Day: November 19, 2024

The Math Behind New York City’s Local Law 97 Does Not Add Up

New York City Local Law 97 (LL97) mandates that “most buildings over 25,000 square feet are required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits as of 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030.”  Rich Ellenbogen explains that the numbers underpinning Local Law 97 underestimate electric grid emissions by between 39% and 47% and uses incorrect emissions numbers to calculate the penalties and as a basis for electric grid efficiency.  The basis of this article is a series of emails from Ellenbogen. 

From Watts Up With That?

Roger Caiazza

New York City Local Law 97 (LL97) mandates that “most buildings over 25,000 square feet are required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits as of 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030.”  Rich Ellenbogen explains that the numbers underpinning Local Law 97 underestimate electric grid emissions by between 39% and 47% and uses incorrect emissions numbers to calculate the penalties and as a basis for electric grid efficiency.  The basis of this article is a series of emails from Ellenbogen. 

Ellenbogen is the President [BIO] Allied Converters and frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I have published other articles by Ellenbogen including a description of his keynote address to the Business Council of New York 2023 Renewable Energy Conference Energy titled: “Energy on Demand as the Life Blood of Business and Entrepreneurship in the State -video here:  Why NY State Must Rethink Its Energy Plan and Ten Suggestions to Help Fix the Problems”.  He comes to the table as an engineer who truly cares about the environment and as an early adopter of renewable technologies going back to the 1990’s at both his home and business two decades ago.

Local Law 97

The goal of LL97 is to reduce the emissions produced by the city’s largest buildings 40 percent by 2030 and net zero by 2050.  Like New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) this is political theater without regard to practicality.  Last July I published an article here that described an evaluation by Ellenbogen, Francis Menton, and myself that the supporting documentation for LL97 falls far short of what is needed to provide New York City (NYC) residents in affected buildings with any assurance that the LL97 mandates can be met at the same time the Climate Act is transforming the electric energy system with massive deployments of wind, solar, and energy storage and unproven generating resources.  This means extraordinary risks for keeping the heat on in the winter in NYC.  Ellenbogen documents specific instances where their numbers are wrong in this post.

Problems

In this section I am going to document Ellenbogen’s criticisms re-formatted from an email to a blog post.

LL97 uses false metrics to calculate carbon emissions.  Contrary to what they claim, it increases the amount of energy required to run a building.   The city’s electricity is 91% fossil fuel generated.  For the foreseeable future, all electric heat will operate from the least efficient fossil fuel plants operating with about a 33% efficiency.   After about a 7% line loss, that is 30% efficient delivered to the building.   Some of the remote generation will be oil fired with a 50% higher GHG footprint than natural gas and higher NOx, SOx, and PM2.5 emissions.   Even if the heat pumps are 280% efficient, that leaves a holistic efficiency of 84%, which is at least 5% – 10% lower than just installing a new high efficiency onsite gas combustion that will operate with a net efficiency of between 90% – 95%.  Do they think that remote carbon emissions away from NYC buildings won’t affect climate change?  

The numbers underpinning Local Law 97 are underestimating electric grid emissions by between 39% and 47%.  By making the electric utility system look “greener” they are providing a false basis for the entire law.

If you look at the image below, taken from page 36 (link), you will see in clause 1 that they are using 0.000288962 tCO2e per KWh (metric tons/Kwh).  Note that the document at the link cannot be downloaded which makes it very difficult for people to challenge the contents.  That value equals 0.288962 tCO2e per Megawatt Hour (MWh) which can be converted (0.288962 x 2203 pounds per metric ton) to 636.5 pounds per MWh that is used as the basis for utility system emissions in LL97.

Source: §28-320.3.1.1 Greenhouse gas coefficient of energy consumption

However, if you look at the table below from the US EPA, highlighted in yellow are the actual emissions that are between 886.6 pounds per MWH and 973 pounds per MWh in NY City and Westchester. So the actual utility emissions are between 39% and 47% higher than what the city is using to calculate their policy values and the associated penalties.

Source: EPA Summary Data: eGRID 2022 Summary Tables, abbreviated Table 1

The numbers used for future emissions are also a problem.  The 636.5 pounds per MWh used in the LL97 document drops to 319 pounds/MWh in 2030 – 2034  (converted from 0.000145 value listed in the excerpt below) which is half of the 2024 value.  There is no explanation of how they expect to achieve that when it is common knowledge that all of the renewable installation numbers are being pushed back.  They are starting from numbers that err in their favor by over 40% and it just gets worse from there.

