A debate at The Steamboat Institute Energy and Climate Summit, The Nexus of U.S. Energy Policy, Climate Science, Freedom and Prosperity featuring Alex Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Andrew Dessler, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University; author of Introduction to Modern Climate Change, moderated by Dan Njegomir, Editorial Page Editor, Denver Gazette, held March 12, 2022 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado
(one hour)
Alex kicked Dessler’s butt imo!
The high cost of nuclear can be directly attributed to the long design and build cycle created by anti nuclear groups and their lawsuits. As of 2017, the cost per MW was $33.50 which is substantially lower than Solar and wind. Beyond this, the large land mass required for solar and wind generation is enormous. If Germany wanted to replace all their electric with solar, they would have to commandeer 20% of the landmass of Spain.
The one chart which Dressler presented showing cost of energy vs amount of renewable is really quite misleading. In Western WY, for example, the majority of energy comes off Columbia river hydro. Places like ND and SD, have a lot of windfarms that feed into the grid which is sold across the nation. Not a very good argument.
Also, the Almond farmers in CA are hurt due to the drought which is, amplified by the very poor choices CA has made regarding water resources and distribution…..CO2 dramatically improved drought performance of plants.
https://www.nei.org/news/2018/cost-of-nuclear-generation-reaches-10-year-low
Finland’s Oikiluto plant is just about to go live after starting construction in 2005…
Are you saying that the development and build time is longer than the whole life of most wind turbines.
That is a travesty, wouldn’t you say.
Correct spelling has an “L” not an “i”: Olkiluoto
Finnish: Olkiluodon ydinvoimalaitos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Capacity factor is about 92.5% when they just used Unit 1 & 2.
They obviously were only changing output by large amounts when maintenance work affected a unit. Otherwise they run at almost constant output. Hydro etc. handle ups & downs. Their non-nuclear sources would be nowhere near that capacity factor. Now has greater capacity to help their neighbours & decrease fossil fuel use.
Delayed to wait for demand to increase sufficiently to justify construction cost.
BTW, you don’t ramp up nuclear plants over shot periods.
Well, I have been know to nurse a shot of whisky for several hours 🙂
Your a better man than I. All the liquor in this house is endangered.
I frequently complain to my local supermarket that the quality of their liquor bottles is poor because the contents evaporates so quickly once opened!!!
The majority of solar panels are constructed in China. A large percentage of wind generation components are made in China. This is not disputable. If Solar and wind are the least expensive, then why is China building hundreds of coal plants and importing millions of tons of coal from the US? The Chinese are quite pragmatic and would not choose a more expensive alternative.
The Chinese also install vast quantities of solar and wind…
How China’s giant solar farms are transforming world energy – BBC Future
China leads world’s biggest increase in wind power capacity | Energy industry | The Guardian
China also has 348 offshore wind farm projects of which 113 currently operating – how many does the US have?
Coal Nuclear and Hydro are the bulk of all electricity supply for China.
Wind are solar are bit players.
If Putin is funding climate change propaganda to increase his grip on Europe’s hydrocarbon fuel market, what is stopping others from doing the same elsewhere. Nothing at all! The Green movement and it’s insanely massive and ubiquitous propaganda machine is evidence that it has been leveraged at every level to enrich and empower a few. The geopolitique is about controlling energy and food and non-food commodities markets both on supply and demand sides. You know the American people have been leveraged when the propaganda technique is drenching us similarly on the pandemic and climate change fronts. Wake up. The “we are the world” dream of pristine, peaceful globalism is now a dead duck. I am in favor of responsible stewardship of our resources and environment and of liberal open societies but the boundaries of truth have been shattered and our liberal open society is now as close to peril as it has been in 77 years. We need decentralized energy production and distribution on the Micro and Nano level. Local communities need working capital to build healthily economies,(not just hospitals, schools and chain restaurants but locally owned manufacturing, energy production storage and distribution systems that empower farming and food production so that we are not totally dependent on the global supply chain which is being leveraged and colluded to the ill of all.. Finally, we no longer need…. centrally orchestrated global crisis responses that unify the world in a hail storm of lies. We can take care of our selves thank you!
