Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?“
Two engineers who worked on the Google RE<C project admit with candour that they used to think that renewable technologies could help prevent climate change, but they now know that was wrong, saying “Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?” The brutal answer eventually is “we don’t know”. The RE<C project started in 2007 and was buried in 2011. Google invested $850 million in clean energy. (For a tiny $100,000 I could have saved Google $850 million dollars. If they only asked skeptics instead of Al Gore…)
Ross Koningstein & David Fork admit with admirable honesty that their assumptions about renewables were wrong. But they still haven’t realized their assumptions about climate models are wrong too. Next year perhaps?
Most of their article is about the engineering hurdles of dispatchable and distributed energy. But they also talk about the Google time management philosophy, their 70-20-10 rule (70% core work, 20% cutting edge but viable, 10% “crazy” possibilities). What they don’t seem to realize 70:20:10 is pointless if 100% of their time is spent solving a problem that doesn’t exist. The Google innovation approach is a pot-luck dip. Five percent of any project — and it’s the first 5% — should be about testing all the assumptions and right back to the very first one. If Google did this research it would have been obvious, and years ago, that not only were renewables unlikely to reduce CO2, but that reducing CO2 was pointless, and indeed, probably counter-productive.
It’s not just about wasting time and money. What if you spend years trying to improve the weather, and not only failed to do that, but had the perverse side-effect of reductions in crop growth, and increases in food and energy prices? What if your main success was to increase the size of deserts — CO2 feeds plants and extra CO2 has the biggest effect on plants in arid zones. How would you feel if you tried to hold back the tide (which is barely rising) but children died of starvation instead?
For the record, the assumptions they should have tested were 1/ whether climate models are better at predicting the climate than any roulette wheel. 2/ whether there is any empirical evidence that climate feedbacks (especially water vapor in the upper atmosphere) are positive and amplify the effect of CO2 (they aren’t and they don’t). The evidence has been there for years that temperatures drive carbon dioxide, and that if carbon dioxide amplifies the temperature the effect is so small it can’t be measured with modern technology and the best data we have.
Google’s boldest energy move was an effort known asRE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do. The company announced that Google would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and conducting its own internal R&D. Its aspirational goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades.
As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. So we’re issuing a call to action.
The two engineers take Hansen’s aim of getting global CO2 back to 350ppm seriously, and try to make it work.
We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon.
Those calculations cast our work at Google’s RE<C program in a sobering new light.
Consider an average U.S. coal or natural gas plant that has been in service for decades; its cost of electricity generation is about 4 to 6 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. Now imagine what it would take for the utility company that owns that plant to decide to shutter it and build a replacement plant using a zero-carbon energy source. The owner would have to factor in the capital investment for construction and continued costs of operation and maintenance—and still make a profit while generating electricity for less than $0.04/kWh to $0.06/kWh.
“Dispatchable” power, which can be ramped up and down quickly, fetches the highest market price. “Distributed” power, generated close to the electricity meter, can also be worth more, as it avoids the costs and losses associated with transmission and distribution. Residential customers in the contiguous United States pay from $0.09/kWh to $0.20/kWh, a significant portion of which pays for transmission and distribution costs. And here we see an opportunity for change. A distributed, dispatchable power source could prompt a switchover if it could undercut those end-user prices, selling electricity for less than $0.09/kWh to $0.20/kWh in local marketplaces. At such prices, the zero-carbon system would simply be the thrifty choice.
The world doesn’t need disruptive technologies as much as it needs impeccable logic and reason.
h/t Eric Worrall
I was listening to Dr Karl on the radio the other day saying that extreme heat events are happening more often. He says that in any one time around the world these events are increasing. Does anyone know what the facts on this is because I never trust what he says on climate change. The media seem to see him as some sort of authority.
251
So, what do the climate modelers and Dr Karl predict?
We’ll get more snow and less snow.
We’ll get more heatwaves and fewer heatwaves.
We’ll get more clouds and fewer clouds.
We’ll get more rain and less rain.
We’ll get more storms and fewer storms.
We’ll get more blizzards and fewer blizzards.
We’ll get more plant growth and less plant growth.
We’ll get more floods and fewer floods.
We’ll get more droughts and fewer droughts.
And we’ll get them in more places on Earth and fewer places on Earth.
We’ll get them more frequently and less frequently.
In other words, they have no idea, but whatever happens, they say it must have been caused by mankind.
Do they really believe that there was no climate before mankind?
491
No they believe we invented a global thermostat and if we’d just listen to them they would set it at just the right temperature and everything would be perfect from then on.
Ran into this the other day at a site called “the inconvenient skeptic” created by a chemical engineer. I’ll leave it to the reader to dig up the link if they are so inclined:
I think that pretty well sums it up. I’ve found over the last few years that the fastest way to get a “deer in the headlights” response from an alarmist is to ask them “what the temperature should be?”, “where do we set the ‘thermostat’ to?”, and “are you sure everyone else on the planet wants that particular temperature?”
If they say anything at all, as is typical, they try and change the subject.
