Amazon Web Services to Use Wind Farm Power to Supply its Datacenters with Approximately 500,000 MWh of Power Annually
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jan. 20, 2015– (NASDAQ:AMZN) — Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced that it has teamed with Pattern Energy Group LP (Pattern Development) to support the construction and operation of a 150 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Benton County, Indiana, called the Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge). This new wind farm is expected to start generating approximately 500,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind power annually as early as January 2016 – or the equivalent of that used by approximately 46,000 US homes1 in a year. The energy generated by Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) will be used to help power both current and future AWS Cloud datacenters. For more information go to http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/.
In November 2014, AWS shared its long-term commitment to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure footprint. The Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for AWS’s new Wind Farm is an important step toward that goal. AWS introduced its first carbon-neutral region – US West (Oregon) – in 2011. Today, AWS offers customers three AWS Regions that are carbon-neutral – US West (Oregon), EU (Frankfurt), and AWS GovCloud (US).
“Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) will bring a new source of clean energy to the electric grid where we currently operate a large number of datacenters and have ongoing expansion plans to support our growing customer base,” said Jerry Hunter, Vice President of Infrastructure at Amazon Web Services. “This PPA helps to increase the renewable energy used to power our infrastructure in the US and is one of many sustainability activities and renewable energy projects for powering our datacenters that we currently have in the works.”
Pattern Development is a leader in developing renewable energy and transmission assets with a long history in wind energy. Pattern Development’s CEO, Mike Garland said, “We are excited to be working with Amazon Web Services and we commend the Company for its commitment to sustainability and its continued pioneering and leadership in cloud computing. We look forward to working with AWS as it progresses towards its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy.”
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Philanthropists To Spend $48 Million on Clean Energy
Justin Gillis at the New York Times has this story:
Two charitable groups will spend $48 million over the next three years to help states figure out how to reduce emissions from electricity production, an effort to seize the possibilities that are opening up as the cost of clean power falls.
… Half the money will come from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization set up by Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, and half will come from Mark Heising and Elizabeth Simons, a California couple who have taken a strong interest in reducing the risks of climate change.
A test of Jevons paradox in energy use: Falling gas prices
Gas prices have fallen to nearly half (or more depending on your starting point) in recent months. Therefore, according to Jevons Paradox, which does indeed appear to exist sans apostrophe, use of gas should have gone up.
It did, but only by 1%.
So, we are not impressed with Jevons paradox.
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars:The Battle Continues
Climate Scientist Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, gave a talk at Trinity College a couple of days ago on climate change and ethics. Just so you know, the Hockey Stick is a graph Mann and colleagues produced during the late 20th century showing how rapid recent global warming stands in stark contrast to previous centuries of climate change. The research itself has been repeatedly reconfirmed, refined, replicated, and verified, so it is for real. See, for example, this post by Stefan Rahmstorf.
Anyway, here’s the interview: Continue reading The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars:The Battle Continues
New Poll on US Voters Thinking on Energy
A poll commissioned by the Center for American Progress on US citizen’s thought about energy has been released. The key findings are:
- Promoting the development of renewable energy sources is a leading item
on the public’s energy agenda, and five in nine voters want the federal
government to do more than it currently is to promote sources such as wind
and solar power. - While voters support increased reliance on natural gas in the coming years, by a two-to-one margin they put a higher priority on protecting public lands
and natural places from overdevelopment than on opportunities for oil and
natural gas drilling on public lands. - Two frames for setting energy policy have strong resonance with the public:
- A BALANCED energy policy that addresses energy independence while
better protecting public health, public lands, and clean drinking water;
and - A CLEAN energy policy that promotes innovation and manufacturing
jobs while spending the transition to cleaner renewable forms of energy.
Both of these frames have stronger appeal than an “ALL OF THE ABOVE”
energy frame
- Strengthening protections against pollution of drinking water and clean
air; and - Permanently protecting special public lands for future generations.
leadership in Congress is expected to push that would weaken protection for drinking water and clean air, sell off some national forests or other public
lands, and allow drilling on highly valued recreation lands.
taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuel industries is a compelling frame against an
anti-environment, fossil fuels agenda in Congress.
Voters want the federal government to do more to promote both energy independence and renewable energy (keep in mind that for the most part, renewable energy leads to more independence): Continue reading New Poll on US Voters Thinking on Energy
State Of The Union Address: The Climate Change Part
Heat in Brazil is stressing the electrical grid
Brazil already has an iffy electrical grid, apparently, but very hot conditions are pushing it over the edge. Also, they had a small problem related to a nuclear plant (nothing nuclear, don’t worry). From Reuters:
ONS said it orchestrated 2,200 megawatts of controlled outages in eight states as the hottest day of the year in Sao Paulo, where the temperature hit 36.5 Celsius (97.7 Fahrenheit), and other southeastern cities led to surging demand from air conditioners and other power-hungry appliances.
Eletronuclear, a unit of state-run power company Eletrobras , said nuclear reactor Angra I powered down automatically at 2:49 p.m. local time (1649 GMT) due to a drop in frequency on the national grid. The company said there were no risks to workers or the environment due to the stoppage.
