By Jo Nova

The cause of the mysterious oscillations and the big Iberian blackout is still a mystery, and it will take six months before the world has forgotten, sorry, I mean before the official report is finished.

In the meantime, baffled Spanish grid managers, who couldn’t possibly speculate on the cause, have cranked up the nuclear power and the gas, and reduced solar generation for no reason in particular. It’s all very odd, because gas is more expensive, and sun is free.

The Minister accidentally called this “Strengthened Mode” . (They used to call it pollution).

Lest we forget — in the hours before the crash, solar power was providing 60% of the energy, while nuclear power was covering 11%, and gas was just 3%.

By Oliver JJ Lane, Breitbart

Spain is running its national power grid in “strengthened mode”, using more nuclear and natural gas in place of the renewables it vaunted before last month’s historic blackout, but still hasn’t said what started the outage.

Bloomberg energy industry journalist Javier Blas, who is Spanish, further notes in a digest of Aagesen’s remarks that she also said — without elaboration — in her address to Parliament that the grid operator was now running the system in “strengthened mode”

The people deserve no hypothesis, says the Minister (who would prefer complete ass-covering silence if she can get away with it)

[Minister for Ecological Transition and Energy Sara Aagesen] said: “The government is working with rigour and not making hypotheses, because that is what the Spanish people deserve. Rigour and truth”.

Per the latest data, in recent days, more reliable traditional generation is being used more, with nuclear responsible for between 14 and 23 percent, and natural gas-fired plants accounting for up to 25 percent at times.

It’s just bad luck, you know, that these mysterious oscillations hit Spain. And thus, they have to use CCGT gas turbines for a while, because they can “adjust more promptly to mysterious oscillations”. It’s just a quirk:

By Thomas Gualtieri, Bloomberg

Still, energy regulator CNMC head Cani Fernandez told lawmakers that the system is currently working with more expensive backup mechanisms that would adjust more promptly to unwanted oscillations. That’s a good description of CCGTs versus solar.

“It seems that Red Electrica wants to have tight control over the generation mix to stabilize it” said Javier Pamos, an analyst at Aurora Energy Research. “Combined-cycle plants are being included in it even though there are hours of the day when they wouldn’t be necessary as renewable production is enough to cover demand.”

The output of combined-cycle gas turbines, a more steady generation technology than solar, jumped 37% in the two weeks after the outage, compared with the two weeks prior, data from power grid operator Red Electrica show. Their average share of Spain’s power mix increased to 18% from about 12%.

On May 15th the Spanish Government claimed that there were mysterious oscillations right across the continent:

PV-Magazine

Two oscillations in the system variables detected at 12:03 pm were observed, lasting five minutes, during which strong fluctuations in voltage and frequency occurred.

The second, at 12:19 pm, lasted three minutes. This, according to Aagesen, “is more common within the European system, comes from the center-east, and oscillates with respect to the European synchronous system, which, in turn, oscillates with respect to Turkey. The system operator acted to dampen these oscillations.”

After these oscillations, demand was 25,184 MW at 12:30 pm, at which time there was 3 GW of pumping.

Portugal is now blaming France, saying that because France runs on nuclear power it’s been very slack about building interconnectors to Spain. The unhappy Iberians have said for years that Paris was “resisting” the flow of cheap (but unreliable) energy “to protect its own nuclear power plants and maintain its control over the European energy market.” (They are so selfish!).

France is 68% nuclear powered, and the last thing they’d want is surges of useless solar and wind power that the nuclear plants would have to dance around. Unreliable solar and wind generators don’t provide France with anything it doesn’t already have, but the surges would make French nuclear plants operate in a less efficient, more expensive mode.

The EU set a target of 10% “electricity swaps” between countries by 2020, but at the moment it’s only 3% between Spain and France.

Portugal Scapegoats France After Iberian Blackout

By Javier Villamor, European Conservative

France’s electricity grid operator (RTE) denies any obstruction.

Portugal’s Energy Minister, Maria da Graça Carvalho, has not hesitated to describe the lack of interconnections with France as a direct barrier to the European single market. According to Lisbon, systematic delays by the French government in expanding electricity infrastructure across the Pyrenees have contributed to the energy isolation of both Spain and Portugal, multiplying the impact of the recent system collapse.

Portugal has announced that it will take the case to the European Commission, requesting formal intervention against France for violating the principles of the EU’s internal energy market. The EU had set a target for member states to have electricity import capacity equal to 10% of national generation by 2020 and 15% by 2030. However, the connection between Spain and France barely exceeds 3%.

So the Spanish and Portuguese complaints are undoubtedly true  — naughty France.

If only the Iberians had been selling something France wanted, it wouldn’t be so hard to make them build the interconnectors.

