So, How’s Your Green Energy Stock Doing?
Guest post By Steve Goreham Originally published in The Washington Times
Is green energy a fad that has run its course? The investment community seems to think so. RENIXX® World, the Renewable Energy Industrial Index of the world’s top green energy companies, hit an all-time low below 146 on November 21, down more than 90 percent from the December 2007 peak.
The RENIXXindex was established in 2006. It’s composed of the world’s 30 largest renewable energy companies with more than 50 percent of revenues coming from wind, solar, biofuel, or geothermal energy, or the hydropower or fuel cell sector. The index includes equipment producers, such wind turbine companies Vestas (Denmark), Gamesa (Spain), and Suzlon (India), solar equipment companies such as First Solar (USA), Suntech Power (China), and Sun Power (USA), and also utilities such as Enel Green Power (Italy) and China Longyuan Power Group. Of the 30 companies, 10 are headquartered in China, 10 in Europe, and 7 in the US.
During the heydays of 2007 and 2008, the RENIXX index was on a roll. Former Vice President Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth reached number one on The New York Times best seller list in July, 2006. His documentary movie by the same name became a worldwide hit the same year. In December 2007, Mr. Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world was whipped into global warming frenzy.
Subsidies and mandates for green energy existed for many years, but during 2006—2008 governments redoubled the emphasis on renewables. California enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006, establishing greenhouse gas emissions targets and renewable mandates. Illinois, Michigan, and other states passed or strengthened Renewable Portfolio Standards, requiring electrical utilities to buy an increasing percentage of renewables or pay fines. The European Union approved the Climate Action and Renewable Energy package in 2008, requiring increased renewable energy and biofuel use and tighter emissions restrictions.
Money poured into green energy stocks. Kevin Parker, Director of Global Asset Management at Deutsche Bank, talked about Mr. Gore and a green investment fund that the company created: “He [Al Gore] impressed us all at Deutsche Bank Asset Management. We invited him to an internal meeting in April, 2007 during which we discussed the issue of climate change extensively. A few months later, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his commitment. We then created a fund that invests in companies that position themselves as climate-neutral. Within two months almost 10 billion dollars flowed into this fund. Can you imagine? 10 billion! There has never been such an overwhelming success.” The RENIXX index rocketed to over 1,900 in December of 2007.
But the subsidy-driven green energy wave soon hit a brick wall of fiscal reality. Spain paid solar operators up to ten times the rate for conventional electricity with a 20-year subsidy guarantee. With a guaranteed annual return of 17 percent, every hombre entered the solar business, making Spain the largest solar cell market in 2008. But the nation’s subsidy obligation soon mounted to $36 billion dollars. In 2009, Spain cut the subsidies and its solar market dropped by 80%.
In Germany, feed-in tariffs of eight times the market rate resulted in the installation of over one million roof-top solar systems by 2010. But the 20-year guarantee also produced a subsidy obligation of over $140 billion. German electricity rates climbed to the second highest in the world and continue to climb to pay for green energy. To stop the bleeding, Germany cut feed-in subsidies three times in 2011 and announced a complete phase-out by 2017. Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations cut subsidies for wind, solar, and biofuels during the last three years.
At the same time, solar manufacturers built huge capacity to meet expected demand for green energy. But with cuts in subsidies, demand crashed and so did solar cell prices. Dozens of companies went bankrupt, such as German companies Solon and Solar Millennium, and US-based Solyndra.
The failure of global climate negotiations also drove the RENIXXindex down. Investors expected a binding agreement from negotiations, but no pact could be reached at the 2009 Copenhagen, the 2010 Cancun, or the 2011 Durban conferences. The current climate conference in Doha, Qatar is also unlikely to produce a binding agreement.
It’s interesting to note that a single oil company, Exxon Mobil, has a market capitalization of over $400 billion, or about 40 times the capitalization of the RENIXX index of the world’s top 30 renewable companies. It looks like investors are betting on oil and not green energy.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
I knew I should have got into the carbon credit scam while the scamming was good.
To late for me to rake in the big Green bucks, I guess.
I like how the graph falls perpetually around the time of the Climategate scandal. Would be nice to hear how the warmists explain that one away!
So, How’s Your Green Energy Stock Doing?
Ouch! Before I actually looked at the science, many years ago, I lost thousands on Astropower (APWR). Should have looked at the science first! Lesson paid for and learned.
It’s hard to figure out the total subsidies in the US to produce a kWh of energy. I have read that it is as high as $1 per kWh produced. Does anyone have information on how to find out in one place, what the total subsidies are? There’s FIT, Loans, grants, tax write offs for manufacturers, and tax breaks to purchase. I would like to have some numbers if someone has them.
Mario
Our (UK) government seems to be in two minds on renewables. Whilst still supporting them with massive subsidies there is at last a move towards the shale gas option. This is some sort of good news.
We should never stop researching and developing clean and renewable power sources.
Rolling them out on an industrial scale was utter folly. Looks like a bunch of economists believed their own hype and the warmist hype. Our governments are populated with idiots who studied politics and know nothing of basic engineering estimate.
Nothing new there then.
It would appear that reality does have an effect on the bean-counters!
Long may it continue.
Green energy (or renewables, if you prefer) needs to stand on its own two feet – subsidies will only delay the inevitable demise of anything that is inherently inefficient or uneconomic. The issue of green energy was pushed on the assumption of the carbon credit type regimes to be imposed (which are, if you like, yet a further indirect subsidy, by ‘taxing’ the fossil fuel industry). Whilst not wishing to prolong the economic problems of the world – it is only this that has taken the wind from the green sails – in times of austerity, investors (or even your average Joe) will only put money into something worthwhile. Clearly, green energy is VERY low on the list of things that need saving! and that is because it simply isn’t (currently) a valid economical proposition and they cannot make it so. I reckon we have a lot to thank the crash of 2008 for!
Coke:
Your post at December 6, 2012 at 2:50 pm says
You are right, but Climategate was not the reason for the decline in the value of renewables stocks.
In the months prior to the CoP held in in Copenhagen during December 2009 it became clear that a successor Treaty to the Kyoto Protocol would not be achieved. Renewables rely on subsidies and without the successor Treaty those subsidies would reduce. Therefore, investors started to withdraw from renewables.
Richard
I found this goldmine of information on total subsidies. Does anyone have any comments on the validity of it? I could not connect to some of the links to the source references.
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/hardfacts-uploads/NJI_IER_HardFacts_ALLpages_20120423_v8.pdf
So what you’re saying is if liberals had to put their money where their mouth is, they’d be a little more pragmatic about green energy? Liberals don’t want to invest their own money. They want to invest your money.
Being skeptical, I notice that this chart is an industrial index chart and that it correlates very nicely with the Dow Jone Industrial Index for the same time period.
