Guest post by the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Consider the Oldbury wind turbine, which WattsUpWithThat.com reveals was installed a couple of years ago at a primary school in the Midlands at a cost of £5000 sterling plus Vicious Additional Taxation at 17.5% (US $9694 in all).
In the first full year of the Oldbury White Elephant’s 20-year life it generated a gratifying 209 kilowatt-hours of electricity – enough to power a single 100-Watt reading-lamp for less than three months. The rest of the year you’ll have to find something else to do in bed.
Gross revenue for the year, at 11p (18 cents) a kilowatt-hour, was, um, almost £23 ($40). Assuming that there are no costs of finance, insurance or maintenance, and after subtracting 20 years’ revenue at last year’s rate, the net unamortized capital cost is £5,415.20 ($8,900).
Even this figure understates the true cost. The UK has hidden much of the cost of its climate measures behind a calculatedly complex web of levies, taxes, charges, and subsidies, and – above all – behind a furtive near-doubling of the true cost of electricity to pay vast subsidies (“yacht money”, as we landowners call it) to anyone connected with windmills. The website of the King Canute Department amusingly calls this obscurantist mish-mash “transparency”.
How much “global warming” will Jumbo the Albino forestall? While it is in operation, it will generate 209,000/365/24 or almost 24 Watt-hours per hour on average: just about enough to drive an electric toothbrush.
Mean UK electricity consumption, according to the Ministry of Transparency, is 43.2 GW. Electricity contributes one-third of UK carbon emissions, and the UK contributes 1.5% of world emissions. So the proportion p of global carbon dioxide emissions that the Worthless Windmill will forestall is 24 / 43,200,000,000 / 3 x 0.015, or 2.76 x 10–12, or, as Admiral Hill-Norton used to call it, “two-thirds of three-fifths of b*gger all”. Skip the next few paragraphs if mathematics makes your head hurt.
Today’s CO2 concentration is 390 parts per million by volume (less than 0.04%, though most people think it’s more like 20-30%). Instead of the 438 ppmv CO2 concentration that the IPCC predicts for 2030 on its A2 scenario, thanks to the Wonder Whirligig it will be 438 – p(438 – 390), or seven-eighths of a Hill-Norton below 438 ppmv.
IPeCaC, the UN’s climate panel says 8 Watts (no relation) per square meter of radiative forcing from CO2 and other bad things (p. 803 of its 2007 climate assessment) will cause 3.4 Celsius of “global warming” (p. 13, table SPM.3) from 2000-2100 (progress from 2000-2010: 0.0 Celsius).
That gives the “centennial-scale transient climate-sensitivity parameter”, which is 3.4/8 or 0.425 C/W/m2. Multiply this by 5.35, the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation, to give the “centennial-scale transient global-warming coefficient” n = 2.274 C°. We don’t need to worry about warming beyond 2100 because, according to Solomon et al. (2009) it will take 1000-3000 years to come through, far too slow to cause unavoidable harm.
Multiply the logarithm of any proportionate change in CO2 concentration by the global-warming coefficient n and you get a central estimate of the warming that will occur (or be prevented) between now and 2100.
The Sandwell Sparrow-Slicer will only run for 20 years, not 100, so our value for n is going to be too big, overstating the warming the thing will actually forestall. But it’s Be-Nice-To-Bedwetters Week, so we’ll use the centennial-scale value for n anyway.
Let’s do it: 2.274 ln[438/(smidgen x tad <438)] is – well, put it this way, even my 12-digit-readout scientific calculator couldn’t do it, so I turned to Microsoft Excess. According to Bill Gates, the warming the Birmingham Bat-Batterer will forestall over the next 20 years will be rather less than 0.0000000000007 Celsius.
As the shopping channels say, “But wait! There’s more!!!” Well, there could hardly be less. How much would it cost, I wondered, to forestall 1 Celsius degree of warming, if all measures to make “global warming” go away were as hilariously cost-ineffective as this silly windmill?
