Let’s just say the proponents of immediate construction of industrial-scale renewable energy generation facilities have a solution in search of a problem.
But based an preliminary findings from sketchy data Nevada lawmakers are pushing eight different bills to encourage the use of “green” energy, Harry Reid is threatening the utility company if it doesn’t buy more “green” energy from his cronies, Obama touts it in his State of the Union speech and liberals everywhere are demanding the immediate cessation of the burning of any and all fossil fuels in the United States. Never mind that there are 1,200 coal-fired plants on the drawing board worldwide.
Now, all of you global warming acolytes, stick your fingers in your ears and chant “la, la, la, I can’t hear you,” because I am about to cite an article in Investor’s Business Daily by Paul Knappenberger, an assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, both of which are dripping in oil money and have chunks of coal where their hearts should be.
Harry Reid tours solar farm in 2010. (AP photo)
Knappenberger says new scientific data suggest the threat posed by human-caused climate change is substantially less than previously claimed. He points to recently published research from a team headed by Dr. Peter Stott, a climate expert from the U.K.’s Met Office Hadley Center and previously an author of a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study that found greenhouse gases could lead to rapid increases in global temperatures.
But Stout’s most recent study found projections of an alarming rise in temperature are inconsistent with past observations of actual conditions.
Knappenberger writes, “When Stott and his colleagues forced the amount of global warming predicted by climate models to equal the amount of warming that has actually been observed, the future temperature rise projected to accompany human greenhouse gas emissions dropped rather substantially. In other words, the better climate models match the past, the less scary the future looks.
“Big surprise: My colleagues and I published the same thing in the scientific literature more than 10 years ago.”
The man from Cato says seven other recent studies have reached similar conclusions.
Knappenberger further notes the planet’s average temperature largely has remained unchanged in 16 years, despite the fact annual GHG emissions increased nearly 50 percent.
So, why are our “leaders” in Washington and Carson City in such a helter-skelter rush to cover the Nevada desert and mountains with acres and acres of solar panels and bird-killing windmills that jack up the price of electricity by as much as 30 percent and are so intermittent the power company must keep quick-start (cheaper to run but expensive to build) natural gas-fired generation idling and polluting for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine?
4TH ST8 
Maybe they know they are running out of time to bamboozle everyone.
Members of the “green” religion believe sacrificing taxpayers and ratepayers to on the altar of the sun and wind gods will lead to salvation of the planet and any facts to the contrary are heresy.
You’re inconsistent, Thomas. You have said that the climate models are all wet, but as soon as someone comes along that agrees with your view, you suddenly assume that he’s the only one with the magic formula. Let me say it plainly. NO ONE CAN RELIABLY PREDICT THE FUTURE CLIMATE. That’s common sense. The best any of us can do is to assess the risks as best we can.
The bottom line, which none of you has disputed so far:
1) Carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere. The severity of the warming is not predictable by ANYONE.
2) The carbon dioxide level is 395 ppm; the highest it’s ever been in the last 800,000 years is about 310 ppm. The excess is 100% manmade. It will inevitably go much higher.
3) The Earth has warmed sustantially in the past 100 years – what a coincidence.
Saying that it’s safe to force an active component of the atmosphere far higher than it’s been since civilization began is the ultimate in hubris. Your crystal ball must be be really good. Where did you pick it up?
Trouble, Rincon, is the USA cannot stop it. Even if the USA were to halt all carbon emissions it would do nothing to stop what IS happening in China. They are currently the source for 70% of the worlds new carbon emissions annually.
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2013/02/28/china-facing-uphill-battle-in-reducing-co2-emissions/#.UTlymNash8G
Check out a few of the links at the bottom, China is trying but they have way further to go than the US actually did. China is still largely a third world country though they first world economies. This is one hell of a polluting mix while our air and water are both way cleaner than 40 years ago. All we have to do is maintain and try to assist China, if our leaders would only realize it and if only China would accept it.
Thank you, no one can predict. So why spend ourselves into the poor house due to what may be a false prediction?
Amen, Tom. But then Rory couldn’t get rich, and I wonder if Algore would have to give back his Nobel Peace Prize and Academy Award?
Speaking of Algore, Athos, you might enjoy my “review” of one of his books a couple of years ago:
“You have to give Al Gore credit for one thing: Truth in labeling.