At $2.43/GGE, Why can’t I buy CNG to heat my home in PA?. I am only a few miles from massive shale gas reserves. Why won’t some one deliver CNG to my home.? I could run all farm equipment off it. I could produce my own electricity with burning CNG through micro turbines while heating my home……. that is if there was an excellent Next Gen Battery available….which hasn’t happened yet….,,,,,and WHATS UP WITH THAT?. Why isn’t there a local economy of natural gas and CNG where I live like there is for fire wood? I can’t find coal anywhere and there are mountains full of it all around me. There is good fruit growing and dairy lands all around me. Yet most of the people use food stamps to buy food grown and shipped from around the world at the local supermarket… or food products from China made with grain grown down the road. WHATS UP WITH THAT?. Why am I burning gasoline from oil from Russia or anywhere else when my local economy has massive natural gas reserves. Why are the towns around me totally impoverished. We have been leveraged by the global politique which is run by global oligarchs and we all bought into and all their lies like obedient consumers.
Please…. lets stop talking about solar panels and all other renewable energy sources as if they are nothing but swords in the hands of global propagandists and deluded politicians. We all know that renewables are not viable without tax dollar boondoggles or without an affordable, commercialized, excellent Next Gen Battery,,,, (or SCMES or some other viable storage and distribution system) The point is the capital that would make renewables truly viable is missing in the market place. And has been missing for 50 years. The reason this capital is missing is the same reason we are all forced to consume billions of dollars in climate change propaganda. This is the paradox that we all need to embrace before we become parochial in our thinking and politics. Bottom line. with a good storage system, renewables would be valuable as an adjunct to hydrocarbon fuels in local communities…especially unitized with TEGS. Decentralized electrical generation, storage and distribution using both renewables and hydrocarbon fuels would reduce the demand on hydrocarbon fuel by at least a factor of 5 due to greater efficiencies and alternative generation sources. The Next Gen battery, generators, micro turbine burners etc… and would provide the manufacturing demand that would empower the world with our products. This is the subtext of the global politique and the safe bet is China and Russia is fully aware.
I like Epstein´s arguments and I think one way to interpret them is to learn from the present state what the future might bring.
And there you can state objectively that with the warming and raise of CO2 we are currently in a better place than 50 or 100 years ago and cheap energy from fossil fuel plays a dominating role in that!
By the way I believe that also is true for the two examples from Dessler,
We see more almond trees in California these days (and I wont even touch the question if the drought there is cause by a natural phenomena in the Pacific) beside a possible temporary setback which he overhypes,
He also said the sea wall in Houston would be worth it beside its price as Houston itself is far more valuable, but forgot to mention that cheap fossil energy is the biggest factor for the growth of that city (as for any other city anywhere on the globe)
Also we can expect more growth and prosperity in a future with more warming and cheap fossil energy (btw not debating that expected additional 3F warming is a huge win for the alarmist, there is no scientific base for it!)
Remember, people who want to reduce your standard of living are not your friends.
Dessler is God’s gift to the skeptics. Not particularily bright, but possessed of a colossal ego, he evidences significant cognitive dissonance, and unicorn thinking. Epstein carved him up.
When their actual goal is achieved which is a global dictatorship the term climate change will never be uttered again.
The answer to one simple question really stops this silly debate;
Can open ocean surface temperature exceed 30C over any annual period?
The answer is NO. Once that is accepted then any notion of catastrophic global warming goes into history where it belongs.
The tropical ocean in the Nino 34 region has a declining temperature trend over the 40 year satellite era.
http://bmcnoldy.rsmas.miami.edu/tropics/oni/ONI_NINO34_1854-2021.txt
The Coral Sea was cooler in 2019 than in 1871 per attached. Up and down scientific voyage in first and third weeks of December compared with satellite readings from 2019.
Anyone who thinks that atmospheric CO2 can warm Earth has no understanding of how the energy balance on Earth is achieved. It is the result of two temperature limiting processes over oceans – 30C upper limit and -1.8C lower limit.
Epstein 90, Dessler 10.
Epstein factual, honest. Dessler vague romanticism, answered questions like a car salesman or politician would.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jokes aside, this debate highlights again the real need for publicity about and better access to economic studies of “renewables” versus d1spatchables.
