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.
The BBC Weather app incorrectly forecast winds of 15,000mph in Oxford Circus and temperatures of 404°C in Nottingham amid a countrywide software failure.
The BBC Weather app incorrectly forecast winds of 15,000mph in Oxford Circus and temperatures of 404°C in Nottingham amid a countrywide software failure. The Telegraph has the story.
Wind speeds of 15,345mph were predicted in Oxford Circus, central London, while temperatures of 404°C were forecast in Nottingham.
BBC Weather said it was were working to fix some “data issues” on its app and website, and apologised for the inaccuracy.
Commenting on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, host Nick Robinson said: “If, like me, you’re one of those people who reaches for your phone first thing in the morning to look at the BBC News app or BBC Weather, you might have noticed that there are hurricane force winds in Oxford Circus.
“Let me just reassure you, there aren’t, because I’m in Oxford Circus. I’m afraid there’s just a little problem with the data on the BBC Weather app, which suggests that the wind speed is 350mph – which I think is something of an overestimate – but it is being dealt with, rest assured.”
Co-host Emma Barnett added that Robinson was providing “a live debunking of misinformation”.
It came as Hurricane Milton brought winds of up to 120mph as it made landfall in Florida, causing nearly three million households to lose power.
Matt Taylor, a BBC presenter, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Don’t be alarmed folks – Hurricane Milton hasn’t made it to us here in the U.K.! There’s been a data glitch between our suppliers and the app/online. Folk are working to solve the issue.”
UN Chief António Guterres took to X to herald the arrival of his long-predicted global boiling… okay, that bit wasn’t true. But these days, is it that easy to tell the data glitches from the alarmist propaganda?
The climate alarmist media seems to act as though the year 2024 Northen Hemisphere hurricane season involves nothing but the Atlantic Ocean and apparently is unaware that the Pacific Ocean, which is over twice the size of the Atlantic, is not cooperating with their politically driven propaganda schemes.
The climate alarmist media seems to act as though the year 2024 Northen Hemisphere hurricane season involves nothing but the Atlantic Ocean and apparently is unaware that the Pacific Ocean, which is over twice the size of the Atlantic, is not cooperating with their politically driven propaganda schemes.
It is obvious from this data that the huge Pacific Ocean ACE levels have fallen flat and have no intention in cooperating with the media’s climate alarmist propaganda campaign that is so focused on pushing election year hype based solely on exaggerating events occurring on the Atlantic Ocean while ignoring the rest of the World’s Northern Hemisphere Oceans.
The World is about 75% through the year 2024 hurricane season with the combined Pacific Ocean basins being only about 41% of the to date total average season ACE level with, of course, not a peep from the climate alarmist propaganda media cabal.
The Northern Hemisphere year 2024 ACE levels are only about 70% of where the 30 year average to date profile resides as shown below as of October 9th.
The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane season has an ACE value as of October 9th of 127.6 as shown below and found here.
The North Atlantic Basin archives from Colorado State University show that the 6 highest ever ACE values for this region are as follows: year 1933 at a value of 258.6, 2005 at 245.3, 1926 at 229.6, 2004 at 226.9, 2017 at 224.9 and 1950 at 211.3.
The present North Atlantic ACE value for year 2024 is 127.8 is less than half of the highest ever recorded value in 1933 meaning that year 2024 is not going to set anything close to record ACE value outcome.
Some of the claims being made about the impacts of the year 2024 Atlantic hurricane season are just astounding with an example discussed below dealing with the recent Asheville flood damage.
In an L A Times op-ed piece published on October 9, 2024, the writer bemoans the loss of Asheville as “a climate haven” because of the impact of Hurricane Helene noting:
“But Asheville was considered a climate haven. I’ve always told family members we can never sell our homes there. It is utterly unfathomable that it would be devastatedfirstby one of the worst climate disasters in U.S. history”.
In fact, there are many such media articles that have referred to Asheville as a “climate haven” that somehow is being proclaimed as never having been touched by weather extremes.
This claim is completely false as addressed in the article here and shown below which addresses the Atlantic’s 1916 Major Hurricane which resulted in horrific flood damage to Asheville from this 108 year old major hurricane that has absolutely nothing to do with climate alarmists claims of “climate change”.
But that reality will never be published by the climate alarmist mainstream media – at least not in an election year.
Admiral Barrie says “ security threats from climate change dwarfed those posed by China”. Apparently the land of drought, fire and flood is will be overwhelmed with a one millimeter annual sea level rise. The things that really scare him are not the subs, drones, propaganda programs, embedded spies or hypersonic missiles, what really freaks him out is a half a degree of warming.
Maybe it’s lucky Australia didn’t have to fight a war when Chris Barrie was the Australian Defence Force Chief.
Admiral Barrie says “ security threats from climate change dwarfed those posed by China”. Apparently the land of drought, fire and flood is will be overwhelmed with a one millimeter annual sea level rise. The things that really scare him are not the subs, drones, propaganda programs, embedded spies or hypersonic missiles, what really freaks him out is a half a degree of warming.
So, five or six retired defence types are calling for an “emergency mobilization” and another government bureaucracy — a dedicated office of Climate Threat Intelligence — which if it was intelligent would do what no government has ever done, and audit the UN climate models. They’d discover the models fail on humidity, drought, rain, clouds, the upper troposphere, the Antarctic, the sea ice, the short term, the long term, ocean currents, and practically everything else.
They also want some kind of “early warning system” — in case the cyclones develop Stealth mode perhaps?
