I put this ramble together for the Ellenbogen thread, but thought better.
Then, I thought worse, so here it is:
I do so love this bit:
“”While I can agree that reducing emissions is a good thing I do not believe that greenhouse gas emission reductions will have any effect on extreme weather.
It goes to the very heart of my ravings, ever since I ever first clicked on ‘Post Comment’ around here. (maybe I exaggerate but at least I’ve been consistent throughout)
My point has always been ‘soil erosion’ and it is that ’emissions’ can go “musk themselves”
It is an accelerating rate of erosion causing an ongoing rise in “Lack Of Absorptions” that is causing the observed rise in temps and the rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels.
(The numbers are fiddled/fixed. Nobody knows to the nearest tonne, cubic metre or barrel of fossils that *anybody* *anywhere* is using day-to-day or year-on-year. Emissions figures are worked backwards from the atmospheric levels. It is a ‘trick’ well used by NASA. It is in fact NASA’s only ‘trick- – it’s all they do nowadays= Make Stuff Up.)
Not that absorbing of carbon would directly affect the weather, it is that when plants (trees esp) absorb carbon they set a trap for water. The ‘stored’ carbon stores immense amounts of water and water stores heat energy within landscapes.
If you don’t believe me, look at Europe right now, disappeared under a blizzard of snow.
If there had been any moisture within the soils of Europe, those heavy snowfalls would have been merely mists & fog or endless drizzly rain over the last 2 months and with temps of around 5 or 6 Celsius
Or maybe sleet, as happening now in Norfolk/Cambs UK.
(See also Russia/Ukraine this last week= epic rainstorms and snow)
But the ‘resistant ridge’ over Europe which lasted all summer and is still there and removed all possibility of fog & drizzle. It dragged the tropopause down to ground level and sucked all the heat & water out of Europe. So temps drop to well below freezing and when the monsoon comes, it comes as snow.
That is the snow in Europe right now, it is a ‘monsoon event’ or the breaking of a drought.
Deserts are cold places, the Mediterranean Climate will kill you as soon as look at you – as folks in Europe, Ukraine and Russia are finding out right now.
And California. Attached is yesterday’s temperature graph for Santa Margarita (picked at random. On the 101 and about 80 miles NE of Santa Barbara and 35° north)
At minus 3 Celsius last night your ‘Mediterranean’ fruits, veggies and idyllic lifestyle are gonna need all the CO₂ greening and fertilation they can get.
and then some
History: Knut thought he could control the weather.
Yes he really did. He was a Really Stupid & Self-Obsessed Person, a spoilt brat dazzled by his own brilliance.
So his court and ‘advisers’ set a trap for him to prove as much.
He walked/ran/sprinted right into it, (and simultaneously into the incoming tide, how dumb is that)
Knut’s dynasty lasted about 80 years in total. Yes, his ‘family’ really was that dumb.
Will we make it as long as that, how does our dumbness compare that of Knut?
So, who is going to, who is able to: Set the Same Trap for Climate Science?
Ellenbogen looked like That Person for a while, until he went into that CO₂ in glasshouses business and his credibility plummeted.
He too is an appeaser.
“Knut thought he could control the weather. Yes he really did”
You have comnpletely misunderstood the fable/legend which first emerged a century after his death and was intended to illustrate his piety and wisdom.
To quote The Economist’s Style Guide: “Canute’s exercise on the seashore was designed to persuade his courtiers of what he knew to be true but they doubted, ie, that he was not omnipotent. Don’t imply he was surprised to get his feet wet.”
And to make your assertion even more ludicrous – it was never a story about the weather – it was the tide.
It was quite rainy and cool in Germany this past summer when I visited, and when I flew out of Munich it was raining there. My experience with droughts is that they make things brown not green.
Labor Day 2023 Extreme Cold event on Antarctica triggered me into becoming an Activist. I saw it coming on August 27th from monitoring the 10-Day forecast Data from NOAA, followed it up close and documented it, The Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine, hid that Event from the World and instead produced a 10-Day Warming Event starting on August 31st. Go see their Graph on Antarctica and then compare that with my Excel Spreadsheet and the Data I documented. Both cannot be TRUE, so which one is TRUE?
Over the next week or so i will share much more Data collected related to that Extreme Cold Labor Day Event that NO one knows about and many other things (I am reconstructing the Entire Summer for 16 Stations from AMRDC Data and the Australian BOM to see what really happened and how COLD it got on Antarctica) I have discovered since, Check out my Linked In Blog here: Activity | Frits Buningh | LinkedIn
The Left most Column in the Table below is the CR-Record, is the Average Temperature on Antarctica according to the official Record keepers at the Climate Change Institute form the University of Maine. They are the Scientific underpinning of all the Hyperventilating about Heat Records/Global Boiling such as the one about July 6th, 2023 “Hottest Day on Earth” in the NYT.
“Source: Climate Reanalyzer, Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, based on data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast SystemBy Elena Shao/The New York Times”
joe x
December 3, 2023 3:41 am
my home state of michigan, now trashed with solar and wind has been recently diagnosed with california cancer.
“”president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
…
[Ouch]
Al Jaber said: “I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Also, at the end of the video he says “Show me solutions. Stop pointing fingers”. Too right, Sultan Al Jaber, but I’m afraid all you’ll get from these people is magical thinking.
At least Al Jabar pointed out the Elephant in the Room: That there is no evidence that reducing CO2 is going to do what the climate change alarmists claim it will do.
Now the ball is in the climate alarmists court. They need to show Al Jabar their proof.
Of course, we, and Al Jabar know there is no such evidence, so it will be interesting to see what the climate alarmists have to say about this “heresy”, or if they have anything to say at all.
Where’s the evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth? Al Jabar wants to know.
In 2020 when COVID became worldwide human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 as seen at Mauna Loa Observatory didn’t change a bit. https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
I read one article yesterday addressing this issue, and the climate alarmists, as expected, are not talking about the actual issue, they are calling Al-Jabar’s comments “farcical”, without providing any evidence that Al-Jabar is wrong:
For some reason, that reminded me of Greta. Wasn’t she uninvited from last years farce because she had taken to pointing her finger at people pointing their fingers ?
600 years of tree rings reveal climate risks in California
Date:
November 29, 2023
Source:
Cornell University
Summary:
The San Joaquin Valley in California has experienced vast variability in climate extremes, with droughts and floods that were more severe and lasted longer than what has been seen in the modern record, according to a new study of 600 years of tree rings from the valley.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to increase its rate of melting over the rest of the century, no matter how much we reduce fossil fuel use, according to new research. A substantial acceleration in ice melting likely cannot now be avoided, which implies that Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise could increase rapidly over the coming decades.
Scientists ran simulations on the UK’s national supercomputer to investigate ocean-driven melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet: how much is unavoidable and must be adapted to, and how much melting the international community still has control over through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Plus, they probably didn’t take into account the Grand Solar Minimum that has just started and may cool the planet down to The Little Age Ice type temperatures.
Melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, extreme heat waves: the consequences of climate change are more visible than ever, and the scientific community has confirmed that humans are responsible. Yet studies show that a third of the population still doubts or disputes these facts. The cause is disinformation spread by certain vested interests. To try and prevent this phenomenon, a team has developed and tested six psychological interventions on nearly 7,000 participants from twelve countries. The research highlights the extremely persuasive nature of disinformation and the need to strengthen our efforts to combat it.
Thir problem was that they forgot about the use of stocks and pillories, combined with sleep deprivation, starvation, and very rough reeducation classes, the tried and proven goodies of attitude adjustment. Don’t worry, those are sure to occur to them before much longer.
Absolute tosh. The lower forward prices have nothing to do with growth in ‘clean power’ which has run at approximately 2,000 TWH since 2015 according to the bar chart in the article.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with the EU increasing renewables subsidies would it? Your conclusion is either ignorant or deliberate lying – so which is it, are you a lying git or an ignorant scumbag?
If you plot the differing opinions here of him on a venn diagram you’ll likely notice that most of them overlap at ‘liar’. It might even be a consensus!
Surging US oil production brings down prices and raises climate fears
HOUSTON — American oil fields are gushing again, helping to drive down fuel prices but also threatening to undercut efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Only three years after U.S. oil production collapsed during the pandemic, energy companies are cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia. The flow of oil has grown by roughly 800,000 barrels a day since early 2022, and analysts expect the industry to add 500,000 more barrels a day next year.
The main driver of the production surge is a delayed response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent the price of oil to well over $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly a decade. The wells that were drilled last year are now in full swing.
Yes, our hijacked schools are the weak link in our chain of freedom.
If they successfully teach the kids to hate their country, as is the objective of the radical Left, then the future is bleak.
There is some pushback in education occurring now, though.
Still, a large amount of damage to young minds has already been done. Their heads are full of lies and distortions about the world they live in. Put there deliberately by the radical Left.
Biden just announced a campaign to eliminate 80% of methane leaks from the FF industry. As if that will actually result in any significant decrease in warming. What they may save will probably be about the same as new methane from wetlands where beaver are being re-introduced.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Fifty oil companies representing nearly half of global production have pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks said Saturday, a move that environmental groups called a “smokescreen.”
Methane emissions are a significant contributor to global warming, so sharply reducing them could help slow temperature rise. If the companies carry out their pledges, it could trim one-tenth of a degree Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) from future warming, a prominent climate scientist calculated and told The Associated Press. That is about how much the Earth is currently warming every five years.
Many more families are moving from the northern US to the southern US. People like it more when the temperature is around 80F (27C), rather than colder than that.
What should we expect from an incremental improvement in the radiative absorbing power of the clear atmosphere as CO2 concentration rises? Would it get warmer, or is there more to it? What about kinetic energy, and its conversion to and from the other forms of energy in the atmosphere?
I am posting this here on the open thread to emphasize a fundamental implication. It is that the attribution of reported warming to incremental concentrations of CO2 is inherently unsound. That minor change cannot be isolated for reliable determination of cause and effect of trends in the atmosphere, oceans, or land.
The modelers should all know this, yet we are told to expect the result of increasing CO2 to be the accumulation (“trapping”) of heat energy down here on land and in the oceans.
2. Energy, available potential energy, and gross static stability
Of the various forms of energy present in
the atmosphere, kinetic energy has often
received the most attention. Often the total
kinetic energy of a weather system is regarded
as a measure of its intensity. The only other
forms of atmospheric energy which appear
to play a major role in the kinetic energy
budget of the troposphere and lower stratosphere
are potential energy, internal energy, and the
latent energy of water vapor. Potential and
internal energy may be transformed directly
into kinetic energy, whle latent energy may
be transformed directly into internal energy,
which is then transformed into kinetic energy.
It is easily shown by means of the hydrostatic
approximation that the changes of the
potential energy P and the internal energy l of
the whole atmosphere are approximately proportional,
so that it is convenient to regard
potential and internal energy as constituting
a single form of energy. This form has been
called total potential energy by Margules (1903).
…
In the long run, there must be a net depletion
of kinetic energy by dissipative processes. It
follows that there must be an equal net
generation of kinetic energy by reversible
adiabatic processes; this generation must occur
at the expense of total potential energy. It
follows in turn that there must be an equal net
generation of total potential energy by heating
of all kinds. These three steps comprise the
basic energy cycle of the atmosphere. The
rate at which these steps proceed is a fundamental
characteristic of the general circulation. …
*********************************
ENSO and its relatively rapid impacts on global temperatures is consistent with this, but alarmists will just say that chaotic climate behavior just hides GH forcing.
When CO2 emissions dropped 6% worldwide due to the start of the pandemic, the CO2 levels kept increasing at about the same rate as before the pandemic. Cutting CO2 emissions didn’t slow the growth of CO2 a bit. https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Certainly not on a short time scale, as natural fluctuations are almost two orders of magnitude greater than human emissions.
The same is true of temperature. It’s not unusual to see an 1C change from one year to another, but 1C trend over a century is our fault.
The real questions are around long term trends.
cimdave
December 3, 2023 5:17 am
Speculation/question:
Adding up ALL of the human activities that create heat, how much is that compared to the current “understanding” of GHG caused temperature rise?
eg.
current flowing thru a wire creates heat
stepping on the brakes of your car creates heat
tires rolling down the highway create heat
the heat from your care engine
heat leaks out of your house when it’s cold.
pumping heat out of your house when it’s hot.
heat islands – pavement, rooftops, land use
Likely there are many more examples
8 billion people emitting heat?
