A couple of days ago, we noted that this year’s edition of BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy report on global energy use is out, and it contains one of the most telling charts about the failure of the climate crusade’s “war on coal” ever presented.
Most of the lamestream media coverage has focused on this particular chart from the BP report, which shows coal having a small uptick in 2017 after several years of decline. Doesn’t look like much, does it? Just a blip. Nothing for the enviro-faithful to worry about, the net trend is still down, right? They are blaming president Trump for it.
But, despite Trump’s focus on putting coal miners back to work during his presidency, that really doesn’t figure in much for the rest of the world.
Here is the real kick in the pants for environmentalists from the BP report:
(drum roll please) …….
Coal has the same share of global power generation it had 20 years ago
In 1997, coal power had a 38 percent share of global power generation.
And….in 2017, despite billions being thrown at renewable energy, it still had a 38 percent share of global power generation.
BOOM!
The idea that Al Gore, Bill McKibben, and their army of trained flying monkeys hell bent on stamping out coal use have made a difference in the past 20 years of climate crusading just went up in smoke. But, get this, their buddy, George Soros, has invested millions in coal, according to the Guardian.
Old “weepy Bill” is gonna need more tissues.
Meanwhile, in the USA, greenhouse gas production drops for the third straight year,
h/t to Marc Morano (via email)
UPDATE: WUWT Author David Middleton adds this graph in comments, noting that CO2 emissions from coal use have risen sharply.
That’s why the planet is greening.
Take a graph, focus in, increase the scale of the axees, and BOOM, it says what you want it to!
The graph shows the same relationship at any scale.
Arithmetic was not Matt’s best subject.
LOL! Total failure on the part of MattS. 38% in 1997 is still the same as 38% in 2017, no scaling will change that.
I’d think MattS was suggesting you clip the graph 2013-mid2016 and so show continuous decline in coal and surging non fossil
Yes, I think you’re right.
The only graph that has undergone a dramatic change is that of WUWT-appearing trolls in recent days. Apparently, there was again fresh money from Soros after he flew out of Hungary. He probably spared that on his Internet troll army.
However, he should have paid more attention to the intelligence of his soldiers.
“However, he should have paid more attention to the intelligence of his soldiers.”
???
A reiteration:
QUESTION: Why waste billions on The Great Search for an Alternative Energy that is not now/won’t be economically feasible or demanding . . . unless . . . it’s not about finding an alternate energy? You could put a wind farm on every mountain and solar panels on every open spot in America and still not make a dent in the energy needs of the nation.
QUESTION: So . . . why are the financial Wizards of Oz trying to sledgehammer nations’ economies by forcing this alternate energy lie on the world? Australia is taking it on the chin from these money changers who’re trying to force industries onto solar/wind and . . .it’s . . .not . . . working? Facts, families, workers and economies don’t seem to mean a damn thing to these money changers.
(1) IMMUTABLE MARKET LAW: He who gets there first with the most at a good price gets to build the platform
(2) The platform for cheap energy is built on coal, oil, natural gas.
(3) Why force the façade of trying to demonize—using paid political stiffs, shills, pimps, carnival barkers, and storefronts—the world’s cheapest energy platform without a proven replacement unless it’s to siphon government billions for theft and kickbacks for the boys behind the curtain while they’re ripping the energy guts from nations’ economies?
(4) The United States, like China and many other nations, have unlimited supplies of coal, oil, natural gas
(5) The Power Industry cannot burn FREE fuel (old tires, woodchips, etc) and produce electricity any cheaper than they can burn coal
(6) There is no world oil shortage. No such thing as peak oil. Never has been. Oil IS NOT solely dependent upon decaying matter for its existence.
(7) The world energy platform uses roughly 1,000 barrels of oil a second, 24/7/365. Surely lucid leaders grasp the millions of jobs worldwide that rest on cheap energy, do they not?
(8) So . . . instead of a “desperate search for alternate energy with which to “. . .save the earth”, all we’re really looking at are cabal of slick thieves building unaccountable “campaign funds” by sending truckloads of tax dollars to confederate alternate energy ‘entrepreneurs’ to siphon and “. . . whatever ‘chump change’ might be left over, well, a campaign or other ‘contributions’ would be greatly appreciated. . . ”
A sampler of the government-backed alternate energy money pit from the government itself:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-150T
Just a small aside, back in the Jimmy Carter days one of the ideas was to chip waste tires and burn them as fuel. The USA imported tons of waste tires from Asia. Florida had “tire farms” in several places. One problem was that no one had figured out how to chip steel belted radials. Even when the figured out how to do so power companies didn’t want to burn them because of the steel. The tire farms did make national news several times because they would catch on fire. They burned for days and weeks. Fire departments would only contain the fires from spreading since they were hard to put out. Yet the real “monster” in this idiocies was that we imported a nasty, day time biting mosquito, the Asian Tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. Aedes albopictus fills a similar niche as Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito. While aegypti tends to be more of a warm temperate-tropical species the Asian Tiger is more temperate. Both are disease vectors.
In addition, it’s 38% of a bigger pie, meaning an absolute increase. Focus in on that MattS!
” 38% in 1997 is still the same as 38% in 2017,”
I don’t think so…..The percentage may have stayed the same..
But production has greatly increased
It’s the same percentage….but now it’s a percentage of a much bigger number
I haven’t seen anyone post that they noticed BP cherry picked the start of their graph…..
…where is 2011? and what happened from 2001 to 2011?
Ratios are too hard for lefties to understand.
That’s due to the fact that ratios involve context.
They can’t handle more than one number at a time.
Which is also why they are dead set against using context to examine numbers.
They have trouble with fractions,
lefties understand percentages, …… as long as it is always 97%.
They probably don’t realize that a percentage is also a ratio.
Percentages and ratios are all they have to hang on to….so the only good news for them is the percentage increased
Even though the real numbers crashed on them
But rationing is something they do understand and are fully in support of.
Only so long as it’s other people’s stuff getting rationed.
That is generally true. We’ve observed it many times.
The other thing you have to watch is what’s being graphed. The graph shown above shows coal as a percent of total power. If you look at the actual consumption of coal, it has more than doubled since 1980. link
World energy consumption has been increasing steadily in recent decades. link Even if the percent contribution of coal were to decrease, the amount of coal (in tons) could increase.
Anyway, your point is well taken. You always have to be aware of what’s being graphed and how the graph is presented. WUWT
It is against the rules to ask a liberal arts major to do math.
“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.” Robert A. Heinlein
“It was now 1934, the depths of the Great Depression. Robert A. Heinlein was 27 years old and living in Los Angeles…[h]e applied for admission to graduate school in physics and mathematics at UCLA, was accepted, and enrolled in classes there. But he dropped out after only a few weeks…partly because he had become interested in politics and wanted to devote his time to working for Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign instead of studying math and physics.
Sinclair was an outspoken and self-identified socialist, whose campaign as the Democratic nominee for governor of California in 1934 was an outgrowth of his EPIC movement. ‘EPIC’ was an acronym for End Poverty in California.”
https://mises.org/library/was-robert-heinlein-libertarian
Heinlein…embodies a typical mathematics major does he?
🙂
Bada bing!
Say, if doing math puts one so high up on the intellectual ladder, why is it that the seeming overwhelming majority of those doing it professionally in and around climate science can’t think their way out of a paper bag?
Yeah. I used to do calculus for fun. Now I can’t even integrate simple stuff. But, then, I am 87 years old and my brain has shrunk to the size of a pea.
MattS,
Then what is your level of outrage over the abuse of graphs to deceive people about temperature and SLR?
Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me!
“Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” – Sen. Tim Wirth
You’ve been watching NPR again, haven’t you.
Can you show or link to those graphs?
If they are sufficiently outrageous, I may have to have another drink.
Seriously, I have no idea regarding the graphs you mean.
John F. Hultquist
Glad to shee thrs nuther huumun drvn toooooo alc’hl by lefty forkers.
B’tm’s up ole pal!
Hic!
MattS wrote:
I thought that this was the EXACT procedure climate alarmists employ. Funny YOU should mention it.
Let’s consider what it means, when the same percentage shows up, even when the world population using coal has gone up tremendously. It means that more coal, by weight, is being used, because more people, by sheer number of them, are using coal. What does this mean? ANSWER: It means that no matter how many people have come into existence over the period under consideration, people (in general, no matter how many of them there are) STILL prefer coal as an economically feasible, abundant and accessible source of energy.
Even with all the expenditure of resources and hype about renewable sources by all the people who have come into existence, STILL coal stands out as an overriding preference.
What does THIS mean? It seems to mean that renewable sources are not and cannot equal the status of coal. It’s NOT a matter of choice. It’s a matter of practical possibility, … a matter of engineering feasibility, … a matter of economic reality.
Wake up from your dreamworld. Even if you cannot do the math, look at the math that the math experts have done, and try to grasp the significance of the applied aspect of it. We’re not talking about string-theory math. We are talking about survival math, applied math, engineering math — the kind of math that gets the world built and keeps civilization functioning.
Oil and gas has increased, but non-fossil has reduced, presumably due to proportionally less nuclear. Intermittent ruinables have done very little, except to drive up energy costs. The only renewable that is any use is hydroelectricity.
Wind doesn’t suck everywhere… Pun intended.
Hydro and Geothermal are of use in the right locations.
Tidal could be of use. Although it is expensive, it is reliable and dispatchable.
Wind and Solar are a special case of stupid.
