By Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)
“Renewables”: some resources support a healthy grid, other challenge it
The first part of this series discussed some of the shortcomings of the renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy. Renewable generation resources are not necessarily sustainable or environmentally sound and non-renewable options can be clean and highly sustainable. For example, you will find many ardent environmentalist groups strongly opposed to “renewable” biomass generation. Similarly, more and more environmentalists are dropping their objections to “nonrenewable” nuclear power. For those who are concerned with the health of the planet as well as those who want to use the earth for human flourishing the renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy is losing relevance. Referring generally to “renewable” and “nonrenewable” resources or structuring policy to favor renewable does more harm than good as we face the complicate challenges ahead in maintain an adequate electric power supply in an environmentally responsible manner.
This posting examines the impacts of various generation alternatives s on the power system and the electric grid. Renewable resources do not have a general impact on the grid; impacts vary by resource type. The various renewable resources alternatives available today differ greatly in how they impact the grid and should not be clustered. Hydro resources with storage for example, work well to support the electric grid. In fact, it may be the best resource available considering the varied needs of the major grids. Demanding loads that stress the system are often best located near hydro resources. Other “renewable” resources to a greater or lesser extent may present challenges to the operation of the grid and grid reliability. In assessing the challenges of changing resources, reports that a particular grid is operating with 80% renewables may be impressive or virtually meaningless. Of course, a grid can function well depending on 80% hydro resources, or 78% hydro and 2% wind and solar. That’s very different and much less challenging than operating a grid with a penetration level of 40% wind and solar. Let’ look at some of the important characteristics of generation resources and how they differ among resource types.
Load Following/Scheduling/Dispatch/Resource Availability
Generation alternatives, especially some renewables, differ greatly in how and when they supply power. Starting out, the first question, “is the provided energy dependable?” The chart below is the daily output taken from A solar array It shows the energy produced on a typical sunny day with clouds rolling by. You can see the unpredictability introduced by random clouds superimposed upon the predictable daily curve made by the suns path. A bigger footprint or aggregating more farms would tend to smooth the output and increase predictability. But even when greatly smoothed, the energy output is following the sun not the system load.
Electric generation in the form of alternating power has to match load on an instantaneous basis. It’s important that the total generation supply be able to match the load as it ramps up or down. Resources that are dependable and can ramp up and ramp down to follow changes in load are very valuable allowing system operators to depend on them. Plants with the best dispatchability include hydro storage facilities, natural gas plants and batteries/storage. In the middle are plants which provide dependable baseload but are more limited in how well they follow load. These plants rang from coal, combined cycle gas plants, biomass and geothermal to nuclear. Wind and solar generally complicate load following as they are not dependable or able to follow load without attached storage. Run of river hydro is rare and to the extent it is unpredictable it can create difficulties. Speaking generally of the dispatchability of “renewable” resources makes little sense.
One manifestation of load following problems is known as the “duck curve”. In 2014 I warned of the emerging duck curve here and discussed in depth issues related to dispatchability for various generation resources. Since then, as expected, it has worsened considerably. The chart shows that as solar kicks in and fades out, the remaining resources have to ramp up and ramp down at a very steep rate that greatly challenges system operation.
While the daily impacts of solar resources ramping in and out present challenges, at least solar is somewhat predictable. Wind in some locations at sometimes is predictable to a degree but in other locations and at other times it can be highly variable. Sometimes wind and solar track load changes and sometimes they work against the variance in load.
This variability presents problems beyond load following. Generating resources that can’t be counted on need back up resources. If resources might become available, dependable generation must back up those resources. As noted above hydro and batteries can work well to balance energy and it can be easy to have them on standby for that purpose. Other resources however mut be committed and running on line at lower generation levels or depending on the timeframe, in standby mode. Also coal and gas generation have start up times which may delay their availability as well as minimum cool down periods during which they cannot be operated.
I am not trying to go into detail about the intricacies of scheduling and dispatch here, but rather trying to illustrate that generation availability can create challenges that are highly dependent upon the available resource mix and the specific characteristic of the individual resources. All individual renewable and non-renewable resources have their own unique characteristics. When we wonder as to how the grid might responds to renewable, we need to know which renewables are under consideration.
VRE and IRES: The Good and the Bad of these Terms
Some of you may want to remind me that some technical work does break down renewables into a separate Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) group or Intermittent Renewable Energy Source (IRES) group when discussing issues of reliability. Certainly, speaking specifically of the challenges of integrating large amounts of VRE or IRES into the grid is an improvement over discussing the challenges of generic unspecified renewable resources. Referring to VRES and IRES can be seen as somewhat a step in the right direction consistent with the recommendations here for clearer language, but we can do better.
The term renewable in both IRES and VRE is redundant. There are no significant nonrenewable generating options that are variable or intermittent in nature. (There are limited amounts of run of river hydro in some areas.) However, my major concern with this term is that it does not recognize the larger problem currently inherent with most intermittent renewable resources. In the series Academics and the Grid, I argued that it seems like there is a deliberate effort to hide the real challenges of a net zero transition by focusing almost exclusively on the problems associated with intermittency. These names seem to help promote the misconception that variability or intermittency stand as the major challenge. .
Imagine a factory with a problem that workers are showing up late and mostly all of them are intoxicated. Upper management instead of reacting to the very real concerns around inebriated employees, focuses instead on tardiness. They bring in experts to help ensure employees show up on time and provide innovative scheduling so that gaps can be covered with extended hours once the employees show up. To the extent that the measures address the problems of “tardy” employees and that they are able to cover the hours, the more problems associated with intoxication will show up. Maybe the business fears that if the intoxication problem becomes known they will have to slow down, make major changes, maybe lose some contracts. One can imagine that a business might short term want to hide the problem of “intoxication” so that it does not impact near term goals, but for long term success it must be confronted.
The big problem with wind and solar generating resources seems almost hidden in a similar manner. Many do not want to see the march towards “renewables” slowed. It’s obvious there are problems with increasing “ the level of available renewables, but if most of the talk about the smaller problems and the greater public ignores the larger problems, perhaps this is better for the current “momentum” of available renewable options. The focus on intermittency is distracting relevant actors from the bigger looming problems ahead. Far too many policy makers think that batteries or other solutions to the intermittency problem will enable us to march ahead towards net zero with resources that currently are not up to the task.
The Big Looming Problem Associated with Increasing Wind, Solar and Batteries
The major challenges associated with increased penetration of wind and solar generation are not caused by intermittency, but rather from how the energy is injected into the grid. The electric energy produced by wind and solar is transformed by a power converter using inverters in order to synchronize with the oscillating grid. In terms of reliability, resources that spin in synchronism with the grid as electric energy is produced are much better for the grid than those resources which use inverter-based technology to convert direct for grid injection. Resources that spin with the system are called synchronous resources, while inverter-based generation is called asynchronous generation. Note – Although wind turbines spin, they do so at variable speeds, requiring them to produce direct current power which must be then be converted to AC before entering the grid.
Synchronous resources readily provide inertia and essential reliability services which support the grid. In addition to dispatchability, hydro resources are valuable because they spin in synchronism with the grid. They are typically large and among spinning resources they have great grid supporting characteristics. Good spinning resources also include nuclear, coal, geothermal, natural gas, biomass, geothermal and molten salt thermal solar plants. In terms of supporting grid reliability, wind and solar resources which rely on asynchronous inverter-based technologies are at the other extreme.
It’s important that we distinguish between inverter-based technology and spinning machines because there is a strong potential to improve inverter-based technology. To some extent now, with additional features, power converters can roughly emulate some behaviors of rotating machines and help provide important reliability functions to the grid. There is hope that inverter-based generating resources will be better able to approximate spinning generation in future years. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recognizes that:
Managing the stability of electric power systems is based on decades of experience with large, synchronous generators. Today’s electric power systems have increasing numbers of nontraditional sources, such as wind and solar power, as well as energy storage devices, such as batteries. In addition to the variable nature of some renewable generation, many of these resources are connected to the power system through electronic power inverters.
The operation of future power systems must be based on the physical properties and control responses of traditional large, synchronous turbine generators as well as inverter-based resources. But there is no established body of experience for operating hybrid power systems with significant inverter-based resources at the scale of today’s large interconnections. To operate such systems, the assumptions that underlie generation design and control must be reexamined and modified—or even redefined—to take account of the challenges and opportunities presented by inverter-based generation.
Most inverter controllers today are grid-following and built on the assumption that system voltage and frequency are regulated by inertial sources. Such control approaches cannot guarantee system stability in low-inertia setting and are unlikely to sustain an inverter-dominated infrastructure. This limitation has inspired an investigation into grid-forming control methods for power electronic inverters, which provide functionalities that are traditionally provided by synchronous machinery.
Certainly, progress can be made. However, the Eastern Interconnection in the United States in the largest, most complicated machine in the history of the world. The challenge of adding significant amounts of asynchronous inverter-based generation increases the complexity tremendously. I have written extensively on the challenges of increasing the levels of penetration from asynchronous generation sources here, here, here, here and here. I believe that running any large complex grid without support from large rotation machines in very close to impossible within planning time frames. I see the challenge of allowing high penetration levels of asynchronous inverter-based resource as tougher than rocket science or brain surgery. Such an achievement would go beyond the moon landing, the sequencing of the human genome, the atomic bomb or a cure for the common cold.
Many entities, including the National Renewables Energy Laboratory, FERC, and NERC, are working hard to improve the functionality of asynchronous inverter based technology. They may well meet their goals to allow better grid support from these resources within the next five to ten years. Better support is possible. But that will still be a long way from eliminating the grids reliance on rotating machines.
Those who are more optimistic about the development of such technologies may end up being right. I hope so. It may be that we may have functional large grids driven by wind, solar and batteries within the lifetimes of some of our readers. But to get there, we have to recognize and acknowledge the difficulties inherent in such a transformation. Those who assume or pretend that there is no problem are either woefully ignorant or ignoring the looming problem in favor of short-term goals. Unfortunately, the challenges of asynchronous inverter based generation will not be adequately addressed of ever fixed if they are hidden.
Conclusion
Generically speaking about the impact of renewables on the grid, or what renewables can accomplish generates more confusion than clarity. Power system engineers know that it is easier to add wind, solar and batteries where there are existing supportive large hydro resources. It is harder to add wind, solar and batteries where the other resources are not that strong. Comparing the penetration levels of renewable generation for different areas with vastly differing amounts of hydro can be misleading, especially when hydro is included in the renewable category. Failing to distinguish between the capabilities of hydro, and wind and solar can lead to unrealistic selections for low hydro areas. Misconceptions on capabilities are especially a concern as existing hydro resources are increasingly challenged.
Large grids certainly can operate reliability without fossil fuel generation. Large grids can operate on 100% “renewable” energy. Reliability is not a function of the source of the energy input to the grid, but rather how that energy is injected into the grid. If solar powers spin a generator in synchronism with the grid (perhaps through the use of molten salt) that better supports reliability. If wind turbines could be made to spin only in synchronism with the grid, that would aid reliability. If the energy from hydro flows were captured with variable dc motors and injected to the grid with inverters, reliability concerns would increase. As the grid changes and we address reliability, is so much easier, direct and honest to speak of synchronous generation and inverter-based generation. The impact of “renewables” on reliability is too vague to be meaningful. Although this is the case, you frequently see references to renewable percentages which do not distinguish among the resources employed. These figures are quoted by those who want to push a perspective and they impact policy makers.
We do not face a challenge in integrating large amounts of renewable generating resources into the grid. We face operational challenges from intermittent resources. We face large reliability challenges from integrating large amounts of asynchronous inverter-based generation into the grid. The better the problem is understood, the better the problem can be addressed. We many disagree on the scope and magnitude of problems caused by intermittency as well as by asynchronous inverter-based generation. But be assured addressing the emerging problems will be go smoother, the more precisely the problems and successes are identified and defined.
“I believe that running any large complex grid without support from large rotation machines in very close to impossible within planning time frames. I see the challenge of allowing high penetration levels of asynchronous inverter-based resource as tougher than rocket science or brain surgery. Such an achievement would go beyond the moon landing, the sequencing of the human genome, the atomic bomb or a cure for the
common cold.”
Wishing does not make it so.
Please enlightening us. Seems to me the problem stems from the fundamental characteristics of asynchronous generators.
Did you also believe in Santa?
Well no, I don’t believe in Santa, nor do I believe that children will never again see snow.
It is because of your ignorance of environmental sciences and overwhelming political prejudice.
Some people believe in sky fairies and other inventions of the mind under emotional need.
There is a new inverter type which takes care of that issue.
There are grid forming inverters – a lot higher cost than the standard grid following ones, especially on the grid side. They work in the tests and some plant has been equipped with them, but none have shown they work under field conditions. Like many “solutions” they are likely to turn out to be mirages – needing a lot more work..
And despite the promoter’s promises, there still hasn’t been a real grid showing that it can run solely on the unreliables and batteries. Models count for nought in the real world.
Yeah, sometimes you have to pay more for a better solution.
That is the correct label for wind and solar: unreliables. Forget renewable.
Really? Our household and electric cars run on the California Sun.
Do you still have to pay for elect5riity and gasoline?
The new type inverter addresses the issue. Not the same at all as resolving the issue.
You failed to mention how much this miracle inverter costs, George.
Are you digging for reasons to diss renewables?
Do you still pay for electricity and gasoline?
Not me. Why do you still pay?
None of you seem to actually be in the power generation business. Yet you opine as if you invented it.
You say it is the most complicated thing on Earth, but do not understand it, so you think others do not understand it either.
I use an ICEV due to the freedom of movement it provides. Well worth the cost.
George J Kamburoff | February 17, 2024 at 11:07 am |
None of you seem to actually be in the power generation business. Yet you opine as if you invented it.
You say it is the most complicated thing on Earth, but do not understand it, so you think others do not understand it either.
George –
A) Two of the commentators here are very much involved in the power generation business. Those two have vastly more actual real time experience and knowledge of the subject than those “renewable experts” such as marc jacobson.
B) Those of us who are not involved in the power generation industry typically have sufficient mathematical, science and engineering background to understand the subject matter.
C) Likewise, we have sufficient mathematical, science and engineering background to recognize the errors, misrepresentations and outright distortions made by the “renewable experts”. Its a skill set that should be developed.
Its the outright distortions and misrepresentations that taint the credibility of the advocates.
Planning Engineer wrote:
We do not face a challenge in integrating large amounts of renewable generating resources into the grid. We face operational challenges from intermittent resources. We face large reliability challenges from integrating large amounts of asynchronous inverter-based generation into the grid.
You’re an engineer. It’s your job to figure it out. Get busy instead of telling people what can’t be done. If you don’t, you will be replaced by people who DO figure it out.
Spending trillions of dollars chasing the mirage of the “climate emergency” is profoundly technically, financially, and environmentally irrational, with virtually no benefit accrued to those alive now. In point of fact, the average citizen just becomes poorer while special interest groups and politicians become richer feeding of the wallets of the many.
I am an engineer and I just solved the problem.
Appell, you’ve just been replaced.
Oh no you didn’t Mike!
https://V2G.co.uk/2012/07/renewable-energy-is-the-work-of-generations-of-engineers/
“In June 2004 the editor of an energy journal called to ask me to comment on a just-announced plan to build the world’s largest photovoltaic electric generating plant. Where would it be, I asked—Arizona? Spain? North Africa? No, it was to be spread among three locations in rural Bavaria, southeast of Nuremberg.
I said there must be some mistake. I grew up not far from that place, just across the border with the Czech Republic, and I will never forget those seemingly endless days of summer spent inside while it rained incessantly.”
Yet again DA, you have shown your lack of knowledge about anything with that fatuous comment. Plumbing new depths of ignorance.
How much are you prepared to pay to solve the problem? The economics are the major issue. That and the laws of physics drives the technology. It will be more expensive – can’t be cheaper as it would have already been done. So how much extra is the Western world prepared to pay for electricity that will be less reliable?
The recent power cuts in Victoria showed their much promoted battery banks provided very little power when it was really needed. So that isn’t the “now” solution.
CM: that is a general concept of people who are ‘tech impaired’ (to borrow a phrase). There is a general idea, in one case from Europe high up no less, that if you push engineers hard enough they have to deliver. Technical explanation serves for nothing; they do not understand and do not want to hear.
In some cases my answer was ‘God does not allow it’ . Let them ask why.
Chris Morris wrote:
How much are you prepared to pay to solve the problem?
What is the cost of 3 C of climate change.
Old engineers and scientists have often told us what is impossible. Young people do them anyway. So it will be here.
Best get better at cunning than Planning Engineer ,David-
It’s your job to explain to us what President Obama had in mind when he observed to John Podesta’s dismay that:
“The American people don’t cotton to being governed. “
Obama meant the difference between being governed and being led.
I get free electricity for our household and electric cars. Do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
Google decided it couldn’t be done over a decade ago.
Would you say that to an engineer who says perpetual motion machines are not possible? Medical researchers who have not stopped the common cold yet?
Expecting finite & non-renewable crude oil to last forever is a also a belief in perpetual motion.
I don’t believe I have ever commented on crude oil. But I will say here that no finite non renewable resource can be expected to last forever. That certainly would include crude oil.
Why else would we even be talking about renewable energy if not for the issues of non-renewable crude oil and other fossil fuels? I learned this as a kid in the 1970’s.
Are you saying the only concern with fossil fuel is that it will run out one day? You seem to be. There is a much bigger discussion going on. If there were enough fossil fuel to last a billion years we would still have a lot on the table.
Appell says:
You’re an engineer. It’s your job to figure it out. Get busy instead of telling people what can’t be done.
This is tantamount to an admission the Climate Doomer Green Scheme is a Unicorn Dream.
It is a `scheme`. That is the key point.
It’s your job, Dave, to understand what the problem is and isn’t. The problem is not that we must rely on renewables. That is just a wish by those who are too influenced by those pushing the renewable agenda for various reasons, including ignorance. You can’t just demand engineers to “figure it out”. Engineers are constrained by reality, the laws of nature, the current state of technology, reliability and economics of proposed solutions. Too many people who know to little and know not where the hazards lie on the road are driving the renewables bus.
Nope. I have them and they work wonderfully.
Yeah, I am a retired power utility engineer, and most of these posts are just hoping their political prejudice s correct against renewables. It is not They power my house and electric cars.
George
If you are still connected to the grid, even though you may not be doing a net import, you are benefitting from it. If you don’t pay for your connection, you are freeloading with your costs being paid by other consumers. How much a unit do consumers in your area pay? And what is the difference between this cost and what the US average is? Why the difference?
That grid in you area relies on reliable synchronous generators, which wind and solar are not.
I pay for the use of the distribution system, meter charges and other charges. Why do you try to find something wrong with my system? It paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
George
I note that you didn’t all answer the questions. That is telling.
If you cannot see the economic issues behind what you have written, you are one of those who believe in magical free lunches and fairy dust powering everything.
George K – Is california where the state pays you back the full retail price of electricity you put back into the grid.
If so, then they are paying you 3x-4x for the cost of generation with and charge back for the cost of reliability , transmission etc.
“If you don’t, you will be replaced by people who DO figure it out.”
People have been saying that for years as you well know, Mr Appell, and for years no answers have been forthcoming. The brigades who pushed solar and wind have been found out just as you are every time you post your incredulous nonsense.
I am replying to Joethenothing.
I get no money for the power I put into the grid.
Chris, my neighbors have PV systems, too.
None of your other questions make sense in this regard.
We get kWh for kWh – no money. It’s a good deal for the power company – they don’t have to do maintenance on my “generator”.
Chris,
I live in Colorado and pay my BEV road use via registration excise tax. Due to low mileage, I pay more than my share, but don’t complain. Compared to other issues, it is minor quibbling that is easily remedied.
I see BA that you are another who has no understanding of the complete grid system not the costs of the component parts. Single metering is a subsidy – maybe 70% of what the power value is.
What is your experience in the power business. Is like that of environmental science?
Yeah, and solve world hunger while you’re at it, dude! Get busy!!!
Engineering involves finding practical technical and economic solutions to problems. It also involves evaluating whether or not the problem is real or imaginary and whether or not resources should be spent chasing solutions. Further, professional ethics require clearly stating whether or not spending the public’s money on proposed solutions is warranted.
The money being spent on “climate change” has no bearing on actually changing the climate. The impact of the claimed villain, the trace gas CO2, remains speculation, at best. Attempting world-wide control of the trace gas is not possible, as simple mass balances readily show.
Logic and practicality conclude that spending trillions and trillions of dollars is not warranted. There is little or no likelihood of success. Massive damage to the environment is the inevitable result of the stupefyingly huge land and sea areas required to deploy excessive renewable resources.
As a professional energy engineer with over a half century of experience, I am clearly stating that: (1) there is no climate emergency, (2) the proposed solutions to the theorized problem are not financially viable, and (3) the the proposed solutions have no technical chance of working. Stop wasting money on excessive deployments of renewable energy.
Deploy energy resources based on insuring that citizens have access to reasonably affordable and reasonably clean energy.
Yes, there is a climate emergency. This ain’t your field, and your 20th century stuff is outdated. Did you look up Ocean Acidification and the slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation?
Mike, I was a senior engineer in technical services for PG&E and earned a Master of Science in Environmental Management.
Your assertions are not valid.
It works. Do you still pay for electricity and gasoline? Our PV system has powered our household and electric cars for eight years. It paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
” The impact of the claimed villain, the trace gas CO2, remains speculation, at best.”
Sorry, lost me there. If nothing else, the impact is evidenced by millions of measurements, with underlying physical causality explanation and experimental testing. And, because people that call it speculation cannot offer a viable alternate explanation for what the climate, gauged as GMST, has done over the last 50 years.
George
If its California, the taxes on petrol pay for a lot more than the cost of fuel. Some of it is going on upkeep of the roads you use as a freeloader. As the state is not getting that income from the taxes, it has to get it from other sources. So the poor are subsidising your lifestyle. Isn’t that why the middle class is leaving California?
Your potted history indicates you have no hands-on experience of actually working in a generation or transmission facility. We see a lot of people like you through work. One has had to learn to minimise the eyerolling when they make dumb statements.
Yeah, I do have experience solving a power problem at The Geysers geothermal powerplant.
Dangerous place.
But most of my work at PG&E was troubleshooting in customer facilities usually industrial.
How about you?
Kamburoff, careful with your claims, you are heavily technically and financially overmatched. My analysis is spot on.
George
So you have spent your short electricity industry career in distribution. Did you visit Geysers for a week to claim generation experience? Were you allowed out of the office? We are now running a Fuji machine from there which was never installed.