No doubt more not mentioned here.
Would all of the heat generated by humans (other than GHG warming) be a significant cause of temperature rise, over a period of time?
(The project of measuring global temp is an imperfect art/science. Does all the Climate Science pass ISO9000 rigor? Yes, I’m a Qualty Control bore.)
p.s. Still running to the mailbox every day looking for my check from the oil companies.
All of mankind’s production of energy (heat) combined with nature’s contribution of heat (energy-volcanos, wildfires, earthquakes) are trivial compared with the energy Earth receives from the sun and rejects into space, which keeps Earth at a constant range of temperatures roughly between 233K and 313K (+/-20K at the extremes). You may worry about +1.5K if you wish.
I’m not ‘worried’ about it, I’m curious. Might poke a nice hole in the panic-mongers narrative if it is a significant contribution. Has there been any estimates of these inputs? Maybe it’s significant, maybe it’s not. Does anybody have even a guess?
Please see the numerous articles on WUWT about the issues you raise, which are normally collectively referred to as the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect. There have been several articles referencing efforts to remove UHI from the urban biased temperature datasets as every single one of them is hopelessly contaminated by this urban activity. Yes it is significant, known land temperatures are homogenised (mixed and averaged) with sea and unmeasured land areas and, of the known land temperatures, over 80% are in urban areas. Estimates vary as to exactly how much of the ‘global average temperature’ is due to UHI, ranging from around 0.3°C to 1.5°C so it could be hugely significant.
The temperature reading of a thermometer is at best only tenuously related to the energy use in a region around that thermometer. I have often seen differences of 10F, perhaps more, within a few miles, all within a single urban area.
I know, that was the whole flaming point of the post. IT’S NOT TEMPERATURE. The temperature datasets are hopelessly contaminated with UHI because UHI is not temperature, it’s a measure of urban activity.
I have been banging my head against this brick wall for years now, thank you so much for providing an example of why the wall is sold brick!
Would all of the heat generated by humans (other than GHG warming) be a significant cause of temperature rise, over a period of time?
The annual anthropogenic consumption of energy is roughly 2 hours of sunshine. So it is not significant in energy input to the globe. A single cyclone redistributes more energy than humans produce over a year.
However, surface temperature measurement is concentrated in more densely populated locations where much of the anthropogenic energy is consumed. That causes the urban heat effect, which increases the measured temperature.
Excellent and educational response Sir. I was once asked this same question on another site and started Googling. I found someone had done the calculation for me. I was surprised that it didn’t register, except in what is an invalid proxy – the UHI effect.
The claim is that the energy use of a year’s worth of all human activity is about equal to between 1 and 2 hours of solar input on one day of that year. This does not compute to any amount of global warming. It is well below the variation is storm activity from day to day.
Marty
December 3, 2023 5:51 am
Right after I woke up early this morning, I turned on the CBS radio world news. The second story was a breathless report that 2023 was the hottest year on Earth “ever.” Talk about careless and ignorant news reporting! But there probably are millions of people who hear nonsense like that, and think it is true.
The rich who own the media are hoping to make trillions from “climate change” spending which is estimated to be around $200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.
Right after I woke up early this morning, I turned on the CBS radio world news.
And how long have you been living with masochism Marty?
JiminNEF
December 3, 2023 6:08 am
Sultan Al Jaber’s debate with Mary Robinson should be front page news. He’s challenging the assertion that ending the use of fossil fuels makes scientific and/or economic sense for humanity.
Mary and the socialists at the UN must be aghast. How dare he?
If so, I would sure like to see it. Al Jabar is asking the right questions, and the climate change alarmists don’t have the answers.
I’m guessing the first thing they throw up as evidence is the bogus Hockey Stick global temperature chart, trying to show its temperature profile correlates with CO2 increases in the atmosphere.
That’s probably a pretty good guess as the Hockey Stick chart is all they have. And it doesn’t represent reality.
I wonder what Al Jabar’s regional, historical temperature charts show for his region. Do they show a “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart temperature profile? Or do they show a benign temperature profile like the U.S. regional chart shows, and like charts from all over the world show?
According to the IAEA, a total of 412 nuclear reactors are in operation at power plants across the world, with their total capacity at about 370,200 MW
Rosatom, a Russian Company, is building more nuclear reactors than any other country in the world, according to data from the Power Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
The data show, a total of 58 large-scale nuclear power reactors are currently under construction worldwide, of which 23 are being built by Russia.
Nuclear Plants: A typical plant may have up to 4 reactors, usually about 1,200 MW each
In Egypt, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $30 billion is about $6,250/kW, which includes financing by Egypt $5 billion and by Russia $25 billion
That cost is at least 40% less then US/UK/EU
In Turkey, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $20 billion is about $4,200/kW, entirely financed by Russia. The plant will be owned and operated by Rosatom
Rosatom, created in 2007 by combining several Russian companies, usually provides full service during the entire project life, such as training, new fuel bundles, refueling, waste processing and waste storage in Russia, etc., because the various countries likely do not have the required systems
Nuclear vs Wind: Remember, these nuclear plants reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
They have about 0.90 capacity factors, and last 60 to 80 years
Nuclear do not require counteracting plants, because they can be designed to be load-following, as some are in France
Offshore wind systems produce variable, unreliable power, at very high cost/kWh, and near CO2-free
They have about 0.45 CFs, and last 20 to 25 years
They require a fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the up/down wind outputs, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, plus major expansion/reinforcement of electric grids to connect the wind systems to load centers.
Major Competitors: Rosatom’s direct competitors, according to PRIS data, are three Chinese companies: CNNC, CSPI and CGN.
They are building 22 reactors, but it should be noted, they are being built primarily inside China, and the Chinese partners are building five of them together with Rosatom.
If we talk about the Americans and Europeans, they are lagging behind by a wide margin,” Alexander Uvarov, a director at the Atom-info Center and editor-in-chief at the atominfo.ru website, told TASS.
Tripling Nuclear? During COP28 in opulent Dubai, Kerry called for the world to triple CO2-free nuclear, from 370,200 MW to about 1,200,000 MW, by 2050.
Based on past experience in the US and EU, it takes at least 10 years to commission nuclear plants
That means, ten 5000 MW plants are started each year, for 16 years, to fill the pipeline, to commission all of them by 2050
That would require a major increase in infrastructures and training of personnel.
Much as I would like to see some US companies and power producers leading the way on installing nuclear power plants, I can at least find some consolation in the fact that not every government has been infected with climate change and anti-nuclear alarmism
Germany’s universal expert Lesch planned a speech at a Vivaldi 4 Seasons Climate Change concert – cancelled by snow and ice.
Moved to May ’24, maybe warmer?
I don’t ascribe to the ‘Al Gore’ effect – instead I credit weather as having a very well developed sense of irony!
wilpost
December 3, 2023 7:10 am
BATTERIES IN NEW ENGLAND? https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
.
Currently, the variable output of wind and solar is counteracted by fossil-fired, CO2-emitting, quick-reacting power plants. Some people want to replace such power plants with large-scale battery systems to reduce CO2 emissions. This article presents an analysis that shows, using such batteries systems for counteracting, and storing electricity, even for one day, has a very high owning and operating cost, even with 50% subsidies.
NE has variable weather conditions, with frequent periods of very little wind, even offshore, and very little sun, which means wind and solar power, already highly variable 24/7/365, is frequently minimal, throughout the year.
This analysis shows the cost of battery systems, if they are used to store electricity for a W/S-lull lasting one day.
In this analysis, we ignore hydro, for simplicity.
As part of our analysis, we assume, at some future date:
.
– CO2-emitting power plants will be shut down, such as fossil fuel, wood burning, refuse burning, etc.
– Nuclear plants, once shut down, will not be replaced
– Existing hydro plants, about 7% of NE annual generation, will remain.
– Wind and solar installed capacity, MW, will be sufficient to provide 100% of average daily demand each day of the year. https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix
NOTE: This analysis uses average values, for simplicity. A more exact analysis would use hourly or 15-minute values. Whereas it would be more difficult to understand by non-technical people, the outcome would be nearly the same.
A Wind/Solar Lull Lasting One Day in Winter in New England
If such a W/S lull occurs, batteries will make up the electricity shortfall
We assume, at some future date, NE has installed:
60000 MW of solar, which produce an annual average of 8700 MWh/h, at capacity factor = 0.145
60000 MW of onshore and offshore wind, which produce an annual average of 21000 MWh/h, at CF = 0.35
During a W/S lull, we assume the production will be only 10% of these values during winter, which frequently has days with very little wind, and snow on most panels
We assume the average electricity fed to the grid is 21000 MW on a January day, and during that entire day the average W/S output fed to the grid is 0.1 x (21000 + 8700) = 2970 MW.
W/S electricity shortfall is 24 x (21000 – 2970) = 432720 MWh
Batteries are rated as providing a level of power for a period of time, or MW/MWh
Our required battery capacity is (18030 MW)/(432720 MWh/0.45)
There are some system design factors that reduce rated capacity, but we will ignore them, for simplicity
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full, and not discharging to less than 20% full
That means the recommended maximum delivered electricity is 0.6 of capacity.
We assume the battery is 75% full, at start of lull, and is drawn down to 25% full, in 24 hours, i.e., 0.5 of capacity is drawn out of the battery, if we are lucky.
But that 0.5 “in battery” must be reduced by 10%, due to system losses, i.e., 0.45 is fed to HV grid
NOTE: Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve, in Australia. They had to add Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and decided to add more Megapacks to increase the rating of the system. In the article, the Hornsdale graph of operating conditions confirms:
1) The about 20% round-trip loss, explained below
2) The output reduction, due to rapid aging http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
Battery System Loss: There is about a 20% round-trip loss, from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid
That means, of the electricity taken from the HV grid, about 10% is lost to recharge the battery to desired levels, then, upon discharge, another 10% is lost, before feeding to the HV grid.
This article is a good source of information https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Capital Cost: All-in, turnkey capital cost of Tesla, Megapack-based system = 432720/0.45 x 1000 kWh/MWh x $575/delivered kWh as AC, 2023 pricing = $553 billion
Double that amount, if the W/S lull lasts two days.
W/S lulls of 5 to 7 days are not uncommon in New England, throughout the year
Dealing with such multi-day lulls will require batteries costing about $2.8 to $3.9 trillion, just for New England!
Those capital costs can be reduced by extreme “demand management”, including rolling blackouts and complete blackouts, often practiced in Third World countries. Imports from nearby states is not an option, as those states face similar wind/solar/battery challenges.
Until about 2020, various people claimed future utility-grade battery system costs will be as low as $250/delivered kWh
If that were still the case, the battery cost would be about $553 x 250/575 = $240 billion, for a one day lull
During 2021, 2022, 2023, Tesla, Megapack-based, battery-system turnkey costs have been increasing to about $575/delivered kWh
Because of continuing high inflation, high interest rates, high materials, energy and labor prices, etc., battery costs likely will not decrease for some years.
Remember, these battery systems last only about 15 years, and age at about 1.5%/y during that time, if properly operated. Aging increases the loss percent, and reduces the delivered electricity quantity
The recurring replacement cost, about every 15 years, will bankrupt New England
Recharging the Batteries: There must be enough W/S capacity, MW, plus favorable wind and solar conditions, to recharge the batteries to about 75% full, in 3 days, in anticipation of a second lull, which could happen a few days after the first lull.
The battery charging occurs, while the battery performs normal battery services, such as:
1) Counteracting the W/S-up/down output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365,
2) Providing electricity during low-W/S periods (such as minor lulls), and during high-W/S periods, when wind turbine rotors are feathered and locked.
We assume weather conditions have significantly improved to increase the W/S output from 2970 MW (during the lull) to 30000 MW (immediately after the lull), which is well in excess of the 21000 MW demand.
W/S electricity available from HV grid for charging is (30000 – 9000) MW x 72 h x 0.50 CF, assumed = 324000 MWh, which loads 0.9 x 324000 = 291600 into the battery, which provides 0.9 x 292600 = 262440 MWh to the HV grid
Even with our optimistic assumption of “3 windy/sunny days”, the MWh fed to HV grid is significantly less than the required 432720 MWh That means at least 65% of additional wind and solar capacity, MW, is required to recharge the battery in “3 windy/sunny days”, after a one day lull
Most rational people have to come to the conclusion, the wind/solar/battery/EV, etc., route will lead to bankruptcy.
