zebra @228, you are a hell of a lot smarter than our denialist friends, but you need to listen to criticism and act on it and not talk down to people. The reason KM flounces is probably because he cant figure out you are saying, and neither can I at times, and neither can quite few others, because you dont write clearly and are far too cryptic. It leads to talking at cross purposes. Simply copying and pasting some stuff from SA doesn’t change that.
And you keep changing your definition of what a z grid is. It started as a house with a few solar panels, and then mutated into a wind farm. This adds to the talking at crossed purposes. If you want to have a free thinking discussion on grids then you have to do it openly and admit you are exploring options that might be wrong. You are trying to be a teacher while exploring ideas and you cant be both at the exact same time.
And when you talk about grid reliability, it is never clear if you are talking about your own house, your z grid, or the wider grid. So people end up talking at cross purposes with you.
The scientific American block and paste on smart meters is fine. I doubt that anyone disputes that. But it doesn’t back up your claims about not needing ancillary services, and doesn’t have anything about switching peoples appliances off as a method of resolving load matching problems and other grid fluctuations. So if you are using it to defend your ideas, it isnt working. And those particular ideas don’t make much sense.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury @227, very much my own view, except to say I m a bit more relaxed about nuclear power than you.
Mike Moore is good value, but seems to have dropped the ball on renewables. Its because Micheal Moore hates capitalism and elites, but the trouble is its hard to run a modern economy without an elite of some sort. The job is for the public to figure out the right limits to put around what they can get away with. And to recognise how tragedy of the commons issues are more prevalent than they think.
There’s a great quotation “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” . Traced back to Voltaire.
—————————-
Al Bundy @229, yes a carbon tax and dividend would not be so inflationary, but it would be slow, again suggesting we need additional mechanisms at both a government and individual level.
————————
Killian @236
“Apparently the Eurasian put an AVERAGE of 4cm/year into world oceans. 4×80= 320 = 3.2 meters. In 80 years…..Hmmm… so when I’ve said 3 meters is possible this century many times over the last ten years and caught flak for it…? Sorry, 3 meters is not an outlier.’
Could possibly be 3 metres per century, but remember that the Eurasian ice sheets were much larger 14,000 years ago than today, so 3 metres per century would be unlikely in todays world. Could still easily be over 1 metre.
Mr. Know It Allsays
236 – Killian
“How about we discuss something germane for once, eh?
Says temps over Greenland went up 14 deg C about 14,000 years before SUVs, when CO2 was only 240 ppm. How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming? At the very least, it is hard evidence that AGW MAY be a false theory. No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and there is evidence that supports AGW, and evidence that does not support it.
William B Jacksonsays
#253 You are a skeptic if and only if skeptic is another word for denier.
The bottom line reality is this: we need URGENTLY to reduce emissions as fast as possible. The tool that is primarily actually doing that in the real world today is renewable energy, predominantly wind and solar.
Wind and PV are observably failing, and failing badly. Germany’s per-kWh emissions are 10x those of neighboring France, and Germany’s insistence on denuclearization has made it miss its 2020 emissions targets by a wide margin. As Dr. Hansen noted in 2014, the success stories use nuclear and hydro.
Germany’s “reductions” are largely fraudulent. Most of Germany’s “renewable” energy comes from “biomass”, aka clearcut forests. Due to the low heat content of green wood, it emits more CO2 per kWh than the same energy from coal. It will take decades to get it out of the atmosphere again, and the lost biodiversity can never be recovered.
But the single highest priority right now is to finish decarbonizing electric generation. The next is to decarbonize transportation–and those two projects are inherently linked.
That’s exactly the approach of all the “green” countries, and that’s why they’re failing to de-fossilize. The only way to get this job done is to (a) go after EVERYTHING in parallel (no sense changing process A by itself when processes B, C and D have to be integrated with it to achieve defossilization), (b) use synergies which present themselves (e.g. emissions-free waste heat from electric generation should be used for space heating, displacing mostly natural gas), (c) use biomass from crop wastes, forestry wastes and coppiced fast-growing trees (NOT old-growth) to supply fixed carbon to support synthesis of fuels for those things we can’t electrify, and (d) devote as much power as we can afford to energy-efficient methods of carbon sequestration and ocean deacidification. We can’t wait to finish one to get started on others; this is all of a piece, and has to achieve probably negative 50 gigatons CO2 per year.
So you anti-nukes, ask yourself this: how much of this can you do with “renewables” (don’t forget land-use change in your calculations), and how much easier would it be with a carbon-free fuel which costs 23 cents per million BTU?
Yeah, but the fact remains that in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions, even with less than perfectly decarbonized grids charging them. There are multiple lifecycle studies on that. So “Planet of the Humans” apparently remains guilty of at least that cherry-pick.
EP:The hypocrisy of the “environmentalist” left is so blatant,
AB: bull. The issue is that the left is populated primarily by somewhat above average folks (the right is populated primarily by somewhat below average folks). How on earth could someone who ain’t either miss pretty much everything relevant except pure math?
Rhetorical. The answer is obvious. Long ago you chose to ignore everything relevant to humans as humans so that you could concentrate on stuff that ignores the complexity that humans bring to the table.
Gives you room to explore factoids, but you are WAY wrong in not acknowledging that your self-imposed limitations limit your answers.
From prior comments here this so-called documentary is one-sided and unrealistic.
Al Bundysays
NigelJ: zebra @228, you are a hell of a lot smarter than our denialist friends, but
AB: I don’t see it. You’re allowing your kindness to override any reasonable analysis. Zebra seems to be exactly as intelligent as the average denialist spokesperson. Zebra is definitely a sub-genius.
NigelJ: Micheal Moore hates capitalism and elites, but the trouble is its hard to run a modern economy without an elite of some sort.
AB: As if that’s a problem. Gandhi and MLK gave obvious answers. As I’ve said here before:
Leaders who believe that they should live like their typical followers are the leaders we should follow.
Al Bundysays
NigelJ: yes a carbon tax and dividend would not be so inflationary, but it would be slow,
Aren’t you assuming magnitude? A carbon tax and dividend of $100,000,000 per gram of CO2 would?
David B. Bensonsays
jgnfld @241 — I don’t consider the current comment @200 to be beyond the pale. I went back to check.
Al Bundysays
MrKIA: No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and
AB: No, you are a liar who lies to himself. Full stop. Please give us a Single Example where you didn’t lie (to yourself) in order to come up with a conclusion.
And remember, I’m way more intelligent than you and I’m loaded for bear.
KIA 253: Says temps over Greenland went up 14 deg C about 14,000 years before SUVs, when CO2 was only 240 ppm. How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming?
BPL: Asked and answered. You already KNOW why this is wrong, but you keep repeating it anyway. Troll.
Says temps over Greenland went up 14 deg C about 14,000 years before SUVs, when CO2 was only 240 ppm. How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming?
If you knew anything at all about feedback loops, you’d know that a forcing in the feedbacks is equivalent to a forcing anywhere else. Milankovich forcings are amplified by CO2 (and H2O and other) feedbacks. Adding CO2 is amplified even w/o Milankovich effects.
Ray Ladburysays
Mr. KIA: “How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming?”
No, you fricking moron, it does not. Local changes in temperature are not germane to the current situation where the entire fricking planet is warming. No responsible scientist ever suggested that CO2 is the only driver of climate.
Look, why not at least learn enough of the theory so that you can discuss your doubts intelligently and not look like a total imbecile…Oh…wait. You read Breitbart. Never mind.
Killiansays
nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.
Killiansays
Re #249 Al Bundy/BPL said BPL: Moore’s film is already being criticized for being biased, incomplete, and full of cherry-picking and special pleading.
My, what a surprise that truth to power gets shivved…
For instance, its conclusion that electric cars didn’t help the environment was based on one location that got 95% of its electricity from coal.
When one wants to make a point, one wants to make it emphatically. Did the film say that is the only example and there are no better ones? No. So why lie? Because people have agendas.
Fact is, EV’s IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM **HELP** the environment. They are a BARELY less bad. In a world that is out of time, that’s absolutely stupid as a solution.
Ten years now I’ve been preaching risk analysis and you geniuses still can’t be bothered.
AB: Nope. Their conclusion was based both on the fact that EVs inherit the grid’s fossil components (as you mention) and also how much fossil fuel goes into biofuel, wind, and solar facilities as an inherent component of said facilities’ construction and operation. Propagate them all you want; the fossil components’ percentage remains.
My opinion is that the cutting edge of such facilities are significantly less fossil dependent, so for me the film fell short. It needed a “tomorrow’s tech” segment. That would modify their tune for sure.
It should include magical thinking when its entire premise, a correct premise, is that current technology is a climate solution mirage?
WTF? He wasn’t making a milquetoast, Bidenesque movie on renewables.
Killiansays
Re #253 Mr. Know It All said No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and there is evidence that supports AGW, and evidence that does not support it.
You’re goddamned lying criminal.
#EcoNuremberg
Killiansays
Re #227 Ray Ladbury said I probably won’t be seeing Moore’s new movie.
Yet, you have no trouble trashing it amid a pile of assumptions and heresay.
Just… f@#$in’ genius, man!
he’s not particularly insightful or deep.
How the hell would you know? What insight on climate have you ever positied? None.
He also suffers from a malady that seems to be epidemic on the political left–rejection of the better because it isn’t the best.
No, you simply do not understand the climate system, the energy system, resource limits, and, particularly, the risk assessment.
Never have. Your middle way is suicidal, but you have absolutely no clue that’s the case.
Killiansays
Re #246 Al Bundy said AB: You forgot to include the surface area of the ice involved. Was it larger than the current ice sheets?
I forgot? Hmmm… if you can point to any time I ever didn’t have acomprehensive understanding of issues, have at it. Cut and paste.
What’s at issue here is your knowledge. 1. You imply, but then appear to immediately ignore in your own question, that the ice sheets in question were/are different. is that not a time to engage averages and means?
