Three politicians and a comedian introducing the consensus

Recently, I came across The Consensus Handbook by Cook, van der Linden, Maibach and Lewandowsky. It was already the first text that I encountered (the take-away message on the introduction on page 3) that caught my attention (my emphasis):

Based on the evidence, 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. This scientific consensus has been a hot topic in recent years. It’s been referenced by presidents, prime ministers, senators, congressmen, and in numerous television shows and newspaper articles.

That last sentence reminded me of a video in which lead author John Cook explained his 2016 paper (Consensus on Consensus). It was the introduction in the video that puzzled me until now:

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Climate deniers are obviously incredibly influential … obviously?

The most surprising claim in the Guardian article “There are genuine climate alarmists, but they’re not in the same league as deniers” is that the deniers are influential. But before we go into that, let’s start with the first paragraph of that article (my emphasis):

Those who debunk climate change misinformation often face a dilemma. We’re flooded with such a constant deluge of climate myths, where should we focus our efforts? Climate misinformation is propagated via congressional climate hearings, conservative media outlets, denial blogs, and even from some genuine climate alarmists.

Reading this, one could get the impression that those poor debunkers are seriously in the disadvantage here. They are tasked with the herculean effort of debunking such a deluge of climate misinformation propagated via congress hearing, conservative media and blogs, needing to chose very carefully what to debunk.

Poor sods.

He ramps it up a bit further down in the article (my emphasis):

Projecting sea level 300, nah, 1000 years in the future

On the same day that I published the post on the IPCC, the political organization that is mistaken for a scientific organization, an article was published in a Belgian newspaper, titled Belgian expert: “It’s inevitable: large parts of Flanders are going to be under water”, in which exactly the same error was stated (translated from Dutch, my emphasis):

The highborn professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele is a regular at the United Nations as a climate expert, advises Presidents on the rising sea level and was for many years Vice-President of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the most important scientific climate panel in the world, that was awarded with the Nobel Prize.

It is an interview with van Ypersele about sea level rise and its influence on the Belgian coastal region. Some excerpts (translated from Dutch):

And those negative effects will also be felt in Flanders. “We can’t prevent large parts of the region will be under water. Within three hundred years, maybe earlier: it will happen. Much of the region doesn’t lie much above sea level.”

Did he really say 300 years?

Luckily, there is some hope … (translated from Dutch):

The IPCC, the world’s leading scienti…, err, political body

A new communication handbook for IPCC scientists is published. It is compiled by Climate Outreach and was commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I Technical Support Unit. They want this handbook out “ahead of the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees special report later this year”.

Interesting.

The handbook also comes with a video explaining the 6 principles to help IPCC scientists better communicate their work. They already lost me in the second sentence in that video though:

The facts are there, thanks in great part to the IPCC – the world’s leading scientific body on climate change

Wind and solar in Belgium: among the best in the EU, maybe even the world?

From the department of everyone-gets-a-price comes this tweet (translated from Dutch)::

Also in the field of wind energy, we are currently at the top in Europe

Ook op het vlak van windenergie staan we momenteel aan de top van Europa #stroomversnelling #windkracht2020 https://t.co/reTjrSCCSg

—
Bart Tommelein (@Barttommelein) January 26, 2018

Huuuurrrraaaah! Belgium is at the top in the EU for something!

Do our politicians realize that wind and solar are intermittent power sources?

Something I have wondered for a long time: do the politicians who want to go for 100% wind & solar realize that these power sources are intermittent and therefor balancing and/or storage is needed in the transition? When I look at the competencies of the Minister of Energy, his crew and the energy experts among the politicians, then I fear for the worse. The need for balancing/storage is completely absent in the discussion. We only hear that we need more wind and solar in our energy mix, but never about measures to overcome intermittency.

My initial guess was that they don’t realize it, that they consider intermittent energy sources to be dispatchable energy sources and go from there. Then I saw this tweet from the spokes woman of the Minister of Energy. It seems a statement of the Minister himself:

‘The real challenge is storage. There is not always wind and the sun is not always shining. I strongly believe in i… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

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Margot Neyskens (@MargotNeyskens) January 15, 2018

Who cares about a lack of PV in December when there is plenty of wind and more sun to come in the coming months?

On the last day of 2017, our Minister of Energy (who is fiercely promoting solar energy) posted a tweet to thank all people who installed solar panel on their during 2017. He got a prompt reaction from someone asking how much electricity those solar panels produced in December. The Minister of Energy replied with this remarkable tweet:

@EtienneBoghmans December 2017 was inderdaad een historische zonarme maand. Maar er was wel wind en in de komende m… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

—
Bart Tommelein (@Barttommelein) January 01, 2018

Translated from Dutch:

December 2017 was indeed historically low on sunshine. But there was wind and the sun will compensate plentifully in the coming months #HappyNewYear

Basically, solar energy production sucked really bad in the previous month, but, hey, there was more wind and there is more solar energy to come in the coming months anyway.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I would glad to laugh if it was a joke, but his guy is our Minister of Energy and I am afraid that he was serious about it.