Texas Heatwave Highlights A Major Problem With Wind Power

Texan wind project [image credit: Newscom]

It’s an obvious problem that politicians ‘would much rather not talk about’, as the article puts it, while noting it may be ‘good news, at least for birds’. Running away from reality isn’t going to work.
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The Texas energy grid has been under severe stress due to a heatwave, and lower than average wind speed means wind energy has been unable to counter demand, says OilPrice.com.

Texas is suffering a major heat wave. Three-digit temperatures are straining the state’s grid and earlier this month prompted ERCOT, the Lone Star State’s grid operator, to ask Texans to conserve energy. It also severely affected wind power generation.

Bloomberg reported this week that wind turbines in Texas are operating at just 8 percent of their capacity because of low wind speeds. This is really unfortunate because demand for electricity is on a strong rise because of the weather.

The Bastille Day Event

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Some interesting solar physics here.

Spaceweather.com

July 14, 2022: When a solar storm is so strong that the Voyager spacecraft feel it at the edge of the solar system, you know it must be special. Twenty-two years ago today, July 14, 2000, the lonely travelers were on the verge of escaping space weather altogether when giant sunspot AR9077 exploded. The flare was so intense, it sent shockwaves to the very edge of the solar system.

SOHO images of the Bastille Day solar flare (left) and CME (right). The onset of snow in the images is a result of energetic protons hitting the spacecraft

Earth was on the doorstep of the blast, dubbed The “Bastille Day Event” because it coincided with the national day of France. Subatomic particles, especially protons, arrived in a ferocious wave, peppering satellites and penetrating deep into Earth’s atmosphere. Sensors on Earth’s surface registered a rare GLE–a “ground-level event.”

“People flying in commercial…

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Continue Net Zero business as usual and preside over the worst energy crisis in British history, Tory candidates are warned

Choose between common sense and climate ideas that don’t work, basically.
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To assess how serious each candidate in the Conservative leadership contest regards the ‘cataclysmic’ energy cost crisis Britain is facing, Net Zero Watch is sending a list of key questions to all candidates to find out where they stand on each of these pressing cost issues.

Dear leadership hopefuls,

As Martin Lewis is warning about a ‘cataclysmic’ energy crisis which threatens to drive up to 10 million people into real poverty this winter, will you put the energy cost and security of supply crisis at the top of the government’s reform agenda?

Plankton will store more carbon as Earth’s climate warms, but ‘Twilight Zone’ uncertainties remain say researchers

CO2 is not pollution

The researchers are not going overboard with positivity, but seem clear that the Earth’s carbon cycle is still working much as expected. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they theorise problems might occur by 2100 if some presently unknown limit is approached, but say ‘the Twilight Zone region of the ocean’ needs more research. In short, so far so good.
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The amount of carbon stored by microscopic plankton will increase in the coming century, predict researchers at the University of Bristol and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

Using the latest IPCC models (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the team expects the “biological pump”—a process where microscopic plants, often called phytoplankton, take up carbon and then die and sink into the deep ocean where carbon is stored for hundreds of years—to account for between 5 and 17% of the total increase in carbon uptake by the oceans by 2100.

Their findings were published today in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), says Phys.org.

Lead author Dr. Jamie Wilson, of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, explained, “The biological pump stores roughly double the amount of carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere in the deep ocean. Because plankton are sensitive to climate change, this carbon pool is likely to change in size, so we set out to understand how this would change in the future in response to climate change by looking at the latest future projections by IPCC models.”

Microscopic organisms called plankton, living in the sunlit surface of the ocean, use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. When these plankton die, their remains rapidly sink down through the “Twilight Zone” of the ocean (200–1000m), where environmental factors, such as temperature and oxygen concentration, and ecological factors, such as being eaten by other plankton, control how much reaches the deep ocean where the carbon from their bodies is stored away from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.

Warming of the oceans slows down the circulation, increasing the time that carbon is stored in the deep ocean.

