New Gas Gridwatch Tool
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
We have a new toy to play with!
Just like its electricity big brother, this tool monitors usage of natural gas in the UK.
It offers a stark reminder of just how much we rely on gas during winter months. Even with mild weather this month, non-power demand for gas peaks at over 100 GW each day (the blue bar is power). In other words, double peak demand for power.
Greenland Temperature Update
By Paul Homewood
You will recall all those stories from last summer about heatwaves and meltdowns in Greenland.
DMI have now published the temperature data for last year, which shows those claims to be fake:
“The link between climate change and Britain’s winter storms”–(Clue–There is not one)
By Paul Homewood
There is a very muddled piece in the Sunday Times today by meteorologist Simon Lee, which attempts to link winter storms with climate change:
Every winter Britain gets hit by a series of storms. Ciara and Dennis are just the latest — but with two key differences.
The first is their strength. Our storms get their energy from temperature gradients in the atmosphere over north America. Recently that gradient has been much greater than normal.
The second is good PR. In 2015 the Met Office decided to start naming storms, which gave them a much higher media profile.
In 1993 Britain had the powerful Braer storm. In 2013-14 we faced about 12 of these weather systems. But in other years there are hardly any, which is why this year might be feeling so extraordinary to people coping with flooding, high winds and lots of rain.
A key question: why does the number vary so much?
Part of the answer lies in the jet stream, the powerful westerly wind blowing about six miles above us which, driven by that steep temperature gradient, has accelerated and got bigger. That energy feeds into our storms.
On their own, Ciara and Dennis are not symptomatic of climate change or a global weather crisis. What climate change does is to alter the likelihood of such events.
Computer models of the impact of climate change predict an increase in winter rainfall for the UK, along with warmer atmospheric temperatures and changes to the tracks followed by storms across the north Atlantic. This year may not be a sign of things to come, but we will probably see more severe winter flooding in future.
January 2020 was the warmest or second warmest on record in every global temperature dataset. It was rivalled only by 2016, when there was a strong El Niño event in the Pacific that temporarily raised global temperatures. Given that there is no El Niño this year, these record global temperatures — up to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels — are a cause for concern.
It emphasises the rapid warming of the planet. These record temperatures are consistent with recent events such as the Australian wildfires, the rising temperatures in the Antarctic and the unprecedented lack of ice and snow in parts of Europe.
What does this mean for Britain’s weather? So far the world has seen warming of about 1C. That is going to continue and the best guess is that the world could be 4C-6C warmer by 2080.
That may not sound much – but multiplied by the area of the planet it means that the atmosphere will hold an enormous amount more energy.
That energy will not only be felt as heat. It will also power our weather like never before. That means more and bigger storms, stronger winds and changes in the temperature of the oceans, which will make the sea levels rise. If our weather is exciting now, it may soon be overwhelming.
Simon Lee is a meteorologist at Reading University
Let’s take it apart:
Bjorn Lomborg Fighting Australia’s Fire Myths
By Paul Homewood
https://mailchi.mp/lomborg/jbpl570n9d-623631?e=bcd216d9bf
Bjorn Lomborg has an op-ed in the Australian this month about the bushfires. You can read it here.
His key argument is that this season’s fires are far from being unprecedented, as is regularly claimed.
https://www.facebook.com/bjornlomborg/photos/a.221758208967/10158703983303968/?type=3&theater
As he points out in the article:
UK Getting Wilder, Wetter Weather? Data Says Not
By Paul Homewood
As we keep being reminded, global warming will bring wetter, wilder weather to the UK more often.
Except that the facts tell the opposite story:
Climate change?
Scientists are wary of saying climate change has caused a specific event such as Storm Ciara. And they are divided on the impact global warming could have on the jet stream, which whips up storms and drives them towards the UK.
But scientific modelling suggests stronger winds and heavier rainfall could be in store for the UK as a result of climate change. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, making heavy rain and flooding more likely in the years to come. In 2017 researchers concluded the heavy rainfall brought by Storm Desmond, which caused widespread flooding in December 2015, was made 60 per cent more likely by climate change.
Perhaps instead of playing with their silly little models, these so-called scientists might bother to check the actual data:
Storm Dennis Arrives
By Paul Homewood
You can always rely on the Express to go hysterical when we get a bit of bad weather!
The facts are actually much more prosaic.