A group of former national security leaders says the federal government needs to radically overhaul the way it plans for climate threats, warning that Australia is totally unprepared to deal with the cascading and existential risks that climate change presents to the region and the world.
The starkly worded new report by Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) — which includes former Australian Defence Force chief Chris Barrie — says that climate change presents such a serious security threat that it demands an “emergency mobilisation” in response.
“Today, unimaginable new climate extremes confront us: record-breaking droughts and floods, cruel heatwaves, unstoppable bushfires, broken infrastructure, and coastal inundation. Worse is to come,” it says.
Win wars with wind turbines!
The ASLCG says the federal government must make sharper and faster cuts to emissions, as well as pressing the largest polluters to collaborate on driving down carbon pollution.
The answer to everything is solar panels, for sure.
They’re also calling on the government to establish a new climate threat intelligence branch and early warning system to assess the impacts with “brutal honesty,” while improving planning for the disruptions climate change will bring.
Lord help us, if our military bases can’t handle a drought-surprise in a continent of deserts, or a flood in a land of monsoonal rains, we are already in trouble.
Admiral Barrie said that the latest climate science showed that large parts of northern Australia “could become uninhabitable within 30-40 years, threatening military bases, communities, and the economy.
Hypothetically President Xi would be happy about statements like this:
“All the billions of resources being put into confronting China will not help one iota in dealing with the greatest threat to our future security in Australia and the region — and that is climate disruption.”
If the CCP had funded a group which aimed to reduce Australian industrial competitiveness, our defence capability and also raise electricity prices, it might make similar arguments to ASLCG. Just sayin’…
Let’s look at the comparisons of this years hurricane season, vs 1954, Florida vs the East Coast.
Specifically looking at this aspect and trying to inject some sense into post storm hysteria.
Our comparison: The magnitude of 2 Major New England hits in 11 days vs.2. SAFFIR SIMPSON MAJOR hits in 14 days in Fla, and the bullwhipped storms, Hazel and Helene..
( note post-storm analysis has Milton as a 2.4 on our scale, slightly under my starting point on a major of 2.5).
And does this tell us anything about man-made influences, from climate change to government control of the weather? Because like every hurricane season, the left comes out and weaponizes the storms for their purpose but in this case, other people that I agree with on most things are weaponizing it, claiming it’s evidence of government control. So poor little Joey, the now 69-year-old that was ridiculed as a child for being “blizzard belly” ( I loved snow and the weather and was fat) is now finding himself getting hit from both sides because of my insistence there was nothing unnatural about any of this.
So let us review and keep in mind that no co2 or use of government control was used in me making these forecasts.
1). On CFACT we showed you this on December 7,2023 predicting a hurricane season from hell impact-wise on the US coast. The tracks of the storms speak loudly as to its accuracy.
On the impact scoreboard which totals intensity on our power and impact scale at a storm’s closest approach to a coastline, this year has 15 points, tied for 3rd with 2004 and behind 2005 with 18.6 and 2020 with 20. Milton btw proved my point about Saffir Simpson as people were freaking out over a storm that was only 100 miles wide when it was a cat 5. When it hit the coast it was over 300 miles wide but weaker at the center. So our scale communicates that better. But alas I don’t believe in man-made climate change so until the idea comes from the government where they can get credit, The scale change isn’t going to happen. So we have the above on Dec 7. Remember this is showing where we thought they would go. Last year, with the exception Idalia, another storm that fell apart, that area was virtually empty as our forecast had for last year also.
So we get to the second half of the season and to get you ready, we put this out Sept 5.
I have set up this timeline because who said what and when is important in establishing credibility.I live in a world where until the event,or close, the media is clueless and then comes out and spouts things that show they were ignorant of the setup for such an event like this and know nothing about events like this in the past.
So at the risk of sounding like a pompous arse, you should know this was set up. I have to do it, it is how I make a living getting my clients ready before its a known That gives them a leg up.
So if this was this good, just think how good I would have been if I factored in CO2 input or got control of the CIA joystick that controls the weather (SUPER SARCASM).
So the Poll question was on twitter:
So that is a good sign, that this poll reveals that people understand 2 major hurricanes hitting further north within 11 days is more impressive than 2 major hurricanes hitting in 14 days ( one of them on our scale, Milton was slightly below major at landfall and the wind reports back that up)in Florida) further south.
While I can set up a comparison to many events, I am going to use the 1954 season on the East Coast and this year.
How are they in the same genre to compare?
1) Major hits in close to each other
2). Upper low Capture of Hazel and Helene
this season in FLA
The East Coast Season 1954
Helene pre/post landfall map and 500 mb
Hazel set up
1 :30 am Oct 15,1954
1:30 pm
inland about the same amount of time as Helene when she was blasting the Carolinas . NYC had its highest wind gust ever at 113 mph shortly after.
Keep in mind Hazel was 3 weeks later and further northeast and as strong or stronger than Helene.
Think about that. While we saw the heavy and well-forecasted rains in the Carolinas ( 3 days before I termed it a flood of biblical proportions on the way, but this administration was completely asleep at the switch. Their own hurricane center was on top of it) with Helene, NYC highest wind on record was with a storm inland for 10 hours passing 150 miles to their west. Imagine if that happened today.
1:30 am Oct 16
So which is more extreme as far as a deviation from what is expected?
I am not going to say either though I am partial to 54. ( Gee I wonder why. I was put to bed, not with the story of the 3 little bears but the 3 big hurricanes of 54 ). But only if 54, and other years where the weather went wild, did not occur, can you conclude that something nefarious, be it climate change or government control of the weather, can be the cause.
