Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, untold suffering is pretty much locked in, but we won’t have to dismantle Capitalism, because cheap solar energy will soon eliminate the need for fossil fuel.
Worst Case for Climate Change Doesn’t Look Realistic
A major overhaul of energy production is still needed, but not a dismantling of capitalism. By Noah Smith
…
But a growing chorus of climate scientists and energy policy analysts has begun to question whether the dreaded RCP8.5 scenario should be taken seriously. The scenario assumes that after a brief flirtation with natural gas and renewable energy, the world returns to fueling industrialization primarily with coal. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that the global coal industry will increase sevenfold, as RCP8.5 envisions, even if natural gas proves to be a temporary phenomenon.
First of all, there probably just isn’t that much accessible coal in the ground. Second, burning coal creates air pollution in addition to greenhouse gases, which gives countries an additional incentive to reduce its use. Third, the price of renewables has dropped to the point where building new coal plants is simply not economical in most places. Despite China’s new plants, overall global coal use fell 3% in 2019. India is turning away from coal, and so is Southeast Asia:
And as renewables get cheaper, it will become economical to retire existing coal and gas plants. McKinsey predicts that this will be the case in most of the world by 2030. Banks are already beginning to pull out of the coal-power industry, not because of environmental pressure (since they’re still funding coal for other industrial uses), but because they know there’s just no future in coal plants. Gas won’t be far behind, though a few gas plants will probably remain in service to back up solar plants when the sun isn’t shining.
…
Now for the bad news: 2.5 degrees of warming will still be catastrophic for many people and countries, and 3 degrees even more so. Heat waves will become unbearable without air conditioning, even in high latitudes. All coral reefs will probably die. Many major cities will be drowned. Even just 2 degrees of warming, which will be exceeded in any business-as-usual scenario, will have very serious global repercussions.
…
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-23/worst-case-for-climate-change-doesn-t-look-realistic
According to author Noah Smith’s bio, he was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, so he probably understands how to do a few financial calculations, but he’s clearly skipped a few steps in this calculation.
The limiting factor of renewable energy is not just the cost of solar and wind installations, its the cost of making renewable energy dispatchable. Most winters in the Northern Hemisphere there are at least a few periods of bitterly cold winter high pressure weather systems, with very little wind over a vast area, and only a few short hours of sunlight to charge the frost covered solar cells.
A “few gas plants” won’t suffice as backup in such conditions, you need backup capacity which can supply 100% of winter peak demand, for at least a few weeks. This implies either a complete duplicate set of fossil fuel power infrastructure, maintained at hot idle until required at who knows what cost, or an enormous battery backup system, topped up by whatever vast additional renewable over-capacity is required to keep the batteries topped up during brief periods of favourable conditions, to cover winter weeks or months when the solar and wind power let you down.
No plausible drop in renewable energy prices can make either of these scenarios affordable in the forseeable future.
As for two degrees making heatwaves unsurvivable, Noah has no idea what he is talking about. One of my first jobs was operating a heavy, hot plate hydraulic press inside a poorly ventilated chemical factory in Australia whose humid, fume filled interior routinely reached 130F / 55C during Summer, for most of the work day. The only thing you needed to do to “survive” this human induced heatwave was to dress lightly and drink rehydration fluid every 5 minutes.
Plenty of people right now, such as bakers, factory workers, miners, laundry workers, machine operators and many others, routinely work in such conditions.
Only people who have studied and worked in air conditioned offices all their life think any plausible heatwave is a major threat to human survival. When climate academics make absurd claims about the terrifying 110+ heatwaves which will make entire nations uninhabitable, they lose the members of the audience who actually experience such conditions on a regular basis in their every day working lives.
It’s time that America takes a serious look at it’s energy future and future energy needs.
The world is not going to be over in 10 or 12 years as some are predicting.
America has 600 years of good quality coal available and we believe this coal needs to be used to produce America’s electricity. America’s natural gas needs to be used for building space heating and by industry to produce all those other products we use daily. America’s oil needs to be used for transportation and by those industries that produce products requiring oil. Doing the above will keep America into energy for over the next 100 years
America’s renewables (wind & solar) need to be connected to it’s own grid ,supplying electricity to America’s growing EV market. Then when the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t blow and the batteries go dead, it’s time to call it a day. No harm done.
