A Gust of Energy

I find this a good discussion on the need for an aggressive government program to expand and also rationalize energy production and transmission.  Beyond that I want to repeat a couple of comments of mine on the subject.  The first item is that most of the various issues disappear the moment we have some energy storage put in place.  For starters, Calcium hydride with thermal solar is a natural industrial grade energy storage system that could easily be used instead of having a power plant on standby for fifty hours of usage per year. 

The second issue is that the advent of the true electric car is imminent in some form or the other.  Each car becomes an energy storage device in its own right.  However the demand for all forms of energy production can be expected to sky rocket.

The USA should be gearing up to provide loan guarantees and sales contracts to accommodate this rapid build out that will compare to the headlong expansion taking place in China.  We could use three years of that.

The absolute best policy that the USA and Canada can enact is fund an aggressive replacement of all imported non North American oil.  We have more than enough internally if we swiftly displace transportation energy into electricity.  We will likely become net exporters of oil once we fully transition to wind, solar and geothermal through a national grid.

This is a huge job and a massive retooling of the North American economy comparable to declaring war and going to full mobilization.  Yet it is all naturally pays out through internal cash flow.

A gust of energy

22 JAN 2010 1:53 PM

BY TODD WOODY

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-22-a-gust-of-energy

http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/i/assets/2/windmill_flickr_obrien26382_400.jpg&w=307

The great hope for powering a sustainable world is renewable energy. The great barrier to powering a sustainable world is the cost and complexity of building a new national transmission grid that will transmit the carbon-free electricity generated by remote wind farms and solar power plants to population centers.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report that concluded the United States could obtain 20 percent of its electricity from wind power by 2030. This week the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory issued a study that shows how the eastern half of the U.S. could obtain as much as 30 percent of its electricity from wind by 2024. The study focused on what transmission geeks call the Eastern Interconnection, six linked regional power grids that run from the Great Plains to the Eastern Seaboard and from the Canadian border to the tip of Florida.

“Although significant costs, challenges, and impacts are associated with a 20 percent wind scenario, substantial benefits can be shown to overcome the costs,” the report’s authors wrote. “Such a scenario is unlikely to be realized with a business-as-usual approach, and that a major national commitment to clean, domestic energy sources with desirable environmental attributes would be required.”

Essentially, all we need to do is come up with at least $93 billion for new power lines and infrastructure and get myriad transmission operators and local agencies to cooperate on the design of a new high-voltage grid.

Sounds daunting. But let’s put the numbers in context. The $93 billion is roughly what the U.S. spends in eight months on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Or to use another metric, a little more than what Joe Taxpayer forked over to bail out AIG.

The payback to build a transmission grid, however, is likely to be far more productive.  Such an expansion of transmission capacity (and the resulting increase ) in wind power—and one assumes, other renewable energy—would displace coal-fired power plants, according to the NREL.

It would also solve one of the biggest problems with wind—its intermittency, which plays havoc with keeping electricity flowing smoothly. To greatly simplify, the wind is usually blowing somewhere. By multiplying the number of wind farms that feed into a single transmission grid from a broad swath of the country, transmission operators can rely less on fossil fuel power plants—read coal—as a backup when the wind dies, say, in South Dakota.

That will lower not only the price of renewable energy but utilities’ capital costs, which are, of course, passed on to their customers.

In California, for instance, utilities like PG&E spend billions on natural gas-fired power plants in order to provide emergency power for those few days each year when the grid is overloaded—hot summer afternoons when everyone cranks up their air conditioners at the same time.

“About 10 percent of our generation capacity sits idle for all but 50 hours a year,” Andrew Tang, a senior director at PG&E, tells me. “This industry is predicated on the premise that you always prepare for the worst day. It’s hugely expensive.”

Left unsaid in the NREL report is that the massive expansion of wind power needed to supply 20 to 30 percent of the nation’s electricity would be a green jobs machine.

At the beginning of 2009, according to the report, the U.S. had 25,000 megawatts of wind capacity installed and added another 4,500 megawatts during the first half of that year, despite the recession. To reach the 20 percent target, NREL estimates that 225,000 megawatts of new wind capacity must come online. Add another 105,000 megawatts to hit 30 percent.