Nothing has happened that simply looking at what has happened before would make you think anything different. IMO. Only if you don’t know about what has happened before do you believe what is happening now is something other than nature is responsible for. I am not talking about modifying or mitigating the situation, I am talking about control, like creating and steering a hurricane. A guy asked me if I had read all the CIA reports on this, I asked him if he had looked at over 50k Weather maps on the Weather Prediction Center site of past events.
Here, go back and look at all these maps on this site and you will see that the weather has been wilder:
And it should be wilder. I ask myself why it is not. It does me no good to have nice weather for my business. I should be all in with this stuff. That is where the money is.
I can show hundreds of maps of crazy tracks Or rapid deepeners. There is a vast difference between seeding clouds or trying to disrupt the eyewall of a powerful storm like project stormfury ( which I advocate for when they are coming to the coast, look how fast Milton’s eye fell apart in this case naturally).. The idea is that the stronger and more perfect the storm the more introducing a process to change the condensation processes could influence the storm. Like my geothermal ideas, which add to my resistance against CO2 warming the planet, I have a lot of people on my side that vehemently disagree with me.
Which is fine with me, tho it may not be to them as I have heard. Geez I thought it was the left that demands lock step.
Go do the work. I spend thousands of hours peering over maps of the past ( I love it, and I realize to most it would be long and boring) If you do that, if you see something coming now, you have an idea. And that is my ask of you. Go back, day by day from the 1800s and look at what has happened.
It’s how I picked out that Texas Freeze 9 days out. I looked at the maps of 1899 and simply matched it up. And guess what, A lot of times nothing happens to the extreme. More often than not, the weather falls short. But there are times when ordinary events combined produce the extraordinary.
BTW that. Vertical Velocity pattern of shut down i showed you in the blog on the why’s of the season, that shut us down in mid-season, is here this week into next.
however the end of the month into November it is back for one last round. So the end game looks like its from the Caribbean and then perhaps up into the impact areas again.
I have not yet issued an “Attention Governor DeSantis” watch
Remember the Wise Guys of Weather on Am 970 the Answer in NYC. Sunday 5 pm. Streaming live and then on a podcast. I hope to demystify a lot of this, and have some fun doing it.
Major shifts have been taking place in the race to commercialize nuclear fusion, but one high school senior has shaken the fusion world by building a nuclear fusion reactor as a high school science project.
Major shifts have been taking place in the race to commercialize nuclear fusion, but one high school senior has shaken the fusion world by building a nuclear fusion reactor as a high school science project.
Cesare Mencarini, an Italian studying in the United Kingdom, taught himself to code and how to work with electrical systems. He searched YouTube and the Internet and built a custom-made reactor that was controlled and hosted from a Raspberry Pi system. His reactor achieved plasma, the fourth state of matter, a crucial step in the fusion process, by effectively using high voltage to heat atoms to the required temperatures.
His work has earned him a college scholarship, where he will be working on larger reactors. Mencarini explains that “I had to adapt the design to fit in with the budget and my aim is to encourage other young people to develop ideas and think about how we can improve our world and be innovative.”
Mencarini’s success should be an inspiration to the thousands of scientists affiliated with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), where, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the CERN Council in June 2022 decided to end cooperation with Russia, affecting 500 scientists affiliated with Russian institutions.
While about 100 of the Russian-affiliated scientists have found other sponsorship and will continue working with CERN, the Russian government withdrew US$46.8 million from the financing of the upgrading of CERN’s large hadron collider and will no longer supply 4.6% of the LHC’s experimental budget.
On another front, CERN last November signed an agreement with members of EUROfusion, a European consortium of fusion research laboratories, to facilitate collaboration on development of innovative technologies for future colliders and nuclear fusion reactors. EUROfusion’s laboratories are creating a technical design of a fusion demonstration power plant (DEMO) to succeed ITER (the International Fusion Reactor).
ITER, one may recall, was launched in 1985 by a consortium including China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, the United States, and the European Union and supported by the European Atomic Energy Community (which itself was created by the Euratom Treaty in 1957). Its mission was to bring fusion to a point where a demonstration fusion reactor could be designed.
Construction of the ITER tokamak began in 2010, and in May 200 the 1,250-tonne cryostat base was installed at the 42-hectare site. The latest news from ITER is a plan to build a more complete machine than was initially planned, with achievement of full magnetic energy by 2036 and the start of the deuterium-tritium operation phase by 2039. Expect new information at the ITER Council meeting this November.
While the European efforts are slowing down, the hunt for nuclear fusion is escalating in the United States, and notably in Wisconsin.
At the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, a significant advancement in fusion ignition was achieved in December 2022 using 192 lasers concentrated on a minuscule gold cylinder consisting of a diamond capsule loaded with deuterium and tritium. At one moment, hydrogen atoms integrated into helium, emitting energy of 3.15Mj that exceeded the 2.05Mj contribution from the lasers.
The success of this experiment symbolized a model change in the nuclear energy segment. It also prompted renewed curiosity as well as financing in fusion energy, which promises practically unlimited power with no safety hazards with little if any waste issues. The challenge remains to sustain the fragile balance of conditions essential to fusion.
On another front, MIT researchers just published results of a study that addressed the problem of building tokamats that can withstand the incredibly hot plasma. Senior researcher Ju Li described the method for drawing away problematic helium atoms that can wreak havoc on the tokamak’s inner walls by dispersing iron silicate into the bulk metal.
