by Judith Curry
A round up of some insightful articles on the TX blackout
Posted in Week in review
By Planning Engineer
The story from some media sources is that frozen wind turbines are responsible for the power shortfalls in Texas. Other media sources emphasize that fossil fuel resources should shoulder the blame because they have large cold induced outages as well and also some natural gas plants could not obtain fuel.
Extreme cold should be expected to cause significant outages of both renewable and fossil fuel based resources. Why would anyone expect that sufficient amounts of natural gas would be available and deliverable to supply much needed generation? Considering the extreme cold, nothing particularly surprising is happening within any resource class in Texas. The technologies and their performance were well within the expected bounds of what could have been foreseen for such weather conditions. While some degradation should be expected, what is happening in Texas is a departure from what they should be experiencing. Who or what then is responsible for the shocking consequences produced by Texas’s run in with this recent bout of extreme cold?
Posted in Energy
By Nic Lewis
I thought it was time for an update of my original analysis of 28 June 2020. As I wrote then, the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is of great interest, as it is one of very few advanced nations where no lockdown order that heavily restricted people’s movements and other basic freedoms was imposed. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
The insurance sector is abuzz with a new report from AIR Worldwide on the insurance risk from the impact of climate change on hurricanes. Insurance industry clients of my company, Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), have requested a critique of this report.
Posted in Hurricanes
by Judith Curry
A pacated dialogue between two serious thinkers who disagree about climate change.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
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.”
By Nic Lewis
A critique of the paper “Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect”, by Zhou, Zelinka, Dessler and Wang. Continue reading
Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks
By Nic Lewis
Introduction
Many people, myself included, thought that in the many regions where COVID-19 infections were consistently reducing during the summer, indicating that the applicable herd immunity threshold had apparently been crossed, it was unlikely that a major second wave would occur. This thinking has been proved wrong. In this article I give an explanation of why I think major second waves have happened. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
Just as everyone was heaving a sigh of relief that 2020 is over, 2021 is providing some fresh craziness.
Posted in Politics
by Judith Curry
Looking ahead towards new energy technologies, plus my own saga and rationale for transitioning my personal power generation and consumption. Continue reading
Posted in Energy
By Nic Lewis
Key points
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
A year ago, there were many things about 2020 that no one anticipated.
Posted in Week in review
by Judith Curry
I just finished reading an article entitled Asymptomatic Spread Revisited. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
How the ‘blame game’ gets in the way of solving complex societal problems.
Posted in Politics
by Judith Curry
“Avoid unwarranted certainty, neat narratives and partisan presentation; strive to inform, not persuade.”
Posted in Communication, Uncertainty
by Andy West
“For me the question now is, now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to keep letting them destroy it?”. – Michael Schellenberger Continue reading
Posted in Energy
by Frank Bosse
A recent paper published in “Nature” made some excitement in the media, see here or here.
Posted in Hurricanes
by Kenneth Fritsch
Abstract. An analysis is presented of he disconnection between the CMIP5 and CMIP6 Historical and Future periods when considering the relationship of the individual model GMST changes and the climate sensitivity. I have included a simple model that can account for the period disconnection using the negative forcing of aerosol/cloud effects in the Historical period that is carried forward into the Future period. I attribute some of the uncertainty in simulations of this simple model to endogenous model decision (selection) uncertainty that leads to variations in the changes of the negative forcing in the Historical period carried forward into the Future period.
Posted in climate models, Sensitivity & feedbacks
Posted in Hurricanes, Politics