somewhere else. If we find another low spot with taller walls we may end up there, or we could just wander around for a while. Extremely hard to know without mapping the entire surface (and we can't even map where we currently are).

So how do we compare deaths in that scenario? UK residents could easily be killed by climate in places very remote from the UK (widespread desertification of current crop land for example).

 

Interesting observation as I was plotting the UK average temperature each month from 1910 to current. I noticed there was a local minimum about two years ago when the average, UK temperature was below 0C. This explains why the original author, the UK climate denier, roused himself to write his complaint about UK tax policies on energy.

Well that seems to be a problem both the UK author and even our local "Mojo" have. They are willing to post gross numbers but not a 'death list' . . . who died when from what event traceable to a weather or climate policy or event.

The funny thing is folks who live in the natural world, those of us who deal with facts and data, could easily find the source records. But the UK author and those who shout "we're all going to die because of <their favorite boogie man>" are powerless or incapable or afraid to discover that the facts and data have a 'liberal' bias. But that is OK.

The exercise of treating FUD with facts and data, something empricist do daily, well it simply strengths our ability to respond to nonsense. Yes, it burns cycles but it also sharpens our wit in the constant battle against the witless.

Bob Wilson

 

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I'm not sure that is such a problem, what we have is exaggerating politicians, using statistics badly. Let's just leave it at this case in the UK.

Politician W says warming is going to kill lots of people so we need to raise taxes to save them. I don't know, maybe they read something that said if we burn coal the surface of the earth will become like Venus. Politician S says warming doesn't exist, and we shouldn't raise fuel taxes because it will hurt the poor.

Politician W wins and raises fuel taxes a great deal. Let's even pretend that politician W only had great intentions.

Now we know from reading that wiki and articles that in the UK cold weather is much much more likely to kill people than hot weather, the elderly are the most likely to die from heat or cold, and that many of the elderly have poorly insulated homes that cost a great deal to heat in an unseasonably cold winter. Let's take one other giant leap, and say that milton freedman is right, and if you put in price controls people will over use a thing and cause shortages. So the politicians highly tax instead and get people to in the short term seemed to cut back on fuel use, but many did not insulate or put in a more efficient heater, they just lived in the cold.

Now we have this news item, that the policy to reduce energy use is actually killing old people. I'm sure it is quite right.

It doesn't mean that politician W was wrong that energy should be conserved. It doesn't mean global warming isn't happening, and no I don't think the british are at great risk of starvation either. It means the tax policy had some bad consequences, and it needs to be examined how to reduce energy use without killing old people. Politician S seems to be right that W put bad policies in place, but that doesn't mean conservation is a bad thing. It also doesn't mean that the cold is killing more people now than say the 1970s, but too many people are dying because of misguided government policy. My utility, being municipally directed, discounts directly off the bills of the poor. They won't cut off power in the Summer, where air conditioning saves lives, for nnstead of fuon-payment of bills, for anyone. The rates though are cheap. Energy efficiency and green energy are subsidized with small charges in the rates, , instead of the energy getting highly taxed. I'm not sure what will work in the UK.

Here is one development
US shale gas to heat British homes within five years | Environment | guardian.co.uk
And the politician s argument against it

I absolutely agree with politician S, that more renewables are needed in the UK, but in school we learned Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Natural gas is still one of the best fuels for both power generation and home heating. It does mean that you should make the homes and power plants more efficient to do more with less. You don't want to cut off natural gas from homes by banning imports because they come from shale and you think that will lead to global warming deaths.

 

Still looking with modest success, I've found various 'sparse' sources of monthly temperature averages. I suspect I'll find good sources within another day or so. Meanwhile, I found:

Source: Record blocking patterns fueling extreme weather: detailed look at why it&#8217;s so cold

 

Per usual.

My claim would be that BOTH politicians are wrong. And both policies are misguided. They all seem to be trying to assume that there is one thing wrong, and fix that one thing. Natural gas isn't cheaper than solar because it has less costs, but rather because those costs are hidden and distributed over many things. Raising the tax on fossil fuels without using the money to reduce some of those externalized costs just doesn't change anything.

Even a simple solution which looks at the whole could be better. Raise the tax on fossil fuels to the point of parity with externalized costs, then subsidize (and perhaps mandate) insulation, and heating assistance for the poor. Fossil fuel usage is reduced, no poor people freeze to death.

 

Yes, I tried to make it clear, that the UK politicians, much like the american ones get solutions wrong, but ignoring problems with their policies. But as for natural gas, what are these huge hidden costs that would make it worse. Think about the costs for a minute, trying to heat an old home. You can build enough solar to electrically heat that home every day and replace the natural gas heater with an electric one. But when does it get the most cold? At night when those solar panels won't do much of the heating. You may get some nuclear power from france, but lots of it will come from those coal plants that will heat you less efficiently than direct natural gas, if you decide natural gas is the evil fuel because it may be imported from fracking in the US. Again solar is so expensive in the US that even with subsidies, it is much less than 1% of energy use, and it's main use is heating rich peoples pools.

