Dr. Howard Hayden is Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Connecticut. He is the editor of “The Energy Advocate” a pro-energy, pro-science, and pro-technology newsletter.www.energyadvocate.com
We have about a dozen pumped-hydro plants in the US. In some places (that’s why they’re not abundant) it is economically feasible to store energy by pumping water uphill to a higher reservoir, and then release it when demand is high.
Hydro has the advantage of being a system that can turn on or off in a hurry. Typically, a dam has a lot of independent water turbines. So you can turn on (say) 50 MW, 100 MW, and so on.
Greenies look at storage systems as their salvation. (Indeed, solar and wind are nearly worthless without back-up.) What they fail to realize is that back-up is far better used with conventional power.
If a back-up system (of whatever type you care to mention) is used with wind or solar, it has to have enough storage to last for days — possibly even weeks — to keep the grid from going down.
Now look what happens in you increase conventional baseload power (the cheapest, most reliable) beyond the actual baseload demand. During times of low demand, you store the excess energy, and then release it during times of high demand. The upshot is that you need to store only something like 20% of one day’s energy rather than 100% energy for many days. (Even a greenie ought to be able to see that 3 or 4 or 5 or … is greater than 0.2.
As to the Australian Snowy 2.0 project, I have no idea whether it makes any sense or not. But if it does, it makes far more sense for conventional power than wind and solar.
Just to keep you abreast of what is going on in France…
You may have heard of the Yellow Vests, who triggered our president Macron into embarking on a “Grand Debate”, mainly on the internet. It is mostly a closed questionnaire with circular arguments on the most surreptitious ways to shoehorn the energy transition, without offering to question its legitimacy in the first place. However, looking closely at the fine print, contributors like associations can still express an open opinion.
On our side Rémy Prud’homme is an emeritus professor of economics, former consultant to the OECD, occasionally to the World Bank, and visiting professor at the MIT. As such he is our chief economist within the steering committee of the French Climato-Réalistes. He came up with the attached “ENERGY TRANSITION IN FRANCE: USELESS, COSTLY, UNFAIR”, initially in French of course. See: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/energy-transition-in-france.pdf [PDF, 346 KB]
We thought you may like to know that we Froggies are enduring the same attacks as everywhere in the western world and that we like to voice our concern.
Sympathetically yours,
Pierre Bouteille, on behalf of the French Climato-Réalistes
If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000 from both ends of the world. What’s obvious is that in terms of homo sapiens history, things are warm now (because we’re not in an ice age). But, in terms of homo sapiens civilization, things are cooler than usual, and appear to be cooling.
There has been NO significant sea level rise in the harbour for the past 120 years, and what little there has been is about the height of a matchbox over a century.
Along the northern beaches of Sydney, at Collaroy there has been no suggestion of any sea level rise there for the past 140 years. Casual observations from Bondi Beach 1875 to the present also suggest the same benign situation.
A rush to judgement by local councils and State Governments by legislating harsh laws and building covenants along our coastlines now seems misplaced.
The falsehoods and mendacity of the IPCC and climate alarmists should be rejected out of hand, and efforts be made to ensure that science, not propaganda, defines our school curricula in matters of climate and sea levels
There was the First Atlantic Warm Period about 7750 BC
Second Atlantic Warm Period about 7000 BC
First Saharan Warm period about 5800 BC
Second Saharan Warm Period about 5000 BC
Egyptian Warm period about 3200 BC
Sumerian Warm Period about 2200 BC
Minoan Warm Period about 1200 BC
Roman Warm Period about 0 BC
Mediaeval Warm Period about 1000 AD
Modern Warm Period about 2000 AD
All the warm periods prior to the current one have been warmer (in most cases substantially warmer) than the modern warming that we are having hysterics about.
There have been five significant Little Ice Ages scattered between these warm periods.
If you can explain how man-made carbon dioxide was the temperature driver for these events please go ahead and tell me.