410
The Earth surely DOES have a “proper and normal” GLOBAL mean surface temperature (GMST)–it is 15°C, as long recognized in the (empirically derived) Standard Atmosphere, which my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison precisely confirmed as the true equilibrium state of the troposphere. The problem is that climate scientists have all been miseducated, for two generations and more, to believe that man is changing that global mean temperature (by increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration, so far, from 300 to 400 parts per million), and is in fact causing it to run away catastrophically–and the Insane Left (my term for them) is using that general scientific incompetence to make insane socialist war against our inalienable human rights and modern civilization itself.
72
HDH, I disagree. “The Earth” does NOT have a ‘Standard Atmosphere’ anymore than it has a global mean surface temperature (GMST) except perhaps as a defined quantity of a hypothetical construct or model. In this model you correctly identified that To (defined as the temperature in °C at sea level, not ‘mean’ temperature) as = 15.0°C (= 59.0°F). You also omitted an important empirical observation that separates the model from the natural World — in bold below:
Meanwhile the NOAA tell us courtesy of Seth Borenstein, that we are, as usual, doomed:
Google might have considered spending its prodigious talent and resources helping humanity in productive ways ! It’s hard to imagine that they failed to define their problem properly to begin with, to comprehensively research the literature to determine what was know, unknown and uncertain. Surely, this alone reveals that their altruistic project was belief driven. It’s criminal to think of the waste of such potential largesse.
60
@ Manfred,
“and since water has a lower molecular weight than air”
But water has a far greater density, because it s liquid.
One assumes they are referring to “atmospheric water vapour”…. in which case they should say so.
40
I was simply going to ask:
When was the last time the globe was at that temperature and for how long?
What was the temperature before that and for how long?
Why did it change?
Even before your comment, which points these things out better than I would have, this “proper and normal” temperature sounded very much like a hypothetical, given perfect conditions, mathematical construct rather than something that normally occurs for any length of time over the history of the planet.
60
Mr Huffman you seem to be confusing ideal with an average derived at a particular point in time.
Until it became politically incorrect the name used by archaeologists and historians for the Mediaeval Warm period was the Mediaeval Climate Optimum. This was in Europe and North America the most benign period recorded. During this time the population increased, wine production was possible as far north as England and Denmark and the settlements in Greenland and Iceland thrived.
The aftermath when temperatures slumped to so called ideal levels brought famine, war and disease.
30
I enjoyed your post Robert, particularly the refrain to ‘should’, ‘ought’, and ‘must’ that appears to form much of the vocabulary of the Green pariahs.
20
An extra thumbs up from me for knowing the difference between less and fewer and using them correctly!
80
That was answering MaxL at 1.1
10
Of course the media love Dr Karl, because he is one of them — he says what they want to hear, that humans (i.e. capitalists) are to blame for the climate catastrophes that must be happening somewhere.
With regard to “we must take action on climate now”, I found this beautiful precis of what is going on:
http://www.randombio.com/pprinciple.html
210
He’s a pop-culture ‘messiah’. Cross him off your list of credible and impartial commentators.
160
“Dr” Karl probably doesn’t have a proper MD. He would more likely than not have a double pass bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery if he was trained in Australia.
51
Dr Karl Kruzselnicki , BSc, Msc, M Biomedical Eng, MB BS.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kruszelnicki
Lots of degrees. No doctorate. I am not sure if he has ever practiced medicine.
20
Key statements from the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on extremes.
Roger Pielke, Jr.:
“In the process of updating Senate testimony given back in July (here in PDF) I did compile some key statements from the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on extremes.
Here are a few … ”
Conclusion:
“There is really not much more to be said here — the data says what it says, and what it says is so unavoidably obvious that the IPCC has recognized it in its consensus.”
. . .
Dr Karl is a quack.
81
Hi Peter,
In future it is a good idea to keep points which aren’t exactly ‘on topic’ till at least later, as the top of the page comments can take the whole post off track.
To address the question, it is an easy claim for alarmists to make for a number of reasons, but it provides absolutely no evidence that if true, the cause is anthropogenic. But that is the assumption which is implied by Dr Karl. The fact is, we know the world has gradually warmed since the Little Ice Age. If it is on average, warmer now than it was at the end of the LIA, then it stands to reason that there will be more ‘heat events’.
Whether there are more ‘extreme heat events’ I think is open to debate for a number of reasons:
1. The temperature records are dodgy. As we know for instance in Australia the Acorn data set has dropped off any records prior to 1910. As Jo showed in a previous post extreme heat events worst than anything we have had in recent times in Australia were no unknown. http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback-on-special-trains-as-hundreds-die/
2. We keep far more records now than we have ever done. So we will be achieving more extreme heat ‘records’.
81
Peter,
For an example of such lies that are being told in the US, start with this post …
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/another-massive-fail-by-james-hansen/
30
Google engineers acknowledge the point:
“We’re glad that Google tried something ambitious with the RE<C initiative, and we’re proud to have been part of the project. But with 20/20 hindsight, we see that it didn’t go far enough, and that truly disruptive technologies are what our planet needs. To reverse climate change, our society requires something beyond today’s renewable energy technologies. Fortunately, new discoveries are changing the way we think about physics, nanotechnology, and biology all the time. While humanity is currently on a trajectory to severe climate change, this disaster can be averted if researchers aim for goals that seem nearly impossible."