Source: 1 RCNY §103-14, CHAPTER 100 Subchapter C Maintenance of Building, page 12.

The numbers used to calculate the district steam emissions relative to the gas emissions in the document are just as big of a fantasy.  New York City has an extensive steam system with over 100 miles of pipe that bring steam from central plants to buildings in Manhattan. The unacknowledged problem in LL97 is that there are extensive energy losses in the steam system. Because of the age and size of the system they are dumping the hot water at the end of the loop, the pipes leak (as exemplified by the iconic steam puffs coming out of manholes), and they have miles of high temperature steam lines dissipating energy before it ever gets delivered so there are significant losses.  Nevertheless, LL97 calculations claim district steam with a 15% lower GHG footprint than 90% – 95% efficient on-site gas combustion.  LL97 uses the following assumptions for building emissions  taken from §28-320.3.1.1 Greenhouse gas coefficient of energy consumption  page 36:

2) Gas      0.00005311 tCO2e per KWh or 399 lb. CO2e per MWh

5) Steam   0.00004493 tCO2e per KWh or 338 lb. CO2e per MWh

They are doing everything in their power to make gas look bad.

Source: §28-320.3.1.1 Greenhouse gas coefficient of energy consumption

Even more comical is the clause in section 28-320.6.3 which is also copied below regarding false statements which is meant to pertain to buildings misreporting their emissions.   What they are saying is that it is okay for the city to outright lie on their policies but they will fine you up to $500,000 and put you in jail for 30 days if you do it.

Source: §28-320.3.1.1 Greenhouse gas coefficient of energy consumption

Conclusion

Basically, whoever wrote this document is just pulling numbers out of thin air.  It is a total fabrication. When you can easily find such flagrant errors in major parts of the document, nothing that is contained in it can be trusted.  Everything has been skewed to justify someone’s worldview and policy desires.  Because of these false numbers, buildings in NY City are going be saddled with technologies that don’t produce emission savings and will simultaneously result in far higher operating costs, besides having huge upfront capital installation costs.

For those of us who have been analyzing this and understand the numbers, it has been apparent for years that the entire policies, both in LL97 and the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act were fabrications.  These numbers just prove it.

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 organization with which he has been associated.

Blockbuster: Labor’s weather control “renewables plan” turns out to be half a trillion more than expected

Finally, twenty years too late, Australian leaders are talking about the galactic cost of making a spare energy grid that might, maybe, hopefully one day reduce world temperatures by one thousandth of a degree. Sadly they are still not talking about why that’s a pointless quest, why CO2 feeds the poor, warmth is good, humans emissions are irrelevant, or how science has become a turgid swamp patrolled by dead sacred cows. But it’s a start!

We got the trifecta: Our car-crash energy bills, the revolution of common sense in the US, and the appearance of our own election on the horizon have set off the Air-raid sirens to wake a sleeping nation.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Finally, twenty years too late, Australian leaders are talking about the galactic cost of making a spare energy grid that might, maybe, hopefully one day reduce world temperatures by one thousandth of a degree. Sadly they are still not talking about why that’s a pointless quest, why CO2 feeds the poor, warmth is good, humans emissions are irrelevant, or how science has become a turgid swamp patrolled by dead sacred cows. But it’s a start!

We got the trifecta: Our car-crash energy bills, the revolution of common sense in the US, and the appearance of our own election on the horizon have set off the Air-raid sirens to wake a sleeping nation.

It’s only half a trillion dollars

The Minister for Energy says the cost of renewables by 2050 will be $122 billion (AUD). Not convinced, the Opposition commissioned a study that estimates it’s more like $650 billion. But what’s a half a trillion dollars when you have hope, faith, and a fantasy to make storms a bit nicer? It’s a horror show. The Labor Government wants every family of four to spend something like $100,000 on their wind and solar vision over the next 25 years. There goes the house deposit, the uni fees, the family holidays. There goes our lifestyle.

Australian energy is twice the price

Things are so bad here in Renewable Crash Test Dummy World, that the CEO of Glencore said Australian energy costs twice as much as in the US, Canada, China and India. Glencore, is the largest coal miner in Australia, the fifth largest miner in the world, and employs about 140,000 people.  Gary Nagle went on to tell the Daily Telegraph  that Australia has a bad attitude:

He argued that the negative attitude to coal in Australia was increasingly out of step with other parts of the world.