A grid for wind and solar would be a horrendous waste of money that’s unmarketable, government subsidy-dependent, and unconstitutional. Wind and solar AREN’T useful. That’s why their taxpayer handouts have never really been ended. As soon as ALL of the supports end, that’s when I’ll believe that they could work. Investment bankers and venture capitalists have found these schemes to be enormously profitable. That’s why they’ve gone into overdrive to defend them.
Not only a waste of money but vulnerable to EMP attack.
We need to go in exactly the opposite directions with “Distributed Generation” to minimize the need for the EHV grid and thereby hardening our electricity generating system against GMD (Geo Magnetic Disturbances) and EMP.
If a GMD on the scale of the 1859 “Carrington Event” happened today it would destroy EHV grids on a continental scale and nobody has effective counter measures in place.
By burning solid waste for power generation, every city could provide the bulk of their electricity needs.
Then again, there’s politics beyond stupid…
In Illinois the power distributors are not allowed to own or operate generation facilities. The generation is owned by mega-companies, mostly from out of state.
We have a lot of small Combined Power Heat facilities in northern Europe which are powered by various forms of waste incl. everything we are forced to collect for recycling which isn’t in fact recycled (but I digress).
They have utility for power generation because they are additive to the grid and are quite reliable. As many larger communities have a well developed hot water distribution system for domestic central heating and as it’s miserable most of the year, heating not Air Conditioning is the other pressing need being met.
I’m all for CPH as a useful addition, but there is only so much trash and in the case of those facilities powered by animal excrement, bullshit and the other additives that have to be supplied to turn bullshit into hot water.
“The world is not going to be over in 10 or 12 years as some are predicting.”
No one with a brain is predicting that.
How dare you!
Do you mean to imply AOC is brainless?
Well she does go by Occasional Cortex
The REAL “Smart Money” at the IPCC’s actual estimate is that at worst, “climate change” aka “weather events” may ding the GDP 2.9 percent, in an age when it will most likely be running 9 times today’s figures.
If anyone wants to lose sleep over THAT “first-world-problem,” knock yourself out I guess.
A RCP8.5 Climate Catastrophe is unlikely not because of ‘Cheap Renewables’ or even because of Expensive Renewable but because of our existing Fossil Fuel Systems. It is also unlikely because there is no sign of it al anywhere despite continual searching,
RCP 8.5 is unlikely to happen because it’s a ridiculous assumption.
Bloomberg is indulging in liberal license to advance straw clowns apologies.
At least the publication is beginning to see a little light, even if the Candidate refuses to
As predicted the climate Gretins will now claim victory over a non existent ‘climate disaster’. Trebles and bonuses all round.
That was the same in 1972 where I briefly worked in Germany on a resistor factory in Pinneberg. On hot summer days the temperature in the huge production hall would reach over 40°C or 104°F, at which time a big stainless steel container filled with milk would be rolled out and cups of milk be served to the “suffering” staff.
So even back in 1972 Global Warming had reached intolerable levels so close to the North Pole – tragic.
ugh, a glass of milk ( even chilled ) is the last thing I’d want in heat wave when battling dehydration. Give me water !
When did you see a man crawling on all fours in the desert crying “milk, milk!”
Maybe the factory owner’s brother was a dairy farmer ?
“Maybe the factory owner’s brother was a dairy farmer ?”
Actually he was, although an extremely big farmer with some 3000 hectare 500 milk cows south of Copenhagen 🙂
Sorry, the milk was actually buttermilk, but i don’t suppose that makes it better.
No it doesn’t make it better – quite the reverse! I can’t help but see the image of Michaeleen Flynn’s reaction to being offered buttermilk by Will Danaher in The Quiet Man.
Now I have that tune in stuck my head. You earwormed me.
Great movie.
Koldskål og kammerjunker – yummy
The green lifestyle preachers claim that:
-Renewables are infinite, dirt cheap and clean
-Meanwhile we have to spend trainloads of money for insulation, energy saving devices & appliances, horrendously expensive eco lightbulbs
So where’s the logic so spend cash in an effort to spare what’s infinite, dirt cheap and clean ? And why has my utility bill almost tripled since 2009 despite thousands of windmills and acres of solar cells ?
What kind of professorship it takes to figure this out?
Add to that, that the EU directorate has ordered the European electricity utilities to persuade their clients to use less power.
If I owned such a utility, I would encourage my clients to use as mush as I could possibly produce, thus increasing salary to shareholders, staff and myself.
Does this has something to do with climate or communism?
Been there. Water utilities in California asked us in a dry year to conserve water. We did. Then because of a declining consumption they had to increase prices.