When the storm peaks this afternoon, virtually all of the country is looking at wind speeds of between 20 and 30 mph, putting it into the Fresh to Strong Breeze category. (I do believe it a bit silly that the scale should go from “strong breeze” to “near gale”. Strong winds would have been a more appropriate description! But it does indicate that, when the Beaufort Scale was drawn up, people did not regard a strong wind as anything to be concerned about)
The biggest problem will actually be the rainfall. The best graphic is this one from the Met Office:
The heaviest of the rain looks set to nit N Wales, so hopefully the Calder Valley will not be too badly hit this time.
BP’s Net Zero Accounting Trick
By Paul Homewood
BP has been in the news lately, with its announcement that it is going Net Zero by 2050:
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/who-we-are/reimagining-energy.html
And this is how they intend to do it:
Now, you may be puzzled how you can carry on producing oil and gas, but not emit any CO2 when you burn it.
And so are many others!
And if you believe that this is all just a bit of virtue signalling PR by BP, you may be right.
The BP presentation is hopelessly vague as to how it is going to achieve all of this. But Greenpeace have suspicions of their own. Here’s their take, which I suspect is not a million miles away from what will happen:
The Unpredictability Of Wind Power
By Paul Homewood
h/t Stuart Brown
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/windforcast/out-turn
It is claimed that although wind power is variable, it is also predictable. After all, we are assured, weather forecasts are now so accurate that they can predict wind speeds.
It turns out that this not the case. Above is the chart from BMRS, showing the initial wind power forecast with the actual outturn over a two-day period.
Below is the explanation of the National Grid forecast:
Based on historical outturn data and detailed local wind forecasts, National Grid forecasts likely levels of wind generation for windfarms visible to National Grid, i.e. those that have operational metering and that are included in the latest forecast process. The forecasts are produced for the period from 21:00 on the current day (D) to 21:00 D+2.Wind Generation forecasts are produced by National Grid’s own second generation windpower forecasting tool. The predictability of the wind varies with atmospheric conditions and so there may be periods where National Grid’s forecast and outturn values differ significantly. Please note that the downloadable data will contain gaps for Original and Updated Forecast values in Settlement Periods that National Grid do not provide forecast values for.
Even yesterday, we can see that wind output was overestimated by more than 3GW, or a third of the forecast.
The “Latest Forecast”, which presumably is made a day before, is naturally more accurate, but has still been up to 2GW adrift.
Fortunately we have plenty of CCGT capacity around to fill these gaps. But when wind capacity has been tripled or quadrupled, such we could be looking at shortfalls of 10GW or more.
AEP’s Latest Fossil Fuel Rant
By Paul Homewood
AEP is off on one of his usual rants again:
We know what a stranded fossil state looks like. It took five years for the halving of oil prices to defund Venezuela’s rentier petro-regime and reduce what used to be Latin America’s richest country to a humanitarian basket case.
Once the downward spiral began, it became self-feeding and unstoppable. The economy has contracted by two thirds. Nearly five million people have left the country since 2018. It is the world’s largest refugee crisis after Syria.
Brent oil prices today far exceed Venezuela’s extraction costs, but that is irrelevant. What matters is the ‘fiscal break-even cost’ needed to sustain the socialist Chavista machine. The International Monetary Fund thinks this is over $200 a barrel.
The Orinoco tar sands – the world’s largest crude reserves on paper – produce high-cost dirty crude that will never be viable in the post-Paris era of decarbonisation. They are worthless.
Venezuela is the first to go of RBC Capital’s ‘fragile five’, but several others are heading towards social collapse and sovereign insolvency.
Behind them in this grim parade come the big beasts of the Persian Gulf, and arguably Russia since it depends on fossil revenues to cover 60pc of its budget.
The timing of this massive geopolitical upset is subject to hot dispute. Yet there can no longer be any doubt that the twin-pincers of draconian carbon curbs and plummeting renewable costs will sweep away much of the old energy order, and that markets will bring this forward demolition job soon enough with Schumpeterian ferocity.
BLAH BLAH!
I think you can guess the rest!
Climate Crisis Update–England As Warm As 1736 Last Month!
By Paul Homewood
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
It’s been a mild start to the year here in England. In fact, according to the CET, it’s been the 14th warmest January since the start of records in 1659.
No doubt fingers will be pointed at global warming, but as the above chart shows, we have simply had mild weather of the commonly seen before. The difference is that it lasted virtually all month.
Moreover we have had warmer Januaries way back in the past. The warmest was in 1916, followed by 1921, 1796 and 1834.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt
Meanwhile UK rainfall has been pretty much average:
I suppose you could say, the more things change, the more they stay the same!