A much better approach would be, continue using our God-given abundance of fossil fuels, enjoy the beneficial aspects of increased CO2 (increased flora and fauna), while building more nuclear plants, which reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions US leads call to triple nuclear power at COP28 https://phys.org/news/2023-12-triple-nuclear-power-cop28.html
Cutting human CO2 emissions doesn’t seem to change the yearly CO2 increases by anything but a tiny amount, if at all.
In 2020 when COVID spread worldwide, human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6%, according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 as seen at Mauna Loa Observatory didn’t seem to change a bit. https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Elon Musk is a very good engineer.
He works his butt off 80 hours a week
Always on the go, and keeping in touch with everyone and everything
He is rich, but that was not his intention
It was just a byproduct of his hard work that the system provides
He is not like Bozos with a 475 ft yacht, that is followed by a 150 ft tender, which carries all the toys, for which there is no space on the yacht, and not like Trump with his palatial/gaudy Mara a Lago in Florida
All three are movers and shakers in their own way, but Musk is my favorite
Pat Smith
December 3, 2023 7:48 am
A question about the recent Wijngaarden and Happer paper ‘Atmosphere and Greenhouse Primer’. On page 24, figure 6b shows that the emission altitude for radiation at the centre of the CO2 adsorption band (667.4 cm-1) is way up in the mesosphere at 80+ kilometers. Increased absorption caused by increasing concentrations of CO2 is caused by more of the edges of the absorption lines coming into play as the lines broaden. So marginal emissions from the edges of the adsorption lines may have any emission height up to the maximum and increased concentrations of CO2 will push them all up. Some of these will be in the troposphere or mesosphere where temperature goes down with height; some in the stratosphere where temperature goes up. Is this a useful way of thinking of the science of what is happening here with increased concentrations? Are there enough emissions from emission heights in the stratosphere where increased concentrations might actually lead to cooling of the atmosphere to be important in the equation? Does the HITRAN database have enough information about the absorption lines to examine at this level of granularity? (DANGER – if anyone answers this question, I have lots of others.)
‘They found that this stratosphere cooling causes subsequent increases in CO2 to have a larger heat-trapping effect than previous increases, causing carbon dioxide to become more potent as a greenhouse gas.’
Did they provide any evidence or propose a mechanism as to why this would happen?
Wijngaarden and Happer paper ‘Atmosphere and Greenhouse Primer’.
Experts in photonics are not going to give much insight into Earth’s energy balance.
Numerous observations show that tropical ocean, away from the interference of land, do not sustain more than 30C. Once that temperature is achieved the surface solar input is regulated at the level required to sustain that temperature until the top of atmosphere solar input drops below the threshold of 420W/m^2. Convective instability is the process that regulates the temperature and the solar energy input. Solar reflection rises rapidly once ocean temperature exceeds 26C.
Climate modellers have been predicting steady rise in tropical ocean temperature that never happens. The temperature in the Nino34 region of the Pacific is trundles.
Anyone wanting to understand Earth’s energy balance needs to understand deep convection and the creation of convective instability.
Earth’s climate has proven to be quite robust over 4Ga of massive perturbations. The notion that a tiny addition of CO2 in the atmosphere is going to alter the energy balance is bunkum. Milankovitch was on the money and history will verify his insights.
‘Milankovitch was on the money and history will verify his insights.’
There’s a lot more going on, and over myriad time scales, than Milankovitch – namely plate tectonics, as well as much shorter-term influences that play out over centuries and millennia.
But you are correct that our CO2 emissions will have no meaningful impact on climate.
Precession is the dominant orbital cycle for the hemispheres as it is just modulated by the longer term obliquity and eccentricity. More people will understand this when permanent ice extent in other locations beside Greenland starts to advance downward and southward.
The rise in peak solar input in the hemispheres from bottom to top of the precession cycle takes around 10,000 years and the change is massive compared with any notion of what CO2 does. So the temperature trends are observable over centuries. The summer solstice solar intensity at 44N will increase by 21W/m^2 over the next 9,000 years. That is going to get a lot more area of the northern oceans to the 30C limit. So lots more snowfall that is within 200 years of overtaking snow melt.
ALL of the current trends are following the change in peak solar intensity across the globe. The peak solar impacts on the surface temperature in the mid latitudes. Peak daily solar has been increasing in the NH for 500 years. Numerous records point to the NH beginning a sustained warming trend soon after that.
The Southern Ocean has a cooling trend for the entire satellite era. That alone invalidates all climate models.
Climate modellers are now claiming they have always predicted more snow with “global” warming.
Yes, but Milankovitch doesn’t explain the very real shorter-term variations that are <<10,000 yrs, such as RWP, MWP, LIA, Bond events, D&O cycles, etc.
It is therefore an incomplete explanation of climate variability, which, when it fails to properly explain the above phenomena, leaves the door wide open for the Left to fill in the gaps with their misanthropic pet theory of climate alarmism based on human CO2 emissions.
The early Miocene isn’t perfectly analogous to today’s world, but the new study suggests Antarctica’s ice sheets could change rapidly and unexpectedly in the coming centuries if carbon dioxide levels and temperatures continue to rise due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The above statement from the article is a spurious speculation without any support what so ever from the Antarctica findings. Actually, it seems to me that the article’s statements about ice sheet changes are speculation from circumstantial data than there being actual evidence that glaciers grew and retreated relatively rapidly.
What would be interesting is whether or not there were time related changes elsewhere in the world and of course, why.
I still remember the old days when the greenhouse effect was supposed to act like a greenhouse. Increases in downwelling IR were suppose to cause the warming, not some fake science about emission height. The emissions height for CO2 is fixed.
DWIR actually causes surface cooling which would counteract any warming from increased absorption at the edges as found by W&H. The energy increases evaporative cooling at the surface which also drives reductions in water vapor high in the troposphere.
Why don’t increases in CO2 lead to changes in the emission height? Because of Kirchhoff’s Law and the changing density as we rise through the atmosphere. The early scientists obviously thought the atmosphere worked like a mist/fog in that increasing CO2 would block more outgoing IR and that was the source of DWIR which they thought caused warming. That’s not how the atmosphere works.
As CO2 increases you do get more absorption as you move up in the atmosphere but you also get more emission (Kirchhoff’s Law). You essentially have more energy moving slower. Both are log functions. As a result you get the same outgoing rate of flow independent of CO2 concentration.
However, the increases in CO2 will still lead to increases in DWIR at the surface. Almost all of this energy is radiated from the atmospheric boundary layer which is tied to the surface temperature due to conduction and the 2LOT. This little detail means the DWIR cannot cause any warming. It simply increases conduction back into the atmosphere. And, since the surface is about 80% covered in H2O, the increase in DWIR also enhances evaporation.
This evaporation increases latent heat removal from the surface which cools the surface. It’s a good thing CO2 also has small increases at the edges of the absorption band to counteract this cooling.
Finally, the increases in water vapor will lead to higher convection speeds up into the upper troposphere especially in the Tropics. The lighter air will be driven higher where it is colder and you get more condensation. That reduces the leftover water vapor in the upper atmosphere which allows the increased latent heat production to more easily radiate to space. Of course, it also increases precipitation as well.
The net result of increasing CO2 is to increase rainfall. There is no warming. The reason models will never see the real energy flow is they keep relative humidity constant as you move upwards in the troposphere. That’s also why they produce a non-existent hot spot in the Tropics.
I know a lot of skeptics continue to believe that CO2 does cause warming and the feedback negates most of the warming. Instead, there is no warming.
Scissor
December 3, 2023 8:56 am
Snow is falling nicely at Boulder’s nearest ski resort.
It is snowing big time in Vermont, all panels are covered, and there is no wind
I am so glad New England has about $500 billion of battery systems to tide us over for one day; sarc.
What? None of them have spontaneously combusted yet? It’s a Christmas miracle! sarc (or should it be snark?)
abolition man
December 3, 2023 9:07 am
Story tip!
The latest Tom Nelson podcast with Hong Kong scientist Wyss Yin is very interesting! I would love to see a breakdown of his hypotheses and data from one or more of our skilled posters! The idea of volcanism having a directly observable effect on our weather is intriguing. Just how much heat is being introduced into the oceans due to the 1,000,000 undersea volcanoes?
Usually, large eruptions are associated with cooling from their aerosols. The year 1816 was called the “year without a summer” and caused terrible famine, resulting from the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora.
Thanks, Scissor!
The question that I would love to see answered is just how much heat has been added to the oceans due to undersea volcanoes?
I was completely unaware of a number of the large submerged eruptions tha Dr. Yin spoke of. That, and a look at how these affect the weather locally or regionally around the eruption sites, might be an interesting topic for further study!
He really covers a lot of information, even in one-off comments. I’m over half way through, as I am trying to listen carefully, at 1.25 X. 1.5 X is a little too fast.
It seems that his estimates of number of volcanoes is larger by a factor of 10 than other estimates. Also, the majority are probably not active at any one time.
Yes it’s very interesting. Mostly about local, regional and short term temperature and precipitation changes that he can relate to specific eruptions. At the beginning he talks about possible climatic effects of weathering on exposed continental shelves during glacial periods when sea level was up to 130 metres lower than today. No graphics for that part of the video, and I need to watch it again to get exactly what he’s saying.
The figure of 1 million submarine volcanoes is presumably the total of identifiable volcanic seamounts from bathymetric surveys. He shows the number of active submarine volcanoes as 5,000. So relax – 995,000 of the 1,000,000 are extinct! If you think about the lack of erosional processes you would expect in the deep ocean, you could expect that a volcanic seamount would last as long as the oceanic crust that it rests on. Here’s a nice map from NOAA showing the age of oceanic crust. Unlike on land,where erosion will wear an inactive volcano down quite fast.
SR,
I’m sure you’re right, but I would still be extremely interested to see the size and scope of the known active eruptions, and some back-of-the-envelope calculations on just how much heat has been added to the oceans! How Hiroshimas are we talking about!?
Could be except that’d be a twofer – the main effect was in the air temperature as an unseasonably warm mass of air moved in and stayed over part of the continent. If the mechanism was that the warmer water caused the air to warm up then that might be better but not sure of the details.
And then, as the underwater currents continue around the southern polar current, they emerge on the west coast of Peru, to push up the warmth from the El Nino.
Joseph Zorzin
December 3, 2023 9:37 am
Just Warming Up? The Deadly Impact of Rain in Antarctica
Ocean warming and evaporation around the Antarctic Peninsula is causing increased rainfall instead of snow. This has a deadly impact on gentoo penguin chicks whose downy feathers are not adapted for rain. In this video film maker and environmentalist John Weller shows us that the impacts of climate warming are occurring all over the world, both near to home and in the remotest regions, and that it is time to choose optimism, inform it with science and compassion, and then act together in the face of these challenges. It is a moving and heart-felt plea to join forces in the face of environmental change.
just started watching this- it’s a huge place- if it’s raining in one small location, it’s not the end of the world- the presenter is whining that some chicks are suffering- well, that’s Mother Nature for you- been that way forever
It’s also hardly unprecented; some Antarctic coastal areas average about 30 days of rain every year – if gentoo chicks hadn’t learned to deal with rain then the species would’ve died out centuries ago. Just an obvious and easily disproven appeal-to-emotion ploy.
You have to bear in mind a couple of things about this really; Antarctica covers not just the continent itself but many outlying islands which are on the edges of the region and several of these can see temperatures above freezing. The second thing is that the largest breeding ground for the endangered Gentoo penguins is on the Falkland Islands, which gets a lot more than just 30 days of rain a year!
Neo
December 3, 2023 10:29 am
Babylon Bee on all those private jets, scheduled to take elites to the Dubai climate confab, stuck in Munich’s ice and snow:
‘Climate activists’ private planes freeze themselves to runway in powerful protest’
Any know what and why happened to the “Real Clear Energy ” website? For some time now they have gone full warmunist, except for a few token actual honest articles from time to time. They were once pretty reliable about exposing the codswallop of the climatistas. Now, no more. WTF happened?
Smart Rock
December 3, 2023 12:07 pm
“The old nihilist left has seized control of the environmental movement and transformed it into a battering ram to destroy economic growth and prosperity in the name of saving the planet“
That’s a quote from Conrad Black in yesterday’s National Post. Lord Black usually expounds verbosely in his opinion pieces, but here he has condensed the entire history and philosophy of climate alarmism into a single epigram.
