Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK power outages

Windy Standard wind farm, Scotland [credit: RWE.com]

H/T Chaeremon

We’re supposed to believe that spending £25 million is going to somehow make UK power supplies cheaper. No explanation of where the energy for the flywheel is going to come from. Maybe more trees will have to be burnt, as wind can’t be relied on? Don’t even think about a catastrophic failure of the flywheel itself.

A giant flywheel in the north-east of Scotland could soon help prevent power outages across Britain by mimicking the effect of a power plant but without using fossil fuels, reports FR24News.

The pioneering project near Keith in Moray, which would cost around £25 million, will not produce electricity or produce carbon emissions – but it could help keep the lights on by stabilizing the grid’s electrical frequency.

Norwegian energy company Statkraft hopes that starting next winter, the new flywheel, designed by a division of General Electric, will be able to mimic the rotating turbines of a traditional power plant, which have helped balance the network frequency at around 50 hertz for decades.

Bring UK petrol and diesel car ban forward to 2032, say Government advisers

Raising taxes on something you’re trying to get rid of doesn’t look like a great way to raise lots of money. But it should make a big dent in the culprits’ political popularity, especially with car and motorbike dealers. Another product of climate fantasies.
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The ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars should be brought forward from 2035 to 2032 “at the latest”, a group of politicians and scientists that advise the Government has said.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) – an independent body that advises ministers on decarbonisation – is asking the Government to provide “detailed policy arrangements” to enable the 2032 ban, reports Auto Express.

The CCC also advises that sales of new motorcycles with an internal combustion engine should be outlawed.

Biomass: The Burning Question

What use is it? That would be the obvious one, when better alternatives not requiring ludicrously high subsidies are readily available.
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A new report from climate change think tank Ember reveals the cost of burning wood for power, with energy billpayers committed to subsidies of more than £13 billion, including £10bn at Drax power station alone.

In addition to the direct subsidy, we estimate biomass generators are receiving carbon tax breaks of £333 million a year.

The UK has now left the EU, and there’s an opportunity to reassess carbon pricing – including in the design of the UK emissions trading system.

In this research, we demonstrate why the UK should abandon the carbon tax break afforded to large power stations burning biomass (mostly wood in the form of pellets or chips).

UK consumers face £2-3bn annual bill to prevent green-energy blackouts

Price gouging on the grand scale to keep the ruinables show on the road, regardless of electricity grid stability. But our leaders love this fiasco and label it as climate policy, so that’s OK? No, but they seem to face few obstacles to their blinkered obsession, even though the problems look bound to get worse.
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Lockdown reveals the UK’s power grid is fragile, costly, and failing – because of renewables, says Dr. Benny Peiser @ Climate Change Dispatch.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is today publishing a collection of papers by energy expert Dr. John Constable, documenting the rapid decay of the UK electricity system, with system balancing costs spiraling out of control over the last few weeks.

The cost of balancing the grid over the Bank Holiday weekend amounted to £50m, and National Grid has predicted additional costs of £700m from May to August alone.

Britain’s electric car strategy is ‘doomed to failure’

Making the insanity obvious is one thing, but getting UK political leaders to take any notice is another matter altogether. Most of them won’t be in office anyway when their climate/energy policies run into the roadblock of reality. Renewables are totally inadequate for projected electricity demands, but nobody in power understands that, or they pretend they don’t.
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The UK Government’s push to electrify road transport is based on naivety, the undue influence of the Committee on Climate Change, and a lack of engineering expertise within Government, an academic has said. 

Professor Michael Kelly, the former chief scientific adviser to the Department for Communities and Local Government, issues the warning in a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

He warns the Government’s ambitions for EVs and electric heating in buildings will end in damaging failure.

Weaknesses Of Wind And Solar: When Science And Reality Clash – Part 3

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The demonisation of carbon dioxide is essentially a marketing tactic masquerading as science, to fool the gullible.

PA Pundits - International

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Terigi Ciccone~

In Parts One and Two of this Series, we established the Ciccone/Lehr Rule of Thumb which states that All Wind and Solar Power must be backed up with an equal or greater amount of Fossil Fuel Power running on standby 100% of the time.

In this concluding segment, we summarize the critical climate change facts that you need to be optimistic for a better future and do so with confidence, tolerance, and good humor. The facts are fully substantiated in the book A HITCHHIKER’S JOURNEY THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE, now on Amazon.

The climate change industry is enormous. Untold hundreds of $billions are in play each year, and charlatans are fiercely competing for the biggest bites. An editorial in the May 27 Wall Street Journal by Steve Milloy described how many Fortune 500 companies brag about what they are doing…

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UK court allows Drax gas power station appeal

Drax power station [credit: drax.com]

The climate-obsessed BBC frames this as a hard luck story for a charity. But for energy consumers it will be the biggest gas power station in Europe if/when built, providing on-demand power to help replace the many coal-fired plants closed in recent years.
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An environmental charity has lost a High Court challenge against a government decision to approve a new gas-fired power plant, reports BBC News.

ClientEarth had argued the decision did not take enough account of environmental targets at the Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire.