Further, did I say that was a model for now? Why, no. Have I not, for a decade now, said we must focus on risk? Does that paper not help quantify, bound to some degree, the risk of SLR due to ice sheet melt? Why, yes, I think all of those are true.
But let’s add: Have I not also stated more often than should have ever been necessary, conditions now are such that there is virtually no hysteresis in the system? That we can, and must, expect changes to be faster than ever before given we debilitated every ecosystem concurrently while natural rapid changes in the past were more akin to dominoes falling? I do believe I have.
Given all of the above, should we not assess that the risk of melt being even faster now is high?
Killiansays
Re #247 Al Bundy said What might be the money quote from Killian’s link: Our reconstruction of the EIS deglaciation shows that the collapse of an ice sheet, comparable in size to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, can occur in as little as 300–500 yr.
Indeed, the money quote. But then you go and turn it into chump change. Interestingly, you don’t apologize here for the aspersion wherein you question what I do or don’t consider… yet, then quote the very source of my comment.
Some puppies can’t be trained.
I assume they took into account differences in location and submergence. 16 feet / 300 * 80 = 4.2 feet. Lets just double it for Greenland and EAIS and we/re getting close to 10 feet in 80 years.
Hmmm… you took me to task for the same calculation.
But which 80 years?
It doesn’t matter. You’re conflating, as is the constant error on these pages, the issues of the climate science – not this thread – and the risk – this thread. We literally have no period in history that is like this one, no matter how far back you go. There is no way to safely quantify what *will* happen. When you treat climate science like it is a statement of future fact, you are in grave error.
Just a few years ago, doubling times for any aspect of climate change were thought to be decades. Now we know that doubling times of as little as five years are happening in specific contexts… and spreading.
Last I recall, SLR and melt rates in specific cases have been found in that 5-year range. I posit that is propagating throughout the system. And even if not, our risk assessment must assume that if it is happening in multiple contexts, it’s going to continue to propagate, and become global, pervasive.
Policy and the science are *not* the same goddamned thing, AB.
Figure that shit out, already.
Even the most radical legitimate science, Hansen’s doubling rate hypothesis takes decades to get into fifth gear, so to speak. As much as we’d like to see the end of the show we’re all worm-food before the first intermission.
zebrasays
#244 Al Bundy,
Stable geniuses shouldn’t have to misquote things:
And it will allow utilities to offer customers hour-by-hour rates, including incentives to run appliances and machines during off-peak times that might vary day to day, reducing demand spikes that can destabilize a grid. Unlike a meter, this digital energy portal would allow network intelligence to flow back and forth, with consumers responding to variations in pricing. The portal is a tool for moving beyond the commodity model of electricity delivery into a new era of energy services as diverse as those in today’s dynamic telecommunications market.
AB says: “No bilateral agreements between consumers and producers mentioned at all.”
Perhaps that’s because all agreements between consumers and producers are bilateral? I know my utility company and I have a bilateral agreement, but maybe you have some other arrangement?
And what the expert suggests, but you left out…”energy services as diverse as in telecommunications”… sounds an awful lot like what I suggested, where individuals decide what services they want to pay for. Doesn’t it?
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @261 &262, ok maybe I was a bit too kind, but you gotta appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement goes a long way with most people.
I hear what you say about Ghandi and leaders ideally living like followers, and I used to think that myself, but you have to be practical. How many people would be prepared to take positions of responsibility and risk if they did not get some extra reward? Probably not many, so we are stuck with needing an elite that earn a bit more than average. And someone has to get the first new smartphones etc. That said, greed is not good.
There’s a sensible middle ground that works. Remember “the perfect is the enemy of the good” (Voltaire).
A very high carbon tax and dividend would work quicker, at least initially, but just ain’t gonna happen.
nigeljsays
Killian @269
“nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.”
Nope. I made no mention there of the Antarctic and you haven’t refuted the point I made about Eurasia. The antarctic could cause multi metre sea level rise, but it would need sustained warming of several degrees as in the past paleo evidence, so it looks like something most likely to happen next century, like AB more or less suggested.
Mr. Know It Allsays
264 – David Benson
“jgnfld @241 — I don’t consider the current comment @200 to be beyond the pale. I went back to check.”
When I read your comment about why comment #200 was allowed, I figured it might be one of mine so I went back and looked. Big sigh of relief when it wasn’t. :)
264 – Al
“And remember, I’m way more intelligent than you and I’m loaded for bear.”
Me too – I use that Buffalo Bore ammo – how about you? Check the ballistics on that stuff!
258 – Kevin McKinney
“More fundamentally, CO2 and temperature are well-correlated during the deglaciation. See, for instance, Shakun et al 2012:
But, but, but the article said the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades” and the CO2 was only 240 ppm at the time. Seriously, isn’t this a little weird – it’s like what’s happening now, only with greater temp increases and lower CO2. How did it happen?
“Studies of ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet have “suggested that the atmosphere above Greenland warmed by up to 14C in a few decades at this time,” he told AFP.
“We think that this warming was the main driver of the ice sheet collapse.”
While Earth is heating everywhere, parts of the world such as the poles are warming far faster than others.
Atmospheric concentrations of planet-warming CO2 were around 240 parts per million at the time, compared with over 415 ppm currently.”
Al Bundysays
Killian,
I didn’t take you to task, I threw you a softball in my first post.
“Which 80 years” is precisely the question. You’re the one who pegged the 80 to start this very year. Now you’re saying 3 meters more than whatever it is in, say, 2137 by 2217? If so, then I agree with you. At some time in the future a three meter rise over 80 years is possible.
zebra,
The point is that the z-grid is certainly NOT a help with the implied issues brought up by your expert, that said issues are more easily handled by a middleman with serious agency. That’s what your link said (though actually they had no idea that a z-grid is a possible alternative).
Instead of appropriating what is already happening via the current paradigm how about telling us why ONLY the z-grid can do these things, why the insane attempt to do them within the current paradigm is destined to fail?
And NO, it is extremely rare (non-existent?) for bilateral agreements to exist between supplier/consumer where neither runs the grid through which the electrons flow. There are toes-in-the-water, such as “I want my electricity to be supplied with wind” but I am certain that those agreements do NOT say “exclusively”. Those contracts are “accounting” with no direct link to reality. The z-grid appears to make said contracts ironclad and physical. Wind drops and customers are dropped on their head. Wind increases and wind energy suppliers are curtailed with immense losses. It sounds like the least efficient and most destructive way possible to organize a power delivery system (other than making each supplier/consumer pair run their own dedicated lines).
Your attempt to switch “bilateral between suppliers and consumers neither of which operate the grid” to “my bilateral agreement with the grid operator” is dishonest, ludicrous, and Trumpian. You think we’re all so dumb that we don’t remember what you said yesterday? We’ll all forget the entire friggin’ point of “z-grid”??? Yeah, that’s Trumpian in spades.
What does the z-grid do that an advanced but traditionally organized grid can’t do better?
nigeljsays
The following is an excellent article relating to the dubious ideas posted that renewable energy is not the solution to climate change, and instead its all about population control and much lower energy use:
“But more than anything else, I’m angry at the implication that “we” are at fault. There is a bad but persistent narrative that climate change and pandemics are caused not by greenhouse gases and viruses, but by human nature. We are greedy for food, shelter, adventure, self-fulfillment, human contact and — says this narrative — we must be punished for our sins. But the current situation (covid 19) — death, poverty, loneliness — is an ineffective blueprint for climate solutions. We were never going to be able to sacrifice our way out of climate change, especially not on the backs of the people who have historically done most of the sacrificing. There is an entrenched system that extracts CO2 from the ground and pumps it into the atmosphere, one that results not from inherent human badness but from the choices of a few humans with power. Confronting that system will take work. We need to build things: wind turbines, solar panels, public transportation, denser cities, fairer societies. We don’t need purification. We don’t need absolution. We need to get to work.”
(Of course lower energy use and lower population growth help the climate problem, but its important to understand what is realistic policy and expectations, and that they cant do it alone without a new energy grid)
Al Bundysays
Killian: That we can, and must, expect changes to be faster than ever before given we debilitated every ecosystem concurrently while natural rapid changes in the past were more akin to dominoes falling? I do believe I have.
Given all of the above, should we not assess that the risk of melt being even faster now is high?
AB: Dude, the issue folks have with you is that you take what MOST of us have been saying for decades and trumpet it back to us as your singular and exclusive insight (while denigrating the rest of us). As if any of the non-denialist regs here haven’t said precisely what your above quote says. Join the team as an equal. Like the USA you ain’t #1 and the rest of us are tired of your crowing about your amazing superiority and our total worthlessness.
Ken Fabiansays
The emissions of manufacturing and responsibility for them are not unique to renewable technology manufacturers although I think using coal power to make solar and wind and batteries and EV’s could be the best possible use we can put it to. As the proportion of low emissions energy for manufacturing grows the embedded carbon costs diminish; requiring it to be zero emissions up front for RE manufacturing but other kinds of manufacturing, including high emissions ones remaining exempt (because they don’t care and choose to play no part in advancing a transition to zero emission) would be more hypocritical to my thinking than PV makers choosing their energy inputs on the basis of cost and awaiting the system wide changes to energy emissions intensity to flow through.
Then there are companies that (admirably imo) have preferencing the use of low emissions energy as business policy – Tesla products, for example, will have lower embedded emissions than other battery and PV and EV makers that have no such commitment. It is a transition – one with a clear goal but without a clear plan or unchanging, optimised technology let alone accurate cost estimates. But people arguing that because RE doesn’t achieve zero emissions from day one – and depend on ongoing economy wide change over decades to approach zero – is unreasonable and inconsistent.
But whilst such companies can and do make such choices, it makes the role of carbon pricing, that would apply to the companies that do not care as much as to those making RE technology, more clear to me.