You get the “mitigation cost-effectiveness” by dividing the total warming forestalled by the total lifetime cost of the project. And the answer? Well, it’s a very affordable £8 quadrillion ($13 quadrillion) per Celsius degree of warming forestalled. Remember, this is an underestimate, because our method tends to overstate the warming forestalled.
And that’s before we politicians ask any questions about whether IPeCaC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are wanton, flagrant exaggerations [cries of “No!” “Shame!” “Resign!” “I beg to move that the Noble Lord be no longer heard!” “What did I do with my expenses claim form?”].
Suppose it was just as cost-ineffective to make “global warming” from other causes go away as it is to make “global warming” from CO2 go away. In that event, assuming – as the World Bank does – that global annual GDP is £36.5 trillion ($60 trillion), what percentage of this century’s global output of all that we make and do and sell would be gobbled up in climate mitigation? The answer is an entirely reasonable 736%, or, to put it another way, 736 years’-worth of worldwide income.
This is an inhumanly large sum. So how much would each of the seven billion people on the planet have to cough up over the next century to forestall the 3.4 C global warming that IPeCaC hopes will happen by 2100? It will cost each of us more than £3.8 million ($6.3 milllion), and that’s probably a large underestimate. I’m going to have to sell the Lear ad go commercial. No – wait – what did I do with that glossy brochure about how many tens of millions I could make from the 30 250ft windmills I could put on the South Beat? Ah, here it is, under my expenses claim form.
“The Noble Lord,” the Canutists might say, “is deliberately taking a small, absurd and untypical example. Shame! Resign! Expenses!” etc. So here are the equivalent figures for the £60m ($100 million) annual 20-year subsidy to the world’s largest wind-farm, the Thanet Wind Array off the Kent Coast – that’s £1.2 billion ($2 billion) for just one wind-farm. KaChing! I think I’ll have another Lear. And a yacht, and a Lambo, and a bimbo.
The “global warming” that the Thanet wind-farm will forestall in its 20-year lifetime is 0.000002 Celsius, or two millionths of a degree, or 1/25,000 of the minimum global temperature change that modern methods can detect. The mitigation cost-effectiveness, per Celsius degree of warming forestalled, is £578 trillion ($954 trillion), or almost 6000 times the entire 296 years’-worth of UK peacetime and wartime national debt as it stood when Margaret Thatcher took office. That’s more than 1.7 million years’ British national debt, just to prevent 1 degree of warming.
Making IPeCaC’s predicted 3.4 C° of 21st-century warming go away, if all measures were as cost-ineffective as Thanet, would take more than half of the world’s gross domestic product this century, at a cost of more than £280,000 ($463,000) from every man, woman and child on the planet.
“The Noble Lord is still cherry-picking. Resign! Moat! Duck-island!” etc. So look at it this way. All of Scotland’s wind farms, which can in theory generate 10% of Britain’s electricity (actual output in that cold December when we needed them most: 0.0%), will forestall just 0.00002 degrees of warming in their 20-year lifetime – about the same as all of China’s windmills.
So there you have it. After the biggest and most expensive propaganda campaign in human history, leading to the biggest tax increase in human history, trying to stop “global warming” that isn’t happening anyway and won’t happen at anything like the predicted rate is the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money in human history, bar none – and that’s saying something.
The thing about gesture politics is that the politicians (that’s us) get to make the gestures and the proles (that’ll be you) get to get the bill. I think I’ll have another moat. Torquil, don’t you dare put that expenses claim form on the fire. Think of the carbon footprint!
I trust, good Viscount, your story is also well told without the mirth and smirk such that the larger audience, less attuned to the blogosphere’s way with parody and snarky repartee, can appreciate it and gain from it. You have spoken to the choir, tossed red meat to the hungry skeptic, but have not said a single word which will land easily on the ear of the believer. Say it again, in the language of the believer, and convince them. As it stands you appear a court jester only, humorous, but not compelling. What you say can change minds save for the way you have said it.