His lordship said a lot of very negative things about Canada, and renounced his Canadian citizenship when Jean Chretien told him he couldn’t be both a Canadian and a peer. Then he got first hand experience of what he call the US “prosecutocracy” and spent time in a US federal prison, after which he did a 180 degree pivot and started saying all kinds of nice things about Canada. So I’m not totally enamoured of his lordly opinions, but here he has hit the nail on the head.
It’s dangerous to overrate the intelligence of one’s opponents, but much more dangerous to underrate it. These days it’s getting much harder to rationally evaluate published reports on seemingly irrational policies and actions by governments, corporations and NGOs. But a reasonable approach would be to question, as news reporters sometimes did in the past, “who benefits” from this seeming nonsense?
Take Gaza as a small example. Thousands are killed at random, tens of thousands more are injured, one of the most densely populated landscapes on earth is made unliveable,and the only rationale offered is the need to exterminate Hamass? Extermination is the goal alright, but not of Hamass…
The climate change crusade’s purpose is similarly veiled. All of the phenomena threatening our civilization, and perhaps our species, have become critically urgent because of overpopulation., which is depleting our productive soil, our drinkable water, and our breathable air, without any need for help from climate change. And the crusade to eliminate fossil fuels, if successful, will result in the extermination of most of the human race in a very short time, starting with northern North America.
Unfortunately, it will also leave a toxic, devastated landscape without the manpower or technical skills to rehabilitate it.
When almost all of the world’s rulers of government, industry, and culture have clearly agreed on this path, I would suggest Conrad’s Black comments are mere hypocritical posturing. Perhaps he’s no longer sure of his reservation on the lifeboat the ruling elite are surely preparing for themselves, and hopes to re-ingratiate himself with this pathetic smokescreen.
Nations don’t have voices, so it’s not clear what they’re concerned about. Those who speak for them are generally politicians and their associates, who are not squeamish about saying whatever will help them get their way.
Certainly many developed countries have aging populations and are desperately looking for attractive ice floes on which to send them into the sunset before they bankrupt the government’s budget.
Covid and the mRNA vaccines were a nice try, but failed. One could consider the “war” in Gaza to be a pilot project with the same aim, but with a more “old school” approach, and with far less risk for the instigators. Lack of water, food, shelter, and medical care, combined with overcrowding is pretty much what we can expect from elimination of the fossil fuel supply.
Lack of manpower is not a concern for those who have city-size yachts and huge, well guarded estates in Patagonia. They would rather preserve the earth for their enjoyment than have to rely on Dr. Strangelove types like Elon Musk to fly them to a miserable existence on Mars.
And these are the people, who, with the help of their “governing” flunkies, decide the “news”, the “science”, the “food” and the “medicine” we’re force-fed.
Am I to assume that you approve of foreign policies that consist of preemptive military strikes on the civilian population of countries with which there is friction? Think of what the world would be like if every nation used that approach.
No. I don’t approve of murder of either civilian or military people, whether individually or en masse, whether anointed as pre-emptive or self-defense by politicians or the result of individual sociopaths. But I disapprove even more when such behavior is hypocritically styled as patriotic or even world-saving.
Nuernberg decreed that the end doesn’t justify the means. But its architects only applied that rule to the losers of the war. By the moral criteria currently applied by Europe and the US to the ongoing massacre in Gaza, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were justified in all the murders they ordered, based on a perceived threat to their nations, no matter how delusional.
Neo
December 3, 2023 3:36 pm
Below is an important chart that somehow slipped by EPA’s “consensus” censorship squad. It is a map of all 1,066 weather stations across the United States. The change in the number of hot days for that station are ID’d as increasing (red), stayed the same (blank) or decreasing (blue). https://co2coalition.org/2023/07/14/epa-few-stations-show-increase-in-hot-days/
It looks to me that the majority of the stations that show an increase are urban areas with increasing population and therefore, increasing UHI effects.
Neo
December 4, 2023 5:45 am
Taking the well-established Community Atmosphere-Biosphere Land Exchange model (CABLE), the team accounted for three physiological factors: How efficiently CO2 moves within a leaf, how plants adjust to changes in environmental temperature, and how they distribute nutrients most economically. Using recent data and studies to build the model, the researchers then threw in the mix the variable of a strong climate-change scenario, to see how much CO2 plants would be taking out of the atmosphere through to the end of the century.
After repeating this experiment with eight versions of the model, the team found that the most complex version, which accounted for all three factors, predicted the most CO2 uptake, around 20% more than the simplest formula.
My thought is, that sense the HT H2O has stratified throughout the entire Stratosphere in both Hemispheres, if we see High Temp Summer records in the Southern Hemisphere, the North will see the same next summer. Eventually (2 more years) it will get broken down by UV and global temps will crash down to pre HT levels. But yes, it could cause a significant breach in the Polar Vortex, or it could stabilize it.
A beautiful science experiment nature has provided about the upper atmospheric radiative properties of rapid and un-precedented changes in water vapor content.
murrayv
December 4, 2023 12:17 pm
Re: Hunga Tonga
This is just a thought process, not an analysis.
Let’s start with the eruption in Jan 2022 throwing an unprecedented 150 million tons of water as water vapor (WV) into the stratosphere, and increasing levels to 13% above normal. Given that atmospheric/stratospheric water vapor is by far the strongest greenhouse gas and accounts for about 98% of the total worlds greenhouse effect, and given that the Jan injection had been distributed world-wide by March, one would have expected to see significant warming in eg the UAH temp record in Q2 2022, but that didn’t happen. One can surmise that, with the sun in a very low activity state, heat that was blocked by the stratospheric WV was dissipated by evaporation at the sea surface, and cloud formation blocked incoming heat due to elevated levels of cosmic rays. It seems that that atmospheric WV may have continued to accumulate until late 2022, resulting in far above normal rainfall in Southern Australia and southwestern USA (mainly California) through Q1 2023.
Then in Q1 2023 the sun went back into an active state, spiking in May 2023. The Oulu monitor showed a sharp drop in cosmic rays in Dec. 2022, followed by a larger drop in late March/early April 2023. This could have resulted in a major decline in cloud cover, a major increase in sunlight reaching the surface and a resulting rapid rise in surface temperature, as illustrated by Ryan Maue. Both sea and land temperatures rose to levels unprecedented in the modern period. Elevated temperatures persisted through summer and into fall 2023.
Now, recently, solar activity is dropping rapidly, implying a rise in cosmic rays and widespread increase in cloud cover. Over the last 3 months we have seen major and sometimes prolonged precipitation events leading to local, frequently unprecedented, flooding world-wide eg Libya, New England, NE France, the Philippines, Brazil, Afghanistan, most of Africa, etc. It seems that the excess atmospheric WV will have largely dissipated very soon and temperatures may rapidly return to normal. In fact we are seeing incidents of at least brief, unprecedented cold in many places, early snowfall in the Alps and the Rockies, and Russia 80% covered by snow, and unusual cold throughout Scandinavia in late Nov.
I have left El Nino out of all of this. Curiously there is some evidence that major volcanic events in the tropics trigger El Ninos about a year after the eruption, usually ascribed to atmospheric cooling from the volcanic aerosols. Hunga Tonga does not fit that description, but was very major, and has been followed by an El Nino. Strange. El Ninos transport heat from low to high latitudes, and result in further cooling, so 2024 could see significant cooling.
Whither next? – Also, solar cycles usually show spikes of activity 30 – 40 months after commencement, and that spike may or may not be followed by a higher one. This cycle 25 spike peaked 37 months after start. Given that the solar system barycenter (SSB) has switched from moving away from the solar center to moving nearer the solar center during 2022 (mass effect going from pull to push?) this spike might be the only one in cycle 25, and we are likely to be into a prolonged cooling period during the next 3 cycles. At least one scientist has forecast another “little ice age”, but that seems very unlikely given that the current Eddy cycle is nearing its warm peak, and the Bray cycle (see Andy May’s recent posting) is well off the bottom. Both were near bottom for the recent little ice age.
1 comment – “Spencer and Christy of UAH looked into the effects of the Hunga Tonga eruption on lower troposphere temperatures and concluded that its effects were likely to be minor – in the region of 1/100ths of a degree C. They published this in one of their monthly updates and haven’t commented on it since”.
My reply – By itself the event seems to have had a minor effect on temp as they concluded – but it set the stage through a prolonged increase in atmospheric WV to amplify the impact of a change in solar activity. It is the unlikely chain of events that matters. Spencer and Christy may not have yet connected the dots.
The recent record setting UAH global temp anomaly is absolutely because of HT, No way this El-Nino could have caused that, what else could it be? Why is Antarctica setting a record the 2nd year in a row, its not El-Nino, this one is nothing compared to recent ones. Blobs of water Vapor running 20 – 200% higher than average around the Stratosphere is not something one can get data for, so this is not a back of the napkin calculation, so anyone who makes a claim that the HT H2O could not have caused much warming, without any evidence, may as well be whistling dixie.
Story tip – The Times today reports ‘Scientists highlight risk to planet from 26 tipping points’.
The tipping point is one of the most prevalent themes of climate change dogmatism – OK, things don’t appear too bad now but a small change in THIS will lead to VERY BAD THINGS INDEED.
A question about one of them – you know when someone asks you about something and you give the same answer you always give and then you think ‘is that right?’ So is the following right?
Re melting the Antarctic ice sheet (one of the 26 tipping points) – I have always said – this ice sheet has 10 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere (5 times the mass, twice the specific heat capacity). So, if we found a way of taking all the heat in the atmosphere that has warmed it by a bit over a degree in the last 170 years and put it into the Antarctic ice sheet, it would warm it by about 0.1 degC, so from about -53degC to maybe -52.9degC. So, unlikely to melt. A simplistic argument but is this about right?
I put this ramble together for the Ellenbogen thread, but thought better.
Then, I thought worse, so here it is:
I do so love this bit:
“”While I can agree that reducing emissions is a good thing I do not believe that greenhouse gas emission reductions will have any effect on extreme weather.
It goes to the very heart of my ravings, ever since I ever first clicked on ‘Post Comment’ around here. (maybe I exaggerate but at least I’ve been consistent throughout)
My point has always been ‘soil erosion’ and it is that ’emissions’ can go “musk themselves”
It is an accelerating rate of erosion causing an ongoing rise in “Lack Of Absorptions” that is causing the observed rise in temps and the rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels.
(The numbers are fiddled/fixed. Nobody knows to the nearest tonne, cubic metre or barrel of fossils that *anybody* *anywhere* is using day-to-day or year-on-year. Emissions figures are worked backwards from the atmospheric levels. It is a ‘trick’ well used by NASA. It is in fact NASA’s only ‘trick- – it’s all they do nowadays= Make Stuff Up.)
Not that absorbing of carbon would directly affect the weather, it is that when plants (trees esp) absorb carbon they set a trap for water. The ‘stored’ carbon stores immense amounts of water and water stores heat energy within landscapes.
If you don’t believe me, look at Europe right now, disappeared under a blizzard of snow.
If there had been any moisture within the soils of Europe, those heavy snowfalls would have been merely mists & fog or endless drizzly rain over the last 2 months and with temps of around 5 or 6 Celsius
Or maybe sleet, as happening now in Norfolk/Cambs UK.
(See also Russia/Ukraine this last week= epic rainstorms and snow)
But the ‘resistant ridge’ over Europe which lasted all summer and is still there and removed all possibility of fog & drizzle. It dragged the tropopause down to ground level and sucked all the heat & water out of Europe. So temps drop to well below freezing and when the monsoon comes, it comes as snow.
That is the snow in Europe right now, it is a ‘monsoon event’ or the breaking of a drought.
Deserts are cold places, the Mediterranean Climate will kill you as soon as look at you – as folks in Europe, Ukraine and Russia are finding out right now.
And California.
Attached is yesterday’s temperature graph for Santa Margarita (picked at random. On the 101 and about 80 miles NE of Santa Barbara and 35° north)
At minus 3 Celsius last night your ‘Mediterranean’ fruits, veggies and idyllic lifestyle are gonna need all the CO₂ greening and fertilation they can get.
and then some
History: Knut thought he could control the weather.
Yes he really did. He was a Really Stupid & Self-Obsessed Person, a spoilt brat dazzled by his own brilliance.