Unlike you, I have spent most of my 46 year career doing O&M on actual power stations, mainly geothermal. And they aren’t dangerous, apart from for people who don’t know what they are doing. But with that amount of concentrated energy around, containment is a real issue.
I was referring to SO2 and other nasties as I was snuggy in the coveralls with rubber booties so the arsenic and other stuff did not get to us.
Where did you work?
Sulphur Dioxide!! – only Californians are stupid enough to remove hydrogen sulphide from their NCGs by the Stretford process. The idiotic policies is one of the things that killed development there and why it has shifted to other States.
As we use about 15 tonne a week of oleum to acidify SWR, the other “nasties” you are scared of pale into relative insignificance. I am surprised you didn’t mention radon and mercury. They are there too. Thats what you get working around geologically active volcanics. You showed your ignorance of the process as well. The arsenic (and boron) is there in the water phase – from a near dry steam field like Geysers, their mass discharge doesn’t register in the risk matrices. So what if you can find them in trap discharges.
We have found Environmental Scientists are generally useless on power plants – almost as bad as academics. They have no understanding of how things actually work – they are unable to comprehend that it isn’t like the textbooks. They also have no idea of the concepts behind risk analysis like in the ISO31000 series. The type of work they could do is a lot more competently done by embedded Process Engineers and Chemists with contract specialists.
You went way off track to diss California. But are used to jealousy.
Thank you – as an old retired engineer I have been banging on about the risks of the reduction of system inertia due to the retirement of large thermal plants. The operation of the grid will become very fraught and may well fall over for system fault that may otherwise have been ridden through
Russ:
Great article but, sadly, marred by poor proof reading. You must have been in a bit of a rush.
Keep up the good work, your contributions much appreciated.
Cheers
Thanks for the explanation.
A typo in the cinclusiob , “We many disagre…” you mean “We MAY disagree … ?
In related news from here in the once United Kingdom:
https://V2G.co.uk/2024/02/octopus-energy-introduce-the-uks-first-vehicle-to-grid-tariff/
“Octopus Power Pack: the UK’s first Vehicle-to-Grid tariff
Get free EV charging with our groundbreaking vehicle-to-grid (V2G) tariff
Add Octopus Power Pack to your regular tariff. We’ll set up your V2G charger to automatically manage your charging and discharging in the greenest way possible, so you can fill up for free.”
Time to add the term “V2x” to serious discussions and policy directives?
Yeah, what a deal we have for you. One of the requirements is:
A schedule that fits: You’ll need to be able to plug in for roughly 12 hours a day every couple of days, and charge less than 333kWh per month (equivalent to 1,084 miles of driving). We’re not fussed if you occasionally miss these targets, but if it’s a regular occurrence, you’ll need to hop off Power Pack.
Id EEE O C!!!!
Vehicle to grid – is basically an admission that the vehicle batteries are needed to make the 100% renewable scheme work.
Plus, the extra charging and discharging is going to shorten the battery life considerably. Lifespan of auto battery only driving 1 hour a day lasts 20 years. Lifespan of auto battery only driving 1 hour a day plus 2-6 hours a day feeding the grid – now whats it battery life?
Since you asked Joe, here you go:
https://V2G.co.uk/2017/06/can-v2g-improve-ev-battery-life/
“According to a [2017] press release from Warwick University:
Researchers discover that by intelligently managing vehicle-to-grid technology, energy from idle vehicle batteries can be pumped back into the grid – and this would improve vehicle battery life by around 10%.”
Jim
You apparently didn’t read the full article. It also says “I cannot help but think that the opinion of many battery degradation sceptics won’t readily be swayed by “simulation results” based on a “degradation model”, “Have there been any real-life verification of this modeler’s study? Or is it jest yet another example of GIGO? As it is a seven year old desk exercise, why is there nothing more recent?
To get power back out of a car battery, you need a lot more complex charging system than those used now. It also needs very sophisticated electronic monitoring and control system right down on the distribution network. What is the capital cost of those? And as many places find out when trying to put solar back into the grid, all manner of unforeseen things occur. Like in SA where household electronics got fried from lack of voltage control.
Gee, our two electric cars have been running on our PV system for eight years, and our Tesla house batteries work really well, too.
What is your experience with electric cars and house batteries?
Recurrent gets battery information from many cars including my 2013 Model S. It shows the eleven year old battery is down from 265 miles to 250.
Jim – Take another look at that article – You should have noticed what it did not state.
I don’t need to take another look Joe, because I wrote it.
What did it not state in your opinion?
Jim Hunt | February 17, 2024 at 5:44 pm |
I don’t need to take another look Joe, because I wrote it.
What did it not state in your opinion?
Hunt – Its written like a press release. Far too much information is omitted to provide any useful analysis.
It’s wrong. The battery in my 2013 Performance Model S is still good after going for eleven years. Once again you are embarrassing yourself in public.
Just in case anybody here is interested in reading some “academic” input into the issues Russ raises, here is an open access paper from the once Great British Institution of Engineering and Technology – “Synthetic inertia versus fast frequency response: a definition”:
https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-rpg.2017.0370
“The frequency of a power system is a continuously changing quantity whose derivative indicates the balance between consumed and produced power. A momentary imbalance between these results in a change of system frequency where kinetic energy is stored or released in rotating masses in the system. When a disturbance in the form of disconnection of load or production occurs, the frequency response of the system depends on size of disturbance, inertia and response of controlled frequency responses. Inertia prevents system frequency from experiencing sudden changes which can in turn cause stability issues. Today the bulk of inertia in power systems is made up of rotating masses in synchronous generators. With more non-synchronous generation such as wind and solar power in the power system, inertia is reduced.”
Jim
If you (or others) go back into Climate etc archives, you will see there are articles which Planning Engineer and I wrote where the importance of inertia was discussed
Good evening Chris (UTC),
Did you and Russ discuss “synthetic inertia” in your articles?
Did you read the paper I linked to? If not, here’s another extract for you:
“Since non-synchronously connected production units, such as modern wind turbine generators, are connected via power converters, their rotational speed is isolated from the system frequency. They do not therefore deliver a natural inertial response and do not contribute to the inertia of the system. We refer to synthetic inertia as the contribution of additional electrical power from a source which does not inherently release energy as its terminal frequency varies, but which mimics the release of kinetic energy from a rotating mass.”
No Jim I don’t bother with theory papers – anything using models and the grid is invariably garbage – usually because their grid is so simplistic. I did however read all the AEMO papers on the trials with grid forming invertors. Why they still want synchronous condensers.
I agree with Chris that it’s a long road from models to demonstrations. Longer road from small controlled demos to larger. Farther still to grid wide integration. Have written on the topic with various names multiple times. Pseudo inertia, electronic emulation, synthetic inertia, grid forming response. Don’t know why the names change so much but suspect as the old names get muddied by lack of real progress a fancy new name adds some shine. Speaking of renewables, there is always some new fix just around the corner that overwhelmingly does not materialize. I have no doubt synthetic, pseudo, emulation can imitate some characteristics some what and that their ability will improve. I’ve read a lot that goes from discussing small successes to touting big hopes. You have to read between the lines. In one of my pieces on it I gave some advice and noted something like the following, similar is not the same, approximate doesn’t mean as good as, can provide some doesn’t mean enough or across enough conditions…..
Once again someone not in this business thinks he knows more than he does. This is not your field, and you keep on proving it.
George
“ Once again someone not in this business….”
What would that business be, George?
Just curious, have you ever considered defecting to the other side? That is, becoming a skeptic. I’m sure we could get you into the witness protection program and set up a security apparatus to protect your safety, once those hateful leftists learn of your defection. We could even arrange for deprogramming services to offset the years that you have obviously spent in a North Korean style reeducation camp that the CAGW fanatics run.
Given the volume of evidence that non CO2 factors are influencing our climate, I’m surprised a reasonable person like you has been so duped.
I was duped as well at one time. But that was in the 1980s. About 12 years ago I began to research the issue. I quickly became unduped. The unduping process has grown with each succeeding year. It’s so nice to be able to think on my own. Try it, George, you might like it.
Environmental consequences of energy use. In 1980 PG&E hired many of us industry professionals at high salaries to help customers save on their energy bills. I did complete analyses of campuses, trained energy workers, including electrical engineers.
Thar year I finished my MS coursework, and was starting on my thesis developing a real world ethanol manufacturing facility on a dairy and it ran on digested poop. At PG&E in Technical Services I pushed alternative energy.
I read upon that event. It was caused by poor load-shedding, and it does not mention batteries at all.
I was in the “business” of selecting and advancing workable, reliable, economic, publicly responsible generation additions. I served on national committees hoping to advance renewable generation resources and better integrate them with the grid. After federal requirements separating the generation and transmission sides of the business within public utilities I wound up on the transmission side. I don’t have a love affair with any particular resources or technologies. I just like things that work.
George – way back when I worked at LADWP we had a poop plant by the beach. It worked fine as far as a grid element. It did had a lot of maintenance problems as I recall. Tell me, is poop a renewable resource or not? It could be a great resource, but if so would it be sustainable. If not infinitely renewable and sustainable, should we still generate to responsible levels with it?
I remember the efficiency craze of the 80s. Utilities spent tons of money with little improvements. The players went away for a while then came back as demand side management experts where the process repeated somewhat. When I wrote this post I should have emphasized the efficiency movement as the precursor to the following phases. https://judithcurry.com/2023/04/17/renewable-experts-undeterred-and-unmoved-by-failed-ideas/
“Certainly, progress can be made. However, the Eastern Interconnection in the United States in the largest, most complicated machine in the history of the world.”
Unfortunately, many of those demanding renewable energy think in terms of a farmer’s windmill.
Hi Judith,
It seems as though a pertinent comment of mine has disappeared into your moderation queue.
Would you mind fishing it out at a convenient moment?
TIA
Thanks Judith
People are beginning to see the ESG problems with wind and solar.
Kathryn Porter, an energy consultant at Watt-Logic, contends the increase in mining needed to obtain critical minerals necessary for the energy transition “starts to actually look morally questionable” once the harms are factored in. Porter points to the issues around opening up new mines, including water supply, contaminants, wildlife impacts and indigenous rights.
She joins Merryn Somerset Webb on this week’s episode of Merryn Talks Money to discuss the matter and what she sees as a better approach to the green transition.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-16/podcast-why-nuclear-power-should-be-ramped-up
Please consider Earth as a planet, because Earth is a planet wich interacts (as all planets do), because Earth interacts with solar energy.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Planning Engineer,
Thank you again for another fine article.
Synthetic inertia in Australia. Comments?
https://www.pscconsulting.com/australia-leans-in-on-synthetic-inertia-for-grid-stability/
During the recent underfrequency incident in Victoria, the big batteries on the grid there which are supposed to have this technology and are paid for 1 second raise reserves didn’t appear to respond.
I ask about these for a couple of reasons. PE, whom I have followed for years, is highly skeptical, and I respect his judgement and experience.
At the same time, it is not clear to me why simulating spinning inertia with electronics and a battery is a hard problem.
And finally, I don’t know what to make of the claims of actual synthetic inertia installations.
And https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/12/19/synthetic-inertia-on-show-as-wallgrove-big-battery-reaches-full-capacity/
What the fanboy magazines don’t mention is that the Australian grid, like a number of other partial grids with high penetration of the unreliables, are busy installing synchronous condensers. Now why would they do that if grid forming inverters are the nirvana?
Big battery farms are an expensive solution to a problem that was already solve by natural gas plants. Back to the stone age.
What part of climate change do you not understand?
What part of too poor to heat your house or afford food do YOU NOT understand???
Jim2,
What are you going to do when there is no longer sufficient natural gas to “recharge” gas power plants? Not preparing for that eventuality is what will likely lead to “back to the stone age”.
BA Bushaw,
“What are you going to do when there is no longer sufficient natural gas to “recharge” gas power plants? Not preparing for that eventuality is what will likely lead to “back to the stone age”.
–
A very good point. What are we going to do?
There still be the solar panels, the wind turbines. And they will be supported by coal power plants. Also they will be supported by gydro. And the nuclear power plants. The oil power plants, not to forget.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
We can use nat gas while we have it and continue to develop alternatives. I’m not optimistic concerning batteries. I think nuclear will win the day. It’s gaining momentum. I respect the fact you have worked with it and understand the dangers of radioactivity. Like electricity, it must be respected. But that will be, I’m pretty sure, our only viable alternative.
Jim, we cannot afford nuclear power. In 1979 I was on a team which tested GE Mark I BWRs, and found them not desirable.
The failures at Fukushima proved the safety release valve systems we tested were ineffective.
George, was Fukushima really caused by the safety release valve systems?
No, but that system design failed to quench the steam of the reactor. The torus boiled.
The lesson is we cannot keep on fooling ourselves playing with nukes. They are losers financially, even with massive subsidies such as the Price-Anderson Act, and were born subsidized.
The French and Koreans seem to successfully build reactors which don’t need subsides. Wonder why that is?
Prove it.
You can’t.
George
I see you have descended to the David Appell school of posting. So much for thinking you were better than that.
France’s EDF posts historic loss, debt swells
The state-controlled utility was required to sell electricity under cost following soaring energy prices due to the war in Ukraine.
Le Monde with AFP Published on February 17, 2023, at 9:55 am (Paris), updated on February 17, 2023, at 2:28 pm
EDF reported one of the biggest losses in French corporate history on Friday, February 17, as fallout from the Ukraine war and idling nuclear reactors spelled financial disaster for the state-controlled utility.
EDF struggled with a drop in electricity output last year as it had to close several of France’s 56 nuclear reactors to fix corrosion problems while a heatwave led to a diminution of hydro-power production.
While 2022 revenue rose 70% to €143.5 billion, EDF reported a record loss of €17.9 billion which compared with a net profit of €5.1 billion in 2021. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices skyrocketing, the government required EDF to sell energy under cost to consumers to help them afford their bills.
George, ever heard of France?
The economics of nukes
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx
Every spinning generator has inertia. Not every grid thrown together with spinning generators will be robustly stable. Generation with Inertia is necessary but not sufficient. The characteristics and properties of the various generators must be well understood and well coordinated. See the quote from NREL in the article. Lot of experience with the old. Challenges get dramatically harder: So Step 1 do they provide inertia. Step 2 coordinating it with current system so it contributes to stability. Step 3 take away current system and real inertia support by primarily pseudo inertia. I hope for progress, but a little early to be optimistic about step 3.
There is no such thing as synthetic inertia. Inertia is a state of being…the condition of containing stored energy immediately available. What is normally called synthetic inertia is fast frequency response. Which is useful to allow longer term frequency response to respond but it is not inertia. For example, it cannot allow a system rendered unstable by a fault to ride out that fault.
It may be possible to store energy in electrical form to provide inertia, but I suspect it would be cheaper to provide inertia with syncronous condensers, which also provide reactive power control.
On the Australian grid, they have 1 second raise and 1 second lower in the frequency control Ancillary Services part of their market filling the niche you describe Doug. They were previously 6 second but with the reducing inertia as coal plants were shut down, this was too slow.
This was a market specifically designed for batteries to supply. Their control system models said it would work. However, analysis of the recent Victoria outage showed they apparently didn’t deliver, nor did they deliver energy. In fact, one battery kept changing in an underfrequency. Model failure 2317?
https://downloads.global-roam.com/WattClarity/2024-02-13-4secData-FuelTypes/2024-02-13-4secdata-Trend-BESS-discharge.png
https://downloads.global-roam.com/WattClarity/2024-02-13-ez2view-Bids-TopDown/2024-02-14-at-00-00-ez2view-VIC-Bids-BESS.png
Thanks Chris
That seems to highlight that “synthetic inertia” is not inertia.
You have that correct Doug.
As with near everything in the alternative energy business, the more something is promoted as the saviour, the less it actually delivers. Models are not reality, and reliability has to be proven by real-life operation.
Stuff that works doesn’t need promoting. It will get readily adopted by the industry because it is better/ cheaper/ more reliable.
Doug
Further to your query about synthetic inertia – what is really rapid response generation/ charging from battery banks – needing really sophisticated high voltage electronics.
As well as the failure of the batteries in the recent Victoria LOR3 incident, the grid operators in NSW have been looking at the potential lack of system security in their grid from the closure of their coal units. This is a consequence of their grid’s behaviour in light of them closing Liddell.
To this end, they have done some work on the issue and came up with the following:
“ An amount of synchronous generation is required to be in service to allow for the stable operation and protection of the New South Wales transmission network. Transgrid and AEMO have jointly determined and agreed that this can be achieved if the equivalent of six large synchronous generators are in service. If the equivalent of six of these generators are in service the network is considered to have enough synchronous generation to be in a satisfactory state. Allowing for a single credible contingency, if the equivalent of seven of these generators are in service, the network is considered to be in a secure state”.
“When the market provides insufficient synchronous generator for a secure network, AEMO may intervene in the market and direct generation to maintain a secure operating state.”
So they will dispatch off wind and/ or solar to keep thermal units on. This follows what SA was forced to do.
On the data they provide, even the biggest hydro units at Tumut 3 are only equivalent to 10% of one coal unit despite them being half the MW rating. The unacknowledged benefit of having high speed coal plant as the backbone of a grid.
Note how there is no acknowledgement or recognition of what battery banks could do. Despite all the fanboys claims, they are still very experimental and have failed on a real-life test after modelling was used as assurance that they would work. Funny that – most people would say that means modelling and the batteries themselves don’t work.
“We’ve spent years tracking the nexus between left-wing environmental groups and their billionaire funders, and this once again proves the connection between the financial, ideological, and political influences on the widespread legal attacks on the American energy industry,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute For Energy Research, said in an email. “It’s clear that anti-oil sentiment in this country is being driven by this network of billionaires, activists, and politicians who show little concern for how their political campaigns hurt everyday Americans.”
…
The RFF was in the news earlier this month when, on Feb. 8, The Wall Street Journal reported it and other left-wing billionaire interests – including Michael Bloomberg – were instrumental in pressuring the Biden White House to implement its January “pause” on the permitting of proposed new liquefied natural gas export facilities.
Citing sources “familiar with the effort,” the WSJ writers detail a billionaire-backed campaign that began four years ago to co-opt and organize local community activist groups to oppose new LNG export capacity even as U.S. LNG became such a crucial supply source for American allies in Europe in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The activists then worked to “buttonhole” administration officials at conferences and meetings around the world, pressuring them to freeze the process based on flimsy, hyperbolic climate alarm arguments similar to those behind the case against ExxonMobil.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/17/opinion-the-billionaire-class-is-fueling-the-war-against-abundant-american-energy-david-blackmon/
The Daily Caller was itself called out for disseminating inaccurate information, and being an origin of some.
Called out by Marxist Democrats, no doubt. Not a trustworthy source.
JTNCS,
Read the reference and provide a reference to refute it. Your unsupported personal opinion is worthless, particularly when there is plenty of evidence that says you don’t know anything about what you are saying. “Colorimetric determination of sea water pH,” should be an easy search, even for you.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 18, 2024 at 8:59 pm |
JTNCS,
Read the reference and provide a reference to refute it. Your unsupported personal opinion is worthless, particularly when there is plenty of evidence that says you don’t know anything about what you are saying. “Colorimetric determination of sea water pH,” should be an easy search, even for you.’
Ganon – Not surprising that you dont address the point I made.
Either you didnt understand the point, or you ignored the point. bottom line you are conflating two separate and distinctly different subjects to distort the analysis
JTHCS,
I didn’t know you made a point. If you are referring to your 0.3 pH unit accuracy, that is a falsehood, not a point, and I have already refuted it.
Those who are still in the nasty 20th century do not understand how and why we are in this fix. If you doubt it, google Ocean Acidification and the slowing of the AMOC.
The ocean will never become acidic, as it is chemically impossible considering the volume of the salty water.
It is getting less basic. That is called acidification.
George wrote of the ocean “It is getting less basic. That is called acidification.”
From a scientist who has personally performed thousands of measurements of the pH of natural waters, it is quite difficult to measure with an accuracy better than +/- 0.1 pH. Part of the difficulty, which is understudied and poorly understood, involves the common presence of solids, whose removal can change the measurement, particularly when electrodes are used. Read up on Debye-Huckel equations for a start.
So, while words can be used to claim that an alleged ocean water change of 0.1 pH represents acidification, experienced scientists regard that as a statement with status suited to the advertising industry word salad.
Re terminology, if there is indeed a term acidification for becoming less basic, is there a term for becoming more basic? I do not know of one. We speak of more alkaline or less alkaline, higher pH or lower pH. That suggests that acidification is an invention that suits an agenda, which many would agree. Frankly, we are sick and tired of the propaganda distortions of proper science by under-educated ideologues who hopefully, as they mature, will see reason. Geoff S
All that babble says nothing.
Look up Ocean Acidification and find it is a worrisome condition, already having negative effects on marine life.
Come back and tell us what you found.
Mike Keller | February 17, 2024 at 6:46 pm |
The ocean will never become acidic, as it is chemically impossible considering the volume of the salty water.
George J Kamburoff | February 17, 2024 at 8:24 pm |
It is getting less basic. That is called acidification.
Which statement is based on science and chemistry and which statement is based on distorting chemistry and science?
In science getting less basic is called acidification. Get used to it.
Don’t forget to open your garage door before warming up your toxic polluter.
George J Kamburoff | February 17, 2024 at 8:24 pm |
It is getting less basic. That is called acidification.
Distorting the term does not make a false statement true!
That shows me you did not look it up, and thought you understood it. You don’t.
Look it up.
Sherro001,
Try to keep up. Ocean pH is now measured colorimetrically – no electrodes and accuracy to 0.001 pH units:
https://www.ioccp.org/images/D4standards/Dickson-2007/sop06b.pdf (sec
And yes, the ocean is acidifying. I think you must be thinking of the measurement of Australian mud puddles with a hand-held selective electrode pH meter. That is not what is used for high precision measurements on an oceanographic research vessel.
BA:
Yes, the ocean is acidifying.
The ocean ph fell from 8.15 in 1950 to 8.05 in 2020
Even you know better than that.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 18, 2024 at 8:22 pm |
herro001,
“Try to keep up. Ocean pH is now measured colorimetrically – no electrodes and accuracy to 0.001 pH units:”
Those stats are as bad as the stats in the paleo reconstructions.
The reality is the closest the ph can be measured on a global scale is no better than 0.3ph
Deal with reality, not agenda driven bad stats
JTNCS,
Yes, it clear you are not a scientist, and it is also clear that you have no idea of the kind of measurements modern instrumentation can make. Trying to equate the accuracy of modern instruments to paleoclimate proxies is both false and stoopid.
Burl,
That sounds about right for ocean pH. Do you know what it means for formation and solubility of phytoplankton tests, or the effect on deep ocean calcium compensation level.