And on the links:
Obviously sea level is not rising. C02 lags temperature, yes initially, but 90% of glacial/interglacial warming occurs after the CO2 increase. And of course the planet has stopped warming
429
Cause! Dumb
AssHorse. Separate natural variation from what may be human caused. Just try. How many times do you need to be reminded of this?Then:
Who was it (warmist) here that a few months back poo pooed the notion that climate researchers were alarmist? Oh yeh it was William Connolley
Political propaganda 101: always use fear to motivate the plebeian. When they are sufficiently afraid, offer a solution that costs just a little bit more in taxes and fees.
But then horses do prefer the herd and thinking as a group don’t they.
140
WillyNilly,
You need to read your comment before you hit the post comment button! You sound as shrill and desperate as the taxpayer funded gravy train riding rent-seekers that ddisguise themselves as third rate scientistts and academics
1. Sea levels are rising as they have since the beginning of the Holocene and over the course of time have slowed (see the graph at this post http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/ As far as recent sea level rise, it has slowed recently. This debunks Trenberth’s contention that the heat is hiding in the ocean deep. If it were, sea level rise would have accelerated due to thermal expansion. For a peer reviewd paper you might find edifying (yes,i am an eternal optimist) as well as a discussion of it and other relevant peer reviewed papers on the matter see http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-paper-finds-sea-level-rise-has.html
2. It didn’t go far enough? It went as far as it could! Truly disruptive technologies? I will be looking for you on the FBIs most wanted list. What kind of a fool would want to bring pain and suffering to humans to fight a non existant threat? Even if the theory were correct, and it has been falsified over and over again, we only contribute 3% of the CO2 to the atmosphere! When we need a replacement for fossil fuels humans will find a way if past is truly prologue.
3. Yes, the planet has stopped warming. The number of climate scientists offering explanations and excuses is growing at such an accelerated rate that they will have to post a real time graph similar to the McDonalds sign showing how many customers have been served or the counter showing the increase in the US debt!
4. “CO2 lags temperatures, yes initiallly, but 90% of glacial/interglacial melting occurs after the CO2 increase.” A disingenuous lie by omission and a red herring to boot! You omitted that temps continue to rise 600 to 800 years after CO2 levels decline! The reason why CO2 levels lag temps is that the ocean temps lag land temps by 600 to 800 years and the oceans outgas CO2 when they warm and absorb CO2 as they cool.
The day you actually open your mind and honestly search for the truth please call and ask for Mr. Blue. That will be me waiting while holding my breath.
CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas easily overwhelmed by other natural forcings. Get a clue, wake up and smell the coffee and if you are employed in the climate science field go out and get a real job!
360
I love this simple calculation to demonstrate the stupidity of the headless green chooks:
70
“CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas easily overwhelmed by other natural forcings”
unproven, unsubstantiated and just plain wrong.
And read up on the lag. Lung popping coming Mr Blue!
015
roflmao..
The Shakun, but not stirred with cherries on top.
Used just one CO2 record, and chopped it at the beginning of the Holocene…
so they didn’t show CO2 rising as temperature slowly dropped.
And what a mess that paper is… ! quite funny that anyone, even the most rabid brain-washed dopey alarmista, still considers it worthwhile linking to !
Also very “strange ” that the Shakun paper even made it through peer review….
Oh wait.. Its Nature magazine !!!…… the purveyor of all the junk that is, in alarmista non-science. 🙂
70
The Shakun et al. paper states that they use the methodology of Lemieux-Dudon et al. (2010), which involves construction of a model using estimates of snow accumulation rates, temperature, firn densification rates, and ice flow rates, all of which vary from glacier to glacier and from glaciation to interglaciation (thus introducing large potential errors). The modeling data is then modified by…….
Very funny stuff.. to be sure, to be sure.. :-0 🙂
40
And another quote from an eminent statistician (look it up dopey donkey, I know you have no idea what it means).
Talking about the 80 proxies for temperature in the ‘martini’ paper…
“It’s clear that there is warming since the last ice age.” “But if you want to make the claim that CO2 precedes the warming? I fear that this set of proxies is perfectly useless for that.”
20
Actually, silly, the main greenhouse gas is water vapor. Since there is no positive feedback loop the most a doubling of CO2 could do is to increase temps 1.1 degrees. NASA ENVAP data shows no indrease in water vapor and actually show a recent decrease. Vonder Haar, et al cites the NVAP data to show that there is no increase in water vapor so, again,no positive feedback is possible.
One of the over sixty excuses for the pause by offered by true believer climate scientists is one that claims overly sophisticated models combined with natural variability is responsible for the pause that you calim doesn’t exist. So much for settled science!
