Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
There is an interesting story from gCaptain – “the world’s leading maritime and offshore website, and we are dedicated to quality news and building an interactive community of maritime professionals.”
News Brief by Kip Hansen — 11 September 2024 — 500 words
There is an interesting story from gCaptain – “the world’s leading maritime and offshore website, and we are dedicated to quality news and building an interactive community of maritime professionals.”
“In a risky move aimed at overcoming Western sanctions Russian LNG producer Novatek dispatched the non-ice class LNG carrier Everest Energy onto the icy waters of the Northern Sea Route. It is the first time a conventional carrier has attempted the route.”
“The voyage represents a further escalation of the risk profile of Arctic shipping. Everest Energy does not hold a permit by Russia’s Arctic permitting authority, the Northern Sea Route Administration. It is also traveling under a suspended Palauan flag with its P&I insurance status unknown.”
If you know the name of a sea going vessel, you can almost always find information on the ship itself, and if you are willing to pay a small fee, its current location. For the Everest Energy we can look to MarineTraffic.com, which reports that, as of 8 days ago, she was underway north of Murmansk. gCaptain reports that she is now in the Kara Sea heading east.
Mid-September is certainly the right time to be attempting this passage in a non-ice classed vessel.
“Everest Energy is part of Russia’s emerging LNG shadow fleet first reported on by gCaptain in early August. It traveled to the Arctic LNG 2 project for a second time last week and departed late on September 6. It has since entered the Kara Sea traveling east towards Asia.”
[to see the animation, click the arrow in the center or in the lower left corner]
That sanctioned LNG is now traveling up and over the length of Russia heading for markets in Asia. There seems there may be substantial ice still in the Eastern Siberian Sea — where ice breakers may be needed.
How do we know that in the back lagoon at Myrmidon Reef there are some massive bolder corals – immovable, representing layer upon layer of calcium carbonate laid down year after year, back more than 300 years.
And so healthy; in various shades of green and blue and, also golden.
How do we know that in the back lagoon at Myrmidon Reef there are some massive bolder corals – immovable, representing layer upon layer of calcium carbonate laid down year after year, back more than 300 years.
And so healthy; in various shades of green and blue and, also golden.
Their health and size are captured in the photographs from the inaugural Great Barrier Reef Megafauna Expedition.
We made it all the way to Myrmidon Reef on Friday 6th September and the three competition photographers – Dave Baxter, Jenn Mayes, and Laura Boderke – got measuring, with their yardsticks.
Dave Baxter photographing his scuba buddy Kate Armstrong beside a large Porites coral colony, at Myrmidon Reef, September 6, 2024Laura Boderke photographing Seb Falk above a mega Porites in the Garden of Porites, Myrmidon Reef, September 6, 2024.
Each of the photographers entered more than one photograph in the first category: Largest Coral Colony.
I measured the height and width of the largest coral colonies from their submissions using ImageJ software and the reference within each photograph – their yardsticks.
Jenn Mayes and Laura Boderke both submitted coral colonies of the same equally large width: 3.6 metres!
ScreenshotSeb Falk above Laura’s submission, showing the ImageJ stats in centimetres.
Jenn Mayes coral colony, however, was significantly taller at 3.0 metres, while Laura Boderke’s coral was squatter at 2.2 metres.
The winning photograph in the category ‘Largest Coral Colony’ by Jenn Mayes with Nadine Huth above a giant Porites coral colony, Myrmidon Reef, September 6, 2024.
So, the winning photograph – the largest coral colony – is awarded to Jenn Mayes. This coral was photographed on the first dive at Myrmidon at a depth of 8 metres. The coral measures 3.6 metres wide and 3.0 metres tall.
Holding the 1 metres scale above the coral colony is her scuba buddy Nadine Huth.
Congratulations!