But we struggle get that kind of clear policy and especially in any uncompromised form that can persist long enough to influence commercial investment decisions (not retail purchasing decisions if carbon pricing is well designed). Climate science denial is not just tolerated within mainstream politics but has, for major political groupings, become a matter of faith and an expression of party loyalty.
End the Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking by people who actually sit in the Offices that make the essential policy decisions (and have abundant resources to analyse and develop policy) and we may start to get consistent policy that is effective; them passing the issue to Environmentalists in a “you care so much, you fix it” style (then complaining about the result – actually complaining even before the result)is not only petty political gameplaying in the face of a problem of great seriousness, it is a profound abrogation of responsibility and trust. By those who, unlike green activists, actually hold that responsibility and trust, that is dangerously irresponsible and potentially culpable. It is a “green” issue because mainstream politics (that seeks to avoid climate responsibility) wants it to be seen as NOT mainstream as because political environmentalists have made the issue their own.
I think the mainstream politics of a couple of decades ago choosing appeasing community concerns with pointless “green” projects, like solar and wind – almost certainly with a “give ’em enough rope” expectation of failure as well as intention of reinforcing the association of the climate issue with extremist fringe politics – may have been the best mistake they have ever made. And the most significant short term impact of that may not be the emissions reduced directly (yet) but shifting public perceptions from belief that commitment serious emissions reductions will be economy destroying (Doubt, Deny, Delay politic’s most potent meme) to accepting that significant non destructive change is within our reach. Ironically, nuclear could ulitmately end up benefiting from the shifting perceptions although it still relies on RE hitting walls and failing to thrive.
I also refer you to my earlier comment linking to the World Nuclear Association website regarding lifetime carbon dioxide emissions for each of the most important types of electrical generators.
The following is an excellent article relating to the dubious ideas posted that renewable energy is not the solution to climate change, and instead its all about population control and much lower energy use
Um, no. That is NOT what it’s about. It’s about being a “fake fire brigade” which claims to be the “solution” to fossil fuel consumption while actually requiring it in perpetuity, thus protecting the FF interests from emission-free nuclear competition. Changing the subject to population control or whatever is straight deceit.
“We need to build things: wind turbines, solar panels, public transportation, denser cities, fairer societies. We don’t need purification. We don’t need absolution. We need to get to work.”
We need NONE of those things. We need nuclear energy, both to power our societies and to power the CO2 removal/ocean de-acidification process. Go watch Planet of the Humans to see just how this fraud was perpetrated.
Of course lower energy use and lower population growth help the climate problem
That population growth occurs almost exclusively in the turd world. Just stop sending food there and sink the boats coming out; the problem will fix itself. So-called humans who are objectively no smarter than yeast deserve nothing from us.
The emissions of manufacturing and responsibility for them are not unique to renewable technology manufacturers although I think using coal power to make solar and wind and batteries and EV’s could be the best possible use we can put it to.
The point you’re missing is that your solar and wind and batteries CANNOT be manufactured with solar and wind and batteries; they require coal, oil or NG forever because they cannot supply the energy to make more of themselves. It’s too unreliable; you can’t keep the essential systems powered. Your NG “bridge fuel” is a bridge to nowhere.
That’s the essential fraud of the “green” fronts for FF producers. You cannot get off FFs that way. Your “renewable” energy cannot supply the systems to make enough batteries, wind turbines and PV panels to keep everything going. They don’t supply enough net energy (if they supply any) to replace and expand themselves and run society too.
End the Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking by people who actually sit in the Offices that make the essential policy decisions (and have abundant resources to analyse and develop policy) and we may start to get consistent policy that is effective; them passing the issue to Environmentalists in a “you care so much, you fix it” style (then complaining about the result – actually complaining even before the result)is not only petty political gameplaying in the face of a problem of great seriousness, it is a profound abrogation of responsibility and trust.
Taking that at face value, why is not opposition to nuclear energy also “a profound abrogation of responsibility and trust”? Why should we not view the writing of “renewable portfolio standards” which exclude carbon-free nuclear energy as a crime against humanity and the planet as a whole?
NigelJ: Could possibly be 3 metres per century, but remember that the Eurasian ice sheets were much larger 14,000 years ago than today, so 3 metres per century would be unlikely in todays world. Could still easily be over 1 metre.
Killian: nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.
AB: There you go, Nigel. Being reasonable and accommodating again. ::eyeroll::
________
zeb: Stable geniuses shouldn’t have to misquote things:
AB: Cut-and-paste is 100% accurate (I even include markers, such as the “:” above, to indicate where further could-be-relevant goop might be).
In contrast, your insults are not even slightly accurate. You got any data that indicates that I have Trumpian tendencies? And what crawled up your butt a couple months ago? Please evict it cuz it’s eating your brain.
I’m sorry that everybody thinks your precious baby, the z-grid, is hideously fugly. But that’s what you get for forgetting to use protection when effing a Stable Genius. (not me, I don’t own a ten- hmm, that phrase is veering down a path I didn’t intend)
Heck, I even deliberately gave you a chance to promote your concept by beefing it up yourself. Yep, instead of speaking about obvious solutions, such as your Wind Farm having contracts with Jim’s Solar Resort, Hank’s Hydro, Gerta’s Gas Turbines, and EP’s Nuclear Palace so that your customers don’t have to bother with multiple contracts in order to get 24/7 service, I set your shot up, expecting you to spike the ball. Imagine my surprise when you fully embraced my set-up, the dumbest possible interpretation of the z-grid’s operation imaginable.
Damn, that neuronavirus might have been up there too long already.
The decrease in carbon dioxide emissions was driven by the continuing downward trend in emissions from power stations, with a 13.2 per cent decrease between 2018 and 2019. This is mainly as a result of changes in the fuel mix used for electricity generation, away from coal and towards renewables.
Now the biggest item on import balance sheet is wind turbines, which fill the country’s ports on their way to installation… Biomass and solar power have also been ramped up. Adding to existing hydropower, this means that renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel) compared with a global average share of 12%.
Et cetera.
Germany’s per-kWh emissions are 10x those of neighboring France, and Germany’s insistence on denuclearization has made it miss its 2020 emissions targets by a wide margin.
Here E-P reverts to form by asserting something that is true, but irrelevant. At question is not whether France has cleaner electricity than Germany–it does, and has for decades, because the former has predominantly used nuclear power since the 1980s while the latter has historically been a heavy user of coal. At question is whether renewables can help.
(Parenthetically, I find it quite telling that E-P seems here to be conflating the questions of the effectiveness of wind and PV with the effectiveness of nuclear power, as if they were competing in some sort of zero-sum game. They are not. But given his evident emotional attachment to nuclear, it certainly explains his equally evident dogmatism.)
I would certainly agree that the decision to denuclearize at the same time as decarbonizing greatly complicated–nay, hindered–the latter. But that says nothing about whether renewables ‘work’ in this respect. It just says that they were, and are, working against a very large handicap–one that I personally wish the Germans had not imposed on themselves.
However, it’s worth noting:
–The 2020 emissions targets are still technically within reach, technically;
–If they are reached, it will be in considerable part due to good luck;
–Nevertheless Germany has been notching consistent decreases in emissions during the allegedly ‘failing’ period of increased wind and solar;
–They figure to continue doing so, and consider themselves well on track to meet the 2030 emissions targets.
So, as usual, E-P has suppressed a whole lot of nuance and context in the service of his dogma.
As Dr. Hansen noted in 2014, the success stories use nuclear and hydro.
Yes, they often do–in combination with wind and solar.
Like I’ve been saying.
Al Bundysays
NigelJ: ok maybe I was a bit too kind, but you gotta appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement goes a long way with most people.
AB: Just to clarify, when I diss you for your style of interaction I’m actually paying you a supreme compliment. Keep it up. This site needs your breath of fresh air. Otherwise we’ll all choke on the toxic smog the rest of us spew.
NigelJ: How many people would be prepared to take positions of responsibility and risk if they did not get some extra reward? Probably not many, so
AB: it is fortunate that we need very few. The US federal government, for example, needs two in the executive and 535 in the legislature. I’m thinking 537 talented non-greedy souls exist in the USA.
NigelJ: A very high carbon tax and dividend would work quicker, at least initially, but just ain’t gonna happen.
AB: True. My workaround is a small carbon tax that goes exponential (or even linearly upwards) so that folks know that in 10 years the tax will be extremely high. Kind of like the mumbo-jumbo words politicians spout about how their proposal will save $X ten years from now, but with teeth. This works because the Big Deal is not consumption of fossil fuels but the creation of new stuff (cars, houses, etc) that consumes fossil fuel. Delayed carbon taxes take direct aim at fossil-hungry durable goods. And yes, even that ain’t gonna happen unless Bernie gets elected.
________
MrKIA: – I use that Buffalo Bore ammo – how about you?
AB: A brain. Still eating paint chips off old windowsills, bullethead?
nigeljsays
AB @288, I was trying to point out to Killian he might not have considered the difference in ice sheet size, but without making it a ‘gotcha’ thing, and by giving him an easy and productive way out, but he still didn’t take it and instead he tries to deflect attention like Trump does, call me names, and defend the indefensible thinking nobody notices. So tedious.
Same as you were trying to do with Zeb on his z grid thing. These guys just don’t get it. Pride or lack of neurons. Maybe both. I’m past caring.
nigeljsays
AB @290,
“it is fortunate that we need very few. The US federal government, for example, needs two in the executive and 535 in the legislature. I’m thinking 537 talented non-greedy souls exist in the USA.”
And then there are captains of industry, heads of government organisations, etcetera. I doubt enough talented non greedy people exist. People will compromise for example politicians generally earn less than they could make in the private sector, but lets be honest most humans only compromise so far.
the fact remains that in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions, even with less than perfectly decarbonized grids charging them.
Since there’s some dispute over this, it’s time to… DO. THE. MATH.
