Guest slam dunk by David Middleton
Wind Power Stats Reveal 2018 Was a Huge Year, and There’s More to Come
It’s off to a flying start.
By Mike Brown on February 5, 2019
Filed Under Clean Energy, Power & Sustainable EnergyThe amount of wind power capacity in North, Central and South America jumped 12 percent in the past year, a report revealed Tuesday. The Global Wind Energy Council found 11.9 gigawatts of capacity was added to the region, with the United States and Brazil among the biggest contributors.
The report bodes well for plans to transition more energy usage onto sustainable means, dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear.
[…]
Inverse (of logic, reason and the real world)
Show of hands…
- Who thinks that Mike Brown comprehends the difference between capacity and generation?
- Who thinks that Mike Brown actually thinks that 11.9 gigawatts of new wind capacity is a large number relative to the increase in crude oil production in 2018?
This is what “dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear” looks like in the real world.
In reality, fossil fuels are drop-kicking renewable fantasies and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Year-over-year growth of U.S. crude oil production was 7-8 times that of the entire global wind power production from 2016-2018.
Time for my favorite graph…
Answer to #1 = He doesn’t. Answer to #2= He Does.
Or, Just the opposite and he knows he is fibbing.
One option or the other fits every renewable proponant I have ever talked to.
If Mr. Brown was offered a starting salary of $1.00 per hour for his work, along with a promise to receive 12% yearly increases in that salary, suppose he would accept?? Maybe he would.
He must have missed the article on this site about Poland Banning Wind turbines in 17 years. Go back and read it and the 1st comment that references a youtube video, for a REAL education on the subject of the health effects of these bird choppers. VERY interesting.
Now, take your favorite graph (lovely!) and somehow juxtapose it against forecast world energy requirement growth. We’ll be hard pressed to meet it with every source we have to hand.
Not just growth, but replacement of current needs would be impossible with unreliables and not just because we need the base load to create them.
I’ve stated several time before, the best solar panel working its entire useful life (20 years) operating under ideal conditions will not produce enough electrical power to create its replacement.
As has also been said before, while wind and sunshine are free, the means to convert and transport that energy ARE NOT.
In the same vein that sunshine is free, so is petroleum, but the extraction and conversion to electricity are not.
Simple economics demonstrate the difference. One is relatively inexpensive per kilowatt/hr., the other demonstrably NOT.
Well where I live, without government subsidy, solar panels have a payback of 3 years, Go do the math! Sand and aluminium are cheap, the manufacturers are not selling at a loss, the price paid for the raw materials reflects the costs involved in manufacturing them.
A simple calculation shows a 250w panel would need to operate for about 40 hours to process the sand in its construction, another 6 hours for the aluminium.
[DELETED. Try and keep it civil. Mod]
Wind turbines, well that’s another matter.
Humorously, National Progressive Radio (npr.org) had a feature on the Green New Deal this morning. The 15-year old reading the news earnestly explained that it would involve stopping the use of fossil fuels within ten years, and THEN replacing them with renewable sources. We were left wondering how many years we would need to wait after we stop using fossil fuels before we have energy again.
But in light of the increase in polar vortex events due to warming, what could go wrong if we had to go through three decades or so without reliable heat? Then we’ll have fusion-based unicorns and the glories of socialism will be obvious, right?
And yet the Synod of the Church of England wants to disinvest from fossil fuel
One religion believing in another religion…
Ha!
As Dr Tim Ball said somewhere, for warmists, GIGO does mean garbage in, garbage out; it also means GOSPEL IN, GOSPLE OUT .
Sorry, I do not have blink to the source.
