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IEEE Spectrum By David C. Wagman | 08 Aug 2018 Fortifying connections between three disparate grids could make renewable energy more widely available The U.S. electrical grid is really made up of three largely separate grids with puny transmission connections at the seams. These seams cross sparsely populated rangeland in the middle of the country. The Eastern Interconnection serves much of the United States east of the Great Plains. The Western Interconnection covers residents from the Great Plains to the Rockies and up and down the West Coast. And most of Texas has a grid of its own. Policymakers there …

OK Energy Today August 9, 2018 Is it time for a convergence of the three separate power grids creating the U.S. electric transmission network? According to a recent article published by David Wagman in IEEE Spectrum, the results of a seam study finds considerable economic and engineering value in fortifying the connections to better distribute power resources around the country. The study was conducted by researchers at the U.S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and presented last month at the TransGrid-X Symposium at Iowa State University. The Eastern Interconnection grid is located east of the Great Plains. The Western …

Photo: Joe Biden NY Post | By Bjorn Lomborg | Feb. 9, 2021 Across the world, politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. President Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on climate — about 13 percent of the entire federal revenue. The European Union will spend 25 percent of its budget on climate. Most rich countries now promise to go carbon-neutral by mid-century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent …

Serendipity | 18. August 2015 Today I’ve been tracking down the origin of the term “Greenhouse Effect”. The term itself is problematic, because it only works as a weak metaphor: both the atmosphere and a greenhouse let the sun’s rays through, and then trap some of the resulting heat. But the mechanisms are different. A greenhouse stays warm by preventing warm air from escaping. In other words, it blocks convection. The atmosphere keeps the planet warm by preventing (some wavelengths of) infra-red radiation from escaping. The “greenhouse effect” is really the result of many layers of air, each absorbing infra-red from the …

By Andy May, Feb. 11, 2021 The new IPCC report, abbreviated “AR6,” is due to come out between April 2021 (the Physical Science Basis) and June of 2022 (the Synthesis Report). I’ve purchased some very strong hip waders to prepare for the events. For those who don’t already know, sturdy hip waders are required when wading into sewage. I’ve also taken a quick look at the CMIP6 model output that has been posted to the KNMI Climate Explorer to date. I thought I’d share some of what I found. Figure 1. The CMIP6 13-member model ensemble from the KNMI Climate …

by Judith Curry | February 8, 2021 Spatial Requirements of Wind/Solar and Nuclear Energy and Their Respective Costs “In addition to the energy sector, the climate debate also needs a transition. From ideology and wishful thinking, to facts, figures and rationality.” An important document was published last week, a collaborative instigated by two members of the European Parliament – one from the Netherlands and the other from Czechoslovakia.  One of the editors on the resulting report is Lucas Bergkamp, who has written several guest posts at Climate Etc. The study is now available for download on the website www.roadtoclimateneutrality.eu. This …

The Chinese team collected coral reef samples from Yongle (pictured) and Yongxing in the Paracel Islands. Xinhua Investigation of coral reefs in the Paracel Islands suggest the South China Sea began warming up in 1825, researchers say Uranium dating shows samples have a continuous climate record going back to 1520 South China Morning Post | Stephen Chen | 7 Feb, 2021 Studies of coral reefs in the Paracel Islands suggest that the South China Sea started warming up in 1825, at the start of the industrial revolution, according to a study by Chinese scientists. That was the year the world’s …

Postil Magazine October 1, 2019 | B.E. Vaillant   Is fame random? Or, is fame the result of access to power? The recent prominence of Greta Thunberg is a case in point. Did she become famous for simply being photographed sitting alone in front of the Swedish parliament building, on strike for the environment? Or, did she inherit the mantle of an eco-prophet? Is she just an ordinary, outraged young woman, or someone with deep family links to environmentalism, and who thus has all the right connections? For those that might not know, Greta supposedly shot to fame when the …

Professor Happer discusses CO2 and Bad Press  WUWT by Charles Rotter | Sept. 4, 2020 Professor Happer discusses CO2 and Bad Press CO2 is a greenhouse gas, just not a strong one.  Professor Happer discusses why the impact of CO2 is small on the earth surface temperature.   The effect of CO2 saturates as the amount of CO2 increases even to the 2X amount, such that the change in temperature is small.  It is not likely to see the impact of 2x CO2 above 1 to 1.5 C.  Exaggeration expands this impact greatly using feedback to achieve the artificial runaway warming.   …

By: Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) http://www.sepp.org/ Logarithmic Relationship: A post in No Tricks Zone on earth’s climate being governed by the Sun led TWTW to search for a 1971 article on global cooling by S.I. Rasool and Stephen Schneider, then of NASA-GISS, now both deceased. Rasool was an atmospheric chemist who has written on the atmospheres of other planets as well as the earth. Stephen Schneider was a climatologist who was a lead author of the Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a strong advocate for …