World Nuclear gives a range of 894 (Finland) to 980 (Sweden) gCO2/kWh for coal; let’s call it 940. A Tesla Model S uses on the order of 0.38 kWh per mile. Assuming 7% losses in the grid, that’s 384 gCO2/mile for the coal-powered Tesla. At 8.89 kgCO2/gallon gasoline, the coal-powered Tesla emits as much CO2 as an ICEV achieving 23 MPG (not including upstream emissions in production, refining and delivery).
If the Tesla is powered by gas-fired open-cycle turbines emitting 550 gCO2/kWh, the direct emissions (not including methane leakage) make the Tesla equivalent to an ICEV achieving 39.6 MPG. Adding methane leakage makes the Tesla considerably worse; perhaps worse than a 20 MPG ICEV.
If the Tesla is powered by the worst-performing estimates for Finnish nuclear power (26 gCO2/kWh), it is equivalent to an ICEV achieving 318 MPG.
nigeljsays
Engineer Poet @284, yes ok I agree to the extent that theres a place for nuclear power. I did say at the end that we needed a “new energy grid,” as opposed to a “renewable energy grid”, in other words there’s space for nuclear power. I should have been more specific.
What really interests me is this absurd notion promoted by M Moore that we dont need renewable energy because its somehow been captured by the capitalist elite. Make no mistake he probably thinks the same about Nuclear power. And both arguments sound a bit weak to me.
Its the mirror image of climate denialists rubbishing renewable energy because they don’t like the left leaning green movement. Both Moore and the denialists are overly politicising the issue. Yes we need healthy and strong scepticism of all elites, but to let this lead to rejection of a new energy grid is patently absurd.
Plus as KM points out Moores alternative of lower population and lower energy consumption doesn’t work. Its just unrealistic to expect people to reduce their energy consumption by vast amounts so we need some form of new electrical grid as well.
Im not going to take your bait over Africa, other than to say a giant helicopter drop of free contraceptives would help us all.
And someone has to run the grid so we are stuck with an elite of some form. Zebra wants to get rid of the elite and comes up with a contrived looking grid to do this. AB expects people to run things but work for peanuts. Again its a bit unrealistic although I think there’s a sensible middle ground. Killian wants to get rid of the elite by going back to hunter gatherer egalitarian social structures. Nice in theory, but not without implementation problems and other consequences…. And even indigenous tribes still have leaders.
So I repeat what I said, the only real answer to the problems of greedy self serving elites is for society to put the brakes on them a bit more one way or the other. There is no viable alternative.
And of course, they’re sqealing like stuck pigs. FTA:
Unfortunately, and somewhat strangely, the filmmakers chose to focus much of their attention erroneously critiquing a leading climate solution—renewable energy.
This “solution” has not stopped the out-of-control spewing of CO2 into the atmosphere. Despite record levels of “renewables”, the emissions continue to accelerate.
Alvarez accuses Gibbs and Moore of misunderstanding the grid, and then comes up with this whopper of a false analogy:
Along these lines, the documentary attacks Apple, the Tesla Gigafactory and others for claiming they run on renewable energy. However, the film again misunderstands how the power system works. The electricity grid can be thought of like an ATM. When a corporate buyer of wind energy says it’s buying enough wind to power a data center for example, that doesn’t necessarily mean the electricity generated by a wind farm feeds directly into the data center.
Say you deposit $20 in the ATM near your office. A short time later, you withdraw it from the ATM near your house. You now have a different bill than the one you deposited, but that’s irrelevant; you still have $20.
And that analogy is a lie about how the grid works. When you “deposit” electricity into it, it has to be “withdrawn” within a very brief time, a small fraction of a second on average. The main equivalent of “cash on hand” is the mechanical inertia of the large alternators and synchronous motors attached at that moment, and this inertia can only store a small amount of energy. This is sufficient to buffer the megawatt-scale ebbs and surges in demand which occur on a scale of seconds on a grid of many GW, but it’s nowhere near enough to handle matters across the time of a drive home, let alone the equivalent of saving for a vacation. A more exact analogy is printing and using tickets: you print a ticket and give it to someone else, who uses and cancels it immediately. Later and elsewhere, someone else prints a ticket for you, and you use and cancel it immediately. It’s only in transit for a fraction of a second. Worse, if there’s more than a brief, small imbalance between printers and cancellers, the whole system fails.
This is the bookkeeping fraud behind the “100% renewable” claims. Apple is not taking most of the “renewable tickets” (power) when and where they are printed. Someone else is taking them, and the ticket printer then sells Apple a piece of paper (Renewable Energy Credit) that says “I been a gud boy”. Apple then shows off its collection of “gud boy” paper, while it actually uses power from whatever is supplying its local grid at the moment. This is a fraud, and Alvarez knows it’s a lie.
But Alvarez has to lie, because if he told the truth about how finely-balanced the grid has to be it would expose not only the REC scam but also the net-metering scam. If this were widely known, it would take down the whole “renewable power” industry.
nigeljsays
Mr KIA @278, don’t breathe a sigh of relief. I’m fairly sure jgnfld probably meant you and just got the number wrong.
A great deal of that is due to the narrow focus on wind and PV, which can only generate electricity. Electric generation may be the single largest source of emissions, but it doesn’t even make a majority; even a fully-decarbonized grid leaves the job well under half done. There is a glaring lack of attention to heat/DHW, to transport, to industry, to agriculture and forestry.
you may be surprised to hear that wind energy isn’t the most widely used renewable energy source in Denmark. First place actually belongs to bioenergy….
They count this as “carbon neutral”, which is a lie.
Uruguay
Try parsing your own quoted text.
Now the biggest item on import balance sheet is wind turbines
IMPORT balance sheet; they do not manufacture them.
Biomass and solar power have also been ramped up. Adding to existing hydropower, this means that renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel)
Per the EIA, Uruguay produces neither oil nor natural gas. Primary energy consumption is 63.91 million Btu per person, or about 2135 W/capita. The USA is about 10 kW/capita.
The EIA data browser is buggy AF on my browser, liking to set text to unreadable colors after initially flashing them as B on W. It also displays data in quadrillion BTU, with no link to conversion factors (if any). But Uruguay’s 0.118 quads of nuclear/RE in 2017 over a population of 3,461,000 comes to just 1140 W/capita. Given the lack of references it’s not clear if this is actual energy consumed or equivalent primary energy required to produce at some assumed heat rate. I’m going to assume actual energy consumed.
It’s pretty obvious that Uruguay has almost no industrial energy consumption. Petroleum consumption of 0.099 quad is just 956 W/capita compared to 3823 W/capita for the USA, and no coal. It’s a country which produces very little and is not making the industrial products it consumes. It is not a model for a sustainable society.
Germany’s per-kWh emissions are 10x those of neighboring France, and Germany’s insistence on denuclearization has made it miss its 2020 emissions targets by a wide margin.
Here E-P reverts to form by asserting something that is true, but irrelevant.
Here KM reverts to form and ignores the blatantly obvious and conclusive facts before him. Germany HAD targets for CO2 emissions. Germany adopted policies which resulted in those targets being missed by a wide margin. Those policies are FAILURES. Yet KM won’t admit that.
At question is whether renewables can help.
That was not the policy. The policy was to rely ONLY on “renewables”, eliminating nuclear. The results of that policy are in: it is a failure. Renewables might “help”, if they are placed in a HELPING role. In a primary role they are blatantly unfit to power an emissions-free industrial civilization. If their output was devoted to powering some kind of energy-storage systems with large physical buffers, they might be fine. In their designated roles as mainstays of the electric grid, they are a disaster.
What really interests me is this absurd notion promoted by M Moore that we dont need renewable energy because its somehow been captured by the capitalist elite.
That’s not the message I got. What it said to me is that “renewables” are UNABLE to live up to the promises made for them. They cannot be clean and they cannot sit lightly upon the earth. It does not matter who brought this message forth or what motivated them, it only matters if it is true. I believe it is.
Make no mistake he probably thinks the same about Nuclear power.
Oh, I’m sure they HATE nuclear energy. Misanthropists will do that. But that doesn’t mean their main conclusion is wrong.
Its the mirror image of climate denialists rubbishing renewable energy because they don’t like the left leaning green movement.
FFS, man. I rubbish “renewable energy” BECAUSE I take climate change seriously, and their schemes cannot fix it. Germany is de-nuclearizing while burning lignite. What more needs to be said?
someone has to run the grid so we are stuck with an elite of some form.
Whether they are an “elite” or not depends on whether they identify with you or someone else. Choose carefully… and if you don’t have enough competent people who identify with you, woe be unto you. (Look up “smart fraction theory” and despair.)
the only real answer to the problems of greedy self serving elites is for society to put the brakes on them a bit more one way or the other. There is no viable alternative.
Stakes, nooses and machetes work. I’d like to see the Sacklers and Pritzkers on them sooner rather than later. This year is good.
Killiansays
Re #281 Al Bundy said you take what MOST of us have been saying for decades and trumpet it back to us as your singular and exclusive insight
Bull. Not one of you has ever said anything like that that I recall. It is a point I have made for a number of years, and well before you showed up a mere two years ago.
A search found zero instances of you using the term hysteresis out of an entire page of links from the site search engine.
So, no, you haven’t been talking about it. You haven’t talked about framing the conversation around climate as risk, you’ve made no useful observation and made no meaningful predictions.
As if any of the non-denialist regs here haven’t said precisely what your above quote says.
No, none have.
Join the team as an equal.
We are not. You need to learn, you choose not to out of sheer suicidal spite.
Like the USA you ain’t #1 and the rest of us are tired of your crowing about your amazing superiority and our total worthlessness.
And you’re petty and foolish enough to keep pretending that’s what’s happening so you can dismiss what you are told.