“Many stakeholders globally are now taking a more pragmatic view about coal,” Mr Nagle said.

It’s such a first world problem. Imagine being the world’s largest coal exporter nation every other year, and spending billions to undermine one of your two largest industries? How did we get here, standing on a plank, sawing the ship off?

Tricked by “free energy” scam

The electricity-fashion-queens chased a vision of fairy-energy so they could win cat-walk parades at the UN, but lose in every other race that matters. The wind and sun appear to be free, but cost us the Earth to collect, and the Universe to store.

All the politicians had to do was get scientists and engineers to debate in public and they would have realized that they can’t keep electricity in a shoe-box, or post it from the Simpson Desert to Sydney harbor. Instead, they employed the yes-men who agreed with the vision, and sacked, silenced or never funded the 1,000 engineers who could have told them it was stupid.

That, and they all watched the ABC:

Bowen, others should be ashamed of our $650bn renewables disaster

Robert Gottleibsen, The Australian

Since Federation, Australian ministers on both sides of the parliament have made major mistakes and misleading statements. But nothing in our history matches the looming renewable energy conversion financial disaster.

The Bowen calculations are based on “net present value”, or NPV, which involves calculating the final cost and adjusting it back to the current dollars. But commercial infrastructure projections work on what will actually be outlaid. Frontier have now done those outlay calculations to 2050 for the governments and now the public.

And of course, by 2050 all the windmills and sacred glass panels will be due to expire and we will need to find a very big hole to bury them in, and start again with the fire-hose from the bank account spraying direct to China.

The only hope, as Gottleibsen says, is if the protests from farmers and country towns have glued up the plans enough that we can pull the pin before we sink any more into this pit.

It only makes sense if imaginary “carbon credits” had some value:

So, the state and federal governments devised a system which I would call “rigging the books”. But they would justify it by saying carbon savings had a value which must be counted in the project.

And so, a transmission network hypothetically costing $100m would be given a carbon credit, which would reduce its “cost” substantially and justify investment. Frontier calculates that some $80bn of the $650bn came from these carbon credits.

And this half a trillion doesn’t include half the country (the Western half and the Northern Territory). The price can only rise.

Despite the blockbuster costs, Frontier Economics have almost certainly underestimated the true cost of converting Australia into a third-world nation. The direct costs are bad, but the secondary costs are existential. Once the factories and mines are gone, who is left to defend the green-god ideology?

POLITICO: Argentina mulls UN Paris climate agreement exit with Trump – ‘Both countries explore leaving the landmark 2015 accord’

Argentina mulls Paris climate agreement exit with Trump –

President Javier Milei met with Trump overnight as both countries explore leaving the landmark 2015 accord.

From Climate Depot

By Marc Morano

https://www.politico.eu/article/argentina-mulls-paris-climate-agreement-exit-with-trump

Argentina mulls Paris climate agreement exit with Trump –

President Javier Milei met with Trump overnight as both countries explore leaving the landmark 2015 accord.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Argentina is weighing an exit from the Paris Agreement, joining the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in reconsidering the global climate deal.

“We’re reevaluating our strategy on all matters related to climate change,” the country’s foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein, told The New York Times, adding that the country had fundamental doubts about what is driving climate change. The Washington Post also reported the news, citing an unnamed government official.

Argentina withdrew its delegation this week from the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, just days into the two-week summit. Werthein told the Times no final decision had been made about the 2015 Paris accord, but noted Argentina was reconsidering participating in a deal that “has a lot of elements.”

“We decided to withdraw our delegation and reevaluate our position, nothing more,” Werthein said. “I think it’s a sovereign right.”

The Argentinian embassy in Baku did not respond to a request for comment.

Argentinian President Javier Milei has described climate change and the international effort to contain it as a “socialist lie.”

On Thursday, he met with Trump at the incoming president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Milei was the first head of state Trump received in person since winning the Nov. 5 election.

During his campaign, Trump said he would withdraw the United States from the Paris deal. The U.S. left briefly during Trump’s first term. But no other countries followed.

