Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t James Delingpole – Alice Bows-Larkin has given a TED talk, which outlines her plan for “saving” the environment from a 4c temperature rise. The gist of her idea seems to be that developed countries need to dramatically reduce their output, while developing countries raise theirs, so everyone gets a “fair” share of a smaller pie.
How deep a cut are we talking about?
10:52
So that poses very significant challenges for wealthy nations. Because according to our research, if you’re in a country where per capita emissions are really high — so North America, Europe, Australia — emissions reductions of the order of 10 percent per year, and starting immediately, will be required for a good chance of avoiding the two-degree target. Let me just put that into context. The economist Nicholas Stern said that emission reductions of more than one percent per year had only ever been associated with economic recession or upheaval. So this poses huge challenges for the issue of economic growth, because if we have our high carbon infrastructure in place, it means that if our economies grow, then so do our emissions. So I’d just like to take a quote from a paper by myself and Kevin Anderson back in 2011 where we said that to avoid the two-degree framing of dangerous climate change, economic growth needs to be exchanged at least temporarily for a period of planned austerity in wealthy nations.
Click here to read the full transcript
Why do I think this plan for aggressive CO2 emission cuts amounts to economic ruin? Lets think about what 10% per year actually means.
Imagine this reduction as slices taken away from a 5 day working week. I’m going to assume for the purpose of this calculation, that emissions are a proxy for economic activity.
In the first year, not so bad – its like leaving work every week on Friday at lunchtime. It might be uncomfortable, but a lot of people in developed countries probably have the spare financial capacity, to absorb a 10% cut in income.
By year 3, things get unpleasant. By now you are only working;
(1 – 0.10)3 years * 5 days = 3.5 days per week.
More than an quarter of your income has gone. Bills are getting tough to pay, you spend long hours in the Supermarket aisles agonising over your grocery basket.
By year 10, things are desperate. By then you are only working;
(1 – 0.10)10 years * 5 days = 1.7 days per week. 66% of your income is gone. Your mortgage if you owe money on your house is in arrears. Debt collectors are calling every other day, demanding money you don’t have. All you have to look forward to is more hopelessness and despair.
OK, so you’ve lost most of your income – but working 1.7 days per week, you would get plenty of time off, right? Wrong. The reality is you would probably still have to work your normal 5 day week. What is being degraded is not the number of hours you have to work, but the economic return those hours generate for you and your employer. Your 5 days of effort now only returns 1.7 days worth of the spending power, in terms of what you earned before the cuts started. Your employer’s profits have also been slashed – they simply can’t pay you any more, even if they wanted to.
Even at 34% of your original income, you probably still have more spending power than many people in the third world. The cuts would have to continue.
Of course, most people would probably be worse off than my simple calculation predicts. I doubt very much whether the green elite would give up their frequent flights to climate conferences, and other perks. So if the national pie in your country is shrinking, and the greens keep the full portion of their slice, your slice gets smaller even faster.
If alarmists are right about the rate of climate change, which by any reasonable evaluation of the skill of climate models is very doubtful, is all this hardship really a price worth paying, to prevent a few extra days of pleasant sunny weather every year?
Sounds a lot like the old Penn and Teller pie sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz2p4EQtEXs
Perfect analogy, thanks !!
really? this is probably the dumbest analogy I’ve ever heard.
This is also what the Ford Foundation pushed as the Line of Plenty in papers created as part of Rio 2012.
Here’s a little cartoon that explains progressive income taxes.
http://youtu.be/S6HEH23W_bM
The formula should have been decided before installing the improvements. The hardworking, thrifty one should have put the gate and flowers in front of his house alone. Let the shiftless, lazy one feel the imact of crime and barren surroundings. It may provide an incentive to GET TO WORK! [Sorry for the caps shouting…it is well deserved.]
LarryFine,
Great video and great link to Prager U. I recommend more people see it and the other videos.
I can’t work out whether it’s an attempt at sarcasm or the creators are deadly serious that this is the way it should be? I don’t know much about Puger U, but given it’s a university I assume they are deadly serious?
reductions of the order of 10 percent per year, and starting immediately, will be required for a good chance of avoiding the two-degree target.
================
seriously? so she is OK with a 10% pay reduction every year! How about everyone else where she works? Are they on board with a 10% annual pay cut?
Try making the interest payments on your student loans, with a 10% pay cut each year.
” so she is OK with a 10% pay reduction every year!”
Well obviously she’s an academic, so no. Her pay won’t be cut. Yours will. She’s working in a protected environment. And a green to boot.
I have no doubt that she actually believes there will be no problems caused by a mere 10% cut per year.
Dr. Bows has with her nifty idea, just elevated herself to the same pedestal as that other brainiac, Sheryl Crowe, who can wipe her a*** with one 4 inch square (100 mm for scientists) of one ply recycled toilet paper.
Maybe they can share their ideas with each other.
g
George,
This short video shows what people can do to save on toilet paper (explanation toward the end).
I heartily recommend it to Dr. Bows-Larkin, who would surely benefit. ☺
Why would anyone listen to the economist Lord Stern??? There would be economic upheaval alright…………his economic upheaval.
NOTES:
Abengoa is engaged in solar energy and bioenergy devices and other products.
Stern also runs the NS Economics Limited (sole owner, jointly with wife; the company’s main business is the Member’s speaking engagements. He likes to speak and get paid to talk about climate alarmism. I wonder why he keeps telling us that ‘climate change’ is much worse than he thought while investing in climate schemes. It surely wouldn’t have anything to standing to gain from one’s own alarmism would it?
Lord Stern:
“I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse”
Of course. Good Lord! You are a failure in economics and climate.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
I don’t think Teller is going to get any pie at Bill Gate’s place either. He will starve, as will we all if her plan were implemented. In 10 years, you will only have a hunter gatherer society. I don’t think this lady actually understands the consequences of her plan. I would suggest that she be offered a trial run under the conditions that her policy would generate. She might change her mind. If she knows she is spouting nonsense, and knows what the real impacts would be, she would likely decline the offer. If she is as uninformed as she sounds, she just might accept. If her plan were successful, she’d rue the day she put it out to the world.
Actually if they tried this climate scientists and greens would be an endangered species. People’s tolerance only goes so far after that that its A La Lanterne.
Good point. It would be torches and pitchforks.
Hilarious 🙂
I wonder how many of the young Eco-Terrorists realize they would have to give up their Iphones,Ipads, laptops,make up, GameBoys and cell phones …etc……??? All are made with evil CO2 contributing products !!!!
There is a very much greater possibility that the USA’s electric power grid would be attacked and knocked out than of the climate changing catastrophically solely due to human activities.
Eco terrorists, like most liberals, are convinced that it’s the other people who will have to give up stuff.
Since they care, they are given a free pass.
@ MarkW
“Eco terrorists, like most liberals, are convinced that it’s the other people who will have to give up stuff.
Since they care, they are given a free pass.”
Exactly right. As exemplified by the bun fight about to take place in Paris.
She and her ilk can greatly help by walking to Paris! but nooooo, flying and staying at high end hotels and scarfing in expensive restaurants will be their “right”
Because she cares, she is allowed to continue her lifestyle.
I think most people commenting here are far too nice and polite.
In reality, this is a classic case of SBS, or Silly Bitch Syndrome
Sometimes, a sensible, but sexist, remark is totally appropriate to describe the shallow utterances of the Amazon leaders of the alarmist cult.
Since there’s been no actual warming for 18 years etc., and the CO2 greenhouse theory has essentially been disproven, I don’t see ANYONE altering much for the sake of an academic construct. I DO see them doing it if and when it makes economic sense–and ONLY then. The Smart Money is not losing sleep over “climate change.”
My GF is a green left winger and always goes on about how we need to lower the West’s standard of living to accommodate whatever grabs her attention at the time (like AGW). I took her to the movie Les Misérables. After it finished I turned to her and said “How do you like the lower standard of living?” She hasn’t mentioned it again.
Smart Expat, smart. Funny how somebody’s NIMBY mindset changes once reality smacks them in the nose.
Well done.
Trust me. I know some of the young Eco-Terrorists you refer to and believe when I say…they have convinced themselves that everyone else will have to give up their phones, laptops, game boys….etc. Except them.
Yes, magically running whilst the infrastructure that kept them operating has fallllen apart.
Of course all plastics have to go too, so we’ll just clothe 7 Billion people with animal skins.
This has little, if anything, to do with “saving the planet.” It (probably) has everything to do about the alarmists and their political, corporate and elitist rich backers increasing their power and control over the masses.
Dr. Bows is only a pawn delivering an emotional and perhaps even a strawman argument in support of the above goals.