The effects are well known and can be reviewed here:
https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/182/the-acid-test/
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 18, 2024 at 8:22 pm wrote:
“Sherro001 (sic), Try to keep up. Ocean pH is now measured colorimetrically – no electrodes and accuracy to 0.001 pH units.”
My comment was not about instruments, but about the properties of the water being measured and some effects of suspended and dissolved solida. Few climate researchers even know the correct definition of pH.
You cannot even make a case for eliminating electrode work, for it provides the bulk of historic data, imperfectly, on which claims of change are made.
For ocean studies, the chemistry of natural waters prevents accuracy reaching anywhere near the benchtop ultimate accuracy of instrumentation. Perhaps +/- 0.3 units is a practical true accuracy (to 2 sigma if you wrongly use normal distribution concepts).
As I say, read up on Debye-Huckel equations. They are a token of those who know chemistry and those who do not.
Geoff S
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 18, 2024 at 9:16 pm |
JTNCS,
Yes, it clear you are not a scientist, and it is also clear that you have no idea of the kind of measurements modern instrumentation can make. Trying to equate the accuracy of modern instruments to paleoclimate proxies is both false and stoopid.
Ganon Again proves he is anti-science. Ganon takes one fact that is correct, the extrapolates the one correct fact to reach a multitude of erroneous conclusions. Ganon doesnt respond to my point. Hint – the accuracy of the instrument is not the issue.
JTNCS,
I didn’t know you made a point – I thought it was word salad. If you restate it clearly, instead of calling it “my point”, I’ll try to respond.
My point was that you are not a climate scientist, and you have shown that the things you say are not worth paying attention to unless you provide supporting, verifiable evidence.
To all quibbling about acidification. The opposite is called alkalization. Sheeesh.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 19, 2024 at 9:29 am |
JTNCS,
I didn’t know you made a point – I thought it was word salad. If you restate it clearly, instead of calling it “my point”, I’ll try to respond.
My point was that you are not a climate scientist, and you have shown that the things you say are not worth paying attention to unless you provide supporting, verifiable evidence.
Ganon – neither are you a climate scientist – and like many climate scientists , you reach erroneous conclusions based on your belief in your superior intellect.
You implied in your argument that the oceans are subject to acidification and the ocean ph can be measure to within 0.001 ph
My point , which flew right past the superior intellect, was that the global ocean ph cant be measured within 0.3ph. That is separate and distinct from the ability of the instrument to be able to measure within 0.001ph.
You have repeatedly , in your multitude of past comments, that you dont really understand basic mathematical concepts such as averages, medians, means, etc, nor do you understand statistical analysis.
Did you google Ocean Acidification and the slowing of the AMOC?
If you refuse you choose ignorance.
JTNCS,
“the global ocean ph can’t be measured within 0.3ph.”
Reference? The global ocean does not have a pH, it has an average pH and that is know to better than 0.02 pH.
Being able to measure with an accuracy of ~0.001 pH has nothing to do with the range of values, or their average. Thus “your point” is irrelevant to acidification (which refers to changes, not absolute values).
Instead of making up stuff, self education might be more appropriate:
https://www.nist.gov/how-do-you-measure-it/how-do-you-measure-acidity-ph-ocean
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165993612002427
No, I’m not a climate scientist, but at least I am physical scientist (chemistry and physics) that has a good understanding of climatology. Your unfounded attacks on my mathematical and scientific abilities are silly, and simply exhibit the insecurity in your lack of knowledge. So, what is your background that empowers you to make up stuff about things you don’t know much about?
George,
The only rational I can think of is, they are crossing their fingers and hoping it doesn’t get too bad within their lifetime.
I also find entertaining the dismissing reliable electric energy storage as “impossible” while dismissing the problems of nuclear, particularly waste management and processing, as “no big deal”.
I worked at the Hanford reservation for 35 years, some as a chemist in the “hot” labs. Be assured that responsible waste management for large scale nuclear usage is a big deal and would have large economic impacts that are largely ignored. We also have statistical evidence for frequency of major “off-normal” events. They are only safe until they aren’t.
Wow. Are they trying vitrification?
Also,they are not even good at storing contaminated clothing at WIPP.
Vitrification was in testing at the time I retired. Probably a good solution for long term storage, but expensive, and the preparation is still “dirty”. I think it is a handleable problem, but it has to be addressed and expenses acknowledged.
Of course vitrification is doable, and doable safely. But IMO, we should keep the waste accessible in case we find uses for it that can’t be done by other means.
Disposing of radioactive waste is held back by politics. It’s an engineering problem that is easier than high levels of wind and solar power.
How much do you want?
Jim2, get serious. If you do not understand the dialogue, just keep quiet and follow it.
Do you mean 136 Megawatt-hours?
Waste storage is harder than those of you far away from the business assume.
Look up WIPP.
Jim2,
“But IMO, we should keep the waste accessible in case we find uses for it that can’t be done by other means.”
OK, may we keep it in your back yard?
Hi BA,
Not a nuclear power advocate but… 102 people a day die in US using autos, over 2000 injured. With all the nuclear power plants… how many have died…would seem insignificant compared to vehicle traffic ?
Nasty stats I mention above… and YET there’s this TOO: A human only dies about every 30 million miles driven by vehicles (so I read and calculations with reasonable assumptions seem to bear it out…hence self driving cars have a high (?) threshold to exceed it seems). I love the idea of self driving vehicles if only to reduce human suffering but devil is in the implementation details of course.
Europe does have gas fields that could be accessed by fracking, but they ban fracking. Further, Germany shut down their nuclear plants. Sending them our natural gas strikes me as not particularly reasonable, as our prices inevitably go up and our resources are depleted.
The Europeans (excluding the French) got themselves into their current energy mess after having been repeatedly warned. The Europeans can solve their own dam mess, which includes Ukraine.
Eavesdropping, very VERY non technical person here.
George is clearly pleased he lives mostly free of charge off grid.
What if everyone in the US did (or attempted to do) as George.
Would George then have to pay more for his energy ?
What other “freebies” does George currently obtain…someone mentioned not paying tax for car gas ? I envie George. Also envie Ian Woofenden, author of Dummies Guide to Wind Power. Though not too much…he makes it clear its work living off grid (Puget Sound island)…you better know what you are doing.
As for the French…they went decades w/o any nuclear catastrophes (?). Did they ever come close ?
Acidification – when I eat too much crap. Eat more salads, kale, etc… deacidifies my system… isn’t that what nutritionists say or is that 20th century language out of date ?
Basic, alkaline used as synonyms. Don’t know what synonym if any exists for acidity.
I said I was non technical (compsci degrees,, some AI, but only most basic of physics, chem).
George – what are renewable energies biggest challenges, i.e., shortcomings ? You benefit from them, but still I ask.
Renewable critics – what are our energy solutions going forward… do renewables play a role at all ?
Cognitive sciences might have more bang for the buck than any of the physical sciences going forward.
Even if the asynchronous problem were solved, we would still be left with a larger grid. The expansion of power lines is not only aesthetically abominable, it creates inherent risks to drainage, damaging crops, increases the risk of wildfires, and demands untold quantities of copper to construct, which in itself will create serious damage to the planet. The “electric solution” simply isn’t.
Yeah, it is. Those of us formerly in the business know the systems are changing granularity to smaller, grid-embedded power resources and microgrids.
Of course it is, George. And we’ll all live in the woods and kill our own meat, grow our own vegetables too! Talk about environmental destruction!!
So George. I’m curious what sect it is to which you belong. It is the Solar Evangelical Sect of the Church of Climate Doomers?
George, I see among your many talents, you belong to the Kamala Harris school of buzzword salads.
If the US is going to microgrids and embedded generation, why are those same people wanting to build massive interstate transmission lines, expanding the grid? And it may come as a shock to you, but the US is not the world. With regards an expanded generation & grid integration, they are probably well behind many of the G20.
George J Kamburoff | February 17, 2024 at 4:58 pm | Reply
Yeah, it is. Those of us formerly in the business know the systems are changing granularity to smaller, grid-embedded power resources and microgrids.
George – you resume says that your were involved in the power system/grid at the user level, not the generation level.
There is no “level”.
You obviously do not understand Technical Services.
I went where I was needed.
Time to retire Climate Doomer Unicorn projects? (Yes)
Commuters who went through turnstiles at the Miromesnil station in central Paris powered mini turbines, converting kinetic energy into electricity. During the two-day pilot project, 27,000 people crossed six turnstiles — a tiny fraction of the more than 1.5 billion passengers who use the French capital’s metro system annually. The energy produced was minuscule, but if installed across the city’s metro network, these turbines could produce 136 megawatts a year, saving 30,000 tons of CO2, according to Iberdrola SA, the Spanish energy company in charge of the project.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-16/paris-climate-change-initiative-sees-metro-turnstiles-generate-electricity
Jim2,
Your humorous quote displays once more the fundamental problem about “renewables”, which is lack of knowledge and experience. Most of the comments made here by those defending renewables (in terminology and in real life) display ignorance and arrogance, a deadly combination.
For example, the safe management of radioactivity is solved adequately. If it were not, there would be death certificates, but there are none to very few each year, globally. It is possible for sad people in society to invent hobgoblins that scare people. We need to learn to recognise them and treat accordingly.
The turnstile generator story fails because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. The energy to turn the turnstiles comes with help from the food that the turners ate. If you want the turnstiles to contribute more energy, the people have to eat more. BTW, similar concepts apply to bicycle riders who claim false saintly properties of saving energy and to George K who wrote above about his pride in getting electricity free. George, were your solar panels and batteries free? Or was energy required to make and transport and finally dispose of them? Do you accept that people had to eat food to make the energy they used in your gear? George, your lack of education seems to extend to analytical economics.
Nowhere have I claimed that I am well educated or experienced. You can lecture me about people without sin throwing stones. I accept that. But, when an average intelligenced person can see simple faults in the comments of others, it is fun, even a duty, to call them out, to stop the flow of nonsense.
Russell and Chris here are doing that, based on direct experience and measurement. I for one thank them for their efforts, for they represent the types of people from whom we should learn. If we are smart enough to discern this and to discard the hobgoblins. Geoff S
sherro01 – They actually did a demo project!! It does look like a joke, but it isn’t. Further down, the article does say it’s too expensive to implement over the entire Metro. I surprised the Climate Doomers don’t want to pony up a few billion to implement it.
Considering, its not a bad idea. And put a series of turnstiles which obese and overweight people would have to go through (I read people are being weighed before boarding planes). One also saves time from the exercise bike.
On radioactivity I have serious concerns. Some two decades ago I read about a couple of mishaps (see one here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents)
The problem is the transfer of responsibility from the ‘trained’ to the ‘untrained follower’ who evidently do not understand the seriousness and dangers involved. Worse some take a cowboy attitude about some dangers (I know since if I had nine lives like a cat i’m down on the last, and radioactivity featured there, but not reactors; others were not so lucky; tech ignorance kills).
Over the years I learned that in most industry the knowledgeable drivers are very few, some have/rely on the one single person, the main ‘brain’ behind the enterprise (I was lucky -and honoured- to have met a few, and to whom I’m indebted). Micro-nuke proliferation has risks there. No magic bullet.
Sherro,
Disagree and agree:
1. Why do people need to eat more food ?
If bicyclists are already doing it, if …IF… the energy could be captured effectively… its no extra effort by the riders… they do it for fun. Why would they need to eat more ? Ditto turnstiles, why need to eat more.
2. Agree on the “were your solar panels and batteries free? Or was energy required to make and transport and finally dispose of them?”. This of course is an obvious issue with renewables that somehow inexplicably mainstream media conveniently overlooks.
I hate wise guys, but should I say its an “inconvenient truth”(hah, probably the 1000th person to state that in this context…and people think they are so original).
Randy, Renewable does not mean free equipment. You need to differentiate between capital, operational, and fuel costs. You might also want to consider the delayed costs of mitigation and/or adaption needed for pollution caused by the more expensive fuels.
Geoff, Were your coal, gas, and nuclear fired power plants, , and hydroelectric dams free? I think the main differentiator is the cost, cleanliness, and sustainability of the fuel used to power the various electricity generating machines over their life cycle.
136 megawatts a year is not an amount of energy. It should refer to megawatt hours per year. It shows a lack of understanding , just as a saying a car can drive 45 miles per hour on a tank of gas. In both cases the units don’t work with the accompanying statement.
A similar annoying thing – a “1GW battery.” Okay, that’s the power it delivers, but for how long? And “enough to power X homes” – again, how long (not to mention, how big are the homes).
Amazing that some people don’t know the difference between power and energy, yet think they know enough to write about it.
Hi,
Is this nitpicking or not… watts versus watt hour ? Often we shorten things with the unstated understood. That said, Ian Woofenden in his Dummies Guide to Wind Power (I dont know the guy !) actually makes a big deal of this…because … many people don’t realize a watt is rate of energy generation or consumption. A watt hour (or kilowatt hour, could even have “watt day” for that matter) is an amount of energy. I believe a watt is some large number of joules per second.
Many layman probably don’t know this but are … perhaps…none the worse for it. If they believe they used 400 kilowatts this month as opposed to 400 kilowatt hours, they can still recognize they are using more than the 300 kilowatts they used last month.
I won’t push this too far….
I need to correct myself a bit.
Watt is 1 joule per second (not multiple per second). Consumed or produced.
So watt hour is 60*60 = 3600 joules. The number of joules produced in an hour at 1 joule per second.
Kilowatt-hour is 1000 watt hour = 3.6 x 10⁶ joules.
A watt day would be 24 * 3,600 joules .
Randy,
That “some large number” is 1. 1 W⋅s = 1 J
It’s not nitpicking for anyone that wants to talk intelligently, and make meaningful calculations, regarding power and energy.
I would not fault a reader for failing to know the difference, but a person “explaining” should and it’s fair to discount their explanation if they don’t. How would you react if a car magazine writer told you a car could be driven for 300 mph (instead of miles) between charges . You rightfully might be skeptical of other specs and performance data they report. With batteries the data on output capability between max instantaneous output and energy output often can’t be untangled by a reader who understands the difference.
APE,
Yes, I am highly skeptical of a small minority that claims fossil fuels are not environmentally and climatically detrimental, and that non-renewable resource can sustainably meet energy needs.
I don’t know all the answers, but I know the above is delusional, and that believing it is detrimental.
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“Nuclear is dangerous” … has been running around the houses ever since disarmament became a mass body of complaint and got conflated with energy generation. The fact that nuclear energy is much safer to general life on this planet, in carefully controlled environments, than ever is a wind turbine – on land or off shore -where the consequential effects are felt throughout their life times. And when it comes to the day they stop working how much is the clean up bill going to be for all that waste over much less a period than the working life of nuclear? At least the nuclear designs for waste has been commendable with Finland leading the way on design and choice of site.
And those green [sic] PVs involve huge expenditures in fossil fuel use to produce (and therefore CO2 emissions) which rather blast into nothing any arguments about the absurdity of talking net zero fossil fuel at any time in the future until, perhaps, it is used up, if ever. Certainly the C02 is not going to do any harm to the planet and that is still a fact despite the apparent claims by alarmists on here who echo Gore at their peril.
The detail of all the flag waving and commentary on this site by alarmists is pure propaganda with perhaps an ounce of a half truth stuck in somewhere to make it seem ‘scientific’. Nuclear has a future – solar and wind have a very wretched present still to negotiate and under a lot of pressure and attention to detail which was missing when they were prematurely delivered on energy customers deserving of much better treatment than huge bills just to meet the subsidies involved. I cannot wait for the responsible idiots to be put on trial and made to pay all that wasted money back.
All that whining is old hat. I suggest you tell the power companies where they went wong. Be sure to include your name and address so you get full credit!
Low level sarcasm, Georgie boy, and well suited to your ability.
BTW, did you say that your dinky little EV can go 250 miles (about 400 km) between charges ? As pathetic as that is, is this metric for winter, on a constant 70 mph highway, with four adults plus luggage, in the rain at night ?
Just answer the question, Georgie. And don’t evade it by saying you don’t need to travel like that.
I see comments of pride having well functioning electrical vehicle charging and back-feeding the grid from home solar and back-pack battery on the house. That’s all fine. How about the plant that uses steel furnaces with melt-down electrodes? Or the electrically powered train that leaves the station? They bring the local grid to their knees by making surrounding voltage drop substantially? Rapid on-off switching loads, such as these, really tax asynchronous solar and wind power supply. Grid batteries cannot keep up.
Did you mean arc furnaces? Ever seen one in action? The noise of first contact and operation will feel like it goes into your bones.
The electrodes do not melt, but are consumed in the process.
Among electrical furnaces you have different types and uses. Those with graphite electrodes simply melt down scrap. Others are consumable, that is, they melt down through a slag bath to purify high alloy steel, like for ball bearings. Yes, I worked on those designs many moons ago.
Yes, when I was plant engineer for an iron foundry we used induction furnaces to replace our cupolas.
“Rapid on-off switching loads, such as these, really tax asynchronous solar and wind power supply. Grid batteries cannot keep up”??
You have it backwards. Only batteries can keep up as opposed to rotating equipment.
Tell me how much environmental science you have had, so we can discuss the science.
George, I am curious, what does environmental science have to do with this thread….?
Environmental science, it’s landfill remediation isn’t it?
It is to those ignorant of science.
Leftist Western academia’s vision of renewable energy makes as much sense as a return to the use of whale oil for lighting.
“The moralization approach undermines itself… poor country governments have a clear and over-riding moral duty to help their citizens achieve the quality of life and prosperity which the West takes for granted, and which is inevitably energy (i.e. carbon) intensive. And then there is the practical economics: the world still has lots of coal, a lot of it in poor countries like India, that can produce electricity very cheaply. Not even the strongest moral rhetoric can make renewables competitive without radical technological (i.e. price) breakthroughs. ~Thomas Wells
Wagathon,
“…And then there is the practical economics: the world still has lots of coal, a lot of it in poor countries like India, that can produce electricity very cheaply. ”
“And then there is the practical economics:”
Very well said!
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
It is too late now. We have gone too far and will see it in a few years for certain. Without an amenable climate, there is no business.
George J Kamburoff | February 19, 2024 at 1:10 pm |
I held seminars for utility and other electrical engineers nationwide.
I guess you were not one.
GK – I called you out on your fantasy claims/ belief in climate change causing mass migration and your fantasy belief to $6t fossil fuel subsidy,
My question was what seminars did you attend to belief in fantasy / pseudo science.
How silly. I told you to look up the Electric Power Research Institute, Power Quality and my name.
What have you done?
You will slink away or change the subject rather than answer that question.
Reply to George:
“Without an amenable climate, there is no business.”
I live in eastern WA, US. Overall I’d prefer it warmer here rather than colder. Just from a comfort standpoint (I do NOT like hot weather, but we have lots of quite chilly and cold weather).
That said, I think it is getting warmer here for whatever reasons. I note number of 90 degree days in the summer.
Used to be 20ish range. More recently (5 to 10 years) in the 25 to 50 range.
The whole Pac NW… California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia … is having late summer-falls of wildfires.
Too much smoke, sometimes toxic.
Heat ? Drought ? Forrest mismanagement ? Too many houses in rural areas ? Arson ? Some combination I suppose but it is DEFINITELY an issue.
George
I followed up on what you recommended and Googled “EPRI Power Quality Kamburoff”. It came up with 9 hits. The top one was your own website. The other 8 were EPRI sites with the text under it saying “missing Kambuoroff.” Got similar results using Bing. I went onto EPRI’s website and put in a search on your surname. No hits. Searched their journals without success. Whatever you did with that organisation does not seem to have left a mark. How unusual.
One has to say that on your own evidence, you are mixing an ounce of knowledge with a tonne of spin plus lots of Googling. It smacks of false and irrelevant credentialism. I see too much of it in academics and witchdoctor consultants who have no understanding of why things are the way they are – what engineers have done previously and why, based on past experiences.
The headpost is about the problems of integrating the intermittent unreliables into a grid. The only relevance of power quality to that is that inverter based supply causes major problems (and costs) to the rest of the grid. Issues like SSO and harmonics are already causing significant problems. And those are costs imposed on the grid, together with downstream consumers.
Or maybe it makes as much sense as switching from incandescent to LED lighting.
jim2,
I think 6 trillion is a little low – more like 7. Depends on how you view uncompensated damages. If you limit it to direct (undeniable) subsidies, it is more like 1.3 trillion.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2023/08/22/IMF-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Data-2023-Update-537281
Well BAB, that reference says 60% of the alledged subsidies are due to global warming (it has to be damages in order for a dollar figure to be assigned) and air pollution – 95% of which of all that occurs only in Unicorn Dreams. I can make anything as expensive as I want if I make up “damages”. But in this case, the damages don’t exist.
In the US, the actual subsidies are basically nonexistent. The “subsidies” in the US that Climate Doomers like to cite are simply put down to the normal tax treatment of a mining industry.
Jim2,
“Unicorn dreams” and “basically nothing” are not very convincing. If you read the comment – you will see that tangible and intangible subsidies are separated; If you think the numbers are wrong, complain to the source.
BTW – You’re welcome (for the references about NEEM temperature profiles).
Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true, BAB.
BAB- by some accounts we have already exceeded a 1.5 C increase in global temperature, and yet there are no DAMAGES clearly attributable to that.
Shut off Fox and go look at what is really happening. We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate. As food growing areas change, hundreds of millions will die from famine.
In the Middle East and India and Southeast Asia heat and humidity conditions are too severe for humans to go out in many places.
You must think I care about your unsupported and false personal opinions.
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/?Print=Yes
George J Kamburoff | February 18, 2024 at 7:35 pm |
We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate.
George – that is one of most inane statements ever. Absolutely zero evidence to support that claim. Though that is typical of those that are gullible.
Joe, sorry, but you have shown us you do not have the education
or experience for this thread.
Do not doubt me.
Look up the slowing of the AMOC.
I said DAMAGES. Pay close attention. DAMAGES.
Not effects, not anything but DAMAGES.
Jim2,
Yes, there are both monetary and physical damage(s). Your unsupported and uninformed person opinions are a hoot. Hope you feel good about yourself.
George
“Look up the slowing of the AMOC.”
Indeed, look it up. If you knew the actual research instead of just lifting of articles from Better Homes and Gardens, you would realize there is much more debate and uncertainties about the future of the AMOC. These studies highlight the uncertainties, the multi centennial variability and intrinsic modes of variability.