There are a few places where solar isn’t totally stupid, like deserts. And onshore wind has decent economics where there is a sufficient wind resource and lots of flattish land (Texas, Iowa).
The problem with putting solar in the deserts, is that people don’t live in the deserts, which means the electricity generated has to be shipped a long way.
Even so, you still can’t get over the fact that it’s dark half the day, and even in the deserts, the monsoon season means clouds can make your power unreliable.
There’s no place on earth where the wind blows 100% of the time. Without that, wind never makes sense.
“people don’t live in the deserts”
.
MarkW has never been to Las Vegas.
There’s also Tucson, however my point still stands.
If you call staying in Las Vegas “living”….
Here’s an even cooler graph from the US Energy Information Administration…
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/exec_summ.php
Global CO2 emissions from coal have roughly doubled since 1990.
And an even more cooler graph…
Global coal consumption has doubled since 1990 and projected to remain stable through 2040.
“projected to remain stable through 2040”
But a reducing share. Here is the detailed brwakdown plot of shares of primary energy. Coal black, oil green, gas red:
Ah, projections, projections. What would we do without projections?
Computer games, really.
And what would we do without Nick, providing us with nonsense to debunk?
Rich: All Nick did was to show a chart from the same BP review that the head post is using. He has made a perfectly valid observation that projections where coal consumption is shown as a percentage, convey a somewhat different message from the absolute number projections used by David just up-thread.
Weren’t you making some derisive comments about understanding fractions earlier in this thread? Sauce for the goose……..
I suspect that Nick is too bright to be a real alarmist, and he may be trapped by circumstances into pretending to be one.
“I suspect that Nick is too bright to be a real alarmist, and he may be trapped by circumstances into pretending to be one.”
“Nick’s too smart to be a real alarmist, so he pretends to be one instead.”
Interesting.
Pretending that Nick is an alarmist doesn’t make him one. Too much of that rubbish goes on here because he will go into details, and not just cheer along with the mutual back-patting crowd. Apparently that makes him alarmist even if the things he says and information he presents isn’t alarmist. You’ve got to make it explicitly clear what side you’re on to avoid that label if you dare to disagree with the echo chamber.
In a lot of cases, renewables are just fossil fuel use in disguise. But wait it’s worse, coal conversion to fuels and chemicals via direct liquefaction and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is on the rise, particularly in China.
Anyone can guarantee to make you a millionaire. First, they get more than a million from somewhere (and pocket the extra). That’s basically how renewables work, where the money comes from ratepayers, taxpayers and their indebtedness.
Renewables are nuclear energy in a weak and almost useless form.
The sun is a dangerous nuclear reactor and we are made from nuclear waste.
If you knew the future you’d have won the lottery at least once by now … QED.
… or at least the commodities markets…
That is what I like so much about these forecasting programs. If they were so good, why don’t the major brokerage houses and hedge funds use them to long or short the natgas, coal and petroleum futures market?
At least these green studies would be self-funding. Looking at their future chart, it isn’t a straight line, it shows undulations, as if they are predicting spot prices months and years in advance. Rather than hitting up taxpayers to underwrite their models, they should put their money where their mouths are and play the markets as their climate models suggests.
You would think with a little more tweaking they could predict the agricultural markets like corn, wheat and OJ to make a killing.
“But a reducing share”
Nick, consumption and production have massively increased…it’s a tiny percentage..of a much bigger number
Usually, points on a graph represent actual measurements, not extrapolations. The points should be removed and the projected lines changed to dashed lines. I know that you didn’t make the graph, but it was a poor choice.
Nick only does projections, reality bites.
Yes, I didn’t make the graph. It is from the BP Energy Outlook, introduced by WUWT here. And it is in response to a projection from that document posted by David Middleton. So I didn’t introduce the notion of projecting either. Just trying to show the whole story.
The BP document didn’t project anything. It described a minor drop in coal consumption from 2013-2016 as a “free fall.” The US EIA image is not significantly different, despite lacking the minor drop from 2013-2016. The difference is probably due to how coal gasification and liquification are accounted for… But I haven’t dug into the data deeply enough to figure out why there is a minor difference
It may even be a simple matter of optics.
BP 1992-2017 in MTOE:
US EIA n1990-2040 in quad Btu…
“But a reducing share.”
Nick, They are predicting a smaller percentage…..of a much bigger number.
David’s emissions graph even shows emissions going up…emissions can’t go up unless more coal is produced
Normally, I don’t try to rain on Nick’s parade, but projections are guesses at best, and nothing more.
Ergo, Nick, counting projections as part of real-world stuff does not work. Any financial analyst will tell you the same thing. It is guessing. It is NOT reality.
“Ergo, Nick, counting projections as part of real-world stuff”
So why didn’t you raise that with David Middleton, in the post to which I was replying. He started with a projection from the same document.
This is how it goes so often here. I respond to a projection, or a trend over some interval or some such, with what I think are the right figures. Then all the perceived sins of projection, or the trend interval chosen or whatever, are heaped on me.
That’s a fair point. I did post an EIA projection that coal consumption would bemain relatively flat until at least 2040 (which doesn’t substantially differ from the BP graph…
That renewables, including hydro, would rise at about the same rate as natural gas…
That renewables, including hydro, would rise from 12 to 17% by 2040, while coal hovered in the 20’s…
And that non-hydro renewables were the absolutely stupidest path to lower-carbon energy…
Which pretty well projects that the “TOTAL FAILURE of the climate crusade” will be with us until at least 2040…
“And that non-hydro renewables were the absolutely stupidest path to lower-carbon energy…”
If the Brookings Institution analysis to which you refer was ever valid (I’m not sure it ever was), it’s certainly not valid in 2018.
The failure of wind and solar isn’t due to the cost. It’s due the 20-30% capacity factors. It takes 3-4 MW of solar or wind to cut the same volume of carbon emissions as 1 MW of nuclear power. The reduction of capacity costs doesn’t affect the reduction of emissions. Relative to coal, nuclear and natural gas reduce far more carbon emissions per MW of capacity than solar or wind do.
With nuclear it’s a 100% reduction. Natural gas is about 50%.
On a capacity-factor basis:
Solar 0.25 * 1.00 = 0.25
Wind 0.33 * 1.00 = 0.33
Natural gas 0.87 * 0.50 = 0.435
Nuclear 0.95 * 1.00 = 0.95
Nick, it would be interesting to see how this would effect energy prices on the whole. Renewables may be more expensive in and of themselves, but there share would take the heat off the markets for other sources (as would the growth of NG as well). That could be a complex analysis because prices change depending on demand which in turn changes with boom/bust economic cycles. As an example, diversification of sources of oil was the advantage that the Reagan economy had over the Carter economy. (competition kept prices low)…
Nick
genuine inquiry.
Were the CO2 and material inputs to each of those primary energy sources be included in the calculations, I wonder what the real value of CO2 output for each of them look like?
I know it’s slightly OT but you seem to be able to dig up obscure information.
After all, CO2 is what climate alarmism is all about.
AFAIK, these are just forecasts of gross consumption, regardless of CO₂ implications. Remember, this BP document was introduced by the article and head post, not me.
And it didn’t have any projections…
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/coal/coal-consumption.html
“Were the CO2 and material inputs to each of those primary energy sources be included in the calculations, I wonder what the real value of CO2 output for each of them look like?”
It looks to me like you’re asking about what are called “life cycle” CO2 emissions from various electrical power sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources
Median values in grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (gCO2eq/kWh) from 2014 IPCC analysis:
Pulverized Coal (PC): 820
Natural gas combined cycle = 490
Photovoltaics utility scale = 48
Photovoltaics rooftop = 41
Wind onshore = 11
Nuclear = 12
Mark
Thank you for that, very useful.
Being that Natural gas is now credited with reducing CO2 emissions in the US with a score of 490, how much less CO2 would be emitted by the least efficient renewable (well we know that, 48) but at what cost to replace natural gas with it?
If that makes any sense whatsoever.
HotScot,
You’re welcome.
Regarding costs…costs are a tremendously complicated subject, and any decent analysis needs to come with a host of listed assumptions. Among the important considerations of the cost of photovoltaics and wind versus natural gas are:
1) Location, location, location. The cost of electricity from photovoltaics in particular are sensitive to the location. Photovoltaics are much more competitive in places like Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico than in Germany or Britain. Hence the recent contract in Nevada for 25 years of photovoltaic power for about 2.4 cents per kWh. (No escalation!)
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nevada-beat-arizona-record-low-solar-ppa-price#gs.ufmAj_c
2) Battery costs. Utility batteries have rapidly come down in costs.
3) Exports of natural gas. If the U.S. begins exporting significant amounts of natural gas, the price would rise with the increased demand.
4) The shape of the demand curve. Photovoltaics are well-suited to hot dry climates, because the air conditioning demand fits well (but not perfectly) with photovoltaics supply.
Any decent analysis would have to be location-specific…and even then, the situation has been changing quickly, with photovoltaics and batteries so rapidly coming down in price. So the short answer to your question is, “It depends.”
🙂
Look it’s a renewable hockeystick … do we get odds that it won’t remotely meet that line?
its all about where the line ends, eh.
“TOTAL FAILURE of the climate crusade”
Well, another number not separated by the grouping here is that the share of non-hydro renewables is now up to 8.4%. Here is the breakdown
LOL! Nick is putting on a brave face, trying to salvage something, anything, from the total failure.
The more detailed breakdown graph is below. Renewables have been rising exponentially. Coal has been holding on, at the expense of oil and nuclear.