I believe what you are seeing is the decline in investment in renewable energy sources which corresponds to the general economic decline rather than evidence of an overall decline in interest in renewable energy sources.
As long as you see a rise in the price of the current energy source you will see an increase in the interest in alternate energy sources. The real breakthrough and conversion comes when the cost of the alternate energy source is less than the cost of the current source.
I advised my parents, who are retired and living off investments, to get out of anything labeled “green” some years back. They talked to their money guy and he was still hyping the whole “green” thing, but did move their stuff away from self-described “green” funds.
Today, many of their friends are lamenting their reduced finances, while my own parents are still chugging along with a nice income.
By the way, I also got my parents into a sizable chunk of Microsoft stock back in the 80s… despite their money guy saying it was like throwing money away. I know he still kicks himself for not buying more himself.
I have no problem with cheap green energy, other than perhaps the aesthetics of wind turbines, which are not cheap, and the potential ecological damage of river barrages. Well managed nuclear and geothermal would be good and clean. But while carbon based fuels are relatively cheap and climate change is a scam, to me it’s a simple exercise of cost effectiveness.
Richard,
Thank you for your insight – Since I made that post, I was browsing the internet looking for possible reasons as to the wavering interest in renewables, and your post was most edifying 🙂
Gore and Strong both got out while the getting out was good.
Pulpit-pounding idealism + cynical pragmatism = Wealth.
Most of us have only one half of the equation. Either side.
Al Gore already left.
Michael Tremblay: You appear to be mistaken. The Dow Jones Has fully recovered from the 2008 crash (to within 4%). There is almost no correlation between these two indicators
Michael Tremblay……not even close to the truthdow fell by half and has recovered to the 90% level not your Green’s current value of 10%
The chart above is down 90% from its peak in 2008. The Dow is down maybe 15% from its peak.
The charts are similar in their big drops in the fall of 2008. The chart above differs in that it failed to recover most of its losses starting in 2009. Instead, it resumed falling.
Schadenfreude!
Michael Tremblay says:
December 6, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Being skeptical, I notice that this chart is an industrial index chart and that it correlates very nicely with the Dow Jone Industrial Index for the same time period.
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Ummm – no. I don’t think the DJII is now worth one ninth of what it was in 2007. It may be that the shape of the graph is similar, but in terms of value, there is no comparison.
I feel sorry for people whose superannuation funds invested in these turkeys.
Here’s text from an article on Seeking Alpha yesterday, for those who want to be fooled twice–or who want a good short sale candidate:
All energy, less nuclear, renews at less than 1350 W·m^-2 ~ 5kWh·m^-2·day^-1 More demand than that indebts the future as fossil fuel has done.
We took the Longyuan in the Enel all right but the Gamesa has nearly Rennix course.
This is just further evidence that the world needs a unified emissions market to correctly price fossil fuel use in light of cloaked future environmental costs. A realistic pricing mechanism for fossil fuels is critical to driving rapid and far-reaching development and implementation of renewables. Without such a mechanism renewables will always be vulnerable to short-term price fluctuations and short-term government policies.
Great graphic on this post: indeed, the artificially high price of green energy is the pointless burning of hard-earned dollar bills.
A green bubble, to accompany our late real estate bubble. What’s next?
Sounds good. Let’s correctly price fossil fuels according to their value in modern life
Let’s cut the highway fuel taxes to lower gasoline prices by $1.50 per gallon.
Cut the 75% “tax” paid to the oil barons in the Mideast, Russia, and the NOrth Sea on every barrel of oil.
Cut the 39% income tax paid by the oil companies every year on what they have earned as profits for their risks and their expenses.
Cut the DOE budget – and save money for us all.
Cut the EPA budget to, say, 2002 levels of funding. To their 2006 levels of interference in energy production and wasted regulations.
Great thinking there RACook. It’s forward thinking folk like you the world needs… Er, actually, no the world doesn’t need people like you at all – actually, the less people with suicidally short-sighted opinions the better. What, you weren’t satisfied with the hottest, most drought and flood stricken decade in human history, you want more? Insane.
Mike says:
“This is just further evidence that the world needs a unified emissions market…” &etc.
The world needs no such thing. CO2 emissions are completely harmless. If you disagree, I challenge you to post solid, testable evidence showing global harm as a result of rising CO2.
You don’t have a clue about either science or economics. You are simply one of the head-nodding lemmings, following the climate alarmist crowd by repeating their debunked talking points. Get a clue.
If renewables had any hope of becoming economically feasible any time in the foreseeable future they would be vulnerable to short term government policy. It’s the vary fact that they can’t compete without far greater subsidies per unit energy produced that makes them so vulnerable to government policy shifts. Your posited artificial price increase on fossil fuels is just another form of subsidy which does nothing to solve renewables vulnerability to government policy shifts.
Really?
1) Carbon dioxide has a variable radiation absorption profile. It is transparent to sunlight, but opaque to infrared.
2) The earth’s heat balance is determined by the amount of sunlight absorbed by the earth vs the amount of infrared radiation radiated.
3) Excess carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels to power industrial actiivity has accumulated in the atmosphere, raising the concentration of CO2 from ~280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to 394 ppm now, and the rate is still rising.
4) This CO2 concentration is higher than any level experienced in the history of humanity.
5) CO2 has drastically lowered the amount of infrared radiation radiated into space by the earth, causing the earth to rapidly accumulate heat.
6) Excess heat is causing increased surface temperatures and climate instability. 2000-2010 was the warmest and most natural-disaster prone decade in record. 2010-2020 will almost certainly surpass it, resulting in at the very least billions of dollars of economic damage – in fact, Munich Re, one if the largest reinsurance companies in the world, has identified greenhouse emission-driven climate change as the cause of increasing extreme weather and resultant insurance payouts, and as an extreme challenge to both the insurance industry (society’s principal risk identification and management industry) and to the global economy in general.
Hardly harmless, I would say.
I think the luddites are pulling a scam with “green” energy. If they were honestly concerned about CO2 induced warming they would embrace nuclear. But they killed nuclear when it showed potential to give the world cheap energy (energy truly is power) and are annoyed that those darn engineers found a way to make oil and natural gas so abundant that energy has still gotten fairly cheap. If someone invented a scheme tomorrow that could store wind energy so it was really useful these faux greenists would suddenly be up in arms about all the birds killed, the amount of mining needed to make the towers and blades, etc etc. Look at how they oppose hydro-electric and not just new dams, but the existing ones.