You came here long after the Peanut Gallery had gone into mass group hysteria around 2013 and started trying to shut me down. So, maybe you are just ignorant, but my “style” here is the direct result of 5+ years of abuse on this site. Abuse because I have been correct from the time I got here to now. Yeah, you’re all geniuses. And now nearly two years of turning this forum into a nuclear power website as the world burns. Sheer, unmitigated genius! Good lord….
So, you wanna claim all you geniuses have said things I have, claim my insights and analyses are yours? LOL… go ahead. At least then you’d be talking sense when you parroted my output.
E-P 284: That population growth occurs almost exclusively in the turd world. Just stop sending food there and sink the boats coming out; the problem will fix itself. So-called humans who are objectively no smarter than yeast deserve nothing from us.
zebra @228, you are a hell of a lot smarter than our denialist friends, but you need to listen to criticism and act on it and not talk down to people. The reason KM flounces is probably because he cant figure out you are saying, and neither can I at times, and neither can quite few others, because you dont write clearly and are far too cryptic. It leads to talking at cross purposes. Simply copying and pasting some stuff from SA doesn’t change that.
And you keep changing your definition of what a z grid is. It started as a house with a few solar panels, and then mutated into a wind farm. This adds to the talking at crossed purposes. If you want to have a free thinking discussion on grids then you have to do it openly and admit you are exploring options that might be wrong. You are trying to be a teacher while exploring ideas and you cant be both at the exact same time.
And when you talk about grid reliability, it is never clear if you are talking about your own house, your z grid, or the wider grid. So people end up talking at cross purposes with you.
The scientific American block and paste on smart meters is fine. I doubt that anyone disputes that. But it doesn’t back up your claims about not needing ancillary services, and doesn’t have anything about switching peoples appliances off as a method of resolving load matching problems and other grid fluctuations. So if you are using it to defend your ideas, it isnt working. And those particular ideas don’t make much sense.
Ray Ladbury @227, very much my own view, except to say I m a bit more relaxed about nuclear power than you.
Mike Moore is good value, but seems to have dropped the ball on renewables. Its because Micheal Moore hates capitalism and elites, but the trouble is its hard to run a modern economy without an elite of some sort. The job is for the public to figure out the right limits to put around what they can get away with. And to recognise how tragedy of the commons issues are more prevalent than they think.
There’s a great quotation “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” . Traced back to Voltaire.
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Al Bundy @229, yes a carbon tax and dividend would not be so inflationary, but it would be slow, again suggesting we need additional mechanisms at both a government and individual level.
————————
Killian @236
“Apparently the Eurasian put an AVERAGE of 4cm/year into world oceans. 4×80= 320 = 3.2 meters. In 80 years…..Hmmm… so when I’ve said 3 meters is possible this century many times over the last ten years and caught flak for it…? Sorry, 3 meters is not an outlier.’
Could possibly be 3 metres per century, but remember that the Eurasian ice sheets were much larger 14,000 years ago than today, so 3 metres per century would be unlikely in todays world. Could still easily be over 1 metre.
236 – Killian
“How about we discuss something germane for once, eh?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0567-4
Apparently the Eurasian put an AVERAGE of 4cm/year into world oceans. 4×80= 320 = 3.2 meters. In 80 years.”
That article would be more germane to the UV thread, but this one will work too. Here’s an article not behind a pay wall:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/21/world/science-health-world/eurasian-ice-sheet-collapse-14000-years-ago-raised-seas-8-meters-study-says/#.XqN_SpXn99A
Says temps over Greenland went up 14 deg C about 14,000 years before SUVs, when CO2 was only 240 ppm. How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming? At the very least, it is hard evidence that AGW MAY be a false theory. No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and there is evidence that supports AGW, and evidence that does not support it.
#253 You are a skeptic if and only if skeptic is another word for denier.
Kevin McKinney writes @240:
Wind and PV are observably failing, and failing badly. Germany’s per-kWh emissions are 10x those of neighboring France, and Germany’s insistence on denuclearization has made it miss its 2020 emissions targets by a wide margin. As Dr. Hansen noted in 2014, the success stories use nuclear and hydro.
Germany’s “reductions” are largely fraudulent. Most of Germany’s “renewable” energy comes from “biomass”, aka clearcut forests. Due to the low heat content of green wood, it emits more CO2 per kWh than the same energy from coal. It will take decades to get it out of the atmosphere again, and the lost biodiversity can never be recovered.
That’s exactly the approach of all the “green” countries, and that’s why they’re failing to de-fossilize. The only way to get this job done is to (a) go after EVERYTHING in parallel (no sense changing process A by itself when processes B, C and D have to be integrated with it to achieve defossilization), (b) use synergies which present themselves (e.g. emissions-free waste heat from electric generation should be used for space heating, displacing mostly natural gas), (c) use biomass from crop wastes, forestry wastes and coppiced fast-growing trees (NOT old-growth) to supply fixed carbon to support synthesis of fuels for those things we can’t electrify, and (d) devote as much power as we can afford to energy-efficient methods of carbon sequestration and ocean deacidification. We can’t wait to finish one to get started on others; this is all of a piece, and has to achieve probably negative 50 gigatons CO2 per year.
So you anti-nukes, ask yourself this: how much of this can you do with “renewables” (don’t forget land-use change in your calculations), and how much easier would it be with a carbon-free fuel which costs 23 cents per million BTU?
#249, AB–
Yeah, but the fact remains that in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions, even with less than perfectly decarbonized grids charging them. There are multiple lifecycle studies on that. So “Planet of the Humans” apparently remains guilty of at least that cherry-pick.
#251, nigel–
The reason KM ‘flounced’ was to conserve his time, which had already been abundantly wasted by z. At some point you have to prioritize.
#253, KIA–
No, dude, “AGW” never asserted that there was only one cause for climate change.
More fundamentally, CO2 and temperature are well-correlated during the deglaciation. See, for instance, Shakun et al 2012:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10915
EP:The hypocrisy of the “environmentalist” left is so blatant,
AB: bull. The issue is that the left is populated primarily by somewhat above average folks (the right is populated primarily by somewhat below average folks). How on earth could someone who ain’t either miss pretty much everything relevant except pure math?
Rhetorical. The answer is obvious. Long ago you chose to ignore everything relevant to humans as humans so that you could concentrate on stuff that ignores the complexity that humans bring to the table.
Gives you room to explore factoids, but you are WAY wrong in not acknowledging that your self-imposed limitations limit your answers.
For a factual study, by ExternE, of life cycle carbon dioxide emissions for each electricity generator type, read
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/co2-implications-of-electricity-generation.aspx
From prior comments here this so-called documentary is one-sided and unrealistic.
NigelJ: zebra @228, you are a hell of a lot smarter than our denialist friends, but
AB: I don’t see it. You’re allowing your kindness to override any reasonable analysis. Zebra seems to be exactly as intelligent as the average denialist spokesperson. Zebra is definitely a sub-genius.
NigelJ: Micheal Moore hates capitalism and elites, but the trouble is its hard to run a modern economy without an elite of some sort.
AB: As if that’s a problem. Gandhi and MLK gave obvious answers. As I’ve said here before:
Leaders who believe that they should live like their typical followers are the leaders we should follow.
NigelJ: yes a carbon tax and dividend would not be so inflationary, but it would be slow,
Aren’t you assuming magnitude? A carbon tax and dividend of $100,000,000 per gram of CO2 would?
jgnfld @241 — I don’t consider the current comment @200 to be beyond the pale. I went back to check.
MrKIA: No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and
AB: No, you are a liar who lies to himself. Full stop. Please give us a Single Example where you didn’t lie (to yourself) in order to come up with a conclusion.
And remember, I’m way more intelligent than you and I’m loaded for bear.
E-P 222: I’ve argued nuclear power to my local chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. I was rejected and shut out.
BPL: I can’t imagine why.
KIA 253: Says temps over Greenland went up 14 deg C about 14,000 years before SUVs, when CO2 was only 240 ppm. How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming?
BPL: Asked and answered. You already KNOW why this is wrong, but you keep repeating it anyway. Troll.
Mr. Know It All wrote @253:
If you knew anything at all about feedback loops, you’d know that a forcing in the feedbacks is equivalent to a forcing anywhere else. Milankovich forcings are amplified by CO2 (and H2O and other) feedbacks. Adding CO2 is amplified even w/o Milankovich effects.
Mr. KIA: “How can that be? Isn’t that the stake in the heart to any theory that man is causing global warming?”
No, you fricking moron, it does not. Local changes in temperature are not germane to the current situation where the entire fricking planet is warming. No responsible scientist ever suggested that CO2 is the only driver of climate.
Look, why not at least learn enough of the theory so that you can discuss your doubts intelligently and not look like a total imbecile…Oh…wait. You read Breitbart. Never mind.
nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.
Re #249 Al Bundy/BPL said BPL: Moore’s film is already being criticized for being biased, incomplete, and full of cherry-picking and special pleading.
My, what a surprise that truth to power gets shivved…
For instance, its conclusion that electric cars didn’t help the environment was based on one location that got 95% of its electricity from coal.
When one wants to make a point, one wants to make it emphatically. Did the film say that is the only example and there are no better ones? No. So why lie? Because people have agendas.
Fact is, EV’s IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM **HELP** the environment. They are a BARELY less bad. In a world that is out of time, that’s absolutely stupid as a solution.
Ten years now I’ve been preaching risk analysis and you geniuses still can’t be bothered.
AB: Nope. Their conclusion was based both on the fact that EVs inherit the grid’s fossil components (as you mention) and also how much fossil fuel goes into biofuel, wind, and solar facilities as an inherent component of said facilities’ construction and operation. Propagate them all you want; the fossil components’ percentage remains.
My opinion is that the cutting edge of such facilities are significantly less fossil dependent, so for me the film fell short. It needed a “tomorrow’s tech” segment. That would modify their tune for sure.
It should include magical thinking when its entire premise, a correct premise, is that current technology is a climate solution mirage?
WTF? He wasn’t making a milquetoast, Bidenesque movie on renewables.
