More and Worse Hurricanes? Nope
Climate change is the Left’s “god of the gaps.” It’s the scapegoat for bad governance and the bogeyman used to threaten people to comply with the Left’s people-last agenda. It bares a passing resemblance to ancient pagan civilizations. Like those long-ago primitive peoples, climate change cultists also seek to appease an angry god by sacrificing humanity. They do this via green energy boondoggles that attempt to take away modern necessities like fans and gas stoves and cars, the latter of which actually get people places without a battery recharge lull in the middle.
Climate change is now regularly blamed for an increase in hurricane intensity and frequency. In other words, there are more hurricanes now, and those hurricanes are more often a Category 3 or higher because of humanity’s carbon footprint and use of fossil fuels and aerosols.
This is a lie, plain and simple. Looking at the actual hurricane data, it’s easily disproved.
Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) debunks this particular untruth. A summary NOAA released in May 2023 definitively states: “Several Atlantic hurricane activity metrics show pronounced increases since 1980. However, evidence for any significant trends is much weaker considering trends beginning from the early 20th century, partly due to observed data limitations.” In other words, we have been recording hurricane activity for more than 150 years, and weather patterns, when viewed over that longer period of time, show no anomalous trends in hurricane fluctuation (either number or intensity).
NOAA’s table shows the accumulated data from as early as 1860. When viewed on a larger time scale, the current trend in hurricane frequency shows little to no change since the 1900s and is actually trending slightly downward in terms of intensity.
In the shorter term (1980-2023), it seems like perhaps the U.S. is being pummeled by more hurricanes. But though hurricanes are scary and potentially devastating storms, their occurrences haven’t increased in either of the scary metrics like climate alarmists would have you believe.
In fact, climate change due to humanity — which has been dubbed the “climate emergency” by climate cultists — is being denounced by more and more scientists. For example, 1,609 scientists from around the world, including two Nobel laureates, just signed on to a declaration stating that “there is no climate emergency.” But the ecofascists will continue to push the alarmism, because who cares about actual data? Climate change, after all, has become such a useful political tool that such sane declarations sound unusual and newsworthy.
The alarmists, some politicians, and those with a misanthropic agenda write off hurricanes as a judgment on humanity. But it’s not even really about saving the planet. It’s all about power, their fanatical religion, and appeasing their ever-angry “god of the gaps.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100296-more-and-worse-hurricanes-nope-2023-09-08
*****************************************************Electricity from wind isn’t cheap and it never will be
Politicians should stop endorsing an energy source that isn’t particularly clean or secure, and won’t bring down prices
The MPs who have forced Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on onshore wind power love to repeat the favourite slogan of the wind industry: “wind is cheap”. “Cheap, clean, secure,” says Sir Alok Sharma. “Cheap,” cheeps Ed Miliband.
It conceals the truth. Electricity from wind is not cheap and never will be. The latest auction of rights to build offshore wind farms failed to attract any bids, despite offering higher subsidised prices. That alone indicates that wind is not cheap or getting cheaper.
But the real reason for the lack of interest in the auction is that, for the first time, bidders are not free to walk away from their bids when it suits them. In the past, they could put in low offers, boast about them being cheap, then take the higher market price later. The Government has at last called their bluff, so they are having to admit that electricity prices need to be higher to make wind farms pay.
The cost of subsidising wind is vast. Then add the cost of getting the power from remote wind farms to where people live. And the cost of balancing the grid and backing wind up with gas plants for the times when the wind drops. And the cost of paying wind farms to reduce output on windy days when the grid can’t take it.
If wind power is so cheap, how come energy bills have risen in step with the amount of installed wind power? Says the energy expert John Constable: “We had a huge amount of wind... and it not only did absolutely nothing to protect against the recent gas crisis: it actually made it worse, because the UK’s security of supply now hangs by the single thread of gas, as the sole thermodynamically competent fuel in the system, coal being near absent and nuclear a small fraction.”
And yet the wind industry is complaining that today’s high electricity prices are not high enough, and without more subsidies they will stop building: “The race to the bottom on strike prices incentivised by the current auction process is at odds with the reality of project costs and investment needs, jeopardising deployment targets,” said RenewableUK recently. How does that square with claims it is cheap?
The wind industry’s capital costs were very high before the Ukraine crisis, and now, like everybody else’s, are shooting up still further: the cost of steel, concrete, carbon fibre, copper and all the other ingredients of a wind turbine have risen sharply. Operating costs are rising. Inevitably, the energy generated by wind is expensive.
And, as Constable suggests, wind itself is thermodynamically inferior. Consequently, it takes a huge machine – the building of which requires a lot of energy – to extract a small amount of electricity from randomly fluctuating, low-density wind, which bloweth as and when it listeth. By contrast, in a nuclear plant, it takes a small machine to produce a flood of energy from a dense, “thermodynamically competent” energy source, and on demand.