Hello to mods, can WUWT please consider an info page where such costs are briefly explained and then referenced so they become more tip-of-tongue? Geoff S
Nice debate, and it runs well at 1.5x speed.
Epstein did a nice job countering many of Dessler’s misleading claims.
A recurring point of contention was the LCOE [levelized cost of energy]
for renewables. The 2 sources Dessler showed were studies from the
NREL & Netzero.org, both of which are renewable interest groups; both
have a clear bias.
From a Manhattan Institute article 3-2019: The LCOE calculated by the EIA
does NOT include backup generation, transmission costs, property taxes, or
utilities’ profits, and uses a 30 year depreciation schedule, which is far longer
than the lifespan of either solar or especially wind [actually 30 years is too
short for coal, gas or nuclear].
And I liked how Epstein hammered the moral case for energy. But he could have
mentioned the 2-3 million people who die each year from respiratory disease
from using wood or dung to cook &/or heat their homes due to energy poverty…
Europe has summarily demonstrated that “rapid” eliminations of fossil fuels is not possible, via their failure to cease using petroleum products obtained from Russia. Hostages taken and held.
Alex Epstein opened his remarks by forfeiting his position against the war of
demonization against fossil fuels and CO2 from the git-go, effectively
conceding that he has no dispute with the climate “science” that Prof.
Dessler dispenses. He said he prefers “methodology”. What he means by this,
I suppose, is, after you assume everything the global warming people say is
true, you look for what they didn’t say and see if it balances out that truth
or even overwhelms it. So you are assuming these people are great scientists
and observers of the truth as far as it goes, but then somehow mess
everything up royally by leaving out crucial tidbits that prove them dead
wrong in a larger objective context in the long run. What Epstein doesn’t
realize is that the essence of coming up with scientific conclusions involves
scads of eliminating the false BEFORE you even begin to arrive at the true.
If you are so good at arriving at the truth then you also HAVE to be good at
eliminating the false beforehand and considering the full context of what you
are evaluating. And if you are not good at eliminating the false, you never
would have arrived at a truth for Epstein or anyone else to balance anything
against. Epstein’s position amounts to praising the global warming nutcakes
for being great scientists while decrying the fact that they never engaged in
the efforts necessary to be great scientists.
By doing this he really is ending the debate right there because even though
Dessler’s positions are logically preposterous (how can America not using
fossil fuels effect — at all — any worldwide reduction in fossil fuel
combustion in a network of trade and production which has caused and will
continue to cause atmospheric CO2 to rise — everywhere — dramatically — at
least until we run out of fossil fuels or the whole human race is wiped out)
and scientifically illiterate (there is no evidence that CO2 gas at 0.04% in
our atmosphere warms the earth to any appreciable extent nor to ANY extent
whatsoever through the “greenhouse effect” (which is, maybe, the absorption
and substantial blocking of far infrared energy leaving the Earth going
towards outer space such that the surface of the Earth is, somehow, thereby
warmed)), Epstein is ready to ignore all that, at first, and give him an
initial stamp of approval. If you have no dispute with this egregious junk
logic and junk science, then you have nothing to add to the debate. You are
as wrong-headed as the person you are, sort of, criticizing. You must be
more forthright in attacking whackos like Dessler or else … go away.
Here’s an example of attacking Dessler’s “science” — his original,
Arrhenius-motivated “science” of greenhouse gases (though this is not science
anymore; it has now become just religion, and a poor one at that). It is a
scientific fact that the infrared absorption / emission “spectrum” of air
changes drastically as the pressure goes up, let’s say, from 1/10,000 of an
atmosphere up to one atmosphere. At one atmosphere of pressure (ambient
temperatures), all gases will absorb / emit infrared due to many different
multi-atomic/molecular moieties quantum level transitions. And by all gases,
I mean nitrogen, oxygen, and even argon — yes, argon, monatomic argon. At
one atmosphere of pressure, even argon gas mixed in the air absorbs and emits
infrared radiation through the transient production of multi-body moieties
through collisions, even though the single atom has absolutely no quantum
transitions in the infrared.