Jenn Mayes lives on Great Keppel Island. She is a Dive Master, Skipper and Photographer.Nadine Huth was scuba buddy and measure for Jenn Mayes. Nadine is a Master Scuba Diver Trainer, lives in Townsville and is the Operations Manager at Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive.
Acknowledgements
Charter of the MV Sea Esta for the inaugural Megafauna Expedition was made possible by Sydney-based philanthropist Simon Fenwick.
Despite a challenging weather forecast Paul Crocombe skippering the MV Sea Esta got us all the way to Myrmidon Reef – with first mate, Robert Arthur also from Adrenalin Dive.
The photographs of the photographers and their buddies in action measuring – Jenn Mayes and Nadine Huth, Laura Boderke and Sebastian Falk, Dave Baxter and Kate Armstrong – were taken by Stuart Ireland, funded by the Institute of Public Affairs. I was able to help organise this inaugural Megafauna Expedition thanks to the continued financial support of Perth-based philanthropist Bryant Macfie through the IPA.
The measure used by Nadine and Jenn, the one metre long-ruler, was made by John Abbot.
Our megafauna logo is the creation of Ewa Buczkowska.
Stuart Ireland on the bow of MV Sea Esta with Ewa and Kate, anchored not far from the Garden of Porites, Myrmidon Reef, September 6, 2024.Dave Baxter photographing his scuba buddy Kate Armstrong in front of a mega Porites in the Garden of Porites, Myrmidon Reef, September 6, 2024.
A September 9th story published by National Public Radio (NPR) asked the question: Can the most popular red wine in the U.S. endure climate change? The answer is yes, despite the story falsely suggesting the opposite. Data suggests that Napa valley grapes have survived hotter temperatures in the past, and despite over 30 years of modest global warming, grape production has actually increased in the area.
A September 9th story published by National Public Radio (NPR) asked the question: Can the most popular red wine in the U.S. endure climate change? The answer is yes, despite the story falsely suggesting the opposite. Data suggests that Napa valley grapes have survived hotter temperatures in the past, and despite over 30 years of modest global warming, grape production has actually increased in the area.
Here are some excerpts of the article:
But increasingly severe heat waves are taking a toll on the grape variety, especially in late summer during ripening. As temperatures keep rising, the wine industry is slowly confronting a future where Napa may not be the prime cabernet region it once was.
…
The vineyard is already at the hotter northern end of Napa Valley, but the extreme heat in recent years has been a wake-up call. A late-summer heat wave in 2022 hit temperatures just under 120 degrees at the vineyard, she says.
“When it gets that hot, the vines, they’re done,” she says. “They’re going to go dormant, and when that happens, they’re not ripening anymore.”
A one-degree difference on one day spanning 61 years is not indicative of climate change, but simply natural weather variation. Weather does not operate in the same time span as climate. Figure 1 below, plotted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA), displays monthly average high temperature for September. It is clear that that NAPA county has experienced a number of hot Septembers throughout its history. Some were even higher than September 2022 when the entire month is averaged:
Note that many past Septembers had monthly average temperatures greater than or equal to September 2022.
In the table that NOAA provides with the graph plot, they indicate that September 2022 was not unusual at all, ranking 121 out of 129 years for maximum temperature, indicating that eight previous Septembers were hotter:
Also, production numbers for red grapes indicate that their output has not been harmed by recent temperatures. Figure 3, below, tracking grape production in California, with Napa in green, shows a steady increase in in tonnage harvested, not just in the Napa region, but for all regions:
If long-term climate change was in fact detrimental to wine grape production, surely it would show up data informing figure 3, but it doesn’t. Climate change doesn’t come in the form of a single day’s hot temperatures, such as what NPR is conflating, it comes in the form of sustained increases over time.
The data suggests NPR’s Lauren Sommer may have been drinking too much wine when she wrote that story or, more likely, she failed to look into the actual temperature and grape production data before commencing to write a story in the “climate change causes everything bad” narrative; choosing her anecdotes to fit the narrative..