As also happened in Cape Town. And now that dams are over 80% (thanks to the ubiquitous climate change) the rates are still “up there” – what goes up, never comes down – if it’s about rates and taxes.
My reply about the same happening in Cape Town did not appear?!
test – sorry
I’ll bet the wealthy people with mansions didn’t have to reduce their water usage to maintain their huge emerald green lawns.
Well, They are…
The wind is as free as sunlight…
It’s just harvesting them that’s a biotch
All good questions. Quasi-answers:
You are asking them of a faux religion whose primary mission is to terrify acolytes so they’ll kowtow to the next doomsday fad.
Giant subsidies for dirt cheap, infinite renewables is lying, cheating, and boondoggling.
I used to live in Minnesota. Snow shoveling is hard work, can you imagine having to shovel your solar panels? Sound fun.
For high-latitude winter you ideally want the panels at a steep angle, where not much snow should settle on them. Of course, you also need 5-10x your expected power requirements of solar because of the short days and reduced power output in winter.
Ever heard of snow drifts?
For a home system, panels want to be either on the roof or on an open patch of ground, so drifts tall enough to cause problems seem unlikely in most places. If you do get twenty-foot-tall snowdrifts, solar probably isn’t going to work.
I’ve seen home systems out in open fields, for better access to the sunlight. So yeah, it can happen. And it can happen even worse with facilities, since they’d be on the ground too. But, they could always heat them with diesel generators.
Where I grew up you very rarely had snow without snow drifts. I imagine that ranks of solar panels angled at 50′ will create all sorts of wind Eddie’s causing areas with no snow and very deep drifts and infilling. I have been waiting to see some photos just to see the effects, just like I’ve been waiting for pictures of flooded and generally weather damaged solar arrays on the BBC, no headlines yest.
MarkG, in the northern latitudes ya don’t get very many “dry” snowflakes falling softly to the ground.
It’s usually “wet” snow being driven by a 10 to 30 mph wind which will “plaster” it against anything it comes in contact with.
In the utopian world of the “greens,” the snowflakes are all teflon coated so they’ll slide off of solar panels and windmill blades./sarc
I live in a northern latitude where we get snow for six months or more a year, and yes, we do. ‘Wet’ snow is rare, because most of the time it’s too cold; when it does fall, it usually melts in a day or so.
MarkG, …… iffen you say so.
Maybe he meant that these floating skyscraper turbines will do it. I will leave this to the engineers, and innovation should be encouraged, but not with our tax money and lack of homework that this seems to lack. They are putting faith in a model based on palm trees, relatively tolerant of high winds, but not at their altitude. I can show them some from Harvey and doubt if these guys have ever been to sea or studied botany and meteorology much. Check out their video.
https://www.utdallas.edu/news/research/researchers-developing-floating-turbine-to-harvest-deep-ocean-wind-energy/
They are just “re-inventing” the darrieus turbine first patented 1926. We discussed those back in 1984 when I worked at Vestas. They are noisy and and ineffective given the area of the blades.
But, when you get a grant for doing something that that was already done 100 years earlier…”
If the temperature of Detroit increases 2C then its climate will be about like Indianapolis Indiana or Columbus Ohio. How bad would that be? Is that an existential threat?
Anyone who can’t see the coming gen 4 molten salt small nuclear reactors simply is a stooge with respect to future energy production.
Not even one mention of nuclear power by Noah. His work is so comprehensive.
Andrew Yang still has bought the CO2 myth, but at least he thinks we need Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. No other candidate has mentioned them as far as I know.
And he thinks that we all need a $1,000 a month as universal basic income because AI, robots and computers will be displacing 25 to 30% of the jobs in the near future. There is not much that AI, robots and computers can not do better than humans now.
Singularity and quantum computing will put the final nail in the coffin of most human jobs.
All the people already unemployed by technology are so annoying as it is. Around here the roving bands of former flax spinners are almost bad as the gangs of switchboard operators and the ox cart drivers are just the worst.
Look, technology and enhanced productivity lead to wealth, not poverty. AI will put the same number out of work that the steam engine did. Zero.
David DeCaro
100%!
Technology has always led to increased jobs and wealth.
Actually Yang addresses the loss of manufacturing jobs quite well and says that unfortunately, due to their age, usually in the late forties, few were rehired or retrained.
Says the same will happen to truck drivers and call center workers.
And AI is not at all comparable to changes like the steam engine. We are talking brains vs. brawn. But go ahead and live in your right wing delusions.
But I bet you would not turn down a grand a month and for every family member over 18. Would you?
