Copenhagen: I am happy :-)

Copenhagen Illustration

The BBC and The LA Times have remarkably neutral coverage of the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Conference. It’s neutral because they cannot find ‘the story’. The news organisations would have reveled in a ‘failure’ or a ’success’, but find it hard to uncover a villain or a hero in the actual outcome – which is a compromise.

Slightly to my surprise, I am pleased with this outcome. More pleased than I would have been with a legally binding commitment. Why? Because I don’t believe that legally binding means anything. We have laws against all kind of things – murder for example, – but it still happens and for the same reasons that it has always happened. I am pleased because the USA is involved in the accord (pdf) and (if I have followed reports correctly) seems to be involved in a deal with China and India – altogether accounting for about 2.4 billion of the Earth’s population. I think an agreement between 3 (or 5) countries is likely to be clearer and more transparent than one between 100 nations. Changing our way of life is enormously difficult and convincing people to do that  - as we must in democracies – is going to be hard. It is like turning around a supertanker – first one has to slow down, and that takes time.

I have two disappointments. The first is that the agreements I have heard discussed, talk in terms of limiting ‘global temperature rise’. I would have made an agreement which limited CO2 levels directly because they can be measured easily whereas measuring the Earth’s temperature is fraught with difficulties. Secondly I think targets need to be on a year by year basis: – they don’t have to be same every year – but we need to realise that hitting targets in 2020 involves action now!

National Electricity Consumption 2001 to 2009

Energy Consumption 2001 to 2009

I revisited the National Grid web site the other day to look at how electricity consumption had varied. Not over recent hours, as I reported previously, but over recent years. Amazingly, they have data for every half-hour period since July 2001 in a series of 6 monthly spreadsheet files. The data is complicated but I extracted the column for Total Gross System Demand which seemed to be what I was after.

The graph above tells its own story. There is no real sign of any reduction in consumption over the last 8 years. In fact, I used to the use the ballpark figure of 50 GW (50,000 MW on the above graph) as a rough measure of peak demand. Now a more appropriate figure would be 60 GW. I have some reservations about the data since there seems to a big change in demand in the Winter of 2005/2006, which then doesn’t go back to its previous value. But overall it does look reasonably plausible. Incidentally the thickness of the coloured regions from top to bottom indicates the variation in daily demand.

We all know the benefits and pleasures of using electricity. But given the challenges that face us as a country, these figures need to come down if we are to make any progress in reducing greenhouse emissions. The only ways I know to do this are to ration electricity or to charge more for it. And I just cannot see any politician in the UK with the honesty to state that.

What have people got against low energy light bulbs?

CF Light Bulb

I have remarked before on the Daily Mail’s bizarre objections to low energy light bulbs (Link 1 and Link 2). But now the BBC’s Ruth Alexander at it too (Why eco-light bulbs aren’t what they seem) . In a long article she attacks every claim made for the light bulbs. But despite being supposedly written by a numerate correspondent, she fails to mention the very simple fact: using these light bulbs saves enormous amounts of money and energy. As our leaders negotiate in Copenhagen for such dramatic cuts in carbon emissions (80% within 40 years in the UK apparently) their credibility is reduced to almost zero by the folks who constantly hark on about the good ‘old-fashioned’ light bulbs. If we can’t even change our light bulbs without complaining, then what chance do we stand of really changing our lifestyle. Her criticisms fall into three categories: Brightness, Lifetime and Energy Efficiency. But I will ask you to consider others at the end of this article.

Brightness

The article states that the light bulbs aren’t as bright as is claimed, and I agree. The claims are generally that the compact fluorescents are 5 times brighter for a given power, but I think the real equivalence is nearer a factor 3. Even so, that is three times more light for the energy input which is a pretty large factor. According to the article my factor of 3 (derived from informal tests and use at home) is borne out by US recommendations. However they finish with the statement that ”studies show CFL bulbs can get 20% dimmer over time” Well OK, I agree. But so do conventional light bulbs! And LED light bulbs are (currently) even worse!  It then states that “New European regulations expected next year mean manufacturers will have to display lumens – a measure of light output – more prominently than wattage” Well that’s a great idea, but it is not a downside of CF light bulbs.

Lifetime

Here the article is facile in the extreme. She points out the 10,000 hour lifetime is an average – and half the bulbs will fail before this time. Well yes, but the simple fact is that the bulbs last for years. If you put them in your house, then you are not constantly having to buy and change light bulbs as you are with conventional incandescent bulbs. They do actually last for years.

Energy Efficiency

Here the article loses all track of common sense. This point is already covered in the first point! However the article confuses the matter – deliberately I would say – by using ‘efficiency’ and ’savings’ figures in appropriately. They say that the CF light bulbs only save 60% of your energy rather than 80% and they compare this with Halogen light bulbs which are 30% more efficient. The facts are these: To get the same light output, using a halogen light bulb will use 70% of the energy you would have used. But using a CF light bulb will use only 40% of the energy i.e. it is more than twice , and nearly three times as efficient – an efficiency improvement of (roughly) 250%.