We can add this poorly researched story to the dozens of similar stories that Climate Realism has taken the media to task over faulty or selective reporting. Obviously, wine grapes can and have endured climate change, and the media is just dealing in scary stories without merit. NPR’s reporting on grapes seems more an expression of “sour grapes” at so many alarming climate scare stories having been debunked, rather than factual reporting on any dangers facing grape and wine production.
In 2007, the total value of an exotic form of financial insurance called Credit Default Swap (CDS) reached $67 trillion. This number exceeded the global GDP in that year by about fifteen percent. In other words – someone in the financial markets made a bet greater than the value of everything produced in the world that year.
What were the guys on Wall Street betting on? If certain boxes of financial pyrotechnics called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are going to explode. Betting an amount larger than the world requires a significant degree of certainty on the part of the insurance provider.
Great Wealth Destroyed in Mortgage Crisis by Trusting a Financial Model
In 2007, the total value of an exotic form of financial insurance called Credit Default Swap (CDS) reached $67 trillion. This number exceeded the global GDP in that year by about fifteen percent. In other words – someone in the financial markets made a bet greater than the value of everything produced in the world that year.
What were the guys on Wall Street betting on? If certain boxes of financial pyrotechnics called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are going to explode. Betting an amount larger than the world requires a significant degree of certainty on the part of the insurance provider.
What was this certainty supported by?
A magic formula called the Gaussian Copula Model. The CDO boxes contained the mortgages of millions of Americans, and the funny-named model estimated the joint probability that holders of any two randomly selected mortgages would both default on the mortgage.
The key ingredient in this magic formula was the gamma coefficient, which used historical data to estimate the correlation between mortgage default rates in different parts of the United States. This correlation was quite small for most of the 20th century because there was little reason why mortgages in Florida should be somehow connected to mortgages in California or Washington.
But in the summer of 2006, real estate prices across the United States began to fall, and millions of people found themselves owing more for their homes than they were currently worth. In this situation, many Americans rationally decided to default on their mortgage. So, the number of delinquent mortgages increased dramatically, all at once, across the country.
The gamma coefficient in the magic formula jumped from negligible values towards one and the boxes of CDOs exploded all at once. The financiers – who bet the entire planet’s GDP on this not happening – all lost.
This entire bet, in which a few speculators lost the entire planet, was based on a mathematical model that its users mistook for reality. The financial losses they caused were unpayable, so the only option was for the state to pay for them. Of course, the states didn’t exactly have an extra global GDP either, so they did what they usually do – they added these unpayable debts to the long list of unpayable debts they had made before. A single formula, which has barely 40 characters in the ASCII code, dramatically increased the total debt of the “developed” world by tens of percent of GDP. It has probably been the most expensive formula in the history of mankind.
Covid Panic and Social Devastation from Following an Epidemic Model
After this fiasco, one would assume people would start paying more attention to the predictions of various mathematical models. In fact, the opposite happened. In the fall of 2019, a virus began to spread from Wuhan, China, which was named SARS-CoV-2 after its older siblings. His older siblings were pretty nasty, so at the beginning of 2020, the whole world went into a panic mode.
If the infection fatality rate of the new virus was comparable to its older siblings, civilization might really collapse. And exactly at this moment, many dubious academic characters emerged around the world with their pet mathematical models and began spewing wild predictions into the public space.
Journalists went through the predictions, unerringly picked out only the most apocalyptic ones, and began to recite them in a dramatic voice to bewildered politicians. In the subsequent “fight against the virus,” any critical discussion about the nature of mathematical models, their assumptions, validation, the risk of overfitting, and especially the quantification of uncertainty was completely lost.
Most of the mathematical models that emerged from academia were more or less complex versions of a naive game called SIR. These three letters stand for Susceptible–Infected–Recovered and come from the beginning of the 20th century, when, thanks to the absence of computers, only the simplest differential equations could be solved. SIR models treat people as colored balls that float in a well-mixed container and bump into each other.