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-paper-explanations-of-so-called.html
From the paper “Natural variability, radiative forcing and climate response in the recent hiatus reconciled”
“Global mean surface warming over the past 15 years or so has been less than in earlier decades and than simulated by most climate models1. Natural variability2, 3, 4, a reduced radiative forcing5,6, 7, a smaller warming response to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations8, 9 and coverage bias in the observations10 have been identified as potential causes. However, the explanations of the so-called ‘warming hiatus’ remain fragmented and the implications for long-term temperature projections are unclear.”
If you add up all the missing heat accounted for in the over sixty excuses proffered by warmist scientists it should be enough to put us into another ice age!
If the science is so settled, why are there so many excuses offered by the scientists? Shouldn’t ther be just one?
60
Apologies for the typos but I am using my new iPad.
00
I can play too. Once you remove all of the “seasonal adjustments” and the “calibration against tide gauges” you get almost no sea level rise for the last 21 years. We’re almost at the peak of an Interglacial. Sea level has been rising since the Laurentide Ice Sheet, along with the rest of the ice on the planet, started melting 10 or 15 thousand years ago. Those cycles have been going on for millions of years and we have no power whatsoever to stop, start, attenuate, amplify, brake or accelerate them. Believing that we can is gold plated, diamond encrusted hubris of the first order.
When you look at satellite data for the last dozen years when we should have all been roasting alive, at least according to all of your demigods in the climate “science” community, the warming vanishes. Even though I purposely picked points that put the trend where I wanted it, I didn’t use a data set that was chock full of statistically manufactured surface air temps, UHI errors, homogenization and every other trick your “scientists” have to resort to in order to demonize mankind for Nature’s actions.
220
The energy balance is wrong by (at least) an order of magnitude.
Neither wind turbines nor solar PV panels can be produced using only the energy from those sources.
Just thought that needed to be said more loudly Bernd
170
How did this get here?
Supposed to be in reply to Bernd at 5
[I blame the Nargles, myself -Fly]
60
Silly,
Honesty doesn’t seem to be your strong suit. We’ve seen all this before and debunked it all before.
100
This is a common trait amongst her sort. Spew some nonsense, get thrashed for it, run away for a little while, then return and spew the same nonsense all over again hoping no one will remember what happened the last time it was tried.
Poor memory as well as poor intelligence seems to define her.
100
You have debunked nothing, only reiterating failed arguments!
07
“only reiterating failed arguments!”
did he quote you somewhere?
Failed models, failed hypothesis, failed arguments, failed donkey rants, failed as an alarmist troll……
Let me guess, you failed primary school, too. !!
If anyone should know about failing.. it would be you, you pointless and irrelevant ass.
41
No, the reiteration of failed arguments is your area of expertise since that is all we ever get from you. Nice projection though.
10
Sea levels have been risings for the whole of the Holocene.
They are now starting to slow down.
And high atmospheric CO2 levels have never lead to catastrophic warming, not ever, and in fact have never been able to maintain the high temperatures that cause those higher CO2 levels.
The Earth’s climate is inherently stable to CO2 changes, because CO2 changes have basically zero effect on climate. None, nada, zip !!.
120
The Griss: nothing more than grist for the mill of science!
04
And another empty nothingness from the drone donkey, zero content.
Was that DATA and FACTS way too much for you, little child?
30
spare me the platitudes and look at the facts and data yourself! Give me something else rather than the rubbish on that linked denialist web site.
05
Too much truth for you.. you poor little thing 🙂
You are really continuing as a z-class joke, little mule. 🙂
Please don’t ever try stand up comedy, there are not enough tomatoes to go around. !!
20
Just remember that they “adjusted ” that using a sinking reference point, invented GIA fudges etc.
In reality, you need somewhere really solid that isn’t moving..
Like Fort Denison… and use a long term , non-adjusted data set..
30
Ahh Griss, they can’t use long term or non-adjusted data sets or anything remotely resembling truth or the scientific method. Their grants and budgets depend on imaginary and manipulated numbers based on measurements taken by fairies riding winged horses… ’cause they’re the only ones that fit into their massively flawed theories and models. Remember that the Climateer version of science is:
1 – Find something scary in nature (this can be made up if all the good calamities have all been recently used.)
2 – Create a goal with threshold value of a thing or activity which is “man made” that you wish to have cause the cataclysm listed in #1. (It’s even better if the man made thing can actually help people live happy, healthy, comfortable lives.)
3 – Create a mechanism/formulation/theory whereby some tortured, tenuous route connects the man made thing in #2 to the conflagration at #1.
4 – Create a process where some kind of actual data is parsed/filtered/adjusted/mis-represented or generated out of thin air that creates a trail unicorn droppings along the path drawn in #3.
5 – Write the whole mess up using every misleading term, caveat, if and wherefore available and present it for “peer review” to someone the lefty news media listens to.
6 – Scream, wail, gnash teeth, etc. until you get publicity (or more grant money) along with getting your target (#2 above) banned, taxed, boycotted, regulated and, if you’ve done a really good job, the outcome will kill several million more innocents in 3rd world h*llholes every year since you’ve helped keep them in the Stone Age.
Note that none of this requires truth, accuracy, science or proof… just a modestly active imagination, a poor understanding of physical processes and a healthy hatred for Mankind.
