Solar panels across Australia reduce our emissions by almost nothing.

The ABC is whipping Gorgon for not getting carbon sequestration to work, making out that this is a crisis that will wipe out the entire “gain” from installing two million solar panels across Australia. What the ABC don’t say is that the entire infrastructure of solar panels (on 20% of the nations homes) is only reducing our CO2 emissions by one pointless percent. So the Gorgon delay, meh, whatever. Australian emissions are rising at 1.5% pa now anyhow.

In terms of our national emissions, the real question is if we shut  every solar panel in the nation would anyone notice?

Despite the $1.1b budget, the ABC could have got this bigger and more useful perspective for free from any number of skeptics, none of whom it tried to interview.

With minimal training in arithmetic ABC staff could even have figured it out for themselves. Instead, as per usual, the ABC provides free advertorials for green-industry hacks, with no hard questions and little research.

Can someone please explain to ABC investigative journalists the difference between a megaton and a ton? All they had to do was graph the solar contribution […]

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June 22, 2018 at 04:52AM

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US researchers who accurately forecast last year’s busy Atlantic hurricane season are not expecting a similar level of activity this year, partly due to lower sea surface temperatures as El Niño effects fade away.

Hurricane season didn’t officially start until June 1, but Subtropical Storm Alberto made an appearance early, causing more than $50 million in damage as it made its way inland and up the coast in late May, reports Phys.org.

Twelve people—seven in Cuba and five in the U.S.—died as Alberto’s fallout included flooding, landslides, tornados and mudslides.

Is Alberto’s early-season appearance an indicator of another active Atlantic hurricane season? Not necessarily, according to predictions by researchers at the University of Arizona.

The UA forecasting model predicted a below-average number of hurricanes for the 2018 hurricane season, which runs through November 30. UA researchers are predicting four hurricanes, two of which will be major hurricanes, defined as those reaching Category 3, 4 or 5. That forecast falls below the median of seven hurricanes with two majors.

The UA prediction is among the lowest of all published forecasts, which include predictions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the London, United Kingdom-based consortium Tropical Storm Risk and other universities.

Last year, the UA’s forecast was among the highest—11 hurricanes with six majors—and came closest to hitting the mark. The 2017 hurricane season ended with 10 hurricanes and six majors, making it the most active since 2005 and the seventh-most active in the NOAA’s historical records dating back to 1851. Last year, Irma (Florida) and Maria (Puerto Rico) were 5s, and Harvey (Texas) and Jose (offshore Caribbean) were 4s.

Xubin Zeng, his former graduate student Kyle Davis, and former UA professor Elizabeth Ritchie developed the UA’s hurricane forecasting model, which has proven to be extremely accurate over the last four years.

“Since we began issuing our annual hurricane prediction in 2014, our average error is 1.5 hurricanes,” said Zeng, director of the UA’s Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center, a professor of atmospheric sciences and the Agnes N. Haury Endowed Chair in Environment in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences at the UA.

A main factor in this year’s prediction is the low sea surface temperatures over the Atlantic, where little warming occurred from April to May. The sea surface temperatures are the lowest Zeng and his team have seen since 2014, but similar to long-term average temperatures.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in May, which describes multidecadal climate variability in the North Atlantic, is zero, which is below the threshold at which El Niño would affect hurricane activity in the UA model.

Continued here.

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June 22, 2018 at 04:30AM

As much of Germany’s nearly 30,000 strong fleet of wind turbines approach 20 or more years in age, the list of catastrophic collapses is growing more rapidly. The turbines are now being viewed by technical experts as “ticking time bombs”.

According to a commentary by Daniel Wetzel of online German Daily ‘Die Welt’, the aging rickety wind turbines are poorly inspected and maintained and thus are now posing a huge risk.

Over the past months alone there’s been a flurry of reports over wind turbines failing catastrophically and collapsing to the ground, e.g. see here, here and here.

As the older turbines age, their components and electronic control systems are wearing out and beginning to gravely malfunction. And according to Wetzel, these turbines are not even subject to strict technical monitoring by Germany’s TÜV (Technical Inspection Association), which provides inspection and product certification services.

In Germany industrial systems are required to regularly undergo technical inspections and approvals in order to ensure that they operate safely. However, wind turbines are exempt from this strict requirement, and so many wind park operators are neglecting to properly inspect, maintain and repair the systems. And so it does not come as a surprise that the aging turbines are beginning to fail catastrophically.

As a result, the TÜV is calling for turbines to be treated like any other industrial system, and be required to undergo rigorous inspections as well, Wetzel writes.

In 2016, near in the region of Paderborn, a 100-tonne turbine and its rotors plunged to the earth. The turbine was nearly 20 years old.

“Razor-sharp shards” threat to grazing animals

In another case, earlier this year, near Bochern, Wetzel reports, a brakeless 115-meter tall turbine spun wildly out of control before “two of the 56-meter blades “ripped to shreds ‘in a cloud of glass, plastic and fill material’.”