When red (infected) and green (susceptible) balls collide, two reds are produced. Each red (infected) turns black (recovered) after some time and stops noticing the others. And that’s all. The model does not even capture space in any way – there are neither cities nor villages. This completely naive model always produces (at most) one wave of contagion, which subsides over time and disappears forever.
And exactly at this moment, the captains of the coronavirus response made the same mistake as the bankers fifteen years ago: They mistook the model for reality. The “experts” were looking at the model that showed a single wave of infections, but in reality, one wave followed another. Instead of drawing the correct conclusion from this discrepancy between model and reality—that these models are useless—they began to fantasize that reality deviates from the models because of the “effects of the interventions” by which they were “managing” the epidemic. There was talk of “premature relaxation” of the measures and other mostly theological concepts. Understandably, there were many opportunists in academia who rushed forward with fabricated articles about the effect of interventions.
Meanwhile, the virus did its thing, ignoring the mathematical models. Few people noticed, but during the entire epidemic, not a single mathematical model succeeded in predicting (at least approximately) the peak of the current wave or the onset of the next wave.
Unlike Gaussian Copula Models, which – besides having a funny name – worked at least when real estate prices were rising, SIR models had no connection to reality from the very beginning. Later, some of their authors started to retrofit the models to match historical data, thus completely confusing the non-mathematical public, which typically does not distinguish between an ex-post fitted model (where real historical data are nicely matched by adjusting the model parameters) and a true ex-ante prediction for the future. As Yogi Berra would have it: It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
While during the financial crisis, misuse of mathematical models brought mostly economic damage, during the epidemic it was no longer just about money. Based on nonsensical models, all kinds of “measures” were taken that damaged many people’s mental or physical health.
Nevertheless, this global loss of judgment had one positive effect: The awareness of the potential harm of mathematical modelling spread from a few academic offices to wide public circles. While a few years ago the concept of a “mathematical model” was shrouded in religious reverence, after three years of the epidemic, public trust in the ability of “experts” to predict anything went to zero.
Moreover, it wasn’t just the models that failed – a large part of the academic and scientific community also failed. Instead of promoting a cautious and sceptical evidence-based approach, they became cheerleaders for many stupidities the policymakers came forward with. The loss of public trust in the contemporary Science, medicine, and its representatives will probably be the most significant consequence of the epidemic.
Demolishing Modern Civilization Because of Climate Model Predictions
Which brings us to other mathematical models, the consequences of which can be much more destructive than everything we have described so far. These are, of course, climate models. The discussion of “global climate change” can be divided into three parts.
1. The real evolution of temperature on our planet. For the last few decades, we have had reasonably accurate and stable direct measurements from many places on the planet. The further we go into the past, the more we have to rely on various temperature reconstruction methods, and the uncertainty grows. Doubts may also arise as to what temperature is actually the subject of the discussion: Temperature is constantly changing in space and time, and it is very important how the individual measurements are combined into some “global” value. Given that a “global temperature” – however defined – is a manifestation of a complex dynamic system that is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, it is quite impossible for it to be constant. So, there are only two possibilities: At every moment since the formation of planet Earth, “global temperature” was either rising or falling. It is generally agreed that there has been an overall warming during the 20th century, although the geographical differences are significantly greater than is normally acknowledged. A more detailed discussion of this point is not the subject of this essay, as it is not directly related to mathematical models.
2. The hypothesis that increase in CO2 concentration drives increase in global temperature. This is a legitimate scientific hypothesis; however, evidence for the hypothesis involves more mathematical modelling than you might think. Therefore, we will address this point in more detail below.
3. The rationality of the various “measures” that politicians and activists propose to prevent global climate change or at least mitigate its effects. Again, this point is not the focus of this essay, but it is important to note that many of the proposed (and sometimes already implemented) climate change “measures” will have orders of magnitude more dramatic consequences than anything we did during the Covid epidemic. So, with this in mind, let’s see how much mathematical modelling we need to support hypothesis 2.
