Sunday 26 December 2010

The temperature usually rises when it gets Warner

Courtesy of UKK41, attention is drawn to this article by Gerald Warner, writing on The Global Warming Foundation.
"These are challenging times for climate jihadists. Last week the Met Office was forced to issue a press release stating it "categorically denies forecasting a 'mild winter' ". In fact, in October, its long-range probability map predicted an 80 per cent probability of warmer than average temperatures from November to January in Scotland. It claimed Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, the eastern half of England and Cornwall, would experience temperatures above the 3.7°C average, more than 2°C higher than last winter. Perversely, those are precisely the regions most ravaged by blizzard conditions; but the Met Office now insists that was not a forecast. Apparently, just as weather is not climate, a Met Office map predicting an 80 per cent likelihood of higher temperatures is not a forecast."
and;
"Our MSPs - mostly people who give cretinism a bad name - have gone overboard for a world-leading role in climate crusading. How much energy did Scotland's ice-bound wind turbines generate this month? The regulation director at Scottish Power Renewables has stated: "Thirty gigawatts of wind maybe requires 25 GW of backup." Few Scottish windfarms attain even 28 per cent of capacity. Cutting-edge technology, eh?"
 Ouch!

So, according to the regulation director at Scottish Power Renewables, for every GW of wind power we need virtually the same amount of GW 'back-up'. I only have one question for the regulation director: 

In which case, WTF are we building wind turbines then?

6 comments:

microdave said...

Scottish Power Renewables obviously don't understand the weather - 30GW of windpower requires 30GW of back up, NOT 25GW. This winter (just like last year) there have been several days when the entire UK fleet of turbines have been producing next to nothing....

Witterings from Witney said...

m'dave: not surprising, but in my defence I was but quoting that what was wrote!

microdave said...

I wasn't blaming you - just pointing out their utter stupidity!

IF (and it's a monumental if) conventional gas fired power plants could be run up and down at a moments notice, then having lots of wind turbines could (possibly) be justified.

But the engineering reality is that large plants simply can't be run like that. The thermal stresses would wreck them in no time. So they have to be kept running virtually 24/7, just in case the wind suddenly drops.

WUWT had a story a few months ago about a major city in the US (Chigago, I think) which came within 15 minutes of a total grid shutdown. This was due to a sudden combined drop in wind speed AND temperature, causing a dramatic loss of generation, and spike in demand. They only survived by invoking special agreements with large industries to have their power disconnected....

This is what is going to happen here within 3-5 years.

Witterings from Witney said...

m'dave: Which just goes to show what happens when a policy is based on a fallacy of unproven science.

What really p's me off is the fact that they won't even agree to have a review of the 'science'.

chris edwards said...

So are the , now what would be an accurate word to describe them?? powers that be looking at the old Leafield long wave radio station site for a wind farm??, maybe more (if not there now) on the old WW2 airfield nearby. I have a use for the redundant windmills, apply the brakes, a length of rope on the end of each blade, a politician or other warmist elitist on the other end and let off the brake, they got rid of the crossbars on lamp posts to save politicians necks (if not why?) how nice to erect more gallows all over the country!

Witterings from Witney said...

chris edwards: Now that is an idea, one that I have to admit had not crossed my mind.....!