A July survey by the Fusion Industry Association reported that among 45 private fusion companies worldwide, 25 were headquartered in the United States. Perhaps the biggest news on the U.S. fusion front is emerging from three of these firms that were spun out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison – Realta Fusion, Type One Energy, and SHINE Technologies.
On July 15, Realta Fusion scientist Elliot Claveau reported that his team had generated a beam of superheated plasma for the first time at the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM) project being conducted at the University of Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory in Stoughton.
WHAM was created in 2020 as a partnership between UW-Madison, MIT, and the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, who had received $10 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as funding support from UW-Madison. WHAM is now operating as a public-private partnership between UW-Madison and Realta Fusion, which was spun out of the university.
Just one week later, scientists at SHINE Technologies in Janesville showcased their FLARE™, billed as the world’s most powerful continuous fusion neutron system at the IEEE Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects Conference and at the Technology of Fusion Energy Meeting (TOFE). FLARE™, an acronym for Fusion Linear Accelerator for Radiation Effects, produced 50 trillion nuclear fusion neutrons per second.
FLARE™ can complete tests in hours that heretofore took weeks. This allows for shorter development cycles and faster iteration in developing radiation-hardened components. As a result, the Department of Defense will be able to much more quickly determine how much radiation our defense systems and withstand before they are disrupted or destroyed.
The third ring came on July 30, when Wisconsin-born Type One Energy, which recently relocated to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, announced it had raised over $82 million in seed funding for a fusion prototype based on work of scientists at its Madison office. Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the extension, with Australia-based Foxglove Ventures and New Zealand-based GD1 also contributing.
Type One’s reactor is a stellarator, whose shape has been called a cronut – a circle that is warped and bulging. The shape is defined by magnets that exert the specially shaped field that confines the superheated plasma necessary for fusion reactions. The stellarator requires a tremendous amount of computing power to fine-tune the design to make it work. Type One was spun out of the University of Wisconsin, which is also operating a stellarator.
CEO Christofer Mowry says the next step is finalizing the core reactor design, then building a prototype reactor called Infinity One as well as designing a pilot reactor by 2030. According to Mowry, “When Infinity One operates and we test it, it’s actually verifying the key design aspects of the pilot plant.”
Wisconsin’s presence in the nuclear fusion industry began with the founding in 1971 of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Realta’s Furlong says, “There’s this huge potential to marry Wisconsin’s manufacturing capabilities with its research capabilities and create this new industry which could just generate a huge economic engine for the state.”
Furlong added, “What Detroit was for the global automobile industry in the 1950s, what Houston is today in the global oil and gas sector … I can see Wisconsin being the global hub for the fusion industry in the 21st Century.” And SHINE CEO Greg Piefer says, “I think the thing we all agree on … is that an advanced society will make its energy from fusion.”
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Mad Miliband want to spend billions more of our money to plug the intermittency of so-called cheap renewables!
Loch Ness faces monster hydro scheme after Energy Secretary offers developers support for projects
A string of giant dams are to be built across Britain’s mountain landscapes after Ed Miliband offered developers billions of pounds in potential support for the projects.
In a bid to strengthen the country’s energy storage capabilities, the Energy Secretary has approved a scheme that will provide a financial safety net for dam developers.
The eventual cost of supporting such projects will be added to consumer bills, with Mr Miliband introducing the backstop to help developers make a profit.
The technology behind the dams relies on pumped storage hydropower (PSH), which uses two reservoirs at different elevations.
Water is pumped into the upper lake when there is surplus cheap power and then released during shortages to spin turbines and generate electricity.
Such systems are highly controversial because while they can provide green energy, they also require altering entire landscapes, often in treasured rural or wild areas.
Energy Minister Michael Shanks said: “We need to increase our ability to store energy for when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.
The UK already has four pumped hydropower schemes – two in Scotland and two in Wales. The largest is at Dinorwig in Wales, opened in 1984 in Snowdonia National Park.
The power station was built inside Elidir Fawr mountain using a reservoir built 2,000 feet above sea level and linked to a second lake 1,700 feet lower down.
Mr Miliband and Mr Shanks want to unleash many other schemes over the next two decades, meaning many new dams will be built across mountainous regions in Britain.
Under the so-called cap and floor funding scheme, developers will have a guaranteed minimum income in return for a limit on revenues.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said deploying 20 gigawatts of long-term energy storage – an eight-fold expansion – could save the electricity system £24bn by 2050.
This, they claimed, would “reduce household energy bills as additional cheaper renewable energy would be available to meet demand at peak times”.
Several hydro projects, targeting up to a dozen lochs, are already at the planning stage in Scotland.
A number of schemes are centred around Loch Ness, where critics say the projects will damage the local environment.
Brian Shaw, river director of the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, said: “In places such as Loch Ness, this scale of pump storage hydro will overrun natural ecological processes, destroy the loch and surrounding ecosystems’ biodiversity, and devalue one of Scotland’s premier tourism destinations, all in the quest for not-so-cheap electricity.”
One of the largest is Earba, near Dalwhinnie, on the Ardverikie Estate, whose stately home was used for filming TV series including The Crown and Monarch of the Glen.
Davie Black, of Mountaineering Scotland, which represents climbers and hikers, said such projects were “incursions into the wild qualities of our hill country”.
Kate Gilmartin, chief executive of the British Hydropower Association, the industry trade body, said dams and lakes were among the least intrusive of renewable energy technologies.