That said, I did enjoy the read.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 30, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Kadaka, the 8 million dollars is peanuts for something with such a potentially huge payoff.
Learn about Polywell fusion before criticising this. It all seems to be going to plan and last I heard it was the US Navy sponsoring this for ship power plants. If any kind of high energy fusion is going to work I think this is it(just my opinion). Thermonuclear fusion isn’t going to burn p- B11 ever. Polywell might, which means direct conversion with no thermal cycle and the waste is helium.
For extras, it will make a great spaceship engine.
Kum, with regard to your idea to change power supplies from AC to DC, the main problems are:
1) AC and DC generators and motors are totally different and cannot simply be interchanged. Likewise with flourescent lights and the bloody awful compact bulbs the EU has forced upon us. Incandescent bulbs would continue to work, I am not sure about LED’s. TV’s of any description would not work, neither would HiFis, blu rays, DVD, computers battrey chargers. The cost to change to DC would be astronomical and every electrical appliance bar incandescent bulbs would need to be replaced.
2) If you hold a wire with 240 volts AC or 110 volts AC (in US) the body’s muscles go into spasm increasing the strength of the grip on the wire for 1/50th of a second (frequency of AC currrent being 50hz) allowing grip to be released. In DC this does not happen and electrocution would be the result.
California doesn’t count large scale hydro as Renewable, Dave. Nor Nuclear.
If dp would be kind enough to let Anthony pass his email address to me, I shall be happy to send him the current draft of the scientific paper on which the calculations were based. The paper has already been read by eminent climate scientists and economists, and a few final comments are awaited before it is sent to a scientific journal. The paper will get its first public airing at a high-level conference on the climate – unusually featuring skeptics and true-believers on the same platform – at Cambridge University in 10 days’ time; then I shall present it in detail at a climate conference in Colombia. dp will be relieved to learn that the paper is entirely dull, except for the hilarious cost-ineffectiveness values. – Monckton of Brenchley
This site give a daily breakdown of the contribution of the various Renewable to California’s Total Demand.
http://www.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20110430_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf
One thing to note: California imports a lot of wind. That is just lumped in under “Imports.” It looks like around 14% of California’s consumption the last few days has been “Domestically Generated” Renewables. Add in the “Imported Renewables” and, and a larger contribution from Solar in the Summer, and my 19% number (that came from a speech by Jerry Brown, but I can’t find it right now) looks fairly reasonable, I think.
Andrew, I’m just talking about the move toward Connecting large Solar, and Wind Farms to certain major destinations via DC. Not a wholesale reworking of the whole grid.
For instance, LA, I believe, gets a substantial amount of “Wind” from Wyoming. It would probably make sense to run an HVDC line between that source, and destination. Possibly, an HVDC between the upper midwest, and, say, KC, or St Louis, or Chicago. I don’t know, I’ll leave that part to the Experts.
Talking about WIND ! ( something that comes out the rear end )
Andrew H says: April 30, 2011 at 11:56 pm
All off mainland interconnectors for the UK are already run at DC power in these interconnectors can flow in both directions.. I think this amounts to approx 6GW of dc input to/from the UK.
The technology is mature, It has obviously greater installation costs but the removal of losses of AC in heat quickly make up the costs. No one yet suggests using DC in Homes. (although most home appliances convert the AC to smoothed DC at first entry to the unit – these DC-DC converters are more efficient than transformers and also cheaper to build!)
Kum Dollison says:
May 1, 2011 at 1:09 am
Thanks for the link. Do those numbers already include “imported” energy.
Also, interesting the huge change in wind one day to the next, as judged by the significant difference between 1 AM and 12 PM.
Ahh…
The tabular data helps a little bit.
http://www.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20110430_DailyRenewablesWatch.txt
Kum Dollison says:
April 30, 2011 at 11:59 pm (Edit)
California doesn’t count large scale hydro as Renewable, Dave. Nor Nuclear.