What is she a doctor of, given that she is an expert (in her mind) on climate and also on economics ??
g
Her undergraduate studies were in astrophysics (Leeds) and her PhD is in climate modelling (Imperial College). Her academic CV is here:
http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/people/staff/profile/?ea=alice.bows-larkin
Indeed!
I worked on a project in Poland during the Communist period. The government elites had a very nice life style. They lived far better than the people who suffered under their rule. Clearly, the “green” elites of today assume that their privileged life style will endure the poverty which they force on the rest of us.
It’s that parallel between environmentalists and Communists that coined the term watermelons.
Social Justice……direct from the UN playbook.
Yes, whatever Agenda 21 has been renamed to.
Can’t be the UN playbook. If the wealthy countries deliberately impoverish themselves, they won’t be able to pay the $100 Billion per year that the LDCs want as their pay off for the climate treaty. Better to talk the talk, than give up the money.
The UN Isn’t about money, it’s about power. They’d rather be in charge of a world of medieval squalor than nobodies in a high-tech utopia.
Walter Sobchak,
So what if whoever ends up with such power does not pay some promised money? Promised to “the people”, no less. The people will have no way to enforce squat if the folks with real power in this world take it all.
That’s what I see happening, a well conceived attempt to return to “normal” rule by a few elites, like it was for virtually all of history. It happens all the time, so to speak, just not on this scale.
Walter you are assuming the thing has to make sense and be logical. It does not.
Like all Marxist causes the game of Climate is only a pretext to wrestle power.
The road to Green Economic Ruin is paved with imbecilic notions by those without a clue about either climate or economics.
Alice, put the Bong down and slowly walk away…..
Or stagger slowly away, as the case may be.
Mark
+several
Auto – amused.
These sorts of claims illustrate well how little alarmists understand the energy supply and demand and the inter-relationship between energy consumption and economic activity. I don’t know in which field Dr. Bows has her PhD, but it certainly cannot be in economics or any of the physical sciences. It would be simply amusing if claims like hers were just being made by starry-eyed youth who had watched Al Gore’s film too often. The extraordinary thing is that somewhat similar claims are being made by James Hansen and by the “experts” who work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the European Union. The challenge is to do what Eric Worrall has tried to do here, which is to develop a clear explanation of what emissions reductions of this magnitude would mean in practice for people’s lives.
Follow Da Money !!!!
Better yet, Cut Off Da Money!!!
If that doesn’t work, start cutting off other things.
One might suppose she has a PhD in bong-hit smoking, but…no.
Check it out:
“Alice is a Reader in Energy and Climate Change as part of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and based within the School of Mechanical, Civil and Aerospace Engineering (MACE), University of Manchester. Alice trained as an astrophysicist at the University of Leeds, did her PhD in climate modelling at Imperial College, joining the interdisciplinary Tyndall Centre to research conflicts between climate change and aviation.”
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/people/Alice-Bows
A Phd in climate modeling?
So she’s been trained in how to tell lies using computers.
MarkW,
Not telling lies – playing computer games. There is no reason to assume she is lying. In fact I’m pretty certain she believes everything she says. Which is the sad part. As Peter Miller above so accurately put it, a definite case of SBS.
Let us give Hansen certain props. he wants nuclear power, not universal poverty. That doesn’t make his hysteria any better, but at least he understands the problem with his proposals.
Using the climatocracy cry of ‘he/she is not a climate scientist’ I say that as she is not an economist she has no right to any opinion that involves economics.
No right to an opinion on economics??? Why should she not be allowed even one, when economists are allowed an unlimited number? Alice and others should all be encouraged to express their opinion, because then it can be analysed to see if it holds water. This one doesn’t because it is based on zero-sum logic, ie that if the developed produce less then the developing can produce more. Well, Alice, the world doesn’t work like that. If the developed cut back then the developing lose their customers.
Of course she’s got a right to an opinion (although I can see where you’re coming from on that comment). So let’s hear her plan for how this 10 per cent reduction is to be achieved. Massive tax increases? Huge hikes in interest rates? Big cuts in government expenditure? And how does she plan to achieve 10 per cent? (As opposed to 9 or 11.) How does she know, for example, what tax increases are needed for a ten per cent cut? Is she relying on her climate models to tell her? She also seems a bit coy in telling us how long this ten per cent cut is to go on for. And what is her explanation for saying that after several years of cuts, economic growth can resume? But most of all, can she tell us how much of a cut in her own emissions she is going to make over the next 12 months and exactly how she is going to do it?
What are you talking about, everyone has a right to my opinion.
@MarkW
I believe bertief is riffing on the theme usually offered by the wamunists that since (most) sceptics aren’t climate scientists we should just shut up.
And the notion of per capita emissions is just assumed to be a sensible metric? Seriously, what ever happened to brain power in this politicly stupefied world. Economies have not yet to be divorced from the individual constraints of their physicality! Only in models of reality could these self satisfied pronouncements make any sense.
Economies have not yet been divorced from the individual constraints of their physicality! Only in models of reality could these self satisfied pronouncements make any sense.
It is extremely logical to base emissions on per person that way the efficient western model is properly handicaped so communism has a fighting vhance.
Max
Is economic ruin really such a large price to pay for a very tiny chance to prevent some ice from melting in some God-forsaken wasteland where hardly anyone even goes to have a gander before quickly leaving?
The ice man…think of the ICE!
We need it.
We really do.
All that other stuff, like money, food, clothes, stuff…we can do without most of that, can’t we?
If it might possibly keep some ice from melting may…someday…perhaps…?
/sarc off
[Which is the really twisted part: I was being sarcastic. She is being 100% serious!]
Places that are covered in ice for most of the year are death zones and we need less of them, not more.
(Trimmed. Fake screen name. -mod)
I agree Nigel.
This is one thing I am actually sure of…warmer is certainly better.
I would be even if only because it puts the inevitable end of the Holocene further away.
If you liked The Great Depression, you’ll love Alice Bows-Larkin’s plan.
Worldwide GDP fell by 15% from 1929 to 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
… if you’re in a country where per capita emissions are really high — so North America, Europe, Australia …
North America, Europe and Australia are continents. Sloppy.
SPOT ON.
Just shows how divorced from reality the ‘professional students” have become.
Odd dichotomy here: the Greens (AKA loonie socialists) want enforceable austerity, whereas the Socialists (AKA loonie Greens) are fighting to stop austerity. I just wish they would go away and fight amongst themselves and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives.
The socialists have defined austerity, as not getting as big a raise as they asked for.
Australia has a population of about 2 average German Bundesländer/Federal States (e.g. Bavaria + Hessia).
Or Texas.
New South Wales is bigger than Texas.
And it’s not as if the have-nots will be magically isolated from such an economic implosion. Such a downturn may be onerous in the developed world, but it will be deadly in the Third World.
One always wonder why the great civilizations of the world have perished. The ruins are still visible and explanations about environmental ruin are abundant though never proven. Has anybody yet thought about destruction from inside? Once a civilization reaches a point where generations start to live on the fruits created by their forebears the values of building that civilization are lost. Rome is a great example by the way.
The same thing is happening to us right now. People who contribute zero to our economy are busy destroying it. So sad.
including TED bowing to propaganda
If she said these things in an attempt at humor, it would not even be funny.
To say such things off the cuff would be quite eccentric to say the least.
To give a talk about it, as a well thought out, actual plan of action is beyond insane, beyond economic illiteracy, beyond even socialist eco-lunacy.
This woman is certifiably bat-shit crazy and mentally incompetent to opine on any serious subject.
We just lived through an economic downturn a fraction as bad as what she is proposing we do to ourselves on purpose, for years on end…to solve a 100% imaginary problem.
I have no idea what is wrong with these people.
Sometimes, like today, I wake up and read this stuff and wonder if I am on the right planet.
Consider that this woman, and people who share her mind set, currently comprise most of the people who have been entrusted with educating our children.
God help us if these people continue to be believed.
I think even He will not be able to help us if power is not wrested from the grasp of these maniacs, and that very soon.
Bows-Larkin’s looney dogma is filling the void created by the collapse of organised religion.
What have the Romans ever done for us? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQE
I agree with you there. It seemed a better explanation to me that these civilisations self-destructed from the inside due to some insane idea that the parasite class used to suck the life out of the productive class. Sometimes I wonder wether those huge constructions that last through the ages are part of the cause of why people dont live there any more, in other words the grand edifices (nearly always of no productive use) require the impoverishment and diversion of productive energy into unproductive monuments to the parasites. Wind farms etc and international conferences are some excellent examples.
Thanks for that perspective + 1.
I had to wade through alot of emails to find this gem today. Do you know if WUWT offers a block or filter ?
The Moche, in what is now Chile, did no such thing. They self-distructed based on a “religious” hype that war and sacrifice pleased their gods. It did not work.