The researchers offered different scenarios on how to achieve those goals, relying on varying mixes of wind from the Great Plains, the East and offshore. The 30 percent target relies heavily on developing wind farms off the East Coast, a capital-intensive undertaking that so far has run into huge political problems.

The NREL report, which was prepared by the consulting firm EnerNex, offers a highly technical discussion on how to reconfigure the grid to accommodate all that wind. But the bottom line is that between 8,352 and 11,102 miles of 800-volt direct current transmission lines, as well as thousands of miles of lower-voltage power lines, must be built. All in all, as many as 22,697 miles of new transmission lines would need to be installed, along with all the supporting infrastructure.

But the key takeaway is that NREL has concluded that there are no overriding technological hurdles or insurmountable financial obstacles to be overcome on the way to achieving the 20 percent target. It is basically a political problem—just imagine the NIMBY nightmare all those power lines would create.

Well, a political solution has been offered up by, of all people, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who previously advised President George W. Bush on how to neutralize demands that the government take action on global warming.

Luntz has apparently undergone a climate change conversion. In a poll he released on Thursday, Luntz found that there is broad support among both Republicans and Democrats for climate change legislation when the issue is couched in terms of national security and energy independence.

“National security tops every other reason to support cap-and-trade,” Luntz concluded. “It’s about freeing the U.S. from foreign oil—and opening the door to greater security and prosperity.”

And as green energy advocates press to translate the NREL report into action, it’s worth remembering how a 20th century president managed to persuade Congress to fund a similarly ambitious infrastructure project, the interstate highway system.

Eisenhower did not argue that we needed to spend billions of dollars on a vast road system so we could develop the suburbs or drive coast-to-coast with ease. In the fearful fifties, he said building such a transportation network was all about creating the ability to move troops around the country in a national emergency. In other words, a national security argument secured what would become the driver of American prosperity in the coming decades.

Printing Lithium Batteries

For the present of course, researchers are discovering how far they can go with this.  We know that solar cells can be printed and doing the same with battery tech is an obvious fit.  This also suggests that folding can produce larger batteries. Again it is early days for the art itself.

 

The objective most attractive is to store solar energy without moving it at all.  That way we avoid unnecessary movement and storage and the related wastage.  Having the energy stored for example on the back of a solar panel is clearly most efficient and convenient.

 

That is the promise anyway.

 

I wonder if the ultra capacitor powder can be also printed.  This is much more promising and in time it will be more useful if it can be done.

 

As I described in my article on the reverse engineering of an UFO, several layers needed to be laminated together to produce the necessary working shell.  One layer been energy storage made good sense but was not necessary.

 

We are presently mastering the necessary arts.

 

 

Japanese Researchers Seeking to Print Out Li-polymer Battery

 

Jan 7, 2010 15:57Satoshi Okubo, Nikkei Electronics

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100107/179028/

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100107/179028/1.jpg

A Japanese research group developed a lithium polymer battery that can be manufactured by printing technology.

The group is led by Advanced Materials Innovation Center (AMIC) of Mie Industry and Enterprise Support Center (MIESC), a Japan-based incorporated foundation.

The sheet-shaped battery is expected to be used with a flexible solar battery or display and to be attached to a curved surface. If the battery is integrated with a solar battery formed on a flexible substrate, it is possible to realize a sheet that can be used both as a power generator and a power storage, AMIC said.

Because the battery is made by using printing technology, it can be reduced in thickness, increased in area and laminated. Furthermore, when combined with a roll-to-roll production method, its costs can be reduced, AMIC said.

The lithium polymer battery was developed in a research project participated by MIESC, Toppan Printing Co Ltd, Shin-Kobe Electric Machinery Co Ltd, Kureha Elastomer Co Ltd, Kinsei Matec Co Ltd, Meisei Chemical Works Ltd, Mie University, Suzuka National College of Technology and Mie Prefecture Industrial Research Institute.

They prototyped two types of batteries. One has an output voltage of about 4V at a room temperature while the other has an output voltage of about 2V. The thickness of the battery is about 500μm, but the battery capacity was not disclosed. Its negative and positive electrodes were formed on a flexible substrate by using printing technology.