—…— This is because CA enviro-crats do NOT want renewable energy produced, but rather they prefer that no energy be produced. Politically speaking, they cannot let hydro be called renewable, or they would lose “credit” for blocking dams and cursing river projects, would lose political power to destroy those dams that are already built for water and power, and would not be able to force money into their chosen “green” politically-funded and politically-profitable (though economically disastrous!0 renewable energy projects.
If they were forced to admit that hydro power IS naturally renewable, and is ALREADY paid for and installed, then your enviro-crats would have no reason to demand expensive solar and wind projects – which they oppose anyway based on right-of-way issues and REAL environmental damage.
What do you claim is the advantage of HVDC?
It is good ONLY for (very expensive) point-to-point delivery of power from one location to another. At each end of the HVDC line – assuming you can get permits for construction and right-of-ways for the line in the first place – you need an elaborate, hard-to-build AC-DC and DC-AC conversion plant and HV transmission transformer yard.
So, now – in addition to building 5 TIMES the number of windmills that you really need (since each windmill is effective only 20% of the time) you need to build a very expensive facility and collection transformer yard at the windmill farm, another at the HVDC AC-DC unit, the HVDC line itself, the DC-AC facility, the second HV transformer yard, and the distribution net at the other end to the existing lines where power is needed. One permit application for a single 150 mile HV line across West Virginia took ten years to go through. ….. How long will your HVDC lines permit cycle take?
Instead, I “could” build ONE 700 Megawatt combined cycle GT facility with double today’s conventional plants’ thermal efficiency on 20 acres in a parking lot – right near the site where power is actually needed.
Oh. Wait. I HAVE TO DO THAT ANYWAY! Your windmills drop off line regularly, no matter how spread out they are, and can’t be relied on to produce power when needed.
HVDC is point-to-point ONLY. Every inch of every mile in between is isolated from the intermediate grid(s) because the DC can’t be tapped off or touched. (Without building a third, fourth, fifth, sixth DC-AC conversion facility – but then you get ground fault changes in the return current too.) It has its place in the national grid, but the “experts” have ALREADY “spoken” based on 120 years of HV experience: DC is NOT effective in the “hope-for-perfection/solve our problems” the way you describe it.
Oh – By the way – there is NO problem to be solved either: Your CAGW “threat” does not exist as a problem/threat/crisis to be solved!
I love the comments related to green jobs being created. Pick pockets do this very well. They make you feel loved, embraced, and cared for while their slippery hand is deep inside your back pocket.
Job creation that builds shining fields of cheerfully blinking windmills but then leaves ghostly fields of dead three-horned monster skeletons on the back end of the story is not job creation. It is vote garnering targeted for the next election. Then the cycle of love and pick pocketing starts again. Like a man intent on abusing each subsequent wife he woes.
dp says: April 30, 2011 at 11:08 pm
..your story is also well told without the mirth and smirk …parody and snarky repartee…have not said a single word which will land easily on the ear of the believer.. you appear a court jester only…
********
The good Lord Monckton’s discourse is in keeping with British politics. It is typical of the exchanges in the House of Parliament.
My favorite example was an exchange between William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. I believe (and would welcome correction if wrong) that it took place during a debate in a regular session of the House of Parliament:
Upon being told by William Gladstone: “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease” Benjamin Disraeli replied: “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.” As the other members would have said: “Hear! Hear!”
Besides, if you can’t laugh at what’s going on, you would have to cry. During the last century Progressives imposed their various “..isms” on the world in order to create their visions of Utopia. They have all been failures from Argentina to Zimbabwe and England during Labor’s mis-rule between Churchill and Thatcher is no exception. Two of them, National Socialism and Communism, were particularly brutal. Their Socialist experiments resulted in the murder of between 145,000,000 and 200,000,000 civilians. These deaths were not “collateral damage” during warfare, but civilians deliberately murdered by their governments. The toll would be increased by tens of millions if you included the deaths of civilians in 20th Century wars, principally between National Socialist Germany and the Communist Soviet Union.