“His new book, “The Assault on Reason,” is precisely that — a relentless assault on reason, as well as science, history, Republicans, news media, the president, corporations, the wealthy and any ignoramuses who do not fall in line with his soft-core socialist friends.
“It is a 320-page daisy-chain of platitudes, sophomoric clichés punctuated by vaguely relevant quotations ripped straight from the pages of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and smatterings of pseudoscientific citations to prop up lame contentions.”
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/7812527.html
I’ll address China shortly. Your may want to rephrase your question, Thomas. Using your logic, nobody should ever buy insurance since they cannot predict the future. Do you have insurance on your home and car? It’s all about risk and consequences, not trying to predict the future.
You also make the incorrect tacit assumption that saving energy will be horrendously expensive. Not necessarily true. Hot water heater blankets are a good case in point. I see very few, yet it’s very expensive NOT to have one since they pay for themselves in 6 months or so. Do you guys have them?
It’s more like life insurance. I bet I’ll die. The insurer bets I will not. The older I get, the more expensive it is. At some point it doesn’t pencil out.
No, I don’t have a blanket, but sounds like a good idea. I do have solar panels, because half of it was paid for by ratepayers.
Actually water heater blankets in our climate are not so fast a ROI. Keep in mind we have several months where 100+ is the norm. If one is using Natural Gas this is not an issue. Our biggest cost is air conditioning, pool pumps, refrigerators, appliances in that order. We have always timed appliance use around the hot times in the afternoon because it adds heat to the house. The pool pump is timed to run when the air is cool anyway (night).
I signed up for NV Energy’s “Choose When You Use” program. Its coming anyway so its an early chance to see what effects it will have and its risk free as they will keep track and I will pay which ever was less at the end of the year.
You van address China all you want, they are not within our control. All we really have to do is maintain. Pushing inefficient wind and PV really does little to improve USA GHG emissions. Though the molten salt system has potential because it is a solar based UPS. (uninterruptible power system)
If your water heater is outside the house, that would be true during the day, but the opposite would occur on a 40 degree night. If the heater is indoors, then it’s fighting the A/C, which would make the payback even faster. Either way, it pays fast.
As for insurance, the (lack of)logic you employed applies to any form of insurance.
I should clarify then. In the desert overnight lows can be as high as 95F during three of the hottest months. And with gas it is REALLY insignificant.
And, Rincon, that life insurance bit was a joke. Johnny Hart employed it in BC decades ago.
As for China, of course China is producer of most of the NEW carbon emissions. They are the only major power that’s growing rapidly. Even with that and despite the fact that much of their emissions come from smelting iron, which we then purchase from them, the average Chinese produces 6.8 tons of carcon per year vs. 16.9 for the U.S. Their renewables sector is growing more rapidly than ours also.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2012-06-11/Renewable-energy-investment/55517876/1
For a developing country, they’ve caught and passed us in the renewables field in some sectors. According to Wikipedia, 17% of the electricity in China is generated from renewable sources. For us, it’s only 14.3%.
The Republicans though, give China a great excuse to avoid renewables if they choose to, but the Chinese are smarter than that. I just wish that we were.
C’mon Rincon, don’t Nyp it on me. Most of China’s renewable usage was from Hydro. And that bit is outdated 2007. My links were from Via Motors and current.
I have to share a cartoon I just received. No way to paste it in, I assume.
It shows a speaker on climate change with his bullet points: Energy independence, preserve rain forests, sustainability, green jobs, livable cities, clean air, water, healthy children, etc. A guy in the audience addresses him, saying, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
Oh well, I really didn’t expect you to get it.
So is ours, Steve. Hydro is renewable, so it’s not worthwhile? My last link was from 2012. Not recent enough?
Wiki bit was 2007 showing China @ 17% USA Today was 2011.
Yep its a real bad the you can fly into LAX today and NOT see the brown layer anymore.
All the USA has to do is maintain. Its not us anymore.
Here you go Rincon and that was a very old bit I remember from the late 1960’s
Hydro is as old as dirt and as reliable as coal. Get a new Hoover dam past today’s enviro-crazy wing nuts. I dare you try. But go with wind mills and PV then you have the magic beans they want us to buy at inflated intermittent prices.