. . . and renewables are going to save us from what? Prosperity? Long healthy lives? A greening earth? Beautiful scene scapes w/o BWBWs (Big White Bird Whackers)? Fewer gov rent seekers? etc. etc.
“Renewables have been rising exponentially”….
Well of course it has……it’s filling a new niche market…and government money is funding it…even while they are forcing it
…but that new niche market is not a bottomless pit either
You are right! The number two renewable, coal, is rising. Good catch. The number 1 renewable, gas is rising exponentially, so, yea, you are right, yet again.
“Never give up, never surrender.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_V5Eqg6C34E#
And as every troll knows, any trend that I approve of will continue to infinity.
Nick, you’re on a roll! Specifically, rolling the same thing that a dung beetle rolls….
Solar and wind are not seeing exponential growth.
They are seeing pair-a-bollocks growth!
..8.4% of nothing is still nothing ! LOL..Nice try though…
Then I guess you could say 38% of nothing is nothing. But I don’t see the point.
“but I don’t see the point”
….not for the first time, Nick
(is this the same Marcus who used to chime in here at WUWT all the time?)
Yes, 8.4% of unreliables, mostly intermittent, highly subsidised and harmful to the grid (apart from all that wood and dung which is burnt and causes huge numbers of deaths in third world countries).
Phillip Bratby
“(apart from all that wood and dung which is burnt and causes huge numbers of deaths in third world countries)”
That’s 120,000,000 deaths by 2050 (only 32 years away) WHO*. Many of them children.
3,750,000 people dying per year.
10,300 people dying per day.
428 people dying per hour.
7 people dying per minute.
Because they lack clean energy.
Then there’s 2,000,000 people in developing countries going blind and dying, mostly children, from lack of vitamin A which can be stopped by golden rice, a harmless inclusion of a beta carotene gene rabidly objected to by Greenpeace.
That’s 5,500 people dying per day.
230 people dying per hour.
4 people dying per minute.
In the time it’s taken me to write this, about 40 people have died as a consequence of ‘green’ initiatives to save the planet.
Save the planet for what?
We privileged western select?
Thanks, but no thanks. I would rather we allowed these people (children) to live productive lives now, and use human ingenuity to deal with any climatic problems that MIGHT occur.
*World Health Organisation.
Greenpeace has nothing to do with the fact that golden rice is not already widely available. The developers have had a hard time getting yields of the various strains of golden rice to match their non-golden counterparts.
It’s fallacious reasoning to say that people are dying and will die “because they lack clean energy” then say it’s due to green initiatives. Given that you didn’t cite a particular WHO study or webpage it’s hard to know what exactly you’re talking about (what is the cause of death), but I don’t see how you can attribute lack of electricity to greens. It costs money to build coal-fired plants and a transmission network, and the poor in the developing world don’t have that money. The Green Climate Fund has many projects that focus on getting electricity to those who need it using locally-supplied renewable energy. Which is better – solar power or no power?
Solar Philippines installed about 6000 solar panels that along with Tesla batteries supply 24-hour electricity to a city of 16,000 that was connected to the grid, but had frequent brownouts. The company plans to do the same for 100s more towns and cities across the nation. There are a few grid-capacity batteries currently in development.
What is your answer? What are those who are against renewable energy doing to supply electricity to those who need it? Do you have a Brown Climate Fund building power plants in poor countries? Unless the “anti-greens” are doing something constructive, what sense does it make to blame the greens for people dying due to lack of “clean energy”? And what is clean energy to you? Don’t you mean cheap energy? Does it make sense to build coal-fired power plants that increase ambient air pollution in order to lower in-home air pollution? What if locally-supplied solar is cheaper than coal in some areas (small island nations, for example)? One has to also consider that the price of coal fluctuates, and will always have a cost to it, while the sun will always shine for free.
None of these issues has anything to do with climate change or CO2 emissions. It’s ridiculous to blame millions of deaths on the greens. Greens are not responsible for poverty or poor resource use in developing nations. If you really want to assign causes, you have to look at the problems socially and historically.
“I would rather we allowed these people (children) to live productive lives now, and use human ingenuity to deal with any climatic problems that MIGHT occur.”
Kind of like necessity is the mother of invention? Then invention is a response to necessity; how many will suffer during the time it takes for ingenuity to fill the need? What if problem-solving can’t keep up with change? Who will “deal with any climatic problems” in countries with low educational attainment and no money to spend on innovation and adaptation? What about problems that are already occurring, such as massive flooding in South Asia? Is it justifiable for wealthy nations to risk endangering those in countries that can’t afford to adapt to climate change and have contributed little to the problem? If you really care about the suffering millions, why don’t you support the Paris Accord, which has programs to alleviate suffering? (The assumption that the money will be siphoned off by the corrupt is just that – an assumption. Without knowing the organizational structure of the programs and the potential for fraud, it’s a baseless assumption.) No offense – I think it’s a common refrain, not your idea – but I find the argument that suffering is the fault of the greens weak, hypocritical and self-serving.
Is there any green hype that Kristie won’t swallow, lock, stock and barrel?
PS: I just love the way Kristie assumes that for the first time in history, throwing money at poverty will solve it.
[MODS]
Could you please change the last sentence to “… the argument that suffering is the fault of the greens weak.” I’d appreciate it.
According to Patrick Moore, it’s very much Greenpeace that’s campaigned against, and stopped golden rice.
“3.8 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels and kerosene for cooking. Among these 3.8 million deaths:
27% are due to pneumonia
18% from stroke
27% from ischaemic heart disease
20% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
8% from lung cancer.”
http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health
It costs peanuts in relative terms to build coal fired power stations in, for example, Africa, using locally sourced fossil fuels. It doesn’t happen because of various agreements by governments not to internationally fund fossil fuel derived energy.
The Green Climate Fund is yet another bureaucratic, money hoovering concept that delivers diddly squat for the amounts poured into it, other than, of course, a few very expensive solar farms with Tesla batteries, all of which will be abandoned when subsidies are withdrawn and the poor suckers are left to pay for electricity they can’t afford. As MarkW rightly points out, you don’t solve poverty by chucking money at it, then walking away smugly imagining you have done the poor a favour.
The answer is, stop pouring money down the gullet of climate change and get on with helping these people build power stations which will last 50 years and provide income, encourage industry, stabilise health provision, build infrastructure, enable education, irrigation, flood defences, building materials, steel works, car factories. In other words, everything you have and deny them from having by imagining CO2 is a harmful gas, it isn’t!
And if you live in a modern city, try sticking your head out your window to breathe, then cook on an open fire in your living room and see which you would prefer to inhale. The UK had choking smog from coal fires in the 19th century so smokeless coal was mandated, then power station emissions were cleaned of soot, now CO2 can be scrubbed from the chimneys.
And where isolated solar and wind make economic sense, sure, why not, assuming they can afford the cost.
What you must realise is that the only empirical manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the world has greened by 14% in 35 years. And after 40 years of failed predictions of world ending weather events, the Arctic ice melting completely and the extinction of mankind well before now (yes, all these claims have been made) the one they didn’t make was that the planet would green.
“If you really want to assign causes, you have to look at the problems socially and historically.”
Nigeria was robbed of more than $400 billion, stolen from the treasury by its leaders between 1960 and 1999. That would have paid for several power stations, several times over. So just how are a few measly solar farms going to address that social and historic problem?
And your alternative to ingenuity to meet a need is? To invent a problem, project it out to 50 years and exaggerate it, to ensure mitigation against an unknown, unquantifiable threat is met with tons of money rent seekers suck up by being paid for when their wind turbines don’t produce electricity.
Do you somehow imagine that money siphoned off by the corrupt is somehow a man dressed in a striped shirt with a mask and a bag marked swag over his shoulder? It’s not, it’s government manipulation to feed crony capitalism/socialism so government officials are parachuted into cushy jobs when their political careers are abruptly terminated. It’s sophisticated and stealthy with economies manipulated for the sake of the few elite disguised by layers of bureaucracy.
Do you imagine flooding in SE Asia is something new? I was living in Hong Kong when it was nearly wiped out in the 60’s by a typhoon. Was that caused by AGW? Even the IPCC state that dramatic weather events are not caused by climate change, so why do you cite flooding as an argument.
Meanwhile, guess what? CO2 emissions in the US have been dropping thanks to fracked natural gas, a fossil fuel. And in Germany, they have risen, thanks to a nationwide drive to impose renewables. Yet another utopian green dream gone up in smoke, or rather, CO2. Nor are these computer predictions, these are observations, you know, real science.
And if you want to understand what’s really going on, do some research on Maurice Strong, his Club Of Rome, it’s ambitions for population control, it’s membership, and it’s ambitions for UN Agenda 21. Then you might understand who is making vast amounts of money from climate change (Al Gore, for one) who pulls the financial strings (Rockefeller’s, for one) and who adds some royal clout (Prince Philip, for one).
But be prepared to be shocked.
Grrr. Lost my post.
“It costs peanuts in relative terms to build coal fired power stations in, for example, Africa, using locally sourced fossil fuels. It doesn’t happen because of various agreements by governments not to internationally fund fossil fuel derived energy.”