This time, the research group used a normal sheet-shaped flexible substrate but employed a printing technology that can be applied to roll-to-roll production, it said. When a roll-to-roll production method is used, the thickness of the flexible substrate can be reduced, enabling to manufacture thin batteries.

The group did not use a printing technology to package polymer electrolyte this time. It did not disclose the details of the polymer electrolyte or the negative or positive electrode materials.

The research project is a three-year project that will end in March 2011. In the final year, the research group plans to improve manufacturing technologies for commercial production, seek appropriate applications of the battery and set numerical targets such as of battery capacity.

Rotten Sea Ice

This is further confirmation that the decades long sea ice decline is continuing.  Field observations describing the collapse of apparent multiyear ice sheets last fall supported that prognosis, but this will tighten it up.

This winter I believe we had much colder conditions so if there is to be a halt in the ice loss process, then this summer could show it.  That is assuming that the cause of the sea ice loss is significantly related to atmospheric conditions which I no longer subscribe to at all.

The little evidence we have supports the idea that a shift in the geometry of the circum polar current cause an increase of surface water flowing into the Arctic.  The cycle itself appears to be a full millennia long and is barely understood to exist by myself let alone anyone else.

In the meantime, this shows that even badly rotten ice can mask the actual losses.  In fact the press has constantly jumped on areal extent as a measure of total ice.  It is not.  The low of 2007 came about because of exceptional wind conditions.  The problem is that the ongoing disintegration of the sea ice has prevented much of a recovery taking place, but normal winds have allowed a more regular area to be covered.

We really have doubtful proxies for multiyear ice and it is problematic to just send out parties who can only assess a modest non representative sample.

The longer picture is of sea ice decline that has entered its last stages of collapse.  As I posted in 2007, I expect it to be glaringly obvious by 2012.  Certainly two more years anywhere like the past decade or so will have eliminated the multiyear ice pretty well completely.

This year promises to shed significant insight on the role of atmosphere on sea ice loss and perhaps strengthen the case for the global circum polar current paradigm.

It would be immeasurably ironic if it could be shown that atmospheric conditions are driven by the variation of sea conditions everywhere rather than blithely assuming that warm weather is the cause of declining ice.  That any apparent climate warming or change is mostly reflecting ocean changes we know little about.

 Ice Is 'Rotten' in the Beaufort Sea

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121164011.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2010) — Recent observations show that Beaufort Sea ice was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009. Sea ice cover serves as an indication of climate and has implications for marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

In early September 2009, satellite measurements implied that most of the ice in the Beaufort Sea either was thick ice that had been there for multiple years or was thick, first-year ice.

However, in situ observations made in September 2009 by Barber et al. show that much of the ice was in fact "rotten" ice -- ice that is thinner, heavily decayed, and structurally weak due to a uniform temperature throughout.

The authors suggest that satellite measurements were confused because both types of ice exhibit similar temperature and salinity profiles near their surfaces and a similar amount of open water between flows. The authors note that while an increase in summer minimum ice extent in the past 2 years could give the impression that Arctic ice is recovering, these new results show that multiyear ice in fact is still declining.

The results have implications for climate science and marine vessel transport in the Arctic.

The research appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Authors include David G. Barber, Ryan Galley, Matthew G. Asplin, Kerri-Ann Warner and Mukesh Gupta, Centre for Earth Observation Science, Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources, University of Manitoba; Roger De Abreu, Canadian Ice Service, Environment Canada; Monika Pućko, Centre for Earth Observation Science, Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources, University of Manitoba, and Freshwater Institute, Fisheries and Oceans; Simon Prinsenberg, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans; Stéphane Julien, Laurentian Region, Canadian Coast Guard.

Looking for Above Normal Temperatures? They are in the Arctic.

Submitted by Nick Sundt on Tue, 01/05/2010 - 20:58

http://www.wwfblogs.org/climate/content/looking-above-normal-temperatures-they-are-arctic

Despite the cold air gripping much of the U.S., Europe and Asia, there is a very large area in the Northern Hemisphere where temperatures are well above normal: the Arctic.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported yesterday (5 January 2010) that "average air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean were much higher than normal" during December 2009.  The extraordinary atmospheric conditions may be tied to climate change and  to the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, as well as other factors that cause climate to vary.