An alternative to the response to the state of the union address. Must see.
I watched the State of the Union Address, and it was great. Not nearly enough on climate change, but otherwise it was great. I did not watch the response. I heard it was not great.
But then Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones asked on twitter if they, the responses, are ever great. So I went and looked through a few old ones and I found one that YOU MUST NOT MISS. Watch the whole thing including the credits and the bit with Brokaw at the end. Pay special attention to the hair.
So, without further delay, the Democratic Response to Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union Address, a veritable Variety Show of Politics, hosted by the rising star Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas. Music by Genesis.
Western Australia is Baking
For the first time, ambient temperature in this part of Australia has been measured at just below 50 degrees above zero C. That is 122 degrees F. Hot.
This is near Shark Bay, which is already hot. So hot, normally, that the bay has a very high evaporation rate, causing the water to be very saline, too saline for snails to live, and thus, this is one of the only places in the world where you can find stromalites. This is also where the dolphins showed up one day to play with the humans, and continued to do this regularly. It became an important dolphin study site for that. Oh, and there are sharks. But I digress. The climate news from the area:
“It looks like we might get some 49s but with the observational network pretty sparse out there, it’s probably unlikely that we’ll actually observe a 50,” Mr Hicks said
Current modelling suggests the heat will linger in the region, extending the area of potential 50-degree condition to the Pilbara by Friday.
“The longer the air sits over the land, the more it heats up,” Mr Hicks said. “It just sits there and just bakes … Those poor buggers living out there tend to swelter for quite a few days in a row.”
…
Australia has recorded just three days of 50-degree heat since instruments were standardised nationally with the bureau’s formation in 1910. The most recent was on February 20, 1998, when the mercury hit 50.5 degrees in the Pilbara town of Mardie.
The bureau sparked international interest two years ago when it updated its weather charts to add temperature coding for both 50-52 degrees and 52-54 degrees.
Heat records are expected to continue to tumble as global warming pushes up background conditions, climate experts say.
…
But there is some good news.
A possible category-one cyclone forming off the Kimberley coast will help break up that region’s extreme heat if it pushes moisture and clouds into the Pilbara, Mr Duke said.
2014 The #HottestYearEver: The Movie
2014 is officially the hottest year in recorded history. Along with record temperatures, the impacts of climate change were felt across the country and across industries. Additional information available, here: http://bit.ly/1yiakWp
Hat Tip, Dana.
El Nino and Global Warming: Graphics
Here are a couple of helpful graphics looking at global warming in relation to ENSO events. During La Nina years, we expect the earth to cool(ish). During El Nino years we expect the earth to warm(ish). This pattern sort of cycles over several years, with neutral years in between (it isn’t a very regular cycle). The influences of the tropical Pacific, manifest as La Nina and El Nino periods is then, of course, superimposed over the longer term warming trend caused by increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Technically, 2014, which was the warmest year during the instrumental record beginning in the 19th century, was a neutral year, though there were some El Nino tendencies.
This graph, from Climate Central, helps show this relationship:

Dana Nuccitelli is the master of animated climate change graphs. He has produced a graph that shows the surface temperature record for only La Nina years, only El Nino years, and all the years together, in a way that makes the point. The original graphic can be found here, and further discussion of it can be found here. Here is the moving GIF … but if it doesn’t move for you go to one of the provided links and get to the original version.
NextGen Climate State Of The Union Ad
NextGen Climate is putting an ad up, in at least some markets, during the State of the Union Address. Not sure how that works exactly. During halftime? Anyway, here it is:
What to watch on Netflix
Testing Matt Ridley’s Hypotheses About Global Warming
Matt Ridley has written an opinion piece for The Times (not the New York Times, the other one) which is a response to his critics, specifically, to those who openly disagree with him about climate change. Ridley’s commentary is jaw dropping, and for most of you, those who are not of Royal Blood and highly privileged, it is more than a little squirm-inducing. But, putting that aside, Ridley makes a number of assertions, two of which (*) I’d like to address. Other problems with Ridley’s approach have been addressed here, by Dana Nuccitelli.
Spoiler alert, he is wrong on both counts.
First, to summarize his arguments, I paraphrase of his commentary in The Times (which is behind a paywall), in bullet point form:
- Since so many people disagree with me, I am probably right.
- I think global warming is real, and mostly man-made.
- I think global warming is not dangerous.
- I think global warming is slow and erratic*, AND will continued to be*.
- That global warming has been slow lately conforms with my lukewarm hypothesis.
- I annoy people.
- I have been called a lot of names.
- My detractors are mainly public employees including scientists and politicians.
- I have lost opportunities because people conspire against me.
- I do other things than write about climate change.
- People do not attack my arguments, they attack my motives. For example, I make money off of coal.
- I really prefer natural gas to coal.
- I have been offered, many times, opportunities to install clean energy technology on my vast land holdings. I have refused every time.
- I used to think climate change is serious, but since it seems to have slowed down, I no longer think so.
- Climate change models are wrong.