BLINK S/B LINK
I think it was Garbage In, Gospel Out
(GIGO)
From an article in the Washington Examiner, on December 19, 2013:
Also, IPCC findings depend largely on computer models, which are notoriously wobbly. GIGO applies – the 1963 hacker acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” The IPCC first turned GIGO into “garbage in, gospel out,” then after some experience, “gospel in, gospel out.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lack-of-science-literacy-helps-global-warmists-spread-the
from an article in the December 19, 2013 Washington Examiner
Also, IPCC findings depend largely on computer models, which are notoriously wobbly. GIGO applies – the 1963 hacker acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” The IPCC first turned GIGO into “garbage in, gospel out,” then after some experience, “gospel in, gospel out.” That’s delusional.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lack-of-science-literacy-helps-global-warmists-spread-their-gospel
From an article in the Washington Examiner on December 19, 2013
Also, IPCC findings depend largely on computer models, which are notoriously wobbly. GIGO applies – the 1963 hacker acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” The IPCC first turned GIGO into “garbage in, gospel out,” then after some experience, “gospel in, gospel out.”
David,
Could you please provide the details of the source of your stunning “favourite graph”? Is it also from the BP Statistical Review?
Thanks in anticipation.
Yes it is from the 2018 BP Statistical Review.
Thanks David
It is misleading to keep posting a chart showing all power consumption when the issue is electricity production…
wind is a means primarily of electricity generation. Charts used in discussion around it should show it as a percentage of that.
tell us during the recent cold and snow just oh ‘well’ eind has been doing when it comes to the ability to supply power ?
Odd. Somehow it is never misleading when the Climate Faithful and other Deep Green fantasizers talk about replacing oil, or blocking pipelines. Like you said, Renewables are completely unsuitable for any of the transport systems. You can’t run ships or trains with them, or power a plane. You can only power a car with them if that car accepts the higher prices and much lower range of an electric, and so for trucking has proven beyond the technological limits.
In fact, I’ve noticed that the Faithful usually mention oil FIRST when they talk about how we need to ‘keep it in the ground’. Strange isn’t it, that Exxon and the other Oil companies are always the Big Bad’s in the Faithful’s narrative, when they are the ones least threatened by the rise of ‘Renewable’ energy.
~¿~
Then they need to leave the precious Earth minerals in the ground. Talk about an eye sore, strip mining. Oh well, it makes for kick ass four wheeling! I miss weekends at Shamokin and the Trevorton Hill climbs.
Although Colorado has much more epic scenery, Moab even better
What good does leaving “precious Earth minerals” in the ground do?
Your off-road vehicle depended upon iron ore and coal mining for its production, and upon petroleum for its delivery to your point of purchase, and for every inch you have driven it since your purchase.
Wind has powered ships for thousands of years. Perhaps a green fleet is viable for cargo delivery across the seas. A certification process could verify that the tea and olives that I crave were sustainably transported. Of course, we’d have to prohibit competitive forms of shipping. I see a market for some high dollar virtue signaling.
Absolutely true. Wind has powered ships for centuries. During those times it took mere weeks to transit distances we now traverse in hours. Even longer to get to the South Pacific. And, forget about shipping perishable cargo. Everything will be canned, packed in oil or heavily salted. (Ever wonder why corned beef is so popular in Ireland?)
And, personal travel will be severely curtailed.
Simple question: Who was the first man to circumnavigate the globe?
(hint: It wasn’t Magellan. He never made it home.)
It may be a simple question, but the answer is not so simple.
Of the people of whom we have a name, likely Juan Sebastian Elcano – a Basque mariner who took control of the expedition after Magellan’s death in 1521 and captained its lone surviving vessel, the “Victoria,” on its journey back to Spain. Elcano and his sailors (17 of them, including Italian scholar Antonio Pigafetta, who technically by longitude at least would have finished the circumnavigation before they reached Spain) stand as the first people to have successfully voyaged around the world as part of a single journey. Magellan’s Malay slave, Enrique may have done so over the course of multiple voyages spanning many years, but it is unknown if Enrique ever returned to his point of origin (he was only a few hundred miles short) after Magellan’s death.