The progressive New York Times newspaper, referring to the systematic starvation of millions in the Ukraine published: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” –New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18
I enjoy the good Lord Monckton’s humor. It is a little bright spot in an otherwise bleak prospect. Progressives are at it again, trying to create some kind of pre-industrial utopia. I pray that our experience in this century will not repeat that of the last century.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
National Grid 7 year UK plan
http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/A2095E9F-A0B8-4FCB-8E66-6F698D429DC5/41470/NETSSYS2010allChapters.pdf
National Grid’s responsibility in the Balancing Mechanism is to balance generation and demand and to resolve transmission constraints. The intermittent effect of wind (i.e. its output is naturally subject to fluctuation and unpredictability relative to the more traditional generation technologies) coupled with the expected significant diversity between regional variations in wind output means that, while the balancing task will become more onerous, the task should remain manageable. Provided that the necessary flexible generation and other balancing service providers remain available, there is no immediate technical reason why a large portfolio of wind generation cannot be managed in balancing timescales.
In the longer term, we do not think it likely that there will be a technical limit on the amount of wind that may be accommodated as a result of short term balancing issues, but economic and market factors will become increasingly important, most notably the potential impact of both the interim and enduring connect and manage regimes.
dp, English humor is rich with scientific information and persuasiveness. In my opinion, the good Lord is at the higher end of oratory and debate techniques known to sway the day, and is tuned quite well to his audience. But to be sure dp is well qualified to offer suggestions, may we see your list of presentations?
Not particularly hard to find out; 2009 California generated 11.6% from renewables including small small hydro. Large hydro another 9.2%. California has some of the highest electricity rates in the country, increases in percent of power by renewables increases those rates at a much higher rate than coal. Kim should follow what is happening in England, where fuel poverty endangers and indeed kills thousands every year.
kbray frm Cal says
In spite of inherent dangers like Japan is now having, modern nuclear is the only good answer now, especially if one must have a “zero carbon” effect for the politics.
If one could successfully remove the “carbon threat theory” from the picture, then fossil fuel is still king, and we could have “business as usual”.
The current path is leading to a fiasco.
Henry@kbray
It seems there are still those who still believe there is nothing wrong with nuclear energy, especially if you read the blogs here in the USA. But don’t ask any of them who still sing the praises of nuclear energy to go and volunteer to clean up the mess, either in Chernobyl or Fukushima. We are still sitting with two enormous problems there. You can read more of my take on the nuclear energy crisis if you read my comment that I left at the bottom, here,
http://www.citizen.co.za/citizen/content/en/citizen/opinion-columnists?oid=187973&sn=Detail&pid=334&Nature%E2%80%99s-nuke-defence
Another
Wind turbine life cycle All the stuff anyone could ask for:
http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/wind-turbines-and-the-environment/life-cycle-assessment-(lca).aspx
Try this one for most recent LCA
LCA V112-3.0 MW
This is also confirmation that not all turbines use neodymium (rare earth)
ENERCON news ENERCON WECs produce clean energy without neodymium
29.04. 2011
ENERCON wind energy converters (WECs) generate electricity in an environmentally friendly way without the use of the controversial element, neodymium. The gearless WEC design on which all WEC types – from the E-33/330 kW to the E-126/7.5 MW – are based includes a separately excited annular generator. The magnetic fields required by the generator to produce electricity are created electrically. By design, and unlike the majority of competing products, ENERCON WECs do without permanent magnets whose production requires neodymium.
Forgot to include the link http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/index.html
Henry@those still in favour of nuclear energy
in case you missed that argument (referred to in my comment above)
here it is:
I just wanted to point out that the Chernobyl incident is not yet finished. All of the people who were charged with encapsulating it (300?) have since died. But they have now found that the site is still not save. It leaks radioactivity from the cracks and needs to be re-encapsulated. Unfortunately, the country (Oekraine) does not have the money for it. Can you believe that? How much money are we talking about here??