While the West Surrenders its Energy Security on the Altar of Net Zero, China Secures 80% of the World’s Solar Market With its Coal-Fired Economy

Nick Cater, a senior research fellow at the Menzies Research Centre, “a think-tank that champions Liberal principles and advocates a free, just and prosperous Australia”, has written another excoriating piece for the Australian about Australia’s Net Zero plans.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Sallust

Nick Cater, a senior research fellow at the Menzies Research Centre, “a think-tank that champions Liberal principles and advocates a free, just and prosperous Australia”, has written another excoriating piece for the Australian about Australia’s Net Zero plans.

Cater starts outside by pointing out that while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was keen to castigate the then PM, Scott Morrison, first for not planning to go to COP26 in Glasgow but when he changed his mind and did, for not increasing Australia’s 2030 target. But as it’s turned out, now he’s PM himself, Albanese didn’t roll up to COP28, and nor has he yet made it to COP29.

Cater dives in to turn the knife in the wound:

Could it be embarrassment keeping Albanese away? Indeed, he has reason to feel sheepish, judging from the latest quarterly National Greenhouse Accounts published by the Department of Climate Change and Energy.

Australia’s annual CO2 emissions have flatlined under Labour. We were responsible for 438 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the year to June 2022, a 28% reduction on 2005 emissions. Emissions in the year to June 2024 totalled 440 million tonnes.

So, despite Labour’s bragging and despite all the pain, it has yet to make a gram of progress towards reaching its target of a 35% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Energy prices have rocketed, thousands of hectares of remnant vegetation have been despoiled, the ugly stick has hit landscapes, and farmers have been trussed with green tape. Yet there has been zero progress towards Net Zero in a mere 26 years.

The Government might trot out excuses such as the post-Covid boost to the economy or the self-inflicted surge in immigration. The underlying explanation, however, is that reducing carbon in the atmosphere is extraordinarily difficult. Setting targets is one thing, achieving them quite another.

The electricity sector was responsible for 39.8 million tonnes of emissions in the March quarter of 2022 under Angus Taylor’s watch. In the March quarter this year under Chris Bowen, the total was 39.2 million, a fall of a miserly 1.5%. We can safely say Labour’s 2030 target of an 82% carbon-free electricity grid will not be met. Neither will it hit its overall emissions reduction target of 35% without a moratorium on immigration coupled with a humungous economic recession and a few pandemics.

Australia isn’t the only country struggling to meet the absurd expectations of the global climate elite. In 1995, when the first Conference of the Parties was held in Berlin, the world was emitting 23.5 billion tonnes of carbon. Last year’s total was 37.5 billion tonnes, an increase of 60%.

Cater says COP has been a total failure and left nations with compromised energy security:

The annual nagfest has been hijacked by groups with divergent political agendas, like the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor nations. It is a honey pot for renewable energy rent-seekers, who want governments to skew energy markets in their favour, squeeze out their competitors, subsidise their businesses and fatten their profits.

If the 67,000 delegates at COP29 had an ounce of shame, they’d polish off the caviar and head home with their tails between their legs. The vanity targets set under the Paris accord won’t be met.

The unintended consequences of the zero-2050 fantasy have been severe. Trillions of dollars in global capital have been allocated towards achieving a singular, unachievable goal using unproven technology. It has distracted Western governments from the strategic challenge of energy security. Many European countries were deeply exposed to the disruption of oil and gas imports after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Even worse, the headlong dash towards renewables has only really benefited China, “which processes 67% of the world’s lithium and has cornered 80% of the global solar market”.

Paradoxically, China, the heaviest carbon emitter by some way, is on track to become the world’s only green energy superpower. Yet the heavy manufacturing involved has increased the country’s consumption of coal. A notional reduction of emissions in the Californian transport sector from switching to electric vehicles, for example, will correspond to a rise in emissions in China’s manufacturing sector.

With UN Secretary-General António Guterres screaming for the floodgates of public spending to be torn open, “It is little wonder pulling out of the Paris accord is one of the priorities of Donald Trump’s second Presidency, along with scrapping EV mandates and green energy welfare subsidies.”

With the U.S. withdrawal, none of the world’s four largest emitters – China, the U.S., India and Russia – will be on board with the 2050 target and, given that they produce 60% of the world’s emissions, zero 2050 must be recognised as an ex-target, nailed to the perch like a Norwegian blue parrot whose days of pining for the fjords have expired.

As for the U.K.’s own ludicrous and unmeetable ambitions to reduce us to total energy insecurity, isn’t it about time we all registered a complaint?

Worth reading in full.