So his court and ‘advisers’ set a trap for him to prove as much.
He walked/ran/sprinted right into it, (and simultaneously into the incoming tide, how dumb is that)
Knut’s dynasty lasted about 80 years in total. Yes, his ‘family’ really was that dumb.
Will we make it as long as that, how does our dumbness compare that of Knut?
So, who is going to, who is able to: Set the Same Trap for Climate Science?
Ellenbogen looked like That Person for a while, until he went into that CO₂ in glasshouses business and his credibility plummeted.
He too is an appeaser.
“Knut thought he could control the weather. Yes he really did”
You have comnpletely misunderstood the fable/legend which first emerged a century after his death and was intended to illustrate his piety and wisdom.
To quote The Economist’s Style Guide: “Canute’s exercise on the seashore was designed to persuade his courtiers of what he knew to be true but they doubted, ie, that he was not omnipotent. Don’t imply he was surprised to get his feet wet.”
And to make your assertion even more ludicrous – it was never a story about the weather – it was the tide.
Cnut the Great set out to show he that he could not…
It’s unclear whether his courtiers and sycophants truly thought he could or if they were just bullshitting
Wot a silly bunt.
It was quite rainy and cool in Germany this past summer when I visited, and when I flew out of Munich it was raining there. My experience with droughts is that they make things brown not green.
You ought to have thought a third time Peta.
Read it and Weep! (Story Tip!)
Labor Day 2023 Extreme Cold event on Antarctica triggered me into becoming an Activist. I saw it coming on August 27th from monitoring the 10-Day forecast Data from NOAA, followed it up close and documented it, The Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine, hid that Event from the World and instead produced a 10-Day Warming Event starting on August 31st. Go see their Graph on Antarctica and then compare that with my Excel Spreadsheet and the Data I documented. Both cannot be TRUE, so which one is TRUE?
Climate Reanalyzer
Over the next week or so i will share much more Data collected related to that Extreme Cold Labor Day Event that NO one knows about and many other things (I am reconstructing the Entire Summer for 16 Stations from AMRDC Data and the Australian BOM to see what really happened and how COLD it got on Antarctica) I have discovered since, Check out my Linked In Blog here: Activity | Frits Buningh | LinkedIn
The Left most Column in the Table below is the CR-Record, is the Average Temperature on Antarctica according to the official Record keepers at the Climate Change Institute form the University of Maine. They are the Scientific underpinning of all the Hyperventilating about Heat Records/Global Boiling such as the one about July 6th, 2023 “Hottest Day on Earth” in the NYT.
Heat Records Broken Across Earth – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
From that article:
“Source: Climate Reanalyzer, Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, based on data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast SystemBy Elena Shao/The New York Times”
my home state of michigan, now trashed with solar and wind has been recently diagnosed with california cancer.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs energy bills to make Michigan use clean energy by 2040 | Bridge Michigan
oops…
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/dte-monthly-rates-jump-64-dec-15-fund-clean-energy
Looks like your state is another feminocracy, like NY and WK (Wokeachusetts).
correct. grech, bensin and nasel are the poster children of vote fraud.
I can remember when Ann Arbor was a conservative town.
me too.
I have a lot of good memories still. I liked Metzger’s when it was downtown.
yes indeed.
Show me what you got….
“”president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
…
[Ouch]
Al Jaber said: “I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
It’s a fun read, they’re incandescent
At last someone in a position of UN/COP authority who is prepraed to “go there” and tell it as it is.
Also, at the end of the video he says “Show me solutions. Stop pointing fingers”. Too right, Sultan Al Jaber, but I’m afraid all you’ll get from these people is magical thinking.
At least Al Jabar pointed out the Elephant in the Room: That there is no evidence that reducing CO2 is going to do what the climate change alarmists claim it will do.
Now the ball is in the climate alarmists court. They need to show Al Jabar their proof.
Of course, we, and Al Jabar know there is no such evidence, so it will be interesting to see what the climate alarmists have to say about this “heresy”, or if they have anything to say at all.
Where’s the evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth? Al Jabar wants to know.
I wonder where next year’s meeting will be held. Apparently, Russia is preventing COP 29 from being held in Europe.
Instead of some beach resort, I would suggest to inject some reality and pitch a bunch of tents in polar bear country.
That would eliminate the bikinis, so that’s a ‘no-go’.
No comment.
That’s a wise move, the replies could go places that once seen can never be forgotten…
Yeah.
COP-29 – Fargo!
In 2020 when COVID became worldwide human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 as seen at Mauna Loa Observatory didn’t change a bit.
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
The initial estimate was -18% for April, which was downgraded to -14.5%. Similarly, the initial estimate for the full year was 10%.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
I rather doubt there is a single activists or politicians who feels a need to show him anything except the exit.
I read one article yesterday addressing this issue, and the climate alarmists, as expected, are not talking about the actual issue, they are calling Al-Jabar’s comments “farcical”, without providing any evidence that Al-Jabar is wrong:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/03/climate-john-kerry-responds-to-cop28-presidents-fossil-fuel-comments.html
“The remarks, which were made by Al-Jaber during a live online event on Nov. 21, were described as “farcical” by climate scientists.”
That’s the best they can do. They have no evidence to the contrary.
For some reason, that reminded me of Greta. Wasn’t she uninvited from last years farce because she had taken to pointing her finger at people pointing their fingers ?
What a bunch of fkn cretins.
Kudos to the Sultan though.
I remember if you tried to burn the black book in Zork I, the game would reply: “Wrong Cretin!” and your character would die.
This is very important as the BIG ISSUE on the table at COP28 is whether to adopt language calling for a phase out of fossil fuels.
A bomb just went off.
I almost fell off the chair when I read about
All bets must be off
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231129145908.htm
What’s ironic is that people have know about the variability of California’s climate for decades. It was even noted in the 1977 eco-fantasy YV88.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231023123815.htm
Simulations! I guess that settles it.
Tony Heller posted some interesting historical reports on this yesterday, including : https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/23150667
simulations, does a computer model by any other name smell any better? h/t Will Shakespeare
“and how much melting the international community still has control over through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”
The International Community has zero control over Antarctic warming.
They don’t know what causes the warming, so how can they control it?
Plus, they probably didn’t take into account the Grand Solar Minimum that has just started and may cool the planet down to The Little Age Ice type temperatures.
Keep us posted on that.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231130113049.htm
psychological interventions??????
Yeah, they are trying to figure out how to brainwash people better.
They want everyone to toe the climate alarmist line.
This is what dictators do.
The rich own the media and are planning to make trillions from “climate change” spending.
Bloomberg estimates $200 trillion to stop warming by 2050 and other estimates are similar.
They also control the politicians through campaign contributions.
Won’t the burning waste of those trillions heat things up?
The voters are supposed to control the politicians through votes. It’s called democracy. It has a lot of growing to do.
$200 trillion wont even cover the batteries.
“extremely persuasive nature of (
disinformation) True Science”Fortunately, the truth will always out.
Perhaps, once the entire culture has been eradicated and far future historians have managed to put together a story from surviving bits and peaces.
Thir problem was that they forgot about the use of stocks and pillories, combined with sleep deprivation, starvation, and very rough reeducation classes, the tried and proven goodies of attitude adjustment. Don’t worry, those are sure to occur to them before much longer.
Europe’s clean energy boom cuts forward prices to pre-Ukraine invasion levels
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europes-clean-energy-boom-cuts-forward-prices-pre-ukraine-invasion-levels-2023-12-01/
Not in the U.K., though
Did you mean the EU?
Absolute tosh. The lower forward prices have nothing to do with growth in ‘clean power’ which has run at approximately 2,000 TWH since 2015 according to the bar chart in the article.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with the EU increasing renewables subsidies would it? Your conclusion is either ignorant or deliberate lying – so which is it, are you a lying git or an ignorant scumbag?
Sounds like the same kind of lie as when FJB says he’s reducing the debt.
“Europe’s clean energy boom cuts forward prices to pre-Ukraine invasion levels”
The article DID NOY SAY OR SHOW THAT!
Either you could not understand what you read OR the graph which for what you regularly post here is my assumption OR you are just a bald face liar.
Being a liberal both are your natural MO.
If you plot the differing opinions here of him on a venn diagram you’ll likely notice that most of them overlap at ‘liar’. It might even be a consensus!
How about that photo of a solar “farm”? Gorgeous, huh? Great for Mother Nature. And enviros love such “farms”.
In today’s Bah-stin Glob
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/02/nation/surging-us-oil-production-brings-down-prices-raises-climate-fears/
LOL – “raises climate fears” – not in the real world, only in the imaginary domain of doom!
Yeah, baby! When oil prices are high, more oil is produced.
It’s called Free Enterprise.
And this is happening despite Biden’s war on oil.
The rich are running the “climate change” scare.
They own the media worldwide and hope to make trillions from “climate change” spending.
In a recent Pew Research poll 61 percent of Americans favor climate action. Even two-thirds of Republicans under 30 supported climate action and 40% of Republicans supported it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
This indicates the extent of the damage resulting from public education’s removal of Critical Thinking from the curriculum.
Yes, our hijacked schools are the weak link in our chain of freedom.
If they successfully teach the kids to hate their country, as is the objective of the radical Left, then the future is bleak.
There is some pushback in education occurring now, though.
Still, a large amount of damage to young minds has already been done. Their heads are full of lies and distortions about the world they live in. Put there deliberately by the radical Left.
Biden just announced a campaign to eliminate 80% of methane leaks from the FF industry. As if that will actually result in any significant decrease in warming. What they may save will probably be about the same as new methane from wetlands where beaver are being re-introduced.
Petroleum and natural gas production is likely to hit records in the U.S. for 2023. Peak oil in the U.S. at least is ahead of us.
Another item in today’s Glob
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/02/world/un-climate-talks-oil-companies-pledge-combat-methane-environmentalists-call-it-smokescreen/
Isn’t it funny that they are quick to trot these calculations out when they want to but hide or ignore ones they don’t like.
“Methane emissions are a significant contributor to global warming”
No, they are not.
One-tenth of a degree is a joke.
It never made sense that more than a hand full of nuts would not want it to be warmer in Canada.
Many more families are moving from the northern US to the southern US. People like it more when the temperature is around 80F (27C), rather than colder than that.
If enough people move to the South; won’t that tilt the North ‘up’ and closer to the Sun, so we will get warmer up here?
Ah no, the US is somewhat bigger than Guam 😉
and the amazing thing is that Hank is still there, on government committees deliberating the ways of the world.
They say that people who can do–do. If they can’t do, then they teach. If they can’t teach, then they go into politics.
It is all Kabuki Theater:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
What should we expect from an incremental improvement in the radiative absorbing power of the clear atmosphere as CO2 concentration rises? Would it get warmer, or is there more to it? What about kinetic energy, and its conversion to and from the other forms of energy in the atmosphere?
I am posting this here on the open thread to emphasize a fundamental implication. It is that the attribution of reported warming to incremental concentrations of CO2 is inherently unsound. That minor change cannot be isolated for reliable determination of cause and effect of trends in the atmosphere, oceans, or land.
The modelers should all know this, yet we are told to expect the result of increasing CO2 to be the accumulation (“trapping”) of heat energy down here on land and in the oceans.
Please consider this background:
***************************
From Edward N. Lorenz (1960) “Energy and Numerical Weather Prediction”
https://doi.org/10.3402/tellusa.v12i4.9420
2. Energy, available potential energy, and
gross static stability
Of the various forms of energy present in
the atmosphere, kinetic energy has often
received the most attention. Often the total
kinetic energy of a weather system is regarded
as a measure of its intensity. The only other
forms of atmospheric energy which appear
to play a major role in the kinetic energy
budget of the troposphere and lower stratosphere
are potential energy, internal energy, and the
latent energy of water vapor. Potential and
internal energy may be transformed directly
into kinetic energy, whle latent energy may
be transformed directly into internal energy,
which is then transformed into kinetic energy.
It is easily shown by means of the hydrostatic
approximation that the changes of the
potential energy P and the internal energy l of
the whole atmosphere are approximately proportional,
so that it is convenient to regard
potential and internal energy as constituting
a single form of energy. This form has been
called total potential energy by Margules (1903).
