About reporting bias, it occurred to me that in the early, vastly underreported days, it is much more likely to get reports of non-weather-caused outages, rather than weather events. A hardware or infrastructure event (inadequate connections, components, etc.) is something you can do something about, and someone else can check to prevent a recurrence–weather isn’t. So those events would be reported most faithfully.

Another question is what counts as a weather event? Does a tree branch being blown over onto a line count as a weather event (the wind blew the tree over) or as a tree-being-too-close-to-the-line event (inadequate maintenance)?

Ed

Also, the current North American power gid system is old and not up to the challenge that we place on it. During seriously bad weather, most people tend to hole up indoors, placing a higher draw on the grid, this can also lead to outages or at least brown-outs.

Although Burt makes no claim to be a climate scientist, he is expert at analyzing data. He has looked at some of the ‘popular’ global warming propaganda and found mis-analysis that is nearly/completely fraudulent. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone here. The point is that Burt commands a lot of respect; he really does have friends in high places. (I wonder how many more people like Burt, and how much more evidence we need, before the global warming alarmists come to their senses.) Here’s a link to Burt’s powerpoint presentation.

P.S. A-Nony-Mouse is right about designing instruments. The A/D converter design mistakes he talks about; been there, done that. Having said that, I still teach GIGO (garbage in garbage out, for you whippersnappers that are too young to know). In fact, I spend a lot of time on the appropriate use of equations. Equations are models. Every equation has an appropriate domain. Within its domain, the accuracy of an equation is well known and adequate for its intended purpose. Sometimes you can get more accuracy with a more sophisticated equation/model; sometimes you can’t. By definition, using an equation outside its safe domain will produce erroneous results. (No climate model has a safe domain where it has demonstrated the ability to correctly predict results outside the historical data set with which it was calibrated.) Reality always trumps theory.

P.P.S. I am dismayed that political affiliation and attitude to global warming are so closely correlated. Most of my fellow ‘lefties’ seem to have drunk the global warming kool-aid. Too bad people can’t uncouple themselves from dogma and just go with what works. Universal medical care works (ask almost any Canadian), global warming (and the crazy remedies for it) doesn’t work. Sigh!

What brought me to this site to begin with was In 1982 (or 1980) one of those years as I remember my wife’s missery during one of our two childrens gestation periods (I’m pretty sure it was 1982 as this child was born in Aug. but I degress. My point is that in Hobbs New Mexico A record was set that still holds and that is 90 consecutive day of 100 degree or better temperatures. I think that the CO2 levels have risen considerably since then.

From Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profane

Main Entry:1pro·fane
Pronunciation:\prō-ˈfān, prə-\
Function:transitive verb
Inflected Form(s):pro·faned; pro·fan·ing
Etymology:Middle English prophanen, from Anglo-French prophaner, from Latin profanare, from profanus
Date:14th century
1 : to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt : desecrate

LOL

Excellent work – keep it up! – and THANKS for helping keep many of the rest of us sane!

Remember, it’s a Little knowledge that’s a dangeraous thing. Thanks for keeping up with the fight.

E

A nuclear plant can be shutdown by a bad storm that knocks out the supporting electrical grid infrastructure. Nuclear plants are not intended to operate without grid connections. In fact, when hurricanes are predicted to pass over/near a nuclear plant, they are usually shutdown early to avoid a loss of the grid that would cause a transient in the plant. The plants can physically withstand direct hits by hurricanes and tornadoes, and all of the debris that gets thrown up during those events, and there are documented instances of this happening. The operators just sit there with the diesel generators running, and the plant staying in standby, till the event passes, and they can clean up, reconnect, and restart generation. There have recently been some concerns that the current state of the grid (overloaded) might make more nuclear plants susceptable to grid degradation from whatever source, including bad weather.

I don’t know for certain, but I would think that wind turbines in hurricane areas should be able to withstand at least the smaller hurricanes. A large nasty hurricane, on the other hand, would probably do some serious damage to an off-shore wind farm. Tornadoes, however, are another matter, but I would think that the footprint of a tornado will not take out much wind capacity, because it is so small.