 

The UK’s Weather in 2023

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has just published its annual review of UK weather. Once again, author Paul Homewood finds little to be alarmed about.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

PRESS RELEASE

London, 18 November: The Global Warming Policy Foundation has just published its annual review of UK weather. Once again, author Paul Homewood finds little to be alarmed about.

Using official data from the Met Office and other sources, this paper examines UK climate trends and assesses the truth of claims that UK weather is becoming ‘more extreme’.

Findings include:

·         The frequency of days with extreme tem­peratures has been in decline since the 1970s, as more hot days have been offset by fewer cold ones.

·         While winters have become slightly wet­ter, there has been little change in rainfall trends for the other seasons. In particular, summers are not getting drier, as projections have suggested.

·         Wind storms have been declining in fre­quency and intensity since the 1990s.

In the words of author, Paul Homewood:
“Despite widespread claims to the contrary, our weather in the UK is not becoming more extreme. In fact, although slightly warmer on average, it has changed very little over the years.”

GWPF director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
“In light of frequent exaggeration and alarmism, it is vital that the public get a level-headed analysis of the UK climate. Too often public perceptions are a long way from what the underlying data shows.”

Read the full paper here: The UK’s Weather in 2023 (pdf)

,UK-Weather-2023Herunterladen

Trump 45 vs. the Green New Deal (Trump 47 will be better)

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

This repost from May 2019 is reprinted as a remembrance of Trump’s first try at reversing Green New Deal policy. The second try promises to be much more systemic, coordinated, and better explained.

“The golden era of American energy is now underway.” (President Donald Trump, The White House, May 14, 2019)

… under the Green New Deal, they don’t like clean, beautiful natural gas. They don’t like anything. (President Donald Trump, “Remarks on Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth,” Hackberry, LA, May 14, 2019)

Who has been the most free-market energy President in U.S. history? In modern times, Ronald Reagan comes to mind. He decontrolled crude oil and petroleum products in his first week of office (January 1981), although Jimmy Carter’s phase-out of such regulation had just six months to go. Reagan did some other things to undo a decade of energy statism but fell short of his election goal of abolishing the US Department of Energy. [1]

Enter Donald Trump. Pulling out of the Paris climate accord and changing the alarmist climate narrative represents one of the greatest, if not the greatest, free-market moments in American history. And with the Green New Deal being the centerpiece of the Democratic Party and Progressive Left, all eyes are on Trump to continue to champion, in word and in deed, the US hydrocarbon boom.

Trumpian energy policy is far from perfect. The trade war has negatively impacted the energy industry and its consumers, as I have written elsewhere (here, here, and here). And much work remains to be done to eliminate tax preferences for wind and solar power and to ax mandates for ethanol. Nevertheless, the progress and promise of Trump versus the Obama/Hillary energy policy has been stark.

The latest Trump free-market energy moment happened this week in remarks at a new LNG terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. The White House press release follows with fact after fact:

President Donald J. Trump Is Unleashing American Energy Dominance

USHERING IN THE NEW ERA OF AMERICAN ENERGY: President Donald J. Trump has put in place policies that tap into America’s incredible energy resources.

  • President Trump has rolled back stifling policies put in place by the previous administration that were holding back our country from achieving energy dominance.
    • President Trump withdrew from the terrible Paris Climate Agreement.
    • President Trump ended the war on coal by getting rid of costly Obama-era regulations like the Stream Protection Rule and the Clean Power Plan.
  • President Trump has taken action to open up our Nation’s abundant natural resources.
    • President Trump signed legislation to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for energy exploration.
    • The Department of the Interior held 28 onshore oil and gas lease sales last year, generating a record-shattering $1.1 billion in revenue.
  • President Trump has paved the way for more energy infrastructure development, ensuring American energy can be delivered to the market.
    • The Trump Administration approved the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the New Burgos Pipeline.
    • The President signed two Executive Orders to cut red tape that was holding back the construction of new energy infrastructure, like pipelines.
    • The Trump Administration has streamlined permitting for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals.

UNLEASHING ENERGY DOMINANCE: American energy production is soaring to new heights thanks to President Trump’s policies.

  • President Trump’s energy agenda has helped drive the booming economy—with mining and oil and gas extraction contributing to growth in 49 States.
  • Total energy production across various sources reached a record high in 2018.
  • Crude oil production hit a record high last year, leaping past the previous record set in 1970.
    • Crude oil production spiked 17 percent in 2018, reaching 10.96 million barrels per day.
    • The United States has become the largest crude oil producer in the world.
  • American natural gas production jumped to a new high in 2018, marking the second straight year of record production.