58 years later, a second circumnavigation of the globe was completed by Englishman Sir Francis Drake. (Like Magellan’s expedition, only one ship survived the ordeal)
Wind is primarily a means of subsidy generating for the unscrupulous or power generation for the deluded. There fixed it for you Griff. Oh, and please connect your household directly to a turbine producing intermittent power and see what happens to your electrical equipment shortly before you freeze to death waiting or because you can’t afford the ever rising cost. Did you notice the energy price cap in the U.K. was raised today, yet again, to subsidise unicorn energy. Tough on ordinary people, but hey ho the green lobby thinks this is a price worth paying.
It’s about depopulation. And sadly, this generation doesn’t know diddly about how to shoot guns. I wonder how they will defend themselves… Pitchforks?
That would be quite poetic considering the PIC want the people back to the days of windmills and royalty.
RE: “I wonder how they will defend themselves… Pitchforks?”
Unicorn horns lashed on to antelope thigh bones. The unicorn horn is a modern green improvement on the long ago proven technology of the antelope thigh bone. For a reference see the first few minutes of the Clarke & Kubrick classic “2001.” Don’t the actors in period costume in those first few minutes of the film remind you of the ANTIFA goons?
As one who wields a pitchfork daily, I can tell you it takes beaucoup hay to power all those unicorn poops . . . somebody, somewhere, needs to call these people out as barmy and GET THE FACTS OUT THERE that CAGW is, as DJT said, a hoax.
Otherwise we’re sitting still and nodding while being robbed blind.
It has often amused me that those who want to reduce the human population are exactly the ones who would fall in the first wave of depopulation.
Yeah, You are right. He got me.
Operative phrase: “The report bodes well for plans to transition more energy usage onto sustainable means, dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear.”
Where’s my Data laughing Gif?
Why? Fossil fuels can provide ALL energy needs, not just electric generation. And since you’re a proponent of replacing fossil fuel powered transport (ICE) with more electric generation dependent EVs, we SHOULD be looking at “total” energy needs, not *just* the ones where wind makes a minuscule and fruitless “contribution.”
Griff,
To “DIVEST” the world from fossil fuel usage and “Leave it in the Ground”, doesn’t ALL sources of energy consumption need to be supplied by renewables?
Why YES IT DOES!!!
So all energy sources for all energy needs is the proper comparison.
Just because you think the truth treats Unreliable Renewables unfairly doesn’t negate the fact it is the truth.
It is misleading to claim this is just about electricity generation when radical environmentalists are pushing for the cessation of all fossil fuel production and use, and for the electrification of all energy systems. You are presenting a classic case of bait and switch but the average voter is not nearly so stupid as to fall for this.
griff has been corrected on this very point many times.
It seems that it’s more important for him to back the cause, than it is to be accurate.
Says the troll who has been demanding that all cars be electric.
David has a favorite graph, and so do I — mine changes every 5 minutes, but have a look:
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
During the coldest week of the year, wind has gone missing — that’s the green line at the bottom of the chart.
This page will show the cold temps in the western USA:
http://wxmaps.org/
We were at 0°F at dawn today 2-7-2019. 100% electric house.
No more misleading than, “The report bodes well for plans to transition more energy usage onto sustainable means, dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear.” He has not limited his remarks to electrical generation.
In fact, why are you assuming that Brown didn’t intend to imply that this, plus other sustainable means, would replace all fossil fuels? If so, showing the graph, which shows all means of production, is eminently appropriate.
Perhaps it is only you who thinks the overall conclusion presented by Brown is restricted to electrical power generation.
It is misleading to keep posting a chart showing all power consumption when the issue is electricity production…
No griffy-poo, the issue is the switch to 100% renewals – that’s *ALL* power consumption. The chart showing all power consumption is the correct one to use. But let’s ignore that for the sake of argument. You think a different chart is in order, they why don’t you produce said chart rather than complain about the chart David uses. (surely, since you clearly know soooooo much about the issue – all due sarcasm intended – you know where such a chart can be found) .
No chart griffy-poo? no surprise.
So if I disconnect from my gas supply to heat my house – what non fossil fuel would I use that is not electricity?