Summary

This article is pernicious. It’s tone implies that these light bulbs are somehow a con. They are not! The technology is imperfect, but they are lighting my home as we speak and they work fine. They also reduce emissions of mercury and radioactive materials into our environment, and represent a pretty straightforward way in which we can reduce easily carbon dioxide emissions. If the UK switched over entirely to CF lighting then there would be one 1 GW power station that we simply wouldn’t need. And to top it all, they save me significant amounts of money (hundreds of real ponds every year!) Just what is Ruth Alexander’s problem?

Copenhagen Conference

Penguins

I have refrained from commenting on the forthcoming UN Climate Change conference for the last few months, even as stories circulated of a collapse of negotiations, and the prospects for binding agreement have diminished. The reason for my silence is that all the news stories are simply editors seeking a  story. They find it impossible to simply report what is happening, they need to unearth ‘the story’. So journalistically the conference has be ‘a triumph’ or ‘a failure’. The USA, the UK, or China have to have ’succeeded’ or ‘failed’. And I just find this focus tiresome.

The UK Perspective

At the moment it seems the UK will be deemed to have ‘failed’ diplomatically because it seems the binding targets it pressed for will not be adopted. I am not concerned. These targets are nonsense. The targets are always for 10 years ahead and each government – with a  5-year mandate – can safely ignore them. If the targets specified results year by year, then they would be meaningful, because they would focus on what we needed to do now in order to achieve them. The targets are like those set by dieters to lose weight or alcoholics to stop drinking: sincerely meant at the time, but they just need one more drink to help themselves over a ‘difficult patch.

Things have changed

I think the magnitude of the changes which have occurred, and those yet to come has been underestimated.

• Firstly, since we started Protons for Breakfast six years ago, public consciousness (as we sample it in Teddington) has been transformed. I think this will continue.
• Secondly, we are at a unique point in history: we believe (sort of – and with caveats) that we know what is going to the happen to the climate many years in advance. WOW! This is a stunning achievement. There is uncertainty in these predictions – and skepticism on the part of many – but nonetheless, most people would accept that the endeavour of predicting the Earth’s climate is at least conceivable; and possibly feasible; and has possibly even been achieved already!
• Thirdly, we are on the edge of a global agreement between the many tribes of humans on the planet, that we need to act together. Even contemplating such an agreement is an achievement. As the science progresses, and events on the ground and on the seas and the atmosphere unfold, I think we will eventually come to some kind of global agreement. But the idea of giving up current wealth for future shared security is pretty radical and agreement will take time.

So in the context above I am reasonably happy that whatever ’story’ gets told about Copenhagen, that it is a step on the road.

Climate Rancour: What we know and what we don’t

The recent stories about rancour amongst climate scientists raise a number of issues, but fundamentally they reflect badly on all involved.

The gist of the story is that climate skeptics hacked into the e-mail server at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and uncovered evidence of bad behaviour on the part of climate scientists. The bad behaviour varies from the acceptable – calling someone a prat in a private e-mail seems pretty understandable to me – to the unacceptable. The unacceptable behaviour includes trying to avoid releasing fundamental data necessary for opponents of their views to make calculations for themselves. It includes discussions about trying ’strengthen’ conclusions of work. Unsurprisingly, climate skeptics (to crudely label them) have reacted with glee, saying that this validates their assertion that the apparent unanimity of the climate change lobby (to crudely label them!) is a ‘front’. They assert that Climate scientists try to maintain this unanimity for political reasons, and for reasons of profit – the worse the climate gets, the more climate scientists we are likely to employ!

What matters here?

This dispute is noise. What matters here is the science. Questions such as :

• What (if anything) is happening to the Earth’s climate?
• Are changes occurring?
• Are humans involved?
• How large might the changes be?

And finally the non-science question: Should we be concerned? These tribal spats are irrelevant to the answers which will out in the end. Much of the dispute refers to interpretations of data which establish a baseline trend for climate parameters such the average surface temperature of the Earth. Now measuring this quantity in the present day is fraught with difficulty even with satellites,  many remote weather stations; rapid communications and robust quality systems. Inferring the temperature over the last 100 or 1000 years is fraught with difficulties. Frankly – and speaking as a scientist working in one of the world’s foremost temperature calibration laboratories – I take all the temperature data with a pinch of salt. Basically the measurement is really hard and subject to many assumptions (made for whatever reason). When we see an absolutely indisputable change in global temperature – it will be way too late. So I don’t think this spat really affects my views at all. Wherever people collect themselves into ‘tribes’ such behaviour is regrettable, but pretty much inevitable.

