Apollo 8 fifty years ago 1968

The trajectory of Apollo 8 to the moon.   Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders read from the creation account in the Bible as they viewed the first earthrise. as they circled the moon. Christmas Eve 1968.

Coldest Thanksgiving in New York since 1901

Manhatten New York   -3 Celsius    -6 celsius predicted on Thursday Thanksgiving Day.

Ju;y Atlantic  temperature coldest since 1948!

ack: Philip Klotzbach

Lithium Ion batteries. Another green failure? $2.5 trillion reason!

A pair of 500-foot smokestacks rise from a natural-gas power plant on the harbor of Moss Landing, California, casting an industrial pall over the pretty seaside town.

If state regulators sign off, however, it could be the site of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery project by late 2020, helping to balance fluctuating wind and solar energy on the California grid.

The 300-megawatt facility is one of four giant lithium-ion storage projects that Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility, asked the California Public Utilities Commission to approve in late June. Collectively, they would add enough storage capacity to the grid to supply about 2,700 homes for a month (or to store about .0009 percent of the electricity the state uses each year).

The California projects are among a growing number of efforts around the world, including Tesla’s 100-megawatt battery array in South Australia, to build ever larger lithium-ion storage systems as prices decline and renewable generation increases. They’re fueling growing optimism that these giant batteries will allow wind and solar power to displace a growing share of fossil-fuel plants.

But there’s a problem with this rosy scenario. These batteries are far too expensive and don’t last nearly long enough, limiting the role they can play on the grid, experts say. If we plan to rely on them for massive amounts of storage as more renewables come online — rather than turning to a broader mix of low-carbon sources like nuclear and natural gas with carbon capture technology — we could be headed down a dangerously unaffordable path.

Small doses

Today’s battery storage technology works best in a limited role, as a substitute for “peaking” power plants, according to a 2016 analysis by researchers at MIT and Argonne National Lab. These are smaller facilities, frequently fueled by natural gas today, that can afford to operate infrequently, firing up quickly when prices and demand are high.

Lithium-ion batteries could compete economically with these natural-gas peakers within the next five years, says Marco Ferrara, a cofounder of Form Energy, an MIT spinout developing grid storage batteries.

“The gas peaker business is pretty close to ending, and lithium-ion is a great replacement,” he says.

This peaker role is precisely the one that most of the new and forthcoming lithium-ion battery projects are designed to fill. Indeed, the California storage projects could eventually replace three natural-gas facilities in the region, two of which are peaker plants.

But much beyond this role, batteries run into real problems. The authors of the 2016 study found steeply diminishing returns when a lot of battery storage is added to the grid. They concluded that coupling battery storage with renewable plants is a “weak substitute” for large, flexible coal or natural-gas combined-cycle plants, the type that can be tapped at any time, run continuously, and vary output levels to meet shifting demand throughout the day.

Not only is lithium-ion technology too expensive for this role, but limited battery life means it’s not well suited to filling gaps during the days, weeks, and even months when wind and solar generation flags.

This problem is particularly acute in California, where both wind and solar fall off precipitously during the fall and winter months. Here’s what the seasonal pattern looks like:

If renewables provided 80 percent of California electricity — half wind, half solar — generation would fall precipitously beginning in the late summer. Data: CAISO; analysis: Clean Air Task Force

This leads to a critical problem: when renewables reach high levels on the grid, you need far, far more wind and solar plants to crank out enough excess power during peak times to keep the grid operating through those long seasonal dips, says Jesse Jenkins, a coauthor of the study and an energy systems researcher. That, in turn, requires banks upon banks of batteries that can store it all away until it’s needed.

And that ends up being astronomically expensive.

California dreaming

There are issues California can’t afford to ignore for long. The state is already on track to get 50 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2020, and the legislature is once again considering a bill that would require it to reach 100 percent by 2045. To complicate things, regulators voted in January to close the state’s last nuclear plant, a carbon-free source that provides 24 percent of PG&E’s energy. That will leave California heavily reliant on renewable sources to meet its goals.

The Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based energy policy think tank, recently found that reaching the 80 percent mark for renewables in California would mean massive amounts of surplus generation during the summer months, requiring 9.6 million megawatt-hours of energy storage. Achieving 100 percent would require 36.3 million.

The state currently has 150,000 megawatt-hours of energy storage in total. (That’s mainly pumped hydroelectric storage, with a small share of batteries.)

If renewables supplied 80 percent of California electricity, more than eight million megawatt-hours of surplus energy would be generated during summer peaks. Data: CAISO; analysis: Clean Air Task Force

Building the level of renewable generation and storage necessary to reach the state’s goals would drive up costs exponentially, from $49 per megawatt-hour of generation at 50 percent to $1,612 at 100 percent.

And that’s assuming lithium-ion batteries will cost roughly a third what they do now.

Read the full article here.

              ACKLODGEMENTS: Paul Homewood   Not a lot of people know that  blog

                                                   James Temple

Summer percentage of days above 95F verses year US 1918-2018

Acknowledgement:  Steven Goddard  US.  red line is 15 year mean.   Clearly declining.
US Historical climatology Network stations.

July Atlantic temperature coldest since 1948!

                              The July relative SST(tropical Atlantic minus global tropical SST) was the coldest July value on record since 1948!     SST---Sea Surface Temperature)..  See image tweet from Philip
Klotzbach

Deputy Director of ONS health analysis disputes "killer heatwave" in UK press

 FAKE NEWS?                Claims that the heat in the UK is to blame for the rise in extra deaths in the UK is NOT supported by the data according to Nick Stripe deputy director of health analysis at the UK  ONS
(Office of National Statistics).
             Daily Express headline reads " UK heatwave turns KILLER:  1000 more people die this summer than average as temp soar".  The Mirror claims "nearly 1000 more Brits than average have died since start of record summer heatwave". 
                       However a report in the Press Gazette by Sam Forsdick 7 August 2018 disputes that conclusion.   The Express and Mirror fake news?   Nick Stripe reports that the provisional weekly death figures released are based on the date the deaths were registered not the date each person died.  Registrations can be delayed by months(for example when referred to a coroner).  The 1000 figure referred to by the Express and the Mirror could include those that happened weeks or months before the summer heatwave started.  A much higher number of deaths above the 5 year average was recorded in the previous three years.  In 2015 there were 3516 more deaths across June and July.

     "Lies, damned lies and statistics"? famous quote from Mark Twain attributed to UK prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.

NCEP climate satellite data. Note mostly cold Atlantic(Northern Hemisphere)

  Image tweet from US meteorologist Joe Bastardi.
Ony a small slither of warmth in the north Atlantic.  This engulfs the UK and Europe, not characteristic of Atlantic as a whole which is cold(representing a sixth of the global oceans).

Global cooling is here!

Acknowledgements to Dr Roy Spencer and WUWT web site

Population and resources

Click to enlarge

Tesla model s electric car bursts into flames. Two teenagers dead!

The Tesla does not use a gasoline-powered engine and is powered by a battery. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday to investigate, to “primarily focus on the emergency response in relation to the electric vehicle battery fire, including fire department activities and towing operations.”

The NTSB said it has a history of investigating emerging technologies to understand their effect on transportation accidents.

…

Back-seat passenger Alexander Berry, of Fort Lauderdale, was ejected from the car. Firefighters took him to Broward Health Medical Center, where he was in fair condition Wednesday, the hospital said.

…

The chemicals inside battery cells can be corrosive and flammable, said Karl Brauer, executive publisher for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. “Electric vehicles are not more prone to fire, but batteries can burn hotter fires that are harder to extinguish,” he said. “Once there is a fire and you melt the battery pack, chemicals come out and when those chemicals come out, the fire can start, even without a spark.”

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-sb-engulfed-flames-car-crash-20180508-story.html

Claire Perry MP defends renewables. The truth is the opposite.

The Energy minister Claire Perry MP on a visitto Glasgow defended renewables.   The truth is somewhat different:

Wind power output amounted to 16.8 TWh last year in Scotland, most of which is onshore. Subsidies for this, via the Renewable Obligation system cost £816 million.