Why are people like this even given space on the web or in a publication to air their views? This is totally brainless. Even the UN elitists who support such a plan can’t be serious. It destroys the goose that lays the golden eggs that provides them with the wealth that allows them to perpetuate their idiotic ideas.
To answer your question “Why are people like this even given space on the web”….it’s the same reason why this blog exists.
[Reply: and even you can post here. ~mod.]
They already have their wealth, they don’t want any one else joining their elite little club !!!
In answer to your good question, the reason is:- other people’s MONEY.
The so-called university she “works” for in Lancashire, England will have received OPM (other people’s money) in the form of a grant from the British government gravy train.
[Even St. Andrews university in Fife has been on that particular “payroll”.]
Worst of all, it appears that Alice acquired her PhD. in so-called “climate modelling” !
Evidently, modelling is not her strong point but she certainly knows how to rake in the MONEY.
Regards,
WL
Climate modelling does not appear to be a “strong point” for anyone.
Just sayin’.
So she’s actually a real-life “Alice in wonderland”.
Big grants makes you larger, and no grants makes you small. Go ask Alice – while she’s ten feet tall.
And the ones that Government gives you don’t do anything at all…
Thank you from the White Rabbit. 🙂
Thanks jeff, how did I miss that opportunity?
Thanks Eric (and also thanks of course to James Delingpole),
Your last paragraph: last sentence
… “is all this hardship really a price worth paying, to prevent a few extra days … ?”
Answer
We have ALREADY paid; many times over.
It is not a few sunny days. I think it should rather be polar amplification which means warmer winter days at high latitudes. Warmer days there come with the price of clouds, fog, rain, and snow.
It is boring, depressing and did I say dull, but luckily at least saves some heating.
A very good analogy. I would like to add though that this process of less hours of work and lower earnings will actually become logarithmic in nature. If farmers cut down their hours, presumably there will be less food which will drive up the prices in the supermarkets. so those whose earnings are cut will have to pay more for food. The same will apply to every consumer item, so inflation rises. At the same time the government will have lower tax revenues, the public service pay bill will be less, but other costs will rise such as the interest rates, making repaying the national debt more expensive so taxes will have to rise.
It also disregards the fact that there are many people in the third world who either cannot or will not work and/or have corrupt governments that discourage work.
This woman is absolutely clueless about reality!
The only way to permanently cut economic output, is to permanently cut the population.
Fortunately, the left also has plans for that.
Mark: “Fortunately, the left also has plans for that” Starvation or hypothermia, take your pick?
Abortion.
And when those don’t work, there are always the re-education camps.
I recommend that as ‘a reader’ she read a lot more.
Dafuq kind of title is, “Reader in Energy and Climate Change?”
She seems to realize that 1% is pretty serious stuff…for her to say that 10% is a “challenge” is an understatement.
This level of stoopid demands we institute something like the Darwin award. Perhaps there’s room for a GSM: the Galactically Stupid Medal. In the case of Alice Lows Barkin, I would improve it to bar and clasp.
I was thinking big tattoo on forehead.
Harry Passfield. I agree. Now when POTUS himself set the acceptability calibration criteria for insults, there is ample of room for humor, sophistication and humanity while at it.
So who gets to decide the speakers at these TED things? Do you have to buy a lottery ticket?
Or is it completely random, as now appears to be the case?
It is as random as who gets published in Science and Nature nowadays.
The “cause” gets promoted in all places possible.
Have read some of the TED comments to her speech, there are so many lemmings out there, whether the “we have destroyed nature by our lifestyle” or hints to “read scepticalscience not to fall for climate denier schemes”.
It’s sickening.
There should be a restriction that no scientist can travel abroad more than 2 to 3 times a year for the purpose of conferences or scientific meetings. I know a few more scientists who are travelling abroad more than 10 times a year showing the same reason. Surprisingly, they are from the group of ‘Alarming Propaganda of CO2’. They are rewarded with lots of undue advantages of travel fund, not to mention about their sudden upsurge in career.
Are you suggesting alarmism is a consequence of jet lag? Perhaps a result of heightened cosmic radiation at cruising altitude? Oh the humanity!
We could meet this goal easily…
…just stop producing food for the rest of the world
Now that’s what I call “planned austerity”.
The idiot (Alice) doesn’t know that if the rich would cuts it’s economic growth…..the third world crap burners have no chance of increasing theirs
Some suggestions:
Every driver is given a card that may be used to obtain gasoline. The number of gallons granted is annually is reduced by 10 percent plus the percentage increase in cards issued. The grant is covered by arbitrarily setting the price at something like $250.00 per gallon. The cards are biometrically locked for social justice. It’s not fair to benefit from a gasoline ration.
Every abode is issued some number of kWh of electricity and heating/ cooking fuels to be determined solely by the number of residents. The grant decreases 10 percent annually. This grant is paid for by onerous prices for overages. Smart meters are used to disable consumption when limits are reached. Credit card readers are provided at the meter for purchase beyond the ration limit.
People who have not secured an abode must live with parents or friends to reduce need for new concrete for construction. Annual national lottery to determine who may build a new home.
We can have this next…
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RtzuGO4Z3t8/hqdefault.jpg
Michael Jankowski,
On her behalf, I accept. She can be the first one to start ridding the earth of excess population, which they all seem to want. But they always want others to go first…
Socialism works great, until you run out of other peoples money !!!
They’ve fixed the problem of running out of other people’s money……they just print more.
Then it no longer has value !!! In 1945 Germany it cost 20 million of their dollars to buy a loaf of bread !!!
Printing money is only a slightly more sophisticated way of destroying the value of “other people’s money”.
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/634/economics/the-problem-with-printing-money/
No Marcus, I think you mean 1920’s Germany. We all learned from the last go-round and post WWII inflation in Germany never got anywhere near as bad as post WWI.
She seems to be suggesting we all volunteer to burn one tenth of our money and stuff every year.
Liberalism works great until you run out of victims or other people’s money.
Thanks for the news, Eric Worral, I will not watch a another TED Talk, after having sat trough one a couple of years ago. It was disgusting. Never more!
Why does Alice Bows-Larkin hate humanity, in particular the people of the USA, so much?
“A PHD for a soul” I believe the quote is.
Manchester University seems to specialize in airheads with PhDs. ‘Prof’ Brian Cox comes to mind!
I suggest she spends 5 years in Zimbabwe first, or better still, living with a tribe with no electricity or drinking water or modern medicine and see if she changes her mind.
A couple years without lights, a/c or clean drinking water ought to cure her stupidity! Ya think?
I would give Missy Alice 10 – 1 odds that the planet’s temperature never gets 4º higher. I’d tell her: put up or shut up. But like alarmists everywhere, she would tuck tail and run before putting her own money at risk.
But there’s the thing, DB, with people like Lows-Barkin, it’s too easy to take the grants and live a good life while telling those who pay the grants that you’re working on saving mankind (from itself). What we should do is say we are saving the world from 5 deg C, sit back, take the money, and when the temps (of course) get nowhere near the 2 deg C we can claim it was all down to the work we had done.
A few years ago, one of our trolls tried to claim that the reason for the pause, was all the reductions in CO2 that had already been made.
When it was pointed out to him, that there had in fact been no changes to the rate of CO2 increase, he refused to believe it. After all, they had gone to so many demonstrations, it must have made a difference.
hmmm…
The message from the intelligencia is almost always the same, isn’t it? Tax the wealthy, excuse the poor, give a talk, order croissants and have a nice reception afterward.
seriously … What’s Up With That?
There are only four ways to solve global warming:
[1] Admit we just don’t know if it is even vaguely a system that can be thrown out of balance by changing atmospheric CO₂ by a few parts per million
[2] Admit that all hopeful talking about the CO₂ emitters suddenly bottling up (or just not producing) CO₂ – even in a “nice sounding’ 10% per year kind of way – is hokum. That there is no country that is willing to put its economic neck on the chopping block voluntarily.
[3] Realize that there are easy methods to reduce CO₂ that could happen literally “today”, if it weren’t (ironically) for the hue and cry of environmentalists worldwide (oceanic iron fertilization).
[4] Redirect our (ahem) energies … from fighting all power consumption in those bad old rich countries to simply utilizing the one (and nearly only) form of potent, safe energy that will markedly impact our CO₂ footprint: nuclear & environmental power.
Oh, go ahead and scoff at that last part “… and environmental …” if you like. Yes, it means “solar” and “wind”. It also means hydroelectric and geothermal. No one (except if it were today, the environmentalists) is scoffing at hydroelectric. Because … it has been totally transformative to our whole blôody economy. Same goes for nuclear and solar: they complement each other well, nuclear having the power to “be the battery” when solar’s output is insufficient to track load. Nuclear has been shown (mostly by France) to be able to generate over 80% of all a nation’s electricity, and follow diurnal demand. Its clearly good enough.