EXPANDING ENERGY EXPORTS: President Trump has worked to open up new export opportunities for American energy producers.  

  • We are exporting more and more energy as production soars and President Trump negotiates better market access for our producers.
  • Crude oil exports nearly doubled in 2018, reaching a record average of 2 million barrels a day.
  • Coal exports reached their highest level in five years in 2018.
  • Under President Trump, the United States has become a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957.
  • Thanks to President Trump’s negotiations, the European Union (EU) agreed to import more LNG from the United States.
    • American exports of LNG to the EU have increased by 272 percent since this agreement and reached an all-time high in March 2019.

Reference

[1] Bradley, Robert. “Energy Policies: A Few Bright Spots.” In David Boaz, ed., Assessing the Reagan Years. (Cato Institute, 1988), pp. 305–19.

Put cigarette-style warnings on bacon, says Dale Vince

This is what you get when you send tens of millions in wind subsidies to some overgrown child.
It’s Vince who needs a Health Warning stuck on him, not bacon>

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

This is what you get when you send tens of millions in wind subsidies to some overgrown child.

It’s Vince who needs a Health Warning stuck on him, not bacon>

He told the Sunday Times: “Changing what we eat is the biggest single thing we can do to reduce carbon emissions to improve human health.

“The role for government is to give us better advice, to put health warnings on meat and dairy products, to change the menu in the NHS and our public institutions.”

The UN estimates that domestic livestock emissions make up about 14 per cent of man-made greenhouse gases, such as methane.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/17/bacon-cigarette-health-warnings-labour-donor-dale-vince

I’ll leave it to Telegraph commenters:

Millions of Pounds of Cold Weather Benefits Could be Lost Due to Unreliable Met Office Data

Some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are losing out on millions of pounds worth of cold weather payments in England and Wales due to official reliance on data from corrupted Met Office temperature measuring stations. In 2022-23, cold weather payments of £130 million were made to around five million households, but it’s possible that the annual figures would be much higher if more accurate local temperatures measurements had been used.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are losing out on millions of pounds worth of cold weather payments in England and Wales due to official reliance on data from corrupted Met Office temperature measuring stations. In 2022-23, cold weather payments of £130 million were made to around five million households, but it’s possible that the annual figures would be much higher if more accurate local temperatures measurements had been used.

Cold weather payments are automatically paid to those on a number of means-tested benefits and triggered by seven days of average temperatures below 0oC. (A different system is used in Scotland.) Temperature measurements are taken from 63 Met Office stations in England and Wales but over half of these sites have internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ of between 2°C and 5°C. Payments in the rural areas around Sheffield depend on readings from a City-based site where the station is rated Class 5 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) with a 5°C margin of error. The site, which is by the A57, is blanketed with urban heat corruption and will record much higher temperatures than those found in the surrounding Peak District.

Estimates of urban heat corruption vary, with the EU weather service Copernicus suggesting it can lead to temperature measurements “up to 10oC higher than in rural areas”. A recent science paper written by 37 scientists from 18 countries found that urban heat accounted for around 40% of the recorded warming since 1850. In startling and detailed research, they found that a rural/urban blend of temperatures showed a long-term warming trend of 0.89°C per century, while a rural-only collection produced a rise of just 0.55°C per century.

The WMO, in which the Met Office plays a significant role, rates temperature stations in five classes. Classes 1 and 2 are judged pristine and come with no uncertainties. Class 3 has a +/- margin of error of 1°C, while junk class 4 has +/- 2°C and super junk class 5 is set at +/- 5°C. As Paul Homewood points out, these negative and positive errors don’t tend to cancel each other out, as they do in other fields due to their random nature. “With temperature recording,” he says, “poor siting nearly always adds to underlying temperatures.”

The Met Office scores very badly on the rating front, with the Daily Sceptic discovering through a recent freedom of information request that nearly eight out of 10 of its stations are in classes 4 and 5. In addition, the Met Office runs its own internal classification. But this seems more forgiving of nearby heat corruptions, with only 27 out of 380 sites said to be “unsatisfactory”.