According to grumpy they do subsidize the fuel and insulation for the elderly, but it appears many do not insulate and simply turn the thermostat down. They have raised the price well past what I would consider externalized costs, its a tax scheme.

We get lots of information about the english grid here in texas because the texas grid (ERCOT)is about the same power, but very different incentives. GHG in ercot could greatly be reduced with some of the british policies, which if cherry picked would not raise costs much. Cutting natural gas on the british grid would substitute more coal and look more like ercot. The british though at last blush had less than 4% renewables on their grid, far behind texas. It seems like they need to at least try to build wind before boycotting natural gas imports. Here is one article about renewable plans.
Ecotricity to build 66-megawatt wind farm in Lincolnshire, England - UPI.com

20 GW is a tiny percentage, they used 2,400 TWh in 2010, I don't know the conversions but that should be around 2% of electricity by solar, certainly not enough to get rid of natural gas heating in buildings. Build one 50, 500 MW fast cycling ccgt and you cut coal pollution in the UK much further than even 20 GW of solar, you also have a bigger reduction in ghg even if it is just replacing older natural gas plants.

Now the greeks have harder problems to solve

Greeks forgo winter heating after jump in fuel tax| Reuters

 

I really hope I don't have to explain the concept of a battery to people on PriusChat. So, a well insulated house can coast for a couple of days. Day or night doesn't make much difference. I heated my house this winter almost exclusively with daytime heat. If the solar hot water panels were actually on the roof, instead of not yet installed, they would have made it even more of a non-issue. PV panels in most places can be used to power the grid in peak times, and power can be taken back during off-peak to heat the house (improving grid performance and saving everyone money). People with time-of-use contracts get huge benefits from doing this. Additionally a electric powered heat pump can have an efficiency of 300-400%, as opposed to the best gas heaters around 96% efficient.

Quite incorrect. The grid parity price for PV for me is $4.70 per peak watt installed. PV panels (uninstalled) are running $1.00 per peak watt. Professional installation puts them at about grid parity. Self-installation puts them at about 1/2 grid parity. The reason that they make up less than 1% of energy use is as far as I can tell because people still believe as you do, that the price is too high (or for ideological reasons). And the fact that it will take some time to convert. Installed PV in US in 2012 was around 40% of the entire previous cumulative total. It is happening.

The numbers I have seen for externalized costs would disagree.

 

Well then throw out your numbers, and the cost to hook up one of these british homes with solar and batteries.

And if solar is as cheap than conventional power, why don't those ultra solar states like california have as much solar as texas has wind, and why are they trying to get the federal government to tap into the wind we are building.

 

The biggest expense is having to pipe in the sunlight from some other country.

 

Germany is doing that, they pay much more to have 5% solar. I think he was claiming if we externalize the natural gas costs, that person with the old drafty house in the UK would pay less for solar. I'm not buying that argument at all. But, I'm willing to listen. What are the numbers.

 

http://solargis.info/doc/_pics/freemaps/1000px/ghi/SolarGIS-Solar-map-United-Kingdom-en.png

http://solargis.info/doc/_pics/freemaps/1000px/ghi/SolarGIS-Solar-map-Germany-en.png

 

I'm a little skeptical of this "record blocking pattern" assertion.

There have been atmospheric blocks (often called "omega blocks" due to the shape of the upper flow) since I can recall, and that's been since the late 1950s.

The atmosphere has always transitioned between progressive patterns and blocking patterns. I see nothing extremely unusual about this recent blocked pattern.

 

UBS: Boom in unsubsidised solar PV flags energy revolution : Renew Economy

USB suggesting that because of high electricity prices, unsubsidiesed solar will soon be much cheaper in southern germany then grid power. The catch for applying this to the US is its still 0.27 euros/kwh.

 

I don't like the headline.

"It's the cold, not global warming, that we should be worried about".

It's not an Either/Or scenario. So again subtly it becomes a put down of global warming discussion. Really Global Warming exists as a separate issue to the reality of the elderly, frail, sick and impoverished struggling and sometimes dying in the cold of winter.

It is quite possible to be validly concerned about BOTH issues.

 

Cool chart for those that want to see costs for solar in US versus Germany, and yes the US is much cheaper than 10 years ago.
gchart-US-vs-German-solar-cost-2012 | CleanTechnica


I followed the links and found they eneded at forbes, with some sound advice to cutting solar paper work and costs.
Cut The Price Of Solar In Half By Cutting Red Tape - Forbes

 

It's a little bit higher here in the UK compared to Germany, but still cheaper than the US. A 4kwh system here would cost £6,500 or $9,970 all installed.

Solar Electricity from Tesco Renewable Energy