Don’t hand me BS about we can’t pay for it. The federal government can print money and does not go bankrupt. Don’t believe me? There is no technical difference between paper and metal. Do you think the government would run out of metal for coins? Does it have to tax to mint coins? No. Does it have to borrow to mint coins? No.
The Supreme Court has said there is no difference between coin money and paper money. The federal government doesn’t need to borrow and it doesn’t need to tax to pay for anything. It has exclusive rights to print and coin money at the cost of doing so.
I think your understanding of “right wing” is flawed. Please explain, in detail, your definition of “right wing”.
Ever heard of Germany and hyper inflation? A wheelbarrow full of your easy government printed money for a loaf of bread?
Wait until the flint-knappers come to your city!
Auto
We all see the future clearly.
As for gen4 molten salt things:
Get 5 at scale feeding a grid, 50 more under construction, and 500 more in planning and finance stage.
Then that clear vision of the future will include molten salt reactors.
yeah it’s so cheap China is digging and burning coal as fast as it can….
What’s the deal here….is everyone so stupid they don’t know China’s emissions?….or are they all just scamming us
They’re not stupid. They’re Green as in socially inoculated, renewable, redistributive greenbacks. They’re green as in naive.
Yes …. 😉
Having hike in +40 C regularly again hydration is the key, to survive heat all is required it water and some form of shade. Now surviving -40 that and entirely different, proper clothing and some source of shelter and heat. Cold will kill you far faster than heat, and the amount you drink will not help. I have only walk any distance in -28 C weather and that was deer hunting in Norther Minnesota, I lasted about 4 hours when I retreated to the vehicle and got out of there, a fire was not much help even in the shelter of the trees. I cannot imagine being out on the prairie in that weather. It bad enough to be on the prairie late October hunting ducks. It not usual in Minnesota to hunt in 0 C to -23, the morning can be quite cold but -28 C midday is hard to take. In any case if one was to injury oneself and unable to build a fire you are very much dead in that weather unless someone find you soon.
“some form of shade”
And to think, some idiot decided that “throwing shade” was a bad thing.
Let’s remove the tax credits from wind and solar if Mr. former Asst. Professor of Finance thinks they are so cheap to be able to outcompete fossil fuels. He’s deceiving his readers by conveniently omitting keys facts he must surely know.
The additional dishonesty going on here with liars like Mr Smith is also the conveniently neglected fact that not one solar panel or wind turbine, their farms and their structures can be manufactured, assembled, and maintained without massive fossil fuel investment at each step. And the only reason investors are lured to help finance those things is the tax credits heaped on by bought and paid-for politicians, at least that’s the incentive here in the USA.
As far as RCCP8.5 is concerned, it was never plausible. It was intended to be the scare story to help markket and sell the Climate Scam con-job. And the IPCC is gearing up an even “worser” than RCP8.5 forcing-emissions scenario for AR6. The Climate Hustle has just too much money riding on it for the GreenSlime billionaires to allow it to fail without at least a mighty propaganda effort to save it.
I remember reading one academic study which “proved” that death rates went up when average temperature went up. It was a 20 year study, but when you looked closely you found it was a town in Norway where the average summer high temp went from 65 degrees F to 67. The Horror!!!
It was actually pretty easy to see what had happened – it was an old fishing village, and as the economy got better elsewhere all the younger people moved out, leaving it a village full of old people. Surprise, a town with a population skewed towards the +65 range had a higher death rate than a town skewed towards people in their 20’s. But that never occurred to the brilliant researchers, oh no, the change had to be due to temperature!!!
Wonderful example of correlation and cause. The CO₂ history all over again.
From the article: “Third, the price of renewables has dropped to the point where building new coal plants is simply not economical in most places.”
A ridiculous claim, of course.
Wind and Industrial Solar are not viable options to power the world even if they were cheaper to build than coal powerplants, which they are not. Take away the taxpayer subsidies to Wind and Solar and they will disappear because they are not economically feasible on their own.
There’s a lot that goes into putting up a Windmill, that is never referenced by Wind advocates and the real world problems associated with powering the world with Wind and Solar make these solutions impractical and counterproductive.
Anyone who thinks Windmills are a viable solution doesn’t understand the problem.
Plus NIMBY’s will catch on to the real impacts.
I agree. However it sort of like agreeing the sun rises in the east.
