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264 Responses to "Unforced Variations: June 2015"

  1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/ucl-nct061115.php

    … how much radiation CO2 absorbs …. Previous methods were only accurate to about 5% at best across all wavelengths, whereas the new calculations give an accuracy of 0.3%.</blockquote.
    It's a press release for
    High-Accuracy CO2 Line Intensities Determined from Theory and Experiment
    Oleg L. Polyansky, Katarzyna Bielska, Mélanie Ghysels, Lorenzo Lodi, Nikolai F. Zobov, Joseph T. Hodges, and Jonathan Tennyson
    Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 243001 (2015) – Published 15 June 2015

  3. Killian wrote: “That ‘renewables’ are not sustainable is self-evident”

    That’s ill-informed nonsense and a perfect example of why the moderators of this site are wise to rule discussions of energy technologies off-topic for this site.

    If “renewables are not sustainable” then electricity is not sustainable, and you should lead the way to the electricity-free sustainable future by turning off your computer now, permanently.

  4. From the ‘for what it’s worth’ department, GISTEMP has its May update out, and at 0.71 C, it’s tied with 2012 as the second warmest May in the record; last year remains champ at 0.79 C.

    With the 0.70 logged in 2010, that means that 3 of the last 6 Mays have set new records, and that 4 have been warmer than any month prior to May 2010.

    If you back out 1998, it appears that nearly all Mays in the current millennium were warmer than any year prior to that–the only exception was 2004, which, at 0.40, was edged out by 1990 (0.41.)

    Fun with rankings…

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

  5. Also–missed this attribution study when it came out:

    http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241

    There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.

  6. 148 Barton Paul Levenson said Ad hominem, thou art my master!

    K 145: That “renewables” are not sustainable is self-evident

    BPL: A lot of things are “self-evident” to you that other people cannot even figure out. I know I can’t.

    Rather than ad hominem attacks, try reading. The reasoning is simple and has been presented here too many times to bother attempting to count. That others are backing up what I’ve said would give a wiser man pause to think. Not to mention, “Without the Hot Air,” written years ago.

    Look forward to the day the admin(s) here bore hole ad homs.

  7. 147 Pete Dunkelberg said Killian tells us (surprise) that with current methods at least we need some fossil fuels to build infrastructure like wind turbines, so using zero fossil fuels “currently it is not achievable.”

    Strawman much?

    Pete, the straw man is yours, at least, so your mangled grammatical structure *seems* to indicate. First, your error seems to be due to my error: Everything after the link should have been in the quote, so I didn’t say anything other than renewables aren’t, which is something I’ve said for a very long time and is nothing new. What is new is to have an energy- and emissions-based analysis from someone else to support the obvious.

    And, no, you can’t do renewables without fossil fuels, so I’m not sure what you posted about at all. A fact cannot be a straw man in this case. And, if you’d bother reading the analysis linked, you’d see the issue was replacing the entire current energy needs, not whether *any fraction of needs* should or can be built.

    Peanut Gallery bull poop is back here at RealClimate. #2 so far.

  8. Enhancement of dimethylsulfide production by anoxic stress in natural seawater
    23 May 2015
    DOI: 10.1002/2015GL063546

    … Under the anoxic condition, DMS production was considerably enhanced and DMS bacterial consumption was inhibited, resulting in an eightfold higher rate of gross DMS production than that under the oxic condition. Our results demonstrated that anoxic stress is one of important “environmental factors” in the marine DMS dynamics, suggesting the possible global importance due to ubiquity of anoxic conditions in the coastal oceans. This process would become more important in the future due to expansion of coastal hypoxic and anoxic zones by global warming.

    http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/dms–the-climate-gas-youve-never-heard-of

  9. HJ John Schellnhuber will be one of the panelists at the release June 18 of the encyclical making news now because of a leaked draft.

    “There will be science in the climate encyclical.”

    http://marksilk.religionnews.com/2015/06/12/there-will-be-science-in-the-climate-encyclical/

    http://americamagazine.org/content/dispatches/high-level-launch-popes-encyclical-vatican-june-18

    http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/06/what-will-pope-s-climate-encyclical-expected-18-june-say

  12. Comment by Susan Anderson — 15 Jun 2015

    Yes I saw the trailer. Cute but I had mixed emotions about it. I know that the ONLY way to reach a lot of people when it comes to Climate Change is to attach a “moral responsibility” to the task. Who better to do that than Pope Francis. I’ve known for a while that Pope Francis was and is something ‘new’. He obviously trusts the science and I hear tell has a Masters in Chemistry. That’s a huge + for everyone. Climate Change IS a moral responsibility and taking care of the Earth should be at the very center of any religious belief. It’s not, but it should be.