Contributing author Dr. Anna Katavouta, who worked alongside early-career scientist Dr. Chelsey Baker, both from the National Oceanography Centre, added, “Our research found a consistent increase in the carbon stored in the ocean by the biological carbon pump over the 21st century in the latest IPCC model projections. In contrast, we found a decline in the global export production (the amount of organic matter, such as dead plankton, sinking below the ocean surface), which suggests that export production may not be as accurate a metric for the biological carbon pump than previously thought. We demonstrated that the organic matter flux at 1000 meters is instead a better predictor of long-term carbon sequestration associated with the biological carbon pump. This outcome will help us to better understand the processes that control the biological carbon pump and to predict more reliably how much of the carbon released due to human activity will be stored in the ocean in the future.”

However, the IPCC models have no consistent representation of the environmental and ecological processes in the Twilight Zone. This leads to a large uncertainty in how much carbon dioxide originating from the atmosphere the biological pump will store beyond the end of the century.

In theory, after 2100, carbon storage by the biological pump could stall and instead may start acting as a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which could exacerbate climate change further.

Full article here.

Ned Nikolov: Does a Surface Solar Radiation Dataset Expose a Major Manipulation of Global Temperature Records?

Once again it’s my pleasure to publish a new paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller at the Talkshop. In this study, we see the presentation of a climate conundrum, and recent surface solar radiation data which helps shed new light on the questions surrounding the ongoing adjustment of global temperature datasets. This new study applies theory developed in Ned and Karl’s previous paper to enable quantification of the global temperature drop during the “1970s ice-age scare”. This won’t be the last word on the topic, but it offers a solid grounding for further research.

A PDF version of this article can be downloaded here.

Implications of a New Gridded Dataset of Surface Solar Radiation
for the Evolution of Earth’s Global Surface Temperature Since 1960

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
July, 2022

Abstract

A new data set of measured Surface Solar Radiation (SSR) covering six continents (Yuan et al. 2021) reveals that the Earth surface received annually 6.6 W m^-2 less shortwave energy in 2019 than it did in the early 1960s, and that the average solar flux incident on land decreased by 8.2 W m^-2 between 1962 and 1985. Since the Sun is the primary source of energy to the climate system, this pattern of SSR change over the past 60 years (oftentimes referred to as global dimming) suggests that the early 1960s were much warmer than the present. However, all modern records of global surface air temperature show a net warming of about 1.0 K between 1962 and 2019. We investigate this conundrum with the help of an independently derived model (previously verified against CERES observations) that accurately converts observed SSR anomalies into changes of global surface temperature. Results from the SSR-based temperature reconstruction are compared to observed global surface temperatures provided by UAH 6.0 and HadCRUT5 datasets. We find that the SSR-based global temperature estimates match quite well the UAH satellite record from 1982 to the present in terms of overall trend and interannual variability suggesting that the observed warming of the past 40 years was the result of a decreased cloud albedo and an increased SSR rather than rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. The HadCRUT5 record also shows a satisfactory agreement with the SSR-based temperatures over the same time period. However, between 1962 and 1983, the SSR-based temperature reconstruction depicts a steep global cooling reaching a rate of -1.3 K/decade during the 1970s. This is drastically different from the mild warming claimed by HadCRUT5 over this time period. The cooling episode indicated by the SSR data is corroborated by more than 115 magazine and newspaper articles published throughout the 1970s as well as a classified CIA Report from 1974 all quoting eminent climatologists of the day, who warned the public that the observed worldwide drop of temperatures threatened the global food supply and economic security. Based on this, we conclude that researchers in charge of the HadCRUT dataset have likely removed the 1962 – 1983 cooling episode from the records before the publication of HadCRUT1 in 1994 in an effort to hide evidence contradicting the UN Resolution 43/53 from 1988, which proclaimed a global warming caused by greenhouse gases as a major societal concern, and urged Governments to treat it as a priority issue in climate research and environmental protection initiatives.

