“Misinformation” — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few years. The “misinformation” label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents. Numerous assertions that have dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false, that is, “misinformation.” Examples of such assertions that have been established as “misinformation” include the assertion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election; the assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian plant; and the assertion that the Covid virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan.
After the thorough discrediting of so many false narratives during these years, there remain plenty of narratives still out there that richly deserve the “misinformation” label. But of those, which is the very worst, the very most pernicious? Here is my candidate: the assertion that the cheapest way to generate electricity today is with wind and solar generators.
I recognize that there are many candidates for the title of the worst of all misinformation, and we are dealing here with a very crowded field. Numerous other endlessly-repeated false assertions contend for the title, many of them having very large real-world consequences. For example, other serious contenders for the title of “most pernicious misinformation” could include the assertion that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to human health and welfare; or the assertion that Israel is conducting a “genocide” against Palestinians. Undoubtedly, you have other candidates to add to the list.
So why do I say that the assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there? Here are my three reasons: (1) the assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, (2) it is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world, and (3) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone’s intelligence, yet rarely challenged.
How ubiquitous is the assertion that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity? Try Googling the question “What is the cheapest way to produce electricity?” You will get multiple pages of results advocating for wind and solar electricity, with almost no mention of the problems or costs of intermittency. A few examples of what turns up:
- The top result from Galooli.com, March 13, 2022, “Which Renewable Energy is Cheapest? A Guide to Cost and Efficiency”: “According to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook and other research projects, solar and wind energy have continued to occupy the top spots in terms of the cheapest renewable energy sources. Both energy sources cost significantly less than fossil fuel alternatives and continue to become more affordable every year.”
- Next up, decarbonization.com, August 2, 2023, “Ranked: The Cheapest Sources of Electricity in the U.S.”: “According to Lazard’s 2023 analysis of unsubsidized LCOE in the U.S., both onshore wind and utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies are more cost-effective than combined cycle natural gas power plants. In the case of onshore wind, this has been true since 2015.”
- Next, carbonbrief.com, October 13, 2020, “Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA.”: “The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency. . . .”
Keep going for dozens of these for page after page. Try to find in any of them a serious discussion of the costs of backup, storage, or transmission upgrades to try to make an electrical grid work with these intermittent generators. You won’t. And don’t think that the high-brow mainstream sources can be trusted for anything better. Here is the New York Times from August 17, 2023: “The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal.”
In the face of hundreds of different journalism outlets endlessly repeating in unison the mantra of cheap “renewable” electricity, it becomes difficult to blame the voters or the politicians for just nodding along with the crowd. Why do any mentally taxing independent thinking when everybody seems to be saying the same thing?
The problem is that the idea that wind and solar make the cheapest electricity is plain wrong. At least, it is plain wrong if the electricity you are talking about is the reliable sort that works whenever you want to turn on the switch. The idea that wind and solar are cheapest fails to take account of any of the ancillary costs necessary to make a fully-functioning grid: the entire system of backup facilities to provide the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining; the transmission facilities to take the power from wherever is windy or sunny to anywhere else it may be needed on a moment’s notice; the batteries or other storage facilities to save up energy in anticipation of inevitable wind and solar droughts; and so forth. In short, the idea that wind and solar generation of electricity are the “cheapest” is classic misinformation, the endless repetition of an assertion that is clearly false and known to be false.
Meanwhile, among the people incapable of seeing through the fog of misinformation on this subject are our current President, and the Governors of New York and California. In the case of the states, they throw tens of billions of dollars of handouts and subsidies to develop wind and solar facilities (hundreds of billions of dollars in the case of the feds), never having the presence of mind to realize that none of that would be necessary of this method of generation were actually cheaper as claimed.
Between the vast mis-allocation of resources and the sheer preposterousness of the proposition in question, I think that this assertion of wind and solar electricity generation being “cheapest” definitely has the claim for the number one spot.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) numbers
GWP is based on concentration not the absorption spectrum:
CH4 1932 ppb GWP 86
N20 337 ppb GWP 273
CFC 4 ppb GWP ~8000
If anyone prove that wrong, they should pipe up with facts figures and sources.
Define GWP then include H2Oand CO2
The GWP for CO2 is “1” by definition. I’m guessing that the GWP of water vapor would be less than 1 and greater than zero. Hey if you know math better than me, here’s that link to IPCC AR4 Chapter ten and the formula for calculating the GWP is on page 210 pdf 82.