Until you do there are, for me, better explanations, principally the magnetic field of the sun.
Roger Dewhurst
Roger is a retired geologist who spent much of his life studying climate history written in sedimentary rocks.
Notwithstanding a data gap from 1791 to 1859, there appears to have been little or no change in the trends of monthly maximum and minimum temperatures for a period of 230 years, from 1788 to 2018, based on comparisons of two data sets—one recorded by First Fleet officer William Dawes, and one from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
Gergis et al 2009, authors of a major study and compilation of the data, conclude that “Remarkably, the records appear comparable with modern day measurements taken from Sydney Observatory Hill, displaying similar daily variability, a distinct seasonal cycle and considerable inter-annual variability.”
This runs counter to the climate alarmism normally published by these authors.
Or “Droughts and Extreme Weather are Nothing New.” by Dr Bill Johnson
Outpourings of climate bulldust over recent decades have been more alarming than changes in the climate.
Drought and above-average temperatures during recent El Niño-dominated years from 2001 to 2010 were deliberately and relentlessly marketed as global-warming. Driven incestuously by WWF and its Wentworth Group; green groups; Climate Commissioners; and a bunch of pretend-institutes, superlatives flew-up every greasy-pole out through talking-heads into the community’s ear.
Australians endured an endless chatter-based marketing campaign involving the ABC, CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology that intertwined CO2; the hot/critical decade; Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) “health”; and the carbon tax; grinding them into our national psyche. Science was reorganised with rivers of tax-payers cash enticing once-proud universities to lend brand to the cause. Every hot/cold/dry/wet day, clamouring professors popped out of disused broom-cupboards across the land, waving models and “new reports”. It was an overt scientifically-disingenuous beat-up.
Here is a list of key organisations actively promoting the war against civilisation. These are the internationalist thugs who want the poor to stay impoverished and the hungry to remain starving. These are the people who fraudulently claim tax deductibility for their actions in attacking every kind of genuine human progress. These are the dangerous elements who campaign to divert gigantic sums of public money into subsidising sources of energy which cannot function competitively without the assistance of stolen money.
Here is the list: Number one is GetUp!, leading the racist campaign against the Adani company, pushing the line that the poor of India have no right to the inexpensive energy which they crave because they are only Indians.
Number two is Greenpeace, infamous for many reasons including its campaign against DDT, which according to Robert Gwadz of the US National Institutes of Health “may have killed 20 million children” who died unnecessarily from malaria.
Number three is the Australian Conservation Foundation, which confers demigod status on the totally discredited fraudster Al Gore, and persists in its wholly false claim that governments give massive subsidies to the coal industry.
Number four is Seed, a relatively new arrival on the anti-civilisation block. Seed asserts on its Website: Climate Change is the biggest threat to Black Australia, which is a big call. Seed also proclaims: “Opening up our lands to mining is not a solution to black poverty.” Wise Australians such as Warren Mundine keep repeating that the solutions include jobs and training. Seed seems to be on the wrong team.
Number five is the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which specialises in recycling. That is recycling propaganda from all the other anti-civilisation groups without contributing anything original or imaginative. And of course the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, like its allies, has an expert fundraising pitch to part the unwary from their dollars.
Governments are running huge deficits, but still spend billions on “climate research” especially trying to model the effect of the atmosphere and its trace of carbon dioxide on surface temperature. Benefits are hard to find. It may have improved weather forecasts by a day or so, but official long-term predictions have not improved in the last fifty years. This is because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the main driver of weather or climate.
“What is referred to reverently as “climate research” is mainly just grubby advocacy supporting the political war on carbon. Why are we still funding scientists who believe that “the science is settled”? If they believe that they know the answers, what are they are doing with their research funds?”