1. Introduction

It is a matter of conventional wisdom now that the Earth was significantly cooler during 1960s compared to the 21^st Century. Similarly, no one disputes that the planet’s surface temperature was 1.2^oC lower in the beginning of the 20^th Century compared to the present. This paradigm of climate change is based on surface temperature records maintained by several research teams that show remarkable consistency with one another. Figure 1 portrays global temperature anomalies based on 6 datasets supposedly constructed using different approaches summarized by Morice et al. (2021). All global records depict a nearly continuous warming since 1920 with a brief pause of the temperature rise between 1940 and 1980. No record shows a drop of global temperature between 1960 and 1980, which is at odds with a well-documented, decade-long discussion in the media about an ongoing rapid cooling during the 1970s currently known as the “1970s ice-age scare”.

Figure 1. Global surface temperature anomaly from 1850 to 2021 according to 6 official data sets. Note the remarkable consistency among various time series (borrowed from Fig. 8 of Morice et al. 2021).

The other side of climate ‘lawfare’: Maine hydropower project sparked a $100m ‘hoohah’

[credit: green lantern electric]

Court actions by so-called green groups are commonplace, but there’s legal pushback from another quarter – against intrusive electricity generation schemes favoured by climate obsessives, with a perceived lack of benefits. Not everyone is buying the endless climate fear campaign.
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A proposal to transport clean hydropower from Canada to the state of Maine has created enough “hoohah” to launch a fierce court battle – possibly signalling trouble for the future of green energy projects across the US, says BBC News.

New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) was supposed to be an industry-leading project, transporting 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to Massachusetts across 145 miles (233 km) of transmission line, and eliminating over three million metric tonnes of carbon emissions every year.

The $1bn (£840m) project, funded by utility company Hydro-Quebec and Central Maine Power (CMP), which is owned by the Spanish energy giant Avangrid, received final approvals, including a Presidential Permit from the US Department of Energy. Construction began in January 2021.

Now, the hydropower project could be dead in the water, after a majority Mainers voted to cancel it last November.

Starfish Prime: The First Accidental Geomagnetic Storm

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They don’t make them like that any more – we hope.

Spaceweather.com

July 9, 2022: Sixty years ago today, one of the biggest geomagnetic storms of the Space Age struck Earth. It didn’t come from the sun.

“We made it ourselves,” recalls Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey Space Centre in Guildford UK. “It was the first anthropogenic space weather event.”

On July 9, 1962, the US military detonated a thermonuclear warhead 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean–a test called “Starfish Prime.” What happened next surprised everyone. Witnesses from Hawaii to New Zealand reported auroras overhead, magnificent midnight “rainbow stripes” that tropical sky watchers had never seen before. Radios fell silent, then suddenly became noisy as streetlights went dark in Honolulu.

Above: ‘Nuclear auroras’ viewed from Honolulu (left) and from a surveillance aircraft (right) on July 9, 1962.

Essentially, Starfish Prime created an artificial solar storm complete with auroras, geomagnetic activity, and blackouts. Much of the chaos that night was…

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Electric cars pull up short of advertised range

Not the latest model

EV drivers must hunt for those elusive working chargers sooner than they were led to believe. And range declines anyway as the battery ages. How shocked are we? Not much.
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Drivers should take advertised electric car ranges with “a pinch of salt”, after research found real-world distances were on average almost a fifth lower than manufacturers’ figures, reports the Telegraph.

Consumer group Which? tested 60 vehicles ranging from large SUVs to smaller cars and found that they had an average range of 192 miles, compared with 238 miles under the official tests used by manufacturers.

With UK drivers facing a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030, there is growing interest in electric models. But worries about running out of charge, known as range anxiety, is a key concern.

‘Settled science’ news: DOE awards $14 million to improve climate change predictions

Welcome to another round of evidence-free alarmist climate assertions and propaganda, such as these gems: ‘climate-fueled weather events’ and ‘greenhouse gas pollution’. The summary says ‘Projects will give better understanding of Earth’s atmosphere’. But wasn’t it all supposed to be settled a long time ago?
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $14 million in funding for 22 projects aimed at improving climate change predictions, says Eurekalert.