“Razor-sharp fiberglass shards flew 800 meters,” the Westfalen Blatt reported.

The debris from exploded turbine now poses a threat to the environment. The sharp fiberglass pieces injure grazing animals, says the Hanover School of Veterinary Medicine. “For cattle they can even perforate the stomach.”

Hazard to ground water

Another hazard comes from the hundreds of liters of transmission oil the turbines that seep into the groundwater. Moreover the huge reinforced concrete foundations require tremendous energy for their manufacture and they penetrate deep into the ground, which adversely effects soil and groundwater.

Growing list of disasters

The number of wind turbine disasters is mounting, reports Wetzel. Wind energy opposition group Vernunftkraft keeps a list, which has grown to be pages long. But the German Association of Wind Energy (Bundesverband Windenergie) downplays the incidents, calling them “isolated cases”.

Dealing with “ticking time bombs”

Yet the situation has in reality grown so serious that TÜV is now urgently calling for rigorous inspections and regulations in order to assure operational safety.  TÜV expert Dieter Roas says that we dealing with “ticking time bombs.”

Wetzel writes that many turbines are now approaching their 20-25 year lifetimes and that extending their operating time should require technical approval.

The technical and structural integrity of the turbines in most cases is completely unknown.

TÜV expert Roas warns: “Here we are dealing with significant dangers”.

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(Be sure to follow NTZ at Twitter)

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June 22, 2018 at 04:20AM

Britain should be joining the US in calling for a pragmatic approach to energy in developing countries. That means an end to these damaging restrictions.

The global economy is undergoing a historic transformation, as economic and political power continues to shift towards emerging markets. Britain’s place in this world should be defined by the leadership we bring in unlocking these markets; providing a hand-up and not a hand-out to the world’s poorest so that they can become our trading partners of tomorrow.

But to achieve that vision we must first apply a massive dose of accountability and transparency to the big multilateral development banks that take British cash, while doing little to support our relationships with some of the fastest growing economies in the world.

One clear example of this is energy. Just over one billion people around the world still lack access to electricity. That means surgery by torchlight, pumping water by hand, and no chance of a job that isn’t backbreaking subsistence farming. Yet rather than try and help these people, the big multilateral banks restrict UK taxpayers from investing in any form of energy that isn’t renewable.

Yes, renewables are important, but the reality is that no country in the world has industrialised using rooftop solar panels. In interviews with Western journalists, Indian ministers have repeatedly explained that India cannot be expected go to bed once the sun sets at 6pm. Nigeria is desperate to diversify away from oil and gas and into mining and manufacturing, rightly pointing out this requires massive energy inputs, including from coal. If an advanced economy like Germany needs coal for 40 per cent of its power, then why should a Malawi or Bangladesh make do with intermittent renewables?

The answer is they won’t. Developing countries with fossil fuels are very clear that when push comes to shove, they will always prioritise development over emissions reduction. So if we want to deliver the Paris Agreement, helping them use fossil fuels more cleanly is the only game in town.

And in our own rush to grab headlines and outbid other nations when signing international agreements, we have overlooked the fact that in the UK we have the very technology to support some of those emerging economies to advance.

Take high-efficiency lower emissions (HELE) coal plants, which emit up to a third less CO2 than traditional coal-fired power stations. Innovative British manufacturers, mostly in Northern England, are already part of the global HELE supply chain. We should be backing the kind of energy aid that supports these companies, not restricts them.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is also gathering steam, with 17 large-scale CCS projects in operation around the world and more in the pipeline. One company backed by the UK government recently managed to capture 97 per cent of the emissions from a 10MW coal plant in Chennai, India. Coal with CCS is vital for tackling climate change, but under current World Bank rules portable solar lamps – which do nothing for net emissions – are seen as more important.

As my friend the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it at Davos this year: “Everyone talks about reducing carbon emissions, but there are a very few people or countries who back their words with their resources to help developing countries to adopt appropriate technology.”

It’s time we ended these anti-development restrictions. Not only would this help the world’s most energy-starved countries, it would also support UK Plc. Our North Sea experience has given us huge expertise in the technology that underpins carbon capture and storage. UK universities are forging ahead with CCS research. As we develop this technology in Britain, we should be looking to export it abroad. This trade could be worth up to £9bn a year by 2030 to the UK, but with other advanced economies looking to capture this market, we have to move now.

Already the US has announced that it plans to supply resources and technology to any country that wants to use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently. We cannot risk getting left behind, especially as we raise our sights beyond the EU and look to forge new trading relationships with our partners in the Commonwealth. We should be leading the charge.

In a fortnight, the World Bank will hold its annual meeting in Washington, DC. Top of the agenda will be a request for a capital increase from donor countries. As one of the World Bank’s biggest donors, our voice carries weight. Now is the time to use it. We should be joining the US in calling for a pragmatic approach to energy in developing countries. That means an end to these damaging restrictions.

Full post

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June 22, 2018 at 02:44AM