Around the world there are five official weather data-bases, about 14 weather satellites (some say there are 88 of them!), 73 climate computer models, at least 30 research groups and thousands of academics receiving grants and attending never-ending climate conferences. Much of this torrent of public money is now focussed on trying to torture a climate confession out of one normally un-noticed and totally innocent trace gas in the atmosphere – carbon dioxide.
The major determinants of surface weather are latitude, earth’s rotation, the seasons, the sun with its variable radiations and orbital changes; and nearness to the oceans which maintain the water cycle, moderate temperatures and house massive volcanic chains.
Read more, as well as:
Warmists Watch Wrong Weather Warnings
Let’s Hear How They Will Do It
The Overflow Column
Obama Baloney
US/China Climate Agreement triggers Global Cooling in US
A Lone Australian Farmer Fights back against Kyoto Theft. He needs our help
Wake Up Australia: we are becoming Green and Defenceless.
As Australia’s industrial capacity declines, Australia is becoming green and defenceless. History holds lessons.
Back in Dec 1941, Japan suddenly attacked the huge US Naval base at Pearl Harbour. Three days later, two “invincible” British warships, “Repulse” and “Prince of Wales” were sunk by Japanese planes off Malaya. Soon Japanese armies were rampaging through Asia towards Australia. By Feb 1942, the “impregnable” British fortress of Singapore surrendered and Japanese bombs were falling on Darwin. By Sept 1942 the Japanese army had slashed their way down the Kokoda Track and could see the lights of Port Moresby. They were looking across Torres Strait to Australia. At that time, most of our trained soldiers were fighting Rommel in North Africa or in Japanese prison camps.
Suddenly Australia was on its own and needed to defend itself with what we had here.
Soldiers volunteered and were conscripted. Australian conscripts formed part of the force that met the Japanese on the Kokoda Track.
Of course Australia had very few engineering tools when war broke out, especially key tools like lathes. F W Hercus Manufacturing started making a copy of the famous American Southbend lathe in the 1940’s. These machines were installed in factories around Australia and used to make small parts for the war effort. Most of the lathe operators were women.
Enfield Rifles, Bren Guns and Vickers Machine Guns were produced in large numbers at the Small Arms Factory at Lithgow supported by feeder factories in the area. Britain lost so many weapons at Dunkirk that Australian factories were sending guns to them. We could not do that now.
Motor oil was produced in limited quantities from oil shale at Glen Davis, but petrol was in serious short supply, and had been rationed since 1940. With the fall of Singapore, this shortage became severe, and charcoal burners suddenly appeared to keep cars and trucks moving. Kerosene was scarce so carbide lights were widely used. The demand for charcoal was so great that firewood became scarce so it was also rationed.
To conserve supplies for soldiers, rationing was introduced for tea, clothing, butter, sugar, meat and cigarettes. Hotels were only allowed to serve alcohol twice a day for one hour at a time of their choosing.
An immediate critical shortage was copper for cartridge cases and communications – Australia had mines producing lead, zinc, silver, gold and iron, but there was a critical shortage of copper. Fortuitously, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, an exploration drill hole at Mount Isa had struck rich copper ore.
Mount Isa was called on to avert a calamitous shortage of copper in Australia. With government encouragement, Mount Isa Mines made the brave decision to suspend the profitable silver/lead/zinc operations and convert all mining and treatment facilities to extracting copper.
The lead concentrator could be converted to treat copper ore, but the biggest problem was how to smelt the copper concentrates. Luckily the company had skilled engineers and metallurgists in the lead smelter. In a miracle of improvisation, scrap steel and spare parts were purchased and scavenged from old mines and smelters from Cloncurry, Mt Elliott, Mt Cuthbert and Kuridala and cobbled into a workable copper smelter. In 1943 the first Mount Isa blister copper was produced. Production continued after the war when Mount Isa returned to extracting the then more profitable silver/lead/zinc. Later new plant was built enabling both lead and copper metal to be produced from this fabulous mine.
This story of the importance of self-reliance has lessons for today. (more…)
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