Archive for the ‘Uncertainty’ Category

Gas power stations carry the load as UK temperatures tumble

Posted: January 10, 2026 by oldbrew in Energy, net zero, Temperature, Uncertainty, weather
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No surprise there, except possibly to some deluded net zero supporters who scoff at electricity supply and winter heating concerns. Plans to export some power were dropped, leaving a few nearby countries in the same cold snap chasing around for supplies as their renewables also proved totally inadequate for the demand.
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Gas power has been keeping us going as Britain freezes, says Energy Live News.

An Arctic blast of snow, sleet and hail has pushed temperatures down to -12.5°C, the coldest this winter, driving a sharp surge in electricity demand and straining the GB power system.

With Storm Goretti forecast to bring heavy snowfall on Thursday, analysts expect elevated demand and volatile prices to persist into mid-January.

Jake Thompson, GB Market Expert at Montel Analytics, said national electricity demand jumped as temperatures plunged, with morning peak demand hitting 44GW and forecasts pointing to around 46GW at the evening peak.

He said Monday saw the highest GB demand since March 2018 at 47.3GW, underlining how tightly balanced the system has become during extreme cold spells. [Talkshop comment – ‘has become’ under net zero and renewables dogma, with no easy-to-store coal].

Renewables met just 23% of demand on 5 January, leaving the system heavily reliant on gas-fired generation during peak hours.

Full article here.

 Atacama Desert snowfall forces researchers to shut down telescope – and suspect it’s another sign of climate change  

Posted: January 5, 2026 by oldbrew in Astronomy, research, Uncertainty, weather
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Another one from the ‘warming causes cooling’ branch of climate theory. This article is keen to blame humans for more snow in the desert on the basis of what?
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Learn more about the snowfall that shut down ALMA in the Atacama desert, and how researchers worry this could be a sign of climate change, says Discover magazine.
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In late June and early July 2025, ALMA was caught in a highly unusual snowstorm, forcing it to enter an emergency “survival mode.” ALMA’s research team repositioned her dishes, tilting them to prevent snow buildup. This temporarily halted the telescopes’ observations.

The storm was localized, so the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, both sited in the Atacama but just a few hundred miles southwest of ALMA, were not affected.
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A Wetter Future In The Atacama?
The Atacama’s incredibly dry climate may be subtly shifting. The region recorded no rainfall between October 1903 and January 1918, but snow fell in 2011, 2013, and 2021.
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These recent cases of climate change in the region may be further examples of how the anthropogenic climate crisis is altering the planet. [Talkshop comment – evidence-free assertion].

Soon, snow in the desert may become a more common challenge for ALMA to reckon with.
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Image: Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the largest astronomical project in the world [credit: NASA / Ames].

The multi-million dollar race to shade the sun and [fail to?] stop climate change

Posted: December 30, 2025 by oldbrew in atmosphere, geo-engineering, innovation, Psychobabble, research, Subsidies, Uncertainty, weather
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The media loves the idea of plucky amateurs trying to save the world. The lack of any need to save it doesn’t matter to them. The weather botherers hope for taxpayer backing aka subsidies as they meddle with the atmosphere, but may run into opposition from tourism, farmers, growers in general, solar PV users and makers, lawmakers etc.
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A secretive team of scientists is working on an unprecedented plan to fill the atmosphere with tiny particles that imitate a volcanic eruption and block out the sun, says The Independent (via MSN).

It might save humanity, or it could spiral out of control. [Talkshop comment – or just be useless].

Thousands stand opposed to such a scheme, but these plans may move forward anyway.

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Dalwhinnie no 2 Addendum – Extreme Variations

Posted: November 28, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty
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Following on from my report on Dunstaffnage , I now contrast that coastal site’s overlapping data from manual to automatic operation with that of an inland high altitude station, Dalwhinnie‘s transfer as above.

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Swiss glacier confusion – the Grindelwald Fluctuation 

Posted: November 27, 2025 by oldbrew in climate, glaciers, Temperature, Uncertainty, volcanos
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The source for this is Wikipedia, which starts by saying:
The Grindelwald Fluctuation is a period (in a wider cooling phenomenon) when glaciers in Grindelwald, Switzerland, expanded significantly. Temperatures were 1-2 degrees Celsius lower than twentieth-century averages during this period, which is thought to have lasted from the 1560s to the 1630s.

OK so far, but note the dates. Moving on to ‘Causes’:
The expansion of the Swiss Grindelwald glaciers during this period was likely due to a combination of factors, including volcanic activity, changes in solar radiation, and the sudden decrease in population numbers.