On edit: The simple definition of the GWP Number is:
The physical GWP index, based on a pulse
emission of 1 kg of some compound relative
to that of 1 kg of the reference gas CO2.
Most reports in the media leave out the (1 kg) which makes the statement:
“Methane is 86 times more powerful at trapping heat.”
False
The conveners of the Kyoto Protocol declared that for mixed gases, one should use the integration over 100 years, not 20 years. Therefore, even using the ~86X for methane is inappropriate. The 100-year GWP for methane is about 28-32X. When the ‘equal weight’ metric is converted to mole fraction — the commonly measured and reported values, i.e. PPMV — one molecule of methane is only about 12X as powerful as carbon dioxide.
It’s still bullshit
I have reviewed the IPCC AR4 and cannot find a calculation for the time-integrated GWP for water.
There’s a reason for that. It’s probably less than “1”
If you’re going to demand sources, perhaps providing one yourself might be a good start.
The IPCC Assessment reports have tables for the GWP numbers and It’s easy to look up the concentration those three compounds on the net:
CH4 1932 ppb GWP 86
N20 337 ppb GWP 273
CFC 4 ppb GWP ~8000
For the GWP numbers, here they are from the IPCC:
IPC AR4; Chapter 2; Page 212; pdf84; table 2.14
Later Assessment Reports list slightly different numbers usually greater.
So anyway if you think the GWP numbers are generated from the Absorption values and have nothing to do with concentration, please pipe up as say why. I’ve been posting this for some time now, and I really don’t want to wind up looking foolish. But if that’s the case. I’d like to know. Who was that character on the old Saturday Night Live show who always wound up saying, “Never mind”
Emily Litella
https://youtu.be/fZLeaSWY37I
You provide the current concentration in parts per mole fraction; however, the GWP is based on an equal weight of CO2. The three gases you provided information for have molecular weights that are different from CO2 and each other. A classic example of comparing apples and oranges.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
You have to wonder why the Climate Crusaders chose to compare weight instead of volume. If you paid attention in your 11th grade chemistry class you would know what the gas laws are and why we use them.
While these numbers might be correct from a controlled laboratory experiment using pure gases in isolation, they are irrelevant in the atmosphere as has been pointed out numerous time, in considerable detail, including many articles here on WUWT.
First, most of their potential has been used up by more abundant gases in the atmosphere, especially water vapor. That is to say, what they could absorb is already pretty much completely absorbed already. Adding some of them makes no difference.
Second, their concentration is so low that any absorption they could do, even without the presence of more common and much more abundant GHGs, is too little to be relevant to anything.
Third, their effectiveness for increase concentrations follows the same kind of more or less logarithmic decrease effect with increased in quantity as other GHGs, e.g. CO2. That is, how much additional real effect they have if the concentration is doubled, means that many doublings would be necessary for them to be significant. However, their rates of increase are quite low so, while doubling of CO2 might take another century or two, their doubling, under current conditions, would probably take much longer.
The definitive answer is contained in the linked article.
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” (alternatively “How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?”) is a phrase that, when used in modern contexts, can be used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or on questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence, while more urgent concerns accumulate.
_________________________________________________________
Tell that to the people of Sri Lanka or the dairy farmers & cattle ranchers and all the people who grow rice around the world. Bill Gates wants to inoculate the world-wide cattle herd with some concoction so they won’t emit methane. That the loony toon left-wing wants to regulate methane and nitrous oxide isn’t a non-issue, it will affect everybody.
Thanks for telling me that you and probably a lot of folks think that the Global Warming Potential numbers are of little concern. When “They” finally get around to inoculating you so you don’t fart, you might feel differently.
“…throw tens of billions of dollars of handouts and subsidies to develop wind and solar facilities…”
This article needed to show the actual data which includes these costs as part of the total cost of wind and solar.
I would assume that it is far greater than Natural gas, coal, nuclear, etc.
where is that data … I don’t have it ?
Include data comparing jurisdictions that have high usage of wind and solar with those that don’t.
If wind and solar are the cheapest, why did sun-kist UAE spend about $25B on a beautiful set of 4 reactors from Korea?
Why do California, Germany, UK, and other woke areas have the highest electricity rates in the world in spite of using the “cheapest sources of electricity ™” as declared by every source ad nauseum?
There should be no right to free speech in order to protect democracy.
<deleted>
You forgot the “/sac” tag.
I vote for the “Warming is dangerous for the health and security of both planet and humans”.