Just like everything else in climate science, there are huge question marks about the future.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.0193
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-022-06534-4
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379122004322
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.838310/full
I have been warning about this for a year. Yes, I understand how the cold freshwater from Greenland is upsetting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Did you know we depend on the overturning circulation to bring nutrients from the seafloor to the surface to feed the base of our food chain? When it slows down too much the Atlantic Ocean will be a stagnant Dead Pool.
Cerescokid,
I think you are being overly selective. Everything in the future has a question mark (ask Heisenberg), some large, some small. In science, it is quantifiable and called uncertainty.
George J Kamburoff | February 18, 2024 at 7:35 pm |
GK ‘ s comment “We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate.”
My response to GK – “George – that is one of most inane statements ever. Absolutely zero evidence to support that claim. Though that is typical of those that are gullible.”
GK’s response – George J Kamburoff | February 19, 2024 at 10:06 am |
“Joe, sorry, but you have shown us you do not have the education or experience for this thread.”
GK – quite frankly I dont have the education or experience for fantasy beliefs. Perhaps you could hold seminars are to believe in discredited delusions.
I held seminars for utility and other electrical engineers nationwide.
I guess you were not one.
ganon and George
The AMOC is just like all the other scare tactics. The multi meter SLR, increased hurricanes, increased droughts, all of it is just conjecture. You both want to ignore natural variability. The evidence is overwhelming that NV plays a significant part in today’s climate just as it has always.
Even without CO2, we have multiple factors at play that can account for what has happened the last 150 years.
Those are opinions, not facts.
This is from IPCC6 3.5.4.1
“ Thus, we have low confidence that anthropogenic forcing has had a significant influence on changes in AMOC strength during the 1860–2014 period.”
Translation for George and ganon. They have low confidence that the scenario you two are so confident about.
No decline
https://os.copernicus.org/articles/17/285/2021/
No evidence for declining trend
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246801331500008X
George wrote:
“We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate.”
I’m not knowledgeable enough as to worldwide migration.
No doubt people leaving California… wildfires undoubtedly part of the reason. And yet, TX has seen large inflows…but for economic reasons.
TX has had 2 very severe summers in the last 3 years even by their standards. Look at accuweather website, choose the year and summer month. They produce more renewable energy than any other state… well conservative or not they like to make money there. Will the last few summers become the new norm or not ?
I predict …with no data to back me up… that if the West continues with wildfires, drought…not worse, just the same level as now…yes there will be people moving east. I grew up in the Midwest, do NOT like humidity or mosquitos but I also don’t like 100 degree days, breathing smoke and worrying about wildfires that recently torched 3 towns within about 50 miles of where I live.
Randy | February 21, 2024 at 4:09 pm |
George wrote:
“We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate.”
Randy – that is one of the typical climate change causes everything comments made by AGW activists.
Climate change is causing
“species extinction”
“Causing wars”
or similar to $6T a year in fossil fuel subsidies.
Only intellectuals who have lost basic critical thinking skills would believe and promote such nonsense.
Do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
Not us, we invested in a solar system and electric cars and have lived and driven with free electricity for eight years now.
The PV solar system paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
Why do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
George, as the global poster child for renewable implementation, why is Germany facing a crises over energy costs? Why are its citizens up in arms, branishing proverbial pitch forks (yikes), over energy costs? Germany’s manufacturing base is stressed. I suggest you fax them your cost free solution, give them a hand why don’t you.
You sound like someone who still has to pay for electricity and gasoline. Maybe I would be a crank too if I had to do that still.
You’re accidently somewhat correct, I pay for your free energy, via subsidies, unless you have small animals sipnning a generator in your basement.
Oh I forgot to mention, George, German’s pay over 2x the price for energy than US citizens, as you know, just saying. So get on the hokey stick and help them out, the good global samaritan you are.
Petroleum subsidies world-wide are about six trillion dollars.$6,000,000,000,000!
More “sibsidies” are spent on alternatives than fossil fuels. If one discounts fuzzy math, discounting what are called subsidies that are available to all US corporations; things like depreciation, capital loss deduction, etc. It becomes more clear the game being played
Please review:
https://www.investopedia.com/federal-subsidies-renewable-energy-doubled-since-2016-7568916
Our system went in 2015.
George J Kamburoff just displayed a Climate Doomer cultural attribute:
Petroleum subsidies world-wide are about six trillion dollars.$6,000,000,000,000!
(Oops. Should have been here)
Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true.
Doing it made it true.
George J Kamburoff | February 18, 2024 at 12:58 pm |
Petroleum subsidies world-wide are about six trillion dollars.$6,000,000,000,000!
GK’s response – George J Kamburoff | February 19, 2024 at 10:06 am |
“Joe, sorry, but you have shown us you do not have the education or experience for this thread.”
Another discredited fantasy claim made by the person who has the education and experience to post on this thread.
George – just to clarify – I dont have experience with pseudo science. Tell us where you learned to believe in fantasy science.
Well, gosh, it must start with high school, college, and graduate level physics, math, chemistry and their complex interactions with life forms.
JTNCS,
“I dont have experience with pseudo science.”
You have made it quite clear that you don’t have experience with any kind of science.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 19, 2024 at 1:15 pm |
JTNCS,
“I dont have experience with pseudo science.”
You have made it quite clear that you don’t have experience with any kind of science.
Ganon — George K gets caught repetitively making science fiction claims. Both of you frequently misstate scientific facts, reach erroneous conclusions and thats the best you can do
More nasty accusations from someone not in any of these fields who has no science in his education or experience.
JTNCS,
“Both of you frequently misstate scientific facts, reach erroneous conclusions and thats the best you can do”
Good example of a contentless back off. Since there is no factual content, would you like some help with your grammar?
No, I do not. Tell me where I did that.
George J Kamburoff | February 19, 2024 at 1:42 pm |
More nasty accusations from someone not in any of these fields who has no science in his education or experience.
GK – Just pointing out that those two claims are simply discredited and not based on reality.
Further – your belief in discredited pseudo science seriously undercuts any claim that the rest of your “science based ” claims have any validity. Quite frankly, the fact that you believe what is obviously wrong, does not speak well of your other science claims.
Sounds like you are getting bitter when you get caught with your multiple false claims.
“Claims discredited”? Show me, Toots.
It is all real.
Are you?
Gosh, “Joe”, you know who I am and my my technical fields.
But you hide behind a pseudonym.
Why and what are you hiding, “Joe”?
JTNCS,
If you are not a climate scientist, what are you? Seem to be avoiding that question.
JTNCS,
Me too! If I have misstated any scientific “facts”, please enumerate them: I’ll either correct or explain – that’s the way science works.
George J Kamburoff | February 19, 2024 at 2:55 pm |
“Claims discredited”? Show me, Toots.
It is all real.
George – there are multitude of studies making the the claims for mass migration due to climate change
there are multitude of studies making the claims of fossil fuel subsidies.
They are all based on a fiction and distortion of reality. the fact that you believe them doesnt speak well of the expertise you claim you have.
I am beginning to think you are a failed AI experiment, or a program set to “Ignorance”.
Bye, “Joe”.
Joe,
“They are all based on a fiction and distortion of reality. the fact that you believe them doesnt speak well of the expertise you claim you have.”
The contentless personal attack and falsehood (they are all based on a fiction) seems to speak to Joe’s lack of expertise and knowledge.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 19, 2024 at 3:18 pm |
Joe,
“They are all based on a fiction and distortion of reality. the fact that you believe them doesnt speak well of the expertise you claim you have.”
The contentless personal attack and falsehood (they are all based on a fiction) seems to speak to Joe’s lack of expertise and knowledge.
Ganon – GK made the inane comment that climate change is causing mass migration. Humans have been involved is mass migration since the beginning of human existence. Why would you or ganon believe that mass migration is due to climate change? ( or human cause climate change? ) Its a blatantly inane comment – based on pseudo science.
I love that one. My LED’s cost almost nothing to operate, can be dimmed, and go from cold white to warm. How about your filaments from the 1800s?
Your “free energy” isn’t free. You still have to plan replacement cost for batteries and collection cells which will be more expensive with demand. You either had cheap solar or expensive gas (or used a lot) to realize a savings in three years.
We had all three. But solar is making sense in Minnesota, why not where you live?
J,
The energy to fuel it is free and sustainable – can fossil fuels say either? All forms of energy generation (and use) have equipment that needs replacement and maintenance – duh.
Not even in the rainforests of South America is solar energy s practical solution to providing light to a young native who was wants to read a book- sunlight is unable to penetrate the fauna.
Is that your excuse for not doing it at home?
Do you like paying for electricity and gasoline?
Modern day EV’s couldn’t exist without the the extensive use of petroleum and petroleum products. Tesla’s Models ‘S’ and ‘Y’ are the auto world’s equivalent of a hot house flowers and only exist because of the incentives used, bled off the backs of the productive, to drive retired Californian’s to the golf course every morning.
It is called bootstrapping. Henry Ford used horse-drawn wagons to bring his supplies. Think ahead.
Learn to use the apostrophe.
Utility PV is the cheapest and cleanest power available today.
New stuff is around 1cent/kWh.
Wagathon,
Don’t worry, there has been plenty of the rain forest clear-cut where solar farms could be located.
It is a relief!
Wagathon,
That must be a lot of big animals (fauna) to block out the sunlight. I would suggest that hydro is a better approach in tropical rain forest basins.
George J Kamburoff | February 18, 2024 at 1:00 pm |
We had all three. But solar is making sense in Minnesota, why not where you live?
Solar making sense in Minnesota where the average capacity factor during the winter is less than 10%? during the time of year when energy and electricity is needed the most?
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 18, 2024 at 2:35 pm |
Wagathon,
That must be a lot of big animals (fauna) to block out the sunlight. I would suggest that hydro is a better approach in tropical rain forest basins.
Ganon – hydro – really in a rainforest – Manaus brazil has elevation of approx 300 ft with approx 2,200 miles to the atlantic. How is hydro going to work with that geography? I that going to be one of those problems that the engineers can fix?
George J Kamburoff | February 18, 2024 at 1:00 pm |
We had all three. But solar is making sense in Minnesota, why not where you live?
George – Does Solar really make sense in Minnesota where the average capacity factor during the winter is less than 10%? Which is during the time of year when energy and electricity is needed the most?
Joe,
Solar seems to do just fine in Minnesota.
https://mn.gov/commerce-stat/pdfs/solar-fact-sheet-2022.pdf
and every kWh produced by solar is a kWh that does not have to be provided by burning up limited resources.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 11:11 am |
Joe,
Solar seems to do just fine in Minnesota.
https://mn.gov/commerce-stat/pdfs/solar-fact-sheet-2022.pdf
Ganon – Its not my fault you dont understand evidenced based science.
Ganon posts a link to a promotional website – an intentionally misleading promotional website. Ganon didnt want to answer the question of what is the capacity factor of solar during the winter months when electricity for heating is needed the most.
And Joe didn’t give any evidence at all, just yak-yak.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 11:36 am |
And Joe didn’t give any evidence at all, just yak-yak.
Ganon – Its you and GK who are claiming without evidence that Solar does well in Minnesota
So ganon – man up with evidence – Whats the capacity factor of solar in the winter months in Minnesota. Dont dodge the question – especially since its you and GK that believe in evidenced based science.
Joe,
I already gave evidence with state government figures for solar usage in Minnesota. You give no evidence of anything (and never do) – I don’t care about your seasonal deflection – the numbers show that solar is used and is useful in Mn, and it reduces fossil fuel usage.
https://judithcurry.com/2024/02/16/time-to-retire-the-term-BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 12:57 pm |
Joe,
I already gave evidence with state government figures for solar usage in Minnesota. You give no evidence of anything (and never do) – I don’t care about your seasonal deflection – the numbers show that solar is used and is useful in Mn, and it reduces fossil fuel usage.
Ganon – demonstrate some real evidence science based knowledge.
A) annual averages are meaningless
b) You state you dont care about seasonal deflection – In other words you admit you dont understand the science and thus deflect.
C) You provided “state government figures” which dont address the single biggest issue.
You still dont know the capacity factor of solar during the winter months in Minnesota do you. Notice how you keep skipping the question. Actual evidence based science is not your forte.
Joe,
A) annual averages are meaningless
b) You state you dont care about seasonal deflection – In other words you admit you dont understand the science and thus deflect.
C) You provided “state government figures” which dont address the single biggest issue.
ganon
I hear the hospitality industry in Minnesota does a bang up business in December and January when Ma and Pa pack up the kids and check in at their local hotel for a two month stay, provided they have an indoor pool. Otherwise they would get mighty cold without heat.
https://files.americanexperiment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/solar-panel-capacity-factor-by-month-1024×591.jpg?v=1640018803
George Bush was smart enough to say net to The climate insanity of Kyo
…of Kyoto so, or a bit behind Europe in the resulting economic disaster of Kyoto. We may be in a climatic optimum. That means historically the climate was worse. It can get a lot worse. The Holocene Climate Optimum (aka the Hypsithermal, the Altithermal, the Climatic Optimum, the Holocene Optimum, the Holocene Thermal Maximum or simply, the Holocene) was much like modern weather and perhaps a bit warmer.
And how many humans were around then?
Your Dubya, The Hero of WMD is the guy who funded Solyndra. Check it out.
GJK cites a Climate Doomer, Unicorn Dream fantasy!!
Utility PV is the cheapest and cleanest power available today.
New stuff is around 1cent/kWh.
Does that include the back-up gas plants, George? Cite your proof.
We already have those polluting sources.
We are just making them backups.
Look up the Al Shuaiba PV IP solar power plant.
1.03 cents/kWh.
Every kWh of sustainable energy that is produced, is 1 kWh of fossil fuels not burnt. Besides, those limited resources have better uses.
So what? How much did it or will it change the inevitable growth curve? Not enough to matter.
BA Bushaw,
“Besides, those limited resources have better uses.”
Of course.
But do not make the poor to subsidize the rich. People have their lifes to live.
And what about the rate of births. If the current rate continues the year 2100 the World’s population will be 4 bn.
And the year 2200 the World’s population will be 100 mln.
It is an easy math.
Rob,
Too bad you don’t understand. Any change (either direction) matters.
BAB writes- ” Any change (either direction) matters.”
If mitigation efforts result in lowering the projected CO2 concentration from 550 ppm to 549 ppm did they impact the climate or merely impact the economic welfare of those that had to pay for the efforts.
I understand what you advocate will have little to no impact on the future climate. Humans will have to adapt to what comes.
Rob,
I know it must be difficult for those that have not moved beyond “counting” numbers, and confuse the past with the future, to understand fractional changes.
BAB. Change is the only constant. Write that down.
No, change is not constant, it comes in bursts.
PE … another great piece. Thanks!
Credentials of people who comment here on hydrocarbon fuelled electrical energy and alternatives vary. In the mid 1980s. I was manager of special projects for a major, rapidly-growing Australian mining house with the short name of Peko.
Charles Copeman, AO (dec’d) became CEO of Peko in 1983 and a good friend. Charles was a Rhodes Scholar, taking a prized scholarship to Oxford selected on high merit. He was awarded the civil honours of Order of Australia in 1993 for his contributions to Australian mining. He was a nice guy, a deep thinker.
Charles was the originator and leader of a now-historic episode at Robe River. He was not satisfied that demands by unions were in the best interests of efficiency and profitability at Robe River, so one day he sacked the whole workforce of 1248 wages employees. The trigger was a dispute involving the power station at Robe River, which supplied electricity for the whole of the giant Pilbara mining region. A power trip on 18th May 1986 caused power loss at the Cape Lambert port, so a non-union person turned the power back on by the press of a button. The union insisted on punishment because this was solely a union job.
The larger story is told by author Patrick Gethin “The Power Switch at Robe River”. This book is rather dry. In reality, many union demands were laughable to unbelievable, one focus being on the many flavours of ice-cream that management “had” to provide to tug crews that moved the big ore ships.
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/229788
A later report in 1997 summarises some overall history with quotes from another friend, Bill Willis, who became general manager at Robe after the reformation. I did not play any direct part, but several of us were close to Charles and his core team or reformers as events unfolded.
“In 1985-86 the productivity of miners at Robe River was an appalling 22.5 tonnes per employee. Last financial year it was 171.5 tonnes, a 662% improvement. In 1985-86 Robe River employed 1673 people who shifted just 14 million tonnes of ore and waste rock. Last year the workforce of 786 people shifted a combined 41.8 million tonnes of material.”
And
“At one stage the company sacked its entire workforce of 1248 wages employees, a move that was later reversed.”
It was reversed for past employees who signed a form that they would not be part of union affairs. Most returned within the week. The work safety record improved substantially, almost at once.
https://www.afr.com/companies/robe-river-echoes-in-rio-tinto-dispute-19970929-kb26l
Geoff S
George
Do you know why PG&E wasn’t able to implement NEM 3 billing at the end of last year?
I was an engineer and company consultant, mostly in the field, not a desk worker in finance.
Hi, George.
“Was” begs many questions, relative to was an engineer/consultant. Too often consultants are the refuse of the “was” who couldn’t make it in either cutting edge science, or the applied engineering world. These types usually find their way on the teets of government consulting, or perhaps lobbying.
Full circle, there’s no beg of question here. BTW, did you know that environmental science does capture the discipline behind advancing landfill remediation science? Advancing best practices.You should know that. While it’s a worthy occupation it also includes the refuse side of said occuption (pardon the insider joke). Why does your analysis smells like government cheese? Vacuous analysis; your anal retentive/colon clutching isn’t working for you.
Did you ever come up with an answer as to why Germany is paying over 2x the utlity cost as the US? They really need your “free” energy analysis.
[Insert cricket chirps]
I consulted to power utilities nationwide, and taught the EPRI course in Power Quality.
Look me up.
Who are you?
I thought you might have some system design experience that included verifying solutions worked in the field. PG&E had to send a technician out to our place in 2006 to correct a programming error in our Semi Smart revenue grade utility meter used to capture time of use information.
I didn’t really care who was at fault for not setting up the hardware/firmware/software correctly. The errors lead to erroneous demand response recording via PG&E’s billing department. I just wanted the results to be accurate as we paid a lot of money to put our PV system in place back in 2006.
A PG&E technician used a pc to access the firmware in our meter when he came out to the house to verify that our complaints to the customer service department were valid. His in the field fixes to our meter (setting the firmware initial conditions correctly- so the billing system software worked correctly) took take care of the failure of PG&E’s program to capture our demand response efforts into the appropriate time bins used by PG&E’ billing department to generate our bill.
Glad you got it fixed. That was back in the very early days of smart metering.
When I said I worked in the field, I meant large businesses and factories in many industries.
You have saved a lot of money since 2006.
George,
I spent some time in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries addressing the limitations of measurement systems embedded in meters/measurement devices and data management processes back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I hope PG&E processes have improved since I gave their smart meter back to them in 2013. PG&E’s IOT “smart” solution for billing AND demand response tracking sucked from my perspective. They are likely still working on things otherwise they would be making lots of money similar to how SCE is now that NEM 3 is in place.
Our investment in the PV system held up over the years. The money saved per year started decreasing; especially when PG&E convinced the PUC to eliminate the rate schedule we had originally selected (e-7). An appraiser valued the PV system at $12,000 when we sold the homestead in the winter of 2021. I forgot to ask the appraiser if his estimate of value included the cpuc approved changes to the time of use rate schedule that were going to take affect in Jan of 2022….
All of that was generations of meters ago. Mine has worked perfectly since 2015, even with two separate PV systems integrated into it.
Great that your revenue grade meter was able to accommodate you new pv system. Hope your service provider is SMUD vs PG&E as it seems prices are getting a bit unaffordable for PG&E customers-
It’s getting a bit expensive to get juice (kWh) in Northern CA-
“The price per kilowatt-hour in urban Hawaii came to 42.8 cents in January, followed by San Francisco at 41.2 cents. San Diego had the third-highest average price at 40.1 cents per kilowatt-hour.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/we-re-no-3-hawaii-and-san-francisco-pass-san-diego-for-highest-electricity-prices-in-the-nation/ar-BB1ixDOZ?
My father-in-law is paying close to 50 cents per kWh for his marginal kWh usage as its near to impossible to stay under baseline quantities from PG&E when you live in the country.
I’m not an expert on the grid, though PE is; you ignore him too, as you do everyone who challenges you about anything of substance. Nobody cares about your environmental science degree, understand? It’s meaningless. Step up.
So, being that you’re an expert, and as one who makes the claim that energy can easily be free; prove your scientific chops, here’s your chance.
Provide substantive analysis as to why Germans are paying such high prices for energy? We already know you can’t provide substance, George, you’re just another ideological archtype, an environmental pearl clutching fraud.
Fill in here, now is your chance; provide some enlightening analysis for Germanys expensive energy woes. Go!
Jungletrunks,
You ask George to explain Germanys expensive (relative to US) energy. Admittedly I know almost nothing about European energy concerns…but isn’t it the Danes and maybe Scottish folks that have a decent amount of wind power. How do they compare with US… I dont imagine they do great with solar.
How do the Chinese do with renewables ? Mongolia for that matter…very windy and pretty sunny or am i wrong ?
Texas is #1 renewable producer in the US I understand…some irony …or not.
Boom and bust in the nickel and lithium sector … impact from declining sales of EVs.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/commodities-futures/the-boom-in-battery-metals-for-evs-is-turning-to-bust-5630493c?st=3crt23ebd65xhjh&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
No, it is from the capitalists who all want to get in on the Rush to Riches. WSJ?? Did you forget Murdoch had to pay $787,500,000 for lying?
George … It’s a report on the market for lithium and nickel. There are many forces that dictate how the market moves, but as noted in the piece sales of EVs and (more important for the market) expectation of future sales is down. Those are just facts.
George. If you don’t like the free market and capitalism, I’m sure you would love to live in China.
Sherro001,
I did not suggest getting rid of all ion-specific electrode data. Only that colorimetric methods are now much more accurate; particularly for ocean water. Like I said, try to keep up – I have given several references that might help.
Nuclear power, according to Porter, is the way to go.
“Once you’ve built it, it can run for 60 years. It’s extremely safe. Nuclear and solar have the lowest deaths by unit of electricity generation of all generation technologies,” she argues. Given that, then, between Bitcoin, gold, or uranium, Porter is choosing the nuclear option: “if you’re saying Bitcoin or gold, I’d do gold. Between gold and uranium, I’d probably do uranium.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-16/podcast-why-nuclear-power-should-be-ramped-up
I tested Mark I and II BWR Safety Relief Valves and their pressure spike problems in 1979, decades before those in Fukushima exploded, leaving huge radioactive holes, now leaking into the sea.
When I was in the control room at Rancho Seco, I wanted to ask where the incidents took place which had the owners shut it down and eat the costs of that nuke.
How did you get the idea they are desirable?