It’s true you can go way up into the atmosphere to find a pressure where only
monomolecular processes predominate in infrared emission / absorption and
that is where greenhouse gases’ infrared properties will indeed affect
outgoing radiation from the Earth (and nitrogen, oxygen, argon won’t). But
at these high altitudes far above the earth, it doesn’t matter if greenhouse
gases effect any upward temperature changes or not because any such changes
will stay up there and eventually all leak into outer space, never making it
down to the surface of the earth where the weather (and climate) is. So the
effects of such greenhouse gases up there are utterly irrelevant for us
living down here. What’s relevant is what happens at one-atmosphere pressure
or maybe 3/4 of an atmosphere pressure where we humans are predominately
located and where our atmosphere is predominantly located and where we
experience what we call our weather or climate.
And what happens down here is that the heat of the earth gets transferred to
the atmosphere of the earth mainly NOT through radiation but rather through
conduction. And that conductive heat might or might not radiate thereafter
but its radiation, again, will not affect its transmission of heat nearly as
much as the convection of that air that has been so heated at the surface of
the earth rising to higher altitudes. So, as far as the warming of the earth
through this “backstroke” mechanism, as it were, where the warming comes not
directly from the Sun but from the heat put into the Earth by the Sun then
going back out into outer space, the atmosphere is much too insubstantial to
have any major effect, again, except through convection, and that latter has
nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
This and many other things like it are what Epstein should be emphasizing. To
the extent he’s not, having “enemies” like him means Dessler and his minions
need no other friends.
David Solan
There are probably over 200 points/claims/statements/hypothesis/model/result to argue about. Many are interconnected or follow a domino/tree sequence. It also crosses into many different scientific fields like meteorology, physics, chemistry, palaeontology, geology, geography, biology, astrophysics, historical records, statistics, economics, psychology, politics.
It could take 100 hours of debating over a year to explore all the different paths. Assume any opposing extreme views are false & the truth lies somewhere in the middle but maybe a lot closer to 1 than the other. Historically I see more blind faith, emotion & being selective from CAGW believers, while the opposition throws up a lot more questions & factors to consider like good scientists should. Both can be selective, misunderstand or misrepresent data.
I find it interesting that several scientists/writers with knowledge & experience have changed their view from AGW/CC to being labelled as skeptics because they dared to check facts for themselves instead of following groupthink. If you remove skeptics & debate, you have a religion not science.
I tried so hard to watch this but couldn’t. My problem is Prof. Dessler’s statement that wind and solar are our cheapest choice for energy. On top of that he brings up subsidies but tells us he won’t discuss them. That is infuriating. What we need is for someone to lay out for us exactly what is a subsidy and what is a tax incentive or tax write off. In addition we need someone to lay out how much it costs the fossil fuel, nuclear and or hydro companies to stand ready to fill in for wind and solar when they fall short. In my view wind and solar can never be a cost effective stand alone power source. On the other hand if wind and solar magically disappeared tonight all it would do is make life easier for energy producers and customers.
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! – Mark Twain
Having just a single energy source use power lines are less efficient than mixing sources & mixing demand.
Having solar & wind vary from 0% to 100% usage of transmission lines are not economical. The average 10 to 20% usage for solar & 30% usage for wind is much less than the average 50% to 75% used for coal/nuclear. Gas peaking can be placed closer to demand or supplement coal/nuclear.
The less of the transmission capacity you use on average, the higher cost per MWh that transmission line adds to the generator cost. This can be mitigated when collocating a mixture of generators/storage.
Better to have wind+solar+battery closely located to share the transmission lines & narrow the min&max range. Homes & daytime business demand look very different from each other so while daytime businesses & stay at home workers can largely use solar, the dawn & dusk power use in most seasons are far from matching wind+solar. Some refineries/factories can be run 24/7 so remain almost constant demand through the day & night ie. don’t follow wind+solar.
My local street transformer was designed for about 100 homes, maybe 700kW to 950kW RMS (750 to 1000kVA plus some peak capacity for 125% of nominal rating). This would support about 100 cars maximum at 7kW charging but only 5 to 7 cars if using the 125kW supercharging if built next to it & when no hotwater/cooking/heatpump/aircon are running. But you could trickle charge 600 cars each night if they only travelled the average 40-45km per day & you could remotely manage the loads. YMMV.
“Look what they are installing now” – China, India Africa increasing fossil fuel production in the last 3 years & are still planning to increase fossil fuel use over the next decade.
