Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized 3 May 2017

English Vineyards Report ‘Catastrophic’ Damage After Severe April Frost

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

English winemakers are reporting “catastrophic” crop damage after the worst frost in a generation wiped out at least half of this year’s grape harvest.

From the Guardian:

English winemakers are reporting “catastrophic” crop damage after the worst frost in a generation wiped out at least half of this year’s grape harvest.

Chris White, the chief executive of Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey, said up to 75% of its crop was damaged by last week’s sub-zero temperatures: “The temperature dropped to -6C and at that level it causes catastrophic damage to buds,” he said.

White said staff had worked in vain using special fans and heaters to protect the vineyard, which at 265 acres in the UK’s biggest, after an Arctic blast swept across the UK. “We are very disappointed and it’s quite heartbreaking for the people who work in the vineyard all year round,” he said. “From what I hear the majority of English vineyards have been affected to some degree.”

Winemakers light fires to fight frost – in pictures

Some of France’s most famous winemaking regions, including Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy, were also affected by last week’s severe frosts. The bad weather is expected to mean another poor year for French producers after last year’s cocktail of hail, frost and mildew resulted in one of the smallest harvests in 30 years.

The blow dealt to this year’s wine harvest is a setback for an industry enjoying huge success, with Denbies, Nyetimber and Ridgeview among the South Downs vintners winning international acclaim for sparkling – and increasingly still – wine produced in an area that has a geology and microclimate similar to Champagne. It also comes after four record years, a strong run that has encouraged the industry to plan a record 1m vines over the next 12 months.

http://ift.tt/2pCkUYh

It is an unfortunate reminder of just how volatile English weather is.

It was only last week that the discredited RHS suggested that we would soon be growing all sorts of exotic varieties.

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 3, 2017 at 04:57AM

Uncategorized 3 May 2017

The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Canceling U.S. Participation Protects Competitiveness and the Constitution

President Trump should keep his two-part campaign promise to cancel U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments to United Nations global warming programs. The Paris Agreement is a costly and ineffectual solution to the alleged climate crisis. It is also plainly a treaty, despite President Obama’s attempt to implement it without the Senate’s advice and consent. Failure to withdraw from the agreement would entrench a constitutionally damaging precedent, set President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in conflict, and ensure decades of diplomatic blowback.

For those and other reasons, the Paris Agreement imperils both America’s economic future and capacity for self-government.

The Paris Agreement and the 1992 treaty it purports to modify, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, both contain provisions for withdrawal. Concerns about diplomatic blowback if President Trump withdraws from the Agreement or submits it for the Senate’s advice and consent actually confirm the wisdom of exercising one of those options. The Paris Agreement is designed to institutionalize a running campaign of diplomatic blowback unless the U.S. submits to ever-tightening constraints, ratcheting up every five years. If Trump withdraws, any diplomatic blowback would largely be a muted one-off event, without the economic, political, and security costs that staying in the Paris Agreement entails.

To safeguard America’s economic future and capacity for self-government, President Trump should pull out of the Paris Agreement. There are several options for doing so, which are discussed in this paper. Regardless of which option Trump selects, his administration should make the case for withdrawal based on the following key points:

The Paris Climate Agreement is a treaty by virtue of its costs and risks, ambition compared to predecessor climate treaties, dependence on subsequent legislation by Congress, intent to affect state laws, U.S. historic practice with regard to multilateral environmental agreements, and other common-sense criteria. […]

Full report

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 3, 2017 at 04:50AM

Uncategorized 3 May 2017

Uncontrolled Infusion Of Green Electricity Leads To Record-Breaking NEGATIVE Power Prices

via NoTricksZone
http://notrickszone.com

As mentioned here yesterday, Germany saw sunny and very windy conditions last Sunday and the following national holiday Monday –leading to a huge power surge into the German power grid. But because many industries were closed during these two days, demand for electricity was low, see chart below:

German consumption (blue line), wind power dark and light blue shaded area) and solar power (yellow shaded area). Source: Agora here.

The chart above also shows both the very high infusion of solar, onshore and offshore wind into the German power grid on April 30th and early May, and the low overall demand.

The result: Huge supply + little demand = crashing prices.

The huge feed-in of wind and solar energy did not occur without problems, especially in the southern state of Bavaria, the German online BR24 reports here.

BR24 writes that for the first time ever in Bavaria “wind turbines had to be shut down on a large scale – because there was too much power in the grid,” this according to the Bundesverband Windenergie (Federal Association for Wind Energy). There was also criticism that the wind turbines were shut down instead of the state’s nuclear plants.

BR24 adds that “many wind turbines in Bavaria had to stop for hours because no one wanted to take the power” and that this was the first time this has ever happened in Bavaria. According to the Fraunhofer Institute, “two thirds of Germany’s conventional power production was switched off” on Sunday in order to prevent the grid from turning into a giant toaster.

And because the base load (the grid’s backbone) cannot be adjusted rapidly or taken offline line to meet the rapid changes, the BR24 adds:

But the coal power plants continued to operate – despite the negative power prices of minus ten cents per kilowatt-hour.”

It’s not possible to turn off the coal plants because once you do, the critical baseload disappears and the grid risks becoming an uncontrollable wild bronco.

And when you are forced to sell your very own product at a negative price (minus ten cents per kilowatt-hour) just to get rid of it, then you get a pretty good idea of just how obscenely distorted the market has become because of wind and solar.

Yet the energy masterminds of Germany and Europe intend to double or even quadruple this folly in the future.

So what about the losses incurred from the negative prices? You guessed it! They will be passed along to the German consumers, who already pay among the highest electricity rates in the world.

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

May 3, 2017 at 04:47AM

Uncategorized 3 May 2017

English vineyards report ‘catastrophic’ damage after severe April frost

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

By Paul Homewood

h/t Quaseoveritas

From the Guardian:

English winemakers are reporting “catastrophic” crop damage after the worst frost in a generation wiped out at least half of this year’s grape harvest.

Winemakers light fires to fight frost – in pictures

http://ift.tt/2pCkUYh

It is an unfortunate reminder of just how volatile English weather is.

It was only last week that the discredited RHS suggested that we would soon be growing all sorts of exotic varieties.

Last week, the CET recorded two nights below zero, minus 0.7C and minus 0.2c on the 25th and 27th. (Interestingly, I believe that Benson in Oxfordshire went as low as minus 6C, a figure also noted by the Guardian in Surrey. This must cast doubt over the reliability of the CET series).

A look at CET night time temperatures for the last week in April on records back to 1878 shows that this is a perfectly normal occurrence. What is apparent is that there was a run of years in the 1990s and 2000s, when there were no sub zero days.