She said: “The biggest winners are energy consumers. We are currently paying about £62m a day to curtail wind as we haven’t got sufficient capacity across the grid to move it from Scotland to England.
How the DESNZ can claim that spending billions of pounds could save the electricity system £24bn by 2050 defies logic. (The figure of course is not annual, which they craftily do not reveal, and simply means that the enormous costs of the renewable agenda won’t be quite as steep).
As for Kate Gilmartin’s claim that we are paying £62m a day to curtail wind, I suggest she buys a new abacus, as that works out at £22bn a year!
There is another fundamental issue here as well. As most of this pumped storage will be in the Scottish Highlands, how the hell will we get the power to the south where it is actually needed. We already don’t have enough transmission capacity from Scotland to England, which gets most of its wind power from the North Sea via cables across the East Coast. When the wind does not blow, we can’t just tap into a hydro power station in Inverness, as there is not the transmission network installed to carry it.
And how much difference will these new projects make?
Dinorwig, the largest at the moment, can store just 9.1 GWh. In winter this would only be enough to keep the grid going for maybe 10 minutes.
DESNZ want an eight-fold increase in storage, so that might give us enough to last for a couple of hours. This is a drop in the ocean, when we are without wind power for weeks at a time.
The hydro industry body will, of course, be delighted at the prospect of billions in subsidies.
We have been assured for years that renewable energy is cheap. That was always a lie, as subsidies are now costing bill payers over £10bn a year. But we were never told about all of the extra costs, which will be entailed.
The National Grid already wants £100bn over the next ten years to upgrade the grid to cope with renewables. Then we had Miliband’s potty plan to litter the country with flywheels. Now billions more are demanded for his latest hare brained scheme.
The basis of the emotion driven narrative that there is an existential threat of climate change is fueled by endless articles and opinion pieces in the mass media that conflate every extreme weather event with climate change.
The basis of the emotion driven narrative that there is an existential threat of climate change is fueled by endless articles and opinion pieces in the mass media that conflate every extreme weather event with climate change. Remember climate is what you expect, and weather is what you get. This article describes how the hucksters incorrectly make the extreme weather devastation caused when a rare weather pattern caused the storm to stall into an example of worsening climate change when a hurricane in hurricane alley during the hurricane season occurred.
Good Energy Hype
I was prompted to write this post when I came across an opinion piece in the LA Times: Helene destroyed my hometown. I don’t want climate change stories of false hope by Anna Jane Joyner. She is the founder and chief executive of the “story support nonprofit” Good Energy. Last March I did an article about Irina Slaw’s article “Burn, Hollywood, burn” where Slav called out the blatant indoctrination and propaganda associated Good Energy – “Story support for the age of climate change”.
After noting that she had been checking on the weather and evacuation plans while preparing to board a plane on her way to NYC Climate Week Joyner writes:
The hurricane didn’t come for my partner and me this time, but it destroyed my hometown in the mountains of North Carolina. I’ve spent 20 years working on climate and I live between Los Angeles and the Gulf Coast of Alabama, where I’ve reckoned with the likelihood of one day losing our home. I’ve also accepted that worsening fires, droughts and heat waves could make Southern California unlivable. But Asheville was considered a climate haven. I’ve always told family members we can never sell our homes there. It is utterly unfathomable that it would be devastated first by one of the worst climate disasters in U.S. history. Helene showed us nowhere is safe.
Joyner went on to provide descriptions of the destruction caused by storm. This was followed by her attempt to link the storm to climate change and her climate change false hope argument:
Scientists estimate that climate change increased Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by up to 50% in parts of the Carolinas and Georgia, dumping more than 40 trillion gallons of water. At NYC Climate Week, the annual awareness event held alongside the U.N. General Assembly, the disconnect from this shattering reality was surreal. There were fancy parties, cheerful sun imagery and giant signs reading “HOPE.” The dominant theme was: We can solve this! We need to tell hopeful climate stories! But there’s no “solving” a hurricane wiping out western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the sea. Only focusing on optimism is like telling a cancer patient that everything will be OK if they just stay positive. At best, it comes across as out of touch; at worst, it feels callous. Yes, we can still prevent the worst impacts and must demand our governments scale solutions and act urgently, but we cannot minimize the horrors unfolding now, or that it will get worse in the coming years.
If you thought the hyperbole could not get worse I have bad news:
Fossil fuel executives have known since the 1970s that burning oil, coal and gas would cause escalating climate catastrophes and worldwide suffering. Yet they lied, sacrificed our safety for their greed and just unleashed an apocalypse on my hometown. Their actions will condemn children today to a planet that’s more hell than Earth by the end of the century if we don’t stop them. It isn’t just a tragedy; it’s a crime against humanity.
Sorry to subject you to that. Joyner goes on to argue that more stories are needed and I am sure she will be happy to provide them to anyone with a deep wallet.
What’s happening in North Carolina doesn’t feel real. I have no emotional framework for this, no story to help me. Right now, what I desperately need are authentic stories that help us figure out how to be human in this changing world, to face this overwhelming crisis with bravery. Stories that help us navigate our very understandable fear, anxiety, grief, despair, uncertainty and anger in a way that allows us to feel seen. Stories that make us laugh — not in ignoring our reality, but in the midst of it — and stories that remind us there’s still so much beauty here to fight for. That capture how, in the living nightmare of climate disasters, people demonstrate extraordinary kindness and creativity, as they’re doing in Asheville and Black Mountain at this very moment. And we need stories that expose the guilt of the fossil fuel industry.