    Along with that if he addresses greed, unbridled consumerism, income inequality etc. What more could anyone ask? In my 54 years I’ve never seen a Pope take such a stance. Pope Francis also negotiated the opening up of Cuba so he’s politically savvy. I’ll take help wherever I can get it. Given that Climate Change is such a serious issue I doubt the trailer will have a positive effect. Just my two cents.

  13. 153 SecularAnimist said Killian wrote: “That ‘renewables’ are not sustainable is self-evident”

    That’s ill-informed nonsense

    Argumentation by assertion, despite having source to analyze and respond to. Brill. Peanut Gallery really getting going now. Won’t address the other logical fallacy.

  14. 161 Barton Paul Levenson said K: you can’t do renewables without fossil fuels

    BPL: The more renewables you have in the mix, the more you can do renewables without fossil fuels.

    Duh. And? I had already said, the issue was replacing the entire current energy needs, not whether *any fraction of needs* should or can be built.

    I have always spoken of them as bridge technology, so…?

  15. Peanut Gallery bull poop is back here at RealClimate. #2 so far.

    Comment by Killian — 15 Jun 2015

    I think a little anger management is in order. This is supposed to be a “science blog”. If your postulations can’t stand scrutiny without you going ballistic maybe they’re a bit flawed. Just a thought.

  17. #161–Yes, the posted article could be more accurately summarized, IMO, as “We can’t ‘do renewables’ with our existing economy.” Rather a tautology, really, since as noted in the article itself, we are currently set up to do *everything* with fossil fuels, including any number of things that we used to do in other ways.

    The argument as presented really becomes “Are cement-making and metallurgy sustainable?” Renewables are really just a subset. It’s an important distinction, because it helps to clarify what is actually being implied, mitigation-wise. If one says that renewables are too reliant on steel and cement to be sustainable, then one is also saying that the future needs to be steel and cement-free.

    Humans clearly won’t accept a neolithic future unless it is absolutely forced on us by total social collapse (and probably not even then; survivors would surely be scavenging and reforging metal indefinitely.)

    But there are answers, some prospective and some extant, to the problems of transition. It’s a massive project, obviously, but the good news is that it is proceeding much better than one might have expected, even in the absence of a good climate treaty. The progress of renewable energy is currently–pun intended– a big part of that.

  18. Kevin @167:
    “then one is also saying that the future needs to be steel and cement-free”
    Isn’t that going further than is justified? For one thing, if we cut emissions by say 95%, we could continue at the 5% level for at least another century and still see dropping CO2 levels. Secondly we
    ought to be able to produce at least some steel and cement without fossil fuels. For a couple thousand years iron was smelted with charcoal, but increased demand and inefficient processes meant we over stripped the supply of wood. But many metal oxides can be reduced with energy inputs other than carbon. And we will be able to capture some carbon for carbon neutral conversion to fuels and chemical feedstocks. All this is not even needed for a couple of generations, but these problems ought to be solvable.

    Our job for the next generation or two, is to transition to low carbon as rapidly as possible, while leaving the door open for future generations to finish the transition to a fully sustainable civilization. We shouldn’t let the fact that we don’t yet know all the answers get in the way of doing our part.

  19. patrick at #160 quoted: “As a footnote, initial reports said the encyclical would be called ‘Laudato Sii,’ with two i’s. That’s inaccurate since the Vatican decided to use the original form of the poem, which was written in the Umbrian dialect.” ????

    The “Umbrian dialect” of Latin??? There is no such thing, to my knowledge.

  20. Hi wili. It came out: Laudato Si’. The poem, the “Canticle…” of Francis of Assisi, was in Italian. So was the leaked draft.

  21. Here’s John Schellnhuber’s 20 minute talk today at the encyclical presentation (starts at 1:00:05):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYibHoWrKXo

    He continues to compare global mean temperature to human body temperature, for understanding what a rise of one degree means–or two–or five (1:14:04).