What could population numbers possibly have to do with it? See below. Solar radiation changes – plausible of course, but again, read on.

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CO2 outgassing south of 50°S  underestimated by up to 40% in previous studies

Posted: November 9, 2025 by oldbrew in Carbon cycle, data, Measurement, modelling, Ocean dynamics, research, satellites, Uncertainty
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‘Substantially underestimated winter CO2 sources of the Southern Ocean’ – is the title of this study at Science Advances. Researchers note that ‘previous observational gaps significantly bias’ understanding of the carbon cycle in this region, with ‘profound consequences’ of rectifying this. They conclude that: ‘By underestimating winter outgassing, previous analyses have not only miscalculated the net annual sink but also obscured the true seasonal dynamics. This introduces systematic errors into Earth system models.’ The IPCC is directly impacted by this, they say.
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From the abstract: ‘The size and control mechanism of the Southern Ocean’s carbon fluxes remain highly uncertain due to sparse winter observations. Here, we integrate satellite light detection and ranging (LIDAR) measurements with machine learning to assess the Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 fluxes between 2007 and 2020. We reveal that CO2 outgassing south of 50°S was underestimated by up to 40% in previous studies.’

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Isle Of Portland WMO03855/03857 – A long but confused history that even the Met Office seems unsure of…..but total Junk just the same.

Posted: October 31, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, climate, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Taxpayer, Temperature, Uncertainty
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50.52206 -2.45565 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 (?!) Installed 1/5/1965 or 1895 or 1906 or……….

There has been a weather station on the Isle of Portland (also known as Portland Bill) going back to Robert Fitzroy’s earliest objectives to set up a national weather forecasting service following the Royal Charter Storm of 1859. This “island” has not been one as such for a long time and its location on the Dorset coast acts as an early warning indicator of weather patterns emerging from the south west. This is a classic coastal site purely intended for weather forecasting yet, realistically, is quite hopeless as a climate station, and it shows.

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Large fluctuations in sea level throughout the last ice age challenge understanding of past climate

Posted: October 17, 2025 by oldbrew in Cycles, Ice ages, Natural Variation, paleo, research, sea levels, Uncertainty
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Greenland ice sheet
What was supposed to be settled science has turned out not to be. More long-term variability exists in the Earth’s ice sheets than previously assumed. Researchers say it’s a paradigm shift in their understanding of such matters, with new ideas needed to replace the outdated theories.
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From Phys.org: Large changes in global sea level, fueled by fluctuations in ice sheet growth and decay, occurred throughout the last ice age, rather than just toward the end of that period, a study published in the journal Science has found.

The findings represent a significant change in researchers’ understanding of how the Pleistocene—the geological period from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago and commonly known as the last ice age—developed, said Peter Clark, a paleoclimatologist at Oregon State University and the study’s lead author.

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Global Warming Claims Crumble As Data Challenges Media Hysteria

Posted: October 16, 2025 by oldbrew in alarmism, climate, Critique, data, media, propaganda, Temperature, Uncertainty
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Facts versus exaggerations. Scare stories based on climate models and selective data have no predictive value, but are seized on by alarmists anyway and promoted by the UN and its allies in governments and elsewhere in support of their human-caused warming narrative.
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Global warming hysteria has been cooling off, says Issues & Insights (via Climate Change Dispatch).

But it’s not cold-on-the-slab dead yet. So it’s important to continue to roll out the reality. If we don’t, the zealots will rearm and flood the zone with their mendacious narrative.

From various sources, here is an update on the facts and the fiction:
[Talkshop note: abbreviated version only – see link for more]:

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Paisley DCNN6366 and Largs DCNN6527. Collapsing the House of Cards

Posted: October 3, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Accountability, Analysis, climate, Dataset, Disinformation, History, Measurement, MET office, methodology, modelling, opinion, People power, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty
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From Artificial Intelligence:

“Collapsing the house of cards” refers to the act of causing a fragile system, plan, or situation to fail, often through the removal of a single, crucial component. The phrase originates from the precarious structure of a real house of cards and is used metaphorically to describe something inherently unstable and prone to falling apart if even a small part is disturbed.” 

AI goes on to describe “any scenario that is inherently unstable and likely to fail, such as a flawed business plan or a corrupt institution. “

As I reported in my recent Lowestoft Addendum, the Met Office deleted fabricated data where they could no longer sustain the veracity of their manipulations. This “deletion” has major consequences .

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Gogerddan DCNN8068 – The real site of the Welsh all time highest temperature versus a demonstration of Met Office record chasing.

