When the wind stops blowing, wind power stops flowing. It’s that simple. If anyone is looking for proof that wind power is always and everywhere entirely dependent on the weather. Here it is.

The graphic above comes from the boys over at Aneroid Energy and it depicts the output from every single wind turbine connected to Australia’s Eastern Grid – which covers Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.

On 13 June, as Jo Nova explains below, the total output amounted to a totally risible 88 MW – or 2 fat ladies, as English bingo callers put it.

On a bad day $20 billion in wind power across Australia can only guarantee as much power as two diesel generators
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
15 June 2024

How much back-up do we need for our 11.5 gigawatt wind system? About 11.4 gigawatts.

Wind energy failed on Thursday at what must be close to a record low — with barely 88MW of production from 11,500MW of wind turbines. That’s about 0.7% of total nameplate capacity.

With construction costs running at $2 million for every theoretical megawatt of turbine, that’s $20 billion dollars of machinery sitting out there in the fields and forests of Australia producing about as much as two diesel generators.

We have 84 industrial wind plants across 5 states of Australia, and the green band below was their total contribution to our national electricity needs on Thursday — put your reading glasses on.

Total wind production Australia June 13, 2024. Anero.id

Things were even worse in Western Australia, where at the one point that afternoon when I happened to look the state’s total wind generation was minus 11MW. Some wind turbines were drawing a megawatt here and there, perhaps to keep the turbines rolling so they don’t get flat spots on bearings.

It was an attack of another climate-denying high pressure cell on Thursday. There was no place in Australia good for wind generation except (maybe) for our research stations in Antarctica.

Again, this is now a feature of our weather dependent electricity grid, unless the government can stop these high pressure cells or conquer New Zealand and build a bridge.

High pressure cell over Australia destroying wind production. Anero.id

But sadly, there is no “building” our way out of this. One thousand more wind-plants won’t keep many lights on, and $100 billion dollars of interconnectors will not connect us to wind power if there is a high pressure cell 5,000 kilometers wide, which there is every two or three weeks.

Wind power went from producing 7.2GW in the early hours of Wednesday to 0.09GW by lunchtime Thursday. It was sheer luck it bottomed out at lunchtime on a sunny day when solar panels were at their peak. Seven gigawatts of power disappeared in just 36 hours. If we lost 7 gigawatts of coal plants in a week, we’d never hear the end of it.

It’s the minimums that matter

Paul McArdle at WattClarity has all the grid data, and provides a spectacular graph of the system-wide peaks and troughs of our wind generators over the last 13 years which he has updated recently to highlight how bad the months of April and May were for wind production in Australia. Click to enlarge this graph to really appreciate the devastating message. While the total wind farm “capacity” has grown massively (the grey columns on the graph), the minimum lowest guaranteed production has not shifted much at all. This is the generation we can rely on, the minimum monthly points are marked in dark green at the bottom.

Ten years ago the lowest monthly minimum was practically zero (reaching just 3.7MW one day in July 2014). But since then we’ve built 8,000 MW of extra wind power, at an effective cost of $16 billion, and only bought ourselves effectively two diesel generators worth of reliable electricity?

Lowest monthly wind power performance and capacity in Australia Source: WattClarity

If someone asks how much wind can we rely on, the answer is “about one percent”.

UPDATE: Paul McArdle at WattClarity confirms that this event occurred, was only 88MW and 0.77% of capacity, and that it was not caused by any human management or curtailment, just by being becalmed.
Jo Nova Blog

By P Gosselin

By KlimaNachrichten

We are almost 1/3 of the way through the meteorological summer. Time to remember the prediction made by suspect biologist Marc Benecke in spring 2024. He had predicted “a summer of hell with almost complete certainty”. We reported. As early as March 2024, some meteorologists raised concerns about this forecast.

Shortly after Benecke gave his lecture, Kachelmannwetter created a video explaining the weather conditions needed for a warm or even hot summer. This is done very calmly and the video is correspondingly cautious with forecasts. However, it is well explained that summers in our latitudes have been getting warmer for years. Germany is indeed in for a warm week, but this could end at the weekend if a cold front pushes through from the north-west.

It is not possible to reliably predict how July and August will turn out. According to Wetterkontor, June 2024 has so far been slightly too cold in Germany compared to the statistical average.

(Image: Screenshot Wetterkonto.de)

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

Dozens of mainstream media outlets have run stories in the past week linking the heat related deaths during the annual Hajj in Saudi Arabia to climate change. There is no such connection. Data shows that Saudi Arabia has warmed less than half the global average during the recent period of warming, with no increase in average summer temperatures. In addition, deaths during the annual Hajj pilgrimage are common historically, and when they are related to heat stress they have factors in common, but climate change is not among them.

Axios, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, USA Today, and the New York Times, among dozens of other mainstream media outlets covered the more than 1,300 heat related deaths that occurred during the Hajj this year.