Thanks for the link, Steve. I agree about the enviro nuts. Some even object to windmills because they kill birds – and solar because it takes up so much land. Maybe they would like whale oil because it’s a biofuel 🙂
I took the Wikipedia 2007 figures because I value source accuracy over immediacy, but if you want 2012 figures, how about this: China’s wind energy generation is the same as the U.S., even though their GDP is smaller and they are far poorer per capita than we are. So why do they invest so heavily if it’s such a stupid move? The answer is that they don’t think it’s so stupid. http://www.awea.org/learnabout/industry_stats/
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/29/wind-enegy-surpasses-nuclear-as-chinas-3rd-largest-source-of-electrical-power/
China is trying to clean their air up.
This changes nothing about my main point.
The USA, for the most part, is cleaned up. We only have to maintain.
Forcing change to occur faster than it needs to is only going to worsen things at this point. Its time to realize all the efforts of the last 50 years have worked, now, maintain and grow should be the order of the day.
And the Chinese are so good at building railroads too.
http://english.caixin.com/2012-03-26/100373087.html
Another look at China. Declining Wind.
“The USA, for the most part, is cleaned up. We only have to maintain” I find that hard to believe since the U.S. produces 16.9 tons of CO2 per capita per year, while China makes only 6.8.
Your comment about your link appears to be incorrect as well. Wind is not declining, it’s growing at a slower rate. To quote from your link: “The nation (China)had 17.6 gigawatts worth of newly installed wind turbine capacity last year, the China Renewable Energy Industry Association said on March 23. This was down nearly 7 percent on the figure for 2010. The total accumulated capacity as of 2011 was 62.3 gigawatts”
So let’s see here. You say that adding 17.6 gigawatts to a 62.3 gigawatt system is slowing down. Steve, that means they added 28% to their capacity in a single year. You call that slow??
And you like to selectively pick what you read. Here is another from that same link.
“Goldwind’s 2011 financial report said it had operating revenue of 12.8 billion yuan, down 27 percent from a year before. The net profit of its shareholders fell 73.5 percent to 600 million yuan.”
Yes growing slower is still growing but someone once told me to follow the money and watch the stock price if you want to know how a company is doing and what its future is likely to be.
With fracking and natural gas in the USA wind is on the outs. Here is a bit more from my you must have missed.
“Asia, North America and the Europe will be the markets with the fastest growth, and China would be the main driving force.”
I would say they are counting on a country that is far less interested in wind today and I think their business model is flawed.
Then we have a libby fav in Huff that says “China’s emissions were estimated to be about 9 billion tons in 2011, accounting for about 29 percent of the global total. The U.S. accounted for approximately 16 percent.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-2012_n_1792167.html
Stop being a doomsayer.
Yopu’re the doomsdayer, Steve. You seem to think it would be an apocalypse if we continue to invest slowly in sustainable energy.
My point, which still stands, was that China is aggresssively expanding the use of wind energy. Profits are separate issue, which we can address if you think it’s helpful.
The Huffington figures are extreme, but we can agree that China’s emissions are on a par with those of the U.S., but we almost triple their per capita emissions, so tell me again why China is remiss by merely emulating our behavior.
Sustainable energy is NOT intermittent. I have made many positive statements about the molten salt system.
29 percent China. 16 percent USA. Yep that’s par and the USA is the bad boy,,,,,, sure.
Funny, a liberal leaning person calling Huff “extreme” when its pointing out stuff conservatives have been saying for years!
Your figures are correct, Steve. I had 2008 figures and China’s economy has been expanding while ours has contracted. Of course, China is still far below us in per capita emissions – less than half I believe. As for “bad boy” status, the U.S. and China are enabling each other and will continue to do so. We excuse ourselves by pointing out that China makes more greenhouse gases than us while China excuses themselves by pointing out that the U.S. citizens each produce more than twice as much CO2 as the average Chinese.
I advocate only methods of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions that will substantially pay for themselves, primarily by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and increasing efficiency. The global warming is mostly a pleasant byproduct, not the major motivator.
I can agree with that. I would add I advocate technology that actually has a chance of achieving this goal. At utility scales PV and wind do not, while Harry Reid continues running a horribly nasty scam on the country with his push for those particular “green” technologies.
This is refreshing attitude:
“I advocate only methods of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions that will substantially pay for themselves, primarily by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and increasing efficiency. The global warming is mostly a pleasant byproduct, not the major motivator.”
Glad you like it. Part of it’s pragmatic. I wouldn’t mind taking a few bucks from the F-35 and put up some nice solar plants, but with our debt, we can’t afford to spend any excess money.