Cold weather payments, not to be confused with the winter fuel allowance paid to pensioners which the new Labour government has done away with, give £25 for a period of cold weather to those deemed financially or physically vulnerable. Extra consideration is given to families with children under five. During 2022-23, a number of areas made three payments from November to March. But luck of the draw seems to play a part in these disbursements. Four of the weather stations used to record low temperatures across England and Wales are so bad that even the Met Office thinks they’re ‘unsatisfactory’. These include Hawarden Airport, home of Wales’s national temperature ‘record’, Little Rissington, Redesdale and Pembrey Sands.

The payment system works by allocating postcodes from the surrounding areas to specific sites. Heathrow Airport has the largest number of postcodes attached and seems to extend over most of London. Heathrow is a Class 3 site with 1°C uncertainty, but this is regarded as generous by many since it is one of the busiest airports in the world. Not a great deal of frost is likely to settle on most nights of the year with temperatures boosted by the release of warmth collected during the day by miles of concrete and tarmac. In common with most cities, night time temperatures at airports are likely to be higher than surrounding uncorrupted areas. Copernicus notes, for instance, that cities such as London and Paris, “regularly” record temperatures of around 4°C higher than rural surroundings.

It is likely, indeed almost certain, that temperature recordings in cities and airports will reduce the number of seven day 0°C average temperatures periods over wider areas. If so, many of the poorest and most vulnerable in rural locations are missing out on this financial help.

We are obliged to citizen journalist Ray Sanders for drawing our attention to this wholly avoidable scandal. Commenting on the high number of triggering sites found in areas known to be affected by urban heat, he noted: “The Met Office must know of this issue, they surely cannot be that naïve or just maybe they never gave it a thought – just drew some lines on a map. Whatever, the responsibility must lie with them as they are supposed to be the experts in the field and the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] simply refers to them for advice.”

As we have seen in many past articles, the Met Office is at the forefront of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. But it might be argued that the acquisition of supercomputers and the use of climate modelling have been at the expense of investment in a robust network of stations that can provide an accurate measurement of the natural air temperature. The basics – the day job one might say – have not been given the care they require. The network is littered with unsuitable sites such as airports, solar farms, car parks and electricity sub-stations. Even worse, little thought seems to have been taken when it comes to the placements of new sites, which are often in class 4 and 5 locations. Garbage in means garbage out, regardless of how politically convenient it is for narrative-driven mainstream activists. Producing readings that supposedly measure temperatures down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, as the Met Offices does with this flawed data, is little more than a scientific joke.

To date, the obvious problems surrounding the Met Office’s temperature measuring abilities have been ignored. To discuss the matter risks opening a pandora’s box since it would subject data that backs Net Zero to greater scrutiny. It will be interesting to see if this position holds following suggestions that its figures could be depriving poor and vulnerable members of society from collecting much needed cold weather payments.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Aussie Solar Power: “Like Flooding Rain, we Can’t Store it All”

The question – who pays for the solar power which has to be discarded?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

The question – who pays for the solar power which has to be discarded?

Australia is awash with solar power. Like flooding rain, experts say we can’t store it all

Story by energy reporter Daniel Mercer

…

The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million — barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country.

…

But all of this solar is prompting some hard questions, and gnashing of teeth, for one, simple reason — there is, at times, too much solar power in Australia’s electricity systems to handle.

To deal with this abundance, experts say Australia needs to come to terms what appears a counter-intuitive argument.

It needs to accept that much of this solar will have to be wasted — or spilled — sometimes.

…

“The minimum demand problem typically happens in the middle of the day on weekend days when you have a lot of solar output but maybe not a lot of demand,” Dr Wonhas said.

“At that time, the electricity grid effectively becomes a little bit unstable.

…Read more: 

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/australia-is-awash-with-solar-power-like-flooding-rain-experts-say-we-can-t-store-it-all/ar-AA1ucYf6?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

The author goes on to waffle about all the wonderful investment in batteries, which even in the most optimistic growth forecasts at best will cover a few minutes of national energy storage.

My question stands. Someone has to lose.

Will the cost of unwanted solar be passed to the owners of rooftop solar installations? Will they sometimes have to live with having their power bill benefit slashed, live with their rooftop systems not offsetting their power bills as much as they thought?

How would the curtailing of expected revenue impact those fancy “no cost solar” contracts many low income householders signed, in which repayments are supposed to be charged to the grid buyback income? Do the contracts have a small print clause which makes homeowners liable for servicing the debt out of their own pocket, if solar revenues drop below an expected threshold?