10
Hola sillyfilly.
Hmm. It seems the filly is frightened. Spooked, even.
It’s not the end of the world, but, sillyfilly can see it from here …
> Sea levels rising?
You look at your GIGO graphs, the rest of us ‘look out the window.’
See the The Lempriere-Ross mark and it’s identical brother in the Falkland Is.
~ ~ ~
> No
“pause”peak in 97% Certified Doomsday Global Warming?19 November 2014: Hottest ever ocean temperatures signal end of warming “pause”
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/11/19/hottest-ever-ocean-temperatures-signal-end-of-warming-pause/
. . .
You’ve built your
crucifixeswindmills to ward of the perceived evil.The Cargo Cult of Doomsday Global Warming can see the devil incarnate itself, returning after “hiding in the oceans for thousands of years“.
Repent, ye sinner!
It has been foretold. (unlike next weeks lotto numbers)
sillyfilly denies the pause.
How silly.
Blasphemer.
70
Refer to data and facts above!
13
You haven’t posted any data or facts, EVER.. just junk and propaganda.
10
SillyFilly,you seem to use the term Denier and Denalist,a lot. Maybe you could clarify just what you mean exactly by that term,as no-one here has “denied” anything,or do you claim to be capable of assessing such terms in people?
20
Refer to multititude of posts by the Griss, saying it’s all natural! No evidence, no substantiation and no idea!
02
You have no evidence that it is anything BUT natural.
None, Nothing, just empty ranting.
The current variation in the climate is WELL WITHIN past variability.
NOTHING untoward is happening with the climate, and you cannot prove that it is.
No matter how much you rant and bray, and no matter how much crazy weed you take.
20
“While humanity is currently on a trajectory to severe climate change”
Total unsubstantiated garbage !!
I defy them to prove that very stupid statement.
91
Here is something you SHOULD read , dopey donkey. 🙂
71
Love these lines:
“The core alarmist proponents only comprise a few dozen, mostly third-rate, academics whose scientific reputations are minimal outside of climate alarmism.
They co-opted the niche, little known interdisciplinary field of climatology, proclaimed themselves to be the world authorities, declared a global crisis, received lavish funding to research it and gained global attention.
They have been aided and abetted by sundry fellow travellers who see advantage for various other agendas.”
120
Well done, sillyfilly, congrats from me,
You sure nailed these deniers.
These people here don’t seem to understand or have completely missed the crux of your argument:
“Google engineers acknowledge the point”
Look, I mean why quibble, now we have the expert climate opinion of 2 Google engineers to add to the opinions of adjuct Professor Tim Flannery, adjunct Nobel Laureate Michael Mann, as well as 97% of the world’s adjunct climate scientists.
Look at the news headlines right here in Australia, each and every night and harken the dangers of climate change:
The bush fire season, increasing risk of major bushfires, imminent risk of dangerous bushfires, high level risk of bushfires being dangerous.
Mind you the bushfire season began on 1st October and there have been none so far, but never mind the facts just read the headlines.
If we are not to believe our adjunct national broadcaster and the adjunct MSM on these matters, who are we to believe – all this riff-raff here calling themselves independant researchers because they are not worthy of receiving a cent of funding from the climate change money pot, and never had a proper peer reviewed paper published and supported by the IPCC.
Load of old rubbish, good on you sillyfilly, keep ’em honest, you go girl, yay sister…
61
Adjuntivitus is causing global warming?
40
Who stole the ‘c’?
[I blame the Nargles, myself -Fly]
30
Be careful… I think Adjunctivitus* is contagious.
*Adjunctivitus reminds me of Conjunctivitis which, here in the States, is also called Pink Eye making me think of Pinko Communists and then I think of the “watermelons” in the eco-loon crowd and we’re full circle back to what Climate Change is all about… Social and Government control via thermometer… but I digress, as usual.
20
Well, geez, sillyfilly,
That’s it then, that’s the pinnacle of climate science right there.
Two Google engineers said so…
40
So what Jo said in her preamble is rubbish according to you! I agree!
04
sf,
Only if you agree the pinnacle of climate science is two Google engineers…
20
.. What sort of engineers..
Being they work at Google, probably electrical or computing engineers,
or maybe they could be environmental or sanitation engineers (these latter two being quite similar)
20
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,
The Google engineers concluded that the whole renewable technology program is rubbish.
Warm dark place, warm dark palce, warm dark palce…
20
Some reading for the dopey donkey.
20
Quadrant, you are kidding, the IPA as a source of science what a joke! Some reading for you, might improve your ignorance of science!
The idiocy of Julie Bishop at science!
04
First thing you should always do is check facts.
Like the unadjusted SST in the GBR.
Oh look. Nothing, nada, zip !!!
You really need to WAKE UP..
…..and realise that all these reports are written by people who have been bought up with the rule that “climate change” must be mentioned.
but “climate change” CANNOT be an issue if the climate isn’t changing !!!
Yes the GBR needs looking after, but “climate change” is NOT one of the problems.
20
Jo,
Yeah, I was right, it was funny.
