Last week, the BBC reported that seawater along the tip of Florida had exceeded “hot tub” temperatures of 37.8°C (100°F) in recent days, “making it potentially the hottest ever measured”. The Guardian was in fine alarmist form noting that the Florida recording posed a threat to human food supplies and the livelihoods of those working in the water. Similar hysteria was to be found across most of the mainstream media. Alas, curiously missing from all this excitable coverage was a note that just 48 hours later the temperature plummeted to around 85°F.
The reading was taken from a buoy in Manatee Bay which is managed by the Everglades National Park, and located north of Key Largo. The upper left graph below shows that the temperature moved between 90-101°F on consecutive days, then fell away rapidly to around 85°F.
Examining the ‘record’ on the climate site Watts Up With That?, the former ecology lecturer Jim Steele observed that water temperatures were being driven by dynamics other than rising CO2. Steele noted that the Manatee Bay buoy measuring the water temperature was in a small embayment surrounded by landform and this forms a natural hot tub. Low winds and a high pressure system further helped heat the bay, while muddy waters darkened the water enhancing solar heating.
Steele noted that the science of solar ponds has shown that when fresh water overlayed saltier water, heat gets trapped, and temperatures can be as much as 60°F hotter than the surface at depths between five and 10 feet.
To maintain the “crisis hoax”, Steele suggests it’s also important to ignore conflicting data. Southern Florida has several buoys, some measuring water temperature, some air and some both. Just 56 miles to the south-west of Manatee Bay, the VAKF1 buoy measured water temperatures that were 10°F lower than Manatee Bay on those same days, as shown in the lower left graph (above), which then cooled to 86°F. Manatee Bay lacked air temperature data but VAKF1 reported a high air temperature of 91°F (lower right graph) which then cooled to the low 80°Fs, even dipping to 76°F. “These air temperatures don’t even approach being unprecedented,” said Steele.
Jim Steele has a lifetime’s experience in working for environmental education projects. For 25 years he ran the Sierra Nevada Field Campus for San Francisco State University. As part of one monitoring project, he studied the effect of regional climate change on bird populations in the Sierra Nevada.
Mainstream media are now clearly in the grip of a climate catastrophisation mania where activists scour the world for any unusual weather event or recording. Normal reporting standards seem to have been abandoned in the rush to scare populations to comply with the collectivist Net Zero agenda. Top level politicians encourage widespread panic with Al Gore ranting about “boiling oceans”, while a deranged Antonio Guterres claimed earlier this week that we live in an age of “global boiling”. At a stroke, the UN Secretary General seems to have retired the Guardian’s ‘Global Heating’ invention. Last year’s Nobel Physics Laureate Dr. John Clauser says the climate narrative has corrupted his beloved science. Meanwhile, global boiling is promoted as global surface temperatures are retrospectively adjusted upwards by state-funded bodies, while the accurate satellite record shows a near nine-year pause. In the U.K., the Met Office happily uses corrupted station temperature data that the World Meteorology Organisation states has a error estimate of up to 2°C. The British weather service still seems inordinately proud of its 60-second U.K. heat record last year, despite evidence that three Typhoon jets were landing around the time on the runway next to the measuring devise at RAF Coningsby.
On Wednesday, the BBC’s Georgina Rannard wrote a story asking if the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025. This is pure Day After Tomorrow sci-fi territory, promoting fears of catastrophic cooling in the northern hemisphere, with widespread impacts across the planet. Again the story was all over the mainstream media with USA Today reporting the Atlantic Ocean currents could soon collapse, adding, “how you may endure dramatic weather changes”.
The story originated from a recently published scientific paper and was pure clickbait for impressionable activists. The claims are based on limited observation evidence producing computer model projections. The authors state “with high confidence” that the change will occur between 2025-2095. However, the paper does contain this massive caveat, which went unreported in any of the media coverage: this prediction is only valid “under the assumption that the model is approximately correct, and we of course, cannot rule out that other mechanisms are at play, and thus, the uncertainty is larger”.
Needless to say, the story went around the world and was reported in blazing headlines. However, it seems eyebrows are starting to be raised about this sort of guff, even in alarmist circles. The climate alarmist’s climate alarmist is Professor Michael ‘Hockey Stick’ Mann of Penn University, but rerunning the Day After Tomorrow script was not wholly to his taste. According to USA Today, he said: “I’m not sure the authors bring much to the table other than a fancy statistical method. History is littered with flawed predictions based on fancy statistical methods; sometimes they’re too fancy for their own good.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Let’s have some solid facts and details, rather than Ambrose Evans Pritchard.
This seems like part of the finger pointing, blame shifting since the event.