Yes, they are projecting spending more than 100 Trillion US$.
At first glance, there is no need for models because the mechanism by which CO2 heats the planet has been well understood since Joseph Fourier, who first described it. In elementary school textbooks, we draw a picture of a greenhouse with the sun smiling down on it. Short-wave radiation from the sun passes through the glass, heating the interior of the greenhouse, but long-wave radiation (emitted by the heated interior of the greenhouse) cannot escape through the glass, thus keeping the greenhouse warm. Carbon dioxide, dear children, plays a similar role in our atmosphere as the glass in the greenhouse.
This “explanation,” after which the entire greenhouse effect is named, and which we call the “greenhouse effect for kindergarten,” suffers from a small problem: It is completely wrong. The greenhouse keeps warm for a completely different reason. The glass shell prevents convection – warm air cannot rise and carry the heat away. This fact was experimentally verified already at the beginning of the 20th century by building an identical greenhouse but from a material that is transparent to infrared radiation. The difference in temperatures inside the two greenhouses was negligible.
OK, greenhouses are not warm due to greenhouse effect (to appease various fact-checkers, this fact can be found on Wikipedia). But that doesn’t mean that carbon dioxide doesn’t absorb infrared radiation and doesn’t behave in the atmosphere the way we imagined glass in a greenhouse behaved. Carbon dioxide actually does absorb radiation in several wavelength bands. Water vapor, methane, and other gases also have this property. The greenhouse effect (erroneously named after the greenhouse) is a safely proven experimental fact, and without greenhouse gases, the Earth would be considerably colder.
It follows logically that when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the CO2 molecules will capture even more infrared photons, which will therefore not be able to escape into space, and the temperature of the planet will rise further. Most people are satisfied with this explanation and continue to consider the hypothesis from point 2 above as proven. We call this version of the story the “greenhouse effect for philosophical faculties.”
The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference.
The problem is, of course, that there is so much carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere already that no photon with the appropriate frequency has a chance to escape from the atmosphere without being absorbed and re-emitted many times by some greenhouse gas molecule.
A certain increase in the absorption of infrared radiation induced by higher concentration of CO2 can thus only occur at the edges of the respective absorption bands. With this knowledge – which, of course, is not very widespread among politicians and journalists – it is no longer obvious why an increase in the concentration of CO2 should lead to a rise in temperature.
In reality, however, the situation is even more complicated, and it is therefore necessary to come up with another version of the explanation, which we call the “greenhouse effect for science faculties.” This version for adults reads as follows: The process of absorption and re-emission of photons takes place in all layers of the atmosphere, and the atoms of greenhouse gases “pass” photons from one to another until finally one of the photons emitted somewhere in the upper layer of the atmosphere flies off into space. The concentration of greenhouse gases naturally decreases with increasing altitude. So, when we add a little CO2, the altitude from which photons can already escape into space shifts a little higher. And since the higher we go, the colder it is, the photons there emitted carry away less energy, resulting in more energy remaining in the atmosphere, making the planet warmer.
Note that the original version with the smiling sun above the greenhouse got somewhat more complicated. Some people start scratching their heads at this point and wondering if the above explanation is really that clear. When the concentration of CO2 increases, perhaps “cooler” photons escape to space (because the place of their emission moves higher), but won’t more of them escape (because the radius increases)? Shouldn’t there be more warming in the upper atmosphere? Isn’t the temperature inversion important in this explanation? We know that temperature starts to rise again from about 12 kilometers up. Is it really possible to neglect all convection and precipitation in this explanation? We know that these processes transfer enormous amounts of heat. What about positive and negative feedbacks? And so on and so on.
The more you ask, the more you find that the answers are not directly observable but rely on mathematical models. The models contain a number of experimentally (that is, with some error) measured parameters; for example, the spectrum of light absorption in CO2 (and all other greenhouse gases), its dependence on concentration, or a detailed temperature profile of the atmosphere.