Coal is not locally available in most of Africa. That means shipping and infrastructure to do so. Transmission lines are expensive. Africa is highly rural with dispersed, small communities. There’s difficult terrain. Violence and instability. Corruption. And I bet it’s a lot easier to orchestrate installing 40 panels in a small village than a coal plant and all its needs. But I AM NOT ADVOCATING AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS. I think they are essential, in fact, to provide the developing world with the power it needs. What I am saying, and have always believed, is that there is a place for renewables. Not just for climate change but for our own economic and national security in the long-term, as well as for many areas of the developing world. There are enough people working on batteries that I think there will be a few on the market within 5-10 years, liquid metal batteries. (e.g http://www.ambri.com/technology/) There’s a TED talk about the technology. And I think there will be advances in efficiency. There are already tidal generators. It’s foolish to dismiss renewables at this point. They’ve been around a long time, but there was never enough demand to foster innovation. Think of the market! China is getting much of it, but Spain is a powerhouse, too (no pun intended, but that was pretty good, eh?). Both have invested in American renewable projects. Shouldn’t we be doing so?
(China is about to overcome the U.S. in amount spent on scientific research. We will be in second place for the first time in over 100 years.)
“The Green Climate Fund is yet another bureaucratic, money hoovering concept that delivers diddly squat for the amounts poured into it, other than, of course, a few very expensive solar farms with Tesla batteries, all of which will be abandoned when subsidies are withdrawn and the poor suckers are left to pay for electricity they can’t afford.”
Have you ever looked at the projects? From what you say, it seems you have no idea what you are talking about.
“As MarkW rightly points out, you don’t solve poverty by chucking money at it, then walking away smugly imagining you have done the poor a favour.”
I have already said so in another thread. I agreed with him. And I don’t see how that’s relevant.
“The answer is, stop pouring money down the gullet of climate change and get on with helping these people build power stations ….everything you have and deny them from having by imagining CO2 is a harmful gas, it isn’t”
BS I’m denying them. That’s a stupid assumption. You think all of “us” are alike, we have no ability to think for ourselves. Just saying whatever we read in Mother Jones. But we are different. I am capable of thinking for myself. CO2 is not a harmful gas per se. It is necessary. Duh. But at the rate it’s increasing in the atmosphere, it is a problem.
“What you must realise is that the only empirical manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the world has greened by 14% in 35 years.”
This is willful rejection of the evidence. You are trusting the same agency to provide you with those statistics that you refuse to trust for others. Even the fact that it has greened is partly due to climate change rather than CO2 directly. You are providing evidence against your own argument.
” Even the IPCC state that dramatic weather events are not caused by climate change, so why do you cite flooding as an argument.”
Where does it say that???
http://glisa.umich.edu/climate/extreme-precipitation
https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/extreme-weather
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jgrd.50814
“Here a newly discovered empirical relationship between the wet‐day mean and percentiles in 24 h precipitation amounts was used to show that trends in the wet‐day 95th percentiles worldwide have been influenced by the global mean temperature, consistent with an accelerated hydrological cycle caused by a global warming. ”
Ach, that’s enough.
Renewables are an expensive luxury in developed nations, they can’t survive without subsidies. Even now, applications for new major wind farms has dropped to zero now subsidies have been withdrawn. Meanwhile energy billls have skyrocketed by 20% in the last year or so. The Uk government has refused to invest in a tidal scheme in the Severn estuary because it can’t make a case for it. It’s seen as the best opportunity for tidal power in, arguably, one of the best locations in the world. The Cardiff lagoon project is about to get kicked into touch as well because the numbers don’t add up.
China has also withdrawn subsidies for renewables so expect to see their new schemes go the way of the UK’s.
The UK is set to spend £300 Bn by 2050 (around £10 Bn a year) on climate change for no discernible benefit, yet our NHS (National Health service) was in the red by £2.6 Bn in 2016. It was announced this week that taxes must rise to fund the NHS. Even wealthy westerners are suffering because of this insane scam.
That being the case, how can you possibly claim renewables make sense anywhere else, especially for the poverty stricken? It might be better than nothing, but if no one can afford it, it is worse than nothing.
As for the resources required to fuel the insanity, take a look at the numbers, laid out plain and simple by the late Dr. David MacKay, a green, who demonstrates the insanity of the concept (short video, well worth watching) https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables
And then there’s Matt Ridley who demonstrates the insanity, in numerical and environmental terms. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
“CO2 is not a harmful gas per se. It is necessary. Duh. But at the rate it’s increasing in the atmosphere, it is a problem.”
Prove it. Find a credible, empirical study that directly attributes CO2 to a warming atmosphere. I’ll save you the trouble, there is none, I have looked.
And the nonsense produced by NASA I’m not interested in is computer generated predictions, so far they have been spectacularly unsuccessful. The study on global greening was empirical and therefore entirely credible.
“Even the fact that it has greened is partly due to climate change rather than CO2 directly.”
So climate change is good then, is that what you’re saying?
Besides, the researchers were careful to isolate greening from other influences if you care to read the paper. A summary is here. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
“Where does it say that???”
In the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Conveniently summarised by Roger Pielke, Jr. http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/10/coverage-of-extreme-events-in-ipcc-ar5.html finishing with the statement “Climate campaigners would do their movement a favor by getting themselves on the right side of the evidence.”
So, in summary, we know that
1. Renewables are expensive, destructive and frequently uneconomical to even consider, and only of use in remote regions where they are unaffordable without subsidies.
2. Empirically, the planet has greened by 14% in 35 years, attributed directly to increased atmospheric CO2.
3. There are no empirical studies that demonstrate increased atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm.
4. According to the IPCC, climate change does not cause extreme weather events.
5. You concede global warming is good.
There, that just about covers it.
David Mackay died? That’s a shame. I’ve seen that video before. I thought it was great. He’s not against renewables, he’s for diverse responses, just like I am. I’ve always understood the space problem and never been a fan of biofuel, but in some situations that, too, makes sense. It’s used in Brazil as a way to dispose of sugar cane debris. I don’t know that renewables make much sense in the U.K. because there’s so little space and you are at a high latitude with a lot of grey days (I hear). There’s more space in the U.S. I remember driving down I-35 through Iowa at night and seeing all these rows of blinking red lights, and it went on for miles. I couldn’t figure out what heck it was. It’s all corn fields and pasture and flat, boring land so I don’t mind the change in scenery. I think they’re kind of cool. So are oil refineries and coal plants and ports – they are visual reminders of human ingenuity and industry.
“2. Empirically, the planet has greened by 14% in 35 years, attributed directly to increased atmospheric CO2.”
“However, carbon dioxide fertilization isn’t the only cause of increased plant growth—nitrogen, land cover change and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight changes all contribute to the greening effect. To determine the extent of carbon dioxide’s contribution, researchers ran the data for carbon dioxide and each of the other variables in isolation through several computer models that mimic the plant growth observed in the satellite data.
“Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.” – your link
I am a little skeptical of this model. I don’t see how they could get nitrogen as an important factor from satellite data. But then, it’s a press release, so it’s silly to pass judgement. At any rate, “…and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight” If the response were to CO2 fertilization alone, you’d get a more even greening. Look how much there is in the high latitudes.
What do you care if the world is greening? Isn’t that the kind of thing Greens care about? It’s just an excuse to praise CO2 and show how wrong others are. It’s greening and still it’s not enough to soak up the CO2.
The IPCC does NOT say that climate change doesn’t cause extreme events! And no, I never said global warming was good.
You’re sceptical of the press release?
From memory, it has a link to the paper. No point in discussing it here, it’s unequivocal in its conclusions, so debate it with the scientists who wrote it.
So because I’m sceptical of man made CO2 causing the planet to warm, you equate that to me not caring about the planet or it’s inhabitants.
The fact is, I care a good deal more about our planet than the green alarmist fanatics do. I would far rather the planet warmed than cooled, at the very least, it’s not possible to irrigate frozen wastelands.
We very well understand the consequence of a 2°C temperature drop from our not too distant historic past when the Thames froze over enough that an elephant was taken across it. We know starvation was common thanks to shorter growing seasons, as was dying from cold.
A 2°C rise in temperature was, to a considerable degree, demonstrated during the Roman and Medieval warming periods when mankind flourished.
On the balance of probabilities, a warmer planet is likely to be a far better place to live than a colder one.
I want to see a warmer planet. I want to see the frozen wastelands of Canada and Russia relieved of perma frost, released to agriculture, to feed a growing global population. I want to see even remote African communities with access to clean water, irrigation and infrastructure. America was once no less remote and sparsely populated, but fossil fuel power brought prosperity.
It’s not possible to do that with renewable energy, it’s a con.
It’s ridiculous to condemn a country to poverty simply because it’s too big or poor to worry about, which is precisely what you are saying. It is, in fact, what the Club of Rome is driving for, population reduction by stealth, and you are supporting that. Why should they make do with solar schemes, and be forced to cook with solar ovens when you enjoy the convenience of reliable electric lighting and clean cooking facilities?
And the fact is, it’s one or the other, there is no possibility that mankind can direct the course of planetary climate, and most certainly not with a trace atmospheric gas of 0.04% when water vapour, a far more potent greenhouse gas, is around 3% of the atmosphere.
Don’t believe me though “He [Tyndall] concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall
And before you embarrass yourself by rubbishing that excerpt, it’s a direct link to Wikipedia (a source I don’t normally use) from The Royal Institution http://www.rigb.org/our-history/iconic-objects/iconic-objects-list/tyndall-radiant-heat
“The IPCC does NOT say that climate change doesn’t cause extreme events!”
Again, you might want to take up that argument with Pielke jr., I suspect a far more credentialed and practised scientist on the subject than you.
“And no, I never said global warming was good.”