In our 24 December 2009 post (Don't be Fooled by Weather's Ups and Downs: The Climate is Warming -- Rapidly ) we explained that the odds of below normal temperatures are lower than they used to be -- but such conditions can still occur.  More importantly, we emphasized that it is necessary to look at the big picture -- what is happening globally and over a longer period of time. 

December is a case in point.  While most of us experienced cold conditions and heard in the news only about similar conditions elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, vast and sparsely populated regions of the Arctic were well above normal.  In Extreme negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation yields a warm Arctic (5 January 2010), the NSIDC included the figure below that dramatically contrasts above normal conditions in the Arctic with below normal temperatures in populated areas to the south.

http://www.wwfblogs.org/climate/sites/default/files/20100105_Figure4-415px.jpg

Caption (from NSIDC):  Map of air temperature anomalies for December 2009, at the 925 millibar level (roughly 1,000 meters [3,000 feet] above the surface) for the region north of 30 degrees N, shows warmer than usual temperatures over the Arctic Ocean and cooler than normal temperatures over central Eurasia, the United States and southwestern Canada. Areas in orange and red correspond to strong positive (warm) anomalies. Areas in blue and purple correspond to negative (cool) anomalies.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy NOAA/ESRL Physical Sciences Division

---

Beyond giving us a more complete picture of temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, there are other reasons why Arctic conditions matter.  They not only affect the region's wildlife, ecosystems and communities, they have consequences that spill beyond the Arctic into the rest of the northern hemisphere -- and the entire planet.  We explore many of these connections inArctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications (PDF, 10.3MB).

Atmospheric pressure conditions in the Arctic have a lot to do with the temperature anomalies we are seeing.  The atmospheric pressure in the Arctic and its relationship to mid-latitude pressure can fluctuate in a pattern known as the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and its status is quantified as an index value.  When pressures are higher than normal in the Arctic and lower than normal in mid-latitudes, the AO is in its negative phase and the index is negative. The NSIDC reports that December's AO index value was -3.41, "the most negative value since at least 1950."

There is mounting evidence that atmospheric pressure patterns are changing in mid-latitudes and in the Arctic, that atmospheric circulation -- the large scale movement of air -- is changing, and that these changes are related to the rapid buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and to the associated decline in Arctic sea ice.  While some are using the recent frigid conditions in the U.S. and other regions to raise doubts about climate change science, a wider perspective instead reinforces the science and the need to seriously address climate change by reducing emissions and preparing for the impacts that are increasingly evident. 

For a recent discussion of the connection between Arctic climate change and weather changes in the northern hemisphere, see The Climate is Changing: The Arctic Dipole Emerges (Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog, 11 December 2009).  According to Masters:

"The dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in recent years has created a fundamental new change in the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere that has sped up sea ice loss and is affecting fall and winter weather across most of the Northern Hemisphere, according to several recent studies. " [emphasis added]

Stu Ostro at the Weather Channel also is raising the alarm about the anomalous atmospheric patterns that are emerging and how those changes are reflected in unusual weather, including extreme events such as flooding rains.  As Ostro says in his posting, Off the Chain without a 'Cane (3 October 2009), climate change is altering the thickness (or depth) of different parts of the atmosphere, thereby "setting the table" for the unusual and sometimes extreme weather we are seeing.  Ostro says:

"What we've been observing over and over again in recent years is exceptionally strong ridges of high pressure, sometimes accompanied by strong, persistent "cutoff lows" (upper-level lows cut off from the main jet stream) to the south of the ridges. The upshot: many weather events/patterns in recent years which have been topsy-turvy and/or produced precipitation extremes and temperature anomalies."

Ostro concludes that "[w]hile it's important to consider what may happen in 50 or 100 or 200 years, and debate what should be done about that via H.R. 2454 or other measures, we need to get a grip on what's happening *now*." (Ostro's emphasis).

See also:

·                   How Did this Happen?  Blame the North Pole and the Equator.   Capital Weather Gang (Washington Post), 21 Dec 2009.