…
In the long run, there must be a net depletion
of kinetic energy by dissipative processes. It
follows that there must be an equal net
generation of kinetic energy by reversible
adiabatic processes; this generation must occur
at the expense of total potential energy. It
follows in turn that there must be an equal net
generation of total potential energy by heating
of all kinds. These three steps comprise the
basic energy cycle of the atmosphere. The
rate at which these steps proceed is a fundamental
characteristic of the general circulation. …
*********************************
For those with an account on X (fka Twitter), I posted a video about this, using the ERA5 “vertical integral of energy conversion”.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1722012790368416058
ENSO and its relatively rapid impacts on global temperatures is consistent with this, but alarmists will just say that chaotic climate behavior just hides GH forcing.
When CO2 emissions dropped 6% worldwide due to the start of the pandemic, the CO2 levels kept increasing at about the same rate as before the pandemic. Cutting CO2 emissions didn’t slow the growth of CO2 a bit. https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Certainly not on a short time scale, as natural fluctuations are almost two orders of magnitude greater than human emissions.
The same is true of temperature. It’s not unusual to see an 1C change from one year to another, but 1C trend over a century is our fault.
The real questions are around long term trends.
Speculation/question:
Adding up ALL of the human activities that create heat, how much is that compared to the current “understanding” of GHG caused temperature rise?
eg.
current flowing thru a wire creates heat
stepping on the brakes of your car creates heat
tires rolling down the highway create heat
the heat from your care engine
heat leaks out of your house when it’s cold.
pumping heat out of your house when it’s hot.
heat islands – pavement, rooftops, land use
Likely there are many more examples
8 billion people emitting heat?
No doubt more not mentioned here.
Would all of the heat generated by humans (other than GHG warming) be a significant cause of temperature rise, over a period of time?
(The project of measuring global temp is an imperfect art/science. Does all the Climate Science pass ISO9000 rigor? Yes, I’m a Qualty Control bore.)
p.s. Still running to the mailbox every day looking for my check from the oil companies.
iso9000 rigor? that made my day……
All of mankind’s production of energy (heat) combined with nature’s contribution of heat (energy-volcanos, wildfires, earthquakes) are trivial compared with the energy Earth receives from the sun and rejects into space, which keeps Earth at a constant range of temperatures roughly between 233K and 313K (+/-20K at the extremes). You may worry about +1.5K if you wish.
I’m not ‘worried’ about it, I’m curious. Might poke a nice hole in the panic-mongers narrative if it is a significant contribution. Has there been any estimates of these inputs? Maybe it’s significant, maybe it’s not. Does anybody have even a guess?
Please see the numerous articles on WUWT about the issues you raise, which are normally collectively referred to as the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect. There have been several articles referencing efforts to remove UHI from the urban biased temperature datasets as every single one of them is hopelessly contaminated by this urban activity. Yes it is significant, known land temperatures are homogenised (mixed and averaged) with sea and unmeasured land areas and, of the known land temperatures, over 80% are in urban areas. Estimates vary as to exactly how much of the ‘global average temperature’ is due to UHI, ranging from around 0.3°C to 1.5°C so it could be hugely significant.
The temperature reading of a thermometer is at best only tenuously related to the energy use in a region around that thermometer. I have often seen differences of 10F, perhaps more, within a few miles, all within a single urban area.
I know, that was the whole flaming point of the post. IT’S NOT TEMPERATURE. The temperature datasets are hopelessly contaminated with UHI because UHI is not temperature, it’s a measure of urban activity.
I have been banging my head against this brick wall for years now, thank you so much for providing an example of why the wall is sold brick!
The annual anthropogenic consumption of energy is roughly 2 hours of sunshine. So it is not significant in energy input to the globe. A single cyclone redistributes more energy than humans produce over a year.
However, surface temperature measurement is concentrated in more densely populated locations where much of the anthropogenic energy is consumed. That causes the urban heat effect, which increases the measured temperature.
Excellent and educational response Sir. I was once asked this same question on another site and started Googling. I found someone had done the calculation for me. I was surprised that it didn’t register, except in what is an invalid proxy – the UHI effect.
The claim is that the energy use of a year’s worth of all human activity is about equal to between 1 and 2 hours of solar input on one day of that year. This does not compute to any amount of global warming. It is well below the variation is storm activity from day to day.
Right after I woke up early this morning, I turned on the CBS radio world news. The second story was a breathless report that 2023 was the hottest year on Earth “ever.” Talk about careless and ignorant news reporting! But there probably are millions of people who hear nonsense like that, and think it is true.
The rich who own the media are hoping to make trillions from “climate change” spending which is estimated to be around $200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.
And how long have you been living with masochism Marty?
Sultan Al Jaber’s debate with Mary Robinson should be front page news. He’s challenging the assertion that ending the use of fossil fuels makes scientific and/or economic sense for humanity.
Mary and the socialists at the UN must be aghast. How dare he?
Will there be a debate?
If so, I would sure like to see it. Al Jabar is asking the right questions, and the climate change alarmists don’t have the answers.
I’m guessing the first thing they throw up as evidence is the bogus Hockey Stick global temperature chart, trying to show its temperature profile correlates with CO2 increases in the atmosphere.
That’s probably a pretty good guess as the Hockey Stick chart is all they have. And it doesn’t represent reality.
I wonder what Al Jabar’s regional, historical temperature charts show for his region. Do they show a “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart temperature profile? Or do they show a benign temperature profile like the U.S. regional chart shows, and like charts from all over the world show?
Scimitar beats hockey stick.
+100!
Rosatom is building more nuclear reactors than any other country, IAEA data show
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
According to the IAEA, a total of 412 nuclear reactors are in operation at power plants across the world, with their total capacity at about 370,200 MW
Rosatom, a Russian Company, is building more nuclear reactors than any other country in the world, according to data from the Power Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
The data show, a total of 58 large-scale nuclear power reactors are currently under construction worldwide, of which 23 are being built by Russia.
Nuclear Plants: A typical plant may have up to 4 reactors, usually about 1,200 MW each
In Egypt, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $30 billion is about $6,250/kW, which includes financing by Egypt $5 billion and by Russia $25 billion
That cost is at least 40% less then US/UK/EU
In Turkey, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $20 billion is about $4,200/kW, entirely financed by Russia. The plant will be owned and operated by Rosatom
Rosatom, created in 2007 by combining several Russian companies, usually provides full service during the entire project life, such as training, new fuel bundles, refueling, waste processing and waste storage in Russia, etc., because the various countries likely do not have the required systems
Nuclear vs Wind: Remember, these nuclear plants reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
They have about 0.90 capacity factors, and last 60 to 80 years
Nuclear do not require counteracting plants, because they can be designed to be load-following, as some are in France
Offshore wind systems produce variable, unreliable power, at very high cost/kWh, and near CO2-free
They have about 0.45 CFs, and last 20 to 25 years
They require a fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the up/down wind outputs, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, plus major expansion/reinforcement of electric grids to connect the wind systems to load centers.
Major Competitors: Rosatom’s direct competitors, according to PRIS data, are three Chinese companies: CNNC, CSPI and CGN.
They are building 22 reactors, but it should be noted, they are being built primarily inside China, and the Chinese partners are building five of them together with Rosatom.
If we talk about the Americans and Europeans, they are lagging behind by a wide margin,” Alexander Uvarov, a director at the Atom-info Center and editor-in-chief at the atominfo.ru website, told TASS.
Tripling Nuclear? During COP28 in opulent Dubai, Kerry called for the world to triple CO2-free nuclear, from 370,200 MW to about 1,200,000 MW, by 2050.
Based on past experience in the US and EU, it takes at least 10 years to commission nuclear plants
That means, ten 5000 MW plants are started each year, for 16 years, to fill the pipeline, to commission all of them by 2050
That would require a major increase in infrastructures and training of personnel.
Much as I would like to see some US companies and power producers leading the way on installing nuclear power plants, I can at least find some consolation in the fact that not every government has been infected with climate change and anti-nuclear alarmism
A highly optimistic estimate.
Germany’s universal expert Lesch planned a speech at a Vivaldi 4 Seasons Climate Change concert – cancelled by snow and ice.
Moved to May ’24, maybe warmer?
I don’t ascribe to the ‘Al Gore’ effect – instead I credit weather as having a very well developed sense of irony!
BATTERIES IN NEW ENGLAND?
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
.
Currently, the variable output of wind and solar is counteracted by fossil-fired, CO2-emitting, quick-reacting power plants. Some people want to replace such power plants with large-scale battery systems to reduce CO2 emissions. This article presents an analysis that shows, using such batteries systems for counteracting, and storing electricity, even for one day, has a very high owning and operating cost, even with 50% subsidies.
NE has variable weather conditions, with frequent periods of very little wind, even offshore, and very little sun, which means wind and solar power, already highly variable 24/7/365, is frequently minimal, throughout the year.
This analysis shows the cost of battery systems, if they are used to store electricity for a W/S-lull lasting one day.
In this analysis, we ignore hydro, for simplicity.
As part of our analysis, we assume, at some future date:
.
– CO2-emitting power plants will be shut down, such as fossil fuel, wood burning, refuse burning, etc.
– Nuclear plants, once shut down, will not be replaced
– Existing hydro plants, about 7% of NE annual generation, will remain.
– Wind and solar installed capacity, MW, will be sufficient to provide 100% of average daily demand each day of the year.
https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix
NOTE: This analysis uses average values, for simplicity. A more exact analysis would use hourly or 15-minute values. Whereas it would be more difficult to understand by non-technical people, the outcome would be nearly the same.
A Wind/Solar Lull Lasting One Day in Winter in New England
If such a W/S lull occurs, batteries will make up the electricity shortfall
We assume, at some future date, NE has installed:
60000 MW of solar, which produce an annual average of 8700 MWh/h, at capacity factor = 0.145
60000 MW of onshore and offshore wind, which produce an annual average of 21000 MWh/h, at CF = 0.35
During a W/S lull, we assume the production will be only 10% of these values during winter, which frequently has days with very little wind, and snow on most panels
We assume the average electricity fed to the grid is 21000 MW on a January day, and during that entire day the average W/S output fed to the grid is 0.1 x (21000 + 8700) = 2970 MW.
W/S electricity shortfall is 24 x (21000 – 2970) = 432720 MWh
Batteries are rated as providing a level of power for a period of time, or MW/MWh
Our required battery capacity is (18030 MW)/(432720 MWh/0.45)
There are some system design factors that reduce rated capacity, but we will ignore them, for simplicity
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full, and not discharging to less than 20% full
That means the recommended maximum delivered electricity is 0.6 of capacity.
We assume the battery is 75% full, at start of lull, and is drawn down to 25% full, in 24 hours, i.e., 0.5 of capacity is drawn out of the battery, if we are lucky.
But that 0.5 “in battery” must be reduced by 10%, due to system losses, i.e., 0.45 is fed to HV grid
NOTE: Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve, in Australia. They had to add Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and decided to add more Megapacks to increase the rating of the system. In the article, the Hornsdale graph of operating conditions confirms:
1) The about 20% round-trip loss, explained below
2) The output reduction, due to rapid aging
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
Battery System Loss: There is about a 20% round-trip loss, from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid
That means, of the electricity taken from the HV grid, about 10% is lost to recharge the battery to desired levels, then, upon discharge, another 10% is lost, before feeding to the HV grid.
This article is a good source of information
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Capital Cost: All-in, turnkey capital cost of Tesla, Megapack-based system = 432720/0.45 x 1000 kWh/MWh x $575/delivered kWh as AC, 2023 pricing = $553 billion
Double that amount, if the W/S lull lasts two days.
W/S lulls of 5 to 7 days are not uncommon in New England, throughout the year
Dealing with such multi-day lulls will require batteries costing about $2.8 to $3.9 trillion, just for New England!
Those capital costs can be reduced by extreme “demand management”, including rolling blackouts and complete blackouts, often practiced in Third World countries.
Imports from nearby states is not an option, as those states face similar wind/solar/battery challenges.
Until about 2020, various people claimed future utility-grade battery system costs will be as low as $250/delivered kWh
If that were still the case, the battery cost would be about $553 x 250/575 = $240 billion, for a one day lull
During 2021, 2022, 2023, Tesla, Megapack-based, battery-system turnkey costs have been increasing to about $575/delivered kWh
Because of continuing high inflation, high interest rates, high materials, energy and labor prices, etc., battery costs likely will not decrease for some years.