Yes, that most certainly is “The Big Lie” After a short search here’s the definition from Hitler’s Mein Kampf:
A lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone
“could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”
Claiming that a warmer world constitutes a “Climate Crisis” absolutely fits that definition.
The “consensus” is perhaps the most pernicious lie. Consensus is meaningless in science. Science is based upon facts and observations. Consensus is a part of politics, not science. I’m including false reports of a “97% consensus” as part of the lie.
97% of climate scientists like to maintain their funding.
Exactly! Consensus among the “scientists” was how Galileo was discredited, and also how Semmelweis was discredited when he proposed that physicians should wash their hands after dissecting cadavers and before delivering babies. Science either follows Scientific Method or it is NOT SCIENCE. It does NOT depend on which or how many degrees or accolades one has.
Also, remember that Political science is about the manipulation of the masses.
Agreed, but I think there is an equally important question about why there is so much bad information being consumed. After all, bad information has been around forever, but now it seems to have transitioned from bothersome background noise to active belief for too many.
There’s a perfect storm of excess morons, loss of credibility with what used to pass as reliable information outlets, and an age where the easy stuff has been conquered.
It’s a climate where empty vessels are easily filled with ‘truths’ dispensed by narratives that sound good and are ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous leaders.
Bad information has always held sway. Beliefs about the weather, because its results, such as crop yields, have always been used by those in power to manipulate the general population. Since the general population has always been ignorant about what they can’t directly see, they have always been susceptible to whatever story is used to control them. People feel a need to believe there might be a cure for whatever problem they have. Since they themselves rarely have a clue, they eagerly follow almost anyone who claims an insight.
Misinformation is believed because of the complete corruption of our govt, scientific establishment, and media.
Often times, the people calculating how much wind and solar cost in the US don’t include the massive tax credits. The fact is there are no economically viable wind or solar projects without the credits. And as big as the Federal tax credits are, they aren’t enough to make a project viable. Here in South Carolina there are no solar farms, while in North Carolina they are common. The only difference is NC has a state tax credit to pair with the Federal credit.
Lord Callanan is a liar. He simply can’t be that incompetent.
Especially with a degree in electrical engineering.
I did write to my Conservative MP to ask : “If the cost of offshore wind is £44/MWhr as quoted by Lord Callanan (2023 price) then why has the Government set the CfD price at £73/MWhr at 2012 prices = £100.27/MWhr at 2023 prices for the next renewables auction, AR6?”
What about MSM cover up of the abduction by aliens of the Loch Ness Monster. That’s why it hasn’t been seen recently. Nothing to do with Inverness chip shops in
Misinformation is a made up word that has absolutely no meaning.
There is either information available or there is a lack of information available.
Misinformation is one of those psycho linguistic babble words made up and used to confuse the truth.
Actually an old word…according to “dictionary.com”…if one can believe them. HA.
Has a good discussion of the distinction between misinformation and disinformation 1969, (Russian/French).
Try cracking a dictionary. Misinformation is a proper word. Someone who thinks they know something that isn’t true is misinformed. You, for instance, are misinformed about the word misinformation.
Yes, misinformation is a proper word…used since 1500’s, disinformation is from Russian propaganda from 1969…a Russian word believed derived from a French word. Again, from “Dictionary.com”.
Still think MALinformation is better…although not yet a real word (malpractice is, though) . Watch for in Oxford Dictionary.
A good discussion. And no one was hurt or turned into soylent green!
And what do you call information that has no basis in the real world for its claims: the werewolf will get you if you go out into the night of a full moon?
My offering is accelerating sea level rise due to Arctic and Antarctic ice melting.
This gem was repeated just this week by a senior Tory politician in my constituency. When he was asked why are we fixated with Net Zero.
His assertion was, melting sea ice at both poles due to global warming is threatening unprecedented and accelerating sea level rise. He had seen it first hand on a recent trip to the Arctic, apparently. He continued on stating sea level rise will impact millions of people in coastal areas.
Clearly he fails to understand basic physics just how ridiculous a concept that is didn’t register with him
For that reason we have to progress Net Zero, which will provide many new jobs and will save the planet. apparently.
I rest my case M’lud.
“He had seen it first hand on a recent trip to the Arctic”
Somebody needs to tell him that what he saw was the tide. Lots of very high tides up north, like the Bay of Fundy.
It is self evident that buying two generating systems is more expensive than one. Renewables produce about 1/4 of the time, the backup system produces about 3/4 of the time. Anyone with a brain knows this. Just means Hochul and Newsome lack brains, or more likely honesty.