The Spanish government rushed a few days after the event to blame the private companies for mismanagement.
So this is probably the push back from the private companies.
That’s how I read this
Yes, AEP is a noted purveyor of complete rubbish with everything he writes. While true to blame the government for following the stupidity of Net Zero, it was a problem of lack of inertia on the grid that brought it down as it could not cope with a sudden loss of generation.
Can you point out some non solid facts?
Also from the Telegraph article:
“The previous chief resigned in protest over political meddling… The government put a socialist politician and party loyalist in charge of Red Eléctrica even though she had no experience in the field… Her salary in this plum job is six times higher than the Spanish prime minister…”
…Sounds familiar – witness Met Office, Climate Claptrap Committee, Department of Energy Insecurity.
And Ed Miliband!
So they’ve finally come up with a plausible excuse that let’s renewables off the hook and it only took a few weeks to think up!
Better than the immediate and panicked ‘rare weather anomaly’ excuse though! Well done
Ambrose Evan-Pritchard – an unparalleled purveyor of tripe.
“Foes of green energy like to mix up the inertia problem with the separate issue of what happens when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The short-term answer is batteries, cryogenic compressed air and interconnectors. Spain lacks enough of any of them.”
No we don’t. We foe, we happy foe, we band of brothers – know that the frequency of the grid is determined by lots of heavy, rotating machinery as found in the steam and gas turbines of coal, gas and nuclear – which are independent of rain, wind or shine. We know frequency must be closely maintained at 50Hz.
We know that wind and solar cannot set grid frequency because they provide no rotational momentum to produce a frequency of current, and they have their own frequency of output set by and to match the grid.
So yes, when wind and solar drop out or fluctuate, Ambrose, this affects their frequency of output which could only be corrected from the grid, or by disconnecting. If the grid lacks inertia, these fluctuations or drop-outs cannot be resisted and corrected, so affect grid frequency and other wind and solar installations will disconnect for safety. This is precisely what happened in Spain.
The spinning generators are governed to spin at a rotational frequency to produce a current of 50Hz, and resist any change to it by spinning a bit faster or slower as required. This way frequency is strictly controlled and preserved. In other words, spinning generators are preventative, not curative.
Batteries, cryogenic compressed air (new on for me), or condensers are reactive – curative – to frequency change, not preventative, and slow to respond – essential when just seconds count. The Spanish failure took 3 second and a drop of only 0.15Hz. Once frequency has changed, it’s too late because everything disconnects and the grid shuts down.
Interconnectors: if they are DC, as is the one between UK and France, they can offer no inertia. If they are AC they will most likely disconnect automatically in the event of frequency anomaly, as did the one between France and Spain. Besides, an AC interconnectors can only offer inertia if the supply grids are served by spinning generation. Lots of renewable grids connected just multiplies potential grid instability by multiple factors.
It’s physics Ambrose, and you cannot change the laws of physics.
You can ignore physics however, but you certainly can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring physics.
Superb, my friend.
Good explanation. And AEPs gridforming inverters are a new one on me. As are UK’s fleet of flywheels.
Why would anyone let “scientists” not grid engineers (with uni degrees) experiment with grid.
A likely answer would be that Scientists do experiments, while Engineers build things, though I expect the Telegraph ‘journalists’ use the term ‘scientist’ generically, without really understanding the process. For example:
“Spanish scientists start trial on inhalable Covid-19 vaccine”
“Scientists look to dim sunlight in fight against climate change”
“British scientists invent treatment for disease suffered by Pope Francis”
Remember those Climate Scientists at the UEA CRU that helped to construct and promote the Hockey Stick Graph? Graham Stringer MP called them Enthusiasts.
The Spanish allowed agenda-led “scientists” access to a grid they didn’t know they didn’t know anything about.
But now they – and hopefully many others – know what happens so one less known unknown has gone but plenty of others along with the unknown unknowns.
If you fight against the laws of physics you will lose.
It is that simple.
AEP lost it shortly after the brexit vote (which he was sound).
His columns nowadays are farcical.
So is the DT.
I also think it was a test ….. to see how the population would react to an extended blackout with no information; an inability to communicate; impossible to get cash from a machine or to buy etc.
If they’d tried it in the UK, there would have been looting and riots in our major cities within hours.
You cannot run Industrial Society on Wind and Sun no matter how much of it you have, and infact the more of it you have the less reliable becomes the grid. The general public are being led to believe that in order to “save the planet” all we need to do is replace fossil fuels with wind and sun and everything will tick along just fine. —-No it Won’t, and it is costing us all astronomical sums of money into the bargain.
He isn’t waging war on the Nuclear Industry, he is waging war on the people.