What they really fear is everyone having the same access to power that they do. They understand that electricity and horsepower give people personal power and they don’t like the idea of everyone being able to afford more power as it will diminish theirs in a relative sense. So every new thing that would give power to the masses must be opposed.
poor mike – another shattered victim of pre-traumatic stress syndrome
Mike;
What, you weren’t satisfied with the hottest, most drought and flood stricken decade in human history, you want more? Insane.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well Mike, I don’t know what the world needs, but I do know that there have been a lot of people in history who were certain that they knew what the world needed, and it didn’t come out well for the most part. But let’s put that aside and talk about what WUWT needs.
We need some good quality trolls Mike. You see, we’re in danger of becoming an echo chamber. Itz very tough for us not to become an echo chamber when all we get from the other side is assertions like the ones above. So, while I could respond by pointing you at facts and data which show that your claims are without merit, I decided to take a different approach this time, and simply ask you to provide facts, data, and reasoned arguments to show that your assertions are valid.
Can you do that? It would help us out a lot here. Can you provide factual data and reasoned argument to support your position? Provide evidence based science to substantiate your claims and perhaps change our minds on one issue or another?
‘cuz Mike, if you can’t, then doing what you say we should be doing would be…. insane.
I assume the index replaces the failed companies with others that have not yet failed. As some of these fail, they too will be replaced. Soon the RENIXX will be a list of the world’s 30 smallest companies with an average life of about 6 months.
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RACookPE1978 says:
“Let’s cut the highway fuel taxes to lower gasoline prices by $1.50 per gallon.”
Can you explain how you got this number and/or where you are?
http://www.washingtongasprices.com/tax_info.aspx
I’ve also read that gas taxes have not risen as rapidly as the costs of highway maintenance and construction, including, but not limited to, wages and materials. And states want to get some money out of electric vehicles by using an in-vehicle GPS.
http://www.plugincars.com/states-consider-taxing-evs-make-lost-gas-tax-revenue-106946.html
Of course if all the roads fall apart the majestic art of equine travel could re-emerge.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3160/2691152429_ca6df34921_z.jpg
“the hottest, most drought and flood sticken decade in human history” Mike are you talking about the Archean?
tallbloke says:
December 6, 2012 at 3:00 pm
We should never stop researching and developing clean and renewable power sources.
Rolling them out on an industrial scale was utter folly.
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What would have made sense is one state-of-art facility for solar and one for wind with annual published costs per kWh, separating original investment, ongoing operating costs and long term maintenance. All with the eye of lowering these costs until they could compete with fossil fuel. At that point there would be a natural transition from fossil to renewables. But that’s not what happened.
John F. Hultquist says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:59 pm
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In Ontario, for a gas price of $1.22/litre the tax works out to about $1.47/US gallon.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/driving-it-home/ontario-drivers-pay-taxes-lots-and-lots-and-lots-of-taxes/article2246486/?service=mobile
Sorry, I stand corrected on the relationship to the DOW – but there is still a correlation between the sudden drop and the crash in 2008.
The evidence to me is that the RENIXX reacted like it was a bubble market, in that it was highly speculative supported by extensive government subsidies, and when the market collapsed the index returned to reality. The continued decline is more of an economic response to the viability of the so-called ‘green’ initiatives and the economies falling back on cheaper and more reliable energy resources instead of investing capital in large costly alternatives. I don’t think it is an example of this being the end of the search for alternate, cheaper, forms of energy, but more of people returning to core investments in response to an economic problem.
It was all a scam from the beginning;
A few examples;
The fundamental efficiency of a photo-voltaic cell is determined by the band gap of the semiconductor material. All of the semiconductor materials have been evaluated for this performance measure years ago. They vary a little, but in general the ones that perform the best are also the most expensive (scarcity of raw materials, difficulty of manufacture, the cost of disposing of very toxic waste, etc.). Sure, there are a few alloys (man made combinations of fundamental elements) to try yet, but the chances of finding one with a conversion efficiency greater than 100% are ZERO.
Even if some really smart person found a PV material that could convert at say 99% efficiency (precluded by those pesky laws of thermodynamics,by the way) it only means that instead of covering BOTH North and South Dakota with solar cells to meet our needs we would only have to cover North Dakota. That’s OK since we would still need to fill South Dakota with storage batteries to take care of when the sun don’t shine.
And NO, Moore’s law about faster microprocessors DOESN’T apply to solar cells, it simply states that as transistors in integrated circuits get smaller (a result of better fabrication processes) the calculating power goes UP. Smaller solar cells collect less light; hence less electricity.
Sadly, there are no “breakthroughs” waiting to be found in the solar PV technology field.
These same basic laws of physics apply to the other solar energy schemes, the energy available to be collected is too diffuse and unreliable to power a modern world.
Moving on the storage batteries; if you look at the history of these devices you find that they started with Lead, Then moved to Nickel (and it’s alloys) and ended up at Lithium (about 30 plus years ago BTW). Now if you look carefully at the periodic table of elements you might notice that there are NO entries in the Lead, Nickel, Lithium column above Lithium. So until somebody finds that missing element (Lithium-Light perhaps ?) there are not likely to any “breakthroughs” in the energy density of electric storage batteries.
I won;t even discuss the stupidity of wind based “not-power” approaches.
Cheers, Kevin.
I am a teacher. I am watching this “fad” unfold in every public school in the nation. It is just starting.
In the US, forty-five states adopted the Common Core standards in 2009 and 2010 under heavy incentives from the Obama administration.
The national Common Core state education standards list what math and language-arts information and skills children should master in each grade.
The Common Core next expands into Science standards, finalized last year; integrating global warming and other overplayed worries about human impacts on the planet, starting in kindergarten to “create a foundation for ideas that build on long links of suppositions: catastrophic, man-made global warming; the evils of fossil fuels (“explain differences between renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy” in fourth grade) and the need for the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies to strangle human liberties in order to “save the planet.”
Fifth-graders are to examine Earth’s temperature increases and believe they destroy penguin habitat and erode coral reefs.
Middle schoolers will have to accept that “human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere” and agree continuous monitoring is necessary to undergird “social policies and regulations that can reduce these impacts.” They also must acknowledge the “disciplinary core idea” that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (‘global warming’).”
High schoolers will have to understand that “though the magnitudes of human impacts are greater than they have ever been, so too are human abilities to model, predict and manage current and future impacts.” WashingtonTimes
Finally, in December the new Social Studies standards will be law. Capitalism is to be studied as a problem that we are now solving.
“U.S. History Standard 20 reads: The student will understand that as the United States shifted from its agrarian roots into an industrial and global power, the rise of big business, urbanization and immigration led to institutionalized racism, ethnic and class conflict, and new efforts to reform. The key concept in this standard is “institutionalized racism,” an extremely loaded construct used by those who condemn the American “system” in its entirety.” Fonte
All school children will be tested on these ideas. Schools must teach them.