Posted: September 22, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty
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52.43219 -4.02056 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1953

Gogerddan lies 3 miles inland from the Welsh coast east-north-east of Aberystwyth within the grounds of the agricultural research centre of Aberystwyth University. For a few hours in 2022 it held the all time Welsh highest recorded temperature before losing its title to Hawarden Airport later the same day which I will discuss later in this report. The Gogerddan site itself has a rather interesting history which the Met Office seems to keep so secret that when I asked them about it I shortly after (coincidentally?) found myself unable to access my own email account – a very odd situation.

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Why has the Atlantic hurricane season gone ‘remarkably’ quiet? – asks BBC News (or no news)

Posted: September 11, 2025 by oldbrew in climate, Forecasting, Temperature, Uncertainty, weather, wind
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We’ve been told hurricanes should become more frequent and/or more intense in a warming world, but they’re struggling to even make it to the launchpad this season. The pundits basing their forecasts on such notions are left almost empty-handed, so far at least, much to the BBC’s disappointment. Their only chance to recover some cred is for a late-season burst of storm activity to end the current ‘lull’ as they call it, but no obvious sign of that to date.
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Statistically 10 September marks the peak in the Atlantic hurricane season and in an ‘average’ season we would have expected to have had eight named storms, three of which would have become hurricanes and one a major hurricane, says BBC News.

So far in 2025, there have been six named storms, one of which became major hurricane Erin in mid-August.

With no activity expected in the next seven days, this will have been only the second year since 1950 where there will be no named storm from the end of August to mid-September.

This quieter period may come as a surprise considering the pre-season forecasts all suggested an ‘above average’ season.

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Study Finds ‘Extreme Weather’ Database Exaggerates Global Disaster Trends

Posted: August 29, 2025 by oldbrew in alarmism, Critique, data, research, Uncertainty, weather
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As this article says: ‘Disasters don’t count if you don’t count them.’ Rise in reports of disasters does not equate to a rise in the events, if frequency of reporting has improved. But weather attribution people can make claims that sound as if things are getting worse, without fear of being shown actual contradictory historical data, if it was never collected.
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According to its publishers, a dataset called EM-DAT, which stands for Emergency Events Database, so it’s not even an acronym, lists “data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to the present day” – says Climate Change Dispatch.

Which makes it perfect for studying long-term trends. And what’s even better, for the climate change crowd anyway, is that, as the authors of a 2024 study noted, “There are very strong upward trends in the number of reported disasters.”

But as the same authors noted in the very next sentence, “However, we show that these trends are strongly biased by progressively improving reporting.” Simply put, before 2000, reporting of small disasters that caused fewer than 100 deaths was hit-and-miss.

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Lowestoft Addendum – The non existent “Well Correlated” stations and why the Met Office will not answer.

Posted: August 23, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Accountability, alarmism, Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, History, Measurement, MET office, methodology, modelling, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty, weather
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{Today’s post marks the first anniversary of my restarting the surface stations project. 328 posts later I never expected to find the incredibly sorry state of the UK Met Office, its data and its presentation. There is a long way to go yet.}

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This post is intended to be read following on from the Wye and Addendum reviews to act as a contrast between direct real world analysis of data and the “land of make believe” that the Met Office now seems to be inhabiting. It is also essential to read the original Dungeness and Lowestoft reports and be familiar with the extraordinary lengths the Met Office is employing to withhold exactly what it is doing. Apologies for all the pre reading to aid understanding, but for those possibly not familiar with the background it is important to be “up to speed”. I shall now demonstrate the reasons why the Met office will not supply me with the requested details regarding Lowestoft.

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Hungary’s bet on EV battery boom hits bumps in the road – sagging demand and environmental issues

Posted: August 15, 2025 by oldbrew in Batteries, Critique, Energy, government, net zero, Subsidies, Travel, Uncertainty
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Viktor Orbán wants to turn his country into a European battery hub by offering massive subsidies, but residents at the sharp end of the process aren’t happy about the risks and conditions they’re facing. To add to the problems, the supposedly inevitable success of the scheme is questionable as EV’s fail to sell in the expected large numbers, throwing the whole concept into doubt right across Europe.
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In recent years, billions of dollars in investment have poured into Hungary with the promise to create thousands of jobs and support Europe’s green transition, but stagnating EV demand and strong environmental opposition to new “gigafactories” have dogged Orbán’s showcase economic strategy, says Climate Home News.

Many battery producers in Europe are delaying or shelving plans to expand due to uncertainties about profit levels going forward as battery prices fall, according to the International Energy Agency – and the downturn hasn’t spared manufacturers in Hungary.

