Month: June 2021

After months of anticipation, U.S. intelligence experts have released a report citing 18 incidents since 2004 in which unidentified flying objects — or unidentified aerial phenomena, to use the Pentagon’s term — appeared to demonstrate breakthrough technologies.

The nine-page, unclassified version of the report doesn’t describe the incidents in detail, and doesn’t attribute them to aliens. But it does say they’re not linked to existing U.S. military technologies.

The point of the report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a congressional mandate, is to assess the potential threat posed by the anomalous aerial phenomena reported by U.S. military fliers over the years, whether you call them UFOs or UAPs.

Intelligence experts said they didn’t have enough data to get a firm fix on the nature of 143 out of 144 UAP reports that were filed between 2004 and this March. The one case they said they could resolve “with high confidence” was attributed to a large, deflating balloon.

Their conclusion was that UAP sightings should get more attention.

“UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary,” the report said. The experts said they “currently lack data” to indicate whether any of the anomalous incidents actually pose such threats.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who spearheaded the push to get the report, hailed its release and agreed with its conclusions.

“For years, the men and women we trust to defend our country reported encounters with unidentified aircraft that had superior capabilities, and for years their concerns were often ignored and ridiculed,” he said in a statement. “This report is an important first step in cataloging these incidents, but it is just a first step.”

Rubio said the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community “have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern. “

The Pentagon has been involved in UFO studies for decades, going back to the aftermath of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident.

For decades, such incidents were traditionally written off as misinterpretations of run-of-the-mill atmospheric or astronomical phenomena, or occasionally as stray sightings of aerial operations for military purposes. But UFO reports have been taken more seriously in recent years, thanks to the work of a hush-hush Pentagon task force that came to light in 2017.

Revelations about the task force, and about a series of anomalous videos captured by Navy jets, prompted Rubio and other lawmakers to seek an official report from the intelligence office.

The report said most of the reported anomalies probably do represent actual physical objects rather than mere glitches, given that 80 of the 144 anomalies cited in the report showed up on multiple sensors.

“There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described in the reporting,” the report said. The basic types could be broken down into “airborne clutter” such as birds, drones or debris; natural atmospheric phenomena; developmental programs conducted by the U.S. government or commercial industries; foreign adversary systems; and a catch-all bin for “other” phenomena.

The report highlights 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, where observers reported unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics.

“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion,” the report said. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”

Those cases will be the subject of further analysis, the report said.

According to the report, the Pentagon task force will take steps to expand its database of unidentified aerial phenomena, including anomalies reported to civilian authorities. To deal with a bigger database, the task force plans to take advantage of data analytics, including artificial intelligence tools such as machine learning, to identify and classify UAP reports more efficiently.

The report said the task force “has indicated that additional funding for research and development could further the future study of the topics laid out in this report.”

In advance of the report’s release, U.S. government officials were cagey about discussing whether any UAP reports could be traced to alien technology. “We have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us,” one unnamed official told NBC News.

Now that the public version of the report has been released, Michael W. Hall, director and founder of a Seattle-based UFO study group known as UFO i Team, said the outcome fell short of his expectations.

“They’re limiting their study set,” Hall said. “All of the other testimony from civilians is thrown out the window, and of course the aviators aren’t going to say much.”

He didn’t expect today’s report to attribute any of the UAPs to aliens, but he did expect it to take a “baby step” by acknowledging that alien explanations couldn’t be ruled out.

“This is not even the baby step,” Hall said. “This is just the baby lifting its head up.”

Lead image: Cockpit video records an anomalous aerial encounter that occurred off the Florida coast in 2015. Source: U.S. Navy

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Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

I keep reading how wind and solar are finally cheaper than fossil fuels … and every time I’ve read it, my urban legend detector rings like crazy.