Griff,
What is your logic besides the optics looks ridiculous? Facts matter.
More than half of the power used by the G20 countries is industrial production as opposed to producing electricity. Producing steel, ammonium production, aluminum production, distillation, production of cement, mining, and so on. That is a fact.
The wind and sun gathering schemes have failed in Germany for fundamental engineering reasons. German CO2 emissions have essentially remained the same for the last 10 years even though the Germans have spent billions of dollars installing more solar panels and wind turbines.
The only solution to drastically reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions is fission.
There has been a ‘breakthrough’ (no new engineering, no new science, weird as this is civilization changing) in fission reactor design. This should be win-win for the cult of CAGW supporters. This is something that Bill Gates and friends need to understand.
Rather than pushing wind and sun gathering that does not work, you all, should be advancing the schedule of the new fission reactor design.
We (A NASA engineer while looking for a reactor to use on the moon) have re-discovered a fission reactor design (that was built and tested 50 years ago by the designer of the light water reactor) that cannot have fuel rod melt downs as it does not have fuel rods and that does not have endothermic reactions or phase changes to blow apart the reactor
The new design operates at atmospheric pressure rather than 150 atmospheres.
The ‘new’ fission reactor is 1/9th the cost of the old pressure water reactors, it six times more fuel efficient, it produces 1/9 th amount of long lived radioactive waste and it can be mass produced.
The new reactor system is sealed so it possible to have very near zero radioactive material release under any imaginable normal or accident scenario.
The new reactor design is something that everyone would rather have near them as opposed to a coal fired power station, natural gas power plant, or hundred of wind turbines.
The new reactor produces heat at 600C which enables it be used for all of industrial production. The pressure water reactor produces heat at 315C.
This story needs to told.
OK, I will bite.
Which design, Molten Salt?
Sorry, the environmentalists say that nuclear energy is a Bad Thing, so it is right out.
Ok Griff.. but isn’t the ‘sustainable’ plan that all heating and transportation and lighting be ALL switched over to electric?
Wait, let me ask AOC.
Re the gigatonne chart.
Interestingly it appears the same chart applies to smaller scale networks.
https://www.hydro.com.au/news/media-releases/2019/02/01/appy-new-year-on-flinders-island
As I look now it is 3% wind and 3% solar and the rest diesel. And there is wastage on control of the network.
Are there any other similar network apps known that I may amuse myself with?
Thanks.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/25/green-electricity-grid-collapses-during-aussie-heatwave/#comment-2604778
[excerpt]
Second, fossil fuels comprise fully 85% of global primary energy, unchanged in decades, and unlikely to change in future decades. Ban fossil fuels and ~everyone in the developed world is dead in a month. The remaining 15% of global primary energy is almost all hydro and nuclear.
My source for the above 85% is BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/25/green-electricity-grid-collapses-during-aussie-heatwave/#comment-2604778
[excerpt]
Politicians typically focused on the easy “bird courses” in the social sciences, and skipped the “tough” courses in science and engineering. Here is a primer:
First, this is the economic solution for intermittent green energy – typically wind and solar power:
1. Build your wind or solar power system and connect it to the grid.
2. Build your back-up system consisting of 100% equivalent capacity in gas turbine generators.
3. Using high explosives, blow your wind or solar power system all to hell.
4. Run your back-up gas turbine generators 24/7.
5. To save even more money, skip steps 1 and 3.
Despite many trillions in squandered subsidies, global green energy has increased from above 1% to below 2% is recent decades. Green energy is not green and provides little useful (dispatchable) energy.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/26/are-studies-of-high-penetrations-of-wind-power-valid/#comment-2605685
WHAT IS GRID-CONNECTED WIND POWER REALLY WORTH? [GERMAN EXAMPLE]
Wind power is intermittent and non-dispatchable and therefore should be valued much lower than the reliable, dispatchable power typically available from conventional electric power sources such as fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear.