This leads us to a radical statement: The hypothesis that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drives an increase in global temperature is not supported by any easily and comprehensibly explainable physical reasoning that would be clear to a person with an ordinary university education in a technical or natural science field. This hypothesis is ultimately supported by mathematical modelling that more or less accurately captures some of the many complicated processes in the atmosphere.
Flows and Feedbacks for Climate Models
However, this casts a completely different light on the whole problem. In the context of the dramatic failures of mathematical modelling in the recent past, the “greenhouse effect” deserves much more attention. We heard the claim that “science is settled” many times during the Covid crisis and many predictions that later turned out to be completely absurd were based on “scientific consensus.”
Almost every important scientific discovery began as a lone voice going against the scientific consensus of that time. Consensus in science does not mean much – science is built on careful falsification of hypotheses using properly conducted experiments and properly evaluated data. The number of past instances of scientific consensus is basically equal to the number of past scientific errors.
Mathematical modelling is a good servant but a bad master. The hypothesis of global climate change caused by the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is certainly interesting and plausible. However, it is definitely not an experimental fact, and it is most inappropriate to censor an open and honest professional debate on this topic. If it turns out that mathematical models were – once again – wrong, it may be too late to undo the damage caused in the name of “combating” climate change.
Beware getting sucked into any model, climate or otherwise.
The Gulf Stream system of warm ocean currents could collapse as early as 2025, a scientific study has warned.
The end of the system, which drives the Atlantic’s currents and determines western Europe’s weather, would likely lead to lower temperatures and catastrophic climate impacts.
The Gulf Stream system of warm ocean currents could collapse as early as 2025, a scientific study has warned.
The end of the system, which drives the Atlantic’s currents and determines western Europe’s weather, would likely lead to lower temperatures and catastrophic climate impacts.
The potential weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in response to anthropogenic forcing, suggested by climate models, is at the forefront of scientific debate. A key AMOC component, the Florida Current (FC), has been measured using submarine cables between Florida and the Bahamas at 27°N nearly continuously since 1982. A decrease in the FC strength could be indicative of the AMOC weakening. Here, we reassess motion-induced voltages measured on a submarine cable and reevaluate the overall trend in the inferred FC transport. We find that the cable record beginning in 2000 requires a correction for the secular change in the geomagnetic field. This correction removes a spurious trend in the record, revealing that the FC has remained remarkably stable. The recomputed AMOC estimates at ~26.5°N result in a significantly weaker negative trend than that which is apparent in the AMOC time series obtained with the uncorrected FC transports.
“Modern wind farms are reliable, safe, state-of-the-art power plants with well-tested technologies that meet approved standards and hundreds of thousands of hours of operating experience,” the U.S. Department of Energy states. Except when they fail under normal conditions–or abnormal ones.
“Modern wind farms are reliable, safe, state-of-the-art power plants with well-tested technologies that meet approved standards and hundreds of thousands of hours of operating experience,” the U.S. Department of Energy states. Except when they fail under normal conditions–or abnormal ones.
“Wind Turbines Destroyed by Typhoon Yagi,” read one recent headline. This (during peak hurricane season 2024) has wind power in the (not-so-good) news. Not only were older turbines destroyed by the 150 mile-per-hour typhoon (Category 4 in hurricane terms); new “more efficient typhoon-resistant versions” were leveled too. For multi-million dollar structures, the risk and the cost of insurance are major issues.
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The U.S. offshore wind industry will be spared–but only because of projects that have been abandoned or delayed. But what would happen if such naked structures are built, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic Coast?
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences research article, “Quantifying the Hurricane Risk to Offshore Wind Turbines” (February 13, 2012), remains relevant today to the energy policy debate. DOE’s recent confident statement, in fact, was pre-refuted by the five scholar authors.