  22. Worth saving for reference, answering a FAQ:

    Geophysical Research Letters

    Time scales and ratios of climate forcing due to thermal versus carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels

    First published: May 2015
    DOI: 10.1002/2015GL063514

    Abstract

    The Earth warms both when fossil fuel carbon is oxidized to carbon dioxide and when greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide inhibits longwave radiation from escaping to space. Various important time scales and ratios comparing these two climate forcings have not previously been quantified.

    For example, the global and time-integrated radiative forcing from burning a fossil fuel exceeds the heat released upon combustion within 2 months.

    Over the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the cumulative CO2-radiative forcing exceeds the amount of energy released upon combustion by a factor >100,000.

    For a new power plant, the radiative forcing from the accumulation of released CO2 exceeds the direct thermal emissions in less than half a year.

    Furthermore, we show that the energy released from the combustion of fossil fuels is now about 1.71% of the radiative forcing from CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere as a consequence of historical fossil fuel combustion.
    ———–

    para. breaks added for online readability

  23. Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages.

    — Umbrian language – Wikipedia,

  24. Unlike GISTEMPS, NOAA reports May 2015 as the warmest May and =4th warmest monthly anomaly on record. 2015 continues to be scorchio!

    1 201502 0.89°C
    1 201503 0.89°C
    3 200701 0.88°C
    4 199802 0.87°C
    4 201505 0.87°C
    6 201003 0.84°C
    6 201412 0.84°C
    8 201311 0.83°C
    9 201004 0.82°C
    10 201501 0.81°C
    11 201404 0.80°C
    11 201408 0.80°C
    13 200203 0.79°C
    13 201405 0.79°C
    13 201409 0.79°C
    13 201410 0.79°C
    17 200202 0.78°C
    18 200612 0.77°C
    18 201011 0.77°C
    18 201504 0.77°C

  25. #169–No, the Umbrian dialect of Italian, according to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun

    “The Canticle of the Sun, also known as the Canticle of the Creatures or Laudes Creaturarum (Praise of the Creatures), is a religious song composed by Saint Francis of Assisi. It was written in an Umbrian dialect of Italian but has since been translated into many languages. It is believed to be among the first works of literature, if not the first, written in the Italian language.”

  26. #168–

    To be clear, OC, I’m not saying that the future needs to be steel- and cement-free. But if someone says that renewable energy is unsustainable because of the large quantities of steel and cement needed, then it would seem to follow that those two thing must be as unsustainable as their product is.

    I agree with the points that you make; I think that cleaner steel, cement, fiberglass and so on will be economic realities. (Indeed, some of them already are; IIRC, something like 30% of the steel produced is already from recycled scrap, and it’s produced not in traditional blast furnaces, but in electric ones where the carbon emissions are limited to upstream power generation.) That’s the sort of thing I had in mind when I said that there are (and will be) answers to the problems of sustainability and the transition thereto.

  27. On the subject of sustainable wind power, there are carbon-light to carbon-negative concretes and steel processes existing and/or in development. Not saying they’re ready for primetime, but I’d be very surprised if before long we didn’t have the ready capacity to produce structural materials in a MUCH more climate-friendly way!

    Also, even if we do only get maybe 95% carbon-free in our energy and manufacturing production, regenerative processes like Killian espouses and other potential carbon-sequestering mechanisms could well get us to net carbon-negative. So, from a carbon perspective, I suspect renewables are likely to be sustainable. Doing it all quickly enough is the bigger challenge…

  28. Thanks, hank, but I pretty familiar with the ancient Italic dialect known as Umbrian–I am working on a Chrestomathy of the language. That’s why I was pretty sure they _weren’t_ talking about that language.

    My folly was assuming that anything coming from the Vatican must be in Latin. In fact, as KM points out, this is in fact referring to a poem by St. Francis in his native Umbrian dialect of Italian (not the same as ancient Umbrian language). It was in fact one of the first texts in any vernacular Italian dialect.

    I’m glad to see that RC has posted on this important work now.

  30. hydrogen reduction of iron
    https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/2RK4ZjKBF2f71uM4uriP9g/Dr._Sohn_1_Work_and_Research_Symposia_Current_Stanford_GCEP_08_-_Pub_ver.pdf
    “Calculated energy savings up to 38% of BF process.
    Complete elimination or Drastic reduction of CO2 emission from ironmaking.
    Reduction rate determined to be sufficiently fast to apply a gas-solid suspension process to ironmaking.
    Possibility of eliminatingthe use of coke and pelletization/sintering as well as the associated generation of pollutants.”
    their figures also show that 27 percent of the CO2 from steel industry comes from electricity generation, so even just subbing wind/solar for that energy input makes steel greener.