I submit that Environmentalism is the fastest growing religion in the West. The dogma is strict. The priests are ruthless.(McKibben) Punishment is severe.
Fonte – http://edlibertywatch.org/2011/05/403/
WashTimes –
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/5/teaching-global-warming-in-kindergarten/
Here are the lessons my father taught me. Never buy into a fund when you don’t know what the fund either invests in, or what their investment philosophy (future strategy) is.
Never invest with a company that jumps onto every bandwagon that comes down the street.
Build your own portfolio of dividend paying stocks, not funds.
Buy dividend paying stocks in companies that have real world products that PEOPLE want.
When the market crashes, go on a buying spree, because it’s a sale on stocks.
I have never invested a dime in solar or wind, as neither is being used for it’s intended purpose, i.e. either back up power, or primary power to a small installation in some isolated corner of the world.
RE: Teresa says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Very insightful comment, however when you say, “…They understand that electricity and horsepower give people personal power and they don’t like the idea of everyone being able to afford more power as it will diminish theirs in a relative sense…” I think you give such people more credit than they deserve.
Not that you are wrong about such people. They seem to me to be exactly as you describe. However the amazing thing is they don’t know it. They don’t see themselves in the manner that seems so obvious to others.
Just because their behavior is transparent to you does not mean they are not fooling themselves.
5 Dec: Bloomberg: Torsten Fagerholm: Norway’s First Wind Farm on Hold After Lack of Political Support
Norway put development of its first planned offshore wind farm on hold until further notice, with the company involved citing a lack of political support, a setback in European efforts to boost renewable energy production.
“The necessary support for offshore wind from political leaders is absent,” causing wind power developer Vestavind Offshore AS to halt the construction of a 350-megawatt wind farm until further notice, Wenche Teigland, chairman of the board, said today on the company website…
“Either political priorities need to change, or we must wait for technological developments to make offshore wind power competitive,” Teigland said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-05/norway-s-first-wind-farm-on-hold-after-lack-of-political-support.html
7 Dec: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Fund May Use $100 Billion a Year to Encourage Carbon Price
Climate projects may be able to get private-sector finance augmented by guarantees from the fund, alongside discounted loans from government or development banks, Ishii (chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility in Washington) said. The 24- member board of the Green Climate Fund may make loans or guarantees conditional on the recipient having the right environmental policies in place, she said.
“I know that conditionality is a very sensitive word, but from the donor point of view, if the money is to be impactful, there must be some policy environment put in place,” Ishii said…
*** Renewable subsidies in 2011, including biofuels, amounted to $88 billion, the International Energy Agency in Paris said Nov. 12. Over the period to 2035, they need to amount to $4.8 trillion, over half of which has already been committed to existing projects or needed to meet 2020 targets, it said.
The Green Climate Fund use of the private sector may blur the lines between debt and equity or potentially include mandates for outside fund managers, Abyd Karmali, head of carbon for Bank of America Corp. in London, said Nov. 2 by phone…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-06/green-fund-may-use-100-billion-a-year-to-encourage-carbon-price.html
Anybody know how the green BBC pension fund is doing? I seem to remember it down by some 2 billion pounds? I couldn’t find anything on the net.
Just wonderin??????
RE: John F. Hultquist says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:59 pm
“…I’ve also read that gas taxes have not risen as rapidly as the costs of highway maintenance and construction, including, but not limited to, wages and materials…”
In certain states, such as Massachusetts, highway workers are notorious for being the slowest, laziest and most inefficient workers imaginable. During ww2 sections of highway were built in a matter of days, while in Massachusetts there are sections of highway that have been being worked on for years, and still are not close to being finished. I think it was in Massachusetts that the expression, “To finish a job is to kill the job,” was invented.
At some point the gravy train must derail. When people can no longer afford increased gas taxes, highway workers will face reduced wages, and benefits, and pensions. It may not occur in terms of actual dollars, but rather may occur in terms of an inflation wherein a $90,000/year pension can’t buy a loaf of bread.
No, but its applications are limited and circumstantial. The methods to produce energy cannot be reasonably isolated from the environment. The technology produces energy at low densities and requires an unjustifiable dedication of land, which displaces whole populations and deprives them of their means to survive. The recovery and processing of materials to construct their components causes environmental and human damage. They are also finitely accessible. Their operation has definite and extensive impacts on both nature, wildlife, and people. The term “green” technology is an oxymoron and is merely a marketing term to obfuscate the underlying fraud.
2) The earth’s heat balance is determined by the amount of sunlight absorbed by the earth vs the amount of infrared radiation radiated.
Give us numbers. It’s all hand-waving without numbers. Your assertions could be totally true, and yet meaningless without the scale.
Also, you appear to have left out the elephant of feedbacks. Unlike your warmist sites, we know here that the catastrophe part of AGW theory depends water feedback being large and positive. We need you to show that it is large and positive.
Most here believe the water feedback is likely to be negative. Which ruins your handwaving.
Mike says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:31 pm
Really?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Excellent first crack at it Mike! You’re on your way to a real discussion of actual science. Let’s go through your points one at a time, shall we?
1) Carbon dioxide has a variable radiation absorption profile. It is transparent to sunlight, but opaque to infrared.
REPLY: No, the absorption profile of CO2 is static, not variable. The sun radiates at all frequencies, as does the earth (look up the work of Max Planck if you’d like to know more). CO2 has an absorption band at about 15 microns. Since only a tiny portion of the sun’s radiance (proper term, not “sunlight”) is in that band, it doesn’t change the amount of energy the earth absorbs from the sun. A significant portion of the earth’s radiance is in this band, and CO2 does absorb and re-radiate that.
2) The earth’s heat balance is determined by the amount of sunlight absorbed by the earth vs the amount of infrared radiation radiated.
REPLY: No. At equilibrium, the incoming energy absorbed and the outgoing energy are exactly the same. (Look up Stefan-Boltzmann Law if you would like to know more). Since CO2 increases don’t change the amount of energy absorbed, they don’t change the temperature of the earth system as a whole at all (SB Law again). What they do is absorb and re-radiate energy which results in a change in the temperature profile from earth surface to TOA (Top of Atmosphere). In theory, this should result in a warmer surface. How much warmer is a matter of hot debate.
3) Excess carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels to power industrial actiivity has accumulated in the atmosphere, raising the concentration of CO2 from ~280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to 394 ppm now, and the rate is still rising.