In practice, one should assume the need for almost 100% conventional backup for wind power (in the absence of a hypothetical grid-scale “super-battery”, which does not exist in practical reality). When wind dies, typically on very hot or very cold days, the amount of wind power generated approaches zero.
Capacity Factor equals {total actual power output)/(total rated capacity assuming 100% utilization). The Capacity Factor of wind power in Germany equals about 28%*. However, Capacity Factor is not a true measure of actual usefulness of grid-connected wind power.
The true factor that reflects the intermittency of wind power Is the Substitution Capacity*, which is about 5% in Germany – a large grid with a large wind power component. Substitution Capacity is the amount of dispatchable (conventional) power you can permanently retire when you add more wind power to the grid. In Germany they have to add ~20 units of wind power to replace 1 unit of dispatchable power. This is extremely uneconomic.
I SUGGEST THAT THE SUBSTITUTION CAPACITY OF ~5% IS A REASONABLE FIRST APPROXIMATION FOR WHAT WIND POWER IS REALLY WORTH – that is 1/20th of the value of reliable, dispatchable power from conventional sources. Anything above that 5% requires spinning conventional backup, which makes the remaining wind power redundant and essentially worthless.
This is a before-coffee first-approximation of the subject. Improvements are welcomed, provided they are well-researched and logical.
Regards, Allan
And here’s another add-on to consider: how much renewable energy is used in the exploration for, production, refining and transportation of fossil fuels? How much fossil fuel is used in the manufacture, transportation and installation of renewable facilities?
“The Capacity Factor of wind power in Germany equals about 28%*.”
Nope, it’s 23% overall and 13-19% onshore (more for newer and bigger turbines).
And another cost they neglet to montion is the much higher mainenance costs to keep all those wind turbines operating at peak efficiency, not to mention all the extra power cables needed to string together dozens of wind turbines.
Have you ever wondered how to calculate the amount of battery backup capacity would be necessary if there were no backup generator? Do you know if anyone is even keeping track of the weather parameters necessary to calculate that? Based on your comment, I think you’d want at least 20x the typical output of a windmill over a month. Seems there is never a guarantee that you have enough. Plus, you’d need a multiple of windmill capacity to ensure that the batteries were fully charged when needed.
VAn Doren – my reference is below, from 2005 – please provide your sources.
“E.On Netz Wind Report 2005” at
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
…..And is neither self-subsidizing nor cross-subsidizing.
In this particular discussion, money should be treated as a proxy representative for energy.
Allan,
I say to instead skip steps 1 2 and 3 and build high-efficiency combined-cycle gas generators and just get on with it. Why not leave the gas turbine systems as top off back up and get the most bang for the btu?
Owen, if you read my post, that is what I said. Skip steps 1 and 3.
OweninGA, you just described Allan’s step 5 (step 2 covers what you suggest doing instead of steps 1-3)
“5. To save even more money, skip steps 1 and 3.”
Have a look at the Euan Mearns Energy Matters website, they have lots of energy generation data & analysis.
http://euanmearns.com/
Unfortunately the current main poster Roger Andrews has just died, so I am not sure how much data there will be in the future.
You can also look at the UK Grid Generation here
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
It is currently windy here and wind is doing quite well, but that just highlights the intermittency problems.
For my amusement I’ve done up a set of charts from the Gridwatch 5 minute data, covering 2011 to mid Jan19, split every which way I could think of.
http://redcentresoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/GridwatchUK_Demand_and_Supply.xlsx
The last 19 charts examine Wind in detail which gyrates from near zero to 12 GW. Any expert commentary welcome. There is a regime shift at 2016, so many charts compare 2011-2015 against 2016-present.
Splitting out BioMass might be instructive, as DRAX has been converted from Coal to Wood Chip on 2 of it’s Generators.
Reviewing that chart, it looks like there’s a nice straight blue line that appears to be a reliable source of electricity. Isn’t that what we really need to use as a source?
Patrick,
Wrong. That line is produced using average yearly installed wind power. That tells us nothing of how reliable the actual generated power is on a day to day, hour to hour basis. Apples and oranges.