You will have to ask the person who wrote it George. You don’t seem to have attention to detail.
“When I was in the control room at Rancho Seco, I wanted to ask where the incidents took place”
Voyeuristically like such would have mattered for the irradiated ideologue.
Any answer as to why German utility prices are so high? Or are you still mulling it over?
Ask Germany. My experience is here.
Do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
George cop out alert, he knows nothing about energy grids, at all; zilch. Otherwise by default his take means that if Germany had his grid knowledge, they would be living off of free energy. Unicorn dreams cornered.
Who needed his mea culpa? This fraud disclosure works.
George,
And back in history I purchased privately a fast neutron generator for neutron activation analysis. It had a power supply the size of a small car, 150 Kv and 10 mA. Support in Australia was tiny so at age 29 I had to quickly understand basic aspects of high voltage.
A few years later I joined the scientific team that had just discovered the Ranger uranium deposits. I contributed to radiation safety manuals that stood the test of time for 40 years of employee safety.
I do not think that you realise how silly you sound when you quote references to me and suggest that I catch up. I have been fortunate to experience wide aspects of science and its community interactions, some of it at the lonely leading edge. Geoff S
Jim2,
“BAB. Change is the only constant. Write that down.”
Why should I write it down – not only it is false, it is stoopid.
I am much more interested in change and rate of change. And, if it is change, it is not constant
Pi, G, c
I see that abstraction is beyond your comprehension.
And abstraction is all YOU have, being bereft of education and experience in these fields.
Why are you here?
Great response, and accurate.
I understand abstraction. Do you believe stupid abstractions, which are fundamentally false? Do you understand why you use such devices when you can’t produce anything with intellectual content?
Bafflegab.
Ooooh, Jimmy’s new word. Even less content than usual.
Things changing is a universal constant and the reason why infinity cannot be limited. People who do not understand why that is so should not be commenting on anything since there is literally nothing of the Planet that isn’t in a state of change (e.g. ageing)
I understand it. I also understand that there are different causes and different rates of change, and that some can be changed by human activities. I do not accept that change is a universal constant that doesn’t change. People who don’t understand that shouldn’t be commenting on anything.
No one has claimed change doesn’t change since we have stated that everything is constantly changing even if it is simply a record getting older or clothes less in keeping with modern vogue.
Infinity suggests all things are possible and nothing is impossible and yet we cannot include it in our computer models since they fall short of the required capacity and power by several magnitudes. Our crude attempts to reproduce randomness fall woefully short of the necessary. I would rather doubt that we could successfully program a climate model even if we have such a computer. Computers have got older but no more powerful (in the practical sense) and we seem to be stuck in a rut rather like our climate change mitigation which is simply not fit for purpose.
We need to understand that the complexity of nature isn’t going to solved by the poor quality ‘scientists’ on the alarmist side who seem to believe it is easier to state that stuff is settled. Nothing is ever settled.
You seem to have neglected the observation that humans can have an effect on how and what kind of change takes place. I don’t disagree with most of the other things you’ve said, except the confusing of “constant” with “continual”.
“Nothing is ever settled” – no, the past is settled, but there are only probabilities for different future paths – ask Heisenberg (it has more to do with quantum uncertainty, not the concept of “infinity” that you seem to think makes everything possible). There are infinite possibilities, but that in no way means everything is possible – there can still be constraints on what is possible.
“…no, the past is settled”
The past is not settled–by any human measure of comprehensive fidelity; only marginal measures of the known are settled.
There’s a definite fact based history of the world, scientifically speaking, but only “Mother Nature” knows the immutable facts. Humans will continue to struggle untangling “why things are”, “how they happened”; we’ve scratched the surface of unanswered questions. But the evolution for most things, including climate, remains an enigma. Though the arrogant will always believe otherwise, as in: what else needs to be understood, CO2 is a GHG, we produce a lot, case closed.
Even culturally, humans work hard attempting to rewrite history–this facilitates reliving it. As defined, the Dark Ages remain an unsettled matter, also the Age of Enlightenment. In the grand scheme, the concept that humans understand settled history is a canard.
This Hope that batteries, the White Knight, will ride in to save the day for unreliable energy sources is irrational. A Climate Doomer fantasy. Even if it were doable, how long would it take to build and deploy enough batteries to do without fossil fuels.???
I don’t hope that batteries will “ride in and save the day”. I am confident that myriad energy storage systems will take care of the intermittency talking point before it actually becomes a problem.
” myriad energy storage systems” – and those would be, BAB?
jim2,
Pumped-storage hydroelectric
Batteries (electro-chemical)
Solar electric with thermal energy storage
Compressed-air storage
Flywheels
Are already in use. I expect others, including direct gravity systems, super-capacitors, etc. will be added. Like I said, I have confidence, having seen the scientific advances of the last 50 year. It does not mean I know all the details, or what the ‘final’ preferred configuration will be.
https://www3.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/energy-storage-for-electricity-generation.php
“Pumped-storage hydroelectric
Batteries (electro-chemical)
Solar electric with thermal energy storage
Compressed-air storage
Flywheels”
Those and the others you mentioned were all the rage in… the late ’70s.
You would think, if they were that good, there’d be more of them.
Pumped hydro suffers from lack of storage reservoirs – unless like the Dutch you literally dig way down and hollow it out, or you are working someplace that still has the terrain, and the enviros don’t stop you.. Otherwise, it is a very nice solution.
Batteries have been beaten to death on this thread. Either they’ll get a whole lot better, or they won’t. If they don’t, they won’t make much more of a difference to the grid.
Solar with thermal – Ivanpah? Not many places you can build that, and it isn’t that impressive.
Compressed-air storage shares problems with natural natural gas storage: thermodynamic inefficiency, and use of high pressure vessels in large sizes and/or quantity. Is *anyone* using it for grid scale systems? Why not?
Flywheels – they were really the big deal 40 years ago. There are a few synchronous condensers around – know of any other flywheels? SC’s are not used for significant storage AFAIK.
Yeah, BAB. Those will save the world. Sure they will.
Jim2,
You asked, I answered and gave an EIA reference that explained that answer in detail. Your dismissal just demonstrates the (willful) ignorance that reduces you to stupidity. The desperate aggression without scientific content is entertaining.
I’m happy to hear the EIA has solved the intermittency caused by unreliables. So let’s go ahead and shut down all the fossil fuel plants around the world and see how that works out.
Jim2,
OK, but let’s do it in an orderly fashion over 15-20 years. Why do you want it all, all of a sudden; oh, I know – you don’t want it to work, so make up silly scenarios.
And I am absolutely certain that if there was any truth in the claim that fossil fuel burning would, of itself, cause out of control warming then we would have discovered that long before Mann made his pathetic bid for fame.
We could have had nuclear on scale in the UK many times before Thatcher and it was a sensible (look at Finland, France, etc) and we still can do so by 2050 without messing up the environment as wind and solar have done and without massive use of fossil fuel to produce the goods (and make China etc richer).
Only certifiable maniacs would do what we have been doing for three decades. COVID-19 should have opened your eyes to human incompetence or sheer recklessness as a pure example as to how bad we have gotten at doing stuff properly.
Lass,
I think you confuse could and would.
Do you have a professional field, “jim2”?
Why are you not in their threads?
Not to worry, George. I can never rise to your level of genius. I do feel sorry for you though. Einstein has already discovered relativity. If not for that, I’m sure you would be all about it.
Kid,
“Even without CO2, we have multiple factors at play that can account for what has happened the last 150 years.”
How about you stop with the empty claims and explain what has happened in the last 150 years. Maybe just explain the ocean heat gain and temperature curves over the last 50 years.
Please give an estimate of the fractional contribution of whatever “factors” you choose to invoke.
JTNCS,
“Ganon – hydro – really in a rainforest – Manaus brazil has elevation of approx 300 ft with approx 2,200 miles to the atlantic. How is hydro going to work with that geography? I that going to be one of those problems that the engineers can fix?”
Yes, the engineers have figured that out – they don’t have much trouble with topography (basins have higher elevations around the perimeter). They have plans for 480+ hydro installations with 140 operating or under construction.
Reading and research are your friend. Ignorance is not. Maybe it would help to look at a map instead of desperately searching for a couple of “geography facts” that you hope will negate reality.
https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/img/original/hydrosheds_amazon_large.jpg
Kid,
So what do they think NOW? Things change and the rate of climate change exacerbates that.
“Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation” (July 2023)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w
Alarmists attribute the collapse of the AMO to CO2 increase.
Rob,
The AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current) and AMO (Atlantic Multi-decal Oscillation) are not the same thing. Why am I not surprised that you don’t know this. I don’t know what “alarmists” think. I know scientists think that it is caused by too large a freshwater input to the North Atlantic, which could happen with a too large/too fast a melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
I’m not surprised you ignored the IPCC6 quote. They have LOW CONFIDENCE. Let me help you. Low confidence means low confidence.
Kid,
I didn’t ignore it, I countered it with newer information. That is the way science works.
“Early-onset of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakening in response to atmospheric CO2 concentration” (2021)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-021-00182-x
also from AR6 WG1 p.427:
” … observations show that the Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has weakened from the mid2000s to the mid-2010s (high confidence) … ”
Their low confidence is in having a long enough record for full attribution.
ganon
Your stuff is ancient, out of date junk.
Here are more recent studies. Real science.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/18/JCLI-D-21-0685.1.xml
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.0193
Sorry, oscillations of a couple percent are not interruptions.
This can’t be repeated enough times.
IPCC6 3.5.4.1
“ Thus, we have low confidence that anthropogenic forcing has had a significant influence on changes in AMOC strength during the 1860–2014 period.”
I couldn’t have said it any better than that.
Kid,
That’s right, you couldn’t have said it any better.
ganon
And I can’t say it any better than IPCC6 9.4.2.2
“… there remains low confidence in the ocean forcing affecting the basal melt rates, and low confidence in simulating mechanisms that have the potential to cause widespread, sustained and very rapid ice loss from Antarctica through MICI.”
Or 11.6.4.5
“ There is low confidence that human influence has affected trends in meteorological droughts in most regions, but medium confidence that they have contributed to the severity of some single events.”
Or Antarctica 9.4.2.3.2
“ Due to the limited availability of cavity-resolving ocean models, and the wide regional variation in estimates of basal melt sensitivity to ocean temperature, there is only low confidence in projected future sub-ice-shelf melt rates.”
Or 11.5.4
“ In summary there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale. In general, there is low confidence in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence because of a limited number of studies, differences in the results of these studies and large modeling uncertainties.”
Or 9.6.3.2.4
“This lower level of agreement for higher-emissions scenarios reflects the deep uncertainty in the AIS contribution to GMSL change under higher-emissions scenarios…”
Those authors of the IPCC, they are such wordsmiths.
Kid,
Of course, you have to understand what low, medium, and high confidence actually mean. ( and your inability to define – “low confidence means low confidence” indicates that you don’t). They are all positive; none are “no confidence”, and none are “confidence that something doesn’t exist”. Basically, IPCC has confidence in all of these things happening, they just try to specify how large that confidence is. I prefer the “likelyhood” system which includes probability estimates for both true and not true.
Gannon
Typical deflection by gannon when the facts don’t go his way. No confidence means they don’t have a clue and are just guessing, which is what they are doing most of the time. The federal government was guessing with the sea level analysis over 40 years ago and it became a big whiff.
In 1979 they said by 2000 there could be feet of SLR which turned out to be a couple of inches. In 1983 their analysis said by 2100 SLR could be up to 12 feet. So far no signs of significant acceleration, in the tidal gauges, which is the only reliable measurement.
How you have been so taken in is beyond me.
Kid,
They didn’t say “no confidence”. Sorry, you are so confused.
JTNCS,
You’d have to give evidence as to why George’s claim is “inane”. I would have thought you could have figured that out by now. Your personal opinion doesn’t carry much weight, and you make that clearer in nearly every post you make.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 19, 2024 at 4:03 pm | Reply
JTNCS,
You’d have to give evidence as to why George’s claim is “inane”. I would have thought you could have figured that out by now. Your personal opinion doesn’t carry much weight, and you make that clearer in nearly every post you make.
GAnon & GK – The claim that fossil fuels receive $6t a year in subsidies and mass migration is being caused by human caused global warming are both based on pseudo science / science fiction. Not my fault neither you understand. Not my fault you believe in fantasy science.
Not our fault you don’t believe in, or understand, evidence-based science.
I see we’ve all reached perfect agreement in absence! Hooray!
Just want to jump in on one point: the claim that “your free solar energy isn’t really free. someone had to build the solar cell.”
This is the equivalent of saying, “your free hotel room wasn’t really free. someone had to build the room.”!!!
Obviously, the writer means the energy is free to *him*. we all do truly realize that solar cells do not self-replicate. we know that they require energy and raw materials. thanks for the 1,000th reminder. may we remind you that even after these costs, they are vastly cleaner and better for the environment than fossil fuels, so you really don’t need to keep reminding us that they need to be manufactured. we know that.
Oil is free. You just have to extract it, just like wind and solar.
Now there’s an original thought…
the “extraction” of solar is free. the extraction of oil is expensive.
So, Dan, you seem to be saying you can get a PV system installed free of charge. Where did you get that deal???
Jim2,
“you seem to be saying you can get a PV system installed free of charge. Where did you get that deal???”
DanB is merely saying they both have installation costs but the extraction cost (ongoing) of solar is minimal compared to oil.
I suppose solar extraction might have some cost if you consider degradation, however minor, of the equipment with use.
Honestly I might be the only “neutral” person here. Perhaps my ignorance is helpful in this regard.
I’m impressed, Randy, that you can read minds. Handy ability.
As hard as Russ Schussler argues, and has argued in previous articles, the unpredictable intermittency of wind and variations in the strength of gusts remain an immoveable obstacle to using it as a confident mainstay of power supply.
There have been two major episodes in Australia within the last 7 years where unpredicted wind storms have pulled and snapped high voltage pylons, causing the primary generators to trip out. In the case of South Australia 2016 where the entire State went black, a medical operation in full swing at a major hospital, with the anaesthetised patient opened and medical tools inserted in the wound, was dropped into the dark for some considerable time. What about the emergency diesel generators, I hear the objection ? Despite regular maintenance, they wouldn’t start. (This incident was noted in the AMA Journal but not seen in the MSM).
Our “betters” insist that we still have 20,000 km of these vulnerable transmission lines to go in order to “harvest” as much wind as possible.
Not sure what you think I am “arguing” about wind. Am I too critical for you or too accepting or optimistic? Quote what you are disputing please.
how is a transmission line failure an issue with wind? we had transmission lines long before we ever had wind farms.
You like to ignore reality DanB. Wind and solar farms are typically located far from load centers. This increases the probability of transmission line failure. Are you practicing willful ignorance?
The other problem with wind on the grid instead of thermal plant is the RoCoF from no inertia. That is what the camel breaking straw which caused the South Australian blackouts.
George J Kamboruff
> Do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
I paid Tesla $5000 to be on a waiting list sometime around 2005. I was an electrical contractor and was always attracted to electric vehicles. There would be no doubt that I could install any Class 2 charger wherever I wanted. Not due to any change of mind about EVs, I withdrew from the list. A few years back, I sent Lordstown Motors a $100 deposit to be on a list for their electric truck. I’d still be on it except they went out of business and sent me my $100 back.
I live in an area where a 4WD vehicle can be put to good use. Last year I looked at the Hummer EV. What an amazing vehicle! I also looked at the Rivian and Ford offerings. The Rivian and Hummer were in the range of $115,000. The Ford Lightning wasn’t far behind, when you added extras. For me, that was a bit steep. Needing a vehicle for the back country excursions, I looked at ICEs. And I happened upon a 2006 Hummer H3 for sale. It had 209,000 miles and one owner. I bought it for $8,000 out the door. I promptly put another $5,000 into it. It gets 15-19 MPG. And runs fantastic.
Back of the envelope …
$115,000 – $13,000 = $102,000 Minus another $13,000 for future repairs = $89,000.
Yearly driving = 10,000 miles. Average gas price $4.00/gal. 10,000/15 = 667 gallons/year x $4 = $2,668/year in fuel. $89,000/$2,668 = +33 years. We can increase for inflation and say 25 years.
I haven’t included the difference in insurance costs. Full coverage on the H3 and another car is about $750/year. The Hummer EV would probably be several times that.
I haven’t included the cost of charging, as you may have solar panels, etc. Nor any repairs on the EV.
I won’t be here in 25 years, and you could say the H3 might not either, nor the EV. Yet, this little exercise should give you pause.
1). For the six smooth surface planets and moons
Mercury
Earth
Moon
Mars
Europa
Ganymede
the specular reflection is very strong and it is being ignored as insignificant. Thus it led to “energy in” much higher estimations.
2). The “Energy in = Energy out” concept is about the black box, which is an open system with a boundary.
You study the inputs and outputs across the boundary without necessarily knowing what goes on inside.
(In GHE theory the average surface temperature differs because of the rising greenhouse gases content.)
In my point the solar energy “Energy in = Energy out” concept is the basic concept, it should be necessarily met.
The average surface temperature is a measured value. So we know what the planets’ and moon’s the average surface temperatures are.
And yes, “Energy in = Energy out”, but the energy interacts with surface’s matter. When interacting the average surface temperature occurs.
–
–
There is a well known scientific POSTULAT:
When two identical spheres emitting the same amount of EM energy, the less surface temperature differentiated the higher the average surface temperature.
What is New, is that when considering spheres (planets or moons), which are getting warmed by incoming EM energy, because they are solar irradiated, the less surface temperature differentiated the more solar energy the planet or moon absorbs!
–
And it is the “black box”, or the radiative equilibrium.
When the radiative equilibrium gets “switched” up – the average surface temperature rise. When it is “switched” down – the average surface temperature lessens.
In my opinion the currently observed global warming is not due to CO2 (not due to fossil fuels intensive burning), but because of orbital forcing, because of the current orbital circumstance our planet Earth is subjected to.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Another id eee ot ic, money-wasting idea from the Climate Doomers. It’s slow and expensive, two attributes loved by green energy advocates.
Someday soon, plug-in cars may no longer need a plug. Electric car drivers would simply pull into a specialized parking space when it’s time to power up, wait for a light on their dashboard to switch on, and then hop out of the car and go about their day.
This is the promise of wireless EV charging, an inductive transfer of electrons that would eliminate the need for all those pesky cords. Multiple startups have spent years working towards a world in which wireless charging goes mainstream, and as EV adoption picks up, momentum is building to make that dream a reality. Companies are coalescing around standardized technology, automakers are embarking on wireless experiments, and municipalities are mapping out use cases. Even Tesla Inc. is interested.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-20/wireless-charging-for-electric-cars-is-inching-closer-to-reality
In spite of Climate Doomer objections, nuclear is picking up steam.
Poland’s government is prepared to consider France’s Electricite de France SA as a bidder for the second stage of its nuclear power program after the previous government picked US companies to build the country’s first reactors.
…
“The first project should be implemented with the American side, as agreed,” said Motyka. “However, when it comes to subsequent projects from the program, including the second location, the matter is open.”
The French side has argued that its technology is already being used across Europe, including in Finland and the UK, making it easier for the two EU nations to cooperate, according to the deputy minister. Tusk discussed nuclear energy with French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Paris last week.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-20/poland-looks-beyond-us-for-its-next-nuclear-power-plant-edf-fp
Poland was Europe’s biggest coal user so that’s good news.
Next door in Ukraine their biggest nuclear plant with 6 reactors down to 4 operational units and they have lost power to run the cooling systems several times since their war began.
Nuclear is the only type of power plant that has to have a fully armed and trained battalion of guards to protect it 24 hours a day from nefarious actions by crazy fanatics because the outsized potential for death and damages. Solar and wind don’t need 24/7 protection.
Even if the UK hits its 2050 goal of 225 gwh of storage, that will be only about 0.08% of total gwh based on today’s electricity consumption.
Europe is about to get a burst of activity in battery storage projects, with the UK, Ireland and Italy leading investment across the region.
There’s a chance to see an estimated sevenfold increase to more than 50 gigawatts in capacity connected to transmission networks by 2030, according to Aurora Energy Research cited in this Bloomberg News report. That’ll help store more power when it’s abundant, distribute it when it’s scarce and align governments with net-zero emissions goals.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-19/supply-chain-latest-europe-is-poised-for-a-battery-investment-boom
California’s plan to bring offshore wind farms to its coastline by 2035 as part of the state’s push to get more energy from renewable sources may be a tall order, according to BloombergNEF.
…
“For offshore wind, it appears ambitious,” BloombergNEF analyst Chelsea Jean-Michel said, adding that she doesn’t think the 2035 target is achievable. “We estimate California will fall short of its target,” she added, forecasting that the state will have just 1.1 gigawatts of offshore wind by that time. A gigawatt of electricity is enough to power about 750,000 homes.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-16/california-s-ambitious-offshore-wind-goal-seen-as-unachievable
Ambitious is good, even if you don’t reach your goals.
Joe the non scientist said:
“Ganon posts a link to a promotional website – an intentionally misleading promotional website. ”
No, it is a government information website that provides facts on the given subject. Why do you lie so much about things where you are wrong, and it is easily checked?
BTW, what is your background that makes you think you can get away with such silly statements (lies), when evidence shows you are wrong.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 11:50 am | Reply
Joe the non scientist said:
“Ganon posts a link to a promotional website – an intentionally misleading promotional website. ”
No, it is a government information website that provides facts on the given subject. Why do you lie so much about things where you are wrong, and it is easily checked?
Ganon – You keep demonstrating how poorly informed you are on the subject
Answer the question – what is the average capacity factor of solar during the winter. You and GK are the ones promoting solar in Minn – man up with evidence to support the claim that Solar does well in Minnesota –
Answer the question – what is your background and why should I pay attention to all the things you say without evidence (personal opinions).
As for “The question” – it was if PV solar is useful in Minnesota – and that has been answered with evidence and usage numbers.
The question was not what the average capacity factor is in the MN winter. That was YOUR deflective question, and you already answered it. However, I have no idea if is just another lie, since you give no source or evidence. “Winter” in MN lasts (at least) 4 months, and I’m skeptical that the average winter insolation is less than 10% of summer insolation. Support your number, or I’ll just assume you made it up.
Another deflection from Ganon –
Insolation is not a measurement of the capacity factor of electricity generated from solar panels/ solar electric generation facilities.
Come back when you understand the subject.
Measurement of electrical production is science based evidence. Why do you never provide any evidence of anything?
“A) annual averages are meaningless
b) You state you dont care about seasonal deflection – In other words you admit you dont understand the science and thus deflect.