Yes. You got one right, congrats. It may interest you to know, by the way, that CO2’s effects are logarithmic. This is why warming effects of CO2 are expressed as “degrees per doubling” of CO2. So, if the estimates of 1 degree of warming per doubling of CO2 are correct, and water vapour feedback adds another 2 degrees, we do the math and discover that the CO2 increases we have so far should have added almost 60% of one doubling, or close to 2 degrees over and above natural warming trends from before CO2 started to rise. Instead, we’ve seen no increase in the rate of temperature rise for the last 400 years, and it has actually been flat or declined (depending on which temperature record you choose) for the last 16 years.
4) This CO2 concentration is higher than any level experienced in the history of humanity.
REPLY: Well you might be right on that one. On the other hand, we’ve only had high quality data since about 1960, a fraction of human history. On the other hand, we do have some less accurate measurements from a century before that done by various scientists, and some of them do show higher levels of CO2 in the past. More importantly however, the ice core and other records that are considered highly reliable by the most ardent of AGW scientists indicate that the earth has had levels of CO2 in the thousands of ppm in the past, at temperatures lower than we have now. It may also be of interest to you to know that most plants do best in greenhouses when they are exposed to 2000 to 3000 ppm of CO2, suggesting that they in fact evolved in a CO2 rich atmosphere.
5) CO2 has drastically lowered the amount of infrared radiation radiated into space by the earth, causing the earth to rapidly accumulate heat.
REPLY: No. Per above, CO2 doesn’t change the amount of energy absorbed from the sun, so it doesn’t change the temperature of the system as a whole (SB Law again). What it does is interrupt the flow of infrared from the earth to space, with some of the atmosphere in theory becoming colder and some warming in theory occurring at earth surface. But the total amount of energy absorbed and radiated remains the same.
6) Excess heat is causing increased surface temperatures and climate instability. 2000-2010 was the warmest and most natural-disaster prone decade in record. 2010-2020 will almost certainly surpass it, resulting in at the very least billions of dollars of economic damage – in fact, Munich Re, one if the largest reinsurance companies in the world, has identified greenhouse emission-driven climate change as the cause of increasing extreme weather and resultant insurance payouts, and as an extreme challenge to both the insurance industry (society’s principal risk identification and management industry) and to the global economy in general.
REPLY: Well, that’s a whole lot of points all rolled into one. For starters, Munich Re is more profitable if they can justify higher premiums, which they are trying to do. If they thought they could justify higher premiums by claiming there was an impending asteroid strike, they would. Hardly a good source of information. As for 2000-2010 being the warmest “ever”, again, since when? The Roman and Minoan warm periods were most certainly warmer than now, and the Medieval Warming Period probably was as well. As for natural disasters, sorry, but the data doesn’t support your claim. The Palmer Drought Index shows not much change at all, and the Accumulated Cyclone Energy has been declining for several decades. Don’t confuse isolated high profile events with global averages.
Hardly harmless, I would say.
REPLY: Well, you got most of the science wrong, so let’s talk about harm. Prior to the industrial revolution, the population of the earth could barely surpass 1 billion, and the majority of them lived on the edge of starvation. 40 was a very old person. Since then, our population has risen to six times that, and only a small portion of those are hungry, in fact the only people who are starving are victims of their own governments (like North Korea) rather than suffering from an actual food shortage. Life expectancy is now in the range of 80 years. Average heights of men and women are nearly 12 inches more than they were 100 years ago. We’re bigger, stronger, healthier, longer lived, and there’s six times as many of us. All due to fossil fuels.
So, stopping the use of fossil fuels would hardly be harmless.
No, the fad isn’t over. California’s green scheme is compulsory and punitive. It has a bloated bureaucracy parasitizing over 35 million people. This huge enviro-enterprise will go broke just like most of the others. We can be certain of failure, because their command and control strategy is killing the market that allows California to operate.
Australia’s largest State has had a gutful of Green slushfunding and rising power bills and finally their politicians are getting the message loud and clear-
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/barry-ofarrell-is-cutting-the-green-schemes/story-e6freuy9-1226531660802
Mike: The Munich Re report was addressed on WUWT here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/23/crowdsourcing-the-wuwt-extreme-weather-reference-page/
That thread resulted in the creation of a “reference page” (see the list of tabs at the top) devoted to “extreme weather” under the sub-tab “climate phenomena”—or just click here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/
WUWT also has a hard the find and hard to interpret “Category” drop-down list in the sidebar to enable visitors to find threads of interest. There’s an entry for “extreme weather.” Or click here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/category/extreme-weather-2/
Looking through its most interesting recent entries, I found these:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/10/climate-craziness-of-the-week-usa-today-thinks-severe-weather-began-in-1980/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/03/weather-amnesia/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/17/noaas-weather-ready-nation/
Many of these threads contain links to papers, some peer-reviewed, on the topic—for instance, those of the Pielkes.
The “fad” part is over, but the institutionalized grab for your wallet is just getting started.
Natural Gas (thank you fracking!) plunged and undercut the costs and has lower carbon than coal so coal has been double whacked. Then the Chinese wanted to get in on the money grab too and undercut the manufacturing side…
But generally, while the profit is pretty much gone, the structures remain.
@gnomish:
Well done… PTS has a new meaning 😉
@janef20:
My spouse is now leaving the teaching profession due to just that kind of stupid…
Fortunately, it will take 20 years to have an impact, unfortunately, that’s about when we’re going to be very frozen and entirely broke. It will create a generation of kids that will despise the lies they were forced to parrot…
RENNIX urgently needs to hide the decline!
Mike says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:31 pm
” 5) CO2 has drastically lowered the amount of infrared radiation radiated into space by the earth, causing the earth to rapidly accumulate heat.”
Well, that’s a VERY tall tale. “Drastically lowered” sounds like one should be able to measure it with a satellite, right? NASA is in the business of running satellites, as is the ultra-warmist EU’s ESA.
So WHY is there no observational evidence for your tall tale, Mike?
Michael Tremblay says:
December 6, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“Being skeptical, I notice that this chart is an industrial index chart and that it correlates very nicely with the Dow Jone Industrial Index for the same time period. ”
What is it with your eyes? The chart goes to 2013.
I rode the recovery of the DOW and the DAX all the way from FEB2009 and made a killing. NOT with green energy stocks.
BTW, German solar stocks started to collapse, COLLAPSE I tell you half a year before the subprime crisis in USA caused the BFC in Mid 2008.
The reason they were rushed out was that it was thought that the “learning curve” of mass production would drive down costs AND that fossil fuel prices would rise steeply, enabling a smoth transition about now, or a few years in the future. But production costs are only a small percentage of total costs—and there are hidden costs that weren’t considered, or were minimized. Both costs are now becoming apparent.
I would love to rebut your post in detail, and there is a lot to rebut, but as I only have my iPad on me today I won’t. I will say that I don’t think your condescending tone is particularly pleasant or appropriate in a balanced scientific discussion (which apparently you want to have.)