- The hockey stick graph has been discredited. (I quickly add that the hockey stick graph has been confirmed again and again. See this. A version of the hockey stick graph is the image at the top of this post.)
- Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have it right. (They don’t; see the links.) The vast majority of the other climate scientists have it wrong.
- Climate change is not settled science. (There is, of course, a scientific consensus on climate change.)
- The IPCC agrees with me.
- Policies to combat climate change are ineffective, expensive, harmful to the poor, and bad for the environment.
- No one had ever effectively addressed my doubts.
- Bob Ward is a poopyface.
Of these assertions, I want to address only two (starred); Ridley has said that global warming has slowed down, and he has said that this slowness will continue in the future. These are both reasonable hypotheses at first glance, and testable. So let us test them. But before we do, I want to point out that they are not really reasonable hypotheses, because the physics are pretty solid on climate change. A real long term slow down in warming would be unexpected, astounding even, given what we know about how the atmosphere works. That alone does not make the ideas impossible, necessarily, but it certainly gives Ridley’s hypotheses a rather steep incline.
First, has global warming slowed down? If it has, Ridley may be on to something (but maybe not). If it has not, then this hypothesis is falsified.
There are several lines of evidence to suggest that global warming has not slowed down. First, we need to acknowledge that “warming” as the term is often used means changes in estimated global surface temperatures based only on measurement of the air near ground level, combined with sea surface temperatures. An excellent primer on how this is done can be found here. Keep that in mind.
Some have suggested that there has been a recent slowdown in global warming, as per this particular measurement. The first thing you need to know is that there are frequent slowdowns in warming in this data, as well as frequent speedups. One way to characterize this is to have a look at the famous Escalator Graph produced some time ago by by Dana Nuccitelli and recently updated.
Now that we understand that the squiggle representing surface temperature … well, squiggles up and down … we can have a longer term look at warming and see if an estimate of the rate of warming for recent years shows a slowdown. Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt recently tweeted this graphic addressing this very question:
Notice that the trend does in fact drop slightly in upward slope in recent years. Ever. So. Slightly. But, in the end, 2014, which turned out to be the hottest year of the instrumental record so far, is dead on the long term prediction of warming. In other words, rather than warming slowing below the predicted level, it has nearly maintained the predicted level, thus falsifying Ridley’s hypothesis. Don’t expect 2015 do be a big drop in temperature. It is way too early to say anything close to definitive about the year we just started. But, January has been warm and we are expecting El Nino conditions to add heat to the atmosphere this year, so we might expect 2015 to be like 2014, or may be even warmer.
But, yes, there may be a slowing of surface temperature increase, but that is only part of the story. The vast majority of the heat that is added to (or subtracted from) the Earth goes into and out of the deeper ocean, not the atmosphere or sea surface. (See above graphic.) This means that the surface temperatures are a bit like the tail of the dog, where the dog itself is the sea. I wrote about this here. Meanwhile, there is strong evidence that the top 2000 meters or so of the oceans is indeed taking in the extra heat that helps account for a minor slowdown in warming. Here is a link to a recent paper on this, by John Abraham, John Fasullo and Me. And here’s a graph from that paper:
So, Ridley’s first hypothesis, that warming is slow, is falsified.
To the extent that there is some slowing in recent years, it is generally thought that this is a combination of the ocean taking in extra heat, some slowing of warming due to dust put into the atmosphere by a higher than usual amount of volcanic activity (from smaller volcanoes, the ones you don’t really notice unless you live near them), and a current decline in the energy provided by the sun (not to worry, that goes up and down on a regular basis). In that order, probably.
Let me add that even if warming was slower than some preconceived rate, that does not mean that it is not a problem. First, even a slowed down rate of warming suggested by Ridley and others is very fast by long term geological standards, too high to be safe. Second, certain long term effects of warming, such as melting polar ice sheets and causing massive sea level rise, may simply arrive later. But they will still arrive.
Ridley’s second hypothesis, that global warming will be slow in the future, is not testable at this time. The fact that his second hypothesis is based on the first, that future slowness is assumed because of (non-existing) present day slowness, seems to be obviated. But, we can let the hypothesis stand as proposed and untested, if for no other reason than to mitigate Matt Ridley’s whinge. Then, in a few years, we can test it. Ridley is, essentially, predicting that over the next decade or so far more years will fall below a regression line based on recent decades, with fewer and fewer years falling above the line as time marches on. In a few years, let’s check back.
Meanwhile, let’s be sensible and smart and do something about global warming, because it is real. For his part, I hope Matt Ridley stops mining coal out of his own land and allows those other folks to put up a windmill or two. That would be royal.

Does rain smell like rain, and why?
Did you ever notice that you can smell rain? Usually, you smell it better after the rain, but if you are a highly trained naturalist, or Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadain, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor, or something, you can smell it before it rains. During the rain you are usually inside smelling other things.
It is called Petrichor. That word comes from ancient Greek for rock (obviously) and God Blood. That makes sense because with all the gods up in the sky, a certain amount of God Blood would fall to the earth when it rains.
Anyway, I came across this video on Petrichor, possibly explaining it.
So, basically, you are smelling raindrop spit.