I am also pretty sure that we have not yet seen the end of Fukushima. Apparently they have the same problem as Chernobyl. However, unlike the uninformed workers at Chernobyl, the workers there already know what will happen to them if they go near that place. I am pretty sure that none of us here would be willing to volunteer to help clear up the mess there? That is the problem. If there is an accident at a nuclear plant, then nobody can or will be able to clean up the mess. From the beginning I had my doubts about nuclear energy, because of the waste problem. I am therefore hoping that any plans for more nuclear energy will be shelved. Some time ago, I discovered that the whole global warming scare due to our carbon footprint was just a big hoax. It appears there is now more greenery on earth than 50 years ago. Amazingly, I discovered that it is exactly our human carbon footprint that is responsible for this. You can check out my reports here: http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Therefore, first price for making electricity would be if we could use natural gas. The emissions from the burning of natural gas are not harmful to the atmosphere in any way. Alternatively we have to use coal. I think if we use coal and carefully remove the impurities (sulphur oxides, carbon monoxide, heavy metals etc.) from the exhaust, coal would still be a much better option than nuclear energy.
Wind farms paid £900,000 to switch off for one night
Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/8486449/Wind-farms-paid-900000-to-switch-off-for-one-night.html
A big thank you to Viscount Moncton for another splendid article!
I like Steamboat Jack’s assessment and defense of Lord Moncton’s seemingly peculiar style; the Brits do tend to be less tight-sphinctered than us North Americans when making a point. But, while I chuckle with the rest of you over the apt IPeCaC moniker, I would argue that it is far more important to repeatedly stress the UN connection, as in UN-IPCC, for example. This is mainly a battle for credibility and trust, qualities which the UN has justifiably lost for good on so many other issues, and a reminder of just who exactly is behind this massive climate scam puts things in sharper perspective.
Also, as the unelected, unofficial and wholly self-designated representative/ombudsman for any science dunces like myself on this forum, I suggest that important climate facts and related finances in such articles and elsewhere, should include simplified graphic representations. Think of it as “assistive technology” for the scientifically challenged. And, I don’t mean more scary graphs and brain-freezing charts so ubiquitous here, but nice, bold, clear and colourful illustrations which can represent important points visually and at a glance. So, putting my proverbial money where my mouth is, I’m available for some fancy-shmantzy *pro bono* graphic work for or through WUWT. The latter proviso is a practical necessity; there are many folks with many hobby horses out there, some brilliant and some outright nutty, but since I’m unable to evaluate most, I’d rather go with WUWT’s judgement and recommendations. Of course, if the UN-IPCC were to be interested, I’ll cheerfully churn out mercenary illustrations of sad-eyed polar bear cubs, kittens, puppies and Pikas writhing, bleeding and bleeting whilst impaled on that big, scary spike in Mann’s hockey stick graph. For a “small,” UN-class fee, of course!
So speaks the choir – rather than ponder my specifics, how about you consider my point and show me where it is wrong. My qualifications are irrelevant and the question impertinent. By way of example, what are your qualifications to question my qualifications? Circular drivel, Pamela.
I am a great fan of of Monckton but his tale will not be told to the believer masses as written because the venues they follow will not offer it to them. Such is the fate of red meat articles. Even if re-written it may still not earn an audience, but it will at least appear a serious piece of science.
Note too that I have not suggested he abandon his wit and humor that we enjoy, but that he provide and alternate copy more likely to gain a larger, less friendly audience.
Save perhaps for Sarah Palin, he is at the top of the list of people wrongly but widely assailed as a wonk, out of hand. His presentation style, while fun and thoughtful, is very polarizing. And you see a problem with suggestions to moderate that.
This is an opinion – take it for what it is worth.