Ask the right question…

My approach to this problem is to ask “How does the Earth get to be the temperature it is in the first place?” This question can be answered by most scientists with relatively little rancour. Even the role of CO2 in determining the climate is relatively undisputed. The increase in the concentration of CO2 due to human activity is also an undisputed fact.  The disputes begin when we try to establish whether humans are affecting the climate. The IPCC says this is ‘very likely’ and I concur. Others disagree, but even the most ardent disagreer would answer ‘possibly’.  The next question is what is going to happen: here I disagree with every scientist I have ever spoken to. The answer is “Nobody knows”. Its really hard and we just don’t know what is going to happen. Our climate models try to include all the effects people can think of, but not one of the climate models predicted in advance the last 10 years of relatively stable temperature. This is not (I think) due to malice or incompetence, but simply the fact that its a really complicated problem! We need to face up to our ignorance and then ask the questions such as ‘What we should do?’ in the context of the fact that we just don’t know what is going to happen.

If scientists try to pretend that they really know what is going to happen then they are setting themselves up for humiliation – and a ‘Crying Wolf’ backlash. We really need to be open and honest about our state of ignorance.

Protons for Breakfast

Spectrograph of a Star

Protons for Breakfast is taking up a lot of my spare time at the moment. We have just finished week 3 in which many of the simple connections between electricity, light, heat and atoms get reinforced. People seemed relaxed and very ready to discuss Global Warming next week. It is understanding the connections between these ideas that seems to profoundly move people. Anyway…

I saw the picture above on the BBC website, (Herschel telescope ‘fingerprints’ colossal star) and I realised that the Protons for Breakfast Students would understand this picture.

• They would understand that molecules can be identified by the light they emit. They would understand that because they saw that we could identify the sodium light that was emitted by our electric gherkin.
• They would understand that because molecules are heavier than electrons, they vibrate at a much lower frequency and the light they emit has a lower frequency – in the infra red part of the spectrum. They have seen the infra red light being emitted by the walls of the room in which we gathered.
• They would understand the frequency units on the graph (GHz) and  that the graph has two scales because light has both a wavelength and a frequency. The might even remember that Red light has a frequency of 400 THz which is 400,000 GHz

And I thought: great. This stuff can be made accessible to non scientists. But not instantly. People have to be interested and pay a little attention. But it really, really can be done. And people enjoy the process in a profound and satisfying manner.

 

Determining the Boltzmann Constant

Checking a plug in a hemisphere

 

Cleaning a hemisphere

I am finding it very hard to keep posting articles on this blog, because work is so intense at the moment. In my work I am operating way outside my comfort zone. Allow me please to just take a moment to say a word or two about this.

The main focus of my work at the moment is measuring the Boltzmann constant. This is a number which relates the magnitude of a degree of temperature to the energy of molecules at that temperature. The experiment I am carrying out to determine this involves determination of the speed of sound in Argon gas. We determine this inside a rather perfectly manufactured nearly spherical acoustic resonator.

The resonator was manufactured out of copper at Cranfield University. The nearly-spherical resonator is made from two hemispheres, each of which is turned on a lathe, but the tool used to cut the nearly-hemispherical surface is made of diamond rather than the conventional tungsten carbide. This results in a surface finish which has a surface roughness of only a few tens of atoms. The surface is mirror perfect. At the moment we are trying to determine the exact size of these hemispheres using conventional dimensional metrology. The details don’t matter, but the main thing I want to communicate is that what I am doing is just so hard. Our measurement requirements seem to naturally exceed eveything that anyone else has ever been interested in! So each day I am learning, learning, learning and each evening I am analysing, analysing; analysing.

And in amongst that pressure is the sheer physical beauty and perfection of the objects I am dealing with. Look for example at the perfection of the silicon sphere. I stare at this each day and I am in awe of the object and my friend and colleague Rob Ferguson who manufactured it. It looks perfect, yet I know from my measurements that it is not quite spherical by literally hundreds of atoms.

Silicon Sphere NPL2

And I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the instruments I am using, and the care and ingenuity of the designers and engineers who created them, and the scientists who operate them.

Last week: Odd thing #1

 

MdeP receiving an MBE from HRH ER

Last week was crazy. Probably the oddest thing was collecting my M.B.E. from the Queen.

I have written this blog section three times now – and I have deleted literally thousands of words – because nothing I have written captures what I feel. When I think of this honour I find it to be one compliment that I am unable to discount. I feel overwhelmed and I don’t know how to simultaneously acknowledge the magnitude of what has happened, and just to keep on going. Tears fill my eyes at the thought of it.

And that’s all I can say for now. Perhaps things will become clearer to me later.

