Month: March 2017

Uncategorized 20 Mar 2017

Coal mine to be transformed into 200 MW pumped hydro plant

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What could possibly go wrong? Like all pumped storage, every ‘refill’ uses more electricity for the pumping than is generated by its water release. The UK is also looking to develop similar schemes. The motivation is the intermittency of renewables.

The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia is set to turn its Prosper-Haniel hard coal mine in Bottrop into a 200 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric plant reports PEI.

The facility will act like a battery and will have enough capacity to power more than 400,000 homes, according to state governor Hannelore Kraft.

Other mines may also be converted after Prosper-Haniel because the state needs more industrial-scale storage as it seeks to double the share of renewables in its power mix to 30 per cent by 2025, she said. North-Rhine Westphalia generates a third of Germany’s power.

The consortium running the Prosper-Haniel project, which includes the University of Duisburg-Essen and mine owner RAG AG, are confident that the mine is suitable to become a storage pump. The plan to reinvent Prosper-Haniel envisages creating reservoirs above and below the closed mine, according to a blueprint posted on the group’s website.

When needed to compensate intermittent wind and solar power, as much as 1 million cubic meters of water could be allowed to plunge as deep as 1,200 meters, turning turbines at the foot of the colliery’s mine shafts. The mining complex comprises 26 kilometres (16 miles) of horizontal shafts.

Source: Coal mine to be transformed into 200 MW pumped hydro plant – Power Engineering International

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March 20, 2017 at 01:39AM

Uncategorized 20 Mar 2017

50 Inverted Hockey Sticks – Scientists Find Earth Cools As CO2 Rises

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Modern ‘Warmth’ Just A Brief Excursion

From 8,000-Year (Continuing) Cooling Trend

The scientific literature is replete with evidence that the geological record for the Holocene (the last 10,000 years) fails to support the concept that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations cause ocean and land temperatures to rise.

Actually, the scientific literature strongly suggests that the correlation between rising CO2 and temperature would appear to veer off in the opposite direction: as CO2 rises, temperatures decline.

So if there is a correlation for the Holocene, it may be the inverse of climate model expectations.

Modern ‘Warmth’ Excursion Has Had Little Or No Effect On The Overall Long-Tern Cooling Trend

According to an estimate of global sea surface temperature (SST) changes during the last 2,000 years (“Robust global ocean cooling trend for the pre-industrial Common Era“), the addition of the last 2 centuries (1800 to 2000 C.E.) of relatively modest SST warming only changes the overall per-millennium global cooling trend (~0.4°C) by one tenth of one degree. In other words, using a long-term perspective, the Holocene cooling trend has continued largely uninterrupted during the last two centuries.

McGregor et al., 2015

“Our best estimate of the SST cooling trend, scaled to temperature units using the average anomaly method (method 1), for the periods 1–2000 CE is –0.3°C/kyr to –0.4°C/kyr, and for 801–1800 CE is –0.4°C/kyr to –0.5°C/kyr“

Overall cooling has been ongoing for most of the last ~8,000 years, mixed in with temporary warming “spikes” that last for a century or two. The modern warming that emerged in the early 20th century will, if history is a guide, eventually revert back to the cooling trajectory of the last several thousand years. Gerhard (2004) facilely illustrates this overall global cooling trajectory — with swerves and spikes along the way.

Gerhard, 2004

CO2 Concentrations Rose Steadily Throughout The Last 8,000 Years…While Earth Cooled

While the planet has been steadily cooling (with brief warming excursions) for the last 8,000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have tilted in the opposite direction, rising from about 260 parts per million (ppm) ~8,000 years ago to about 280 ppm in ~1800 C.E.

So if CO2 rises as temperature drops, the correlation suggested by climate models (temperature should rise as CO2 rises) is not supported by by a large portion of the available scientific evidence.

Listed below are 50 inverse “hockey stick” graphs featuring a long-term global cooling trend that is largely uninterrupted by modern era temperatures. These reconstructions illustrate the unheralded disconnect between CO2-driven climate models and the geological record.