Re #253 Mr. Know It All said No, I’m not a denier – I’m a skeptic and there is evidence that supports AGW, and evidence that does not support it.
You’re goddamned lying criminal.
#EcoNuremberg
Re #227 Ray Ladbury said I probably won’t be seeing Moore’s new movie.
Yet, you have no trouble trashing it amid a pile of assumptions and heresay.
Just… f@#$in’ genius, man!
he’s not particularly insightful or deep.
How the hell would you know? What insight on climate have you ever positied? None.
He also suffers from a malady that seems to be epidemic on the political left–rejection of the better because it isn’t the best.
No, you simply do not understand the climate system, the energy system, resource limits, and, particularly, the risk assessment.
Never have. Your middle way is suicidal, but you have absolutely no clue that’s the case.
Re #246 Al Bundy said AB: You forgot to include the surface area of the ice involved. Was it larger than the current ice sheets?
I forgot? Hmmm… if you can point to any time I ever didn’t have acomprehensive understanding of issues, have at it. Cut and paste.
What’s at issue here is your knowledge. 1. You imply, but then appear to immediately ignore in your own question, that the ice sheets in question were/are different. is that not a time to engage averages and means?
Further, did I say that was a model for now? Why, no. Have I not, for a decade now, said we must focus on risk? Does that paper not help quantify, bound to some degree, the risk of SLR due to ice sheet melt? Why, yes, I think all of those are true.
But let’s add: Have I not also stated more often than should have ever been necessary, conditions now are such that there is virtually no hysteresis in the system? That we can, and must, expect changes to be faster than ever before given we debilitated every ecosystem concurrently while natural rapid changes in the past were more akin to dominoes falling? I do believe I have.
Given all of the above, should we not assess that the risk of melt being even faster now is high?
Re #247 Al Bundy said What might be the money quote from Killian’s link: Our reconstruction of the EIS deglaciation shows that the collapse of an ice sheet, comparable in size to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, can occur in as little as 300–500 yr.
Indeed, the money quote. But then you go and turn it into chump change. Interestingly, you don’t apologize here for the aspersion wherein you question what I do or don’t consider… yet, then quote the very source of my comment.
Some puppies can’t be trained.
I assume they took into account differences in location and submergence. 16 feet / 300 * 80 = 4.2 feet. Lets just double it for Greenland and EAIS and we/re getting close to 10 feet in 80 years.
Hmmm… you took me to task for the same calculation.
But which 80 years?
It doesn’t matter. You’re conflating, as is the constant error on these pages, the issues of the climate science – not this thread – and the risk – this thread. We literally have no period in history that is like this one, no matter how far back you go. There is no way to safely quantify what *will* happen. When you treat climate science like it is a statement of future fact, you are in grave error.
Just a few years ago, doubling times for any aspect of climate change were thought to be decades. Now we know that doubling times of as little as five years are happening in specific contexts… and spreading.
Last I recall, SLR and melt rates in specific cases have been found in that 5-year range. I posit that is propagating throughout the system. And even if not, our risk assessment must assume that if it is happening in multiple contexts, it’s going to continue to propagate, and become global, pervasive.
Policy and the science are *not* the same goddamned thing, AB.
Figure that shit out, already.
Even the most radical legitimate science, Hansen’s doubling rate hypothesis takes decades to get into fifth gear, so to speak. As much as we’d like to see the end of the show we’re all worm-food before the first intermission.
#244 Al Bundy,
Stable geniuses shouldn’t have to misquote things:
AB says: “No bilateral agreements between consumers and producers mentioned at all.”
Perhaps that’s because all agreements between consumers and producers are bilateral? I know my utility company and I have a bilateral agreement, but maybe you have some other arrangement?
And what the expert suggests, but you left out…”energy services as diverse as in telecommunications”… sounds an awful lot like what I suggested, where individuals decide what services they want to pay for. Doesn’t it?
Al Bundy @261 &262, ok maybe I was a bit too kind, but you gotta appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement goes a long way with most people.
I hear what you say about Ghandi and leaders ideally living like followers, and I used to think that myself, but you have to be practical. How many people would be prepared to take positions of responsibility and risk if they did not get some extra reward? Probably not many, so we are stuck with needing an elite that earn a bit more than average. And someone has to get the first new smartphones etc. That said, greed is not good.
There’s a sensible middle ground that works. Remember “the perfect is the enemy of the good” (Voltaire).
A very high carbon tax and dividend would work quicker, at least initially, but just ain’t gonna happen.
Killian @269
“nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.”
Nope. I made no mention there of the Antarctic and you haven’t refuted the point I made about Eurasia. The antarctic could cause multi metre sea level rise, but it would need sustained warming of several degrees as in the past paleo evidence, so it looks like something most likely to happen next century, like AB more or less suggested.
264 – David Benson
“jgnfld @241 — I don’t consider the current comment @200 to be beyond the pale. I went back to check.”
When I read your comment about why comment #200 was allowed, I figured it might be one of mine so I went back and looked. Big sigh of relief when it wasn’t. :)
264 – Al
“And remember, I’m way more intelligent than you and I’m loaded for bear.”
Me too – I use that Buffalo Bore ammo – how about you? Check the ballistics on that stuff!
258 – Kevin McKinney
“More fundamentally, CO2 and temperature are well-correlated during the deglaciation. See, for instance, Shakun et al 2012:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10915”
But, but, but the article said the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades” and the CO2 was only 240 ppm at the time. Seriously, isn’t this a little weird – it’s like what’s happening now, only with greater temp increases and lower CO2. How did it happen?
Here’s another one that says the same thing:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1903655/eurasian-ice-sheet-collapse-raised-seas-eight-metres-study
“Studies of ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet have “suggested that the atmosphere above Greenland warmed by up to 14C in a few decades at this time,” he told AFP.
“We think that this warming was the main driver of the ice sheet collapse.”
While Earth is heating everywhere, parts of the world such as the poles are warming far faster than others.
Atmospheric concentrations of planet-warming CO2 were around 240 parts per million at the time, compared with over 415 ppm currently.”
Killian,
I didn’t take you to task, I threw you a softball in my first post.
“Which 80 years” is precisely the question. You’re the one who pegged the 80 to start this very year. Now you’re saying 3 meters more than whatever it is in, say, 2137 by 2217? If so, then I agree with you. At some time in the future a three meter rise over 80 years is possible.
zebra,
The point is that the z-grid is certainly NOT a help with the implied issues brought up by your expert, that said issues are more easily handled by a middleman with serious agency. That’s what your link said (though actually they had no idea that a z-grid is a possible alternative).
Instead of appropriating what is already happening via the current paradigm how about telling us why ONLY the z-grid can do these things, why the insane attempt to do them within the current paradigm is destined to fail?
And NO, it is extremely rare (non-existent?) for bilateral agreements to exist between supplier/consumer where neither runs the grid through which the electrons flow. There are toes-in-the-water, such as “I want my electricity to be supplied with wind” but I am certain that those agreements do NOT say “exclusively”. Those contracts are “accounting” with no direct link to reality. The z-grid appears to make said contracts ironclad and physical. Wind drops and customers are dropped on their head. Wind increases and wind energy suppliers are curtailed with immense losses. It sounds like the least efficient and most destructive way possible to organize a power delivery system (other than making each supplier/consumer pair run their own dedicated lines).
Your attempt to switch “bilateral between suppliers and consumers neither of which operate the grid” to “my bilateral agreement with the grid operator” is dishonest, ludicrous, and Trumpian. You think we’re all so dumb that we don’t remember what you said yesterday? We’ll all forget the entire friggin’ point of “z-grid”??? Yeah, that’s Trumpian in spades.
What does the z-grid do that an advanced but traditionally organized grid can’t do better?
The following is an excellent article relating to the dubious ideas posted that renewable energy is not the solution to climate change, and instead its all about population control and much lower energy use:
https://www.drillednews.com/post/i-am-a-mad-scientist
“But more than anything else, I’m angry at the implication that “we” are at fault. There is a bad but persistent narrative that climate change and pandemics are caused not by greenhouse gases and viruses, but by human nature. We are greedy for food, shelter, adventure, self-fulfillment, human contact and — says this narrative — we must be punished for our sins. But the current situation (covid 19) — death, poverty, loneliness — is an ineffective blueprint for climate solutions. We were never going to be able to sacrifice our way out of climate change, especially not on the backs of the people who have historically done most of the sacrificing. There is an entrenched system that extracts CO2 from the ground and pumps it into the atmosphere, one that results not from inherent human badness but from the choices of a few humans with power. Confronting that system will take work. We need to build things: wind turbines, solar panels, public transportation, denser cities, fairer societies. We don’t need purification. We don’t need absolution. We need to get to work.”
(Of course lower energy use and lower population growth help the climate problem, but its important to understand what is realistic policy and expectations, and that they cant do it alone without a new energy grid)
Killian: That we can, and must, expect changes to be faster than ever before given we debilitated every ecosystem concurrently while natural rapid changes in the past were more akin to dominoes falling? I do believe I have.
Given all of the above, should we not assess that the risk of melt being even faster now is high?
AB: Dude, the issue folks have with you is that you take what MOST of us have been saying for decades and trumpet it back to us as your singular and exclusive insight (while denigrating the rest of us). As if any of the non-denialist regs here haven’t said precisely what your above quote says. Join the team as an equal. Like the USA you ain’t #1 and the rest of us are tired of your crowing about your amazing superiority and our total worthlessness.
The emissions of manufacturing and responsibility for them are not unique to renewable technology manufacturers although I think using coal power to make solar and wind and batteries and EV’s could be the best possible use we can put it to. As the proportion of low emissions energy for manufacturing grows the embedded carbon costs diminish; requiring it to be zero emissions up front for RE manufacturing but other kinds of manufacturing, including high emissions ones remaining exempt (because they don’t care and choose to play no part in advancing a transition to zero emission) would be more hypocritical to my thinking than PV makers choosing their energy inputs on the basis of cost and awaiting the system wide changes to energy emissions intensity to flow through.