But I also like utilizing the sun, and when its not rolled-out-to-ridiculous-extremes, wind power. And geothermal. They’re all good: all are (or can be) cost effective power sources where conditions merit their investment.
And that’s about that! The car, train, truck, bus and other land-based vehicular industries are coming along rapidly to perfect potent, speedy and quite economical electric vehicles. Now, if most of them could be powered “from the grid” which is mostly nuclear, well then … by proxy, they’re nuclear powered cars. Mostly.
Anyway, if you’re not moved (ahem) by any of this, just go back to the first paragraphs. Croissants and Junkets. This is where academics “get off”.
GoatGuy
Goat guy,
I can’t agree that wind power is good in any way. It is extremely inefficient, it couldn’t exist without masssive subsidies, it kills wildlife by the millions, it is unreliable, and by any cost.benefit analysis it’s a total loser.
That applies to solar power, too, except for killing wildlife. But solar is improving, and it may reach the point that it is able to stand on its own without subsidies. Right now it can’t.
The best and cheapest answer by far is the use of fossil fuel for power generation. Nothing else compares. (Nuclear could compete, if the gov’t got out of the way. Fat chance of that.)
As far as EV’s are concerned, electricity will close the cost gap with gasoline. It take electric power to run cars, and that power is not free. When there are millions of EV’s on the roads, the cost of recharging will rise and become comparable with the cost of gasoline powered vehicles. You can’t throw economic laws out the window. In the end, we will all pay the price.
Finally: what is there to “solve” about global warming? Global warming stopped many years ago, and if it resumed, it would be a net benefit.
I partially agree, and disagree too. Wind Power’s quixotic (capricious) character is the bane of electrical distribution operators, to be sure. Ironically though, the larger and more widely implemented, the more wind power ‘self averages’. It becomes subject to prevailing weather, to climate, to season and so on. But less variable minute-to-minute (which just kills its utility).
Solar power is similarly capricious on a scale of seasons, days and even hours. It too self-averages when implemented more significantly over broader stretches of land and state. Like ICELAND’s not-so-capricious, but very potent geothermal energy surplus, there are other things that can be done with the power other than try to use it on ‘the grid’
As to fossil fuels being the best-and-cheapest, I completely agree: they are the ultimate in stored solar energy in a way. And geothermal. But they’re not limitless, and especially with coal, they’re also far, far from being innocuous to extract, and to deal with the byproducts of burning. As to their cost being the attractive component? The 1973 Arab Israeli war caused an oil-shock that tripled … to quadrupled the price people – worldwide – were being required to pay for gasoline and diesel. The net result was that in the next 3 years, a whole new car industry lit up. Light and ultra-light small-displacement “economical” cars.
Point?
Point is that when the price of oil was artificially raised by 3× to 5× at the wellhead, the entire fuel consumption opportunity cost changed, downstream.
And the point of that? Simply to acknowledge that to change demand from cheap, ubiquitous petroleum and coal based energy to something else, will take the fortitude to tax the stuff – at the wellhead and coal mine, to change its economic attractiveness compared to alternatives. Really. Humankind responds to NO OTHER FORCE as strongly and predictably as when taken-for-vantage resources inexorably become way more expensive.
GoatGuy
Goat guy,
Although it seems we are pretty much in agreement about the lack of efficiency of ‘alternate’ energy (hydro is mainstream, not alternative power), the conclusions are troublesome.
You seem to be advocating much higher energy prices. In Obama’s words, energy costs “will necessarily skyrocket”. What’s good about that? I say: nothing.
For one thing, costly energy condemns much of the world to long term poverty. ‘We’ve got ours, but you don’t get yours’ is the attitude. Nothing eradicates poverty more efficiently than cheap electricity. It is unethical to deny more than a billion people to semi-starvation because of the stupid “sustainable” narrative.
And as it turns out, more CO2 is entirely beneficial; there is no downside, or global damage, or global harm from having more CO2 in the air. You wouldn’t even know about it unless someone told you. The biosphere clearly responds the way we would want, if we had planned it that way. Ag productivity is rising right along with, and because of the added CO2.
Next, when you say “wind power ‘self averages”, I say, baloney. There are transmission losses, and even if they’re not figured in, wind power is very inefficient and causes much carnage to wildlife. On that basis alone, other alternatives should be used. And the best alternative by far is fossil fuel power.
Finally, there is plenty of fossil fuel to be found. Even if the ‘low hanging fruit’ is eventually used up, there is still plenty left. Basic Econ shows that the price point will change, that’s all. But we will never run out of fossil fuels.
dbs,
Perfect summary, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t get it.
A substantial fraction of the cost of gasoline goes towards road taxes. Until a means of taxing electrics to support the roads they use, then they will always get a huge operational subsidy.
PS: Since the battery packs make electrics heavier than comparable IC powered vehicles, they actually do more damage to the roads.
GoatGuy, the problem with this fascinating belief in “self-averaging, is that electricity is at best regional in nature. It can’t be transmitted more than a few hundred miles. Once we develop room temperature super conductors, then you can start talking about “self-averaging”, not before then.
If they actually wanted to do something about energy use, they could subsidize those new LED light bulbs.
Replacing all the incandescent and fluorescent bulbs with those things would cut energy use by or two percent.
(I’m against subsidizing anything. I just put this forward as a “if you have to do something, try this”, type of suggestion.)
Even nuclear can’t ramp up fast enough to cover for solar when a cloud passes over the solar field.
False.
“False” isn’t an argument, it is an opinion. A baseless opinion, at that. Please try to support your assertions with verifiable facts. Thanks.
It takes hours for nuclear to ramp up, clouds can cut in, in mere minutes.
Hydro is the only power source that can ramp up and down quickly enough to handle the vagaries of wind and solar.
The problem with hydro is that people like to recreate in the areas below the dams and it takes time to get them out of the way.
@MarkW
We finished our small portion of work at a power plant not that long ago that was basically a collection of four 50 Mw gas-fired generators; really just honkin’ big jet engines. Their ramp up time is between 10 and 20 minutes. Definitely as fast or faster than hydro, and you can put them anywhere you can run gas.
“Environmental power” and cost effective power are mutually exclusive. What is needed is cost effective power, not chasing rainbows and butterflies with the goal of “reducing carbon”.
Sorry, but that’s not true: Environmental power can be cost effective. The problem is that it is often utilized as a government tax relief harbor for the wealthy to invest in … when it would otherwise make no sense. Thus we are littered with impotent environmental power projects that eventually are abandoned as pointless. Yet, had they never been built, instead of EP having a black eye, it’d be just fine. And smaller.
ICELAND, for instance, creates so much excess environmental power (geothermal) that it uses it to power greenhouses that produce bananas(!!!) for export to Europe in the winter time. And gobs of aluminum (one of the most energy-intense produces humankind produces).
The same could (but doesn’t normally) go for solar: home to deserts, its power could be used not just to push electrons to the grid (which for similarly parallel environmental conditions is far away from “markets”), but to purify water. Every square meter of solar panel can nominally produce 1 m³ of potable fresh water per day from seawater-strength brine. That’d change some of the more arid deserts!
Seriously … between environmental power sources such as hydroelectric (nice and peaky tracking), geothermal (nearly continuous / ‘nuclear like’ 95% producing duty-cycle), solar (more or less tracking human daily activity), and wind (capricious, but potent when “on”) … they all complement addressing the whole of demand. And … lest we forget even demand is redirect-able on metropolitan-scales.
Clearly … there is no way to “turn on a switch” to effect the kind of edge-to-edge systematic investments needed to make this transformation overnight. But with fortitude and monetary carrot-and-stick guidance, civilizations themselves can make the changes. Its just a matter of carrot-and-stick taxation. Really.
GoatGuy
I think you’re discounting the cost of constructing and maintaining transmission lines transformers and automated switchgear which serve these remotely located environmental sources. The source must be dense and reliable enough to justify the expense, as it is in iceland and probably would be in Yellowstone park. Large dams are sources of dense power. Pumped-up reservoirs are a way to turn solar farms into 24 hr power sources, but take up way too much space compared to denser sources.
The concrete that should be going into hydro dams is being wasted on anchoring the environmentally unfriendly wind generators, which can’t even produce enough power in their lifetime to self-replicate.
‘Naturalists’ of the future will probably by pushing to eliminate the wires, towers and windmills spoiling the landscapes, and the solar farms playing havoc on the desert ecosystems.
The only place that is at all practical for solar panels is integrated into buildings, thereby reducing the load on the grid during the periods of peak commercial usage, and if used properly, reducing the solar heat load on the bldg HVAC systems
Tax, like the cigarette tax a decade or two ago that was supposed to cover medical costs after the lawyers got their huge cut. All the governments borrowed against it and squandered it on other foolish government ideas. Same for the environmental clean up funds, all the money went to lawyers arguing about where to spend it leaving most sites not cleaned.