But the judge Mr Justice Holgate, said the targets were outweighed by other “public interest issues” involved.

The charity is now considering an appeal against the decision.

The ocean’s ‘biological pump’ captures twice as much carbon as expected

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

The Woods Hole researchers find ‘the efficiency of the ocean’s “biological carbon pump” has been drastically underestimated’, with inevitable implications for climate modelling and assessments. Given that the oceans hold 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere, this must matter.
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Every spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean surface erupts in a massive bloom of phytoplankton, says Phys.org.

Like plants, these single-celled floating organisms use photosynthesis to turn light into energy, consuming carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen in the process.

When phytoplankton die or are eaten by zooplankton, the carbon-rich fragments sinks deeper into the ocean, where it is, in turn, eaten by other creatures or buried in sediments.

This process is key to the “biological carbon pump,” an important part of the global carbon cycle.

Next solar cycle could bring cooler temperatures

H/T The GWPF

Dr David Whitehouse reviews the history of solar cycle predictions in a new paper by the Global Warming Policy Foundation which is published today. The paper, entitled The Next Solar Cycle, And Why It Matters For Climate, can be downloaded here.
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London, 6 April: A former BBC science correspondent says that there remains a real possibility that unusual solar behaviour could influence the Earth’s climate, bringing cooler temperatures for the next decade.

Geothermal Animated

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A recent online comment by meteorologist Joe Bastardi saying ‘underwater volcanic activity is huge’ and linking to this, led to finding this animation.

Zoe's Insights

Geothermal Emission @ the Surface

This was derived from NCEP Reanalysis data, in the tradition of Measuring Geothermal …

Enjoy 🙂 -Zoe

Addendum

geochg.sh:

# source geochg.sh # Zoe Phin 2020/03/13 F=(0 ulwrf dswrf uswrf lhtfl shtfl) O=(0 3201.5 3086.5 3131.5 856.5 2176.5) require() { sudo apt install nco gnuplot imagemagick; } # Linux Only download() { b="ftp://ftp.cdc.noaa.gov/Datasets/ncep.reanalysis2.derived/gaussian_grid" for i in ${F[*]}; do wget -O $i.nc -c $b/$i.sfc.mon.mean.nc; done } extract() { for t in {000..491}; do echo "$t" >&2 for i in {1..5}; do ncks --trd -HC ${F[$i]}.nc -v ${F[$i]} -d time,$t | sed $d | awk -F[= ] -vO=${O[$i]} '{ printf "%7s %7s %7.3fn", $4, $6, $8/10+O }' > .f$i done paste .f1 .f2 .f3 .f4 .f5 | awk '{ printf "%s %s %7.3fn", $1, $2, $3-($6-$9)+$12+$15 }' > .geo$t done } annualize() { for y in {0..40}; do args=`for m in {0..11}; do printf ".geo%03d "…

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Carbon Credit Scam Exposed: Carbon Markets Fail As CO₂ Declines

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Demonising a harmless trace gas can lead to bizarre results. Here’s another one.

PA Pundits - International

From the team at CFACT ~

Environmentalists and green bureaucrats have watched in shock as the coronavirus global shut down has now caused carbon credit markets to crash.

The European Union’s carbon credits price has fallen by 40% this year so far. This market was worth $215 billion last year, according to Bloomberg Environment. The price drop has rubbed out two years of EU carbon market gains.

It turns out that if there are extremely low levels of carbon dioxide emissions, as is the case currently with businesses and industries shuttered, the companies doing the carbon emitting don’t have to buy any carbon credits to make up for it.

And if no one is buying carbon credits to offset emissions, well, then the so-called “market” for carbon dies.

Wait a minute, isn’t the whole idea of these carbon credits to reduce CO₂ emissions; what climate campaigners refer to as…

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Antarctica was covered in rainforests when dinosaurs roamed Earth

The researchers estimate that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were well over 1000 parts per million in those days, compared to 400+ ppm today. Antarctica and Australia were much closer together.

Antarctica was covered in rainforest in the time of the dinosaurs, according to a new study, Metro News reports.

Researchers have found evidence the South Pole had a climate and forests similar to New Zealand today in a startling discovery. The team discovered soil from an ancient rainforest from the Cretaceous period within 900 km of the South Pole.

The analysis carried out by an international team of researchers of roots, pollen and spores shows the world was a lot warmer than previously thought.

Flashback to 2009: Researchers Say Sun Cycle Alters Earth’s Climate

Variation in solar activity during a recent sunspot cycle [credit: Wikipedia]

This seems worth another airing in the face of today’s insistent, but evidence-light, claims from climate obsessives that the world’s present and future weather is going to be largely determined by human activities.

If the energy from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent during the 11-year solar cycle, could such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth? – asks Universe Today.

Yes, say researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) who used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models in their study.

They found subtle connections between solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean that work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe.

Scientists say this will help in predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.