Jiang et al., 2015

Lecavalier et al., 2013

Luoto et al., 2014

Abrantes et al., 2017

Esper et al., 2014

Jalali et al., 2016

Renssen et al., 2009

Rosenberg et al., 2004

Rosenthal et al., 2013

Khiyuk and Chilingar, 2006

Rinne et al., 2014

Gennaretti et al., 2014

Steinman et al., 2016

Yamamot et al., 2016

Shevenell et al., 2011

Bostock et al., 2013

Kim et al., 2007

Viau and Gajewski, 2009

Thienemann et al., 2017

“[P]roxy-inferred annual MATs [annual mean air temperatures] show the lowest value at 11,510 yr BP (7.6°C). Subsequently, temperatures rise to 10.7°C at 9540 yr BP followed by an overall decline of about 2.5°C until present (8.3°C).”

Sepúlveda et al., 2009

Böll et al., 2014

Brocas et al., 2016

Shevenell et al., 2011

Mulvaney et al., 2012

“A marine sediment record from off the shore of the western Antarctic Peninsula also shows an early Holocene optimum during which surface ocean temperatures were determined to be 3.5°C higher than present. Other evidence suggests that the George VI ice shelf on the southwestern Antarctic Peninsula was absent during this early-Holocene warm interval but reformed in the mid Holocene.”

Krawczyk et al., 2017

Foster et al., 2016

Andersen et al., 2004

Fortin and Gajewski, 2016

Caniupán et al., 2014

Birks and Seppä, 2004

Rella and Uchida, 2014

Kawahata et al., 2017

Levy et al., 2013

Weldeab et al, 2005

Dupont et al., 2004

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March 20, 2017 at 01:17AM

Uncategorized 20 Mar 2017

‘I Will Name Names’: Infighting At EPA Drives Top Official To Resign

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A senior member of the Trump administration’s beachhead team at the EPA unexpectedly resigned over concerns of the “integrity” of political appointees and career employees. David Schnare was expected to take a top post at EPA, but he abruptly resigned March 15. It wasn’t for personal reasons, but over what he called a “question of […]

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March 20, 2017 at 12:26AM

Uncategorized 20 Mar 2017

A380 jetliner flips business jet upside down in freak mid-air accident

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Image credit: liveandletsfly.com

Wake turbulence rules for A380s require other aircraft to observe minimum separation distances of 5-8 miles in a variety of situations.

A harrowing freak air accident that has only just been revealed saw an Airbus A380 commercial jetliner flown by Emirates cause a much smaller business jet passing beneath it to flip upside down and plummet thousands of feet, reports the IB Times. The incident is a sharp reminder of why passengers should always wear their seat belts.

According to information obtained by the Aviation Herald, on the morning of 7 January an Emirates Airbus A380-800 was flying from Dubai to Sydney. While the aeroplane was en route over the Arabian Sea, roughly about 630 nautical miles southeast of Muscat, a Bombardier Challenger 604 business jet operated by German carrier MHS Aviation passed by 1,000ft beneath it.

A thousand feet might seem like a great distance between two aeroplanes, but the wake turbulence caused by the A380 jetliner was so great that one minute after the airliner passed by above, very high G-force sent the business jet into an uncontrolled roll that turned the aircraft upside down at least three, if not five times.

Both of the plane’s engines flamed out, its Ram Air Turbine would not work and the aircraft plunged 10,000 feet. Fortunately, the aircraft’s pilots managed to regain control over the Challenger 604 using “raw muscle force” and restarted the engines.

The aeroplane was diverted to Muscat airport in Oman for an emergency landing and several of the nine people on board the aircraft were taken to hospital, with one person sustaining serious injuries.

German authorities investigating damage to aircraft

To give you an idea of scale, the Airbus A380 is 73m long and usually weighs between 386-560 tonnes. In comparison, the Bombardier Challenger 604 is just 21m long and weights 17-21 tonnes.

The damage sustained by the Challenger 604 was so extensive that the aircraft has had to be written off. Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) is leading the investigation even though the incident occurred in international waters.

Wake turbulence forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. It occurs in the vortex flow behind the aircraft’s wings and is due to lift generated by high pressure below the wing and low pressure above the wing, which creates a sort of horizontal ‘tornado’ behind the wings that sinks downwards in the air until it dissipates.

Usually this phenomena is considered to be most hazardous if it occurs when a jetliner is taking off or landing, which is why such care is taken to allocate slots to aircraft at airports. However, there have been several incidences where wake turbulence has caused incidents in mid-air in the past.

Continued here.