At the point where energy storage is required (Battery Point, Germany has reached that point) the green scheme becomes impossibly expensive…
… and the energy required to create the stuff( (power lines, batteries, substations, replacement wind turbines when they wear, and so on) is more than the incremental green energy.
The fundamental limitations of an incremental power ‘supply’ is not a theory. It is sort of engineering reality.
The left lie to themselves at the level of engineering reality and cost estimates and …
..once it starts (ignoring reality, hiding reality, making up stuff, and so on) there is no end to the problems it creates…
This sort of a Forest Gump lie, something that if it were taken into account the money being spent on green stuff beyond the battery point is madness, not politically correct.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive … ….everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth …
”cheap solar energy will soon eliminate the need for fossil fuel.”
Soon? I don’t think so!
Perhaps another progressive’s wet dream? Funny about wet dreams, I recall wake up very disappointed. (but that was a loooong time ago) 🙂
Want to experience the green future? For every dollar you spend for electricity… tear up and throw away a $10 bill. After a while you will see this is not a world you want to live in.
How many mistakes in that article?
“All coral reefs will probably die.”
Or, they probably won’t.
All the people alive on the planet today will probably die, too. Whatever can we do?
Look what happened to Peter Ridd for telling the truth about the Great Barrier Reef:
“First of all, there probably just isn’t that much accessible coal in the ground. Second, burning coal creates air pollution in addition to greenhouse gases, which gives countries an additional incentive to reduce its use. Third, the price of renewables has dropped to the point where building new coal plants is simply not economical in most places. Despite China’s new plants, overall global coal use fell 3% in 2019. India is turning away from coal, and so is Southeast Asia:”
Every sentence is false except the last one. However coal is set to soar to record heights as soon as all the new coal plants come on stream in Asia.
The so called renewable s which produces next to nothing are the most expensive that there is. The crazy lunatic left would stop the economy dead in its tracks, and empty the store shelves.
Why are we tying temperature prediction to emissions? Is there any valid reason to believe that our emissions control temperature that has not been falsified by Salby, Harde , and Berry? Has anyone demonstrated any correlation between our emissions and temperatures? If these three scientists are right our emissions don’t even control atmospheric CO2 which is, according to Salby, nearly entirely naturally controlled mostly by temperature. It seems to me there should be much more effort aimed at falsifying their findings than guessing how much warming we are causing by guessing how much fossil fuel we will burn and guessing how much of that CO2 will add to the atmospheric content as a basis for the guess of how much warming that increase will cause. If they can’t be falsified the pursuit of emissions sensitivity or emissions control is entirely wasted effort and the activists that are predicting our doom will continue their perfect record of failure.
Very good point, also this study:
From their study:
During the last hundred years the temperature is increased about
0.1°C because of CO₂ . The human contribution was about 0.01°C.
“Is there any valid reason to believe …”
Cash.
‘First of all, there probably just isn’t that much accessible coal in the ground …’.
‘There are an estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us around 150 years at current rates of production’ (World Coal Association).
By “accessible” I guess he means after his pals in the ER et al. brigade have done their worst killing off new projects.
Renewables are ‘cheaper’ than fossil, hydro and nuclear, sure, in the same way that a hand-hoe or scythe is cheaper than a tractor:
http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EROI-of-Solar-Wind-Nuclear-Coal-Natural-Gas-Hydro.png
Nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more efficient than photovoltaics and wind:
http://homepages.uc.edu/~becktl/shaka-eroi.pdf
‘First of all, there probably just isn’t that much accessible coal in the ground …’.
‘There are an estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us around 150 years at current rates of production’ (world Coal Association).
By “accessible” I guess he means after his pals in the ER et al. brigade have done their worst stifle new projects.
Renewables are ‘cheaper’ than fossil, hydro and nuclear, sure, in the same way that a hand-hoe or scythe is cheaper than a tractor:
http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EROI-of-Solar-Wind-Nuclear-Coal-Natural-Gas-Hydro.png
Nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more efficient than photovoltaics and wind:
http://homepages.uc.edu/~becktl/shaka-eroi.pdf
Cheap renewables is a classic oxymoron. If A is an adequate base load system ( coal or uranium) and B is renewables. If renewables are added to the system and you still need the equivalent base load as back up. A plus B can never be cheaper than A alone. A alone has provided adequate power for the last 50-100 years and would’ve continued to do so if it hadn’t been demonised by the claim that we had to reduce CO2 emissions.
Warmists will run out of ways to manipulate the past data to give the impression that their models are working when they are not . So when it warmed as much as our models have predicted they will say this is because the measures taken so far are working better than expected and if we only transition to renewables quicker we will reach our temperature goals quicker.
