Global Warming and "The Early Spring"

Ed Scott, thanks for the links. Marc Morano was superb! Romm responded ad hominem all the way. I am ashamed of him ‘debating’ this way. Fortunately, the public is not stupid. Result? Another big win for the AGW skeptics.

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>> The Chinese could:
>> 1. Start selling, in all markets, their US Treasury Bonds.
They dare not – it would cause a run on the value of the US dollar, and reduce the value of their immense dollar holdings. They should rather raise the value of the Yuan (allow it to float), which would allow the US (and the UK) to start producing more manufactured goods (they would be more competitive), which is why we should eventually get a shift back to Western manufacture.
The point, in climate terms, is that the economic policy that the West has been chasing for two decades has ensured that more CO2 was released – because we all know that China does not give a damn about emissions. So the politicians go on about taking less flights, using smaller cars and switching the standby on the TV off – when their economic policy has ensured a doubling of CO2 emissions. Hypocritical, is the word.
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BTW – is everyone up to speed on how useless wind energy actually is, and why it will precipitate the downfall and destruction of nations? In short, wind energy is so variable that grids cannot utilise the power, not unless there are equivalent normal power stations on ‘spinning standby’ (burning and turning) to take up the slack when the wind drops.
Many people don’t realise this because it is not openly admitted. The BBC for example, being a thoroughbred AGW promoter, omits ‘variability’ from its list of wind power disadvantages. How about that for Green propaganda – just omit the most important item.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/adaptation/wind_power.shtml
Spain (a large wind power provider) nearly lost their entire grid on several occasions over the past few years.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article384768.ece?token=null&offset=12
And this is what happens when a grid goes down – civilisation as we know it ends!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003
Even more interesting is the fact that while Denmark has the largest ‘wind carpet’ in the world, DENMARK HAS NEVER USED ANY OF ITS WIND POWER!! Why? Because it is too unreliable.
So what does it do with all that energy? It sells it (at a loss) to Scandinavia, which has abundant hydro energy, which can be turned on and off instantly.
http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/DocumentLibrary/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
(Also take a look at the wind outages on the graphs. 52 days in one year without any wind power, and 15 weeks below 10% power in another. You cannot run a country on energy supplies like that.)
This is the Inconvenient Truth that Al Gore forgot to tell everyone. He is leading us all down the road to ruin, because a technological society cannot function without reliable energy – we all descend back into the Dark Ages within a couple of weeks.
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James P,
The point is that if the wind isn’t blowing consistently, the wind generators can’t produce a steady stream of power. This requires that power sources from a “spinning standby” system be available, instantly, to augment the supply when needed.
Nuclear generates power through water conversion to steam, basically like a coal / gas plant. What you don’t have is carbon coming out of the core and into the environment. So even the nuclear plant is going to have to have a spinning turbine on a constant basis to back up the wind turbine. Otherwise, you’re requiring that the turbine come to speed instantaniously, which is going to cause some mechanical issues with torque.

Roger Sowell (16:29:20) :
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Mr. Ellis, with all due respect, wind does not affect a large power grid in the manner you described above.

A quote from one of the links provided by Mr. Ellis:

The 2004 “wind report” from E.ON, one of Germany’s biggest producers of energy, explains why so much outlay has achieved so little. It points out that wind power is so unreliable that a power company can avoid blackouts only by keeping conventional power stations, with at least 50% of the capacity of its wind farms, on permanent standby. Wind power reaching the German grid in 2003 was just a sixth of the installed capacity.
Conversely, when the wind blows hard, the sudden power surge can burn out circuits and put the whole grid at risk. Such surges frequently threaten blackouts in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.
And the price is far from right. The German government’s economic advisory council has warned that subsidies for green electricity will help push power prices up by a third in the next five years.

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James P also note the economic problems cited.

From the 2004 “wind report” from E.ON I quoteL

For technical reasons, the intensive use of wind power in Germany is associated with significant operational challenges:
• Only limited wind power is available. In order to cover electricity demands, traditional power station capacities must be maintained as so-called “shadow power stations” at a total level of more than 80 % of the installed wind energy capacity, so that the electricity consumption is also covered during economically difficult periods.
• Only limited forecasting is possible for wind power infeed. If the wind power forecast differs from the actual infeed, the transmission system operator must cover the difference by utilising reserve capacity. This requires reserve capacities amounting to 50 – 60 % of the installed wind power capacity.
• Wind power requires a corresponding grid infrastructure. The windy coastal regions of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony are precisely the
places where the grids have now reached their capacity limits through wind power.

http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/EonWindReport2004.pdf
Not made up; cited and referenced.