Climate Letter #491

An update of various statistics involving global temperatures.  One chart tracks the steady approach toward the 2C limit presumption, now at the halfway point.  A linear extension of the present trendline looks like it would bring us there by shortly after 2060.  The El Nino data projects a major increase in warming, peaking in the first half of next year.  It should be followed by a setback period, the extent of which will also be of interest when it happens.

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A clever new way to increase wind turbine efficiency.  The gain works out to about 8.5% higher yield of electricity.  Moreover, the surplus power is captured at times when wind speed is excessively high, then stored and released at times when wind speed is low, for an overall improvement of balance.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-turbine-recycles-spillage-energy-efficiency.html?

What is the true relationship between green energy investment and future fuel savings?  This study, and others like it, all tend to have similar outcomes, but all such predictions are inherently questionable.  The way I look at it, almost every individual project is now based on a feasibility study, and most of these need to project favorable economics, compared with the carbon-based alternative, before gaining approval.  That continues to get easier, even without subsidies.

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Climate science.  A good piece of historical interpretation, showing a process by which nature transferred a large amount of CO2 from the atmosphere to the Southern Ocean during the last ice age.  The result “contributed significantly to global cooling.”

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Bill McKibben writes for the New Yorker about he Exxon exposure.  (See Climate Letters #488 and 489.)  More embarrassing highlights are revealed.  This story will not soon go away.

Carl