Then there are companies that (admirably imo) have preferencing the use of low emissions energy as business policy – Tesla products, for example, will have lower embedded emissions than other battery and PV and EV makers that have no such commitment. It is a transition – one with a clear goal but without a clear plan or unchanging, optimised technology let alone accurate cost estimates. But people arguing that because RE doesn’t achieve zero emissions from day one – and depend on ongoing economy wide change over decades to approach zero – is unreasonable and inconsistent.
But whilst such companies can and do make such choices, it makes the role of carbon pricing, that would apply to the companies that do not care as much as to those making RE technology, more clear to me.
But we struggle get that kind of clear policy and especially in any uncompromised form that can persist long enough to influence commercial investment decisions (not retail purchasing decisions if carbon pricing is well designed). Climate science denial is not just tolerated within mainstream politics but has, for major political groupings, become a matter of faith and an expression of party loyalty.
End the Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking by people who actually sit in the Offices that make the essential policy decisions (and have abundant resources to analyse and develop policy) and we may start to get consistent policy that is effective; them passing the issue to Environmentalists in a “you care so much, you fix it” style (then complaining about the result – actually complaining even before the result)is not only petty political gameplaying in the face of a problem of great seriousness, it is a profound abrogation of responsibility and trust. By those who, unlike green activists, actually hold that responsibility and trust, that is dangerously irresponsible and potentially culpable. It is a “green” issue because mainstream politics (that seeks to avoid climate responsibility) wants it to be seen as NOT mainstream as because political environmentalists have made the issue their own.
I think the mainstream politics of a couple of decades ago choosing appeasing community concerns with pointless “green” projects, like solar and wind – almost certainly with a “give ’em enough rope” expectation of failure as well as intention of reinforcing the association of the climate issue with extremist fringe politics – may have been the best mistake they have ever made. And the most significant short term impact of that may not be the emissions reduced directly (yet) but shifting public perceptions from belief that commitment serious emissions reductions will be economy destroying (Doubt, Deny, Delay politic’s most potent meme) to accepting that significant non destructive change is within our reach. Ironically, nuclear could ulitmately end up benefiting from the shifting perceptions although it still relies on RE hitting walls and failing to thrive.
Here’s what Michael Shellenberger writes about the documentary:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/04/21/new-michael-moore-backed-documentary-on-youtube-reveals-massive-ecological-impacts-of-renewables/#372c0f896c96
I also refer you to my earlier comment linking to the World Nuclear Association website regarding lifetime carbon dioxide emissions for each of the most important types of electrical generators.
nigelj gets misdirected @280:
Um, no. That is NOT what it’s about. It’s about being a “fake fire brigade” which claims to be the “solution” to fossil fuel consumption while actually requiring it in perpetuity, thus protecting the FF interests from emission-free nuclear competition. Changing the subject to population control or whatever is straight deceit.
We need NONE of those things. We need nuclear energy, both to power our societies and to power the CO2 removal/ocean de-acidification process. Go watch Planet of the Humans to see just how this fraud was perpetrated.
That population growth occurs almost exclusively in the turd world. Just stop sending food there and sink the boats coming out; the problem will fix itself. So-called humans who are objectively no smarter than yeast deserve nothing from us.
Ken Fabian loses sight of the target @282:
The point you’re missing is that your solar and wind and batteries CANNOT be manufactured with solar and wind and batteries; they require coal, oil or NG forever because they cannot supply the energy to make more of themselves. It’s too unreliable; you can’t keep the essential systems powered. Your NG “bridge fuel” is a bridge to nowhere.
That’s the essential fraud of the “green” fronts for FF producers. You cannot get off FFs that way. Your “renewable” energy cannot supply the systems to make enough batteries, wind turbines and PV panels to keep everything going. They don’t supply enough net energy (if they supply any) to replace and expand themselves and run society too.
Taking that at face value, why is not opposition to nuclear energy also “a profound abrogation of responsibility and trust”? Why should we not view the writing of “renewable portfolio standards” which exclude carbon-free nuclear energy as a crime against humanity and the planet as a whole?
K 270: EV’s IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM **HELP** the environment.
BPL: They emit less carbon dioxide. It’s all about reducing CO2 emissions.
https://www.aweablog.org/fact-check-new-michael-moore-backed-documentary-full-of-errors-fundamentally-misunderstands-electric-system/?fbclid=IwAR2tuM4LJruaLIC2_PHszUNnRJPDqHb86tGFFOHzbYWJb5fJaJb4ZPcsdnY
NigelJ: Could possibly be 3 metres per century, but remember that the Eurasian ice sheets were much larger 14,000 years ago than today, so 3 metres per century would be unlikely in todays world. Could still easily be over 1 metre.
Killian: nigel, that’s the stupidest damned comment you’ve made in quite a while. Read the damned thing because you just said there’s no ice on Greenland nor Antarctica and I think you should shut your damned fool mouth.
AB: There you go, Nigel. Being reasonable and accommodating again. ::eyeroll::
________
zeb: Stable geniuses shouldn’t have to misquote things:
AB: Cut-and-paste is 100% accurate (I even include markers, such as the “:” above, to indicate where further could-be-relevant goop might be).
In contrast, your insults are not even slightly accurate. You got any data that indicates that I have Trumpian tendencies? And what crawled up your butt a couple months ago? Please evict it cuz it’s eating your brain.
I’m sorry that everybody thinks your precious baby, the z-grid, is hideously fugly. But that’s what you get for forgetting to use protection when effing a Stable Genius. (not me, I don’t own a ten- hmm, that phrase is veering down a path I didn’t intend)
Heck, I even deliberately gave you a chance to promote your concept by beefing it up yourself. Yep, instead of speaking about obvious solutions, such as your Wind Farm having contracts with Jim’s Solar Resort, Hank’s Hydro, Gerta’s Gas Turbines, and EP’s Nuclear Palace so that your customers don’t have to bother with multiple contracts in order to get 24/7 service, I set your shot up, expecting you to spike the ball. Imagine my surprise when you fully embraced my set-up, the dumbest possible interpretation of the z-grid’s operation imaginable.
Damn, that neuronavirus might have been up there too long already.
E-P, #235–
A more than usually flatly wrong set of assertions from E-P. Let’s break it down.
Flatly false. They are decreasing emissions in numerous jurisdictions around the world.
Australia, in the face of hostile federal policy:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/24/australia-carbon-emissions-fall-industrial-pollution-surges-electricity-agriculture-lng
UK:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/875485/2019_UK_greenhouse_gas_emissions_provisional_figures_statistical_release.pdf
Denmark:
https://knoema.com/atlas/Denmark/CO2-emissions
Uruguay:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/uruguay-makes-dramatic-shift-to-nearly-95-clean-energy
Et cetera.
Here E-P reverts to form by asserting something that is true, but irrelevant. At question is not whether France has cleaner electricity than Germany–it does, and has for decades, because the former has predominantly used nuclear power since the 1980s while the latter has historically been a heavy user of coal. At question is whether renewables can help.
(Parenthetically, I find it quite telling that E-P seems here to be conflating the questions of the effectiveness of wind and PV with the effectiveness of nuclear power, as if they were competing in some sort of zero-sum game. They are not. But given his evident emotional attachment to nuclear, it certainly explains his equally evident dogmatism.)
I would certainly agree that the decision to denuclearize at the same time as decarbonizing greatly complicated–nay, hindered–the latter. But that says nothing about whether renewables ‘work’ in this respect. It just says that they were, and are, working against a very large handicap–one that I personally wish the Germans had not imposed on themselves.
However, it’s worth noting:
–The 2020 emissions targets are still technically within reach, technically;
–If they are reached, it will be in considerable part due to good luck;
–Nevertheless Germany has been notching consistent decreases in emissions during the allegedly ‘failing’ period of increased wind and solar;
–They figure to continue doing so, and consider themselves well on track to meet the 2030 emissions targets.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/steep-emissions-plunge-puts-germanys-original-2020-climte-target-back-cards
So, as usual, E-P has suppressed a whole lot of nuance and context in the service of his dogma.
Yes, they often do–in combination with wind and solar.
Like I’ve been saying.
NigelJ: ok maybe I was a bit too kind, but you gotta appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement goes a long way with most people.
AB: Just to clarify, when I diss you for your style of interaction I’m actually paying you a supreme compliment. Keep it up. This site needs your breath of fresh air. Otherwise we’ll all choke on the toxic smog the rest of us spew.
NigelJ: How many people would be prepared to take positions of responsibility and risk if they did not get some extra reward? Probably not many, so
AB: it is fortunate that we need very few. The US federal government, for example, needs two in the executive and 535 in the legislature. I’m thinking 537 talented non-greedy souls exist in the USA.
NigelJ: A very high carbon tax and dividend would work quicker, at least initially, but just ain’t gonna happen.
AB: True. My workaround is a small carbon tax that goes exponential (or even linearly upwards) so that folks know that in 10 years the tax will be extremely high. Kind of like the mumbo-jumbo words politicians spout about how their proposal will save $X ten years from now, but with teeth. This works because the Big Deal is not consumption of fossil fuels but the creation of new stuff (cars, houses, etc) that consumes fossil fuel. Delayed carbon taxes take direct aim at fossil-hungry durable goods. And yes, even that ain’t gonna happen unless Bernie gets elected.
________
MrKIA: – I use that Buffalo Bore ammo – how about you?
AB: A brain. Still eating paint chips off old windowsills, bullethead?
AB @288, I was trying to point out to Killian he might not have considered the difference in ice sheet size, but without making it a ‘gotcha’ thing, and by giving him an easy and productive way out, but he still didn’t take it and instead he tries to deflect attention like Trump does, call me names, and defend the indefensible thinking nobody notices. So tedious.