    STEP cement: Solar Thermal Electrochemical Production of CaO without CO2 emission – http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CC/c2cc31341c#!divAbstract
    “New molten salt chemistry allows solar thermal energy to drive calcium oxide production without any carbon dioxide emission. This is accomplished in a one pot synthesis, and at lower projected cost than the existing cement industry process, which after power production, is the largest contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

    “General Electric’s Mining segment is working to create a safer mining future. GE’s mining division specializes in three segments of the mining industry: propulsion systems, mining equipment and mining solutions.The company has recently begun testing its new battery-powered mining equipment, including its newly designed Load Dump (LHD) at mining company IAMGOLD’s Westwood underground mine in Canada.”
    “We’re getting rid of the diesel emissions, we’re getting rid of the noise, the heat, and the battery changing is really quick,” says GE Mining Engineer Remi Desrosiers. http://www.miningglobal.com/machinery/1255/GE-Mining:-BatteryPowered-Technology-of-the-Future

    See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Muskie ‘…it was the largest single-bucket digging machine ever created…” “Big Muskie was powered by electricity supplied at 13,800 volts via a trailing cable, which had its own transporter/coiling units to move it.”

    And you should google “basalt fiber reinforced concrete”.

    The idea that renewable is unsustainable is like the idea that I can’t get to the grocery store without gasoline since that’s what my current car requires

  32. FYI …

    Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction
    Science Advances 19 Jun 2015:
    Vol. 1, no. 5, e1400253
    DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400253

    Excerpt from abstract:

    The oft-repeated claim that Earth’s biota is entering a sixth “mass extinction” depends on clearly demonstrating that current extinction rates are far above the “background” rates prevailing in the five previous mass extinctions. Earlier estimates of extinction rates have been criticized for using assumptions that might overestimate the severity of the extinction crisis. We assess, using extremely conservative assumptions, whether human activities are causing a mass extinction … Even under our assumptions, which would tend to minimize evidence of an incipient mass extinction, the average rate of vertebrate species loss over the last century is up to 114 times higher than the background rate … These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way. Averting a dramatic decay of biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services is still possible through intensified conservation efforts, but that window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

  34. So do you guys at real climate agree with the latest research coming from standard university? Saying that the 6th mass extinction is here?

    IF so how long of an estimate do you think humanity has?

  35. 184: Victorian greyjoy. Well going by the quality of all the latest studies covering in depth the relative global populations of: invertebrates, marine animals, sea birds and terrestrial mammals. All displaying significant population reductions many in the range of 50% or more. Seabirds (162 species studies) dropping to 1/3 of their historic levels as a direct result of insufficient fish in the4 oceans to name the most important contributing factor. Flora for now is not as badly affected but as mentioned invertebrates such as bees, wasps and flies have been reduced by >40% over the past 50 years. It should be clearly apparent to all and sundry that we are undergoing dramatic population collapses. To put things into perspective, at the end of the cretatious period it took the dinosaurs up to 18,000 years to disappear. What has and is happening on earth now has only taken <100 years.
    Going by a famous American indian, we as people cannot survive without our brothers, the animals.
    It doesn't look promising….
    No one know s the answer to your question but by you knowing the current situation it should be possible for you to make an educated guess.

  36. VG 184,

    I predict our civilization will collapse in 2028, give or take six years (1 standard deviation), due to increasing drought and subsequent agricultural collapse. I was intrigued to see that computer models at a UK ministry are now estimating 2040 for essentially the same effect. Makes me feel good in that I’m no longer a lone voice on this subject–bad in that I see the civilization I live in collapsing and nobody doing anything serious to prevent it.