Meanwhile, weakening of the country’s environmental regulatory powers has left protestors like Szemán worried that authorities are unable to prevent pollution or hold those that cause it accountable.

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The Reification of Averages – Part One. How the Met Office manipulates measurements.

Posted: July 23, 2025 by Ray Sanders in alarmism, Analysis, Dataset, Disinformation, Forecasting, History, ideology, Measurement, media, MET office, methodology, radiative theory, surface station, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty, weather
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Reification is defined as:

“The act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, concept, or relationship as if it were a concrete, tangible thing, essentially turning something non-physical into something perceived as a concrete object or entity. This can occur in various contexts, from everyday language to social theory.” 

Although a rarely used word, its definition is something meteorology applies on a very regular basis. When you hear the weather forecaster announcing “that’s 10 degrees warmer than it should be for the time of year” you are being subjected to reification of a totally abstract, indeed usually completely non-existent, concept.

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The Bastille Day Event, 25 years later – possible repeat this week?

Posted: July 17, 2025 by oldbrew in atmosphere, Electro-magnetism, solar system dynamics, Uncertainty
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Spaceweather.com says:
July 14, 2025: You know a solar flare is strong when even the Voyager spacecraft feel it. Twenty-five years ago, on July 14, 2000, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful solar storms of the Space Age—an event so intense, its shockwaves rippled all the way to the edge of the solar system.
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Could it happen again? It could happen again this week. We’re currently near the peak of Solar Cycle 25, and another X-flare is well within the realm of possibility.
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Image: Coronal Mass Ejection [credit: Wikipedia]
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Full article here…

The Bastille Day Event, 25 Years Later


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Collapse of key Atlantic currents [heard it before?] may be held off by newly-discovered back-up system, study finds

Posted: July 13, 2025 by oldbrew in alarmism, climate, modelling, Ocean dynamics, research, solar system dynamics, Uncertainty
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This topic has been an enduring hobby horse of climate alarmists, but for a change here it seems a new process in the Arctic could ‘save the day’ – scientists say. Introducing ‘Arctic Atlantification’. Anything that breaks the seemingly endless cycle of ‘climate breakdown’ style doom-laden speculation about these northern ocean currents is surely at least worth a look. Unsurprisingly, we’re told more research (modelling?) is needed but at least a note of uncertainty is present, rather than the usual ‘watch out’ tones.
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Key Atlantic Ocean currents that appear to be slowing down due to climate change may be more resilient to global warming than scientists previously thought — thanks to a secret back-up system, a new study shows.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a web of currents that loops around the Atlantic like a giant conveyor belt, says LiveScience.

Cold, salty waters sink near Greenland then travel south along the ocean floor. Eventually these waters rise to the surface again near Antarctica and return north, bringing balmier waters to the Northern Hemisphere. This system is crucial to warming Europe, in particular.

In recent years, experts have repeatedly sounded the alarm bell [Talkshop comment – despite counter-evidence], suggesting the step in which waters sink could cease completely, which could lead to a massive drop in temperatures in Northern Europe and exacerbate sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, among other impacts.

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Residents fear fires at battery storage sites

Posted: July 13, 2025 by oldbrew in Batteries, Energy, flames, government, net zero, pollution, Uncertainty
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Everyone knows lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to deal with, can re-ignite unexpectedly, and release toxic fumes into the air. The UK seems to have few restrictions on the siting of the grid-scale versions now being installed, making residents in affected locations feel nervous but unable to resist. Of course none of these things were needed before renewables arrived on the electricity generation scene, leading to the manic pursuit of ‘net zero’ policies.
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Residents living near proposed battery energy storage systems (BESS) say they fear massive fires and environmental pollution.

BESSs are being built across the UK to help balance the electricity grid, which is becoming increasingly powered by renewables, says BBC News.

But there are no laws that specifically govern the safety of BESSs, and people living near proposed sites in South Hetton, County Durham, have voiced concerns.

Some experts are calling for a pause in their deployment until Health and Safety regulations are established. The government said it had “high safety standards in place for the industry”.

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Culdrose WMO03809 – Aviation weather sites from the viewpoint of a pilot.

Posted: July 11, 2025 by Ray Sanders in Analysis, Dataset, Measurement, MET office, methodology, Surfacestation, Temperature, Uncertainty
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50.08427 -5.25716 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1952

This Met Office site is Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose perhaps more formally known as HMS Seahawk. This is a very major military site with extensive almost continuous activity. In assessing this site I have drawn heavily on the expert advice from reader and commenter “HiFast” who is both a former USAF Pilot and member of the American Meteorological Society.

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