It rings in part because the market is very efficient at replacing energy sources based on their cost. Here, for example, is the story of kerosene, emphasis mine:

When a clean-burning kerosene lamp invented by Michael Dietz appeared on the market in 1857, its effect on the whaling industry was immediate. Kerosene, known in those days at “Coal Oil”, was easy to produce, cheap, smelled better than animal-based fuels when burned, and did not spoil on the shelf as whale oil did. The public abandoned whale oil lamps almost overnight. By 1860, at least 30 kerosene plants were in production in the United States, and whale oil was ultimately driven off the market. When sperm oil dropped to 40 cents a gallon in 1895, due to lack of demand, refined petroleum, which was very much in demand, sold for less than 7 cents a gallon. …
SOURCE

My question was, if wind and solar are so cheap, why are they not replacing traditional sources overnight?

So I decided to look into the question. The main number used to judge how expensive an energy source might be is called the “LCOE”, the Levelized Cost Of Energy. It takes into account all of the costs for new power plants—capital costs, overhead and maintenance costs, fuel costs, financing costs, the whole gamut of expenses for that power source. Well … except for one cost, but we’ll come to that later.

Here is the latest information on the LCOE for various energy sources, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2021 report entitled Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources.

Figure 1. US IEA levelized costs of electricity, 2021.

And yes, that clearly says that onshore wind and standalone solar are cheaper than any other source of energy.

I looked at that, and my urban legend detector started flashing red and the needle pegged out … why?

Because of the numbers in the first column, the “capacity factor”. The capacity factor for an electricity generation system is what percentage of the “nameplate” generation it actually produces. For example, if the nameplate on a windmill says it will generate 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh, or 109 watt-hours) per year if it ran 24/7/365, and due to the intermittent nature of wind it only actually generates a quarter of that, then its “capacity factor” would be 25%.

I looked at the claimed capacity factors for wind and solar, which according to the US EIA folks are 40%+ and 30% respectively, and I thought “No way. Not possible.”

Now, part of the error in the solar capacity factor is explained by footnote 4, viz:

4Technology is assumed to be photovoltaic (PV) with single-axis tracking. The solar hybrid system is a single-axis PV system coupled with a four-hour battery storage system.

Why is that a problem? Well, because tracking systems need to move each individual solar panel at a steady rate during the day so the panels always face the sun. Then, at the end of the day, they rotate the panel back to its starting position. Unlike fixed systems, these require a complex installation of motors, time sensors, bearings, levers, and the like to rotate the panels.

And because such mechanical “single-axis tracking” systems are expensive to install, expensive to operate, expensive to maintain, and subject to damage from weather, it is very rare for a grid-scale solar farm to use such systems. Almost without exception, they are fixed-angle systems with the panels mounted securely to a (theoretically) wind-proof frame like those at the Topaz Lake Solar Farm shown below.

Figure 2. Solar panel fixed mounts, Topaz Lake Solar Farm, one of the world’s largest.

If you imagine the necessary motors, gears, levers, and other mechanisms required for a single-axis tracking system to be able to rotate each and every one of those nine million! solar panels to follow the sun throughout the day, you’ll understand why fixed solar panels are the norm for grid-scale installations.

In any case, I thought I’d find the real data on this question of capacity factors. The amazing source, Our World In Data, has all of the information needed. Here is the current average of all of the world’s real-world wind and solar installations in the most recent year for which we have data, 2019.

Figure 3. Actual and theoretical (nameplate) generation, 2019 data.

As you can see, the US IEA is way off in fantasyland about the capacity factors of wind and solar. In both cases, they are claiming far larger capacity factors than we have out here in the real world.

Now, in Figure 1, they claimed levelized costs as follows, in US cents per kilowatt-hour:

• Combined-cycle gas — 3.45¢ per kWh
• Solar — 2.90¢ per kWh
• Onshore Wind — 3.15¢ per kWh

That’s the basis for the claims that renewables are now the cheapest sources of electricity. However, given the actual capacity factors, in reality these costs are:

• Combined-cycle gas — 3.45¢ per kWh
• Solar — 6.21¢ per kWh
• Onshore Wind — 4.97¢ per kWh

“Cheapest sources”? No way.