  37. 163: Sustainables have got to be our future direction and so they will in time become perfectly feasible once economies of scale take place. However I cannot for the life of me go past nuclear as the best and most logical interim power source, people always make the mistake of thinking it’s either/or. Naturally it has to be ‘either’. It will take a couple of decades to get most renewables up to sufficient capacity to make a difference. We have proven, nuclear NOW!. If you take a look at the numerous casualties from fossil fuel combustion as compared with nuclear the difference is starkly obvious. I’m not saying stick with nuclear long term as I do not trust humans with nuclear waste. At least employ it while renewables technologies and efficiencies is being developed. The US can look at China and how it’s Thorium reactor is coming along and China can be a fantastic partner to Tesla engineering for example..work together.
    It’s a case of emergency management of our ecosystem and we do not have the time or liberties to vacillate back and forth on this issue.

  39. Lawrence Coleman wrote: “I cannot for the life of me go past nuclear as the best and most logical interim power source”

    I believe you are aware that the moderators of this site have repeatedly stated that nuclear power in particular, and electricity generation technology in general, is off-topic for this site, and have repeatedly asked commenters not to rehash tiresome, interminable arguments about whether nuclear power or anything else is “the best”, “the only”, etc.

    There are plenty of other sites where information and expertise on non-fossil fueled electricity generation is shared and such discussions are welcome.

  40. Having read several of the BAMS “specials” on extreme weather and its attribution, and having felt that investigators were often not asking the same questions, I found this report quite interesting:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/06/22/study-sees-a-new-normal-for-how-climate-affects-weather-events/

    Whether or not this model is accepted, I think it’s valuable for seeking some clarity about just what questions attributions studies should be asking.

  41. #187–Lawrence, I agree emphatically that it is not ‘either/or’ with respect to renewables and nuclear.

    Yet I must disagree with your perspective that nuclear can ramp up more rapidly than renewables, and that renewables are far from the necessary scale. According to the IEA, in 2012 (last year for which data is given), nuclear generation of electricity amounted to 2,345 billion kWh; renewable generation excluding hydropower was 1,069.

    The kicker, though, is that the respective numbers for 2008 were 2,597 and 560, which amount to 4-year growth rates of ~10% and 91%. (Hydropower provided 3,646 billion kWh in 2012; that was up from 3,180, an increase of ~15%.)

    True, the decline in nuclear is probably mostly down to the Fukushima disaster; but nuclear generation has been pretty much flat during the present millennium, barring the recent decline. There’s a good graph on the World Nuclear Association site:

    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Nuclear-Power-in-the-World-Today/

    Moreover, the long-promised cost reductions for nuclear power still haven’t shown up; projects in Finland, England, and the US continue to be over-budget as well as behind schedule. The best hope is China; as the World Nuclear Association says, “China has completed construction and commenced operation of 20 new nuclear power reactors over 2002-14, and some 30 new reactors are either under construction or likely to be so by mid-2015.” However, Bloomberg and others fear that “…rapid nuclear expansion may lead to a shortfall of fuel, equipment, qualified plant workers, and safety inspectors.”

    Which, I suspect, is one of the bottlenecks: highly trained specialists do not grow on trees and cannot be conjured out of the air.

    So, which of nuclear and renewables do you think is a more likely candidate to ramp up production over the next couple of decades? Speaking for myself, I see no reason to think that nuclear has any hope of scaling up drastically any time soon–even if the requisite ‘political will’ were somehow to magically be created.

    On the other hand, nuclear may have a more important role further down the road: at some point, one of the various prospects to lower its cost will probably succeed, at least to some degree, and unlock some of nuclear’s undoubted virtues. But it will have to compete in an energy industry in which the ‘new normal’ is strongly conditioned by cheap and abundant renewable power.

  44. BPL 186

    If, as you imply, global civilization collapses around 2030 to 2040 (leaving some local civilizations still surviving no doubt) I should imagine that the collapse would be accompanied by a dramatic decline in the burning of fossil fuel and therefore in emissions. In effect, the reduction in fossil-fuel use will have been forced on us by the planet. Obviously it would be better if we initiated the change ourselves — and beginning soon. Still, we get the desired reduction in emissions, albeit somewhat delayed. But what then is the resultant effect on the trajectory of climate change? As others have said, do we just get disastrous climate change as opposed to catastrophic climate change?

  46. 166 AIC: Nice graphic. Completely nonsense. Wind in Illinois changes far too quickly to do anything but require natural gas fired gas turbines to fix the sudden changes.

    In Illinois today, we had several tornadoes. One of the tornadoes got chopped off by a microburst of straight line wind. This kind of weather topples wind turbines but not containment buildings. Wind in Illinois is too variable.