Really, when will some people learn how the Government actually works versus what they promise when they increase taxes (you can keep your doctor and insurance company)
Can you tell me one significant form of energy breakthrough the DOE has provided with all those tax dollars?
14th Century wind mills?
+1 for solar in Sahara for potable water. Think that, maybe it is feasible.
When you propose to dictate my behaviour, do you imagine i don’t recognize a power lusting petty tyrant?
When you propose to dispose of my property, do you imagine i don’t recognize robber?
When you propose to guide my thinking, do you imagine i don’t recognize a con artist? Let me tell you where to stick your carrot.
Don’t touch what’s not yours – didn’t anybody ever teach you about ownership and rights and why stealing is wrong?
You first have to either pump the salt water to the desert, or send the electricity to the coast.
Both options more than eliminate any savings in your grand scheme.
Goat guy says:
…with fortitude and monetary carrot-and-stick guidance, civilizations themselves can make the changes. Its just a matter of carrot-and-stick taxation. Really.
Read what gnomish wrote above. “Carrot and stick taxation” is only in your dreams. Taxation is all stick. Any subsidies reward a small minority at the expense of everyone else.
You should take your great new ideas and try them out yourself — at your own expense. But you don’t have the “fortitude” to do it yourself. So please leave the rest of us out of it, we don’t want to have our earnings confiscated by people who can’t or won’t do things on their own. If you can’t afford a windmill, form a corporations and solicit share buyers. We’ll see how far you get.
What you’re missing is the fact that your “alternative energy” schemes are a bad idea. They have to be shoved down the throats of taxpayers, and even then they don’t work.
Here’s a quick Econ course for you:
1. Government is force
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed
You could pay $100K for an Econ education and never learn that. Here, it’s free. A gift. Try to make use of that valuable knowledge.
” If you can’t afford a windmill, form a corporations and solicit share buyers. We’ll see how far you get.”
…
Do you mean something like this?…. http://www.albertawindenergy.net/
Alan Penn, please. Are you really trying to tell us that your linked company doesn’t benefit from government subsidies? Really?
” Every square meter of solar panel can nominally produce 1 m³ of potable fresh water per day from seawater-strength brine. ”
If no one has already, I call BS on this.
One cubic meter is a very large amount of water, and removing the salt from seawater is energy intensive.
A solar still can produce perhaps one gallon of water (3-4 liters) per day.
Photovoltaics used to run reverse osmosis plants can produce about 50 gallons per day under optimal conditions, but the required input of capital is enormous, as one must built a desalination plant and enough photovoltaic capacity to run it. Plus, one must have considerable excess capacity, it seems to me, in order to store water for sunless periods, or risk a catastrophe if people are depending on this water supply.
No mater how you slice it, that figure you cite is way high by a factor of at least five, and that only after spending an enormous amount of capital on the initial build and upkeep.
Above should specify that those amounts of water produced are per one square meter of collection area.
I didn’t say anything about subsidies.
…
I’m just showing you how far THEY got by forming a corporations and selling shares to buyers.
Alan Penn,
Fine, then you go and invest your own money in that subsidized company. But there’s no way a windmill company can turn a profit without being propped up by government loot. No way.
So thanx for making my point for me. The whole wind power scam is a burden on taxpayers. It is a subsidy-based hoax.
The Sahara Desert has a huge, small ocean-sized underground reservoir of groundwater, left over from the periodic greening that takes place there during every complete Milankovich Cycle.
May solar to power pumps to extract it.
That may be cost effective, but only if no cheaper source of power is available.
Not much coal in Africa, unfortunately…but there seems to be a lot of nat gas here and there.
“there’s no way a windmill company can turn a profit without being propped up by government loot. No way.”
Vestas is a manufacturer of wind turbines.
…
They make a profit without government subsidies.
Alan Penn, please. Are you really trying to tell us that Vestas doesn’t collect government subsidies for windmills? Really?
GE doesn’t get a subsidy for their manufacturing operations either.
..
http://ieefa.org/ge-wind-turbine-orders-26-2014/
Alan Penn,
Oh, please, stop with your baseless assertions. Your link says nothing about zero subsidies.
Much of the subsidies are in the form of tax credits for buyers of bird choppers. Those subsidies artificially distort the market. But make no mistake, they are real subsidies paid for by taxpayers.
Unless you can provide some kind of solid evidence showing that GE and other companies are not receiving these or any other subsidies, your argument is based only on your belief, not on reality.
GoatGuy, you make some decent points about “environmental” electricity production. However, the fact is that, where I live, the wind may not blow for days, and the sun is long below the horizon when peak electricity demand is reached on winter nights that may be -40 degrees Celsius. What that means is that, no matter how much wind and solar you build, you still have to build enough conventional generation to meet peak demand. If you live in an area with lots of hydro dams, great, but if not, thermal or nuclear generation is the answer. As an example, in week 4 of 2014 in Germany, which has about 38 GW of installed wind and 35 GW of installed solar (almost enough combined to meet its total peak demand), more than 95% of the electricity had to be provided by conventional generation, the vast majority of which was coal and nuclear.
While it is often stated that “green” generation is nearing cost parity with conventional generation, such statements ignore the fact that wind and solar generation has a negligible impact on the capacity of conventional generation that must be built. In addition, widespread wind resources (to get the averaging you speak of) require very large investments in poorly utilized transmission facilities. Essentially what you trade off is the entire capital cost of the renewable generation against the fuel savings created by those resources. That is, the capital cost of the conventional generation is still required. Any fair economic assessment of renewable resources will consider this fact.
With respect to the “averaging” effect, sometimes that works. But weather systems of many thousands of square kilometres exist and can cause thousands of widely spread wind turbines to sit still, or thousands of solar panels to sit in deep shade. And it is important to know that power systems must be designed to handle extreme conditions (such as minimum renewable generation at times of peak demand). Power systems that are designed to handle “average” conditions would suffer from frequent blackouts.
Finally, on the subject of fossil fuels, the 3 kilometre thick layer of ice that existed roughly 20,000 years ago where I am sitting right now melted with, to the best of my knowledge, no help from fossil fuel combustion. And if you check the April issue of Discover Magazine, you will find that Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic was covered with a boreal forest populated by beavers, hares, and even camels 3.3 million years ago. The temperature at the time was 15 degrees C warmer than today, and there was no Arctic ice cap.
So much for catastrophic, fossil-fuel-induced global warming. .
“Are you really trying to tell us that Vestas doesn’t collect government subsidies for windmills?”
…
Examine the financial statement from Vestas.
..
https://www.vestas.com/~/media/vestas/investor/investor%20pdf/financial%20reports/2015/q2/150819_ca_uk_42.ashx
…
No government subsidies.
Alan Penn,
As usual, you cherry-pick the subsidies you want to argue.
Windmill purchases are heavily subsidized for buyers, just like solar power is. Take away the subsidies for windmills, and they would promptly stop being produced. Subsidies distort the market, at the expense of taxpayers. Maybe you missed, or didn’t understand, what I posted before:
1. Government is force
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed
Either you are in favor of Big Government bureaucrats “guiding” the market, or you are in favor of the free market providing what consumers want — not what the gov’t wants.
But you can’t be both.
Freedom? Or coercion? Which?
You posted “there’s no way a windmill company can turn a profit without being propped up by government loot. No way.”
…
I gave you an example of a windmill company that recieves NO government subsidies.
..
You post “you cherry-pick the subsidies” ………no, I am not cherry picking any subsidy, I’m showing you that Vestas makes a profit without subsidies……do you understand the meaning of the word WITHOUT????
….
PS, GE makes a profit on the wind turbines that it makes to…..again WITHOUT a government subsidy.
Without taxpayer’s money Vestas would not exist and neither would GE wind turbines. However, GE buils turbines for other fuels. Vestas doecn’t
Stephen Richards: maybe, maybe not, there’s no way to tell.
PS Stephen Richards & dbstealey.
..
Regarding windmill companies existing only with subsidies.
..
http://www.ironmanwindmill.com/windmill-history.htm
Alan Penn, dbstealey is correct. IF the company buying the product from a vender which is subsidized then it too is subsidized. For example Sikorsky Aircraft makes civilian and military aircraft. Because the government subsidizes the sale to the military, the civilian side is both directly and indirectly subsidized. If anywhere in the chain government monies enter then both up and down the chain the entirety as a result is subsidized. Because if you remove the government funds the entire chain collapses
michael
Mike the Morlock, if the government did not buy the Sikorsky military product, Sikorsky would still make the civilian models, right? Your example doesn’t hold water because the government is not buying wind turbines. I think you are confusing PTC’s with direct purchases. According to your logic, every person driving an automobile is subsided by the oil depletion allowance giving to crude oil producers, right?