 

The National Grid: now on-line

The UK’s National Electricity Grid connects electricity consumers to electricity suppliers wherever they are. The system for achieving this has both hardware and software components. The hardware consists of the high voltage stations and switching centres. The software monitors demand for electricity and buys just the amount of electricity required from suppliers who offer to sell it. Its a complex system.

The web site used to be dull dull dull – and still is in some ways, but it now has live demand graphs, and graphs showing demand for the last 24 hours or 8 days. It also has downloadable data showing demand every 30 minutes for the last 8 years or so. So you wouldn’t call the site dull now! For example: the figure below shows the data for the last week. Click on the figure to go the National Grid site with updated data. (The left-hand axis is in Megawatts – divide by 1000 for Gigawatts). Notice that peak demand is over 50 GW and consumption is higher right now than it was last week at this time – its probably darker and also colder)

Electricity Demand in the UK for the week ending Monday 9th December 2009

The site tells me that demand at 18:41:45 GMT was 52199 MW. In terms of energy transfers it notes the following energy transfers.

• N.Ireland to Great Britain: -292 MW i.e. the rest of the UK is send electricity to Northern Ireland
• France to Great Britain : -278 MW i.e. we are sending electricity to France at the moment (I am surprised)
• North-South: 10486 MW: Not sure what that means
• Scot – Eng: 460MW : Scotland is suppling 460 MW of electricity to England & Wales.

Looking around the site and seeing the instructions for how companies can bid to supply electricity, makes clear just how complex the system is , and how amazing it is that we are barely aware of its existence.

In-SOL-ation: The most amazing fact about global warming

More solar energy falls on the North Pole during each summer day than ever falls at the Equator

Insolation – as opposed to insulation – is the the ‘amount’ of sunlight falling on a planet. Thinking about planet Earth, the variation of insolation across the planet surface is responsible for the main features of the Earth’s climate:namely that it is cold at the poles and the warm at the equator. However, on reading my favourite newsletter from NASA’s Earth Observatory the other day I read an article about the albedo of Greenland which said:

The top-of-the-atmosphere insolation at the North Pole peaks in June at about 520 watts per square meter. By contrast, the insolation at the equator peaks in March at about 439 watts per square meter.

In other words the article claimed that the peak insolation at the North Pole was greater than peak insolation at the Equator. My first thought was that this was obviously wrong, and I began to write a note to them. But then I began to ask if it really could be possible? And amazingly it is not just possible but a fact. It took me an hour or two to convince myself, but I will try to summarise.

The calculation: moderately complex: sorry.

Insolation is expressed as watts per square metre – which is a measure of irradiance or what we  colloquially call the intensity or brightness of sunlight. However insolation is generally averaged over a period of time, typically 1 day, one month or one year. At the top of the atmosphere above the Equator the intensity of sunlight is around 1365 Watts per square metre. But the intensity of this sunlight falling on a particular part of the Earth’s atmosphere at the Equator varies through the day. It is 1365 Watts per square metre at midday, but falls to zero after the sun has set. This makes the daily average insolation only 432 Watts per square metre according to my rough calculation. This ties up with the 439 Watts per square metre quoted by NASA’s more accurate calculations.

Variation of insolation at the Equator throughout one day.

As one moves away from the Equator to the Poles, the peak insolation falls because of the shallow angle with which the sunlight intercepts the Earth. At the height of northern hemispheres summer the Earth axis is tilted by 23° towards the Sun. This means the intensity of sunlight at the North pole at height of its summer is reduced to just 39% of the peak value at the Equator (cosine(90° - 23°) for those interested) i.e. the maximum insolation throughout one day is not 1365 Watts per square metre, but only 533 Watts per square metre. However at the North pole in summer, the angle of Sun in the sky does not change for 24 hours. So the daily average insolation is the same as the peak insolation. This rough figure of 533 watts per square metre ties up with the figure of more accurate NASA figure of 522 Watts per square metre. NASA provide a link to a site with more data in which you can make these calculations yourself. I made graph showing how monthly averaged insolation varies with latitude and it is clear that that even at my latitude in the south of the United Kingdom (53° N) more solar energy falls on the UK during each summer day than ever falls on the Equator at any time of year.

Monthly averaged insolation plotted versus latitude for each month of the year

What this means.

I was amazed by this fact because I had always imagined the summers at the polar extremes on Earth were somehow very ‘weak’. I hadn’t quantified in my mind exactly what I meant by ‘weak’ but I think I just imagined that not much warming would result from this sunlight no matter what. This fact – that more solar energy falls on the North Pole during each summer day than ever falls at the Equator – has shocked me. As the original article said, it makes the albedo the northern hemisphere critically important for climate stability. As more lands and oceans become ice free in the summer and change from reflecting sunlight to absorbing it – lots of it I now realise – the amount of energy absorbed by the land and oceans will increase significantly.