The article’s conclusions follow:
“The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that if the United States is to generate 20% of its electricity from wind, over 50 GW will be required from shallow offshore turbines. Hurricanes are a potential risk to these turbines. Turbine tower buckling has been observed in typhoons, but no offshore wind turbines have yet been built in the United States.”
“We present a probabilistic model to estimate the number of turbines that would be destroyed by hurricanes in an offshore wind farm. We apply this model to estimate the risk to offshore wind farms in four representative locations in the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal waters of the United States. In the most vulnerable areas now being actively considered by developers, nearly half the turbines in a farm are likely to be destroyed in a 20-y period.”
“Typically, wind turbines are designed based on engineering design codes for northern Europe and the North Sea, where nearly all the offshore and coastal wind turbines have been built. These codes specify maximum sustained wind speeds with a 50-y return period of 42.5–51.4 m/s (83–100 knots), lower than high intensity hurricanes.”
“Offshore wind turbines … will be at risk from Atlantic hurricanes…. Wind turbines are vulnerable to hurricanes because the maximum wind speeds in those storms can exceed the design limits of wind turbines. Failure modes can include loss of blades and buckling of the supporting tower.”
“In 2003, a wind farm of seven turbines in Okinawa, Japan was destroyed by typhoon Maemi, and several turbines in China were damaged by typhoon Dujuan. Here we consider only tower buckling, because blades are relatively easy to replace (although their loss can cause other structural damage).”
“There is a very substantial risk that Category 3 and higher hurricanes can destroy half or more of the turbines at some locations.”
Final Comment
Hurricane Category 4 and 5 winds are a threat to existing and even state-of-the-art industrial wind turbines. Category 3 (the baseline of the above article) is a real threat as far as is known. Category 6 (which climate alarmists predict is the future) will make all existing structures in hurricane prone waters susceptible.
The authors stay politically correct by looking to a new future:
Reasonable mitigation measures—increasing the design reference wind load, ensuring that the nacelle can be turned into rapidly changing winds, and building most wind plants in the areas with lower risk—can greatly enhance the probability that offshore wind can help to meet the United States’ electricity needs.
But such would increase cost, reduce output, and/or limit offshore wind below politically desired levels. All aggravate the already bad economics and poor prospects of offshore wind in the U.S.
“… the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that …”
Italy Seeks Reversal of EU’s 2035 Combustion Engine Ban
By Alberto BrambillaSeptember 07, 2024 at 11:45AM EDT
Bloomberg) — Italian officials said the European Union’s plan to ban sales of new internal combustion engines from 2035 should be reviewed.
“The ban must be changed,” Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, on Saturday.
Pichetto Fratin called the decision by the EU “absurd,” and dictated by an “ideological vision” along with a state-controlled approach to policy-making within the bloc. The plan needs changing in order to reflect different market realities amid the European auto industry’s slowdown, he added.
Industry Minister Adolfo Urso also backed a change, urging the incoming European Commission to anticipate the review of the plan to early 2025, from 2026. “In an uncertain landscape which is affecting German automotive industry, clarity is needed to not let the European industry collapse,” Urso said in Cernobbio.
“Europe needs a pragmatic vision, the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that,” he added.
I don’t know how many people would agree that Italy pretty much invented the prestige automobile industry, but they sure played and continue to play a big part in it. The thought they would give up such beauty, such an exquisite quest for perfection, was always a nightmare perpetrated by joyless left wing green ideologues.
Italian prestige automaker Ferrari was an early mover when it came to rejecting EV mandates. Last year they publicly announced their rejection of EV mandates, and in doing so likely saved themselves from sharing the financial pain of their more gullible competitors, most of whom blindly gambled the future financial viability of their businesses on the promises of politicians.
Eager to push its decarbonization agenda before its term expires in January, the Biden administration is speeding up the issuance for permits for solar projects, along with their supporting infrastructure, on millions of acres of federal land across the West.