Remember, these battery systems last only about 15 years, and age at about 1.5%/y during that time, if properly operated. Aging increases the loss percent, and reduces the delivered electricity quantity
The recurring replacement cost, about every 15 years, will bankrupt New England
Recharging the Batteries: There must be enough W/S capacity, MW, plus favorable wind and solar conditions, to recharge the batteries to about 75% full, in 3 days, in anticipation of a second lull, which could happen a few days after the first lull.
The battery charging occurs, while the battery performs normal battery services, such as:
1) Counteracting the W/S-up/down output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365,
2) Providing electricity during low-W/S periods (such as minor lulls), and during high-W/S periods, when wind turbine rotors are feathered and locked.
We assume weather conditions have significantly improved to increase the W/S output from 2970 MW (during the lull) to 30000 MW (immediately after the lull), which is well in excess of the 21000 MW demand.
W/S electricity available from HV grid for charging is (30000 – 9000) MW x 72 h x 0.50 CF, assumed = 324000 MWh, which loads 0.9 x 324000 = 291600 into the battery, which provides 0.9 x 292600 = 262440 MWh to the HV grid
Even with our optimistic assumption of “3 windy/sunny days”, the MWh fed to HV grid is significantly less than the required 432720 MWh
That means at least 65% of additional wind and solar capacity, MW, is required to recharge the battery in “3 windy/sunny days”, after a one day lull
Most rational people have to come to the conclusion, the wind/solar/battery/EV, etc., route will lead to bankruptcy.
A much better approach would be, continue using our God-given abundance of fossil fuels, enjoy the beneficial aspects of increased CO2 (increased flora and fauna), while building more nuclear plants, which reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
US leads call to triple nuclear power at COP28
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-triple-nuclear-power-cop28.html
Cutting human CO2 emissions doesn’t seem to change the yearly CO2 increases by anything but a tiny amount, if at all.
In 2020 when COVID spread worldwide, human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6%, according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 as seen at Mauna Loa Observatory didn’t seem to change a bit. https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Because 6% of human CO2 is just a very tiny fraction of all CO2 circulating, it did not show up at Mauna Loa
Human CO2 is just a fly on an elephants butt
While making Elon Musk beyond filthy rich. Thank you New England.
And Nuke plants last AT LEAST 80 years, as licensed by even the Brandon maladministration’s Energy Department.
Elon Musk is a very good engineer.
He works his butt off 80 hours a week
Always on the go, and keeping in touch with everyone and everything
He is rich, but that was not his intention
It was just a byproduct of his hard work that the system provides
He is not like Bozos with a 475 ft yacht, that is followed by a 150 ft tender, which carries all the toys, for which there is no space on the yacht, and not like Trump with his palatial/gaudy Mara a Lago in Florida
All three are movers and shakers in their own way, but Musk is my favorite
A question about the recent Wijngaarden and Happer paper ‘Atmosphere and Greenhouse Primer’. On page 24, figure 6b shows that the emission altitude for radiation at the centre of the CO2 adsorption band (667.4 cm-1) is way up in the mesosphere at 80+ kilometers. Increased absorption caused by increasing concentrations of CO2 is caused by more of the edges of the absorption lines coming into play as the lines broaden. So marginal emissions from the edges of the adsorption lines may have any emission height up to the maximum and increased concentrations of CO2 will push them all up. Some of these will be in the troposphere or mesosphere where temperature goes down with height; some in the stratosphere where temperature goes up. Is this a useful way of thinking of the science of what is happening here with increased concentrations? Are there enough emissions from emission heights in the stratosphere where increased concentrations might actually lead to cooling of the atmosphere to be important in the equation? Does the HITRAN database have enough information about the absorption lines to examine at this level of granularity? (DANGER – if anyone answers this question, I have lots of others.)
https://scitechdaily.com/turning-up-the-heat-how-climate-change-supercharges-co2s-impact/
As usual, this claim is apparently based on modeling.
From the article:
‘They found that this stratosphere cooling causes subsequent increases in CO2 to have a larger heat-trapping effect than previous increases, causing carbon dioxide to become more potent as a greenhouse gas.’
Did they provide any evidence or propose a mechanism as to why this would happen?
Not that I am aware of and the original article is behind a paywall.
Bizarre!
Experts in photonics are not going to give much insight into Earth’s energy balance.
Numerous observations show that tropical ocean, away from the interference of land, do not sustain more than 30C. Once that temperature is achieved the surface solar input is regulated at the level required to sustain that temperature until the top of atmosphere solar input drops below the threshold of 420W/m^2. Convective instability is the process that regulates the temperature and the solar energy input. Solar reflection rises rapidly once ocean temperature exceeds 26C.
Climate modellers have been predicting steady rise in tropical ocean temperature that never happens. The temperature in the Nino34 region of the Pacific is trundles.
Anyone wanting to understand Earth’s energy balance needs to understand deep convection and the creation of convective instability.
Earth’s climate has proven to be quite robust over 4Ga of massive perturbations. The notion that a tiny addition of CO2 in the atmosphere is going to alter the energy balance is bunkum. Milankovitch was on the money and history will verify his insights.
‘Milankovitch was on the money and history will verify his insights.’
There’s a lot more going on, and over myriad time scales, than Milankovitch – namely plate tectonics, as well as much shorter-term influences that play out over centuries and millennia.
But you are correct that our CO2 emissions will have no meaningful impact on climate.
Precession is the dominant orbital cycle for the hemispheres as it is just modulated by the longer term obliquity and eccentricity. More people will understand this when permanent ice extent in other locations beside Greenland starts to advance downward and southward.
The rise in peak solar input in the hemispheres from bottom to top of the precession cycle takes around 10,000 years and the change is massive compared with any notion of what CO2 does. So the temperature trends are observable over centuries. The summer solstice solar intensity at 44N will increase by 21W/m^2 over the next 9,000 years. That is going to get a lot more area of the northern oceans to the 30C limit. So lots more snowfall that is within 200 years of overtaking snow melt.
ALL of the current trends are following the change in peak solar intensity across the globe. The peak solar impacts on the surface temperature in the mid latitudes. Peak daily solar has been increasing in the NH for 500 years. Numerous records point to the NH beginning a sustained warming trend soon after that.
The Southern Ocean has a cooling trend for the entire satellite era. That alone invalidates all climate models.
Climate modellers are now claiming they have always predicted more snow with “global” warming.
Yes, but Milankovitch doesn’t explain the very real shorter-term variations that are <<10,000 yrs, such as RWP, MWP, LIA, Bond events, D&O cycles, etc.
It is therefore an incomplete explanation of climate variability, which, when it fails to properly explain the above phenomena, leaves the door wide open for the Left to fill in the gaps with their misanthropic pet theory of climate alarmism based on human CO2 emissions.
Similarly, Milankovitch Cycles don’t explain very short, multiple cycles of Antarctic glaciation during the Miocene.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-antarctica-ancient-ice-sheets-foreshadow.html
The above statement from the article is a spurious speculation without any support what so ever from the Antarctica findings. Actually, it seems to me that the article’s statements about ice sheet changes are speculation from circumstantial data than there being actual evidence that glaciers grew and retreated relatively rapidly.
What would be interesting is whether or not there were time related changes elsewhere in the world and of course, why.
I still remember the old days when the greenhouse effect was supposed to act like a greenhouse. Increases in downwelling IR were suppose to cause the warming, not some fake science about emission height. The emissions height for CO2 is fixed.
DWIR actually causes surface cooling which would counteract any warming from increased absorption at the edges as found by W&H. The energy increases evaporative cooling at the surface which also drives reductions in water vapor high in the troposphere.
Why don’t increases in CO2 lead to changes in the emission height? Because of Kirchhoff’s Law and the changing density as we rise through the atmosphere. The early scientists obviously thought the atmosphere worked like a mist/fog in that increasing CO2 would block more outgoing IR and that was the source of DWIR which they thought caused warming. That’s not how the atmosphere works.
As CO2 increases you do get more absorption as you move up in the atmosphere but you also get more emission (Kirchhoff’s Law). You essentially have more energy moving slower. Both are log functions. As a result you get the same outgoing rate of flow independent of CO2 concentration.
However, the increases in CO2 will still lead to increases in DWIR at the surface. Almost all of this energy is radiated from the atmospheric boundary layer which is tied to the surface temperature due to conduction and the 2LOT. This little detail means the DWIR cannot cause any warming. It simply increases conduction back into the atmosphere. And, since the surface is about 80% covered in H2O, the increase in DWIR also enhances evaporation.
This evaporation increases latent heat removal from the surface which cools the surface. It’s a good thing CO2 also has small increases at the edges of the absorption band to counteract this cooling.
Finally, the increases in water vapor will lead to higher convection speeds up into the upper troposphere especially in the Tropics. The lighter air will be driven higher where it is colder and you get more condensation. That reduces the leftover water vapor in the upper atmosphere which allows the increased latent heat production to more easily radiate to space. Of course, it also increases precipitation as well.
The net result of increasing CO2 is to increase rainfall. There is no warming. The reason models will never see the real energy flow is they keep relative humidity constant as you move upwards in the troposphere. That’s also why they produce a non-existent hot spot in the Tropics.
I know a lot of skeptics continue to believe that CO2 does cause warming and the feedback negates most of the warming. Instead, there is no warming.
Snow is falling nicely at Boulder’s nearest ski resort.
https://www.eldora.com/the-mountain/webcams/snow-stake-cam
It is snowing big time in Vermont, all panels are covered, and there is no wind
I am so glad New England has about $500 billion of battery systems to tide us over for one day; sarc.
What? None of them have spontaneously combusted yet? It’s a Christmas miracle! sarc (or should it be snark?)
Story tip!
The latest Tom Nelson podcast with Hong Kong scientist Wyss Yin is very interesting! I would love to see a breakdown of his hypotheses and data from one or more of our skilled posters! The idea of volcanism having a directly observable effect on our weather is intriguing. Just how much heat is being introduced into the oceans due to the 1,000,000 undersea volcanoes?
I’ll take a look. Here’s the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdO9oN6dIqU&list=PL89cj_OtPeenLkWMmdwcT8Dt0DGMb8RGR&index=1
Usually, large eruptions are associated with cooling from their aerosols. The year 1816 was called the “year without a summer” and caused terrible famine, resulting from the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora.
Thanks, Scissor!
The question that I would love to see answered is just how much heat has been added to the oceans due to undersea volcanoes?
I was completely unaware of a number of the large submerged eruptions tha Dr. Yin spoke of. That, and a look at how these affect the weather locally or regionally around the eruption sites, might be an interesting topic for further study!
He really covers a lot of information, even in one-off comments. I’m over half way through, as I am trying to listen carefully, at 1.25 X. 1.5 X is a little too fast.
It seems that his estimates of number of volcanoes is larger by a factor of 10 than other estimates. Also, the majority are probably not active at any one time.
Do you have a link for this podcast?
He’s doing good work.
Yes it’s very interesting. Mostly about local, regional and short term temperature and precipitation changes that he can relate to specific eruptions. At the beginning he talks about possible climatic effects of weathering on exposed continental shelves during glacial periods when sea level was up to 130 metres lower than today. No graphics for that part of the video, and I need to watch it again to get exactly what he’s saying.
The figure of 1 million submarine volcanoes is presumably the total of identifiable volcanic seamounts from bathymetric surveys. He shows the number of active submarine volcanoes as 5,000. So relax – 995,000 of the 1,000,000 are extinct! If you think about the lack of erosional processes you would expect in the deep ocean, you could expect that a volcanic seamount would last as long as the oceanic crust that it rests on. Here’s a nice map from NOAA showing the age of oceanic crust. Unlike on land,where erosion will wear an inactive volcano down quite fast.
SR,
I’m sure you’re right, but I would still be extremely interested to see the size and scope of the known active eruptions, and some back-of-the-envelope calculations on just how much heat has been added to the oceans! How Hiroshimas are we talking about!?
Or are dormant. Even inactive volcanoes can have residual heat that isn’t currently being accounted for.
Huge HT eruption.
Main currents around Tonga head south toward the Antarctic.
1 year later a slight increase in Antarctic sea temperature causes a decline in sea ice.
Maybe just a coincident. 😉
Just like the increase in adverse events in VAERS starting in 2021!
Could be except that’d be a twofer – the main effect was in the air temperature as an unseasonably warm mass of air moved in and stayed over part of the continent. If the mechanism was that the warmer water caused the air to warm up then that might be better but not sure of the details.