C) You provided “state government figures” which dont address the single biggest issue.”
A) another obvious lie
B) another lie – I never stated that, and I do understand the science you are the one who doesn’t (What is your background? Why won’t you answer this question?)
C) What is the biggest issue? A deflection from the issue at hand (usefulness of PV in MN).
PS ~ do you know what an apostrophe is?
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 12:57 pm |
– I don’t care about your seasonal deflection –
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 1:50 pm
-b) You state you dont care about seasonal deflection
B) another lie – I never stated that,
Nice Ganon –
The typical values of the solar capacity factor are between 10% and 25%. For the solar utility power plant, solar capacity is around 24.5%.
https://solarsena.com/solar-capacity-factor-states-power/
(that’s how evidence and sourcing work – try it sometime)
I am not surprised the MN winter is in the lower end of the range. Apparently it is still useful.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 2:16 pm |
The typical values of the solar capacity factor are between 10% and 25%. For the solar utility power plant, solar capacity is around 24.5%.
https://solarsena.com/solar-capacity-factor-states-power/
(that’s how evidence and sourcing work – try it sometime)
I am not surprised the MN winter is in the lower end of the range. Apparently it is still useful.
Ganon decided to do some googling to back up his claim – though he discovered that he was wrong.
Though he is still poorly educated on subject.
Hint 1) the capacity for 12 months in Minnesota is barely 15% – which most educated people would rate as not very well vs GK claim of “doing well”
hint 2) The winter capacity is down in the 6%-8% range.
Now that Ganon has been exposed to a reality check -albeit only partially, – care to venture what the LCOE is during those winter months for Solar.
That’s right – I didn’t state what you said; I know what an apostrophe is.
You haven’t answered any of my questions, or provided any evidence for your deflections. I won’t wait.
Not responding to anyone in particular….slightly off topic.
Renewables: I live in an apartment complex with 72 units.
Eastern WA, not that it matters i guess.
Perfect place to pick up recyclables…right ?
I mean it seems that an appropriate storage bin, vehicle pickup could take in 72 units worth of garbage in perhaps one-fourth, maybe one-tenth the time to pick up the equivalent waste at residential homes. Guess what … they don’t pick up recyclables AT ALL in the complex.
I recycle my stuff (3 or 4 trips to the recycling center annually) but truly wonder if recycling makes sense all things considered. I’ve never seen where it is justified economically…in detail.
I don’t know if they recycle other apartment complexes here or not.
I think your suspicion that recycling is only marginally beneficial is likely correct.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/02/does-recycling-actually-help-the-climate/
I still separate out my waste food for composting and some non-ferrous metals but everything else just goes into the same trash bag.
We apex predators worry a lot about CO2 but maybe its the other 250,000 man-made molecules we are dispersing into the biosphere is the real long term problem?
the question Ganon refuses to answer to defend the claim that Solar does well in Minnesota
“Answer the question – what is the average capacity factor of solar during the winter. You and GK are the ones promoting solar in Minn – man up with evidence to support the claim that Solar does well in Minnesota –”
Ganon’s response –
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 1:35 pm |
and I’m skeptical that the average winter insolation is less than 10% of summer insolation.
my response -joethenonclimatescientist | February 20, 2024 at 1:42 pm |
“Insolation is not a measurement of the capacity factor of electricity generated from solar panels/ solar electric generation facilities.”
ganon’s response – BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 20, 2024 at 1:50 pm |
Measurement of electrical production is science based evidence.
ganon keeps changing the subject because he knows electric generation from solar performs very poorly during the winter months in Minnesota. Does he or doesnt ganon know the capacity factor of solar during the winter.
Joe,
Sorry ,you don’t get it – Solar PV has been found to be a useful addition to the energy mix. None of your deflections, presumptions, or insults change that.
I am in favor of dropping “renewable” as a term for energy production. Can we also reconsider adjectives such as “healthy” when referring to the complex adaptive socially regulated distribution systems that are called “the grid?”
Joe,
Yes, I know capacity factors are lower in the winter (big surprise). I also know that people of Minnesota have determined that PV solar is still useful.
https://www.mn.gov/commerce-stat/pdfs/solar-potential-analysis-report.pdf
Study it (yeah, sure)
You still haven’t answered any of my questions or provided evidence for your deflections.
ganon – did you bother reading the puff piece – It makes marc jacobson look sober
Page 60 –
Load Shifting
Agent 20004480:2 is now asked to charge their EV in a manner that is proportional to the amount of renewable production surplus, as shown in Figure 29 for a day with excess solar production.
Do you see a problem? How much renewable production surplus from solar or wind do you think will exist during the winter.
You have to deal with evidence based science – not the science fiction you and GK adore.
Kid,
I don’t know about ma and pa, but it seems that Minnesota thinks PV solar is a useful addition to their energy structure. No matter what diversions and perceived negatives that you and Joe come up with, that doesn’t change.
OK folks, I think we’re done with Minnesota. The winter capacity factor is low, but not low enough to prevent Minnesotans from continually adding capacity.
There, that’s settled.
Oh, oh. “Nothing is ever settled”.
Not on Climate etc., anyway.
Thanks, Fizzy
I’ll just close by say that they are building solar farms is Alaska too. ‘nuf said.
https://www.akenergyauthority.org/What-We-Do/Renewable-Energy-and-Energy-Efficiency-Programs/Solar/Alaska-Solar-Projects
And I’ll close by saying that nobody here has argued that there’s “no niche markets” where solar makes sense.
200 homes in this example; a presentation by Ganon media enterprises, serving your back yard!
Willow Solar Farm, AEA financed Alaska based start-up company, Renewable Independent Power Producers: The facility, which will generate power to sell to Matanuska Electric Association, is expected to produce enough power for 200 homes.
Not a shot, just niche, very small impressive.
Good fizzy
Tell us what the LCOE of Solar and wind will be during the winter when you have to overbuild by 5x -10x to cover the shortage
It aint going to be less than gas, coal or nuclear.
Trunks,
I agree it is probably a small, remote site niche market in Alaska, but it still works (which was all I was trying to illustrate). And, that is not the case for the lower 48. I don’t think 4% (in MN) is insignificant; despite all the dislike and skepticism expressed here, PV Solar is the world’s fastest growing electricity source.
And I’ll close by saying that nobody here has argued that solar should be 100%, or even the majority, of new energy generation.
And no it was not presented by Ganon media enterprises, It was presented by the Alaska Energy Authority. Good to see you haven’t changed.
Lass,
I am always amazed at those that ignore diversity, and argue that individual technologies are no good because individually they can’t meet 100% of all demands. Guess what, by definition, non-renewables also cannot sustainably meet demands, and can’t even do it in the present.
Willow, AK is above 61 degrees North, and gets less than 6 hours of sunlight mid-November through February. It has a population of less than 2200 at peak. Gotta wonder just how much demand there is, and exactly when they say that they’ll produce it. My guess is that would be at about 2 a.m. on June 21st. Plenty of sunlight, and likely few of those 2000 people are doing anything that requires even a little bit of electrical power.
Meeting any increment to 100% of demand is no trick when you don’t have to provide how much (in a multiple of Watt-hours), How long, or at exactly what time. A lot of commercial grid operators figure demand loading in five-minute increments. Easy. They fake it in Europe all the time.
Add a domestic or commercial load of any sort, and you’re back to coal, gas, or near an oilfied petroleum generation, add Alaska’s “negative income tax” from oil production and a subsidized, import, niche, luxury product like solar pv becomes even a little attractive.
Like LCOE, meeting a percent demand it a con.
Requiring meeting a HIGH percentage of demand, by any given technology, is a con used by people who want to deny the utility of sustainable energy and its use.
Winston – good point -Willow AK solar provides the bulk of electricity during the time of year when electric demand is at the lowest. at 61N, the winter capacity factor is probably close to 3%-4%. Solar in the area near Minneapolis at 42n is only 7%-8% capacity during the winter.
Willow AK solar farm footprint (acreage) per kw is about twice the of the size footprint per kw in the continental US. There still needs to be other form of electric generation that works in the winter when electricity is at its highest demand. In sum, the electric generation footprint is 2x-3x, solar farm acreage, additional transmission lines, etc for a source of electric generation that is trivial.
Thank you Winston for a clear and concise explanation of demand and supply – electricity version.
The problem I have with both solar and wind is that neither can supply a figure that always meets demand (with of without batteries) which is what the grid seeks to achieve all the time. Hence the need to back up the entire wind and solar nameplate supply with our very old baseload generating favourites coal, gas, nuclear, hydro power houses.
Electricity has to be there all the time and solar and wind cannot ever achieve that – even with batteries – because they are intermittent in such ways as to be unpredictable – at any given time and locality. You cannot design reliability around a product that may or may not deliver at any given moment. And as you need the back up for the windless and sunless days then what on earth are you wasting money on solar and wind in the first place? Flag waving? Virtue signalling? Green envy?
Except for the token projects wind and solar should have been rejected out of hand – period as before the tedious greens got their major inferiority complex.
UK-Weather Lass wrote:
The problem I have with both solar and wind is that neither can supply a figure that always meets demand (with of without batteries) which is what the grid seeks to achieve all the time. Hence the need to back up the entire wind and solar nameplate supply with our very old baseload generating favourites coal, gas, nuclear, hydro power houses.
Again, it’s the task of engineers to figure all this out, just like physicists figured out the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. If that’s what it takes (it won’t). Old engineers are full of reasons why something won’t work. Young engineers will find a way to do it anyway. Because it has to be done. Whining about it is a waste of time. Just get busy and figure out a sustainable grid.
The gormless repeat the mantra – “it’s up to engineers to figure this out” – which is precisely what they did do to make electricity reliable and safe until the gormless opened their mouths and said “wind and solar they are there for free and will reduce CO2” neither of which – if they had listened to the engineers – was true.
The other gormless type come on sites like this and repeatedly repeat the mantra … if only they had the ability to comprehend what they read in responses to their nonsense and learn something about the difference between practical and impractical which engineers have to learn from the word go.
Why the focus on solar in MN ? The plain states are known for being windy. I grew up in Ohio and remember the “Alberta Clippers”, as the northwesterly winter winds were called, creating cold wind chill readings.
The winds must blow pretty good there in the summer too.
How else does their state bird, the mosquito, take flight ?
A touch of humor can’t hurt ?
The focus on PV solar in Minnesota arises from Geroge K’s comment that Solar was doing well in Minnesota. That caused a mad rush here to try and prove that just can’t be. But the data says it is doing just fine. Wind is also doing fine in Minnesota, providing over 23% of the electricity generation – More than natural gas.
Ganon – done get over impressed by the average.
As previously noted, the capacity factor for Solar during the winter months in Minnesota less than 10%,
The capacity factor for wind during the winter is also very low. During the hours of 3am until approximate 9am , the wind in Minnesota is extremely low.
Try to calculate how much storage is needed for those 5-6 hours with little or no solar or wind and insufficient wind and solar during the other 18 hours to charge the backup batteries
Joe,
Evidence? “Very low” is not a number. Wind provides 24% of Minnesota’s electrical energy. They have figured it out, even if you haven’t. But then you are so totally biased that you can’t figure out much of anything.
The real point that you continually ignore – every kWh of electricity generated by renewables is a kWh worth of (non-renewable) fossil fuel burning and concomitant pollution that doesn’t have to happen.
EIA seems to think that wind capacity factor in the upper plains, including Minnesota, is greatest in the Winter. You’ll have to excuse me if I believe EIA instead of your made-up, unsupported person opinions.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54819
Would it make sense to ring an electricity-generating dam and downstream of it with windmills that, instead of making electricity, pump water from downstream into the reservoir?
Yes, almost anywhere there is a hydroelectric dam, and somewhere downstream a holding pond of modest capacity. The windmills/farm can be dual purpose, contributing to the grid but back pumping during low demand or high generation times. Good example would be the existing wind farms in northern Oregon/southern Washington coupled with the Columbia River hydro projects next to them. Incidentally, it is fairly desolate and, being east of the Cascades, has lots of sunshine. Tell me what is wrong with large (or moderate) scale integrated solar-wind-hydro systems.
I’ve wondered if it would even be cost-effective in some cases to build the dam and reservoir, in association with a wind or solar farm, from scratch. to begin with, all you need is a hill. when demand is low and output is high, the energy goes to pumping water uphill to the reservoir – instead of charging some giant array of chemical batteries. when the energy is needed, you run the water downstream through your hydro dam. unlike chemical batteries, it requires no special materials, and would seem scalable, etc.
The only potential issue is water rights/usage, especially in the West. I would also want to know the cost, but that’s just me.
Dan
The cost of pumped storage on a greenfields site even in modest capability sizes is very expensive. For Oz, about $20B for 350GWh for Snowy 2. One would also need consents and the opponents would be everywhere. The only thing in their favour is they are an order of magnitude or so cheaper than batteries.
However, it would be uneconomic to operate and expect to pay back capital. As they work by arbitrage and have significant losses both ways, either the power supplying it is uneconomic for the generator or the sale price makes it uneconomic for the consumer.
Orwell is very appropriate here “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
Chris M,
I’m not seeing the $20B. Wikipedia says estimated cost is $12 billion AUD, which was be about $7.8B usd. Sounds like a lot but the Vogtle nuclear reactor just came in at $35 billion. (Does that make me anti-nuclear? No. It’s just one project. Maybe it was poorly conceived / designed / constructed. And same might be the case for your example)
Still, it’s nice to see you quoting avowed socialist George Orwell.
Two things – A lot of Snowy 2 is already there – dams and reservoirs etc. Only adding more tunnels power houses and transmission lines – the latter wasn’t in the cost. The job isn’t anywhere near finished and already unpublished cost over-runs.
Second, remember pumped storage doesn’t generate power. nukes do. Apples and oranges comparison. Use cost of Korean nukes as a true estimate.
With regards Orwell; in the binary world of early 30s, you were either fascist or socialist. He was very disenchanted with the left after the Spanish Civil War and was a fervent patriot – reflected his class. The modern Labour party wouldn’t be his party. – he’d be a Brexit man
“remember pumped storage doesn’t generate power”.
That’s correct, it stabilizes energy availability and stores it for use at times of low generation or high demand. Without storage, electrical power generation needs to be built to answer the highest peak demand. With (sufficient) storage, it only needs to meet the average demand.
Chris M,
i agree it’s an apples to oranges comparison, just pointing out the big energy projects in general cost big bucks. also, i do not claim that this idea of a “water reservoir battery” can be fact cost-effective. maybe it will never be. i pretend no particular expertise. i just find it interesting and i’d like a few more data points before blanketly dismissing it.
as to orwell, we’re going to have to disagree. for example, in 1937, per wikipedia, he wrote, “I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before.” and in 1946 he wrote: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
what’s more, why would the spanish civil war make someone disenchanted with socialism, since the socialists lost and the right (franco) won, wound up committing widespread atrocities, and becoming a hitler ally? he may have become frustrated with the petty squabbling on the left, and of course he loathed stalinism, but i see no evidence that he ever moved away from a socialist philosophy.
BA
How much extra are consumers prepared to pay for stabilisation? The grid didn’t need very little of it until the unreliables started appearing. The pumped storage and fast start GTs were always economic (within the cheap electricity prices of the time) deliverers of short duration energy and reserves. Batteries aren’t.
Dan B
You can find information on a number of pumped storage schemes put in to provide stability and their operational data plus economic analysis by Google searching.
One on the Canary Islands springs straight away to mind. Massive EU subsidy on purpose-built facility to back up wind and replace diesel. Guess why none of the unreliables advocates talk about it now.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 21, 2024 at 9:17 am |
“Without storage, electrical power generation needs to be built to answer the highest peak demand. With (sufficient) storage, it only needs to meet the average demand.”
BA your last sentence in inane – still struggling with this concept called “Average”.
Chris,
And why is it you mention only Canary Island, and none of the successful pumped storage projects like Ludington and Bath County? I’d assume it is a strong person bias that does not allow objective evaluation from a person that claims to be an expert.
Back-pumping dams for increased storage is not new. They’ve been doing it at Grand Coulee for 50 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 21, 2024 at 4:11 pm |
Joe,
What are your qualifications to comment on my ability to understand averages, or are you just insecurely aggressive?
Ganon – Does it matter what my qualifications are when the logic errors and unrealistic assumptions are so blatantly obvious. You are the one that came here with the superior intellectual attitude and I am supposed to educate you on your misuse, misunderstanding and misapplication of mathematical averages? While average[s] have meaning, the use of average[s] are meaningless in the context of the subject you opine upon. Quite frankly its a sign that you don’t understand much of the basic concepts.
Very similar to Jacobsons 100% renewable studies, with countless logic errors and unrealistic assumptions. Though in your defenses, by comparison, jacobson’s misuse of averages makes you look brilliant.
How much electricity we should be able to produce by renewables over the average demand to keep the storage facilities always full and ready?
–
So, how much more renewables should we have, over the average demand, to produce that additional electricity?
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos Vournas | February 21, 2024 at 5:28 pm |
How much electricity we should be able to produce by renewables over the average demand to keep the storage facilities always full and ready?
–
So, how much more renewables should we have, over the average demand, to produce that additional electricity?
Christos – good to see someone grasping the misuse of averages. – Using averages, maybe 8-12 hours of storage max. Using real numbers, probably closer to 2-4 weeks of storage minimum
Looks like some people here confuse credentials with intelligence.
Joe,
Yes, your qualifications matter. Your unwillingness to state them tells me all I need to know. I’m not interested in unsupported person opinions.
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/B-A-Bushaw-8748013
Joe,
It takes intelligence to earn those credentials, and to do scientific research (and publish it) that advances a given field. I would guess that is why you don’t present any credentials.
Credentials are not a necessary for one to be intelligent.
BA
I was replying to Dan’s comment about pumped storage to partner with the unreliables. That is not for pumped storage to allow large thermal generators to run base load and provide fast reserves. Chalk and cheese.
I do know about the operation of the installations, having spent a bit of time at Llanberis in the 80s. That puts me way ahead of you.
Chris M,
Since you’ve put yourself “way ahead of me,” How about you provide references to some of your peer reviewed publications, so we know what you actually do – I’d like to know.
Well guess what BA, because I still work in industry, almost all the stuff I do stays in-house, most confidential. Even my presentations to EPRI workshops aren’t public. Unlike academics, I’m paid for real results.
Chris Morris wrote:
Unlike academics, I’m paid for real results.
But unlike academics, you will never be up for a Nobel Prize, right?
No David, I will never be eligbile for any academic awards, but at least I will never falsely claim to have won one. Mannmade changed his website yet?
Appell
But unlike some academics he actually knows about reality. You should learn about that part of it, not just 8th grade equations.
BTW Chris Morris, Fred Singer made the same claim about the Nobel Prize. Looking forward to your hate on him too.
Fred Singer:
“John Christy, my fellow skeptic and fellow co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (by virtue of having our names listed in IPCC reports) in the WSJ [ITEM #4]….”
http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2007/November%203.htm
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/10/shorter-mark-steyn.html?showComment=1413563721138#c5994386967060979165
cerescokid wrote:
But unlike some academics he actually knows about reality.
Wow you don’t understand research at all.
It’s pure scientists who have discovered the reality we know…. Current academic scientists’ goal is to extend reality into what we DON’T yet know. They’re on the cutting edge of knowledge, trying to push it forward.
Get it?
02
Do you think you will ever live down your sordid involvement in the hockey schtick scam?
cerescokid wrote:
Do you think you will ever live down your sordid involvement in the hockey schtick scam?
How many verifications, theoretical and statistical, do you need?
02
Where is the blade? I don’t care about GMSLR. Just here.
Show me the blade.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/plots/680-140_meantrend.png
If this is the warmest it’s been in 3.121592 billion years, why no blade?
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/plots/680-140_meantrend.png
cerescokid wrote:
If this is the warmest it’s been in 3.121592 billion years, why no blade?
Thanks for showing you don’t belong in this conversation. Ciao.
Appels post – David Appell | February 22, 2024 at 12:43 am |
BTW Chris Morris, Fred Singer made the same claim about the Nobel Prize. Looking forward to your hate on him too.
Singer’s and Christy’s actual statement
C4. MY NOBEL MOMENT
By JOHN R. CHRISTY, WSJ, Nov 1, 2007;
“I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.”
Appel with his superior scientific mind and superior scientific credentials gets spoofed with sarcasism.
Kid,
Why do you post the same graphic twice? Did you notice that the last 15-20 years of data are almost entirely above the linear fit line – that is acceleration, which is a physical reality and the start of a “blade”, which is understandably delayed from the temperature “blade”.
(Work a bit on the memorization of the leading digits of Pi).
joe -Apple got it wrong? not recognising rhetorical devices – How unusual. Looks like a failure for his credentials. Lucky it wasn’t peer reviewed.
Gannon
You do understand we are in the warm phase of the AMO. It’s irrelevant if you consider multi decadal variability.
02
lol. Translation…..you can’t answer the question.
You weren’t sitting by the shore in 2000 waiting for that couple of feet of SLR to arrive, were you? How many failed predictions of runaway SLR do you need before it dawns on you that you have been scammed? This is what I mean by reality vs 8th grade equations.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-07-05101533-down.png
There are always enough empty areas in every country around the world to occupy with renewables, either solar or wind. Renewables do not geopardize agricultural production.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The “experts” recommend a carbon tax on farmers …
The expert group on Wednesday told the Danish government to tax agricultural production by as much as 750 kroner ($109) per ton of emitted CO2-equivalent. It also recommended initiatives to help the industry lower its emissions, including afforestation and the use of new technology such as pyrolysis.
but …
A farmers’ party has stunned Dutch politics, and is set to be the biggest party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.
The Farmer-citizen movement (BBB) was only set up in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmers’ protests.
But with most votes counted they are due to win 15 of the Senate’s seats with almost 20% of the vote.
Even if the 20% in parliament is defeated, farmers in Denmark will happily protest again.
“The “experts” recommend a carbon tax on farmers …”
Seems the experts have already forgotten the fallout from the Covid crisis on agricultural products and the food chain.
EVs running out of juice in the EU.
Pushed by a slowdown in the pace of EV adoption, auto executives are discussing ideas ranging from pooling development resources to bundling businesses across European borders to better compete in the once-in-a-generation shift. The coming months are crucial.
Rather than muscling aside gas guzzlers, sales of fully electric cars this year are set to grow at the slowest rate since 2019, according to BloombergNEF, with the unexpected stall in momentum intensifying competition. Even for Tesla, the slowdown — which has led to widespread discounting — has made an impact. A 20% share slump this year has erased about $150 billion from its market capitalization — more than double VW’s value.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-20/vw-renault-and-stellantis-under-pressure-to-team-up-on-cheap-evs
Jim
Coming to our towns in America. EVs are not ready for prime time. Americans will flock to any product that is inherently superior to any other product. Some day they might meet consumers needs. That day is not yet here.