This equates to £154 for every man, woman and child in Scotland, or would do if it was not for the fact that the bill is shared out amongst everybody in the UK.

On top of this come the costs for building hundreds of miles of transmission cables, to carry electricity from remote Highland areas to where it is actually needed. Total costs are unknown, but will most certainly run into billions. In 2011, for instance, the BBC reported that the cost of the Beauly Denny power line alone was £600 million.

Then there is the cost of constraint payments to wind farm owners, when there is too much wind power on the system.

Despite these massive costs and subsidies, generation in Scotland has actually been falling in recent years. In fact, generation is now at its lowest level since at least 2004, when BEIS records begin.
Acknowledgements :  Not a lot pf people know that blog.

Sun spots vanishing fast. The real cause of climate change

           Dr Tony Phillips,  Nasa Spaceweather reports that so far in 2018 the sun has been blank almost 60% of the time with whole weeks going by without sunspots.  The second  graphic from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sun without sunspots.  The current solar cycle 24 is coming to an end.   NOAA`s Space Weather Prediction Center April 26th shows observed sunspot numbers in blue with the official forecast in red.

         The first graphic shows the sunspot number progression.   The actual monthly sunspot number is significantly lower than the predicted number..  The official forecast comes from Noaa`s Solar Cycle Prediction Panel. (acknowledgements to Anthony Watts of WUWT).  we are faced with a "cold" sun.   The last time the sunspots on the sun disappeared was the Mauder Minimum of the 17th century when the earth temperature dropped significantly. (a coming ice age?).

48 000 deaths in UK in worst winter in 42 years. GWPF

                           Green subsidies rise to a staggering £11.3 billion as a result of the climate hoax..   Deaths in the elderly rise by 40percent!  Global Warming Policy Forum.  48 000 deaths worst in 42 years!   What has the Prime Minister to say?  Nothing!

Ice shelf Antarctica growing!

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated/edited by P. Gosselin)

Whenever a chunk of ice breaks off the Antarctic ice shelf, the guilty party is immediately found by the media: man. He did it with his SUVs, his planes, and his container ships.

But what makes everything all the more surprising is a recent press release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 8 January 2018. Weather phenomenon El Niño is causing the ice shelf in the Amundsen Sea to melt from underneath.

Additional snowfall is unable to compensate for the loss. During a La Niña phase, the opposite occurs: The ice sheet grows. It’s natural variability at work. Gradually we are beginning to understand how it works. The press release follows:

New Study Reveals Strong El Niño Events Cause Large Changes in Antarctic Ice Shelves

Oscillations of water temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean can induce rapid melting of Antarctic ice shelves. A new study published Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience [Paolo et al. 2018] reveals that strong El Niño events can cause significant ice loss in some Antarctic ice shelves while the opposite may occur during strong La Niña events.

El Niño and La Niña are two distinct phases of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by how water temperatures in the tropical Pacific periodically oscillate between warmer than average during El Niños and cooler during La Niñas. The research, funded by NASA and the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, provides new insights into how Antarctic ice shelves respond to variability in global ocean and atmospheric conditions.

The study was led by Fernando Paolo while a Ph.D. graduate student and postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. Paolo is now a postdoctoral scholar at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Paolo and his colleagues, including Scripps glaciologist Helen Fricker, discovered that a strong El Niño event causes ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica to gain mass at the surface and melt from below at the same time, losing up to five times more ice from basal melting than they gain from increased snowfall. The study used satellite observations of the height of the ice shelves from 1994 to 2017.(acknowledgements to Pierre Gosselin (www.notrickszone.com), also Principia Scientific International John O`Sullivan http://principia-scientific.org.)

Electricity prices double in one year in South Australia and Victoria.

Average wholesale energy prices in Victoria and South Australia have more than doubled since this time last year, as experts warn that blackouts and supply issues are likely to increase as state governments chase ­aggressive ­renewable energy ­targets.

More than 2000 Victorian households remained without power yesterday after two days of heat triggered equipment failures and blackouts, opening up distributors to compensation claims.

The mass outages affected more than 60,000 residents, some of whom were cut off for more than 28 hours.