I haven’t really studied the subject but I am suspicious that the claimed success of actions taken to get rid of the hole in the ozone layer is a similar scenario where a cyclical non problem like climate change / global warming has been fixed by an orchestrated non solution. We never hear much about the hole in the ozone layer and I really wonder if it is any different to what it was 50 years ago before the Montreal protocol was implemented.
At least that agreement didn’t send economies backwards , send the cost of electricity sky rocketing and make countries who adhered to it, industry exporters as manufactures in particular move elsewhere as those that seek to change the climate make their countries uncompetitive. But I do suspect if the AGW is as sinister a movement as I suspect that the hole in the ozone layer and the global regulatory controls this involved were the pilot plant test to engage in prior to the unveiling of the much more politically and socially disruptive AGW agenda.
Has Bloomberg finally discovered that measured temperature and sea level trends are on target for the RCP2.6 scenario, not the crazy RCP8.5 one that is referenced in every climate study and MSM article on climate change? No. No, they haven’t. Because why bother with, you know, analyzing data and using real science and stuff? That’s too hard for climate “scientists” and journalists.
It’s harder to scare the children using the mild RCP2.6 scenario than the much scarier RCP8.5 scenario. The alarmists want to get maximum psychological impact when scaremongering about the Earth’s climate, so they pretend RCP8.5 is a likely possibility.
The truth is even RCP2.6 may be predicting higher temperatures that we will experience in reality. RCP8.5 is pure scaremongering, nowhere close to reality. So that’s the one the alarmist use to predict a dire future for the human race.
“because cheap solar energy will soon eliminate the need for fossil fuel.”
If we cancelled the subsidies and government graft,we would have more than enough money to run separate grids.
Imagine dual distribution systems,one for realists and one for the Cult.
Of course in one the cost of electricity will be still cheap,the frequency will be stable and the power will be on 24 hours/day 365 days/year.
On the other,well that would be fun to watch.
A system with power available about half the day on average,with sudden outages and sudden over supply,frequency unstable as the wind and expenses trending ever skyward as “fixes” are rushed in to cure the incurable.
I would be more than happy to pay fractionally more/kW/hr just for the entertainment value.
However I would insist,true believers stay on the “magic system”.
They have freeloaded off of the competent for far too long.
The world is currently run by “experts” who have zero achievements,having grown nothing,produced nothing and unable to organize anything, yet feel they have the skills and competence to tell us how to run our lives and where we shall get our energy from.
Time to give them their own train to run…
If “Heat waves will become unbearable without air conditioning, even in high latitudes.”
Then we will definitely need coal to run the grid to keep up with air conditioning demand.
I’ve been saying for years the same thing. Are the greens so stupid, or is it evil, to say they believe the temps will rise to a dangerous level, but they aren’t doing the necessary planning to put ac in every building, house, apartment, etc.
And as far as sea level rise goes, how about the green plans for building sea walls?
What planet are they from???
I disagree that 100+ degree heat wouldn’t/won’t be a threat to many people. Yes, plenty of younger people, once adjusted, can handle that, but not necessarily older people. Also it is one thing to have heat like that in an industrial facility, another to have it as the actual weather, which will drive many people’s electricity bills (air conditioning) through the roof.
All of that said, much of the claims of said heat waves sound like fearmongering. They also could mean much more mild winters and places like Canada becoming a lot more hospitable.
As for this nonsense about renewables, yes the cost to install solar panels and wind turbines might be cheaper now, but that doesn’t mean that as a source of electricity that said renewables are any more reliable or cheaper. If it cost $500 per solar panel before and only costs $50 now, the cost and reliability of the electricity from either is still going to be lousy.
Where does this Bloomberg idiot think his “renewable” solar panels come from? We’ll, they come from China, and they were produced using coal power, predominantly. The global warmists should be forced to show a single major solar panel producer in China who only uses solar power for their factory. I’ll wait…
Evidently, it takes 70 renewable workers to produce the same amount of electricity as one coal worker. I have heard various versions of this, however, the actual number is inconsequential because with the UK, for example, having an unemployment rate of around 3.8%, where are all these green workers to come from?
Oh yes……Immigration of course. Oh No’s……..Brexit was fought on that very issue, and Leave won, so we are off out the EU, able to control our own immigration rather than having it dictated to us by Brussels bureaucrats.