Or will the cost of unwanted solar be loaded onto everyone elses energy bills, including the bills of poor people who live in high-rise apartments, who have no means of getting a foot in the door of the solar electricity bill rigging game?

Or will the Aussie government sell out the grandkids to the international banking cartel, by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase additional battery storage capacity to soak up all that excess solar energy on the odd occasions it is generated, in the hope the stored power can be used before the batteries lose their charge?

Who is paying for those conventional generators which are being squeezed out of the market, but still have to be kept on standby, for those occasions when both solar and wind fail for a prolonged period of time? Like what happened in June this year, in the middle of our Southern Hemisphere winter?

“Seasonal” Renewable Output Fail Bites Australia

Just how unstable will the grid become on a sunny day? Or an overcast and windless day? Or a bitterly cold windless night? Aussies are still adding rooftop solar every day, squeezing out reliable fossil fuel powered generators, making it more expensive all the time to keep such generators on standby.

Someone has to lose – and nobody is saying who.

I guess we Aussies are about to find out. My big gasoline generator is ready for action. I think I’m going to need it.

When Will Scientists Admit that They Haven’t Saved the Ozone Layer?

Another year has passed, and that stubborn Ozone Hole over Antarctica refuses to go away. Data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that the area of the Ozone Hole remains about the same as it has been over the last 30 years. When will scientists admit that they didn’t save the ozone layer?

From CFACT

By Steve Goreham

Another year has passed, and that stubborn Ozone Hole over Antarctica refuses to go away. Data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that the area of the Ozone Hole remains about the same as it has been over the last 30 years. When will scientists admit that they didn’t save the ozone layer?

Ozone is a gas made up of three oxygen atoms (O3). Ninety percent of the ozone in the atmosphere is found in the stratosphere, a layer of atmosphere between about 10 and 50 kilometers in altitude. The amount of ozone in the atmosphere varies with time of year.

Dr. Mario Molina and Dr. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California published a paper in 1974 warning that industrial chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution was destroying the ozone layer in Earth’s stratosphere. CFCs were gases used in hair spray, refrigerators, and insulating foams.

The theory of Molina and Rowland postulated that CFCs from human industry move upward through the atmosphere to the stratosphere, where ultraviolet radiation breaks down CFC molecules, releasing chlorine atoms. Chlorine then acts as a catalyst to break down ozone molecules into oxygen, reducing the ozone concentration. According to the theory, the more CFCs consumed, the greater the destruction of the ozone layer.

In 1983, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey discovered a thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica which occurred during August, September, and October. This became known as the Ozone Hole. This appeared to confirm the theory of Molina and Rowland, who were awarded a Noble Prize in chemistry in 1995 for their work.

The ozone layer blocks ultraviolet rays, shielding the surface of the Earth from high-energy radiation. According to scientists, degradation of the layer would increase rates of skin cancer and cataracts and cause immune system problems in humans. Former Vice President Al Gore’s 1992 book claimed that hunters reported finding blind rabbits in Patagonia and that fishermen were catching blind fish due to human destruction of the ozone layer, but this was not confirmed.

Twenty-nine nations and the European Community signed a treaty in September 1987, called the “Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer,” in an effort to protect the layer. Over the next decade, signers of the treaty rose to over 180 nations, all agreeing to ban the use of CFCs.

Because of the Montreal Protocol ban, world consumption of ozone depleting substances (ODS), or chlorofluorocarbons, began falling in 1990. By 2005, ODS consumption was down 90 percent and is now down more than 99 percent, according to the European Environment Agency.

The Montreal Protocol was hailed as an example of international success of how nations could unite to resolve a major environmental issue. The Protocol has been praised as an example to follow for elimination of greenhouse gas emissions in the fight to halt global warming. But despite the elimination of CFCs, the Ozone Hole remains as large as ever.

NASA reported this fall that the mean ozone hole area for September 7 to October 13 reached 19.6 million square kilometers, roughly the same level as in the last three decades stretching back to 1991. The hole remains large, despite that fact that world ODS consumption has almost been eliminated.

In 2015, scientists at NASA predicted that the Ozone Hole would be half closed by 2020. But that hasn’t happened. Other scientists have forecasted that the hole will not begin to disappear until 2040 or later. But the longer the hole persists, the greater the likelihood that the ozone layer is dominated by natural factors, not human CFC emissions.

This article originally appeared at Master Resource