 

From ClimateREALISM

By H. Sterling Burnett

The Guardian was among a number of mainstream media outlets to carry a story claiming climate change is threatening wipe out banana production. No data supports this claim, rather it is based on speculation about future climate conditions 55 years in the future. Production and yield trends show that bananas are doing fine, and no reason other than a single study’s speculation to assume they will do otherwise in the future.

The Guardian’s story, “Climate crisis threatens the banana, the world’s most popular fruit, research shows,” paints a picture of current decline and looming disaster for banana production and the people that rely on the fruit as a staple.

“The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found,” writes The Guardian. “Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.”

The report the banana scare story is based upon was not peer reviewed research but rather the output of an activist organization pushing “climate justice.” Despite its questionable pedigree, numerous mainstream media outlets carried stories covering the report, for instance, The Independent, The Telegraph, Euronews, and MSN. The headlines of most of these stories were even more hyperbolic than The Guardian’s, alternatively purporting to report that climate change is “killing,” (Euronews) bananas or that they are on the verge of being “wiped out” (The Independent), or that they may “vanish from export shelves” (The Express Tribune). The reporters writing the stories showed no evidence of exercising any intellectual curiosity questioning the study’s claims or undertaking any independent journalistic investigation to fact check the Christian Aid’s report, rather the stories were written more like press releases promoting the findings.

This lack of a fact check function is especially unfortunate because data show banana production and yields have increased during the recent period of climate change, as have most crops around the world, having benefitted from modest warming and higher carbon dioxide concentrations.

Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that between 1993 and 2023 (the last year for which data is available):

• Caribbean banana yields increased by more than 30 percent and production expanded by more than 39 percent;
• Central America’s banana yields grew by more than 36 percent and production rose by nearly 65 percent;
• South American banana yields climbed by almost 29 percent and production increased by more than 47 percent; and
• World banana production grew by nearly 61 percent and production increased by more than 150 percent. (See the graph, below)

The Guardian specifically implies that banana production in Columbia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala are especially threatened with declines or destruction due to climate change, quoting a particular Guatemalan farmer who said, “[c]limate change is killing my crops.” Yet, once again, FAO data debunk such claims. Between 1993 and 2023:

• Columbia’s banana yields fell by slightly more than 30 percent, but its production increased by more than 33 percent;
• Yields of bananas in Costa Rica grew by more than 47 percent and production expanded by more than 38 percent; and
• Guatemala’s banana yields exploded by nearly 144 percent in part driving a more than 796 percent increase in production.

It is unclear why of all the countries and regions examined, Columbia’s banana yields alone declined, but there is no reason why global climate change would harm Columbia’s yields while leaving other banana producing countries straddling the equator unaffected. Columbia’s yield problems are local, not regional or global.

Contrary to Christian Aid’s claims, which the The Guardian and other news outlets uncritically parroted, there is no evidence temperatures or rainfall patterns across the Caribbean, Central, or South America have changed dramatically, or that black leaf fungus it discusses would limit its damage to Columbia’s banana plantations and leave those elsewhere in the region unscathed.

Concerning the future; the theory of global climate change promoted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggests that temperatures on or around the equator are not expected to increase much if at all in the future. Rather, the increase in global average temperatures is expected to be driven by substantial changes at the poles, and in far northern and southern latitudes. There is no reason expect a substantial spike in temperatures in countries lying near the equator.

If the popular cavendish strain of banana discussed by The Guardian is unable to adapt to the small increase in temperature that might affect its growing region, it is likely one or more of the hundreds of other banana strains can be grown instead. Alternatively, through cross breeding or genetic engineering, as has been done with other fruits and vegetables, a heartier and more adaptable, less temperature sensitive variety of banana featuring cavendish’s desirable characteristics should be able to be developed over the next 50 years.

As importantly, assertions about what the climate will look like 50 years hence are based on computer models’ projections; yet the models themselves are seriously flawed, as discussed in numerous Climate Realism posts, here and here, for example. Climate models don’t backcast past climate conditions correctly without being forced to by the modelers, and they don’t accurately reflect present temperatures and conditions without substantial adjustments. As a result, climate model projections of future conditions should not be trusted.

Astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the scientific adage that had been around in one form or another since the time of philosopher David Hume, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In the face of modest climate change and large growth in banana production and yields, Christian Aid produced a report claiming, contrary to the evidence, that climate change is harming banana production and threatening the fruit with extinction. That is an extraordinary claim, yet the mainstream media, because it plays into the narrative that they have pushed for nearly two decades that climate change causes everything bad, required no extraordinary evidence before promoting it uncritically as the truth. That says as much about the motives of media outlets like The Guardian when reporting climate matters, nothing good, as it does about the motives of the advocacy organization producing this weak, unsubstantiated report about the future of bananas.

H. Sterling Burnett

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.