But in an earlier post you said:
“Even the fact that it has greened is partly due to climate change rather than CO2 directly.”
Or is greening not good?
No matter how many times these things are pointed out, you utterly refuse to accept the realities of what we are facing; and what hasn’t happened over the last 40 years of predictions of Armageddon by scientists like Hanson and Mann.
“It’s ridiculous to condemn a country to poverty simply because it’s too big or poor to worry about, which is precisely what you are saying. ”
You don’t listen too good.
““The IPCC does NOT say that climate change doesn’t cause extreme events!”
“Again, you might want to take up that argument with Pielke jr., I suspect a far more credentialed and practised scientist on the subject than you.”
So what? I can read, and apparently you can, too. Where does Pielke, Jr. say the IPCC says climate change does not cause extreme events?
““And no, I never said global warming was good.”
“But in an earlier post you said:
“’Even the fact that it has greened is partly due to climate change rather than CO2 directly.’
“Or is greening not good?”
Your logic is faulty. Something can have good aspects and still be overall not good. That’s pretty basic reasoning.
“The fact is, I care a good deal more about our planet than the green alarmist fanatics do.” Glad to hear it. I wonder how you arrived at that fact? Did you develop an index of “planet caring” and call people randomly? “Hi there. I’m conducting a poll. Are there any green alarmist fanatics in the house?”
“It is, in fact, what the Club of Rome is driving for, population reduction by stealth, and you are supporting that.”
I look at the Club of Rome website at their list of reports. I don’t know what you mean. And you obviously have no fricking clue what I support.
Tyndall, eh? I see. There has been no scientific advancement since 1860 in our understanding of the climate. Forget Arrhenius, Eckholm and thousands of scientists since then – they are all part of the conspiracy.
“Why should they make do with solar schemes, and be forced to cook with solar ovens when you enjoy the convenience of reliable electric lighting and clean cooking facilities?”
So without solar schemes they will magically have a Western lifestyle? Fine, forget solar and wind, if that’s all it takes. Poof! All African nations are fully developed, wealthy, healthy and peaceful. That was easy!
“No matter how many times these things are pointed out, you utterly refuse to accept the realities of what we are facing.” No matter what I say, you will believe that. This conversation is dull because you can’t get past your insipid assumptions about me. It’s a perennial problem around here.
I’m probably not qualified to comment at all and should refrain but I’ve wondered about how to prevent the theft of solar panels in remote areas. They are being stolen now in first world countries. If people are willing to take the risk of drilling into live oil and fuel pipelines, I’m sure they will have no problem cutting through chain-link fences and unbolting solar panels.
I think the rise in non-hydro renewables has come largely at the expense of nuclear power.
Another Epic Fail on the part of the Climatariat… They’re replacing a carbon-free source that works with intermittent sources… Good job!
“largely at the expense of nuclear power”
Oil and nuclear power. Graph below.
But was the decline of nuclear because of climate activity? Seems to me that it was well in decline in USA, and much of Europe, because of safety concerns, and lack of enthusiasm from investors.
Oil is a relatively insignificant source of electricity generation. The decline in nuclear power is due to cost, regulatory malfeasance and the public’s irrational fear of radiation.
However, as a primary energy source, which includes transportation, oil is king for the forseeable future, gas may replace coal as #2 and renewables (including hydro) lag behind with nuclear power…
From 1990-2015, renewables, including hydro, “skyrocketed” from 10 to 12%.
In terms of reducing carbon emissions, solar bites the big one, wind breaks even, nuclear reduces emissions fastest at a high cost and natural gas kicks ass…
But, but, from 10 to 12 percent? When I look at our landscape here in Europe, these two percent feel like a hundred percent increase in windmills and solar panels. How to be so deceived. So we hold: An incredible financial and material expense for two percent? How will that end when the world, as desired by the Greens, feeds on 100 percent renewable sources. A windmill every 500 meters. And a hunger dead every twenty yards?
It takes about 4 MW of windmills and solar panels to generate the equivalent of 1 MW of coal, gas and nuclear. So, in order to increase the output from 10-12&, they had to add 4 times the MW than coal, gas or nuclear would have required.
David. I think you have forgotten to add in the storage factor which requires a statistically derived capacity of 1 MW times the period of time the 4 MW wind/Solar is unavailable. An intermittency factor comes in here. 50%? 40%?, 30.? who knows?
The Dinorwic storage facility in Wales (UK) can supply 1.650 MWs for 7 Hrs. has a capacity of 9.1 GWhrs. It needs a convenient mountain and two lakes to work. A brilliant bit of engineering; but costs a bomb.
It would require circa 30 of these to have dealt with the recent Wind drought we (in the U.K.) have just experienced. And Hey! we are only taking about 1 or 2 MWs here. Think big and blow your mind.
That reminds me — Must charge up the old Ipad. Looking a bit hungry. Best stick a finger in the air. (sarc.
Hans-Georg
You will value this perspective.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
David, please provide links or proper citations when you post your graphs.
I did in my first comment.
In my first comment with a graph…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/17/total-failure-of-the-climate-crusade-coal-power-has-the-same-energy-share-it-had-20-years-ago/#comment-2380205
US EIA International Energy Outlook 2017 (IEO2017)
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/exec_summ.php
Thanks, David. I was actually most interested in the Brookings Institution graph, though. I had a look at the site, but there’s a lot to wade through. If you don’t have it handy, nevermind.
I’ll see if I can dig up the original reference. I think I have a copy of it or a link to it somewhere. The image is from Real Clear Energy.
Here’s the Real Clear Energy link…
https://www.realclearenergy.org/charticles/2014/08/01/solar_and_wind_more_expensive_than_realized_107939.html
The Brookings paper that forms the basis of the graph is here…
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Net-Benefits-Final.pdf
Thanks, David.
(I know I’m in for some unfamiliar ideas when the report starts with a 2-page glossary!)
Oil based power has increased to provide load leveling and emergency backup to wind and solar, from what I have read.
Keep looking for that point….
Tell enough lies regarding the safety of nuclear, then blame the fact that politicians react to the fears you have created to “safety concerns”.
But was the decline of nuclear because of climate activity?
Nick, the decline in nuclear was a forerunner of the current “climate” (pun intended) today — manufactured scare-mongering and a massive, bloated bureaucracy (NRC).
David
Not just intermittent. They are sources that represent a miserable return for the destruction and use of natural resources they claim to save.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
Such a big part of skeptics’ argument against renewables is about intermittent supply. What will you replace it with when grid-capacity batteries become widely available and economically competitive?
I’ll be dead by then.
Kristie, might as well wish for turbines powered by unicorn farts.
“Such a big part of skeptics’ argument against renewables is about intermittent supply.”
Of course, because that’s the only rational way to think about the problem…or am I wrong about that?
“What will you replace it with when grid-capacity batteries become widely available and economically competitive?”
Why in the world would I argue against such if it happens for goodness’ sake?!?!
I live for the day when I can drive down a country road and find used solar panels for sale capable of reliably (and without grid support) powering each and every structure on my property.
But until then, you’re not going to convince a thinking man that renewables are worth the trouble.
From the perspective of free market economics, this is a problem. Without the demand for grid-level batteries, there are fewer people willing to invest in their development. They are available already, but I don’t know how economical they are. https://www.tesla.com/powerpack
There is a town of 16,000 in the Philippines that is using them with solar for 24 hour electricity. https://www.npr.org/2018/06/11/618975626/how-solar-power-is-changing-the-lives-of-some-in-the-philippines
Why would anyone be selling second-hand solar panels?
Because when better and newer of any other product comes along, that’s what people do.
But solar panels do not and probably can never pay for themselves, so they’r not a normal commodity. They are a gigantically wasteful bubble supported be Western tax and fiscal policy, taken advantage of by Chinese manufacturers and subsidy farmers like Elon Musk.
IOW, an intercontinental criminal scam, costing the world trillions in treasure and tens of millions of lives.
How is solar costing tens of millions of lives? Or trillions in “treasure” (and over what time period)? Are you factoring in the benefits – lower pollution and its effect on health, for instance? That seems to be a driving factor in China’s domestic renewable investment. Coal mining in the U.S. has been linked to high cancer rates, not just among miners but those who live near mountain-top removal mines. How about the benefits to those who would otherwise have no or intermittent electricity?
How do you calculate whether solar panels pay for themselves? Seems you’d have to rely on economic models of future fuel costs, and to me those are at least as questionable as climate models. Nor do you know how much grid-capacity batteries will cost 5 or 10 years from now.
To me it seems a complex question. That’s why I don’t advocate for either switching to (or installing) renewables everywhere or going entirely with fossil fuels. The decision needs to be made on a case-by-case basis.
As for subsidies, complaints would hold a lot more weight if they were applied to subsidies for fossil fuels, too. Subsidies for renewables have changed quite a bit in the last decade; for instance, those for biofuels were 42% of total energy subsidies in 2010 and 48% in 2016, but only 12% in 2013; overall, subsidies for renewables declined between 2013 and 2016. Subsidies for coal quadrupled between 2010 and 2016, though still only 8% of the total. This is for federal subsidies only.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
“According to a Congressional Budget Office testimony, roughly three-fourths of the projected cost of tax preferences for energy in 2016 was for renewable energy and energy efficiency. An estimated $10.9 billion was directed toward renewable energy; $2.7 billion, went to energy efficiency or electricity transmission. Fossil fuels accounted for most of the remaining cost of energy-related tax preferences—an estimated $4.6 billion.[28]
“According to a 2015 estimate by the Obama administration, the US oil industry benefited from subsidies of about $4.6 billion per year.[29] A 2017 study by researchers at Stockholm Environment Institute published in the journal Nature Energy estimated that nearly half of U.S. oil production would be unprofitable without subsidies.[29]”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies)
The idea that we actually have a free market economy is a fantasy. Cities and states lure corporations like Boeing, Amazon and Walmart with billions in subsidies while small businesses flop because they can’t compete. There is no equality of opportunity. Wealth accrues and the top, and wealth equals power.