The US has a problem though. It’s been in charge of it’s own immigration policy forever and, with not dissimilar unemployment rates, it’ll have a real problem finding all these millions of employees for the ‘green revolution’. I mean, Trump’s election was also fought in part, on the basis of immigration.
So does the west then simply offshore the manufacture of renewables to Africa, to raise the continent from poverty and realise cheap manufacture from low wages? Well, no, because the country continues to be poverty stricken, because the world won’t allow them funding to build fossil fuelled power stations.
Nor do I see rows of wind turbines marching across the Savannah, or acres of solar panels powering the country.
(This little diatribe could go on forever with spiralling reasoning the greens just don’t bother looking at, so I’ll stop it here.)
“And as renewables get cheaper, it will become economical to retire existing coal and gas plants”
Fantasy-
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-physical-impossibility-of-renewable-energy-meeting-the-paris-accord-goals/
“Because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine, batteries would be needed to provide back-up power for wind turbines and solar panels. But, the sheer magnitude of what would be required is mind-boggling. For example, the $5 billion Tesla “Gigafactory” in Nevada is currently the world’s biggest battery manufacturing facility and its total annual production would store just three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. Therefore, to manufacture enough batteries to store two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand would require almost 1,000 years of “Gigafactory” production.”
…and generate electricity to transform transport plus batterify it and at the same time replace said batteries every 12-15yrs? Pure fantasy from Gretaheads off their medication.
Noah Smith said: “”
BUT:
China’s thermal coal-derived electricity production growth has again exceeded coal production growth.
Data released this month shows that China’s coal production totalled 334.1 million t in November 2019. This mark’s y/y growth of 6%. Also of note is that China’s thermal coal-derived electricity production totalled 432.5 billion kWh last month, which marks year on year growth of 7%.
https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/18122019/chinas-thermal-coal-derived-electricity-production-increases/
———-
China Builds Massive Railway to transport Coal
https://twitter.com/PDChina
We will have massive debt, high unemployment, out of control government spending, years of political all in fights, super high power costs, and so on.
• In a piece for the GWPF on December 12, at https://www.thegwpf.com/indias-fossil-fuels-first-policy-unyielding-to-paris-climate-deal-pressure/?mc_cid=0ce62d16d5 ,Vijay Raj Jayaraj summarized the approach of India toward the UN’s carbon-emissions-cutting efforts as a “fossil fuel first attitude.” Excerpt: “The Indian government has adopted a fossil-fuel-first attitude and has made clear it will not compromise on India’s developmental goals. . . . India’s . . . proposed actions [under the Paris agreement] include no significant measures to curb India’s fossil fuel use or production. Moreover, the NDC states that the country reserves the right to overturn its commitments if the proposed climate mitigatory actions cause any impedance to the growth of individual economic sectors.”
———
• And worldwide, is use of coal increasing or decreasing? It’s increasing, of course. From The Hindu, December 17 AT https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/coal-consumption-likely-to-rise-as-growing-demand-for-electricity-generation-in-developing-countries/article30327363.ece?mc_cid=0ce62d16d5 “Coal consumption is set to rise in the coming years as growing demand for electricity in developing countries outpaces a shift to cleaner sources of electricity in industrialised nations. . . . [T]he International Energy Agency anticipates steady increases [in coal consumption] in the next five years. . . . [G]lobal coal consumption is likely to rise over the coming years, driven by demand in India, China and Southeast Asia. Power generation from coal rose almost 2% in 2018 to reach an all-time high, remaining the world’s largest source of electricity.”
——–
Ken Shultz
December.16.2019 at 3:58 pm
These statistics bear repeating here:
In the 18 months from January 2018 to June 2019, China increased its coal fired power capacity by 42.9 gigawatts or about 4.5%.
China presently has 121.3 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants under construction–about enough to power the entirety of France.
The increase followed a 2014-2016 “permitting surge” by local governments aiming to boost growth while formerly suspended projects have also been restarted, Global Energy Monitor said. In the rest of the world, coal-fired power capacity fell 8.1 GW over the same period.
The amount coal’s share of the country’s total energy production went from 68% in 2012 to 59% in 2018, and coal’s total share of China’s electricity production is expected to fall to 55.3% by 2020.
Absolute coal consumption, however, has continued to increase in line with a rise in overall Chinese energy demand.