Reality
In the real world, her pessimism is unwarranted. A quick review of recent articles at Watts Up With That demonstrates that the devastation of the remnants of Helene in the Asheville region was an extreme weather event and not evidence of climate change.
Paul Homewood did a nice summary of the data for Hurricane Helene that was highlighted here. His description of the Asheville rain notes:
In Asheville, North Carolina, a total of 13.98 inches (35.52 centimeters) of rain fell from September 25 to 27, according to National Weather Service records. The storm swamped neighborhoods, damaged roads, caused landslides, knocked out electricity and cell service, and forced many residents to evacuate to temporary shelters. Record flood crests were observed on multiple rivers in the state. Flooding was widespread across the southern Appalachians; preliminary rainfall totals neared or exceeded 10 inches (25 centimeters) in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Note that the 14 inches of rain occurred over three days. Joyner referenced a statement that climate change increased Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by up to 50% in parts of the Carolinas and Georgia. I found that the reference stated that “In one provisional rapid attribution statement, a trio of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said the rainfall over the 24 hours Helene moved through was made ‘up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.’” Comparing the 24 hours in this reference to the three-day storm total makes it clear that the storm motion was a major factor in the amount of rain and that the attribution analysis got that part wrong.
Charles Rotter’s article on the observations of Steve McIntyre and Andy Revkin about the real lessons to be learned from the storm completes the destruction of the arguments in Joyner’s op-ed. McIntyre explains that flood control dams were planned for some of the rivers that had devastating floods but were not built. Clearly there are negative consequences of building dams and positive benefits associated with keeping the rivers open. But if you want to prevent flood damage when you keep the rivers free of dams then you should take prudent actions. Revkin points out that was not the case:
Revkin also described a 1960 report “Floods on French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers around Asheville” explaining that this storm was not unexpected for experts:
Andy reported that the report stated that developments around Asheville “would cause these great floods of the past to be higher if they occurred again. Land fills and buildings in the flood plain and the many bridges across the streams have seriously reduced flood flow capacity.” “On the French Broad River a flood of the same discharge as the 1916 flood would today be 3 to 4 feet; higher between Pearson Bridge and West Asheville Viaduct than the actual flood elevation. On the Swannanoa River, a repetition of the 1916 flood would be up to 2. 5 feet higher today at Biltmore and up to 15 feet higher upstream from the Recreation Park dam.”
Anthony Watts described a couple of articles from Climate Realism that debunked the media claims about climate change effects on the storm in general. He shows that the claims of climate change worsening storms such as Helene just don’t hold up. Of particular note, is the reference to a massive flood in Asheville in 1916. Matthew Wielicki provides a good comparison of this storm and the 1916 storm. He found that the 1916 flood peaked at 23 feet. In this storm the peak was 24.7 feet.
Note that the 1960 report projected that if there was another 1916 storm that the flood would be between 3 to 4 higher because of development. Hurricane Helene flood waters peaked at less than two feet higher than the 1916 storm. The observed increase in the peak flood was due to development and not climate change.
Conclusion
Joyner concluded her article:
I need help making meaning of all this, and stories have always been how humans make sense of our world. But as I grieve an unimaginable loss, the last thing I want are optimistic stories about hope. As climate scientist Kate Marvel says: “We need courage, not hope, to face climate change.”
I find it difficult to sympathize with the grief of someone who provides Hollywood “story support for the age of climate change” because reality paints a different picture of the world. The data show that Helene was a rather typical hurricane in hurricane alley that occurred in the hurricane season. Devastating floods in Asheville have occurred before and evidence suggests that the greater flood peak was probably due to development. There is nothing to suggest that this is anything, but an extreme weather event. It certainly is no evidence of any kind of worsening climate change impacts.
In my opinion, the worst part of this is that the usual suspects are using this tragedy to call for US reductions in fossil fuel to prevent this from happening again. Putting aside the lack of a causal link between GHG emissions and specific weather events, the relative magnitude of US and global emissions and the rate of change of those emissions, the indisputable fact is that storms causing this kind of devastation have happened before and will happen again whatever is done to mitigate emissions. If nothing is done to adapt to this observed extreme weather, then the tragedy will inevitably reoccur. The monomaniacal emphasis on emission reductions is not in the best interests of society.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
The wind and solar ‘industries’ were built on lies and run on subsidies. The electricity that the occasionally produce has no commercial value, simply because it can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it. And because their output can’t be controlled, producers get paid a fortune to produce nothing at all to prevent the instability they generate from completely destroying the grid.
The wind and solar ‘industries’ were built on lies and run on subsidies. The electricity that the occasionally produce has no commercial value, simply because it can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it. And because their output can’t be controlled, producers get paid a fortune to produce nothing at all to prevent the instability they generate from completely destroying the grid.
As wind and solar capacity increases, the story has had to shift to cover the ‘big intermittency’ problem.
Lies about wind and solar being perfect compliments, and about the wind always blowing somewhere, have been replaced with lies about giant batteries filling the gaps on calm nights – when wind and solar producing absolutely nothing at all.
In the piece below, David Gardner tackles the latter with some hard numbers.
Batteries not included The Spectator David Gardner 12 September 2024
‘The illusory truth effect (also known as the illusion of truth effect, validity effect, truth effect, or the reiteration effect) is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.’ – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In plain English, if you repeat a lie often enough, most people will eventually accept it as the truth. Here are a few you may have heard.
‘Renewables are the cheapest form of energy.’ ‘Nuclear energy is up to six times more expensive than renewable energy.’