Producing solar panels is also polluting, and both wind and solar massacre birds and bats, thereby increasing insect pests requiring more pesticide to kill.
Tens of millions of excess deaths have occurred over the past thirty years due to abandonment of reliable fossil fuel energy in the developed world, and its never having been adopted by developing countries.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted on “renewables” and on worse than worthless “climate change research” during the same interval.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cold-weather-uk-winter-deaths-europe-polar-vortex-a8224276.html
More than 3000 excess deaths per year in the UK from energy starvation. That scales up to over 30,000 per year in Europe, or about a million in the 30 years of the CACA craziness.
Millions more die from energy poverty on other continents.
Such a large part of the climate concerned thinking relies on magic. Like grid scale batteries.
Another part of the climate concerned mind us the diregard for environmental destruction caused by “green” energy sources.
You could just as well argue that climate-unconcerned thinking relies on ignorance of developing technologies.
Kristi,
Except that I follow the actual news and, unlike the climate concerned, still have my critical thinking skills.
I love twchnology and science, unlike most misanthropuc green posers.
So, can we agree that installing renewables absent these mythical batteries is a waste of time?
LMAO — grid-capacity batteries! Kristi, I was a professional engineer at a utility power plant & understand power, energy & grids. Sorry, but you’re obviously clueless in this regard. There’s no such thing, and will never be, a “grid-capacity battery”. The only thing that might conceptually work is a ENORMOUS & COSTLY battery-rack big enough to START a fossil fueled/nuclear plant after an emergency situation. Hydro plants are already designated for this purpose (black-starts), and we performed exercises at times to practice this.
beng135,
Maybe I’m using the wrong terminology. Is “grid-level storage” better?
You might be interested in this.
https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy/transcript
I think the decrease has multiple causes. Personally, I’m not against nuclear energy. However,
“The construction of large nuclear power plants requires a lot of money to ensure safety and reliability. For example, for the U.S. to derive one quarter of its total energy supply from nuclear would require building roughly 1,000 new reactors (both to replace old ones and expand the fleet). At today’s prices for the two AP-1000 reactors being built in Georgia, such an investment would cost $7 trillion, although that total bill might shrink with an order of that magnitude.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nuclear-power-can-stop-global-warming/
James Hansen is pro-nuclear.
Here is the graph of percentages. Watch the dark orange one rising. Click to enlarge.
Watch the yellow one fall as the orange one rises and the red one rise as fast as the orange.
The really funny thing is that the green one is a relatively insignificant source for electricity generation, except on islands and other places with limited access. The orange one only recently rose to the insignificance of the green one.
While the black one just chugs along at 38-40%.
“the red one rise as fast as the orange”
Yes. The red is the fracking revolution that we have heard so much about. The orange is renewables.
Fracking A, bubba!
Nick, does the “renewables other than hydro” category include wood chips and ethanol?
I believe so.
Nick,
Just because the renewables are currently experiencing a subsidized growth doesn’t mean that it is inevitable that it will continue. As Australia is discovering to its dismay, there are stability and cost problems that start to become significant with ever increasing renewables. I have this mental picture of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge tearing itself apart because of design flaws.
Indeed, the more renewables there are, the greater the cost of the subsidies.
Governments will go bankrupt long before renewables reached 50% of all generating capacity.
Pure coincidence that all of the lines EXCEPT “renewables” show up and down variation in the trend lines, but the renewables line looks like a smooth mathematical formula that only ever goes up. Do not be deceived into believing the crazy idea that this is because the number is just made up from thin air and wishful thinking.
As I commented above, over 2/3 of the rise in renewables is likely due to being based on their unrealistic faceplate capacity, which is based on their running at an optimum rate all the time.
Nick, where does that 8.4% number fall if you count all energy generation (and not just electricity)?
Here’s the plot (click to enlarge). The caption notes that it is 3.6%.
Nick
“Here is the graph of percentages.”
We can all distort energy graphs with enough taxpayers money subsidising the ridiculous.
I also have a question is the graph actual consumed power or simply nameplate power of the generators?
What is that number if wood burning stoves (and other “biofuels”) were taken out of the renewables portion of primary energy?
George, “As we see, historical production of renewable energy has been dominated by traditional biomass – the burning of wood, forestry materials and agricultural waste biomass. … Today, traditional biofuels remain the largest source of renewables, accounting for 60-70 percent of the total.”
https://ourworldindata.org/renewables
“What is that number if wood burning stoves (and other “biofuels”) were taken out of the renewables portion of primary energy?”
They were not in it. BP says (p 8):
“*In this review, primary energy comprises commercially-traded fuels, including modern renewables used to generate electricity.”
Well if renewables and natural gas are rising we should be happy about that. We should not be happy about nuclear as its the biggest potential non-intermittent power source we have.
Is that 8.42% based on nameplate capacity? I suspect it is. If so, it should be cut by 2/3 or 3/4 or 4/5.
Also, is that 8.42% a share of total energy (as the other charts have been) or just of electricity production. If so, as I suspect, its share of total energy should be cut by … what? 60%?
“Is that 8.42% based on nameplate capacity?”
I don’t think it could be. They are annual consumption figures, for all sources.
” its share of total energy should be cut by … what? 60%?”
Almost exactly right. I showed the graph above – it is 3.6% of total.
Unfortunately, costs of power have skyrocketed as the renewables share has increased. Sure, we can keep pushing for more solar and wind – and we will keep increasing the price of electricity so the poor cannot afford it.
Why do you hate the poor, the 2nd, and the 3rd world? Why do you want to force them to live in squalor? Is it just a desire for virtue signaling?
Shanghai, i wonder if it’s that simple. Diversification of sources could bring price down on the whole, but is that enough to offset the high price of renewables themselves? i would think that at times of high worldwide economic growth (like now), we could use all the sources of energy that we can get our hands on. That’s a big problem that we have globally when we max out our energy markets. (costs spiraling higher) Don’t know the effects of high economic activity on electricity costs, but we all recognize the higher prices at the pump. As demonstrated back in the 70s, high energy costs are economy killers…
fonzie
UK diversification of sources has seen a 20% increase in domestic energy costs.
Renewables contribute somewhere in the low single digit percentage of our energy supplies.
God help us all if they reach 50% of our energy sources because judging by past experience, no one in the UK will be able to afford to heat or light their home. Germany is rapidly getting there and Australia seems ahead of anyone.
Perhaps we should max out our existing energy sources before moving onto something none of us can afford.
Scot, some areas are “greener” than others and, obviously, they’ll take a bigger hit. If the UK uses more renewables, then they’re presumably using less of traditional fuel sources. So, the UKs pain is someone elses gain.(my curiosity is how all this works out on the whole)…
HotScot, Are you sure that the whole increase in domestic energy costs is attributable to the switch to renewables?
fonzie, I think you’re right that things aren’t that simple. You make a good point that as more nations develop there will be higher demand for fuel, potentially leading to higher prices.
It seems that many arguments against renewables assume that costs will never decrease, technology will never advance, and power will always be intermittent. I don’t think any of these are safe assumptions. There also seems to be an assumption that cost of coal-based electricity relative to renewables is the same everywhere (and will not change), and this seems like a rotten assumption. For instance, part of the cost of bringing electricity to those who don’t currently have it is in the transmission lines, and in countries with a highly rural demographic, this cost is considerable. The situation in the developed world means changing from one energy source to another, while in much of the developing world it’s a matter of providing electricity to those who don’t currently have access. It could be that small solar “gardens” near villages are cheaper than the infrastructure required for transmission from a central coal plant to scores of remote areas, especially where access is difficult.
Then there is the issue of nations being dependent on others for their energy, and at their mercy as to supply and cost. Not all countries have the fossil fuel reserves that the U.S. does.
The choice of electricity source must take many factors into account depending on the situation, what people need and want, and future estimates of risks/benefits. It’s not just about climate change or “green” ideals.
Kristie, if you are convinced that someday in the future technology will make renewables both cheap and reliable.
So why not wait for that mythical day. Why force people to accept power that is both unreliable and much more expensive?
Diversification can bring security, but it can never bring cost reduction.
If we can use all the energy we can get out hands on, shouldn’t we be building the cheapest and most reliable? Wasting money on expensive unreliable energy just means less actual energy is available for consumers.
PS: The high energy costs of the 70’s were caused by Jimmy Carter.
Nick
Wouldn’t that mean coal, gas and wood consumption would have dropped by 8.4%?
Wouldn’t it also mean domestic energy prices would have fallen by 8.4% in the same period of renewables expansion, instead of rising by 20% in the UK over the last year or so?
The main reductions were in oil and nuclear.
‘brown coal’ counts as renewables.
Hugs, I had never thought of that. I guess the environmentalists haven’t figured out how to claim brown coal as a renewable. It is basically wet petrified wood.
the breakdown of what comes in the renewables bundle is interesting. Wind’s contribution in particular is laughable, especially in the context of the vast expense and instability that accompanies it.