    Instead of baseless graphics and salesmanship, get some electrical engineering professors who teach the Energy Transmission courses to do some articles. The devil is in making your energy source compatible with the grid. For renewables, that is done with “spinning reserve” fossil fuel powered “backup.” For a longer overview see the following:

    http://bravenewclimate.com/2015/06/05/less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-rethinking-all-of-the-above-clean-energy/#more-6641

    http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/11/climbing-mount-improbable/

    http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/energetics/wind-and-solar-how-far-weve-come

    http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/energetics/a-look-at-wind-and-solar-part-2

    What they say:  Solar power interferes with wind power and drives the price of wind & solar generated electricity to zero. Economically, wind and solar energy have little value because they interfere with each other.

    At the level of the whole grid, “it is increasingly difficult for the market share of variable renewable energy sources at the system-wide level to exceed the capacity factor of the energy source.” [They are talking about regional interconnects over 5 or 10 states at a time.]
    variable renewable energy = VRE

    “Capacity factor is the ratio of the average output of a wind or solar plant to its maximum rated capacity. For wind power, this typically ranges between 20 and 40 percent, while for solar it runs between 10 and 25 percent, depending on the quality of the renewable resource.”

    Renewable energy drives down the price of renewable energy so much that renewable energy looses more money the more of it you have. The owner of the renewable energy source goes broke.

    “To keep the power system stable,” you have to have a lot of non-variable energy. An unstable grid is a lot of blackouts.

    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Others/Emerging-Nuclear-Energy-Countries/

  47. Ed, thanks for the Trembath/Jenkins link. But let’s bear in mind what the authors say: “This capacity factor threshold is a rough rule of thumb, one that is useful in guiding our thinking about the eventual role of mature wind and solar sectors in various electricity grids.”

    As to the first link, I think the argument is considerably weaker, since as several commenters point out, wind and solar production tend not to peak at the same times.

  49. #166, 196 et seq–Perhaps we should also look at the paper underlying the inforgraphic. The ideas are worked out in a fair amount of detail:

    http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf

    (2015, Royal Society of Chemistry)

    Of interest in the present context:

    Ref. 2 develops and applies a grid integration model to determine
    the quantities and costs of additional storage devices and
    generators needed to ensure that the 100% WWS [Wind, Water, Solar] system developed
    here for the U.S. can match load without loss every 30 s for
    six years (2050–2055) while accounting for the variability and
    uncertainty in WWS resources. Wind and solar time-series are
    derived from 3-D global model simulations that account for
    extreme events, competition among wind turbines for kinetic
    energy, and the feedback of extracted solar radiation to roof and
    surface temperatures.

    Solutions to the grid integration problem are obtained by
    prioritizing storage for excess heat (in soil and water) and
    electricity (in ice, water, phase-change material tied to CSP, pumped
    hydro, and hydrogen); using hydroelectric only as a last resort; and
    using demand response to shave periods of excess demand over
    supply. No batteries (except in electric vehicles), biomass, nuclear
    power, or natural gas are needed. Frequency regulation of the grid
    can be provided by ramping up/down hydroelectric, stored CSP or
    pumped hydro; ramping down other WWS generators and storing
    the electricity in heat, cold, or hydrogen instead of curtailing; and
    using demand response.

    The study is able to derive multiple low-cost stable solutions
    with the number of generators across the U.S. listed in Table 2
    here, except that that study applies to the continental U.S., so
    excludes data for Alaska and Hawaii. Numerous low-cost solutions
    are found, suggesting that maintaining grid reliability upon 100%
    conversion to WWS is economically feasible and not a barrier to
    the conversion.

  50. The moderators have repeatedly asked ALL OF US to refrain from arguing about nuclear power, solar power, etc. because the economic, environmental and technological issues of electricity generation are OFF-TOPIC for this site. The moderators are world-class climate scientists who generously donate their time, work and expertise to maintain RealClimate as a CLIMATE SCIENCE site. They have made it clear that they have neither the interest nor the expertise to host an ENERGY TECHNOLOGY site, and they certainly have no interest in moderating acrimonious arguments about nuclear power or renewable energy. There are MANY other sites where such discussions are appropriate.

    With all due respect to other commenters, it strikes me as rude, boorish and self-absorbed when people REPEATEDLY ignore those requests, especially when their comments are not only off-topic, but belligerent, inflammatory and insulting towards other commenters.