It is possible to be a dishonest imbecile so who knows could be both? Has anyone checked Newsome’s IQ?
Renewables were thoroughly investigated as replacements for oil fired generation after the oil price shocks of the 1970’s. Coal won out.
Quite right. Here in the UK the then Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) dismissed wind because of its “variability” or as we would say unreliability.
Two other pernicious pieces of misinformation are the claims that the vast majority of “climate scientists” agree that global warming is both completely man made and it will be disastrous, as well as the claim that if the world warms up by more than 1.5C from the depths of the Little Ice Age, disaster will be inevitable.
Without these two lies, the “renewables are cheap” lie would never have gained any traction.
Yes, the definition of ice age and the fact that we are coming out of the Little Age age are absent from the discussion. It does require a lack of thought to expect us to come OUT of the Little Ice Age unless we warm up a bit. The proven Climate Scammers did erase the Little Ice Age from their records. So perhaps we are supposed to forget it, like we forger so many parts of human history now. Unfortunately, almost all paying positions in the relevant sciences are funded, at some point, by government grants and are subject to the whims of political agendas.
One thing I have noticed, is that all of our usual trolls have given up trying to defend the claim that renewables are cheap. Even ones who were quite vocal in making that claim just a year or so ago.
Nick, are your ears burning?
I live next door to a chap who chairs various international climate committees and advocacy groups and lectures on political science and who was a journalist in his first job 50 years ago. A while back I explained how projects are really evaluated by us engineers i.e. risked NPV. He hasn’t mentioned renewables since.
Of course Francis is exactly right. There is only one thing you have to consider, did your electricity bill go up or down? Even if one accepts the CAGW claim wind and solar are not the solution, they are too expensive and they don’t produce the power we need when we need it. This is really simple stuff.
I reckon that the assertion that a “global average temperature” construct has any meaningful application in our understanding of our planet’s many climates is a blatant example of “misinformation”.
“Disinformation” even.
Right up there with the MBH98 ‘hockey stick’
graphcartoon.The Most Pernicious Example Of Misinformation…
In my book is “thousands of green jobs” – redundancies.
Misinformation sounds accidental…perhaps MALinformation would be closer.
A new word:
MAL–to identify information to mislead, known to be incomplete, incidental, unrelated, disproven, criminal deceit.
It is MALinformation to use misinformation intentionally.
How does that differ from disinformation?
Because it is, by intent, more “malevolent”…
OK. You get partial credit.
How about calling it what it is? Propaganda supported with lies.
AND, it is proposed and driven by the same political group that proposes and drives many other truly destructive and bogus policies which drive us towards a one world dictatorship and murder of much, perhaps all, of the population. This group changes history AND imposes their own version of “science” which does NOT follow the rules of Scientific Method. We should begin connecting the dots because this group is international and is focused on imposing a world dictatorship and claims it needs to kill much of our population.
It is time to stop fooling ourselves about this.
The assertion that there is a “climate crisis!” by officials all over the world. Our council here in Auckland imposes a special levy on ratepayers so they can use the money to fight this alleged crisis. I’m sure there will be others doing similar.
The City of Adelaide council has declared a climate emergency and allocates some of its budget to climate matters. Not one of the councilors has any scientific background at all.
Then why has the price of electricity been climbing for decades as these so-called ‘renewables’ have been adopted?
If wind and solar were really cheaper than fossil fuels, then they wouldn’t need to be subsidized. Power companies would be rushing to install them on their own.
Indeed, there would actually have been many millions of good-paying green jobs because every utility and large power user would have sent demand for bird shredders and slaver panels through the roof. New energy-intensive industry would be springing up everywhere.
Rather than spending trillions, governments would have enjoyed tax revenues from all the profitable economic activity, offsetting the loss of revenues on fossil fuel taxes. Since it implies a lower cost of energy, it also implies more energy demand and more economic activity. The national debt would be shrinking.
The last I checked, governments were running trillion-dollar deficits and industries have been racing to escape the jurisdictions that are pushing this nonsense the hardest.
Article says:”…assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there?”
The prior paragraph you noted the assertion about CO2. I think you are wrong in your pick because without the CO2 claim the wind and solar one doesn’t exist.
The base claim causes all of this. CO2 cannot cause warming. Say it loud to everyone you can communicate with. Once this misinformation is killed all else falls in to place.
I think the author is correct. We cannot tell with the evidence of our own eyes that CO2 does or does not cause warming. However, anybody with a pulse can see that wind and solar increase the price of electricity.