You might like this. Wind does pretty good when there is an appropriate amount of wind, which isn’t often.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
Here in Finland we also need heat, not just electricity. So, charts showing power is not actually so misleading. As almost everyone can admit that wind power is only a costly problem, promoting it requires some kind of special state of mind. Or odd character. Or strange sense of right and wrong…
– Nonsense. All it requires is a thirst for money and an utter disregard for how scrupulously one earns it; both common traits of the human(?) condition. Lots of Greeeen Weeeenies eager to throw money at carnival-barkers who tout their chosen religion – and lots of Greeeen Weeeenies have made-it into governments, which have always been “forgetful” about where their taxpayer dollars ended-up.
As W.C. Fields used to put it, “Never give a sucker an even break, or smarten-up a chump!”
Does anyone have the data to predict how long wind companies in Ontario would survive without subsidies?
1 DAY
Let it be the:
One day when we were young, one wonderful morning in May…
11.9 gigawatts of nameplate capacity results in around 3 gigawatts of avg wwind power output. I believe that 2 or 3 nuclear plants went online during the year, with a nameplate (and actual) output of roughly 4 to 4.5 gigawatts.
The even bigger problem is that “average” power doesn’t keep the lights on. If electricity isn’t available when it’s needed, bad things happen and they happen quickly.
Agreed. Amazingly, greenies want to quote average wind and solar production numbers when they tout renewables, but quote peak temps to prove the need for renewables.
SR
Kent. The nuclear plants will last maybe 60 years while the turbines are history in 20 or so.
Sadly, the nuclear plants will last for ~25,000 years before we can safely stop worrying about them. Equally sadly, the nuclear plants emit no CO2 to further infuriate the Greens.
CCGT for the win!
The ‘Capacity’ argument could have a lot more applications than just power generation.
The Greens could apply for funding to set up a huge office complex, staffed by hundreds of thousand of activists, and then claim that it had the ‘capacity’ to, for instance, monitor fossil fuel usage across the world and control it by taxation. Do you think that a Green Donor Billionaire would fall for that one?
In 2030 we will have wind powered aircraft. Link to the picture as the article is cobbled with mindless ads:
The description reads:
—
Futuristic AWWA-QG Progress Eagle concept aircraft was dreamed up by Barcelona-based designer Oscar Viñals
The aircraft has solar panels on its wings and carries a wind turbine that can generate electricity while it is in flight
The three deck aircraft would have the capacity for more than 800 passengers along with beds and offices for crew
Mr Viñals claims the aircraft would be 75 per cent quieter than current airliners and produce zero carbon emissions
—
Green utopia, easy money and unicorn oil. Yes, solar power and a wind turbine. On an 800 pax aircraft.
Aspirine, anyone ?
Using wind power to do work is 4th – 6th century tech. Nothing new.
And from the same team, version 2.0, operating on unicorn manure and high-tech:
http://www.tuvie.com/wp-content/uploads/awwa-qg-progress-eagle-concept-plane-by-oscar-vinals-large16.jpg
I wonder how much it weighs?
Also generating electricity with a wind turbine will only work when descending to land.
At all other times the drag will just use more electricity than it generates.
A dirigible using the same concept might work quite well, but would be very slow.
Right and many more purely utopia assumptions, perpetual movement inclusive. But, hey, no matter if it works, it’s green.
I’m enormously puzzled about something, so maybe some of you could help me figure this out.
I grew up in the Midwest, spent most of my life here. In the 1950s, there were days so hazy around even smaller cities that the term ‘smog’ could have been correctly applied. When I was in Washington, DC, in the mid-1960s, an inversion layer moved down from NYC to the WDC area and planted a blanket of yellow clouds and haze on the area that took a couple of weeks to disperse. The only way to get away from it was to get out of town, out toward the Blue Ridge, and even then, the air was not clear blue.