It is too difficult for the average voter to fact-check these statements, so they are accepted as truth with a bit of help from the media.
Recently, however, the media have begun to add the words ‘and batteries’ when reporting on new renewable energy developments. No fanfare, they just slip it in!
Battery storage units, which are used to maintain supply when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, are a critical part of the renewable energy industry. They are used to balance the grid and cover the gaps during wind droughts, storms, hail damage, fire, cyclones, or mechanical failure.
There is a plan for OECD countries to cease all coal-fired electricity generation by 2030 or 2040 at the latest. The push to increase renewables seven-fold between 2023 and 2050 is on in spades.
SOURCE – CLEAN ENERGY COUNCIL AUSTRALIA
Proponents of the ‘Climate Crisis’ have recently realised that the closure of coal and gas generation equipment is likely to lead to an unstable energy grid, intermittent power, and potential blackouts. To alleviate this problem, there is a concerted effort to encourage investment in ‘The Big Battery’. Within this battery world, there are currently around 30 projects in operation or under construction. These projects will, when completed, provide 5 Gigawatts of clean power for a total of two hours without a recharge.
Australia’s East Coast peak daily power consumption is currently around 65 Gigawatts.
Yes, 65 Gigawatts, not 5 Gigawatts…
Inferred, but not said, is the desire to aim for battery storage equal to 65 Gigawatts so that it can replace the current coal and gas-fired generators. The trouble is, the current predictions (with no gas or coal, and charging 15 million EVs) are for our power usage to increase to over 160 Gigawatts by 2050.
In February of this year, in Victoria, six high-voltage power line towers were brought down by a storm with 120 km/hour winds. 500,000 homes were left without power. This continued for many days. Once isolated, extra power was brought online to replace the loss. This extra power was mainly sourced from interstate gas and coal generators.
Consider these facts:
Commercial solar panels are less than 20 per cent efficient on an annual basis. Their usable lifespan is 20 years [Note to David: try half that, their efficiency and output diminishes rapidly after a decade in service].
A wind turbine (onshore) is around 30 per cent efficient on an annual basis. Their usable lifespan is 25 years [Note to David: try half that, after 12 years it often becomes uneconomic to repair them and they are completely replaced]. Wind tolerance of more than 12 km/hour and less than 90 km/hour. Ideal 60 km/hour.
A big battery capable of storing and supplying 700 Megawatts for two hours is currently costs around $1.1 billion to build with a lifespan of 15 years [Note to Dave: there is no evidence to support that. Large scale batteries have been in service for less than 8 years – the big battery in SA came into service in 2018, it is highly unlikely to be operating at the same level in 2033].
A big battery capable of grid supply for a day, or even longer (say 4-5 days) has not been invented yet.
A nuclear generator (Example – APR1400, four built in UAE) can produce 1,400 Megawatts of clean power 24 hours per day for over 80 years with an annual efficiency of over 95 per cent. The cost of this generator is $9.5 billion.
A big battery capable of storing/delivering 1,400 Megawatts of continuous power for five days is estimated to cost $168 billion – if it could be built!
To compete with a nuclear reactor, over an 80-year period wind and solar would be replaced four times for (solar) and three and a half times for (wind), at the then current day costs.
The batteries would need to be replaced every 15 years, which is over five times in the same period. This is the most expensive item of a green energy transition.
Compare a 1,400 Megawatt wind and solar system, and batteries, with a nuclear generator, over 20 years.
Total asset cost for renewables is $232.25 billion.
Total asset cost for nuclear is $2.375 billion.
When you take into account all these additional factors, renewables are a trillion dollar disaster.
In the commercial world, all assets are amortised over their expected life-span. No board of directors would approve the above costs (some unknown) without calling for an extensive cost/analysis together with a ‘return on investment’ projection.
If it was their money, rather than ours, the entire project would be thrown out as nothing more than an illusion. The Spectator
If carbon capture and storage (CCS) was fracking for gas, it would have been banned years ago. Both processes can cause earth tremors – equivalent to a man falling off a chair in the case of fracking, but potentially much greater with carbon capture. This is because it involves millions of tonnes of pressurised carbon dioxide being pumped into rock cavities possibly compromised by prior drilling holes. Waste water from pressurised oil and gas projects has been known to escape from degraded drill plugs causing geysers 100-foot high. Such a catastrophe on land with millions of tonnes of CO2 waiting to escape is not a good prospect.
If carbon capture and storage (CCS) was fracking for gas, it would have been banned years ago. Both processes can cause earth tremors – equivalent to a man falling off a chair in the case of fracking, but potentially much greater with carbon capture. This is because it involves millions of tonnes of pressurised carbon dioxide being pumped into rock cavities possibly compromised by prior drilling holes. Waste water from pressurised oil and gas projects has been known to escape from degraded drill plugs causing geysers 100-foot high. Such a catastrophe on land with millions of tonnes of CO2 waiting to escape is not a good prospect. On August 21st, 1986 the sudden high pressure release of magmatic CO2 from the bed of Lake Nyos in Cameroon led to heavier-than-air CO2 suffocating all living beings in the surrounding villages including 1,746 people.
CCS divides a green movement riven with disagreements as its climate crisis grift starts to fall apart in the face of reality. Capturing CO2 and burying it in the ground has been described by one influential green think tank as a “colossal waste of money”. Wasting taxpayers’ money is not something most greens lose sleep over, but they dislike CCS because it allows a role, albeit limited, for future hydrocarbon use. As we recently reported in the Daily Sceptic, the penny has finally dropped in the U.K. that there is no backup to a 2030 renewable energy grid except gas, so the Mad Miliband has authorised a £22 billion CCS black hole. It is a colossal waste of money, but it provides a fig leaf to cover the continued use of hydrocarbons.