Some background is warranted. The Hajj is a mandatory religious pilgrimage that all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey must make at least once in their lifetime. The Hajj consists in part of a number of physically demanding rituals, including long walks, standing on the desert plain from sunrise to sunset, and praying in the outdoors for extended periods of time. Published data indicates that between 2000 and 2019 the average number of Hajj pilgrims was 2,269,145 per year, of which nearly 70 percent came from outside Saudi Arabia, many from countries where more moderate temperatures are the norm.

Heatwaves, like the one experienced this year in Saudi Arabia, are common, rather than an uncommon feature of summer in the country. However, because the Islamic calendar is lunar and the Islamic year is between eleven and twelve days shorter than the Gregorian year, the date of Hajj changes from year to year, shifting 11 days earlier each year. As a result, summer pilgrimages during sustained highest temperatures, come in cycles.

The deaths of more than 1,300 people at this year’s Hajj attributed to heat is tragic, but historically not uncommon. Packing this many people into Mecca, a relatively small space results in mass deaths from different causes almost every year, including from stampedes, on occasion tens of thousands from disease outbreaks, protests, fires, and yes, heat prostration and heat stroke.

Some of the media coverage of these tragic deaths was better than others, but almost all  falsely linked this year’s extreme heat and climate change. For example, the headline of Axios story covering the deaths was, “Hajj deaths highlight Saudi Arabia’s escalating climate-related health risks,” and a Washington Post headline opined, “Hajj heat wave deaths underscore climate threat for most vulnerable.”

The first bit of evidence debunking a link between this year’s heat related deaths during the Hajj and climate change is the fact that Saudi Arabia has not warmed that much during the recent period of warming. A fact sheet from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia points out that the Kingdom is ranked as the 107^th most vulnerable country to climate change. Concerning temperatures, during the recent period of modest warming, when the Earth as has experienced an average measured temperature increase exceeding 1.3℃ or more, Saudi Arabia has only warmed only an average of 0.4℃; less than 2/3 of the global average—an amount unnoticeable by people.

So while temperatures during this year’s Hajj have been extreme, it doesn’t reflect a trend which would provide a possible link to long-term climate change. This year’s heat is a weather event, not climate change.

Nor is the number of heat related illnesses and deaths unusual over the period of record keeping for the Hajj. During the Hajj’s “hot cycles,” the years when the Hajj takes place during Saudi Arabia’s summer months, heat related illnesses and deaths increase dramatically, by comparison to its “cold cycles.” During the 1982 through 1995 hot cycle, rates of heat stroke and heat exhaustion peaked at 134.2 and 858.8 per 100,000 pilgrims, peaking in August 1985, nearly 40 years of warming ago. In 1987, more than 1,000 heat stroke deaths were reported over the course of just a few days. In 2023, when the Hajj was 11 days later and deeper in the summer, at least 8,400 pilgrims were reported to have suffered from heat-related illnesses, although that number was likely low, since unless the case is severe, heat related illnesses often go unreported.

Going back further, in 1927, when the number of Hajj pilgrims was a fraction of the present number (approximately two to three percent), at least 1,500 pilgrims died of excessive heat – nearly 100 years of warming ago.

In short, neither the climate nor the fact of temperature related deaths have changed much in Saudi Arabia. The differences in the number of temperature related deaths between the Hajj’s hot and cold cycles are consistent.

In fact, research shows that it is less the heat itself that is responsible for the high number of heat related deaths and health events than the age and health of those participating in the Hajj. Research shows that most of the death during each Hajj hot cycle are among pilgrims from outside of the arid, hot Middle East. Older people and those with preexisting health conditions, especially when they come from countries with more temperate summer climates account for the vast majority of deaths. This fact was hinted at in a few stories covering the deaths, like the New York Times’ story which said, “Deaths at Hajj and big events, highlight failures to adjust to heat (emphasis author’s).

As a study in the journal, Environmental Health Perspectives noted:

[There is] better adaptation to heat among residents than among pilgrims. Elevated temperatures had an immediate strong and sustained effect on the mortality risk among pilgrims, but little change in risk among Mecca residents. Although neither hot nor cold temperatures were significantly associated with mortality risk for year-round residents, the team estimated that 71% of deaths among pilgrims could be attributed to elevated temperatures. This heat-attributable mortality is at least 40 times higher than previously reported in populations elsewhere.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has not been slow to recognize and respond the dangers of heat related deaths during the Hajj, implementing a communication/warning system for pilgrims that come through official channels, providing air conditioned buses, planting trees for shade, developing and siting portable water stations and misting systems, air conditioning the Great Mosque of Mecca, and providing portable air conditioning systems for temporary tents, among other actions. Research shows these actions have contributed to a 74.6 percent decline in heat related incidences of stroke and a 47.6 percent drop in the heat related mortality rate compared to the prior 1982–1995 hot cycle, although heat related deaths still remain higher than during Hajj cool cycles.

Rather than hyping a non-existent connection between climate change and extreme summer heat in Saudi Arabia (a natural fact every summer) or Hajj related deaths, the mainstream media would serve the truth and its audience better by issuing warnings in advance of Hajj to potential pilgrims from temperate countries of the dangers of heat related illness and death when the Hajj is in a hot cycle, and informing them of the health and safety amenities the Saudi government has made available to make their Hajj journey safer.