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Germany's 10GW solar time bomb
Some 15% of Germany’s solar capacity – 10 GW – could suffer from prematurely aging. That equates to up to €2 billion ($2.18 billion) in replacement costs, with only a fraction of the affected panels likely detected thus far.
It is estimated that 10 GW of solar modules in Germany suffer from prematurely aging backsheets, with sites of all sizes affected. pv magazine Germany’s Cornelia Lichner looks at how to detect and repair such defects.
Holger Schultheiß suspected what the installer inspecting his 11-year-old roof-mounted solar system last fall would find. Neighbors had experienced the same problems with inverter failure and strings staying offline.
The rear of the modules displayed checkerboard cracks, some visible from the front. Moisture in the panels caused leakage currents to flow between positive terminals and the ground. The inverter, which measures insulation, does not activate if insulation is too low. Around half the modules in Schultheiß’ 200 kW system were affected – in a year when installers had no time for repairs.
It has long been known some “AAA” backsheet films – made of triple-layer polyamide and widely deployed from 2010 to 2013 – can become brittle and tear. “By now, you would have to see the signs in all modules affected by this, whether they are installed in ground-mounted systems or on roofs,” says Bernhard Weinreich, managing director of HaWe Engineering. Now, younger modules and other foil types are exhibiting similar behavior.
Big problem
Some 15% of Germany’s solar capacity – 10 GW – could be affected. That equates to up to €2 billion ($2.18 billion) in replacement costs, with only a fraction of the affected panels likely detected thus far.
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Australia: Huge new solar farm upsetting country people
There’s nothing but heartbreak and dismay as another renewable energy project looms over regional Australia.
Danish company European Energy has been given approval to build Australia’s largest solar ‘farm’ a mere 70km from the Great Barrier Reef – the same reef that climate scientists weep dramatically over whenever a government grant surfaces.
We say ‘farm’ because nothing grows beneath the scorched Earth veneer of silicon panels.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘captain’s call’ of $443 million to save the Great Barrier Reef is starting to feel like a nasty, expensive joke. If the argument is ‘carbon emissions are killing the reef’ then the associated emissions from Queensland’s ‘green’ projects are nothing short of catastrophic. The reef would be better off with the old coal-fired power stations.
Locals whose communities are sitting in the path of these projects are upset that the current Labor government’s desire to reach Net Zero at any cost – frequently cheered on by the nearest Liberal – is threatening the environment rather than conserving it.
‘They’re not subject to reef regulations,’ complained one local. ‘It’s just out of control. Complete disregard for the reef and the people it destroys.’
This particular solar ‘farm’ is expected to cover an area of roughly 2,700 ha with 2 million solar panels. If the build runs to schedule, it will connect to the grid in 2026. What’s the carbon footprint of these panels? Who knows. If it’s ever completed, it should produce 2.8 TWh/year unless it under-performs due to dust, damage, and bad weather. All things that never happen in Queensland … right?
Community comments from unhappy residents sound eerily similar to those from coastal communities that ‘love’ wind energy but don’t want any turbines in their ocean views. Farmers in the Gladstone region feel the same way about solar farms. They’re pro-renewable energy but only in the ‘right place’ which, presumably, is not their place.
No matter where you put these projects, they destroy the local area.
There is going to be a lot more of them which you can find in the REZ Roadmap. Spread across three regions, Queensland is carpeting itself in over 100 solar farms and 1,000s kms of transmission lines. No more pristine outback wilderness. The CopperString project, for example, is an 840 km transmission line marked as ‘the largest ever economic development project in North Queensland’. Largest ever mess, too.
Despite ‘powering central Queensland’ the project is not removing remote Queensland’s reliance on diesel as ‘these communities are not connected to the main energy grid, decarbonisation of the main grid will not impact them’. Strange. Maybe the Queensland government should have focused on bringing these remote areas into the 19th Century before sending the rest of the state into the Dark Ages.
For a nation that keeps voting for renewable energy, professing a sort of endless love affair with the technology, property values decrease everywhere they are installed. Virtue signalling does not translate to extra dollars on home valuations. Homeowners in the area of this solar farm are furious that they haven’t been offered any compensation for the expected value decrease of 30 per cent.
‘That’s basically it, mate, suffer your jocks. It’s destroying us, destroying our family, destroying the district…’ said one farmer, facing an uncertain future. ‘It’s a beautiful little valley.’
Will it still be beautiful glinting in the sunlight with an artificial hide of silicon?
‘I’ve got a neighbour, he’s in a proper mess. We’re struggling to look after him. It’s just not right.’
They later added, ‘It’s hard to believe in Australia that you can just do this. We’re collateral damage in this rush to Net Zero.’
Unfortunately, once the public ‘vote green’, they issue a social licence and public mandate to the ruling government to do exactly this… Elections have consequences.
The project website has a statement addressing community concerns. ‘How will the project benefit the community?’ It replies: ‘Opportunities will be given for local contractors to supply goods and services, particularly during the construction … rates and rent will be paid to the Gladstone Regional Council and local landowners respectively during the life of the project.’
That resolves everything.(!!)
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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