“Munich Re, one if the largest reinsurance companies in the world, has identified greenhouse emission-driven climate change as the cause of increasing extreme weather and resultant insurance payouts, and as an extreme challenge to both the insurance industry”
You are completely full of sh*t Mike (or should I call you troll?)
Munich Re did do that research, but it showed absolutely ZERO increase in extreme weather events, or their intensity in the last 100 years. What it showed was that costs of a given event were higher these days, because there are more people than 100 years ago, and orders of magnitude more buildings, infrastructure etc.
Munich Re’s research showed that damage from a given weather event is vastly more expensive to repair than 100 years ago, NOT that the events themselves were more extreme or more frequent.
Sorry to rain facts down on your spin…
Mike;
I will say that I don’t think your condescending tone is particularly pleasant or appropriate in a balanced scientific discussion (which apparently you want to have.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
To whom do you refer? Perhaps you should consider the snarky tone of your own comments before calling out others. I responded to each of your 6 points in detail. You got the physics wrong, period. For the record, I’m one of those insane people who spends a lot of time on this forum explaining that the greenhouse effect DOES exist (and it most obviously does). If we’re going to have a discussion about the actual effects however, we have to base it upon facts not statements.
I’ve provided you the facts, and the specific laws of physics that you need to be familiar with in order to verify what I’m saying. Don’t worry, I’ll be patient, grab yourself a keyboard and answer me, rebut away if you think you can. Just don’t make a condescending comment of your own along with the excuse that you don’t have a keyboard and then slink away in silence. If you have a rebuttal, let’s see it.
Roger Knights says:
December 6, 2012 at 8:14 pm
There’s a better choice that’s not too hard to find or read. Click on the graphic for “Ric Werme’s Guide to WUWT” (it’s near the top, click on the word “categories,” then the category “extreme weather 2,” and it will take you to http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cat_extreme_weather_2.html
“Is green energy a fad that has run its course?”
I will believe that when my energy bills here in UK do not include a Renewables commitment.
FD
Very interesting discussion between Mike and Davidmhoffer!
I like very much that 1) Mike has the courage and confidence to discuss these things here and 2) that David responds to him in a calm and reasoned manner. Kudos to you both!
Please lets not treat Mike with contempt or ridicule, everybody. It is counterproductive!
We get enough of that on the warmist blogs and elsewhere.
Thanks, and I hope they continue their discussion!
The sort of “green energy” most people will accept is something they can afford, drop in their backyard, that will then make the “green energy” without them having to do anything else.
They have that now. Plug-in solar panels. Prop them up on the deck or patio, plug in to a dedicated circuit exterior outlet, you’re done. They are set to be very successful in the market.
They don’t replace needing the utility, they’re not “stand alone” AC sources. They’re grid-tie only, if they sense utility power then they’ll try to spin the meter backwards. If the utility current isn’t there (downed lines, blackout) they automatically disconnect, so they don’t back feed to the utility lines, energize a transformer, and possibly electrocute a utility worker somewhere.
There are cheap inverter units out there that’ll do that with your own panels, but they’re not UL listed, so not technically legal in the US. These new units say they are “ICTL certified” which means an International Certified Testing Laboratory looked them over, might be legal. Here’s a manual for one, says to get all the permits, utility permissions, licensed electrician for installation, etc. Take a guess how many people will really do that with their “plug and play” system. Of course if officially installed they qualify for the tax credits, but for such a relatively inexpensive system that could cost more than it’s worth.
http://media.wix.com/ugd/2f9099_5dc76a0057374d687e3380784370c9e8.pdf
Note a frequent major requirement for such is an exterior disconnect that utility people can easily get to. If they’re plugged in at a publicly-accessible area where someone can just walk right up and unplug them, that should qualify as plugs are an electrical disconnect device.
Here’s an informative article reviewing them:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Consumer-Energy-Report/2012/0526/Plug-in-solar-panels-Worth-the-cost
What’s the drawback? They’re pricey! As reviewed, you’re paying $1100 for a 240W panel. That’s expensive.
But why did I say they are set to be successful? Because the current price on Amazon is up to $1225, just six months later. That’s the type of “green energy” the people want, and there are people willing to pay that much for it!
http://www.amazon.com/SpinRay-Energy-SR240-DP1-DeckPower120/dp/B006M3VKTO
Life is simple. The Brits can tell you. You go green, you freeze to death. You can’t sleep from all the racket of those gastly wind things thumping all night. You watch, huddled around a TV in a public tram waiting room to wathc the Royals flitting about all over the globe to go to a charity ball, black tie you know, to declare global warming simply must be stopped. You go to the bank and find the power folks have taken you last farthing for the monthly electro bill. You go to the grocer and find there’s no food due to burning it as “renewable”. You walk past the shuttered power plant that is being used by the Hanson cult to hold seances. Eventually, even in the UK, it starts to wear on a body.
Thousands of years of history have shown that when some thing better comes along it is adopted. If and when a real option for power supply comes along it to will be adopted, surprisingly it will be cheaper, cleaner and require less people to operate it. I have no idea what it will be, but I am fairly sure it will not be a windmill nor a solar panel.
Mike says:
December 6, 2012 at 9:10 pm
“I would love to rebut your post in detail, and there is a lot to rebut, but as I only have my iPad on me today I wont.”
As an aside here…I have an iPad 2 and the screen-based “touch” keyboard is, as Mike alludes, pretty unusable for normal typing. I also like a mouse rather than attempting to press small hyper links on the screen with my fat finger tips. So the iPad will never be more than a music/video-player/browser toy for me…
Here in Spain, the electrity bill gives some indication as to the money that has been squanderd on the green initiative. Approximately 51.5% of my total bill is said to be tax! Only about 48.5% of the bill is the cost of supply (and even in the cost of supply there is tax paid by the chaps that get the enrgy out of the ground, the shippers, the producers, the distributors etc).
Of course, not all of the 51.5% tax, is green tax (some is IVA/VAT – value added tax) but it does show that if there was political will, energy costs could, at a stroke, be almost halved.
It is crazy to have such high energy costs when there are people who cannot afford to heat their homes, and high energy costs are a burden on industry making it uncompetitive. No wonder that industry in Europe is struggling.
Unless Germany does something about its rising energy costs, even German industry will struggle and will no doubt relocate to areas where labour is cheaper, energy costs are cheaper, and land is cheaper. Heck, if they relocate it to China or Indonesia, they will even save the shipping costs incurred in shipping all their luxury cars to the biggest and growing market place.
A heavy price will have been paid for this madness when the final bill is tallied.
Kaboom says:
December 6, 2012 at 8:26 pm
RENNIX urgently needs to hide the decline!
————————————-
I would have thought the Team would have tried to help RENNIX.