·                   Study Links Low Arctic Sea Ice Levels to Drier Winters in the U.S.  WWF Climate Blog (6 October 2009)

·                   Where on Earth is it Unusually Warm?  Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is Full of Rotten Ice.  Climate Progress, 6 January 2010.

·                   It's cold outside. What happened to global warming?  Christian Science Monitor, 7 January 2010).

·                   The U.S. and European Cold Blast: Blame the NAO. By Jeff Masters, Wunder Blog (7 Jan 2010)

·                   Winter Temperatures and the Arctic Oscillation.  NASA Earth Observatory, 9 January 2010.

·                   Feeling That Cold Wind? Here’s Why. New York Times, 9 January 2010.

·                   Frozen In France? Thank The Arctic Oscillation.  National Public Radio, 16 January 2010.

·                   It's Cold so There is No Global Warming.  Video "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" by Peter Sinclair, 16 January 2010.

China Bubble

Adam Sharp makes the most telling comment when he asks if you would rather have the us investment in AIG or the developing equivalent investment in China’s high speed rail network been built to serve over a billion people.

That is what makes merely looking at the numbers such folly.  China’s growth surge will not truly end until China’s economic demographics match that of the western world and by that standard they have plenty more to do. 

There will still be shake outs along the way, but the objective is clear and attainable.

The true bubble will only burst when they get there and they have to manufacture a system driven by creative growth as finally occurred in Japan.

We should have learned by now that sustainable growth is simply a matter of finance when all you have to do is repeat what succeeded elsewhere.

Ideology and elitist greed held back global development everywhere while the West recovered from the Second World War yet proved their economic case for economic development.

Today, almost everyone has taken the lesson to heart and is applying its lessons successfully.  Even the lesson that a globally integrated economy makes war rather difficult has been accepted in strange places.  It isn’t all working yet, but it is now a majority position and that certainly was not the world I grew up in.

The China Bubble Debate

Stock Valuations and Growth Projections

By Adam Sharp

Monday, January 18th, 2010

http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/china-stock-valuations/2272

China is still a growth machine, averaging around 9% GDP lately. But a growing chorus of bears thinks they're cooking the books, and that the whole thing is a huge bubble waiting to pop.

I think Shanghai stocks are a bit pricey here, trading at a P/E of around 30x. So while I consider myself a long-term China bull, it's always good to examine the other side of the argument...

China: Bear Case

Jim Chanos is probably the best-known China Bear out there. He's one of the few guys who saw the Enron collapse coming, so people tend to listen to his warnings.

He thinks China's economy is only being propped up by massive stimulus spending. He points out that their $900b program represents nearly 1/4 of their $4.3t GDP.

It's also not clear how wisely the money is being spent. In some cases, it looks like it's being flushed down the toilet. The empty city in Inner Mongolia is a good example...

China spent billions to build a huge city in the middle of nowhere. It has a huge luxury mall, Venice-like canals, and thousands of empty houses. You can watch an amazing video about the projecthere. Some see this type of project as a clear sell signal.

Questions are also being raised about how real China's growth is. For example, official numbers show excellent growth in auto sales. But sales of gas are anemic. Are they fudging the numbers? Chanos suspects they are, and plans to short auto and infrastructure stocks.  

A government-controlled economy will always be full of waste and inefficiency — that's the nature of socialist markets. Bureaucrats generally make awful businessmen. With hardly any stake in the outcome, workers inevitably get careless and make bad decisions. Corruption also tends to creep in.

But there are some promising projects taking place in China. And compared to the prospects of developed markets, China is one of the better long-term bets.

The Bull Case

Jim Rogers is probably the most well-known China Bull. He dismisses talk that China is a bubble. He recently made a not-so subtle dig at Chanos, saying, "I find it interesting that people who couldn't spell China 10 years ago are now experts on China."

Rogers thinks that selling Chinese stocks today would be like selling American stocks in 1905. I agree. It might be a bumpy ride, but if I had to put money somewhere for the next 10 years, China'd be near the top of the list.

And while some stimulus money is clearly being wasted, some projects look good. One of the more impressive is a $200b high-speed rail network, scheduled to be complete in 10 years.