Much later, like many years later, and with all those emissions testing laws and reductions in this and that in effect, and the air is considerably clearer. Even in the 1990s in Chicago, when a few summers were obnoxiously hot and humid, the worst offender was humidity from Lake Michigan evaporating in the heat. (Normal stuff, that sort of thing.) The sky is occasionally hazy from humidity, but I have yet to see any of the yellow inversion smogs that existed in the 1960s, and on really clear days, the sky is a near-ultramarine blue. In a few words, the atmosphere is as clear as a bell. I don’t even need a polarizing filter on my camera to enhance that deep blue.
Frankly, I don’t even see exhaust emission from big rigs on the highways, either.
So where does this ‘pollution” stuff come from, besides the fantasy worlds the Greenbeans inhabit?
Oh, before I forget, Kenworth and Toyota have put their heads together to produce a semi-tractor (big truck) that is supposed to run on hydrogen fuel cells. Now, there’s no network for replacing the fuel cells in place, but it’s only to be used in California. I want to see just how well this works when a semitractor-drawn rig weighing 62,000 pounds loaded gross weight makes a run. I’m always in favor of saving resources for future needs. 🙂
The EPA did good work in its first 4 or 5 years of existence, but like all bureaucracies it had to expand. It knocked down most of the really bad stuff (unburned aerosolised hydrocarbons floating around) with a few relatively simple changes. Then after having fixed 95% of the problem, they had to spend ever more and demand ever more expenses from industry to fix less and less problem. If we were to roll them back to the state they were in around 1980, move enforcement to the justice department and really look at cost-benefit analysis in a rational manner, they would be an effective partner in keeping things livable. Perfect is inevitably the arch nemesis of the good.
Sara, I am not qualified to answer your question, but my indication is:
Back in the “good old” 60’s, the factories, cars, trucks (the real ones), heating and electricity production all had poorer combustion. Already in the 70’s regulations began to help a lot. There is nothing wrong, to my min, regulating and trying to minimise pollution, it has been very beneficial for us the last 50 years, at least in the west. What is idiotic, is that CO2 has been classified as a pollution. Actually, it could mean that real pollution get’s less attention.
Carl, don’t forget you reach the point of diminishing returns.
ie The air has already been cleaned up and to clean it much more will cost a great deal more money than the original did.
In the UK the Government produced a graph of Pollution reduction and it only goes back to 1970 (ie after the really bad stuff had already been cleaned up) but it shows reductions of 80%-90% over the 1970s. But they have made it very hard to find and replaced it with later shorter period versions.
You can see the legislation here
http://air-quality.org.uk/02.php
Which is a fantastic improvement, however the WHO and EPA are now trying to remove practically all of air pollution and is based on false statistics and computer models.
This is the ‘Hygiene Principle’.
Some dirty smelly unhygienic drains – obviously need cleaning so set requirement to disinfect the drains. Job done.
How do we remain employed if the job is done?
Require drains be tested for bacteria and on the basis of testing set requirement for the drains to be sterile at all times.
This is extremely expensive ..and the drains cannot be used.
That may be the real issue right there: “WHO and EPA are now trying to remove practically all of air pollution and is based on false statistics and computer models.”
Real pollution is gone, and whatever we have now is produced by natural means, having little to do with us. A wood-based fire in an outdoor fireplace for cooking and having moments of peace and tranquility ** is not going to create much in the way of pollution at all. I think the misunderstanding is intentional, because no matter how much you try to get the point across, their minds are closed to what you say.
**Read Henry Beston’s “The Outermost House”. Written in 1928, about his year on the outer arm of Cape Cod. The Greenbeans we have now could not possibly understand his view.
Someone needs to find and show pictures of Houston, Los Angeles and a few others from the 50s/60s as done for the dust bowl storms. It would be helpful if there would be a smell detector also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
Donora is why the air got cleaned.
Wind capacity factor is expected to beat hydro by 2021 at around 36%. New installations are running over 41%.
“Capacity” is meaningless. GENERATION is what counts, and not only the amount, but the timing. Since with wind you can control neither (other than by disconnecting them when they are producing too much, thereby wasting what little they actually produce), wind is essentially USELESS.