I bet Mikey and Phil could show them how.
cn
Slightly off-topic but relevant..
I read in (I think) The SundayTimes (UK) a couple of figures which could explain why there’s so much angst in the UK government’s schizophrenic stance on energy:
North Sea gas – original reserves: 4 Tn cu ft
Shale gas estimated reserves: 161 Tn cu ft (of which at least 20% is recoverable using existing technolgy)
Don’t you just hate it when someone rains on your parade..?
Mike says:
“5) CO2 has drastically lowered the amount of infrared radiation radiated into space by the earth, causing the earth to rapidly accumulate heat.”
Incorrect. Increasing CO2 concentration increases the down-welling IR (GHE) as well as the outgoing IR.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
I wouldn’t describe CO2 as harmless either, it’s absolutely essential to life like water and oxygen, we just wouldn’t live long without it.
Michael Tremblay is right to remind us above (Dec 6, 3:30) to compare the index’s performance against the other major indices which also spiked downward during 2008/9. Clearly, some of the stock performance is covariant. The differences are important too, however.
1. The broader markets have been trending back up since their 2009 low and, for a brief period, almost reached their former highs. The RENIXX rebound lasted only a few months and has been trending still further downward ever since.
2. The broader markets lost a lot of money in absolute terms but did not decline as much as a percent of high-value. This is not easily apparent from most financial charts because many of the major providers persist in starting their y-axis display above zero. (Kudos on the chart above, by the way, which properly shows the full axis.)
Thanks. I notice there are 1035 threads in the uncategorized category. Looking at a few of them, it seems to me at least half of them could be assigned to one of the current categories–and that many of the rest could be assigned to a few new categories. Anthony’s too busy to do that. Is there some way you could be given the permission to assign categories to them, and to create new categories? (One that’s needed is Acidification.)
OT: I listened to Sterling D. Allan, CEO of Pure Energy Systems, last night on the Coast to Coast AM radio show. Here’s what C2C’s post-show summary of his interview stated:
I’d appreciate hearing a year-end wrap-up of what’s been happening in the LENR field from you. As long as it isn’t Rossi-focused, I hope/trust Anthony will allow it.
.
Green energy being a valuable commodity was always a bit like saying one tulip bulb was worth 5 million dollars.** It works, the same as any Ponzie scheme, as long as idiots are piling in down below with more cash to support the scam.
But Ponzie schemes always eventually fail, when they get impailed upon the spike of reality.
** The Dutch tulip bubble.
.
Financially its bubble burst a while back. As to “green energy” I really hate that term and always have. First you need to separate out the good, the bad and the ugly. Basic efficiency has been a proven approach since the 1970s. A classic example is to insulate more to keep out the cold/heat and have a payback in 5-7 years. That is good. Claiming that having one piece of the energy puzzle makes it all good is bad. Yes we can produce electricity from wind and sun but how to store it and what is the total cost system wide? A billion+ of our money lost by the government making stupid bets and trying to play venture capitalist is just plain ugly.
The whole CF/LENR/Cavitation field is fascinating and we are past the point of “is some excess heat being produced”. Yes it is. We are now on to “can we use it” and “what is really causing it”. Some theories about it (I lean towards the cavitation explanation myself but that is just my SWAG).
blacklightpower.com – hydrino (electrons going to a lower state than thought possible)
nanospireinc.com – cavitation (controlled and useful for more than energy)
brillouinenergy.com – cecr (quantum fussion)
I don’t know if any will work or be practical as there are lots of hurdles to over come but it would be nice to see lots of cheap electricity hit the market world wide. The rise in the standard of living for billions of people would have massive positive effects.
Does anyone remember TV ads from a few years ago for a solar generator it said could be used in Hurricanes or black outs? It showed raging storms or dark streets, perfect conditions for a solar generator ;>
” David says: December 7, 2012 at 7:05 am
Slightly off-topic but relevant. I read in (I think) The SundayTimes (UK) a couple of figures which could explain why there’s so much angst in the UK government’s schizophrenic stance on energy:
North Sea gas – original reserves: 4 Tn cu ft, Shale gas estimated reserves: 161 Tn cu ft (of which at least 20% is recoverable using existing technolgy) Don’t you just hate it when someone rains on your parade..? ”
If even 5% were economically recoverable they would have double. Technology has really done an end around play on the whole “must have carbon tax” crowd. I hope we see more tech doing this.
richard verney says:
December 7, 2012 at 6:21 am
“Unless Germany does something about its rising energy costs, even German industry will struggle and will no doubt relocate to areas where labour is cheaper, energy costs are cheaper, and land is cheaper. Heck, if they relocate it to China or Indonesia, they will even save the shipping costs incurred in shipping all their luxury cars to the biggest and growing market place.”
German companies can get an excemption from the FIT cross subsidy contribution which will starting in 2013 be at > 5 Eurocents. As their base tariff without that is about 10 Eurocents, this reduces their electricity cost by 33%. To get the exemption they have to show that they compete in international markets. Merkel hands out the exemptions liberally.
Re relocating to China etc. – guess what all big German manufacturers have been doing over the past decades. Lots of factories in China, Korea, Rumania, Mexico, Brazil, you name it. Lots of developers in those countries as well.
Shipping costs play more of a role for mass market models, not so much for luxury cars. Shipping a fridge from China to Germany costs half a buck, you get the idea. It’s easier to ship a Mercedes to China than to create a factory in China that is as good as the one her. You’d also like to keep a few secrets, so build only the cheap stuff in China.
tallbloke says:
December 6, 2012 at 3:00 pm
” We should never stop researching and developing clean and renewable power sources.
Rolling them out on an industrial scale was utter folly.”
Amen, and very costly.
Having consulted for a few failed cellulosic fuel attempts, it was clear to me from the beginning that the government encouraged companies to spent fortunes to commercialize plants that were doing the same thing before the basic research was completed. In each case it was clear from the beginning that significant problems still needed to be resolved, but the lure of $$$ let the developers to somehow believe these problems could be worked out on a commercial size plant. The list of failures is unending!!
It’s like the electric car folly of actually building autos for which the power source is totally inadequate. See below:
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2011/11/electric_vehicles_ineptitude_apathy_and_piles_of_taxpayer_money_1.html
DirkH says:
December 7, 2012 at 12:44 pm
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I heard that they plan to something similar in the UK. There is a proposal that the domestic energy consumer should subsidise the industrial consumer by paying a greater share of the additional green levies that are imposed on the energy bill. Thus industry will get a cheaper gross tariff.
Some people object to that proposal, but they fail to appreciate that either way, it is always the consumer (or tax payer) who pays. If industry is not subsidised the costs of goods produced increases and therefore the consumer has to pay more for the goods they want. If industry is subsidised, it is the consumer (or tax payer) who pays the subsidy.