Unfortunately there seems to be an awful lot of people with no pulse 🙂
But most people ought to be able to see that the equation for photosynthesis REQUIRES 6 molecules of CO2! They should also be able to understand that if their is NO photosynthesis, there will be no food to support life on earth as we know it. They even plan to restrict sunlight.
There are also the geological records showing climate normally and regularly changes AND that CO2 increases FOLLOW warming. The CO2 is released from the warming oceans like it is from your warming soda. We can see all of that, if we look instead of becoming propaganda zombies who eat other peoples’ brains by parroting it.
6CO 2 + 6H 2 O + Sunlight ———> C 6 H 12 O 6 + 6O 2
MK,
This is very naive and ineffective thinking. You’re choosing to try to win a political argument by asserting something that is highly controversial in negation of a claim that is widely believed, instead of pointing to tangible facts about real-world costs that are difficult to deny.
Even if you were to be correct that there is no significant net warming from increased CO2, your approach is akin to arguing that muslim women shouldn’t need to wear headscarves because after all, there in no god. Test that out in Kabul or Teheran maybe.
I find it odd that you think telling the truth is ineffective thinking and you equate telling the truth about CO2 with there being no God.
Let me be clear Rich I think there is a God and telling the truth is always correct.
MK
My example far from reflecting an atheistic viewpoint was intended to illustrate the ineffectiveness of contradicting a person’s religious convictions when you are in a position of needing to win them over to some political decision.
Maybe it would work better if I had said that we wouldn’t be effective arguing to the Taliban that rape victims should not be stoned for committing adultery because that’s not what Jesus taught. Everything there is true but if we are not ourselves stoned or beheaded, we’ll be lucky.
The public today has been brainwashed to believe that a little CO2 may overheat the planet. I take it that you would rather have them dismiss the view that there is no climate emergency and continue to vote for alarmist politicians because you think it’s more important to assert what you believe to be true than to remain ambiguous and get their assent that the economy should not be destroyed by outrageously expensive energy.
“CO2 cannot cause warming.”
Only stupid people say that
If it causes warming why do we use it to put out fires?
And we don’t use it for insulation. If it were such a great trapper/reflector of heat why aren’t we using it instead of foam air pockets in our building walls?
Even if CO2 was the world’s best insulation, it would still be too expensive to use it to insulate buildings. Spend some time investigating the difficulties of confining gasses.
CO2 puts out fires by excluding oxygen.
It has nothing to do with temperature.
I still haven’t heard how a trace gas in the atmosphere of 0.04 % can have a larger effect than 0.04 %. A magic molecule?
So it is your opinion, that unless all gases are greenhouse gases, then no gases are?
Why on earth would anyone believe that all gases should have an influence based solely upon their concentration in relationship to other gases?
“Meanwhile, among the people incapable of seeing through the fog of misinformation on this subject are our current President, and the Governors of New York and California.”
And the governor of Wokeachusetts- can’t get any worse than her.
I have to admit that Maura Healy makes CT governor Ned Lament look almost sane. My condolences.
I put the same question to duckduckgo.com
The first two entries were from companies promoting solar and wind with no more entries. I had to go to the link “lowest cost to produce electricity”
Here there had a long list beginning with:
1. Cost of electricity by source – Wikipedia
The tables were very misleading including the Capital Costs per Kw
2. Projected Costs of Generating Electricity 2020
report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency
Why did they not produce a more recent one say 2023?
It appears to begrudgingly give some credit to gas but does not give it the prominence it should get.
3. SEAI Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland
This has a number of graphs but what it leaves out makes it unhelpful for a comparison with wind/solar
Why in Ireland for example is the average gas price to households €16.50 while in the EU27 €11.45 (44% higher)?
4. Renewables were the world’s cheapest source of energy in 2020, new report shows
This WEF article is dated and does not give us a 2023 update
The comparisons are misleading
5. Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? Our World in Data
“In most places power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.”
The way the data is presented is misleading e.g. “What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?” as is leaving out some relevant material the changes the whole picture.
6. Renewables: Cheapest form of power UN
I think most of the pernicious misinformation can be filed under the big one. “The government has your best interests at heart.”
I thought of that as well but I question whether anyone actually believes it.
True enough, but many act as if they do.
Those eagerly accepting injections with UNTESTED new technology in huge numbers should answer that question. It also answers the question about why the intelligent Founders chose a Republic (if we could keep it) over an actual democracy.
Don’t call is misinformation; call it what it is:
A bald-faced lie.