In an Aug. 28 announcement, the White House said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had identified 31 million acres (over 48,400 square miles) of federal land in 11 states deemed suitable for solar development. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Eager to push its decarbonization agenda before its term expires in January, the Biden administration is speeding up the issuance for permits for solar projects, along with their supporting infrastructure, on millions of acres of federal land across the West.
In an Aug. 28 announcement, the White House said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had identified 31 million acres (over 48,400 square miles) of federal land in 11 states deemed suitable for solar development. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
‘Environmental Justice’
A press release issued by BLM brimmed with enthusiasm for the agency’s plans for solar development, putting it in the context of the White House’s larger energy agenda.
“The proposed Western Solar Plan builds on President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which is working to transition the nation to clean energy, lower energy costs to consumers, create good-paying union jobs, tackle the climate crisis, and advance clean air and environmental justice priorities, with the goal of achieving a 100-percent clean-electricity grid by 2035,” the administration said.
“We’ve been really pushing ourselves to use our executive authority wherever possible to improve the federal permitting process,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said in an interview, Reuters reported.
The accelerated permitting process would also cover renewable-energy infrastructure, such as generation interconnect, or gen-tie lines, defined by SelectROW, a land and right-of-way services company, as “a series of poles, wires, cables, anchors, and foundations connecting nearby power generation sites and substations.” The system transmits an electrical current to a substation before the power reaches the grid to condition it for long-distance transmission to local power infrastructures.
Though not mentioned in the BLM press release, the renewable energy infrastructure could also include battery storage, needed to keep power flowing when the sun doesn’t shine and – in the case of wind turbines – when the wind doesn’t blow.
Washington Has the Final Say
Aside from the enormous amount of land in question, one of the things that makes putting solar and wind projects on federal land so attractive to renewable-energy enthusiasts, in and out of government, is the near absence of resistance by local communities. Decisions to put up wind turbines and solar arrays on public land are made by the feds, not by local governments. State and local officials, along with ordinary citizens, can submit comments to the BLM or rail at public hearings, but the final decision is made in Washington.
But in the world of private ownership of land, things are different. Some farmers and other rural landowners, eager to boost their income, lease out part of their property to solar developers. That, however, has triggered a backlash, with a growing number of counties in rural America throwing up roadblocks to what many see as an invasion by “Big Solar.” “Of the 116 counties implementing bans or impediments to utility-scale solar plants, half did so in 2023 alone, USA Todayreported in February.
Developers are eager to pocket the federal solar power subsidy, known as the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), without which putting up a solar plant makes no financial sense. Their stake in the enterprise, like that of the leasing landowner, is clear. But what about their neighbors? Industrial-scale solar plants contain thousands of solar panels that occupy huge swaths of land, but they degrade after 15 or 20 years and must be replaced. Touted as part of the “clean energy solution,” solar power is anything but clean.
‘Ecological Wasteland’
“Construction of an industrial-scale solar power plant requires removal of trees, brush, and root balls prior to the installation of the arrays, creating an ecological wasteland,” Citizens for Responsible Solar points out. “Grading, pile driving, blasting, electric cable trenching, and road construction will compact the soil, likely delaying agricultural use for years after the project’s end.”
“Uncontrolled runoff of water and topsoil is a well-documented byproduct of industrial solar site development,” the group adds. “This massive increase in watershed sedimentation impacts all downstream rivers and estuaries. Water contamination doesn’t stop with the end of construction. Removal of all trees and deep-rooted plants, along with inadequate stormwater controls, lead to long-term runoff and water contamination issues.”
The environmental case for industrial-scale solar arrays is as weak as that for giant wind turbines, whether onshore or offshore. Both have in common that they are intermittent sources of electricity and thus woefully inadequate for meeting the soaring power demands of our emerging AI-driven, 21st-century industrial base.
Loading up federal lands with millions of inefficient, chemical-laden solar panels, as the Biden-Harris administration plans to do, is throwing taxpayers’ money at a technology that can never deliver.
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