Increase the range. Shorten the charging time. Reduce the weight. Decrease the cost. Make them more functional in extremely cold weather. When those challenges are overcome they might have a product that will sell. Until then, it’s just another leftist utopian pipe dream.
The truly sad aspect of the entire EV and even ICEV in the US is that regulations have made even ICEVs extraordinarily expensive. In other countries a brand new truck can be had for $10k. It doesn’t have all the safety features and other add-ons, but it is a fully functional truck. You may say that’s dangerous. But if you are a poor person in the US, your only choice for cheap but speedy locomotion is a motorcycle. A truck without seat belts is safer than a motorcycle, so, again, the poor take the hit.
Our daughter’s 3 year lease payment went up $140 per month from just 3 years ago, for a smaller car.
Interest rate rise probably drove that.
concur – combo of interest rate increase and lower projected value at end of lease.
Second point – Purchasing a car is almost always less expensive than leasing long term, especially if car is owned 6-8 plus years. Vehicles now last 250k miles
Rivian latest quarterly earnings call…..lost $43,000 per car.
Just like the US debt growth-unsustainable.
The EIA publishes a report on capacity factors- Table 6.07.B. Capacity Factors for Utility Scale Generators Primarily Using Non-Fossil Fuels- that I use to check to check (to see how CSP facilities were performing).
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b
A footnote in the report notes that one can search their databases for plant specific data.
“Form EIA-923, Power Plant Operations Report; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860, ‘Annual Electric Generator Report’ and Form EIA-860M, ‘Monthly Update to the Annual Electric Generator Report.'”
Chris M,
I googled your canary islands example. thanks. lots of links describing it as a success and an example of how things can be done right. i see no sign whatsoever of environmentalists, or supporters of renewable energy, not wanting to talk about it. there is tons of talking about it. so, i appreciate your confirming my hope that this is a potentially promising technology.
it is evidently extremely important to you that renewables fail – for what reason i truly cannot imagine. Because of this, i am finding your claims and assertions (both here and in your previous posts) to be more than a little suspect. which is unfortunate, since i don’t doubt that you have expertise that one could learn from. but what is the value of all the expertise when objectivity is lost in pushing an extremist point of view?
The place I was referring to was El Hierro where wind and pumped storage was going to fully replace the diesel generator. Guess what, it didn’t. So the advocates redefined success and boast that they have run up to 24 days! without the generator. They mention how much diesel they have saved. No mention of the other side of the equation, repayment of the capital cost cost.
Now on the “success” of that scheme, they are getting more money out of the EU for an even grander one. The slush pit for climate grifters continues.
Yes, I read about El Hierro. deisel savings are perfectly explicit. the deisel plant is kept for back-up. you claim that it was supposed to be decommissioned, but in the absence of evidence, i find this claim suspect. as for capital recovery, i’m not sure i get it. what was the capital recovery of building Interstate Highway 80 in the u.s.? zero. so what? not all infrastructure is funded by capital recovery.
https://fedarene.org/best-practice/wind-pumped-hydro-power-station-of-el-hierro/
“The Gorona del Viento power plant reduces planet-warming pollution by nearly 25,000 tons and saves almost 7,500 tons of diesel fuel per year, according to its website. With solar installations planned by 2050, the power plant aims to cut pollution even further and ramp up renewable energy production. ”
what a horrror!
How about you go back and read what was said about the project when it was first installed? And I note you won’t discuss the cost of saving that iesel. The is why the pro-renewable advocates come adrift from reality. They have no understanding of the first part of cost/ benefits. The rest of the world can cope with the concept. Why can’t you?
The subject of climate-related migration has come up. JungleT is dismissive (“Absolutely zero evidence to support that claim”, “based on a fiction and distortion of reality”, “blatantly inane…based on pseudo science”); George K believes otherwise (“We are just starting to see mass migrations from changing climate”). George K is not alone in taking climate-related migration seriously; see https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2022-chapter-9 (Download the chapter).
Please resist the temptation to quote mine. It’s a complicated subject but, I would say, not so readily dismissed.
Fizzy – there are lots of claims / studies etc blaming ______ (insert pet boogy man) on climate change.
Its simply lazy science with zero evidence.
Regarding mass migration caused by climate change? there has been mass migration since the start of human existence on this rock we call earth. but the mass migration in the last 100 years due to climate change? really.
A good example was the highly touted study of vietnamese migration out of the mekong delta/out of the rice farming due to climate change. A quick examination of world history is that humans have always migrated off the farms into the industrialized centers as the society develops an industrialized society.
The point is that most all the studies claiming global warming causes X are pure crap -It doesnt take a lot of brain power to recognize the crap. That UN study is another example. Agenda first, actual evidence later.
Read victor hansens book on the second world wars. Excellent first chapter on the geopolitical history of war since the greeks. Should put to rest the claim that global warming is causing more wars. Just another example of junk pseudo science.
As I said (or meant to say), Joe the-non-scientist is dismissive. Saves reading, I suppose.
I’m not an east coast person. However I did live in NJ 3 years and I read housing related comments by Floridians.
My impression is a segment of Northeasterners tend to migrate to the southeast, Florida in particular, when they get older. In general older folks, statistically speaking, tend to migrate to warmer climates. Common knowledge ?
Texas and Arizona have had some brutal summers recently.
If Canada warms and the US Southlands warm there could be migration north by non elderly people. Younger folks aren’t bothered that much by cold weather so long as not homeless.
Yes pure speculation but sounds plausible ?
fizzy | February 21, 2024 at 8:56 pm |
As I said (or meant to say), Joe the-non-scientist is dismissive. Saves reading, I suppose.
Fizzy – I encourage you to read – develop a broader understanding of larger range of topics. provides valuable insight to recognize junk science such as climate change is causing mass migration.
While parts of climate science are quite valid, far too much is junk science
Thanks for the advice, Joe. Much appreciated.
Joe, You’ve already demonstrated that you don’t have the credentials or knowledge to pass judgements on science. As usual, all you’ve got is highly biased person opinions without supporting evidence.
While parts of climate science are quite valid, far too much is junk science
A tax accountant doesn’t get to make that judgement unless he shows his work in peer reviewed journals.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 21, 2024 at 9:44 pm |
Joe, You’ve already demonstrated that you don’t have the credentials or knowledge to pass judgements on science. As usual, all you’ve got is highly biased person opinions without supporting evidence.
David Appell | February 21, 2024 at 11:51 pm |
While parts of climate science are quite valid, far too much is junk science
A tax accountant doesn’t get to make that judgement unless he shows his work in peer reviewed journals.
In response to Ganon and Apple –
I have more than sufficient scientific knowledge and experience to point out junk science.
Apple – you keep praising peer review – yet you fail to notice to volume of juck science that passes through peer review. Further you worship much of the junk science in spite of the obvious errors I have pointed out.
Joe,
“I have more than sufficient scientific knowledge and experience to point out junk science.”
You haven’t demonstrated that, and preposterous claims without evidence have no value.
BA Bushaw:
“I have more than sufficient scientific knowledge and experience to point out junk science”
YOU are delusional, and cannot even recognize the junk science that you are supporting!
https://doi.org/wjarr.2023.19.3.1996
The premise that SO2 aerosols are the control knob of our climate is falsifiable (capable of being empirically tested) and has been tested and validated hundreds of times by both Nature and man).
And as you should be aware, there can be only ONE correct explanation for a given problem, in this instance, Climate Change.
BA Bushaw (ganon1950) | February 22, 2024 at 9:49 am |
Joe,
“I have more than sufficient scientific knowledge and experience to point out junk science.”
You haven’t demonstrated that, and preposterous claims without evidence have no value.
Yet ganon & GK are the one who makes the preposterous claims without scientific evidence such as
Climate change is causing mass migration
Fossil fuels get $6T a year in subsidies.
or Averages are good metrics for measuring renewables.
In spite of their superior scientific credentials, both repeatedly get spoofed by junk science – They even continue to defend the junk science –
Joe,
We defend the science, because it isn’t junk science, even though some try to claim that it is.
Besides, we have the qualifications to evaluate the science. You have not presented the credentials, nor exhibited knowledge, to do the same.
I’ve spent a lifetime writing and reviewing scientific proposals, and reading, writing, and reviewing scientific research papers. As a result, I am quite good at discerning junk science (in most physical sciences) – much to the distress of some of the denizens here.
BA Bushaw,
“I’ve spent a lifetime writing and reviewing scientific proposals, and reading, writing, and reviewing scientific research papers. As a result, I am quite good at discerning junk science (in most physical sciences) – much to the distress of some of the denizens here.”
–
So you are quite good at discerning junk science…
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Ganon’s comment _ “I’ve spent a lifetime writing and reviewing scientific proposals, and reading, writing, and reviewing scientific research papers. As a result, I am quite good at discerning junk science (in most physical sciences) – much to the distress of some of the denizens here.”
good – then explain why you have repetitively demonstrated a poor understanding of renewables ( consistent misuse of average[s]
Explain your repetitive defense of the junk science such as the $6t fossil fuel subsidy or the GK mass migration or the mass species extinction from climate change.
You may have been an accomplished scientist at one time.
Typical contentless reply from Joe.
* I defended the $7T FF subsidy with a reference that gave a breakdown and description. It’s not science, and I don’t care if you don’t understand it or like it.
* An average is a well-defined quantity and the 1st pole of a distribution. I didn’t misuse it, I used it.
* I defend the mass migration because it is documented that it is already happening and is supported by numerous peer reviewed publication, including a few from NATURE that have been cited here.
* Similarly, species extinctions are already underway, with plenty of papers on it. There is also the record of past mass extinctions and their relationship to climate, which have been investigated in great detail.
Finally, I’ll believe multiple peer reviewed papers before some unknown who calls himself “Joethenonclimatescientist” and rarely provides evidence or specifications for his claims. The extremely biased, repetitive personal opinions and the aggressive, unfounded personal attacks are getting boring.
Ciao. nlm
ganon
“ I’ve spent a lifetime writing and reviewing scientific proposals, and reading, writing, and reviewing scientific research papers. As a result, I am quite good at discerning junk science (in most physical sciences) – much to the distress of some of the denizens here.”
And exactly how many were studies in climate science?
Ohh, none? Then you are in the same boat as the rest of us. We can all read. We can digest what we read.
Exactly how is it you have an advantage over the other denizens?
Kid,
None in climate science directly, lots in chemistry and physics, which are essential underpinnings of climate science. That is where I have an advantage over many of the denizens.
Yeah, you can all read, doesn’t mean you do very much of it. And how about the more difficult activities (writing, reviewing, original thought, etc.) that go with it.
ganon
One doesn’t have to do science to understand science. I remember helping you to find out about Antarctica’s contributions to SLR from WAIS. You thought it was only AGW. The same with changes in Antarctica sea ice.
The same with geothermal activity sitting below the Doomsday glacier. You were not aware of that.
Many denizens have been reading climate science studies for more than a decade.
“ The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”
Attributed to a wise person
Kid,
We all have things that we are unaware of. Thanks for your past help, and your errors – I tend to learn from them.
Sorry, Jungle – it’s Joe the non-scientist. I apologize.
Jim 2,
“Credentials are not a necessary for one to be intelligent.”
That’s true. But people won’t take you seriously if you haven’t earned any credentials, say, like a GED.
Perhaps you should investigate the difference between intelligence and intellect.
Jim 2 wrote:
“Credentials are not a necessary for one to be intelligent.”
What people without credentials say
Wishful thinking, BAB. (And Appell also)
jim2 wrote:
Wishful thinking, BAB. (And Appell also)
Totally lame response LOLOL
This is why I filter the emails of your messages straight to trash.
Thank you DA. I wear that as a badge of honor!
I would propose that if we are going to childishly (and rather idiotically) refer to renewables as “unreliables” that we absolutely should add fossil fuels to the list of “unreliable” energy sources. i’m getting pretty sick of this one-sided garbage. have we forgotten the gas-rationing in the 1970s? the gasoline shortages and huge gas lines after katrina and rita? the massive price swings in oil due to geopolitical issues beyond our control? pipeline explosions? transportation bottlenecks? and we’ve had 150 years of perfecting fossil fuel technology!
that people want to critique different energy sources is fine and fair. But half of this blog seem to be pro-pollution evangelists, actually preferring pollution to lack of pollution! why do I say they actively prefer dirty energy sources? because there is simply no other explanation for this idiocy, fabricating nonsense about clean energy sources, vastly overstating (lying about) the costs, contorting stories about alleged disruptions until they are entirely unrecognizable. i swear if we invented free, clean, renewable energy at zero cost, half of this blog we go into overdrive looking for faults with it, trashing it, mocking it.
Solar and wind are the unreliables because they cannot be dispatched at a reasonable time interval to allow alternatives. All the other types of generation on the grid can. No matter how you want to fudge the topic, if you can’t tell the grid how much generation you will produce to within 5MW ahead of schedule (world-wide industry standard is 2 hours), your generation source is unreliable. The grid has to incur additional costs having more plant than usual on standby to cover the possible gap. So that makes your electricity more expensive.
Chris M – Your comment highlights ( or hints at) the deception of using “average[s] for renewables. Our superior intellectuals who have numerous peer review articles should understand the fallacy and logic error of using averages for promoting renewables.
Joe
PE and I can only do so much to emphasise the point about why the grid generation/ load needs to be balanced. If people want to be wilfully obtuse on this, that is their perogative, but they can expect scorn. Their lack of comprehension of this fundamental property is why they are never allowed near a control room. And we really need to get rid of similarly minded “decisionmakers”
I live in a country – Greece – which is one of the most suitable for the by renewables (solar and wind) electricity production.
We have plenty of sun and wind around the year.
We have over the ~ 55% of electricity produced by renewables.
I doubt we could ever achieve the 100% renewables goals.
What about the countries with much less sun and wind then? What about the countries with long and cold winters?
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Yet countries with limited sun and wind, the natural resources which are available at the abundance levels at some other, at some other more “fortunate” countries, yet some of those “misfortunate” countries have plenty and abudant quantities of some other natural resourses – they have plenty of the fossil fuels natural deposits.
–
Since the fossil fuels burning (the intensive CO2 emission) doesn’t whatsoever affect the Earth’s Global Climate, it is a pitty whatching those very rich-gifted with natural fossil fuels vast resources countries suffering from energy (electricity) shortages.
It is a pity watching those countries straggling implementing no matter what the costs is, and no matter how low the renewables’ efficiency at their local conditions is, and, at the same time abandoning the well operated “dirty old” technologies, the technologies on wich those countries have economically grown up and on which those countries economically prosper!
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
“Since the fossil fuels burning (the intensive CO2 emission) doesn’t whatsoever affect the Earth’s Global Climate …”.
No point in listening to the delusional.
BA Bushaw,
“No point in listening to the delusional.”
–
I don’t believe it!
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
BA Bushaw, I don’t believe it – you called me “the delusional”.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The average surface temperature is a measured value. So we know what the planets and moons the average surface temperatures are.
And yes, Energy in = Energy out, but the energy interacts with surfaces’ matter. When interacting the average surface temperature occurs.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
“For Earth the energy in and energy out both have a total flux close to 240W/m², which corresponds to an average surface temperature of 255K.”
Earth’s Te =255K, it is not average surface temperature, but it is (by definition) the Earth’s uniform surface effective temperature.
When applying Φ =0,47 we shall have Earth’s the corrected effective temperature Te.correct =210K which is much lower
than Earth’s Te =255K.
What Φ =0,47 does, is to correct Earth’s effective temperature, because the not reflected portion of the incident on the planet solar flux is not
Energy in = (1 -a)So W/m²
but it should be considered with diffuse +specular reflection as
Energy in = Φ(1 – a)So W/m² = 0,47*(1 – a)So W/m²
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
EVs sales drained faster than an EV battery in a blizzard!
The EV Plateau
Political pressures aside, a rethinking of emission restrictions and EV requirements may have been inevitable after demand for vehicles pulled back more drastically in the second half of 2023.
As wealthy early adopters drop out of the EV market and more frugal buyers enter, a mismatch between supply and demand for plug-ins has thrown the initial growth curve for EVs out of whack.
Car dealers were among the first to sound the alarm on the sea change for EVs, turning away allocations of electric cars they didn’t think they could sell. Companies responded by pulling back on EV production and abandoning aggressive EV targets in Q4.
https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-is-probably-going-to-ease-strict-ev-requirements-2024-2
“ Rivian Lays Off 10% Of Workforce As Lucid Production Underwhelms. Elon Musk Expects Bankruptcies.”
https://www.investors.com/news/rivian-stock-ev-startup-lays-off-workers-lucid-production-forecast/
Capital flows to opportunity.
European farmers across the continent have protested against national governments and the European Union (EU) over cheap imports and green agricultural policies that are undermining their livelihoods.
Countries including Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic have all engaged in disruptive demonstrations to vent their frustrations.
“We’re going to increase the pressure because it’s clear that the proposals we are seeing from the EU and the Spanish government are purely cosmetic and do not resolve the problems of farmers,” Luis Cortés, the leader of a major Spanish agricultural trade union, told The Telegraph.
Farmers have risen up in protest across Europe to slam national and European Union (EU) climate policies that threaten their economic interests.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/20/european-farmers-protesting-climate-policy/
From a 2006 WSJ article …
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113867853905960708?st=4pc3yb7fib8x8g4&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
It is hard to remain so consistently agnostic. “People for the most part dislike ambiguity,” Philip Tetlock, a University of California at Berkeley psychologist, has written. “We insist on looking for order in random sequences.”
Mr. Tetlock’s book “Expert Political Judgment” chronicles a 16-year experiment testing the predictions of 284 experts in geopolitics. From it, he concludes: “What experts think matters far less than how they think.”
Experts on either the right or the left who have a single, unified view of the world are more likely to be wrong, and badly wrong. Such “hedgehogs,” as Mr. Tetlock calls them, are less prone to self-doubt, more likely to dismiss evidence that contradicts their vision and less likely to admit to mistakes. “Foxes,” on the other hand, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction as inevitable.” (The hedgehog and fox labels come from philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who in turn traced them to ancient Greece.)
. Such “hedgehogs,” as Mr. Tetlock calls them, are less prone to self-doubt, more likely to dismiss evidence that contradicts their vision and less likely to admit to mistakes.
Describes Ganon GK and Appel – consistently wrong believing in junk science.
“Foxes,” on the other hand, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction as inevitable.” which would accepting the unknowns.
that would include our host, S McIntyre, Russel S, CM and others who have respect for all of science instead of the agenda driven science.
I would say non scientists are the ones that are consistently wrong, because they don’t believe in science unless it agrees with their uneducated and biased perceptions.
Do you really want to open the door for a discussion on the psychology of belief and denial with respect to science. If you really had evidence that ACC is not real, and that some of the predicted effects are not possible, then science would test that evidence and incorporate it if it couldn’t be falsified. Hasn’t happened yet.
> Do you really want to open the door for a discussion on the psychology of belief and denial with respect to science.
Why not? Belief and denial aren’t limited to ‘non-scientists’ and the ‘uneducated’, as you say.
> If you really had evidence that ACC is not real, and that some of the predicted effects are not possible, then science would test that evidence and incorporate it if it couldn’t be falsified. Hasn’t happened yet.
You seem to have put limits on the discussion. No one says that the climate is not warming, or that humans may have a role in that. The questions are far beyond those. How much warming has taken place? How does the planet react to increases in warming? What effects may happen due to increased warming, both positive and negative? What percentage of those negative effects can be mitigated with adaptation? What percentage of those negative effects can be mitigated with adoption of variable and intermittent renewable energy sources? What are the risk factors in policy formation in environments of high uncertainty? And many, many more.
To repeat, bias and cognitive dissonance are not limited by education or science experience. We’re all human. I see no reason to fear such a discussion, and actually expect many positives from it.
Bill,
“No one says that the climate is not warming, or that humans may have a role in that. The questions are far beyond those.”
False, lots of people that say those things.
But to your first point:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial
https://psychology.org.au/community/advocacy-social-issues/environment-climate-change-psychology/resources-for-psychologists-and-others-advocating/the-psychology-of-climate-change-denial
https://mediawell.ssrc.org/research-reviews/climate-change-denial-skepticism-a-review-of-the-literature/?pdf=73382
ganon … in a discussion with this topic, it’s paramount to accept that attributes such a bias, etc. are applicable to all. Do you not agree?
Bill, no I don’t agree. Attributes are only applicable to those that exhibit the attribute. However, I am definitely biased toward evidence based science and against willful ignorance that does not have evidence based support.
I believe most of your questions are being addressed.
“bias and cognitive dissonance are not limited by education or science experience.” I disagree.
PS ~ When you start with “No one … “, you are almost always wrong.
ganon … I appreciate the discussion, but I can only conclude that your bias and cognitive dissonance is very strong. :-)
Being serious, I think you’re not aware of how you frame questions. As I said earlier, most people on this site do NOT say ACC isn’t real. There are some, but most are concerned with actual amounts, affects, effects, etc. and what are the uncertainties, blah, blah. You seem to lump everyone into a denier and doomer dichotomy. Most people here are ‘from Missouri’. Yet, while the poles of denier and doomer represent extremes, those in the ‘middle’ are never exactly in the center.
Your last comment cuts both ways. If you really had evidence that ACC is real, and that some of the predicted effects are possible, then science would test that evidence and incorporate it if it couldn’t be falsified. Hasn’t happened yet.
Yes, it does cut both ways. The evidence (or denial) of ACC is continually tested, with results incorporated into increasing scientific knowledge. As for your “IF”, there is lots of evidence that ACC is real, very little that it isn’t. As far as I know, no-one has falisified the possibility of current and future detrimental effects.
Can you falsify the possibility that God exists, thus increasing scientific knowledge?
In my view the problem with the AGW theory and narrative is that there is no experiment that can definitively prove or disprove the theory. The models do not achieve this and I believe that it’s not reasonable to assume that they can predict the plant’s climate or average temperature 50 to 100 years from now. To me the real question is should we really be spending trillions of dollars, impacting the standard of living of billions of people and condemning the developing world to further decades of poverty based on climate science as we now know it. There are plenty of things we could be doing using tried and true existing technologies that would be environmentally beneficial while improving the quality of life for many beyond what we call renewable energy. Things like more and improved public transit, tighter industrial emissions standards, strategic adoption of EVs and heat pumps etc.
skeptics like to throw around the trillions of dollars and standard of living but it’s pretty much nonsense. gdp growth has been excellent. standard of living is increasing, not declining. and supposed the trillions are entirely mysterious. as to the planet’s warming, it was predicted with high accuracy up to this point. the theory, like many scientific theories, is hard to test experimentally. tectonic plate theory cannot be tested experimentally, but nobody doubts it. evolution also cannot be tested experimentally. nor can the big bang.