00
Small adjustment dumb donkey:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend
So, we take it that you are in denial of “the pause”. Never mind that ALL climate scientists acknowledge it.
20
And you have to remember just how much the pre-1979 has been “adjusted” downwards.
In reality, there should be a peak around 1940 about level with 1998.
Wiggly et al have managed to “remove” it.
Would love to see the contacts between Hadley and Giss as they planned that !!
Oh wait.. you can. 🙂
10
Gee whiz. I got caned for posting from WFT and you substantiate my case with your post. Thanks!
02
Your post is as empty as your mind !!
Your WFT graph displayed gross ignorance.
That is the difference.
You are just too brain-washed to realise that fact.
10
At least I have a brain, yours appears to be missing! Completely unable to process the simplest facts of science!
05
Poor child.. Get back to us when you finish kindy, silly little ditz. ! 🙂
10
Look in a mirror, fool!
04
Rant, rant…. it’s all you have.
empty mind, poor little thing.. 🙂
10
sillyfilly:
of course you’ve got a brain, and in as new condition; never been used.
20
At least, thankfully, sillyfilly has no comment at all on what the actual intent of the main text was about, renewables, and how they patently cannot be used to solve this non problem.
On that, she, or he, or whatever has absolutely zero knowledge, and is not actually game to even attempt to comment for fear of being shredded unmercifully. All she, he, can do is just change the subject to divert away from her total lack of any understanding on that.
You are so transparent in your opacity.
Tony.
50
“for fear of being shredded unmercifully.”
Hasn’t stopped her in the past on every other subject…….
She seems to thrive on her stupidity and ignorance.
10
Now if you actually had a brain and were capable of using it you would realize that Backslider did not in any way substantiate your case.
You are delusional as well as mentally challenged, though I suspect you are so in love with how clever you think your are that you never stop running your mouth long enough to think about what is coming out of it. You really are an embarrassment to Australian education.
10
Look again. See that horizontal green line? This is what all climate scientists and the IPCC refer to as “the pause”.
20
“CO2 levels would continue to rise exponentially”. Such flowery language. They have no idea what this means and cannot be real engineers. Do all rises have to be exponential or is that just one of those scientific sounding words?
Exponential happens when the amount of growth is proportional to the amount already in place. No one seriously believes this is a model for power generation. CO2 will not rise like that even if the whole amount was due to human activity, which it isn’t. We will also run out of fossil fuels soon enough, as has been expected for fifty years. In case Google has not noticed, oil fields are running dry today as in Dubai and Southern Australia and if not for fracking, supplies would be shrinking and costs roaring. So the Greens are against fracking, nuclear and coal. 23,000 windmills later, Germany has given up.
Peter is right. Dr Karl’s statements are often wrong, where dead marsupial specialist Tim Flannery’s are hilarious, like droughts becoming simultaneously longer and more frequent. Individual hot days and bushfires are also our fault, especially result the Abbott government and budget cuts at the ABC. However for the first time I have now read that Climate Change is causing coastal erosion? How does that work? Ocean acidification is impossible and a popular lie as the oceans are not and never will be acidic, but it is dragged out every time as if it was true. Engineers? Hardly.
So what really caused the rapid melting of the glaciers of the ice age, only 17,000 years ago in the areas where 40% of humans now live? Aboriginal man’s discovery of fire? It must be true. Man is all powerful and the Science is in.
170
Well, it’s increase a little over n^1.01 and an order of magnitude would be n^10 so it’s increased three orders of magnitude below an order of magnitude so it’s kind of exponential… especially when your target audience has no clue. Torturing data improperly using mathematics and statistics is what they do.
80
Their other option would be to claim it was linear which doesn’t sound as scary or large. As NielsZoo stated, when the target audience hasn’t a clue what it means, then the bigger the words and more “scientific sounding” the phrasing the more impressed they will be. See sillyfilly for a perfect example.
70
Forget those overheated model projections as… ahem, evidence and justification for oh so costly climate action by intermittent, inefficient, land hungry renewable technology.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/figure-1-4-models-vs-observations-annotated.png
60
You might wish to read this interesting statistical analysis on the models: Bob Tisdale pisses on leg claims it’s raining.
03
Tamino !!!!! roflmao.. you can’t be serious.. really !!
Closed, empty mind, that one !!
The guy is a loser with very little scientific or mathematically understanding or ability.
And a very amateurish propagandist.
He would suit you.. off you go !!
00
No amount of R&D can change the fundamental properties of “renewables”; they are diffuse, unreliable and expensive to harvest and then concentrate to an intensity and availability necessary for modern, technological society. Renewables are only viable for niche applications where the costs of conventional supply outweigh the ability to provide a sufficient and reliable source of energy by renewables.
It should not be necessary to malinvest huge amounts of money to re-discover what Engineering students had readily available as course material at the start of the 1980’s (e.g.). All of the necessary calculations can be done on two sheets of A4 paper. Here’s the summary:
Renewables are not sustainable. The energy balance is wrong by (at least) an order of magnitude. Neither wind turbines nor solar PV panels can be produced using only the energy from those sources.