And as for offshore wind, they’re just as far off. They claim 11.5¢ per kWh, but the new Block Island offshore wind farm is charging the utility, not the customer but the utility, 24.4¢ per kWh …

And finally, there is a huge elephant in the US EIA room … backup power. This is the missing cost I mentioned above.

If you add a gigawatt of unreliable intermittent renewable wind or solar energy to a system, you also have to add an additional gigawatt of some kind of reliable dispatchable energy, where “dispatchable” means you can turn it up or down at will to replace renewables when there is no wind or sun. The US EIA levelized cost document linked above does mention the need for backup … but it doesn’t even touch the cost of backup. All it says is:

Because load must be continuously balanced generating units with the capability to vary output to follow demand (dispatchable technologies) generally have more value to a system than less flexible units (nondispatchable technologies) that use intermittent resources to operate. The LCOE values for dispatchable and non-dispatchable technologies are listed separately in the following tables because comparing them must be done carefully.

They say that dispatchable technologies have “more value to a system” … but they fail to mention that “more value” translates into higher real-world costs for non-dispatchable renewable technologies.

How much higher? Well … they don’t say. But you can be sure that it won’t be free. At a bare minimum, it will be the capital cost of the dispatchable backup generator plus some portion of the other fixed, variable, and transmission costs … and that means that because of the costs of the needed backup generators, there is very little chance that solar and wind will ever be competitive with other methods.

TL;DR Version: Neither wind nor solar are ready for prime-time, and due to their need for backup power, they may never be ready.

Here on the hill above the ocean, my gorgeous ex-fiancee and I are preparing to visit relatives in northern Florida. We’ll be on the road starting Tuesday for about three weeks, leaving our daughter and son-in-law here in the house to enjoy the sun. If you live in the northern Floridian part of the planet and would like to meet up, drop me a message on the open thread on my blog. Just include in the name of your town, no need to put in your phone or email. I’ll email you if we end up going there. No guarantees, but it’s always fun to talk to WUWT readers in person. I’ll likely be posting periodic updates on our trip on my blog, Skating Under The Ice, for those who are interested.

My very best to everyone,

w.

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Related

It is good to remember how little we know about the outer solar system. Humans have only really begun to observe them in the last 100 years, and given the limitations of those observations, there are still many things we do not know about. For example, researchers recently found an object almost the size of a dwarf planet invading the inner solar system, with an estimated orbital period of over 2 million years, more than six the lifetime of the modern human species.

The object, known as 2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), was originally observed in 2014, but was first noted on June 19, 2021 by Pedro Bernardelli and Gary Bernstein and now has its own Wikipedia page. The data on the object were collected by the Dark Energy Survey over a period of 4 years, but new observation platforms are now being used on this novel object.

UT video via the Oort cloud.

With these additional observation platforms, additional insights come. Currently, UN271 is expected to reach perihelion just outside of Saturn’s orbit in 2014 before returning to the depths of the Oort Cloud for another rotation around the Sun. Its size is estimated to be 100 to 370 km, making it possibly the largest Oort cloud object ever observed.

After the UN271 has already passed the orbit of Neptune, it is well on its way to the inner solar system in 2014. As it nears the Sun, astronomers expect it to get the coma and tail characteristic of comets as its surface begins to evaporate in the heat. Unfortunately, it will likely not be bright enough to present a spectacular display like other well-known comets.

In 2014, UN271 could also be viewed as a Kuiper belt object, which is discussed in this UT video.

But it is being watched closely now that its presence is well known. There is already talk of possibly sending a mission to rendezvous with him when he reaches his perihelion point in 2031. Whatever resources are used for it, its very existence will serve as an important reminder of how little we know about what is out there.

Learn more:
SlashGear – 2014 UN271: Object the size of a death star on its way to our solar system
NASA – C / 2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein)
Sky & Telescope – Huge Oort cloud comet shines in the outer solar system
UT – What is the Oort Cloud?

Mission statement:
Artistic conception of a Kuiper belt object.
Credit – NASA / ESA / G. Bacon (STScI)

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