CLINTEL President Says Zero Carbon Is A Crime Against Humanity

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Making electricity unreliable and expensive when it used not be — sounds idiotic, but seems to be the norm with climate-obsessed governments these days.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

I recently got an intriguing email from Professor Guus Berkhout, president of the Climate Intelligence Foundation or CLINTEL. It contained this striking paragraph and the last sentence really got me thinking:

“The past 150 years show that affordable and reliable energy is the key to prosperity. The past 150 years also show that more CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth and increasing the yields of crops. Why do governments ignore these hard facts? Why do they do the opposite and lower the quality of life by forcing high-cost, dubious low-carbon energy technologies upon their citizens? The zero-emission act is a crime against humanity.” (Emphasis added.)

So I looked into the law on crimes against humanity and Professor Berkhout may have a strong case. At its simplest, a crime against humanity is a government policy that systematically and knowingly harms a specific group…

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What causes an ice age to end?

Greenland ice sheet (east coast) [image credit: Hannes Grobe @ Wikipedia]

Of course the other question about the start of an ice age still remains.

New University of Melbourne research has revealed that ice ages over the last million years ended when the tilt angle of the Earth’s axis was approaching higher values, reports Phys.org.

During these times, longer and stronger summers melted the large Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, propelling the Earth’s climate into a warm ‘interglacial’ state, like the one we’ve experienced over the last 11,000 years.

The study by Ph.D. candidate, Petra Bajo, and colleagues also showed that summer energy levels at the time these ‘ice-age terminations’ were triggered controlled how long it took for the ice sheets to collapse, with higher energy levels producing fast collapse.

Researchers are still trying to understand how often these periods happen and how soon we can expect another one.

Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70 million years ago

New laser technology delves into Earth’s history.
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Earth turned faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does today, reports Phys.org, rotating 372 times a year compared to the current 365, according to a new study of fossil mollusk shells from the late Cretaceous.

This means a day lasted only 23 and a half hours, according to the new study in AGU’s journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

The ancient mollusk, from an extinct and wildly diverse group known as rudist clams, grew fast, laying down daily growth rings. The new study used lasers to sample minute slices of shell and count the growth rings more accurately than human researchers with microscopes.

A Tale Of Two Futures For Air Travel

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So-called ‘net zero emissions’ of carbon dioxide is a smoke and mirrors political game that has little or nothing to do with any actual climate.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The UK has passed a law mandating zero net emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by 2050. Airplanes emit a lot of CO2 and cannot run on batteries, or not very far anyway, so what does net zero air travel look like?

We now have two studies on this question, which are diametrically opposed. They illustrate very nicely the fact that climate alarmism has split into two opposing camps — the moderates and the radicals. Let us ignore the fact that both camps are wrong and look at the difference between these two studies. They say a lot about policy debates to come.

The first study is by the airline industry itself, with the apparent blessing of the UK government. This is the moderate view and it is very moderate indeed. In fact it is almost benign.

The title is “Decarbonization Road-Map: A path…

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The Netherlands faces pressure as global ‘test case’ for deep emissions cuts in 2020

They are up against it. Governments are now finding themselves increasingly boxed in by their own climate ideology. From the report below:
Richard Tol, professor of the economics of climate change at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, said it is “highly unlikely” that the Netherlands will rise to the challenge, saying a [extra] 10% emissions reduction by the end of 2020 would “require shutting down a substantial part of the economy”.

But what options are there? Nuclear power is unpopular and can’t be built quickly anyway, while wind and solar power are part-time, intermittent, and relatively expensive. No viable ‘off-the-shelf’ way exists to store electricity on a massive scale. Awkward.
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The Netherlands is under pressure to slash emissions in sectors such as power generation and agriculture in 2020 after a ruling by a top court made the government a reluctant ‘test case’ for tougher global climate policies, says Climate Home News.

The government of conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte is working out new measures after the Dutch Supreme Court in December ordered it to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by the end of 2020, compared with 1990 levels, as its fair share to combat climate change.

Follow that termite!

Termite mound in Australia [image credit: Wikipedia]

So termites could lead us to the solution to…
CO2-generating termites? The wizardry of would-be planet savers – or could it be the sharpness of opportunists? – never ceases to amaze.

Hidden metal deposits needed to transition the world to low emission technologies can be discovered using metallic blue crusts in soils and on termite mounds as signposts, according to new research from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO.

CSIRO’s study in the southern Pilbara region of WA used new advances in sample analysis to show how metallic blue crusts, known as manganese crusts, display unique zinc signatures that indicate the presence of other base metals in the surrounding area, reports Technology.org.

UK Govt.’s Climate Assembly is anything but democratic

Credit: planetsave.com

No great surprise there. As usual the idea is to demonize the essential trace gas carbon dioxide, paving the way to useless ‘solutions’ to an imaginary problem. Note: Attenborough is *not* a climate expert, and admits so himself.

The first two meetings of Climate Assembly UK, dubbed a ‘citizens’ assembly’ on climate change, have taken place in Birmingham over the course of a couple of weekends in January and February, writes Ben Pile (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The climate assembly has brought together 110 randomly selected members of the public to discuss a range of climate issues and policies with a range of experts, including David Attenborough.

The task of the assembly, which will meet over two more weekends this spring, is to decide on a set of recommendations for how the government can best meet its pledge to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.