It seems to me that the only actual research that’s been going on in the renewables sector has been a societal one; to see how hard the golden goose can be squeezed by telling it that it’ll be cooked if the golden eggs aren’t laid. The goose didn’t check that the oven was working.
130
So what will?
My money is on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors or LFTR. If we can get the politicians out of the power business.
70
Hold onto your money.
The Lithium required for the (most publicised) FLiBe molten salt blend has to be Li-7 but natural Lithium has a high proportion of Li-6 isotope. So if it’s not “enriched” before being put into a reactor, it’ll tend to eat up many of the neutrons produced as the fissile core is trying to fission. It might not even fizz.
Molten salt reactors appear to be the most attractive in terms of fuel cycle cost, but using expensive salts (tens of tons per reactor), salts that are also hard to obtain, works against economic viability. Cheaper, more available salts (e.g. MgCl/MgF) perhaps do not work as well “neutronically” in providing surplus neutrons for breeding, but they ought to be investigated as they have different, “interesting” properties that are conducive to safer reactor operation. Even if they don’t completely iso-breed (produce as much fissile material as is consumed), they may still be economically viable; especially in countries like South Korea which has to start “burning” its nuclear by-products because they’re running out of intermediate storage space.
“Conventional” nuclear reactors do a fine job just about everywhere. Re-processing fuels and sending the difficult by-products into high-neutron flux reactors to “burn up” greatly reduces the “waste” issue to one that ought to be manageable. We’ve looked after old buildings for longer than the half-life of by-product left from that fuel cycle.
And who knows? What’s one man’s muck is another’s millions.
Australia can do without nuclear power; depending on coal for the bulk of electrical power generation. But it doesn’t seem smart to not try to exploit the nuclear power option given the exports of Uranium.
Meanwhile, those who have less than 1 kWh of electrical power per day at their beck and call desperately need more of it. Cheaply. Now.
India is to double the production of coal from its own mines within 5 years; to fuel new power stations.
But much of Africa doesn’t even have a toe on the first rung of the energy ladder. Coal is also the cheapest option available to them. It’s in our interest to encourage them to burn that coal cleanly and efficiently; to let them reap the full benefit of burning coal with by-products such as ash as a substitute for cement and the nasty stuff precipitated in the stacks (like mercury), packaged and sold internationally.
When they can afford it, they should be allowed to buy nuclear power plant technology; perhaps develop their own. They won’t be able to afford it without a stable government and the rule of law.
100
The real problem with Africa, is entirely summed up in your last sentence.
And that is a situation that was caused by colonialism, and then by continuing interference from both the UN and by a raft of NGOs, who are just as tribal as the Africans they are seeking to influence.
90
… and the UN is far, far worse than any of those old Colonial governments ever were. I’d even go as far to say that many of those nations in Africa would have been light years more advanced, stable, healthy and happy if they were still colonies. (Compared to their current status quo maintained by the UN and the rest of the extra-governmental
criminalorganizations.)00
So long as we can firstly push the atmospheric CO2 level up to at least 600ppm, then keep it there… I have no problems with nuclear power.
I can see us getting to the stage in several hundred years, where nuclear power is used to release carbon-rich dioxide from carbon deposits so as to maintain and enhance the carbon/life cycle of the world.
A future where the people are intelligent enough to realise that CO2 is not only beneficial to all life on Earth….. it is ESSENTIAL !!!
Thankfully coal and gas are still the major suppliers of energy and release of sequestered carbon, and will be for a considerable time.
50
whoops!
carbon-rich dioxide from carbon depositcarbon dioxide from carbon-rich deposit
20
Huh,
And you bag me for one little error.
Drop and give me twenty…
00
Huh,
And you bag me for one little error.
Drop and give me twenty…
00
Perhaps Griss you should take the time to read about Henry’s Law. It is not possible for us to push it up to those levels by burning fossil fuels.
00
Probably not, but it would be very desirable.
Need to keep pushing, and certainly never let it down below 350ppm again. !
00
I bet if you dig around in some of the Warmist “scientific research” there is some convoluted “forcing” that will do the trick.
00
One ought to first as the brutal question, “Is there a problem?” Then answer it honestly. If they had done that the answer would be no and no more time and resources would be wasted on a non problem.
But Google has allowed it’s corporate head to grow far too big for its hat — a real danger when you become fabulously successful in your field. I wish they would stick to what they do best, search engines, and other software (Google Chrome is an outstanding browser, even with its little annoyances), and stay out of politics and the weather.
110
One ought to first ask the brutal question,
Proofreading is obviously not one of my greatest success stories. 🙁
50
I suspect that in their case, one doesn’t ask the question when one is afraid the answer won’t be the one they want.
20
I say good on the suckers AS LONG AS THEY’RE USING THEIR OWN MONEY AND RESOURCES.
Google is a private company, it can flush money down the toilet if it wants. It’s their and their shareholders business AS LONG AS THEY’RE USING THEIR OWN MONEY AND RESOURCES.
You never know, one day they may stumble upon an energy source that’s cheap as chips. The rest of us would benefit and google will make a motza out of it. Win win.