Alan Penn,
To define the issue, I am not talking about a small water pump windmill, just like I’m not discussing a 1.5 volt solar fold-up battery charger.
I am referring to the thousands of gigantic “alternative energy” windmills that plague the countryside, with their 200 foot+ diameter blades. In July my wife and I drove across the country both ways, from California to New York and back again. We saw hundreds, if not thousands of giant windmills. That was just from Interstates 80 and 90. Presumably windmills cover the rest of the land that we couldn’t see; a thousand miles in each direction. A quarter of the new ones weren’t even working, and when we got back to California, at the Altamont Pass there were many hundreds of older windmills. Fully 90%+ of them were not turning, indicating that they were only built to collect the subsidies.
There have always been specialized windmills. Here is an example of a current model. Those are not the issue.
The problem is that a few benefit at the expense of everyone else, and that is due to the massive taxpayer subsidies attached. None of those giant new GE windmills we saw all across the country wouldn’t even exist if it were not for the massive tax subsidies, and whether those subsidies are collected by the purchaser, or by the builder doesn’t matter. They distort the market by re-directing limited resources into very inefficient power generation. Wind power costs more than 25¢ per kwh. By comparison, coal power is around 6¢ – 8 ¢/kwh. Even nuclear power is less expensive than wind power.
Finally, it muddies the waters to mix in military expenditures with what’s happening in the free market. Youu say:
…if the government did not buy the Sikorsky military product, Sikorsky would still make the civilian models, right?
Maybe, maybe not, but that’s avoiding the issue. As Mike points out:
…if you remove the government funds the entire chain collapses.
This is about government subsidized windmills. The market doesn’t want or need giant windmills, and the only way they exist is because of lush subsidies for the lucky few who either own the land they’re on, or for those who build them. Those folks collect money from the rest of us, for something that is uneeded and unwanted. Explain how that makes any economic sense.
PS…..when you post “Those folks collect money from the rest of us” it shows all of us that you don’t understand anything at all about PTC’s.
…
They don’t “collect money”
..
Learn how it works first before posting nonsense.
Alan Penn,
I guess my minor in Econ makes it hard to explain things to the alarmist contingent. But I’ll try:
People who agree to lease their land for windmill installation, and companies like GE, certainly do “collect money” for those things.
Just because you don’t understand, doesn’t make it “nonsense”. I recommend reading the WUWT archives fro a few months before commenting here. Do a keyword search for “windmills”. You really do need to get up to speed on the subject.
” coal power is around 6¢ – 8 ¢/kwh. ”
…
Got a source for that data?
…
Doesn’t look like you are even in the ballpark….
..
Look at Table 1….
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
Of course I have a source. But your own link doesn’t show anything like what you claim. What do you do, just search until you find something that posits energy costs in 2020 – 2040?
Really, you’re not up to speed enough to be arguing on this science site. May I suggest Hotwhopper?
“Of course I have a source. ”
…
Very funny.
..
From your “source” ….. “per KWh for All Sectors of Consumers by State, 2004”
…
2004
…
too funny
FYI, it’s 2015…..your “source” is………….not very current.
[Reply: “Alan Penn” is a fake sockpuppet name for a repeatedly banned commenter. ~mod.]
Alan Penn,
Your link guessed at prices in 2020 – 2040. So that’s completely bogus.
But you criticize my link because it has real world prices? Of course you do, because that’s all you can do. You certainly haven’t been able to refute anything I’ve posted.
You asked for a source. I gave you exactly what you requested.
But you wouldn’t accept any source that contradicts your greenie eco-religion.
If you could show that the link I posted was wrong, you would have. Instead, you proselytize your religious faith. This is a science site, not a religious blog. You’re in the wrong place… buddy.
@Alan Penn:
As I wrote just above:
To define the issue, I am not talking about a small water pump windmill, just like I’m not discussing a 1.5 volt solar fold-up battery charger.
Sorry you didn’t read that. Really, your arguments are getting increasingly pathetic.
(Trimmed. Fake screen name. -mod)
@Alan Penn:
Nice try, eco-boy. I clearly defined exactly what I was, and what I was not referring to. Therefore, it’s you who is moving the goal posts. Projection, me boi, you got it.
And have you noticed that no one agrees with you? When everyone else is telling you you’re wrong, you might listen up, and try to understand what they’re saying. That’s what most folks would do. They would step back and try to understand why no one agrees with them.
But not you, you’re not able to understand anything. You have a closed mind. That’s what religious faith does to a person.
Lol, Vestas is loaded with “Government Relations” staff.
Not sure why it’s a big deal if Vestas gets subsidies directly or not. The power companies buying their turbines do.
Here’s a US example from a few years ago… http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/sbo/2012/10/vestas-to-close-three-us-research.html . Seems to intertwine Vestas and tax credits for wind power.
And even within Vestas’ annual report itself for 2014…https://www.vestas.com/en/investor/financial_reports/2014/q4#!grid_0_content_21_Container
“…The UK market is showing increased signs of activity, which is partly driven by developers seeking to qualify for the existing support scheme that requires projects to be operational by the end of March 2017…”
Sure sounds like financial support incentives for wind projects to me.
Perfect. I’m all for it. All windmill companies not only can be freed to competition, but their profits can be taxed.
Ahem Alen Penn. http://freebeacon.com/politics/sen-udall-urges-for-billions-more-in-wind-subsidies/
“…In addition to subsidies, Vestas, the company cited by Udall that employs nearly 2,000 people on its four wind farms in Colorado, received more than $50 million from the federal government to build two plants in 2010, taking advantage of a Treasury Department program that reimburses for costs associated with starting renewable energy properties…”
Spin the end of the sentence as much as you want, but a 2014 article explicitly stating Vestas received subsidies seems to be the nail-in-the-coffin regarding your made-up BS.
Hell, Vestas even got subsidies just to revamp a building for use as their HQ http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/08/oregon_portland_help_wind_turb.html
And back to turbines, let’s go back to recent 2012… http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/vestas-wind-considers-options-pending-mitsubishi-talks/2573
“…Rising costs for the V112 turbine development program combined with dropping government subsidy levels have been major problems for Vestas recently…”
Lots of subsidies for a company that doesn’t receive subsidies.
Alan Penn October 25, 2015 at 2:20 pm
“Mike the Morlock, if the government did not buy the Sikorsky military product, Sikorsky would still make the civilian models, right? “
Wrong. All the equipment to build the civilian models was purchased by the navy in the 1950s& 1960s. To make call we say it.. the military aircraft. That is why I referred to a “chain” It does not matter who is the customer, or the manufacturer or the middleman, if the government is paying to help the economic activity, it is subsidized.
Oh and the government subsidized the hard points for the Spirit 76s for foreign sale back in 1984.
As I said, wrong, if no government subsidizes somewhere in the chain, no wind turbines.
michael
For GoatGuy and Alan Penn et al
Of course wind farm investments are heavily subsidized and wind generator manufacturers are subsidized by this in turn. If you don’t think so, then consider the words of an actual investor.
“For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
– Warren Buffet.
[Reply: “Alan Penn” is a fake sockpuppet name for a repeatedly banned commenter. ~mod.]
(Trimmed. Fake screen name. -mod)
(Trimmed. Fake screen name. -mod)
Alan Penn says:
Don’t have to show it was wrong, just showed you that pricing information from 2004 is not applicable today
Wrong, as always.
In fact, you do have to show the numbers are wrong, otherwise you lose this argument.
You asked for a source. I produced one. Then you asserted that the numbers are wrong. If that’s your only response, you fail.
I showed that my statement that coal power costs 6¢ – 8¢ per kwh. If you want to falsify that, you need to produce proof that the current cost of coal power exceeds 8¢/kwh. Merely asserting your baseless opinion loses the argument.
But you should be used to that by now.
DB
I admire your disciplined approach to honoring critical thinking skills. This weekend, I saw my email que explode with what my cartoon mind saw as a red meat fest. A pack of frothing skeptics ripping away at easy prey. A human trait much like a rhesus monkey pack that torments the lesser in the tribe. Not pretty.
Again, that being said, you have top notch skills at zeroing in on weak arguments. I’m far from perfect and indeed flawed beyond measure in the eyes of many so take my observation accordingly.
In my Monday morning rush of exchanges with talking heads, I noticed too much attention draw to the feeding frenzy on WUWT and very little attention to some of the better critical reviews.
I think that hurts this webpage’s effectiveness.
I also think it gets in the way of digesting your (and probably others) very articulate critical reviews.
Yup, free countries. Free to express ourselves as we wish. And I know debate can be rowdy, but it doesn’t mean we don’t also recognize that the rowdiness can undermine the very thing we seek.
Just an observation from one person in a planet of billions.
Alan Penn
What of the corporation that buys them, or the power company that purchases the power from them?