As extreme weather events and impacts of climate change continue to escalate, the research projects will advance fundamental scientific understanding of atmospheric processes, ranging from cloud formation to Arctic weather.

Expanding the scientific understanding of extreme weather and climate patterns is key to tackling the climate crisis and meeting President Biden’s climate goals like slashing greenhouse-gas emissions.

EPA Now Stuck Between A Rock And A Hard Place On CO2

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CO2 has nothing to do with ‘clean air’, hence these problems…

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

There are lots of happy reports on the Supreme Court’s ruling throwing out EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan. Some go so far as to suggest that EPA is barred from regulating power plant CO2 emissions.

It is not quite that simple and the result is rather amusing. EPA is still required to regulate CO2 under the terms of the Clean Air Act, but that Act provides no way to do that regulation. The Clean Power Plan attempted to expand an obscure minor clause in the Act to do the job but SCOTUS correctly ruled that the clause does not confer that kind of massive authority.

EPA is between a rock and a hard place. It should tell Congress that it cannot do the job and needs a new law, along the lines of the SO2 law added to the Act in 1990, curbing emissions. But…

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Freedom of speech: Stuart Kirk resigns as head of HSBC sustainable investing.

Back in May we reported on the suspension of Stuart Kirk, who dropped some truth bombs about climate finance at a Times newspaper conference. Stuart has now resigned his post, and issued this statement:

Today I wish to announce that I have resigned as global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management.

Ironically given my job title, I have concluded that the bank’s behaviour towards me since my speech at a Financial Times conference in May has made my position, well, unsustainable.

Funny old world.

Over a 27-year unblemished record in finance, journalism and consulting I have only ever tried to do the best for my clients and readers, knowing that doing so helps my employer too.

Investing is hard. So is saving our planet. Opinions on both differ. But humanity’s best chance of success is open and honest debate. If companies believe in diversity and speaking up, they need to walk the talk. A cancel culture destroys wealth and progress.

There is no place for virtue signalling in finance. Likewise as a writer, researcher and investor, I know that words or trading shares can only achieve so much. True impact comes from the combination of real-world action and innovative solutions.

Which is why I’ve been gathering a crack group of like-minded individuals together to deliver what is arguably the greatest sustainable investment idea ever conceived. A whole new asset class. Sounds fanciful – but I am not one for hyperbole, as viewers of my presentation know well.

To be announced later this year, the first project will underline the central argument in my speech: that human ingenuity can and will overcome the challenges ahead, while at the same time offering huge investment opportunities.

Meanwhile, I will continue to prod with a sharp stick the nonsense, hypocrisy, sloppy logic and group-think inside the mainstream bubble of sustainable finance. Follow me on LinkedIn if you want to learn the right way to think about ESG – and let me tell you, most of what’s out there is bonkers.

Finally, can I take this opportunity to thank the tens of thousands of people – from chief executives and congressmen to scientists and mom and pop investors – who contacted me from around the world offering their support and solidarity over the past two months.

You have given me strength during what has been a tumultuous time for me and my family. It is for you that the next chapter in my career will be devoted. Please forward this to anyone you know who cares about money and planet earth.

Stuart

Majority of Germans against banning combustion engine cars – survey

German Autobahn

Their Government has decided for them what cars they’re to be allowed to have, or not have. Climate obsession allows their leaders to do that apparently, by claiming their transport policies are ‘climate friendly’ or something. The motoring public find themselves backed into a corner.
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A majority of Germans oppose the EU’s planned 2035 ban of combustion engine cars, according to a survey by research institute forsa for UNITI, the German association of small and medium-sized mineral oil companies.

The survey found that 58 percent of respondents are against an outright ban, while 39 percent support it, says Clean Energy Wire.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents also reject a medium or long-term general ban on vehicles with diesel or petrol engines.