It’s easy to find where trillions are being spent on Unicorn Green projects. You just keep repeating that YOU can’t find them. This is your problem.
It is indeed a mistake to focus on just ACC. There is so much pressure on the biosphere from humanity that some people have mapped out the boundaries.
We have crossed 6 out of 9.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html
Best to think of CO2 as the critical ‘super catalyst’ that causes (indirectly) most of the disruptions in the food chain.
What a reputable organization. Do they employ Hansel and Gretel?
George,
Do you know that is a logical fallacy, to attack an organization without addressing any facts or information. Stupid questions don’t help.
Dan B
From the World Economic Forum, January 2022.
“Consultancy firm McKinsey says total global spending by governments, businesses and individuals on energy and land-use systems will need to rise by $3.5 trillion a year, every year, if we are to have any chance of getting to net-zero in 2050.
That’s a 60% increase on today’s level of investment and is equivalent to half of global corporate profits, a quarter of world tax revenue and 7% of household spending. A further $1 trillion would also need to be reallocated from high-emission to low-carbon assets.
“Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 would entail a fundamental transformation of the global economy,” McKinsey says in the report, titled The Net-Zero Transition: What it Would Cost, What it Could Bring?.”
George, do their boundaries strike you as totally arbitrary? Prove that they are not arbitrary.
P Duncan,
Are you suggesting that humanity shouldn’t try to clean up it’s messes because it’s an inconvenience or too much work? Regarding the economics, my thought is that “too much work” will create as much or more global GDP than it removes. Did responding to WWII create an economic disaster?
BA Bushaw, Is that you, who called me delusional?
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Canada has thrown $35 billion (so far!) at three companies (Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt) to create roughly 8,500 jobs. That works out to over $4 million for each worker.
Jan 26, 2024
https://financialpost.com › opinion
Somehow this kind of activity makes sense?
P,
That’s stupid. EV subsidies are to make them more affordable. That more people have productive jobs is the GDP payback I mentioned.
Christos,
Yes I did. I apologize – I really meant your scientific hypotheses are delusional. I don’t know you well enough to make the personal judgement.
BA Bushaw,
“Christos,
Yes I did. I apologize – I really meant your scientific hypotheses are delusional. I don’t know you well enough to make the personal judgement.”
–
No, my scientific hypotheses are not delusional.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Kid,
“You do understand we are in the warm phase of the AMO. It’s irrelevant if you consider multi decadal variability.”
Yes, I understand the AMO and know where its phase is.
“It’s irrelevant” (the upturn at the end?) – Yes it is relevant (although it would be more relevant if it was global data, not single point); it is data that can be analyzed and compared to the last AMO warm phase (1940’s) where most of the data is below the linear fit line.
And of course, presenting a single location is anecdotal cherry-picking that has little or nothing to do with GMSLR.
Thanks for the attempt anyway.
It wasn’t meant to be related to GMSLR. I used that tidal gauge to point out that if we have had such an incredible blade in temperature why don’t we see it depicted in that graph or any graph. I’ve linked for you before hundreds of tidal gauges and they don’t show significant and obvious acceleration.
Why is that, since any one gauge should be impacted by the global rate, over a 100 year period. But once the multi decadal variability is considered, nothing there.
I wanted Appell to come up with his theory as to why. He whiffed. Sounds like you have whiffed also.
It could be that a wall has been built around the gauge. Or the theory of thermosteric and Barystatic dynamics is wrong. Or perhaps the elasticity of the sea floor is greater than assumed and the ocean basins are expanding. Or the estimated exchange of water with that of the mantle is wrong. Or the estimate of contribution from the AIS, GIS and global glaciers is wrong. Or, perhaps most likely, temperatures have not increased since pre 1900 as much as estimated.
One tidal gauge is not cherry picking. It is simply a part of the whole. None of the gauges show a blade commensurate with the supposed greatest increase in temperature ever.
Apparently no one knows why.
This graph is from Jevrejeva 2008 which shows the variation in rate of SLR during the 20th century. Clearly GMSLR today is being affected by the same variability.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/1f4eb545-9034-4b42-a925-05cde05aeb44/grl24484-fig-0004.png
Kid,
They show it, you just don’t see it because there is too much noise to see it in the data from a single location. You need to look at them all added together to reduce noise and see what is happening for the whole world.
As for no acceleration (blade). It is there, but still small. As for being different from the surface temperature. Are you familiar with thermal inertia and heat capacity of oceans and ice vs. that of the atmosphere?
I know you don’t want GMSLR to be accelerating, but it is.
” None of the gauges show a blade commensurate with the supposed greatest increase in temperature ever.
Apparently no one knows why.
Maybe because it isn’t (yet) the “greatest increase in temperature ever (such blatant exaggeration is not convincing). Although it may be one of the fastest (thus far) for its magnitude.
I think you must mean that you don’t know why. Clue: it has to do, not with temperature, but with integrated heat flux required to heat large masses of solids or liquids as compared to gases.
ganon
You continue to deflect when you are stumped.
As I have pointed out, the satellite data have major uncertainties.
This study discusses the magnitude of that uncertainty.
“ As shown in figure 3, the GMSL is accelerating [3,83,87,94,98]. Over the altimetry era, the estimated acceleration ranges from 0.084 ± 0.025 mm yr−2 [3,87] for 1993–2017 (after correcting for the Pinatubo volcanic eruption) to 0.093 ± 0.01 mm yr−2 [97] for 1991–2019 and 0.11 ± 0.01 mm yr−2 [98] for 1993–2019. According to Ablain et al. [24], the uncertainty of GMSL acceleration estimates may not be better than 0.07 mm yr−2 (90% confidence level) for the 1993–2017 time span, a value about twice the dispersion range of the above reported values.”
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2022.0049
Uncertainty of acceleration is TWICE the dispersion range.
I have provided you with the Ablain study previously.
That is also known as guessing. And then we consider all those studies finding little to no acceleration, the past horrible analysis of future SLR and the tidal gauges data, the common sense conclusion is that it’s a fantasy to believe we have runaway SLR in our future.
Figure 3. your reference. The decadal acceleration is obvious and well above the noise.
Conveniently ignoring the quote, which was the purpose of the comment. But, why am I not surprised. Another deflection from ganon.
Because, the quote is garbage – I’ll go with the data, thanks.
Sorry your own selected data disproves your claims. GMSL rise is accelerating, as has been observed in many studies. Your false denials cherry-picked single point graphics don’t change reality.
Duncan,
It is important to think about what that spending means. this includes spending by corporations and individuals. but…isn’t corporate spending good? isn’t consumer spending good? if i buy a solar panel for my house, that is economic activity. it is a net positive. just like if i buy a new TV. Yet that is getting adding in to the “cost”. what if I buy an EV? presumably, that also is part of the “cost”. and yet, had I not bought an EV, I would have spent money on an ICE. So not only my purchase good for the economy, it is pretty much of a wash versus a world in which we don’t convert to renewables. the solar industry employeeing over 100,000 people now is good thing, right? yet that too is counted as part of the “cost”!
Danb
The answer is both yes and No – it depends.
if as Duncan below notes, the subsidies are generated using deficit spending, the answer is no.
One of the misunderstood problems with subsidies in the form of tax credits to the buyer is that those tax credits artificially shift the demand curve such the the majority of the benefit goes to the seller in the form of higher sales price. for example the supply and demand curve for a specific type of EV is$35k with a $5k tax credit, The seller is able to raise the price of the EV by approx $4k and the buyer is still buying the car at $35k which is close to where the natural supply and demand curve meet ($40k less $5K – yet the seller gets a $4-$5k price increase).
other common misconception is that the financing is done with stimulus spending, its similar to putting the economy on a sugar high.
Other common misconception is the broken window example – such as the cash for clunker program. Removing functionally performing assets from productive use before the end of their natural lifespan. is that really economically efficient? No
Joe,
I was sent a link showing that it will “cost” us trillions to slow AGW. Only a small percentage of that cost is government spending. My point is unrelated to subsidies since the vague “trillions” that get thrown around include a great deal besides subsidies. so either let’s talk about “cost’ in terms only of government spending, and stop throwing around “trillions”, or let’s acknowledge that the world economies will involve trillions of dollars in alternatives to fossil fuels, but that like other economic shifts, this is simply economic activity, not “cost”, and it does not lower standard of living.
The problem is that government subsidies are required to make solar, wind, EVs etc. economically viable. These subsidies are funded through taxes or national government debt. Taxes reduce disposable income available for investment or purchases, while government debt attracts carrying costs which reduces the availability of funds for the construction of hospitals and other critical infrastructure. This kind of activity detracts from economic growth, rather than supporting it.
Government subsidies are not required to make (construct) renewable things. They do encourage and speed adoption as well as help with early phase economic competitiveness, but they are not required. If you don’t like their existence or having your tax dollars pay for them (you could take advantage and get your fair share) – vote for different people to represent you in congress.
Sorry, but you are misinformed. After spending a number of years working in the North American energy industry developing and evaluating numerous renewable energy business proposals I can tell you that absolutely none of them would have proceeded without some form of government or government approved subsidy.
P Duncan wrote:
Sorry, but you are misinformed. After spending a number of years working in the North American energy industry developing and evaluating numerous renewable energy business proposals I can tell you that absolutely none of them would have proceeded without some form of government or government approved subsidy.
Do you think the fossil fuel industry doens’t get government subsidies? Both directly, and indirectly (they through away their waste products for free, even though climate change is costly and will become much so).
The fossil fuel industry is probably the most heavily subsidized industry of all time.
Here we go again with the “subsidies”. Most of the alleged “subsidies” are standard tax treatment for a mining industry.
Appell
“The fossil fuel industry is probably the most heavily subsidized industry of all time.”
Documentation needed. Otherwise just another Appell blowhard fantasy.
cerescokid | February 23, 2024 at 7:47 pm |
Appell
“The fossil fuel industry is probably the most heavily subsidized industry of all time.”
Documentation needed. Otherwise just another Appell blowhard fantasy.
Cerecokid – The documentation is those anti-fossil fuel discredited talking points. Those of us with accounting or economics or finance backgrounds know those those studies are complete jokes. Yet our superior intellectuals miss the obvious
The Federal and State government has just signed a deal in with power companies in NSW Australia to keep the big coal units in service for more years. Cost was over $1B. This is to provide inertia and reserves for the unreliables, particularly from about 4pm onwards.
Now is this money a fossil fuel subsidy or a renewables subsidy? Sensible people would argue that it is the latter.
Chris, I would agree it is a sustainables subsidy. More important, an energy subsidy.
Ah – finally getting an admission that there needs to be back -up energy provided because wind and solar are not reliable energy sources, i.e. they are unreliable. The “subsidy” is just a tax by another name. It just comes out of the tax people pay, rather than their energy bill.
“government subsidies” is a separate debate. i can debate it, but since it is only a small portion of the supposed “trillions” in cost of switching to alternative energy, its really beside the point. the great majority of those imaginary “trillions” in cost that get thrown around here is, once again, BY CORPORATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS. This is economic activity. not “cost”. and it is deeply misleading to claim that it is cost. at most, the cost should be considered only the government subsidy portion of any purchase. if you study what we’ve actually spent on EV subsidies so far, it’s a tiny number. i believe in 2023 it was $83 million, or less than 1/1,000th of that trillion dollar number.
Lots of talk here of “junk science”. Joe-the-nonscientist seems to have a good handle on it. Help me out Joe, how do *you* tell junk science from the real thing?
fizzy – fizzy | February 22, 2024 at 6:47 pm | Reply
Lots of talk here of “junk science”. Joe-the-nonscientist seems to have a good handle on it. Help me out Joe, how do *you* tell junk science from the real thing?
Fizzy – The first point is that I dont criticize good science.
Most junk science is so obviously junk that only our superior intellectuals can believe its true. Most junk science is simply implausible. What is more astonishing is the willingness to defend obviously crap.
joe,
you say “most junk science is simply implausible”.
that the universe was created from a singularity in the big bang seems pretty implausible to me. so…i guess i’m smarter than all the physicists who say it is what happened, and declare it to be wrong.
DanB
I have never negatively commented on any plausible scientific theory or scientific study.
I have only negatively commented on what is obvious junk science – and I have given sufficient basis for the junk science, at sufficient basis that anyone with a basic understanding of the subject matter would quickly grasp why the specific study was junk science. An honest evaluation of those studies reveals the junk nature.
an excellent starting point for developing the skills to recognize junk science is the Bell McDermott study on the increase in premature mortality in 96 US cities due increases in ground level ozone.
That particular study is definitely not junk science and the authors definitely appear to try to get the right answer. However, they overstated the conclusion by approximately 50%+ percent because they did not properly account other factors.
Now compare that study and the methodology used with the recent 12% asthma cases caused by Gas stove study. That is a study that went through peer review. Yet it is a blatant example of junk science, if not outright academic fraud.
Same with the mass migration caused by climate change. Those studies ignore the geopolitical events and attribute the migration to climate change – simply lazy political science.
A dominant theme of junk science studies is the political agenda masquerating as science
Yeah, Joe the non-scientist thinks he is qualified to judge science without ever presenting evidence for his claim. Psychologists have names for it: “illusory superiority” and the Dunning-Krueger effect. Please tell us what your qualifications you have to judge scientific work.
BA Bushaw,
“Yeah, Joe the non-scientist thinks he is qualified to judge science without ever presenting evidence for his claim. Psychologists have names for it: “illusory superiority” and the Dunning-Krueger effect. Please tell us what your qualifications you have to judge scientific work.”
–
–
BA Bushaw called me delusional. When I had protested :
“Christos,
Yes I did. I apologize – I really meant your scientific hypotheses are delusional. I don’t know you well enough to make the personal judgement.”
–
No, my scientific hypotheses are not delusional.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Joe: “Same with the mass migration caused by climate change. Those studies ignore the geopolitical events and attribute the migration to climate change…”
No they don’t. I suspect you are confusing journalism with scholarly research. Or your reading of the literature is…lazy.
In any case, your response that “…junk science is so obviously junk…” doesn’t help me. I was hoping you would give me some reason to respect your opinions. That answer is not enough.
Fizzy – mass migration has been going on since the dawn of human civilization. What would think has changed the dynamics of migration since the dawn of civilization that the same migration is now caused by human induced climate change
So I guess “climate change” isn’t happening in Europe and the US. That seems to be where all these “climate change” migrants are going. I always thought “climate change” was a global affair. Silly me.
Joe,
Climate change causes migration, the cause doesn’t matter. But, it just happens that current climate change is largely caused by human GHG emissions.
JIm2,
“I always thought “climate change” was a global affair.”
It is – some places get hotter, some colder, some drier, some wetter; and boundaries between them move.
Yeah all that implausible (to Joe) science like quantum mechanics and general relativity that is crap. I have an alternative definition – junk science is science that joe doesn’t like, but doesn’t want to talk about with specifics or evidence.
Joe the-non-scientist says: “…mass migration has been going on since the dawn of human civilization.”
Certainly true. Some of it related to climate change, e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-04510-0.pdf, any many other instances.
“What…has changed the dynamics of migration since the dawn of civilization…[?]”
Us causing the climate change. That’s ’new’.
Can you think of anything else that ‘always happened’ but is happening differently now, because of us?
Joe, would you be happier if people said “is a factor” rather than “caused by”?
Fixxy – I would be happier of the agenda driven scientists would be honest and explore all the evidence. Too much of the research is based on myopic tunnel vision of “climate change”
The migration over the last 50-100 years has been driven by geopolitical factors. There is little or no credible evidence that climate change has been responsible for any migration, at least not any evidence that stands up to scrutiny.
this study on Vietnam is a prime example of agenda driven science study of migration caused by climate change. It doesnt stand up to scrutiny. Far too many factors vastly outweigh any effect that :”climate change” could have caused.
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-triggering-a-migrant-crisis-in-vietnam-88791
Joe-the non-scientist links to a study that he says “…is a prime example of agenda driven science study of migration caused by climate change. It doesnt stand up to scrutiny.”
So an anonymous blog commenter criticizes another blog post and calls it an “agenda driven science study”. Not the way I would normally investigate a scientific subject, but let’s pursue it anyway. Let’s scrutinize.
Joe’s only substantive criticism is “[mass migration] studies ignore the geopolitical events and attribute the migration to climate change…”
But the article he links to states explicitly “…it is difficult to attribute migration to individual causes…” and “…every local context is unique.” The article further links to a (real) study that concludes “…climate change is the dominant factor in the decisions of 14.5% of migrants leaving the Mekong Delta.”, a clear acknowledgement that there are other factors. Two other linked articles explicitly examine the effects of changes to the socioeconomic system. The article further acknowledges the effects of poverty and political decisions regarding the construction of dykes and dams.
Aside from linking to real scientific studies, the criticized article offers specific data and anecdotal evidence for the conclusion: “All this demonstrates that climate change threatens to exacerbate the existing trends of economic migration.”
Readers should scrutinize for themselves, but I don’t regard Joe’s prime example of “agenda driven science” as such. Perhaps the title of the article is over the top; perhaps that is as far as Joe got. I don’t see any evidence that Joe has scrutinized the article himself. So, regretfully, I still don’t see any reason to respect Joe’s opinion on the subject of mass migrations.
Joe => Agenda driven non-science. It doesn’t work very well.
Fixxy – You miss the point
there is no evidence for that 14% migration caused by climate change other than the survey, a survey with the typical agenda driven questions. While at the same time, the migration is entirely consistent with historical patterns as societies evolve from agrarian to industrialized. Especially in the case of a region that has experienced war and internal strife for 60+ years (ww2, french indo wars, vietnam war and then communism).
The attribution of even the 14% remains exceptionally weak.
let not let lazy science dominate your believes.
Typos – let not let lazy science dominate your believes.
Should read – dont let lazy science dominate your beliefs or acceptance of weak science.
joethenonclimatescientist: “Fixxy – You miss the point”
Quite right, I missed the point. I thought it was that research on mass migration is agenda driven because it ignores factors other than climate change. That is obviously not true – research on mass migration does not ignore other factors – so I’m guessing that your point is that research on mass migration is agenda driven whenever it concludes that climate change is a factor.
So, for instance, any of the thousands(!) of papers on migration in the Mekong Delta (revealed by Google Scholar) that implicate climate change must be sloppy, dishonest and agenda driven. Any movement of the several million people who live within a meter of present-day sea level will probably be due to geopolitical and other factors, but not climate change. (Apparently this is obvious to anyone who has read Victor Davis Hanson’s book on war history.)
I’d be reassured, Joe, if you gave me some reason to regard your opinions as credible.
Trying again
“ The delta is under pressure from a growing population, expanding cities, and intensifying agriculture and aquaculture activities17. As the upstream Mekong river basin is shared between five other countries (Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, China) with their own demands on the river’s resources, downstream Vietnam has little control over the fluvial fluxes reaching the delta18,19. The delta suffers from reduced sediment flows from upstream19,20, sediment extraction within the delta due to channel mining14,21, and dyke construction that impedes natural floods by restricting connectivity between rivers and floodplains22,23, as well as accelerated subsidence due to groundwater pumping24,25, on top of already high rates of natural compaction26 and other land-use induced subsidence processes, such as drainage or infrastructural loading27,28. The resultant loss of elevation drives RSLR25, coastline erosion9,14 and increased salinization16,29, posing a serious threat to the current population and future development15.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00331-3
Fizzy –
According to a survery, only 14% of the movement is due to “climate change”. Its only a survey of low quality, yet you are willing to believe that climate change is driving mass migration?
Your other statement shows even more weakness of the sloppy science.
” Any movement of the several million people who live within a meter of present-day sea level will probably be due to geopolitical and other factors, but not climate change.
In essence, The alleged mass migration that is happening today is due to the climate change that is happening in the future.
bottom line, the studies showing mass migration due to climate change are both dubious and very low quality science.
there is little or no credible evidence that stand up to scrutiny that mass migration is being caused by climate change.
“there is little or no credible evidence that stand up to scrutiny that mass migration is being caused by climate change.”
So you say.
fizzy – So the alleged mass migration that is supposedly happening today is due to the climate change that is supposed to be happening in the future.
“ This provides a quantitative spatially-explicit assessment of groundwater extraction-induced subsidence for the entire Mekong delta since the start of widespread overexploitation of the groundwater reserves. We find that subsidence related to groundwater extraction has gradually increased in the past decades with highest sinking rates at present. During the past 25 years, the delta sank on average ∼18 cm as a consequence of groundwater withdrawal. Current average subsidence rates due to groundwater extraction in our best estimate model amount to 1.1 cm yr−1, with areas subsiding over 2.5 cm yr−1, outpacing global sea level rise almost by an order of magnitude. ”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6192430/
Cerecisco – good link
Thats my point of the lazy science that dominates much of climate science.
A major river delta which is going to have substantially higher rates of subsistence than most every other place on the planet. A country moving from an agrarian society to an industrialized society. A country beginning to use mechanized labor for farming requiring less human labor. Yet the mass migration off the farm to the city is due to “climate change”
its peer reviewed junk science. Honest scientists are embarassed.
ckid – That’s a good paper. Yes the MKD is suffering from multiple stresses.
Here is a good application for wind/solar.
https://www.carbfix.com/
I would rather sequester CO2 in such a way that it can be re-released in case we don’t understand the climate system as well as we think.
Yeah, that would be another application that could be operated with wind/solar, where intermittency wouldn’t be a large issue.
There is not any emergencies rush. The fossil fuels burning (the intensive CO2 emissions) do not whatsoever affect Global climate temperature.
–
Global warming happens because of the more uniform global temperature. It is getting warmer for some millennials now.
https://geol105.sitehost.iu.edu/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm
At present, the Earth is at perihelion very close to the winter solstice.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The triple counting of CO2 has run into political issues. IMO, CO2 should be counted exactly once. Only for the entities actual emissions. I’m happy to see this development, but it’s not enough.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to pare back a long-awaited climate-risk disclosure rule that has sparked a furious backlash from business lobbyists and GOP lawmakers, a person familiar with the matter said.
The final rule, which could be released in the coming weeks, is likely to include less-comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions disclosure requirements for public companies than the original plan, which was proposed almost two years ago, the person said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/sec-expected-to-scale-back-landmark-climate-disclosure-rule-00143046
Heaven forbid, that there should be understanding and subclassification of CO2 emission sources and impacts.
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