Hey Greg, how often does water stop flowing over the falls?
Not only generation is what really counts, but also costs. I did some calculations recently, in Germany onshore wind turbines CAPEX is ca. 0.11€/kWh, operational costs ca. 0.03€/kWh and backup costs ca. 0.02€/kWh, for total costs of 0.16€/kWh. Gross market prices are at ca. 0.06€/kWh.
And speaking of generation: there are times when generation falls to 0.1GW even if capacity is at 105GW… so, basically zero.
BPA power generation:
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
Wind power capacity is around 3000. This period is representative of the past months wind performance (rather lack thereof).
Greg, your “Wind capacity factor is expected to beat hydro by 2021 …” is a trivially true but misleading (intentionally?) factoid. Hydro is varied to meet load; wind varies unpredictably.
+10
capacity is theory, actual generation is reality. Theory is all well and good, but it’s reality that counts. And the reality is that actual generation of wind comes nowhere near capacity most of the time. Even if you had infinite capacity it does you no good when the wind isn’t blowing (IE generation is zero).
Proponents of intermittent energy are all promoters.
The definition:
“In the beginning, the promoter has the vision and the public has the money.
At the end of the promotion, the promoter has the money and the public has the vision.”
Eventually the public discovers they have been “had”.
Then recrimination and reaction.
It will happen.
The other saying from the old Vancouver Stock Exchange has been:
“Remember where you heard it.”
Dropping the “fossil” fuels of yesteryear, and embracing the hydrocarbon fuels of today and tomorrow. Sprinkle with a grey non-renewable, intermittent, environmental blight where it is suitable to task.
Wind and solar are merely the surface crud floating in a pristine sea of relatively cheap, and reliable energy. They represent supreme folly, ignorance, and weapons-grade stupidity.
http://fresnowalleyes.com/fresnocam.html
Greens need to address functioning at -30F without fossil fuel. Electric vehicles simply don’t go anywhere.
Yesterday, all of the solar panels near my location were covered with 4 to 6 inches of snow and the sky was cloudy. The solar panel out put was likely near zero. The wind was gusting out of the north to 7 miles per hours. The output of the area wind farms was near zero, also. We had a high temperature of 18 degrees F. The conditions made for a nice day outdoors to clean up the snow fall from the day before. The renewable electrical production in my area of southern Minnesota was zero. Thank God for fossil fuels.
The solution to that is really simple. Build a vertical treadmill, as long as possible (a mile high would likely be good), with buckets on it. As the treadmill rotates and the buckets come over the top, they flop-outward and deploy. Then they catch falling snow and are pulled down the treadmill, turning a generator. Then at the bottom, they dump the snow and flop inward, being hauled back up to the top by the weight of the snow turning the treadmill. A snowfall-generator – and expressing it here, makes the idea copyright; GIVE ME MONEY!!!
Oh, wait – there won’t be snow anymore …… Also, see Poe’s Law. Cheers, all! 😉
A simple way of getting a message to our dump politicians, and far better than their “Focus groups”is to make it L:aw, that we the consumer have a choice. All electricity bills, i.e. accounts, should have t wo boxes for us to tick. We should be able to tick for Green electricity if we wish to “Save the Planet”, and the second box to tick if we prefer coal or gas s fired generation.
It would be a instant poll as to what the community wantis, either Green or fossal l fuel power.
Now what could be fairer.
MJE
Are the progressives actually willing to turn off the lights and computers for poor people (to say nothing of heat), as long as they get their own juice from somewhere?
Yes. With so-called progressives it’s always “regulations for thee not for me”
Uh oh – watch how you talk about unicorns.
That’s raised a blister in the past.
That depends on the sensitive area the rub there horns.
Thing with unicorns is that while the word has come to mean a mythical horse-like beast with a horn, it originally meant a one-horned Rhino. So Unicorns (in the original meaning of the word) do exist, even if their farts still aren’t going to be enough to power the green dream.