I pointed out to you that a subsidize anywhere in the chain means the enterprise can not be sustain on its own economic value. A company buys a machine makes product, as the equipment ages taxes are adjusted to reflect its value. Just like the taxes on your car. That is not a subsidy. The government pays funds to purchase equipment, or tax write offs for a purchase, or the purchase by preference of one source of product to another is a subsidy. For example if the government pays a steel company to sell you steel at the same price as a foreign import, they are receiving a subsidy. If you then advertise your product as made with local steel as a selling point against your competitor you also are benefiting from the subsidy.
It can get complicated.
michael
[Reply: “Alan Penn” is a fake sockpuppet name for a repeatedly banned commenter. ~mod.]
“Menicholas
October 25, 2015 at 11:47 am
Not much coal in Africa, unfortunately…”
Plenty of coal in Africa. Plenty of pretty much every thing in Africa, just not much infrastructure to extract it. What is more valuable though is gold and diamonds. Plenty of that there, sadly none of the locals benefit from it.
You cannot conflate geothermal with wind/solar, very different beasts. Geothermal is 24/7 and uses very basic existing technology.
Patrick,
In terms of tonnage, I am sure the number is very large.
As a percent of world reserves, it is small, about 6%, for a very large landmass.
Per capita, it is even less.
Europe has nearly as much in far less area.
http://www.coalplantsengineering.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/WorldCoalReserve.jpg
Interesting graphic. It relates to known reserves. Australia alone can supply the coal burnt by the world for 500 years, on known reserves and at current consumption rates. Given Africa is little explored regarding coal/gas/oil etc…I would say that figure in your graphic is reasonable. Knowing China is in Africa (2006 – Ethiopia) now looking at extracting resources and having spoken to resource geologists there at the time, I would say a resource little tapped and just waiting for the right time. Look at the location of the Horn of Africa in relation to Saudi Arabia. The US have, I think, at least 2 carrier fleets in that region. I would say in 50 years time…oil will be coming from Africa and not Arabia.
“carrot and stick guidance”
Isn’t it fascinating how fascists of all stripes seek to use the deadly power of govt to perfect the lives of others, whether they want to be perfected or not.
“I gave you an example of a windmill company that recieves NO government subsidies.”
You did no such thing. You gave an example of a company that has no direct subsidies of the form that show up on balance sheets.
The fact remains that the govt still mandates that X% of power must be produced by renewables.
That is a direct subsidy for the entire industry.
The fact remains that the construction and purchasing of said power is directly subsidized, so even if the manufacturer doesn’t receive subsidies, his customers wouldn’t exist in the first place without those same subsidies.
I don’t know if you actually are that dense, or if you are just corrupt. But just go away, you aren’t impressing anyone.
How many miles from sea you find desert in Oz or Sahara?
You need to pump the water anyway somewhere, it ain’t good at the sea. The scheme works only because potable water production doesn’t need to run 24/7/365. Sunny days is enough.
Alan Penn,
Their financial reports make a number of references to gov’t support. Why do you expect to see it as a line item?
Maybe the subsidies Udall pushed for didn’t get renewed, but Vestes apparently took advantage of it in previous years, and the layoffs were attributed in part to uncertainty in subsidy renewal.
I posted other links of Vestes getting subsidies, too. They aren’t listed as line items in their financials. Are you accusing them of tax or SEC fraud now? Lol.
[Reply: “Alan Penn” is a fake sockpuppet name for a repeatedly banned commenter. ~mod.]
I love the way activists go about claiming that they can make “environmental power” cost effective, but do it by taxing all competitors out of business.
That is both insane and highly dishonest. But when you are trying to save the world, you can justify any amount of perfidy.
Taxing and regulating out of business.
Coal is cheap enough that taxes alone would not do it…without crippling the economy as a whole.
Here in the US, I believe it is illegal to create a law aimed at one entity or person.
IOW, they cannot tax only coal, but they can regulated it to death…so that s what has been done.
Alan, don’t be dense. If their customers only exist because of subsidies, then by definition they only exist because of the subsidies.
A few thoughts:
It was refreshing to hear her confirm that the heat island effect is real, even if she used it to make small global temperature changes sound worse for city dwellers.
There is exactly zero chance that industrialized nations will reduce their emissions by 10% next year, and by 10% in each succeeding year, so I’m not sure why anyone is listening to her. She might as well say that we need to implement fusion power immediately. If it’s not going to happen, why bother talking about it?
She talks about “well being and equity” and how poor countries should be free to increase their emissions while we reduce ours. This grossly oversimplifies what the industrialized world has accomplished over the last century. We didn’t just light a bunch of coal on fire and chant, while factories and laboratories magically sprang out of the Earth. Forcing the advanced nations of the world to do less doesn’t mean that African nations will suddenly fill the gap. The world’s poorest people have experienced a 30% increase in life expectancy and greatly reduced infant mortality rates over the last 50 years thanks largely to technology provided by carbon emitters. I doubt you can imagine a more valuable contribution to “well being and equity” than that which we’ve already given.
Just another wealth distribution scheme. Won’t work because the west isn’t wealthy because the 3rd world countries are poor.
“There is exactly zero chance that industrialized nations will reduce their emissions by 10% next year, and by 10% in each succeeding year, so I’m not sure why anyone is listening to her. ”
Have you seen how many comments there have been on this issue from the leading skeptics site ? She’s floating the balloon. When the conman floats 10% a year, he throws out the red meat. It’s obvious you guys love red meat.
It does a few things right off the bat.
1. They get to introduce the idea with a bit player (a sacrificial lamb).
2. They then get to watch fenceriders see otherwise smart skeptics go all frothy.
3. They then get to seduce the core heartstrings of people buy sliding in a much more modest reduced growth proposal. They also do it in a way that doesn’t look a obvious as Ms Polly and then look like the side of reasonableness.
Your opponent really understands how to worm into the emotional brain and they’ve gotten so good at it that they know how to scare the fenceriders by proding skeptics into a frenzy.
What surprises me about the above is that most of you folks know this is a common baiting technique.
I hope Dr. Bowes-Larkin will be doing her bit for the greater good and won’t be breading.
I’m pretty sure she wont be breading. I doubt she even knows how to cook.
Oh, she looks like she could be a breading type, but not so much with breeding. ;<)
LOL
When one remembers what the central banks of the world need to prevent the collapse of the developed economies and political structures, the conclusion that the green loonies will be sent packing is obvious but wrong. The Solutions for saving the world have been revealed to some and it is for them to save the world. These people are crazy, and they will destroy the West to save the planet.
Most of them would willingly destroy the West, even if it didn’t save the planet.
For many of them, “saving the planet” is merely a justification for destroying the West. Destroying the West is their goal, not an unintended consequence.
Fortunately, much of Europe seems to be suddenly figuring this out, now they’re facing an existential threat from ‘migrants’ imported by anti-Western fanatics. Most Westerners will kowtow to the Narrative when it doesn’t affect them, but their behaviour can change almost overnight when disaster is staring them in the face.
these de-growth proponents should live by example, and give evidence that they have been following their own recommendations for now and into the foreseeable future.
iron brian
Iron brain, e right.
The only thing that would give them a shred of credibility would be to first practice what they preach.
But do as the say other should do is exactly the one thing none of them ever does or has any intention of doing.
Leading by example is a concept as alien to them as thinking before they talk.
Liberals have been taught that as long as they talk the talk, it doesn’t matter what they do.
By pushing to “correct” ideas, they are given dispensation to cover any energy usage in their own lives.
EW
A fine rubber hammer to the forehead EW.
Miss Potty is the balloon floater. She’s on TED to float this increased clarity on the agenda so the movement can test its readiness.
You can see this balloon floating technique on more radical parts of the agenda. Common technique in the game.
Your approach zeros in on the cost to the common man. Would suggest expanding the idea to include real life historical examples such as the Great Depression noted by another commenter.
The opposition will counter fiercely because it’s the soft underbelly as it gets closer to the real prize. Fortunately, you’ll be able to see counter attacks coming because they’ve exposed tactics from constant sparing.
Soon enough, an alternative mass movement will have to present itelf to replace the void created by being successful in the above. If you really take the long term view, you end up with a successful replacement and things plod along nicely for the next 100 years and then, of course …. we cycle again.
Yes, we are going through another cycle of victorianism. Reminds one of the scientific prediction that man could not survive the speeds that the steam locomotive could attain.
This current political paradigm and the tactics of the leftist leadership mimic the events in Germany during the years before WW2.
D
Extremists (of any side) alter reality to attract followers. It’s a staple of propoganda. After reading Hoffer again, what stuck me more clearly was the fatted cow effect (my phrase).
Unlike post WWI Germany, where the German nation was depressed, what I think we have is a fatted elite generation or two that are disillusioned with what success has brought.