Spain, Portugal dryness ‘unprecedented’ in 1,200 years – or maybe not, say critics

Credit: NOAA

Some scientists contacted by Carbon Brief have their doubts about the reasons given for the reported expansion of the Azores high. An assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, warns that “the title statement is not justified by the study”. Another assistant professor, at the University of Dartmouth, told Carbon Brief ‘that changes in the size and intensity of the Azores high could also have been driven by changes in aerosol levels, rather than changes in greenhouse gases emissions. (For example, the passing of the US Clean Air Act in the 1970s saw pollution levels drop significantly, causing localised warming.) That the authors did not investigate this factor is “a curious omission” he says.’ On top of that, Prof Richard Seagar – a research professor at Columbia University – told Carbon Brief that the expansion in the Azores high could also “easily be explained by the long-term variability and changes of the North Atlantic Oscillation”.
In short, this attempt to put the blame on humans for the more recent climatic conditions related to this phenomenon is already starting to look shaky.
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Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to research published Monday, warning of severe implications for wine and olive production.

The Azores High, an area of high pressure that rotates clockwise over parts of the North Atlantic, has a major effect on weather and long-term climate trends in western Europe says Phys.org.

But in a new modeling study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers in the United States found this high-pressure system “has changed dramatically in the past century and that these changes in North Atlantic climate are unprecedented within the past millennium”.

‘Sand battery’ could solve green energy’s big problem, suggests BBC

Finnish capital Helsinki in winter

They admit so-called green energy has a big problem, namely intermittency. Getting rid of reliable electricity generation from power stations creates it, but that’s what the likes of the climate-obsessed BBC constantly advocate. The sand idea may have some uses, but it’s admitted that ‘The efficiency falls dramatically when the sand is used to just return power to the electricity grid’. No, the big problem will remain.
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Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working “sand battery” which can store green power for months at a time, says BBC News.

The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.

Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind.

The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.

Computer models ‘greatly overestimate’ summer Arctic melt pond formation, say researchers

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

Hardly surprising, given the endless overestimates of global warming by climate models. They found that ‘Melt ponds covered 21% of the observed area during the summer, while the two models indicated 41% and 51%’.
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New research shows two widely used computer models that predict summer melt pond formation on sea ice greatly overestimate their extent, a key finding as scientists work to make accurate projections about Arctic climate change, says Phys.org.

The finding comes from measurements made during a year-long expedition aboard the research vessel Polarstern.

For the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate expedition, or MOSAiC, the ship was allowed to freeze into place in the Arctic and drift with the ice pack from September 2019 to October 2020.

Welsh coal mine expansion facing legal challenge – EV battery production could be impacted

Welsh anthracite [image credit: BL Fuels]

Climate obsessives shooting themselves in the foot here? Interesting that coal is needed to make EV batteries though.
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A legal challenge will go ahead into mine expansion plans after opponents were granted a judicial review, reports BBC News.

In January approval was given for another 40 million tonnes of coal to be dug at Aberpergwm, Neath Port Talbot.

Campaigners said at the time they were considering legal action.

Green fuels adding almost £10 to the cost of filling up a family car

For how much longer?
[image credit: thecostaricanews.com]

One of the many costs of carbon dioxide paranoia. How long do people want to go on paying, and allowing themselves to be bludgeoned into believing suspect climate theories while struggling to afford to run their own lives?
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Green fuels are adding nearly £10 to the cost of filling up an average family car, according to new analysis that will add more pressure on the Government to scrap their use, says the Daily Telegraph.

Petrol and diesel contain between five and 10 per cent biofuels, made mostly from wheat, maize and used cooking oil, the price of which has shot up since the war in Ukraine, even more than the cost of regular fuel.

As part of the Government’s net zero drive, E10 petrol was made the standard last summer, while B7 diesel was introduced in 2019.

Alarmist dismay as US Supreme Court rules against EPA on climate regulation powers

Verdict [image credit: coindesk.com]

Democracy overseeing the flow of EPA climate edicts? A ‘huge blow’, say alarmists, as over-the-top reactions from some of the usual suspects pour in.
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This means Congress will now have to pass off on any climate regulations, says Energy Live News.

In what’s been considered a blow to climate mitigation in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This means the EPA will now be limited in how it can regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and help stave off global warming in the country.