If governments in the United States and Europe are going to pump many billions of tonnes of pressurised gas into the substrata beneath our feet heavily pockmarked with thousands of filled drill holes, it might be a good idea to look into the wisdom and safety of this course of action. Such a task cannot be left to mainstream media, although they were quick to run stories of earthquakes and tap water catching fire in the cause of demonising gas fracking (yes really, check it out).
First some geology. Natural gas is found next to oil fields near the surface but it also accumulates at much deeper levels. It is held in place by a layer of sedimentary rock such as limestone or sandstone. In the U.S., the Permian basin runs across west Texas and south western New Mexico and its rich deposits have been drilled for over a hundred years. The area is riddled with hundreds of thousands of drill holes. Location records and safety checks on some of these holes are now non-existent.
In 2016, a group of Penn State researchers observed that when CO2 is stored underground in a process known as geological sequestration “it can find multiple escape pathways due to chemical reactions between CO2, water, rocks and cement from abandoned wells”. There are concerns that CO2 could leak into groundwater drinking aquifers or dissolve into saltwater deposits. As a result, the high acidity saltwater-CO2 can dissolve certain types of rocks as well as cement casing on abandoned wells. There are fears that a plume of CO2-saturated brine could break free to the surface, with presumably millions of tonnes of pressurised gas looking for a chance to follow.
Engineering professor Mary Kang of McGill University claims she has seen “countless instances” of plugged oil wells failing to hold. Cement is no match for earthquakes, heat and time, notes Eric Van Oort, an engineering professor at the University of Texas-Austin. “You have tectonic stresses, high temperatures – things are changing and shifting in the subsurface,” he said. He was of the view that plugged holes may start leaking in the future.
Current plans in the UK are to bury the CO2 under offshore waters. Hence some of the staggering costs involved. But nowhere is safe from the forces of nature and the British Geological Survey recently said that CCS needed to be “vigorously monitored” to provide an assurance of long-term storage integrity. That would be vigorously monitored for the thousands of years it is planned to keep the CO2 underground. Good luck with that one. Regulatory frameworks governing geological CO2 storage are being developed worldwide with issues of leakage and long-term stewardship being addressed. Again, good luck with asking future generations thousands of years hence to keep coughing up £22 billion (note to reader: feel free to invent your own very large figure at this point) to ensure vast quantities of highly pressurised gas are safely stored beneath the surface.
DeSmog was recently topped up with £400,000 from the Left-wing money tree Rowntree Foundation to continue promoting fracking scare stories and its notorious ‘blacklist’ of so-called climate deniers. On October 4th, it reported that a blowout in the Permian basin had created a 100-foot tower of oily water. Drilling and fracking uses millions of gallons of water a day in the area, noted DeSmog. “It’s a ripper,” said Hawk Dunlap, a libertarian candidate for the Railroad Commission. “It could be coming from anywhere and it’s not going to be an easy fix,” he said. DeSmog reports that Dunlap said the region where the geyser erupted has been plagued by earthquakes amid record wastewater production.
DeSmog is all in on the invented climate crisis and a fervent supporter of the political Net Zero fantasy. It obviously hates all hydrocarbon use and has reported on the problems of carbon capture. For its part, mainstream media just sticks with demonising fracking. Donkey nodding politicians in many jurisdictions accept the need for huge quantities of money to be poured down the CCS hole but are obviously uninformed about the risks involved.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
According to a new study, weather station data has been shown to non-climatically and erroneously record warmer-than-actual temperatures due to the steady and perpetual aging process almost universally observed in temperature gauges.
The globe may have only warmed by 0.41 to 0.83°C in the last 140 years.
According to a new study, weather station data has been shown to non-climatically and erroneously record warmer-than-actual temperatures due to the steady and perpetual aging process almost universally observed in temperature gauges.
When a weather station temperature gauge’s white paint or white plastic ages and darkens, this allows more solar radiation to be absorbed by the gauge than when the gauge is bright white and new. Within a span of just 2 to 5 years, a gauge has been observed to record maximum temperatures 0.46°C to 0.49°C warmer than in gauges that have not undergone an aging process. This artificial warming is not corrected in modern data sets, and it builds up over time – even when the gauges are cleaned or resurfaced every few years.
If these systematic artificial warming errors were to be corrected rather than ignored, the 140-year (1880-’90 to 2010-’20) GISTEMP global warming trend plummets from the current estimate of +1.43°C down to +0.83°C, a 42% differential. The temperature reduction can be even more pronounced – from +1.43°C down to +0.41°C – if a set of conservative assumptions (described in detail in the paper) are removed.
Interestingly, when the systematically erroneous temperature data are removed, or homogenized, at different intervals of time (2 years vs. 12 to 30 years, etc.), the global temperature trend – indeed, the long-term global warming trend – can be shown to effectively disappear, depending on the time interval. This can be observed below, in Figure 7.
As this chart illustrates, temperature data can homogenized, or adjusted, to exhibit just about any trend or non-trend the creator of the chart intends to. Data can be bent and manipulated to show strong warming, weak warming, or even no warming over the last 140 years.
Perhaps the modern version of global warming is not nearly as unprecedented or even unusual as it is purported to be.
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