The issue is why are we needlessly escalating energy prices? It hikes the cost of living for all, and subsidies may partially assist inductry but do not always create an even playing field to the detriment of small to medium sized manufacturers (who are often the life blood of a country).
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/12/06/peter-foster-doha-is-dead-on-to-cop-19/
Mike says:
December 6, 2012 at 9:10 pm
I would love to rebut your post in detail, and there is a lot to rebut, but as I only have my iPad on me today I won’t.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well Mike, it has been very nearly an entire day since you wrote this. I returned to this thread thinking surely you’d found a keyboard by now and would have posted the rebuttal you seem so confident that you can write. But alas, nothing.
Is it the keyboard that remains missing? Or the rebuttal?
When I was setting that up I considered offering to categorize all the old posts. So far, I haven’t had time to do that. Still mean to some day. There’s some good stuff out there.
Things are kind of weird right now. Rossi is still doing the interesting stuff (scam or world changing), but instead of pursuing the low temperature devices from last year, he has a much hotter device that will be capable of driving a steam turbine. Unfortunately, between being busy and the partner’s not wanting to talking about their progress, not much information is coming out. I won’t talk to Anthony about something new until there’s more information available.
@davidmhoffer, On December 6, 2012 at 5:54 pm (you said regarding Mike):
“Can you do that? It would help us out a lot here. Can you provide factual data and reasoned argument to support your position? Provide evidence based science to substantiate your claims and perhaps change our minds on one issue or another?”
I like that you put it on Mike to provide evidence. And I agree with you by the way. One of the problems with people like Mike is that they do not understand the underlying science, and so they get frustrated and sarcastic, actually believing that:
1) Because ice melts, it’s proof that CO2 caused it.
2) That there was a drought with high temperatures, it’s do to AGW. Of course he does not understand that cool water off the west coast causes less moisture and cooler weather in CA, which leaves arid air for the rest of the midwest which naturally warms faster due to less moisture. He does not understand this. He doesn’t understand that it gets hotter in Chico in northern CA even though it gets far less solar energy than on the equator.
3) He believes that the media accurately report science.
It’s Mike fault and problem that he doesn’t bother to understand the science, He does not have the basic understanding of physics and logic and this makes him unable to discern what is true.
This is sad, so sad because so many people are like Mike… it’s that he is outspoken in a forum that for the most part, knows better.
Mario
Mario,
Yes, you’ve identified the problem. Itz now been 1.5 days and Mike still hasn’t been able to muster up either a keyboard or a rebuttal. Which? His explanation of the ghe was reasonably detailed, so the lack of a keyboard excuse rings kinda hollow.
I think a lot of people are like Mike. They are overconfident in their own science knowledge, certain that their simplistic understanding is correct. They assume further that any skeptic blog is inhabited by morons. If he’d stick around and be part of the discussion, he’d discover otherwise.
Confronted by facts which falsify an argument, a fool argues anyway. A man admits his mistake. A coward runs away.
Sadly, we have many of the first and third category, not nearly enough of the 2nd.
davidmhoffer: Well put.
It’s part of the human condition to view issues in much the same was as a two teams hashing it out. People want their side to win, irrespective of logical thinking. Their side of preference is emotionally based. The other motivating factor is $$. I am not sure there is a short term way to expect change unless it hits their wallets directly. Unfortunately, the AGW side has the ill understood motivation of $$. They don’t understand they are killing the goose that lays golden eggs. I digress.
Mario, re: subsidies, here’s a good link from congressional testimony.
http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Zycher%20Senate%20Finance%20renewables%20incentives%20testimony%203-27-12.pdf
Thank you for the link. It also shows close to $1 per kW solar subsidy… and the article/statement(s) was well written, I believe.
Mario
German solar energy can be monitored online, maybe the germans should wipe the snow from their solar panels:
http://www.sma.de/en/company/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html
Green energy, like the spins being put on so called ‘climate change’ (note the change from ‘global warming’) has been, and is, a huge scam by power generators, power distributers and governments to generate more revenue for them. Here in Australia power suppliers tried to con people into paying extra dollars for green energy when in fact there was no such thing on the power grid (when asked about that, the answer was that the extra revenue raised would be used to DEVELOP green energy – yea, and pigs do fly).
It is all well and good to talk about installing solar panels on houses and the so called rewards reaped by pumping your excess energy into the power grid. But what they dont tell you is that the down side for people who cannot afford to install solar panels on their houses and for those people who rent/lease their homes (and thus cannot install solar panels even if they wanted to) is a constant increase in power prices. (you dont think that the power generators and power suppliers are going to take a cut in profits for the sake of green energy, do you? Really?)
Add to this the fact that the whole energy system here has been totally privatised in most states, it does not matter what you do save energy, because there is only one thing that these scum bags are after – thats your money.
As an example, we have so called power saving globes, we have power saving power boards on our tvs (switches the tvs off after an hour), we have changed our power guzzling CRT monitors on our computers to LCD monitors, but have WE had any savings on our power bills? HA, HA, HA, our power bills have gone UP because the scum bags who have gotten their claws into OUR energy system have only one aim – profit, profit, profit.
So here’s a couple of equations:
1: you try to save energy by using energy saving devices and equipment = lowering of profits for the power generators and power suppliers = increased power prices at your meter.
2: you install solar panels and/or gas fed power generators (such as trialed by the CSIRO in Queensland not so long ago – if you could afford one) = payment to you from the power distributers/power generators for your excess generated power = less profit for the power generators/power suppliers = increased power prices at your meter.
Now, if you have your personal green power generation plugged into the main power grid and governments/power generators/power suppliers take away any payments for your excess power generation,here is a final equation:
3: your excess generated power @$0 reward fed into the main power grid = free power to the suppliers/distributers + constantly increasing power prices = more profit for the power generators and power suppliers.
What a money making scam!
@Longjohn Silver
I don’t know about you, but energy costs would be much lower without the green mandates. That’s where the problems are for me. Green mandates indirectly increase cost of energy. Fracking has tended to lower costs of energy which offset much of the increases in cost due to Green initiatives. The huge subsidies paid for the PV solar panels do not all end up raising our energy prices directly however, since they raise the deficit and we will need to pay this back with interest!
You mentioned profit as if it were a bad thing. Here’s where I disagree with you. I have NO Problem with someone selling something and profiting for it. Without the lure of profit, productivity goes down. I do have a problem paying people to not do something –except when I volunteer or donate to causes where people have needs they can not satisfy. I just don’t want the government stealing from me and giving it to people who vote for them in return.
Coming in for a wheels-up, nose-first landing. Watch the pretty fireball-works display!