Same as you were trying to do with Zeb on his z grid thing. These guys just don’t get it. Pride or lack of neurons. Maybe both. I’m past caring.
AB @290,
“it is fortunate that we need very few. The US federal government, for example, needs two in the executive and 535 in the legislature. I’m thinking 537 talented non-greedy souls exist in the USA.”
And then there are captains of industry, heads of government organisations, etcetera. I doubt enough talented non greedy people exist. People will compromise for example politicians generally earn less than they could make in the private sector, but lets be honest most humans only compromise so far.
Kevin Donald McKinney writes @256:
Since there’s some dispute over this, it’s time to… DO. THE. MATH.
World Nuclear gives a range of 894 (Finland) to 980 (Sweden) gCO2/kWh for coal; let’s call it 940. A Tesla Model S uses on the order of 0.38 kWh per mile. Assuming 7% losses in the grid, that’s 384 gCO2/mile for the coal-powered Tesla. At 8.89 kgCO2/gallon gasoline, the coal-powered Tesla emits as much CO2 as an ICEV achieving 23 MPG (not including upstream emissions in production, refining and delivery).
If the Tesla is powered by gas-fired open-cycle turbines emitting 550 gCO2/kWh, the direct emissions (not including methane leakage) make the Tesla equivalent to an ICEV achieving 39.6 MPG. Adding methane leakage makes the Tesla considerably worse; perhaps worse than a 20 MPG ICEV.
If the Tesla is powered by the worst-performing estimates for Finnish nuclear power (26 gCO2/kWh), it is equivalent to an ICEV achieving 318 MPG.
Engineer Poet @284, yes ok I agree to the extent that theres a place for nuclear power. I did say at the end that we needed a “new energy grid,” as opposed to a “renewable energy grid”, in other words there’s space for nuclear power. I should have been more specific.
What really interests me is this absurd notion promoted by M Moore that we dont need renewable energy because its somehow been captured by the capitalist elite. Make no mistake he probably thinks the same about Nuclear power. And both arguments sound a bit weak to me.
Its the mirror image of climate denialists rubbishing renewable energy because they don’t like the left leaning green movement. Both Moore and the denialists are overly politicising the issue. Yes we need healthy and strong scepticism of all elites, but to let this lead to rejection of a new energy grid is patently absurd.
Plus as KM points out Moores alternative of lower population and lower energy consumption doesn’t work. Its just unrealistic to expect people to reduce their energy consumption by vast amounts so we need some form of new electrical grid as well.
Im not going to take your bait over Africa, other than to say a giant helicopter drop of free contraceptives would help us all.
And someone has to run the grid so we are stuck with an elite of some form. Zebra wants to get rid of the elite and comes up with a contrived looking grid to do this. AB expects people to run things but work for peanuts. Again its a bit unrealistic although I think there’s a sensible middle ground. Killian wants to get rid of the elite by going back to hunter gatherer egalitarian social structures. Nice in theory, but not without implementation problems and other consequences…. And even indigenous tribes still have leaders.
So I repeat what I said, the only real answer to the problems of greedy self serving elites is for society to put the brakes on them a bit more one way or the other. There is no viable alternative.
BPL writes @287:
And of course, they’re sqealing like stuck pigs. FTA:
This “solution” has not stopped the out-of-control spewing of CO2 into the atmosphere. Despite record levels of “renewables”, the emissions continue to accelerate.
Alvarez accuses Gibbs and Moore of misunderstanding the grid, and then comes up with this whopper of a false analogy:
And that analogy is a lie about how the grid works. When you “deposit” electricity into it, it has to be “withdrawn” within a very brief time, a small fraction of a second on average. The main equivalent of “cash on hand” is the mechanical inertia of the large alternators and synchronous motors attached at that moment, and this inertia can only store a small amount of energy. This is sufficient to buffer the megawatt-scale ebbs and surges in demand which occur on a scale of seconds on a grid of many GW, but it’s nowhere near enough to handle matters across the time of a drive home, let alone the equivalent of saving for a vacation. A more exact analogy is printing and using tickets: you print a ticket and give it to someone else, who uses and cancels it immediately. Later and elsewhere, someone else prints a ticket for you, and you use and cancel it immediately. It’s only in transit for a fraction of a second. Worse, if there’s more than a brief, small imbalance between printers and cancellers, the whole system fails.
This is the bookkeeping fraud behind the “100% renewable” claims. Apple is not taking most of the “renewable tickets” (power) when and where they are printed. Someone else is taking them, and the ticket printer then sells Apple a piece of paper (Renewable Energy Credit) that says “I been a gud boy”. Apple then shows off its collection of “gud boy” paper, while it actually uses power from whatever is supplying its local grid at the moment. This is a fraud, and Alvarez knows it’s a lie.
But Alvarez has to lie, because if he told the truth about how finely-balanced the grid has to be it would expose not only the REC scam but also the net-metering scam. If this were widely known, it would take down the whole “renewable power” industry.
Mr KIA @278, don’t breathe a sigh of relief. I’m fairly sure jgnfld probably meant you and just got the number wrong.
Kevin McKinney writes @289:
They are supposed to be saving the planet from rampant climate change. They are not even bending the emissions curve downward; the Keeling curve still shows accelerating emissions.
A great deal of that is due to the narrow focus on wind and PV, which can only generate electricity. Electric generation may be the single largest source of emissions, but it doesn’t even make a majority; even a fully-decarbonized grid leaves the job well under half done. There is a glaring lack of attention to heat/DHW, to transport, to industry, to agriculture and forestry.
Ah, yes, Denmark. Here’s what the Danes have to say about themselves:
They count this as “carbon neutral”, which is a lie.
Try parsing your own quoted text.
IMPORT balance sheet; they do not manufacture them.
You’re lying by omission.
Uruguay had a per-capita GDP of just $20916.20 in 2018, compared to $54541.70 in the USA the same year. It is a relatively (if not absolutely) poor country.
Per the EIA, Uruguay produces neither oil nor natural gas. Primary energy consumption is 63.91 million Btu per person, or about 2135 W/capita. The USA is about 10 kW/capita.
The EIA data browser is buggy AF on my browser, liking to set text to unreadable colors after initially flashing them as B on W. It also displays data in quadrillion BTU, with no link to conversion factors (if any). But Uruguay’s 0.118 quads of nuclear/RE in 2017 over a population of 3,461,000 comes to just 1140 W/capita. Given the lack of references it’s not clear if this is actual energy consumed or equivalent primary energy required to produce at some assumed heat rate. I’m going to assume actual energy consumed.
It’s pretty obvious that Uruguay has almost no industrial energy consumption. Petroleum consumption of 0.099 quad is just 956 W/capita compared to 3823 W/capita for the USA, and no coal. It’s a country which produces very little and is not making the industrial products it consumes. It is not a model for a sustainable society.
Here KM reverts to form and ignores the blatantly obvious and conclusive facts before him. Germany HAD targets for CO2 emissions. Germany adopted policies which resulted in those targets being missed by a wide margin. Those policies are FAILURES. Yet KM won’t admit that.
That was not the policy. The policy was to rely ONLY on “renewables”, eliminating nuclear. The results of that policy are in: it is a failure. Renewables might “help”, if they are placed in a HELPING role. In a primary role they are blatantly unfit to power an emissions-free industrial civilization. If their output was devoted to powering some kind of energy-storage systems with large physical buffers, they might be fine. In their designated roles as mainstays of the electric grid, they are a disaster.
nigelj writes @294:
That’s not the message I got. What it said to me is that “renewables” are UNABLE to live up to the promises made for them. They cannot be clean and they cannot sit lightly upon the earth. It does not matter who brought this message forth or what motivated them, it only matters if it is true. I believe it is.
Oh, I’m sure they HATE nuclear energy. Misanthropists will do that. But that doesn’t mean their main conclusion is wrong.
FFS, man. I rubbish “renewable energy” BECAUSE I take climate change seriously, and their schemes cannot fix it. Germany is de-nuclearizing while burning lignite. What more needs to be said?
Whether they are an “elite” or not depends on whether they identify with you or someone else. Choose carefully… and if you don’t have enough competent people who identify with you, woe be unto you. (Look up “smart fraction theory” and despair.)
Stakes, nooses and machetes work. I’d like to see the Sacklers and Pritzkers on them sooner rather than later. This year is good.
Re #281 Al Bundy said you take what MOST of us have been saying for decades and trumpet it back to us as your singular and exclusive insight
Bull. Not one of you has ever said anything like that that I recall. It is a point I have made for a number of years, and well before you showed up a mere two years ago.
A search found zero instances of you using the term hysteresis out of an entire page of links from the site search engine.
So, no, you haven’t been talking about it. You haven’t talked about framing the conversation around climate as risk, you’ve made no useful observation and made no meaningful predictions.
As if any of the non-denialist regs here haven’t said precisely what your above quote says.
No, none have.
Join the team as an equal.
We are not. You need to learn, you choose not to out of sheer suicidal spite.
Like the USA you ain’t #1 and the rest of us are tired of your crowing about your amazing superiority and our total worthlessness.
And you’re petty and foolish enough to keep pretending that’s what’s happening so you can dismiss what you are told.
You came here long after the Peanut Gallery had gone into mass group hysteria around 2013 and started trying to shut me down. So, maybe you are just ignorant, but my “style” here is the direct result of 5+ years of abuse on this site. Abuse because I have been correct from the time I got here to now. Yeah, you’re all geniuses. And now nearly two years of turning this forum into a nuclear power website as the world burns. Sheer, unmitigated genius! Good lord….
So, you wanna claim all you geniuses have said things I have, claim my insights and analyses are yours? LOL… go ahead. At least then you’d be talking sense when you parroted my output.
E-P 284: That population growth occurs almost exclusively in the turd world. Just stop sending food there and sink the boats coming out; the problem will fix itself. So-called humans who are objectively no smarter than yeast deserve nothing from us.
BPL: Does that include you?