And then, as the underwater currents continue around the southern polar current, they emerge on the west coast of Peru, to push up the warmth from the El Nino.
Just Warming Up? The Deadly Impact of Rain in Antarctica
just started watching this- it’s a huge place- if it’s raining in one small location, it’s not the end of the world- the presenter is whining that some chicks are suffering- well, that’s Mother Nature for you- been that way forever
It’s also hardly unprecented; some Antarctic coastal areas average about 30 days of rain every year – if gentoo chicks hadn’t learned to deal with rain then the species would’ve died out centuries ago. Just an obvious and easily disproven appeal-to-emotion ploy.
yuh, the guy in the video is soooooo sad!
I didn’t know it ever rains there. Very interesting. Probably mostly on that part of the continent that points towards the tip of South America?
You have to bear in mind a couple of things about this really; Antarctica covers not just the continent itself but many outlying islands which are on the edges of the region and several of these can see temperatures above freezing. The second thing is that the largest breeding ground for the endangered Gentoo penguins is on the Falkland Islands, which gets a lot more than just 30 days of rain a year!
Babylon Bee on all those private jets, scheduled to take elites to the Dubai climate confab, stuck in Munich’s ice and snow:
‘Climate activists’ private planes freeze themselves to runway in powerful protest’
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1730955864935154140
Any know what and why happened to the “Real Clear Energy ” website? For some time now they have gone full warmunist, except for a few token actual honest articles from time to time. They were once pretty reliable about exposing the codswallop of the climatistas. Now, no more. WTF happened?
“The old nihilist left has seized control of the environmental movement and transformed it into a battering ram to destroy economic growth and prosperity in the name of saving the planet“
That’s a quote from Conrad Black in yesterday’s National Post. Lord Black usually expounds verbosely in his opinion pieces, but here he has condensed the entire history and philosophy of climate alarmism into a single epigram.
His lordship said a lot of very negative things about Canada, and renounced his Canadian citizenship when Jean Chretien told him he couldn’t be both a Canadian and a peer. Then he got first hand experience of what he call the US “prosecutocracy” and spent time in a US federal prison, after which he did a 180 degree pivot and started saying all kinds of nice things about Canada. So I’m not totally enamoured of his lordly opinions, but here he has hit the nail on the head.
It’s dangerous to overrate the intelligence of one’s opponents, but much more dangerous to underrate it. These days it’s getting much harder to rationally evaluate published reports on seemingly irrational policies and actions by governments, corporations and NGOs. But a reasonable approach would be to question, as news reporters sometimes did in the past, “who benefits” from this seeming nonsense?
Take Gaza as a small example. Thousands are killed at random, tens of thousands more are injured, one of the most densely populated landscapes on earth is made unliveable,and the only rationale offered is the need to exterminate Hamass? Extermination is the goal alright, but not of Hamass…
The climate change crusade’s purpose is similarly veiled. All of the phenomena threatening our civilization, and perhaps our species, have become critically urgent because of overpopulation., which is depleting our productive soil, our drinkable water, and our breathable air, without any need for help from climate change. And the crusade to eliminate fossil fuels, if successful, will result in the extermination of most of the human race in a very short time, starting with northern North America.
Unfortunately, it will also leave a toxic, devastated landscape without the manpower or technical skills to rehabilitate it.
When almost all of the world’s rulers of government, industry, and culture have clearly agreed on this path, I would suggest Conrad’s Black comments are mere hypocritical posturing. Perhaps he’s no longer sure of his reservation on the lifeboat the ruling elite are surely preparing for themselves, and hopes to re-ingratiate himself with this pathetic smokescreen.
Are you unaware that quite a few nations are, albeit not very vocally, rather concerned about shrinking populations?
Nations don’t have voices, so it’s not clear what they’re concerned about. Those who speak for them are generally politicians and their associates, who are not squeamish about saying whatever will help them get their way.
Certainly many developed countries have aging populations and are desperately looking for attractive ice floes on which to send them into the sunset before they bankrupt the government’s budget.
Covid and the mRNA vaccines were a nice try, but failed. One could consider the “war” in Gaza to be a pilot project with the same aim, but with a more “old school” approach, and with far less risk for the instigators. Lack of water, food, shelter, and medical care, combined with overcrowding is pretty much what we can expect from elimination of the fossil fuel supply.
Lack of manpower is not a concern for those who have city-size yachts and huge, well guarded estates in Patagonia. They would rather preserve the earth for their enjoyment than have to rely on Dr. Strangelove types like Elon Musk to fly them to a miserable existence on Mars.
And these are the people, who, with the help of their “governing” flunkies, decide the “news”, the “science”, the “food” and the “medicine” we’re force-fed.
Am I to assume that you approve of foreign policies that consist of preemptive military strikes on the civilian population of countries with which there is friction? Think of what the world would be like if every nation used that approach.
No. I don’t approve of murder of either civilian or military people, whether individually or en masse, whether anointed as pre-emptive or self-defense by politicians or the result of individual sociopaths. But I disapprove even more when such behavior is hypocritically styled as patriotic or even world-saving.
Nuernberg decreed that the end doesn’t justify the means. But its architects only applied that rule to the losers of the war. By the moral criteria currently applied by Europe and the US to the ongoing massacre in Gaza, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were justified in all the murders they ordered, based on a perceived threat to their nations, no matter how delusional.
Below is an important chart that somehow slipped by EPA’s “consensus” censorship squad. It is a map of all 1,066 weather stations across the United States. The change in the number of hot days for that station are ID’d as increasing (red), stayed the same (blank) or decreasing (blue).
https://co2coalition.org/2023/07/14/epa-few-stations-show-increase-in-hot-days/
It looks to me that the majority of the stations that show an increase are urban areas with increasing population and therefore, increasing UHI effects.
Taking the well-established Community Atmosphere-Biosphere Land Exchange model (CABLE), the team accounted for three physiological factors: How efficiently CO2 moves within a leaf, how plants adjust to changes in environmental temperature, and how they distribute nutrients most economically. Using recent data and studies to build the model, the researchers then threw in the mix the variable of a strong climate-change scenario, to see how much CO2 plants would be taking out of the atmosphere through to the end of the century.
After repeating this experiment with eight versions of the model, the team found that the most complex version, which accounted for all three factors, predicted the most CO2 uptake, around 20% more than the simplest formula.
https://newatlas.com/biology/plants-absorb-more-co2/
I was told that “The Science Is Settled”
High pressure over Iceland guarantees frost and snow in Europe.
Weather in Oymyakon, Russia
Now parts of the Southern Hemisphere will get to experience a real Hunga Tonga summer.
-30 Stratospheric Water Vapor Aura MLS
mls_h2o_qbo_profile_30S.png (1926×1394) (nasa.gov)
The Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) (nasa.gov)
This means a high probability of a sudden warming of the stratosphere in the north, I suppose it could happen in late December.
My thought is, that sense the HT H2O has stratified throughout the entire Stratosphere in both Hemispheres, if we see High Temp Summer records in the Southern Hemisphere, the North will see the same next summer. Eventually (2 more years) it will get broken down by UV and global temps will crash down to pre HT levels. But yes, it could cause a significant breach in the Polar Vortex, or it could stabilize it.
A beautiful science experiment nature has provided about the upper atmospheric radiative properties of rapid and un-precedented changes in water vapor content.
Re: Hunga Tonga
This is just a thought process, not an analysis.
Let’s start with the eruption in Jan 2022 throwing an unprecedented 150 million tons of water as water vapor (WV) into the stratosphere, and increasing levels to 13% above normal. Given that atmospheric/stratospheric water vapor is by far the strongest greenhouse gas and accounts for about 98% of the total worlds greenhouse effect, and given that the Jan injection had been distributed world-wide by March, one would have expected to see significant warming in eg the UAH temp record in Q2 2022, but that didn’t happen. One can surmise that, with the sun in a very low activity state, heat that was blocked by the stratospheric WV was dissipated by evaporation at the sea surface, and cloud formation blocked incoming heat due to elevated levels of cosmic rays. It seems that that atmospheric WV may have continued to accumulate until late 2022, resulting in far above normal rainfall in Southern Australia and southwestern USA (mainly California) through Q1 2023.
Then in Q1 2023 the sun went back into an active state, spiking in May 2023. The Oulu monitor showed a sharp drop in cosmic rays in Dec. 2022, followed by a larger drop in late March/early April 2023. This could have resulted in a major decline in cloud cover, a major increase in sunlight reaching the surface and a resulting rapid rise in surface temperature, as illustrated by Ryan Maue. Both sea and land temperatures rose to levels unprecedented in the modern period. Elevated temperatures persisted through summer and into fall 2023.
Now, recently, solar activity is dropping rapidly, implying a rise in cosmic rays and widespread increase in cloud cover. Over the last 3 months we have seen major and sometimes prolonged precipitation events leading to local, frequently unprecedented, flooding world-wide eg Libya, New England, NE France, the Philippines, Brazil, Afghanistan, most of Africa, etc. It seems that the excess atmospheric WV will have largely dissipated very soon and temperatures may rapidly return to normal. In fact we are seeing incidents of at least brief, unprecedented cold in many places, early snowfall in the Alps and the Rockies, and Russia 80% covered by snow, and unusual cold throughout Scandinavia in late Nov.
I have left El Nino out of all of this. Curiously there is some evidence that major volcanic events in the tropics trigger El Ninos about a year after the eruption, usually ascribed to atmospheric cooling from the volcanic aerosols. Hunga Tonga does not fit that description, but was very major, and has been followed by an El Nino. Strange. El Ninos transport heat from low to high latitudes, and result in further cooling, so 2024 could see significant cooling.
Whither next? – Also, solar cycles usually show spikes of activity 30 – 40 months after commencement, and that spike may or may not be followed by a higher one. This cycle 25 spike peaked 37 months after start. Given that the solar system barycenter (SSB) has switched from moving away from the solar center to moving nearer the solar center during 2022 (mass effect going from pull to push?) this spike might be the only one in cycle 25, and we are likely to be into a prolonged cooling period during the next 3 cycles. At least one scientist has forecast another “little ice age”, but that seems very unlikely given that the current Eddy cycle is nearing its warm peak, and the Bray cycle (see Andy May’s recent posting) is well off the bottom. Both were near bottom for the recent little ice age.
1 comment – “Spencer and Christy of UAH looked into the effects of the Hunga Tonga eruption on lower troposphere temperatures and concluded that its effects were likely to be minor – in the region of 1/100ths of a degree C. They published this in one of their monthly updates and haven’t commented on it since”.
My reply – By itself the event seems to have had a minor effect on temp as they concluded – but it set the stage through a prolonged increase in atmospheric WV to amplify the impact of a change in solar activity. It is the unlikely chain of events that matters. Spencer and Christy may not have yet connected the dots.
The recent record setting UAH global temp anomaly is absolutely because of HT, No way this El-Nino could have caused that, what else could it be? Why is Antarctica setting a record the 2nd year in a row, its not El-Nino, this one is nothing compared to recent ones. Blobs of water Vapor running 20 – 200% higher than average around the Stratosphere is not something one can get data for, so this is not a back of the napkin calculation, so anyone who makes a claim that the HT H2O could not have caused much warming, without any evidence, may as well be whistling dixie.
A strong stratospheric blockage over the Bering Sea (here at 500 hPa in the troposphere) will draw a cold front to the west coast of North America, with heavy rain on the coast and snow in the mountains.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2023/12/06/2000Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-128.14,57.66,888
Story tip – The Times today reports ‘Scientists highlight risk to planet from 26 tipping points’.
The tipping point is one of the most prevalent themes of climate change dogmatism – OK, things don’t appear too bad now but a small change in THIS will lead to VERY BAD THINGS INDEED.
A question about one of them – you know when someone asks you about something and you give the same answer you always give and then you think ‘is that right?’ So is the following right?
Re melting the Antarctic ice sheet (one of the 26 tipping points) – I have always said – this ice sheet has 10 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere (5 times the mass, twice the specific heat capacity). So, if we found a way of taking all the heat in the atmosphere that has warmed it by a bit over a degree in the last 170 years and put it into the Antarctic ice sheet, it would warm it by about 0.1 degC, so from about -53degC to maybe -52.9degC. So, unlikely to melt. A simplistic argument but is this about right?