Source: Reuters, November 19, 2019
———–
In China, coal creeps back in as slowing economy overshadows climate change ambitions
By David Stanway, Reuters, Dec 2, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-china-coal/in-china-coal-creeps-back-in-as-slowing-economy-overshadows-climate-change-ambitions-idUSKBN1Y60NU
————–
China Burns Over Half Of The World’s Coal And Will Account For 50% Of Global CO2 Emissions By 2030
By Kenneth Richard on 19. December 2019
Today, 30% of the globe’s CO2 emissions come from China. In 10 years, China’s emissions alone will match the rest of world’s emissions combined. China continues to build hundreds of coal plants today. So why are the rest of us spending $600 billion every year on CO2 emissions mitigation?
It only took 7 years for China’s emissions percentage to double that of the USA’s. As of 2015, China accounted for 30% of global emissions (Shan et al., 2018) compared to the USA’s 15%.
Much of the reason for China’s emissions domination is because its citizens consume more than 50% of the world’s coal.
China is in the process of building 100s of new coal plants, with plans to add a new coal plant every 2 weeks for the next 12 years.
According to the People’s Daily, China, the country’s longest coal transporting railway, carrying 200 million tonnes of coal from north to east China every year, is now (October, 2019) in operation.
Due to its exponentially-growing energy demands, China will be responsible for 50% of the globe’s CO2 emissions within 10 years (Liu et al., 2019).
Why should the rest of us spend $89 trillion to reduce CO2 emissions?
According to proponents of CO2 mitigation policies, the cost of infrastructure changes required to reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels is $89 trillion
https://notrickszone.com/2019/12/19/china-burns-over-half-of-the-worlds-coal-and-will-account-for-50-of-global-co2-emissions-by-2030/
No doubt as renewables get cheaper and automated factories eliminate human employment, the price of goods and services will get so low that we will have to pay people to go shopping simply to eliminate surplus production. Otherwise there will be no one to pay the taxes.
Solar does not work 3 months a year even in Arizona. It’s reduced to 25% production. It’s not a bad addition but it’s just not viable as a sole energy source.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/56812
Solar really does work, and very well.
.
.
.
.
.
You just have to eliminate 80% 0f the population and utilize their space for the panels to supply power to the remaining 20%
Here in Texas I often see the landscapers working in plus 100 degree F weather, and they are dressed in long pants and long sleeves. I’m thinking they dress like this because of insects but not sure.
Dunno about your neck of the woods but it’s been banged into the consciousness since 1980 and now it’s WHS to cover up on the job.
… is not a dismantling of capitalism. By Noah Smith …
“Heat waves will become unbearable without air conditioning, even in high latitudes.”
____________________________________
WTF By Noah Smith –
Imagehttps://www.nature.com › … › articles
Changes in regional heatwave characteristics as a function of … – Nature
by SE Perkins-Kirkpatrick · 2017 · citation: 53 · 25.09.2017
· Heatwave duration is projected to increase by 2–10 days/°C, … This change is LESS SEVERE in the mid to high latitudes, …
https://www.google.com/search?q=heat+waves+in+high+latitudes&oq=heat+waves+in+high+latitudes+&aqs=chrome.
____________________________________
That’s called “exaggeration”, at least!
“Most winters in the Northern Hemisphere there are at least a few periods of bitterly cold winter high pressure weather systems, with very little wind over a vast area, and only a few short hours of sunlight to charge the frost covered solar cells.”
____________________________________
OK. What’s never get said:
What really has at least to be is “only a few short hours of sunlight to charge the frost covered solar cells”, not only
“only a few short warm summer hours beneath a light cloudy sky” – without the real stuff “sunbeams” solar panels won’t even register.
“As for two degrees making heatwaves unsurvivable, Noah has no idea what he is talking about. One of my first jobs was operating a heavy, hot plate hydraulic press inside a poorly ventilated chemical factory in Australia whose humid, fume filled interior routinely reached 130F / 55C during Summer, for most of the work day. The only thing you needed to do to “survive” this human induced heatwave was to dress lightly and drink rehydration fluid every 5 minutes.
Plenty of people right now, such as bakers, factory workers, miners, laundry workers, machine operators and many others, routinely work in such conditions.
Only people who have studied and worked in air conditioned offices all their life think any plausible heatwave is a major threat to human survival. When climate academics make absurd claims about the terrifying 110+ heatwaves which will make entire nations uninhabitable, they lose the members of the audience who actually experience such conditions on a regular basis in their every day working lives.”
____________________________________
Man at work in foundries, at castings and extrusion presses, glass works / glass workshops, road repairs in June / July /August don’t drink sip by sip but beer case by beer case.
Beer can pallet by pallet.