Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #642
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The Week That Was: 2025 05-10 (May 10, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (
www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”— Albert Einstein
Number of the Week: 65% of Observed
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW begins with a sidenote introducing a correction: it did not emphasize that on the grid, all generators must be synchronized, with the phases of the AC cycles all within about a millisecond of each other. TWTW discusses the importance of humidity in global climate models and what appears to be occurring with humidity and clouds in in Earth’s atmosphere. Discussed is a paper by Ross McKitrick on the history of daytime high temperatures in Canada since 1888 to 2017 at 30 weather stations and the 46 plus years of temperature trends in the atmosphere. Also discussed is a paper by Spencer, Christy, and Braswell estimating the US summertime heat island effect and a post by Willis Eschenbach on continued efforts by US research organizations to splice together different measurements of sea level rise without using control periods to ensure they measure the same thing the same way. TWTW will conclude with a discussion of a paper by climatologist Judith Curry and economist Harry DeAngelo on energy policies.
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Sidenote: In North America, the power coming into your house is two lines of 120 Volts (V), 60 Hertz (Hz). Connect them together, and you blow breakers. That’s because the voltages are out of phase by 180 degrees. Your electric stove uses both lines to get 240 VAC. Now imagine the problem of connecting two generators (perhaps miles apart) and not making sparks. The AC voltages and the phases must be equal — say, no more than 1 degree out of phase and no more than 2% off in voltage. In any case, tying one generator into the existing grid requires synchronization of voltage and phase, which requires knowledge of the relevant data, and slow adjustment until synchronization is achieved, after which the new generator is switched in.
With steam cycles of gas turbines, stability is partly due to their rotational inertia. (In fact, it’s hard to believe that there’s anywhere near as much rotational inertia in the rotors as there is in an array of wind turbines.) But the big contrast with wind and solar is that if the frequency drops a little, with gas you can increase things up immediately with more fuel or more steam, but not with more wind or sunlight.
Important Correction – Synchronous generation: Power Engineer Jim O’Brien of the Irish Climate Science Forum corrected last week’s TWTW when he noted that in discussing the Iberian power failure, TWTW did not emphasize the importance of having many heavy turning machines generating electricity synchronized. In Europe, all the thermal and hydro turbines are matched to generate electricity at 50 Hertz, in North America at 60 Hertz. Synchronizing the turning machines creates a huge team working in unison to overcome disruptions to smooth flow of current. O’Brien writes:
“I thought your pieces in the TWTW of May 3 missed the key point about the Iberian blackout.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/12/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-642/