Efficient public transportation is a no-brainer for China. Combine rising energy costs with 1.3 billion citizens in need of transportation, and you have a socialist's dream-project. If well-executed, it'll provide superior transportation and a lower cost of living for hundreds of millions.

Here's a map of how it'll look like when it's done:

http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/china-stock-valuations/2272

Now consider the fact that the U.S. has spent around $180b bailing out AIG. For about the same price, China will have a huge high-speed rail network in 10 years. I doubt our investment in AIG will look so good.

The China bull case comes down to growth. Even if they're cooking the books a little to hit their goals, it's still growing faster than 90% of the world.

Time to Invest?

Chinese stocks have historically traded at a premium due to their growth. However, I would probably wait for a pullback to pull the trigger. With the near 100% run Chinese stocks had in 2009, it's prudent to wait at this point.

At 30x trailing earnings, Shanghai stocks are priced for extremely strong growth going forward. And the China bears do have some good points, especially the dependence on stimulus spending.

That said, if we do get a big pullback, I'll be looking to add to my Chinese ETFs — PGJ in particular.

There are a few stocks that are worth a look, but I'm steering clear of the broad-based index funds for now. I recently found a small-cap stock that looks great here. It's China Security & Surveillance Tech, and trades under CSR. It's dirt cheap, trading at a 10x P/E with strong growth prospects. 

Until next time,

Adam Sharp

Analyst, Wealth Daily

IPCC Saga Continues

The IPCC needs to have these past reports all formally withdrawn for revision.  It has become abundantly clear that data manipulation and suppression of dissent was central to the formulation of these reports.

A full peer review by an independent group of scholars has become necessary to accomplish two things:

1          Clear the air.

2          Determine the validity of the data used and whether specific papers may have been improperly reviewed.   After all others will want to reference these papers and their data in the future and it is now necessary to get second opinions because of the reputational damage now done.

The process is embarrassing, but I fail to see how much worse it can get.  Right now they are been treated to death induced by a thousand revelations.   We undoubtedly will soon be hearing from the night janitor.

Perhaps the vigorous new review procedures can be applied directly to the past three years and attached to the next report.

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

Jonathan Leake, Science and Environment Editor

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny - and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods - such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 - could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts - but were ignored.

The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, said:

"We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific."

The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC's 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts.

Muir-Wood wanted to find out if the 8% year-on-year increase in global losses caused by weather-related disasters since the 1960s was larger than could be explained by the impact of social changes like growth in population and infrastructure.

Such an increase, coinciding with rising temperatures, might suggest that global warming was to blame. If proven this would be highly significant, both politically and scientifically, because it would confirm the many predictions that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards.

In the research Muir-Wood looked at a wide range of hazards, including tropical cyclones, thunder and hail storms, and wildfires as well as floods and hurricanes.

He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which "corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,"

Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.

Despite such caveats, the IPCC report used the study in its section on disasters and hazards, but cited only the 1970-2005 results.

The IPCC report said: "Once the data were normalised, a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% a year." It added: "Once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

Muir-Wood's paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or frequency of disasters. Pielke has also told the IPCC that citing one section of Muir-Wood's paper in preference to the rest of his work, and all the other peer-reviewed literature, was wrong.

He said: "All the literature published before and since the IPCC report shows that rising disaster losses can be explained entirely by social change. People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can't find it. Muir-Wood's study actually confirmed that."

Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the Tyndall Centre, which advises the UK government on global warming, said there was no real evidence that natural disasters were already being made worse by climate change. He said: "A proper analysis shows that these claims are usually superficial"

Such warnings may prove uncomfortable for Miliband whose recent speeches have often linked climate change with disasters such as the floods that recently hit Bangladesh and Cumbria. Last month he said: "We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact. Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake."

Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. "We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished."

Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and technical as the IPCC's round-up of climate science. "Part of the problem could simply be that expectations are too high," said one researcher. "We have been seen as a scientific gold standard and that's hard to live up to."

Professor Christopher Field,director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report, said the 2007 report had been broadly accurate at the time it was written.

He said: "The 2007 study should be seen as "a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around." However he confirmed he would be introducing rigorous new review procedures for future reports to ensure errors were kept to a minimum.