Calm down, dear! The climate changing properties of Carbondioxide are greatly exagerated. It just doesn’t matter. What does is that the coal-fired power plants are state-of-the-art clean coal utilities. King Coal is far from dead. Long live the King!
Left-wing governments tend _not_ to solve problems they declare “war” on.
For example, after fifty years of “War On Poverty”, in the United States, poverty levels are now still about the same as then:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait
Why is this? I think one of the reasons is that “activism” tends not to solve problems (like “climate change” for example) is that if these problems were completely solved then the activists would be out of a job and would lose their power over society (especially in elected democracies).
So to maintain power over the electorate, it is better for the activists to let these problems become the status quo. Then they rule forever. Long live the Status Quo!
A Hunger death all 20 yards……. The desire of the greens.
The other problem is that leftists tend to misdiagnose the problem. They honestly believe all problems are a problem of too many or too few resources.
They believe that people are poor because they lack money. So they create government programs to give poor people money. They are then surprised to discover that the same people who were poor, are still poor.
Poverty is caused by behaviors that make people poor. Until those attitudes and behaviors are changed, money can’t solve poverty. The only thing it does is make poverty more comfortable, so that there is less reason for people to work at becoming not poor.
“government programs to give poor people money”
My favorite was Jimmy Carter…..welfare payments are too low
So he increased welfare payments….and immediately more people went on welfare
Poverty is caused by federal reserve monetary policy. Higher interest rates mean fewer jobs. Fewer jobs in turn mean lower wages (yes, even “real wages”)* when poor people are lucky enough to even land a job…
*even if we assume that real wages go down for poor people with a low unemployment rate and high inflation (they don’t), the solution is simple. Adjust the tax code so that there are no losers and only winners. (rich people can get richer as they look out for the poor just to satisfy bleeding hearts like you… ☺️) We’re always better off with a larger pie.
fonzie, 100% wrong.
The federal reserve adjusts interest rates to keep inflation in check.
Inflation is caused by the money supply growing faster than the supply of goods in the economy.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The tax code doesn’t create winners, it merely determines who is going to be the biggest losers.
If you think that it’s possible for government to create bigger pies, you didn’t pay attention in that economics class you didn’t take.
Markus, the problem with your logic is that the federal reserve does everything that i’m saying that they do and for the reasons that i’m saying that they do it. Fed chairs talk. And they will tell you everything that i’m telling you here. It’s a little bizarre that you’re so ill aquainted with that which is common knowledge about what the fed does. (we don’t have to guess about what they do, because they do speak)…
*Mark, i’m going to get you a link to a lecture by ben bernanke that he gave to an economics class at GWU. In it he explains the role of the federal reserve since WW2. i can’t think of a better work out there than this lecture to get you up to speed on the fed. And again, all this is common knowledge. Bernanke isn’t saying anything that hasn’t been said before. Might take a little time for me to post the video. If not here, then i’ll catch up with you somewhere…
https://youtu.be/bw0qrC4FB_l
Mark, looks like this might take me some time… ☺️ (i’ll keep at it)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bw0qrC4FB_l
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bw0qrC4FB_I
O.K., Markus, this one works here (capital i and not an l; gits me evry time… ☺️) The first half hour covers the role of the fed from ww2. The second half hour moves on to QE. There’s a lot packed into that first half hour…
Moderators,
Please closrly review and consider strictly limiting detours into federal reserve bloviation.
You misunderstand the point he is making.
They have historically used unemployment rate as a proxie for how well the economy is doing, along with a number of other proxies.
MarkW
Poverty is relative.
There are 800 children in a small African region called Alison, boys as well. They are all named after the midwife who set up a corrugated iron clinic that saved those children, and their mothers, in childbirth.
The Western world has no concept of genuine poverty.
It’s funny – I think of myself as being on the left in most respects, but what you say about the left doesn’t apply to me at all. Nor does it apply to other professed liberals I know. So who are you talking about? Is there a kindergarten kommunist movement I haven’t heard about?
“They believe that people are poor because they lack money.”
Common misconception, I agree. People can have billions and still be poor in spirit, character and integrity – that has nothing to do with monetary wealth. It doesn’t take millions to have a rich life. But poverty is hard on individuals, families and communities and comes at a cost to the nation as a whole.
You blame the impoverished for their state, suggesting it’s behavioral, and think the answer is to take welfare away. From everyone? Is there anything you would do to help those in poverty now, or to decrease poverty in the long term?
If you had read my post, you would have seen my solutions.
The only ones that have ever worked.
Teach people to not do the things that make them poor.
“Teach people to not do the things that make them poor.”
Wow, it’s that simple? Why didn’t I think of that? Does that include teaching people not to grow up in poor neighborhoods with inadequate schools? Silly kids – what are they thinking? And how foolish is it to get a job that pays $10/hr rather than hold out for the one that pays $50,000/yr with paid vacation, health insurance and a 401K?! Of course, you’d have to teach minorities not to be victims of prejudice, which could get a bit tricky.
Once again, Mark has shown himself an intellectual giant.
It looks like the Left Coast is doing a worse job than the Flyover States.
I doubt that the activists are actually sustaining what they are working against. More likely they are just ineffective. Most of the solutions the left push boil down to more socialism, and that’s never made anything better.
Hanlon’s razor – Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
~¿~
“Why is this?”
Johanus, it was a half century ago (circa 1970) when the unemployment rate was low that we we experienced a modest uptik in inflation. The economic poobahs from then on decided that low unemployment was an unworthy trade off for high inflation. So, they adopted monetary policy to deliberately keep the unemployment rate high at no less than 5% (in later years 4% under greenspan). Their thinking was that this will keep money out of poor people’s hands thus curbing demand inflation along with inflation caused by higher wages. Their “cure” was actually worse than the “disease”. In essence, they were making people so poor that they couldn’t even afford cheaper prices. People often talk about the stagnation in wage growth since the 1970s. In the decades leading up to the 1970s, “real (inflation adjusted) wages” grew. Since then, real wages have stagnated. One would think that monetary policy of creating high unemployment with its accompanying stagnant wages has something to do with it…
*the nice thing about monetary policy, as opposed to climate change, is that the people running the show tell us exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. (unlike gaia who leaves us all guessing) We can all sit around debating whether or not federal reserve policy is wise, but there is no debate as to what they’re doing…
fonzie, your paranoia is pretty ugly.
If you think the inflation rate in the 1970’s were low you weren’t alive than, and have been lied to.
If you think the poor aren’t hurt by inflation, you don’t know anything.
There is not and never has been such a thing as demand inflation. It’s impossible. If one item goes up in price, then the demand for other items drops, and their price goes down.
It doesn’t matter what the product is. Increased prices in one area always mean lower prices elsewhere. The ONLY way to get over all inflation is to inflate the money supply, and you control that via interest rates. The federal reserve either buys or sells US Treasuries.
The “war on poverty” failed because activists wanted to keep their jobs??? Interesting theory, nice way to blame those who care for the problems they care about. I suppose they’d have to try to be content in a perfect world.
How about another hypothesis – America’s wealth is accruing in hands of the wealthiest? Just an idea. At least there’s evidence for it.
“CEOs in 1965 made 24 times more than the average production worker, whereas in 2009 they made 185 times more.”
“Income inequality in the United States, measured by the standard Gini coefficient, is substantially higher than that of almost any other developed nation, and even some developing countries such as Russia and India. Income inequality in the United States, measured by the standard Gini coefficient, is substantially higher than that of almost any other developed nation, and even some developing countries such as Russia and India. ”
So it doesn’t matter how much money the poor have, if the rich have more?
BTW, around the world and across history, the ratio is pretty stable. The bigger government gets, the bigger the divide between rich and poor.
Non-fossil, which includes all renewables, went from ~ 37% to 36% over 20 years. If only some of the ENGO money spent on propaganda had been spent on subsidising yet more renewables! Me being silly. The reason so much is spent subsiding renewables is because of all the money first spent on propaganda.
Global coal production peaked in 2013 so far, four years ago.
http://www.iea.org/newsroom/energysnapshots/170808TotalCoalProduction.png
This is despite not being in a global crisis and having plenty of coal. I guess it is peak demand.
Demand didn’t “peak” in 2013… Consumption continued to rise…
Not according to BP.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/images/energy-economics/svg/coal-consumption-by-region-stsr-bp.svg
“free-fall”
eh?
In my mind a free-fall evokes something like an unimpeded precipitous vertical fall through the air. A gentle decline is what the image graph shows instead, and the ‘recovery’ uptick, is also a gentle minor fractional percentage rise. Such drama.
Not my language, but BP’s. They are mainly a fossil fuel company. The question is that absolutely nobody anticipated a decline in coal production from 2013 to 2017.
Coal is not so fashionable these days. There is plenty but many countries don’t want to burn it.
I’m guessing freezing/frying in thedark has perhaps become less fashionable too, which would be good for coal.
So you are using the language of coals competitors in order to determine the health of the coal industry.
Interesting.
Some countries don’t want to burn coal because they have bought into the global warming nonsense.
The rest of the world is building coal fired plants as fast as they can find the money to do so.
Not that it matters, but who was in the White House in 2013?
Wait… didn’t ALL production decline over the last few years. The world economy itself went through a small decline.
~¿~
Nope. Oil and gas production have increased since 2013. The reduction was specific for coal.
It would seem that consumption is tied directly to economic health, eh?
Demand for coal dropped when nat gas prices fell. However, in the real world every action causes a reaction.