The disillusionment makes a mind susceptible to pseudoscience and psuedotruths.
My current 2 cent theory.
Much agreed. Thanks for the perspective. Hope I can recapitulate down the road.
Didn’t Forbes do a reply to this inanity?
As in greenies and righteous do-gooders first.
Time these culls are separated from the herd, allowed to show us all how it is to be done.
I can’t wait to see the drone pictures sent back from Enviro-World.
What would you bet they could not last a month in the wilderness, with full supplies.
This Academic is the rot every successful society spawns.
My mistake.
Best rebuttal yet;The Regina Leader Post September 30th 2015
to demonstrate feasibility, pilot their own ideas before going full-scale, like a real engineer.
de-growth proponents shrink their own job hours
de-growth proponents shrink their own departments budgets
de-growth proponents shrink their own travel miles and frequencies
Her would-be world reminds me of a short story by Vonnegut called “Harrison Bergeron” (from the “Welcome to the Monkey House” collection of stories). Society is living under enforced egalitarianism: beautiful people must wear hideous masks, graceful people must wear encumbering weights, people of above average intelligence must wear headphones that periodically produce noises to disrupt coherent thought.
Bows-Larkin would be happy with such a nightmare world (as long as she was among the controlling elite). Instead of raising the bottom, she wants to lower the top until we are all equal.
…equally miserable that is.
Mark,
You’re describing the deliberate perversion of ‘equality’.
“Equal opportunity” was a good thing, but it has been replaced with “equality of results”. We see that everywhere: ‘everyone must get a prize!’
We see it in quotas, and we see it everywhere in economics, starting with minumum wage laws.
When you view what’s happening through the lens of “equality of results rather than equal opportunity”, you see the agenda. You see what’s wrong with society.
America and the West was built on fair competition. Equal results is the antithesis of that. We’re going down the wrong road, led by the corrupt UN, and almost all current politicians.
but db, procrustes is the very icon of equality.
maybe it’s ‘liberal’ version of the term ‘equality’ that is the perversion, unnatural and coerced.
One young socialist that I debated in college declared that not only was the minimum wage law a good thing, but a maximum wage law would be equally good.
And ideally, they should both be set to the same number.
“procrustes”
?
Cannot figure this one out.
“You’re describing the deliberate perversion of ‘equality’.”
No, it’s the inevitable consequence of kowtowing to ‘equality’. The left will keep pushing for more and more ‘equality’ until the competent are forced to become as inept as the incompetent.
I remember reading a book a few years ago by a Chinese lady who spent some time in the army under Mao. She said that anyone who could shoot well on the firing range was penalised until they started shooting as badly as the others. Because equality.
As good as it may be in theory, that’s what government-enforced ‘equality’ becomes in the real world.
Menicholas,
Procrustes was an old-timey do-gooder (☭) who altered the height of the people he robbed by stretching them or cuttting them to size, so they were all equal.
MarkW describes a modern Procrustes in his debate example above. I trust he won that debate easily. ☺
Thanks DBS, you saved me having to look that one up. Jeez I learn alot here.
Ditto, Thanks DB. I thought it was a typo, and could not figure out what was meant…so I never bothered to look it up.
dbstealey, you can only win debates with people who are capable of recognizing reality.
Some people are so wedded to their glorious visions, that they won’t let anything interfere with their dreams.
Maybe Alice Bows-Larkin-Moon-Glampers is campaigning to become the world’s first Handicapper General.
Perhaps ‘Minister of Global Austerity’ would be a more succinct position.
I’m sure the present UN hierarchy could find a use for her.
I like to tell her and Obama: You go first, take Gore and all your believers with you and let me know how that works out for you. Then I’ll decide if it looks OK for me
Is she a P.T. Charlatan School of Melonomics grad?
I loved this from the Delingpole piece:”This is a really difficult message to take because what it suggests is that we really need to do things differently. This is not about just incremental change. This is about doing things differently, about whole system change, and sometimes it’s about doing less things….”
[Actually, Bows-Larkins means “fewer”]Lazy with language, lazy with physics? (And completely nutty with socialism)
Yep:
http://s15.postimg.org/fmmk10i9n/Pedant.jpg
Very funny.
Not sure why ?
How come only one dude gets a horse?
Harry,
That was my conclusion. The imprecision in her thinking, and the acceptance of it by her audience, betrays her incompetence, and the crowd’s ignorance. Her thinking is only knowable by her use of words. Prattle and nonsense is the offspring of a disordered and undisciplined mind.
Missed something in the blockquote in my previous comment – even after re-readng it…..huh?
Thanks Mods!
Even the alarmists have admitted that the 2C limit was just made up. There is no science behind it.
There is no reason to believe that a world that is 2C warmer than today would be a worse world, much less the catastrophe that the alarmists have been trying to paint it.
There is every reason to believe that the opposite is true…warmer is better, within the scope of any reasonable estimate of how much warmer it may get, from whatever cause.
Warmer has always been better, colder has always been an unfortunate disaster for people.
How the meme has stuck in so many heads that warming of a half-frozen ice-box of a planet is a bad thing for heat loving humans and the plants we depend on for food, is simply stunning and a deep mystery.
The only real issue is UHI effect and how to minimize it in hot weather or gain from it in the cold. They are playing its effect to make people believe the illusion that the world is warming out of control.
For most of the last few hundred million years, the average temperature has been between 5 and 10C warmer than today.
Yet they want us to believe that a warming of 2C will practically end life on the planet.
They say they want equity across the globe, but the reality is that the biggest shift in the last few centuries has not been life of relative ease enjoyed by the rich and powerful. They had it pretty well back then, they have it pretty well now. The big difference is that the masses have gone from scratching out a brutal and meager existence to lives of relative ease and comfort, made possible by fossil fuels.
If we only went back, the earth could sustain the elites consuming all the energy they need to live as they desire. It just can’t sustain the masses doing so as well, they must be cut off again and go back to the meager existence that is necessary of the low class they were born into.
. + 10.. . Exactly !!
Here in the US many who live in what the Government calls “poverty” have cell phones and AC.
There will always be those who have less than others. But today that “less” is more than it used to be.
She’s out to stop that.
The “poor” in the US would be middle class in most of the developed world. And would be amongst the 1% in much of the developing world.
>>They say they want equity across the globe.
If they wanted equality, they should not have opposed the British Empire. The Empire brought more prosperity across Africa than in the previous few thousand years. But following the Greeny-types opposition and ending of the Empire, the entire continent went down the tubes.
Africa should be the richest nation-continent on the Earth, with all its many resources, but it it not. Corruption, greed and mismanagement has destroyed Africa. So now these Greeny-types want to hobble the West in order to try and solve the Third World mess that they created in the first place? Monstrous.
R
The British Empire collapsed under its own weight. It simply was too expensive to maintain it, and there was much opposition to it from various countries. There was also much turmoil internally, did the Brits have any concept of Islam and Hinduism? I don’t think so!
“Too stupid to live” really should be a valid diagnosis,. >:-(
Right up there with “He needed killin’.”
She is just another filthy, self-important and self-appointed libcult Fairmonger
Convinced of her own personal superiority and supremely “enlightened” understanding she, like all true believing libcultists, seek to insert themselves into everyones lives and courageously make all of our important decisions for us, since, as far as she is concerned, we hapless Muppets are soooo stupid and soooo helpless and in desperate need of their superior understanding in all things.
So enlightened!
Soooo corageous!
These kinds of vacuous, utterly self-serving premises permeate every dark corner and recess of the modern libcult. Like the Ruling Class Monsters whom they ultimately serve, true-believer libcultists both fear and despise the little peeps and regard them as their inferiors in every way. The little peep untermenchen are therefore nothing more than the property of the “enlightened”, to do with as they, the enlightened, see fit, as one might rightfully expect to do with their chattel
Every facet and Crusade of the libcult rests squarely on this same bit of silly rhetorical fluff. BlackLiesMatter, Glo-Bull Warming, “Heroic” immigrant invaders, ad nauseum.
This is government of the self-annointed, by the self-annointed, for the self-annointed.
Good to see someone that refuses to hold back.
How does she know by how much the quantity of CO2 should be reduced to avoid a warming of 2 deg C?
Oh, hell no.
They are too silly to even think through the notion of going back to “preindustrial levels”.
if they did, they would understand that what they are wishing for is a return to Little Ice Age conditions.
And who the hell thinks that was some wondrous time of plenty?
(Although the predicate that reducing CO2 will cool the planet to where it was has no basis in fact, or evidence to support it.)
US Energy Consumption 2004-2011 -5.7%
US CO2 Emissions 2004-2011 -7.4%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
US GDP 2004-2011 +27%
Real world observation shows that reducing emissions does not cause reduction in economic production