The outages struck as new data showed the average wholesale energy price in Victoria climbed to $139 this month, up from $62 in January last year. In South Australia, the wholesale average price for January climbed to almost $170, up from $84 a year ago, whereas prices fell in NSW and Queensland to about $75.

The pricing data has angered energy experts, who say blackouts and supply ­issues are likely to increase and prices are likely to rise as the Victorian and South Australian governments pursue renewable energy targets without prioritising power sources that can supply baseload power.

   (From Paul Homewood blog).  Also acknowledgements to The Australian newspaper.

Grattan Institute energy ­director Tony Wood said Sunday’s and Monday’s blackouts and high pricing showed that the state had botched its energy transition program by allowing baseload power sources — such as the Hazelwood power station — to be replaced by renewables, which delivered intermittent power.

“We’re dealing with a complex transition and it hasn’t been ­managed very well so far,” Mr Wood said. “That’s why we’ve seen local outages and high prices on the weekend, and that’s the reason why wholesale prices are substantially higher this year than last year.

“It’s a reflection of a failed policy. We’re transitioning away from centralised, cheap but dirty power stations, but we’re not ­replacing these stations with sources that are just as stable.”

The Andrews government last year broke away from other states and territories by instituting its own Victorian Renewable Energy Target, with a plan for renewables to power 40 per cent of the state’s energy needs by 2025.

Mr Wood said the energy supply could get patchier and the state could emerge as a net importer of electricity as the government replaced coal-fired power stations with solar and wind and other intermittent power sources, which did not fire 24 hours a day.

Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg confirmed that the weekend power outages were the result of distribution rather than supply issues, but said the state government needed to do more to boost reliability.

He urged Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews to rethink the ­renewable energy target while branding South Australia’s renewables plan an experiment gone “horribly wrong”.

“Reliability standards for networks are set by state governments,” Mr Frydenberg said. “AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) have highlighted that supply in Victoria is tight and that is why we have called upon the Andrews government to drop its reckless state-based renewable energy targets and mindless bans on gas.

“Jay Weatherill’s ‘big experiment’ has gone horribly wrong. South Australia has the highest prices and the least stable energy system in the country and, despite the bravado in the lead-up to summer, their energy problems remain. Just a couple of weeks ago, South Australia’s prices reached $14,200 a megawatt hour, while at the same time they were $89 a MWh in NSW and $85 MWh in Queensland.

“The wind turbines, which can produce 100 per cent of energy on one day and zero on another, were not blowing when needed most, providing less than 5 per cent of power and Jay Weatherill’s big battery less than 1 per cent.”

Australian Power Project chief executive Nathan Vass warned that Victoria’s energy supply with a larger proportion of renewables likely would have buckled under conditions such as those of Sunday night.

“Batteries and solar would not have saved Victoria as over 17,000 Victorians had no power throughout the night, when the sun isn’t shining,” Mr Vass said.

“Pairing renewables with battery storage wouldn’t have done much to alleviate the blackout. By way of example, the Tesla battery facility in South Australia only provides power for an hour to 30,000 homes.”

Release of the wholesale pricing data in South Australia — and data showing South Australia still has the highest prices in the National Electricity Market — prompted state opposition energy spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan to savage a claim by Mr Weatherill that his $550 million “self-sufficient” energy plan was producing the lowest power prices in the national market.

“South Australians are furious about the outrageous price of electricity they pay and tired of the Weatherill government’s refusal to accept responsibility,” Mr van Holst Pellekaan said.

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9mSs2fedXBar3gALi5LBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMWk2OWNtBGNvbG8DaXIyBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--/RV=2/RE=1517348447/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2fbusiness%2fmining-energy%2fwholesale-energy-prices-doublelast-summers%2fnews-story%2fbc420cd4b3da94d9b99d0df3663aef48/RK=2/RS=CNItrMc7h5eLrnSoS2nGSbzO9I8-

Rise in temperature in 2017 not due to global warming.

https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=88a461cee1&view=att&th=1610ac025390b51c&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw
el Nino still dispersing.
Dr David Whitehouse  GWPF Observatory  https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=b4515489a8&e=fdc2942f24