As nat gas prices fell, the demand for it went up, which is causing it’s price to rise.
As demand for coal fell, so did it’s price, which is causing demand for coal to pick back up.
Good explanation but it is not correct. Both coal and gas prices fell from 2013 to 2016, and increased from 2016 to 2017.
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/coal/coal-prices.html
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/natural-gas/natural-gas-prices.html
Natural gas “prices” skyrocketed from 2000-2009, which improved the economics of both coal and natural gas…
This led to a flurry a drilling activity in the oil & gas industry and some very expensive M&A activities in the coal industry… Everyone took on a lot of debt to fund growth.
The combination of the financial collapse and subsequent no-growth economy coupled with an over-supply of natural gas due to the shale boom caused a collapse in natural gas prices. When natural gas is below $2.50/mcf coal is noncompetitive. Most of the shale plays are barely economic at $2.50/mcf. By “barely economic,” I mean one step ahead of insolvency. At less than $2.50/mcf, most coal companies are one step behind isolvency.
The “death blow” to coal occurred in 2009, when natural gas prices collapsed:
However, at prices above $3.00/mcf. coal becomes increasingly profitable. And natural gas prices have been bouncing between $2.50 and $4.00/mcf recently…
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdA.htm
In the Energy Information Administration’s reference case, natural gas prices are forecast to rise to about $4.50/mcf by 2020 and climb above $5.00/mcf by 2030. Coal is extremely competitive with natural gas in EIA’s reference case. It’s even competitive in the “high oil and gas resource technology” scenario.
To paraphrase Samuel Clemens: “The reports of coal’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/22/the-answer-to-whats-actually-killing-coal-isnt-even-wrong/
“In the Energy Information Administration’s reference case, natural gas prices are forecast to rise to about $4.50/mcf by 2020 and climb above $5.00/mcf by 2030. ”
How much will the price of the sunshine rise?
It will always be orders of magnitude more expensive than coal, and far more environmentally destructive to make solar panels compared with mining coal.
To say nothing of the appalling environmental costs of wind turbines.
Fossil fuels are superior in every possible way, to include greening the Earth.
David, the decline in coal has been global, and specific for coal. US specific factors can’t explain it, and global economic factors can’t explain it. The explanation must be complex, but in my opinion among other factors it must involve a specific reduction in coal by part of the World due to energy transition concerns, plus a big reduction in coal use by China due to air quality concerns.
If coal is considered less desirable by most of the world it could lead to stagnation or decrease in coal production as it is substituted by other sources of energy.
Coal consumption in the Asia/Pacific region hit a record high in 2017…
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2018-coal.pdf
The Asia/Pacific region accounts for 75% of global demand.
and australia provides 33% of global exports of coal.
while, out of the other side of their mouths…
I am not disputing the data, David. Asia/Pacific is 75% of the demand, but China is 68% of Asia/Pacific (50% of the world), and due to China’s 4% decrease in the last 4 years, the entire region only increased by 1.2% in 4 years, being unable to compensate decreases elsewhere.
All of this about global coal consumption is fine. But here in the US the average age of coal fired stations continues to climb. As of August of 2017 the median age of all operating coal fired utility units was 52 years. The preponderance of generating capacity by US coal fired units came online between 1955 and 1984.
And the cororally to that, how many wind farms and solar installations will still be operating after 52 years?
…close to 0 large scale wind and solar in 20 years.
and a public crisis over who pays to remove them.
And where do the too expensive to recycle economically composite blades and housings get dumped? Africa? The masts are recyclable or even possibly reusable as are the actual mechanical portions of the transmission and generating components. But then you still have the deep steel reinforced concrete foundations which I suspect will be demolished to 3′ feet or so below grade and covered up.
Then there are the problems with toxicity of certain components of solar panels.
. . . and a public crisis over who pays” for the removal and clean-up of these blights will again be the order of the day. They will be left just like the chemical, lumber, mining industries left the majority of their superfund sites that have yet to be cleaned up and made safe. Best part of all this pristine environmental energy is that you can’t–won’t be able to–give away the land these bird blenders and bug fryers are sitting on.
And I have a sixty year old axe, I’ve only replaced the head three times and the shaft twice
Another characteristic of religious folly:
Tremendous obsession over some tenet of the faith that actually makes no difference whatsoever.
The “climate concerned” obsession on coal is a case in point.
The objective of the “climate concerned” has been to raise the fraction of renewables. That is what the Paris etc agreements were about. And that is succeeding very well, with continued exponential growth. I’m sure that many would prefer that coal went down relative to gas, say. But that is not the primary aim.
Wrong. The objective of the “climate concerned” is the transfer of wealth and power, from advanced, primarily Western and European countries to developing and poor nations. That is what the so-called “Paris Agreement” was all about, and that is why Trump’s refusal to participate in that chicanery has driven the Greenie goombahs and socialist sociopaths bonkers.
>That [raise the fraction of renewables] is what the Paris etc agreements were about.
The [Paris agreement][1] is not about increasing renewables specifically. It is about mitigating and adapting to climate change, in part by reducing GHGs, which is not at all the same as increasing renewables.
“Renewable” is mentioned twice on the Paris Agreement summary page. Once reporting on IPPC work and once in this paragraph:
> > Mitigation measures are translated in, for example, an increased use of renewable energy, the application of new technologies such as electric cars, or changes in practices or behaviours, such as driving less or changing one’s diet. Futher, they include expanding forests and other sinks to remove greater amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, or simply making improvements to a cookstove design.
[1] : http://bigpicture.unfccc.int/#content-the-paris-agreemen “Summary of the Paris Agreement”
Green Climate Fund, established by the Paris agreement has nothing to do with wind mills in the USA.
“GCF was established by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in DEVELOPING countries, and to help adapt vulnerable societies to the unavoidable impacts of climate change” [bold mine].
https://www.greenclimate.fund/home
Eventually government will run out of other people’s money, and the percentage of renewables will plummet as the subsidies end.
MarkW
As they are.
“to raise the fraction of renewables. That is what the Paris etc agreements were about.”
nope………
“(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;
(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”
“Raising the fraction of renewable sources without lowering the fraction of fossil fuels does absolutely nothing.”
The fractions have to add to 1.
It seems to me that skeptics are at least as obsessed about coal. I find it rather strange. Personally, I’m not against replacing some coal-fired plants with new coal-fired plants that are efficient and use the best technologies for emission minimization. It depends on the situation, what’s best for the community, and what they want. I subscribe to a “solar garden,” and if enough people have the opportunity to do that, the demand for new coal plants will decrease naturally. Utilities sometimes provide options for buying power from renewables. There is a market for it. Some people are ready to pay extra, making a financial sacrifice for the sake of slowing climate change. It’s handled differently elsewhere, I guess. I understand there have been subsidies, but that’s hardly unusual.
I think buying electricity from renewables is a gimmick. There is no way to separate out the electricity produced by renewables from that produced from coal, natural gas and nuclear.
Now if buying electricity from renewables was at a lower cost than not, then it would be worth doing whether it was a gimmick or not. 🙂
But I suspect one has to pay a premium for renewables, although I have no experience with it one way or the other.
“There is no way to separate out the electricity produced by renewables from that produced from coal, natural gas and nuclear.”
Meters. Or am I misunderstanding something?
Premiums: It depends on the deal made with the solar provider. My “downside” is that I had to sign a contract for the next 20 years, although I can get out of it if someone else is available to take over my share. They have to cover their investment. The benefit is that I know how much I will pay – the annual increase is 2.5%. This could end up being more than other fuels if their price goes down. Last month I had a credit from my regular electricity provider – evidently the solar garden produced more than the demand, and sold the extra to Xcel.
Hmmm…. the power station north of the state line had stacks that were visible for miles, emitting a lot of steam from coal power generation. It was built in the early 1980s. It was shuttered recently and has been replaced by a natural gas-fired power station, because natural gas is cheaper.
I don’t get any electricity from that company, but the local power station that does supply my little house with electricity has also switched to natural gas because it is cheaper. My electric bill has dropped by about $15/month since I got that notice, so there is something to be said for using a lower cost item to do the job.
The same company also has several nuclear reactors in the state, which supply power to many communities and homes in farmland. As long as the reactor plants are run properly, there should be no issues. It’s the disposal of exhausted fuel rods that is a real issue. The irrational fear of radioactive stuff was not helped at all by the 1997 Chernobyl meltdown or the quake-related damage to the Fukushima reactor.
Solar and wind energy may be fine for individual use, but on a large scale basis they do not seem to work at all. Period.
I would prefer the nuke solution myself, or (if they ever become available) the molten salt reactors, but when bad things happen they scare the uninformed and timid to pieces, and that is the real problem. The general public wants its electricity unimpaired. They just don’t want to know where it comes from or what the “bad stuff” about it may be, e.g., Chernobyl and that old chestnut, Three Mile Island.
One of the reasons they shut down coal fired units that still have a considerable service life is the source of coal. The stations require a good source of water and fuel. Many coal fired stations in states with coal mines were built close to the mines that supply the coal. But with new air quality regulations the plants near coal sources that produce high sulfur coal lost their cost effective coal supply and had to import low sulfur coal from sources further away. Stations that are not on or near navigable rivers have to have the coal brought in by train or in a few cases truck and are most effected by the transport costs of their coal fuel.
Some of the coal fired units using the old C&E Raymond coal mill exhausters and wet wall boilers have been converted to use NG.
(Chernobyl was in 1986)…