How long have they been saying Wind & solar are the cheapest power? My guess is Solar for about 7 years, Wind for about 3 years.
Can nuclear power generators be ramped up & down?
“For example, the minimum stable output of a nuclear reactor changes over the course of the fuel irradiation cycle, and production can’t be ramped up or down too quickly without causing a strain on the nuclear fuel rods and the reactor itself.” Newer designs may allow for greater range & fast ramping up&down but this greater ability comes with greater costs. Running a nuclear power generator at lower average capacity (this increases the output range) doesn’t change the high capital & high per day cost but only reduces the denominator of the LCOE calculation ie. how many MWh are fed into the grid for the same cost RESULT= higher cost per MWh. Do they penalise the nuclear LCOE calculation or do they attribute that operational cost to the cause of that operation ie. Intermittent wind & solar?
It’s quite clear that states & countries with easy access to high capacity (instant & annual) hydro can cope with greater use of intermittent renewables. The claim that we can model the ideal 95% renewable grid for everyone is unscientific, the attributes of geography for every state & country is different & most cannot support the requirements of said models or averages. Reality does not follow averages. The conclusion would be to build 30% more renewables and they would be wasted most of the time either because of curtailment or battery/pumped-hydro/gravity/hydrogen conversion/storage/discharge cycle losses. The places with the lowest use of fossil fuels have the highest availability of cheap hydro/geothermal/nuclear. Wind+solar by themselves are not enough to meet per minute/hour/day/month/season/year demand.
French nuclear generation can vary +/-36% per month. Monthly consumption varies -21% to +40% across the year from long term average. French Renewable generation can easily vary +/-40% from the average in a day (9/3/2022 -38.5%, +38.2% of demand). French Renewable generation can also vary -34% to +38% from its average each month (% of demand).
Then, understand the limitations & economics of the various forms of storage to cope with the different timescales. Most sources can handle seconds. Batteries are good for seconds to hours. Hydro good for 30mins to hrs or days (if average output is lower) but can store some water from season/year to season/year. Nuclear & fossil fuels combined handle the 5% variations over short times and follow slow ramp ups/downs for day to day or longer time scales. Gas peaking (eg. OCGT) are good for minutes to hours. Nuclear & coal are better for +/-10% per 4hours most of the time. The distribution of generation vs consumption across a grid changes the % losses (amps^2 times distance, ontop of minimum for being energised).
Modelling grids & reality extremely difficult to cope with different weather conditions, unpredicted demand, offline for maintenance, unplanned faults. If all your neighbours are relying on the same intermittent/unscheduled generation, you cannot rely on being able to import or export enough to balance your grid. Previously grid interconnections were sized for 12% to 20% of average demand, next gen grids (conversion from fossil/nuclear) now need 35% to 50% capacity when everyone doesn’t have sufficient hydro+geothermal+biogen to cope with wind+solar generation or way too much to get rid of. Long term battery or similar are neither practical nor economical for the week to year time scales.
The assumption that a free market will always have sufficient power is a fallacy. You can’t charge $15’000/MWh for 4hours in a day and suddenly have extra renewables/fossil generation built during that day in time to meet demand. The most economic use of solar+wind is to never exceed demand otherwise they loose money or have to charge more for the other times. The spot price is not the actual cost of producing that energy: subsidies, tax credits, carbon credits/certificates, long-term contracts for minimum supply, payments for grid reliability capacity all affect the actual average cost of energy.
We have been told many times green energy is cheaper & will create more jobs. Those 2 outcomes are typically mutually exclusive. More jobs cost more money or each job will be paid less money from the same or smaller pot. If they can’t get simple maths of economics right, what else do they get wrong?
The only other option is the expectation that cheaper energy will increase demand so much that any reduction of jobs per MWh can be overcome by increasing demand. You can’t directly model that. Many renewable projects & investment are very sensitive to subsidies, other incentives & long term contracts with higher payments/MWh. Countries/states are still voting with their feet, look at the detail, there is currently not a green nevarna, So it remains to be seen. YMMV.
Dessler is a dope. Blind to the obvious… Alex very clear thinking and articulate and more importantly much closer to the truth than Dessler. Climate changer is a religion and like all religions, you find evidence of your beliefs everywhere you look.