I’m all for encouraging google AS LONG AS THEY’RE USING THEIR OWN MONEY AND RESOURCES.
60
That’s the thing though isn’t it Baa. They aren’t just using their own money. Ivanpah was heavily subsidised.
“The $2.2 billion bird fryer was funded with a $1.6 billion federal loan, which Google and its business partners plan to repay by applying for a federal grant.”
Eric Schmidt doesn’t just run a private company but the worlds largest search engine for finding information.
“This week the Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, called people who oppose green energy subsidies “liars”.”
Luckily of course, we don’t have to use google.
110
True! There is Bing from Microsoft and I find it useful for a lot of searches. But Bing and Google use entirely different internal search philosophies as far as I can tell and it’s often necessary to use Google to find what I want close enough to the top of the list of hits that I don’t get discouraged and quit before I get there. I think Google is here to stay for a long time in spite of a very good alternative.
Bing is especially useful if I want any video that may pertain to the search because it will present you with a comprehensive list of what’s out there. For instance, compare the Bing and Google results for “airplane crashes”.
20
There are search aggregators that use a number of different of search engines in the background. Some also shunt your queries through a whole lot of proxy servers, which is cool.
When you are doing serious research, you tend to follow lines of reasoning, which the search providers can track. If these get disrupted, by the use different servers, and search engines, it is much harder for the search providers to figure out what you are doing, at least in a timeframe that might be useful to them.
Because we are paranoid, we also use multiple aggregators. Everybody gets a spoonful, but only we can see the whole pudding. At least, that is the theory.
50
Roy,
Do what I do and use DuckDuckGo …
A search engine that doesn’t track you and is politically neutral.
50
Never heard of that one. I’ll give it a try.
10
Truthseeker,
Tried it this morning on my example “airplane crashes” and discovered this. It’s a comprehensive study of Air France 447 that went down in the Atlantic on its way from Rio to Paris.
It will show you in graphic detail why I don’t want to fly commercial anymore unless the need outweighs my conservative approach to risk. You could be riding behind pilots with a variety of incompetencies, many of which were not there before the days of flight management computers, not to mention that planes crashed even before onboard computers. But at least before the computer the pilots were actually flying the airplane and an hour’s experience counted for something. Nowadays it may not count anything.
Interesting stuff.
10
That’s what I use, but I wouldn’t call it remotely “politically neutral.” It appears to have about the same bias as Yahoo, but certainly not as bad as Google or Microsoft. Try doing a search for “climate change” and see how far you have to scroll before you find a neutral or skeptical site listed… make sure you’ve got some time before you start ’cause I didn’t find one.
00
Not to mention that the Ivanpah project operators have now conceded that it is producing much less electricity than they predicted and they are asking the Government to forgive over $500m in loan repayments. http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/09/google-owned-solar-company-requests-540-million-bailout-to-help-pay-1-6-billion-loan/
50
To be totally accurate they are actually asking for a grant to repay $539 of the $1.6bn in Government guaranteed loans.
70
Yes that is the thing
00
Losing or wasting own money and resources can also have a negative flow on effect financially within the market place, investors, stock trading, government spending, military, I know it’s the nature of the capitalist beast but that always seems forgotten before a market crash.
10
Update: I just added a little line.
The RE<C project started in 2007 and was buried in 2011. Google invested $850 million in clean energy. (For a tiny $100,000 I could have saved Google $850 million dollars. If they only asked skeptics instead of Al Gore…)
I could have done a ripper of a report just by… googling. :- )
170
Oh dear, fancy now admitting they cannot make electricity from renewables cheaper than coal fired power.
They actually had so many artful ploys to make it cheaper. Chop half the original construction price off the front end by gifting sometimes more than half that cost to the proposers of the plant with grants from Federal and State Governments, so now they only need recover half that cost, guarantee that the grid HAS to but the electricity at a set price, ratify in the contract that the government will pay an extra amount per MWH of electricity produced, and then artfully fudge the figures for actual power generation, extend the life of the plant and say it will operate at best case Capacity for the WHOLE of its life, something they patently cannot do, and then inflate the Capacity Factor. Then on top of that they then fudge the figures for coal fired power, by giving them the same life span as for renewables, inflate their construction costs, add on the extra for the totally unobtainable CCS process, and then fudge their generation figures and Capacity Factor downwards.
Even after ALL of that, they still cannot make it cheaper than for coal fired power.
Hey, who cares. It doesn’t matter.
Coal fired power delivers it’s power 24/7/365. Renewables cannot do this, and in fact barely manage 30% of the time.
They just cannot deliver the power required to actually replace coal fired power.
The cost is incidental ….. if it doesn’t work on the same scale, something it cannot do, and will never be able to do.
Turn on a wind Plant and the power delivery is sporadic at best.
Turn on a coal fired power plant and it delivers 100% of its maximum power for as long as it remains turned on. The only down time is for carefully scheduled maintenance.
Take for example one of the units here at Stanwell, barely 20KM as the crow flies from where I am sitting right now.
One unit, Unit Number Four was turned and it stayed running at 3000RPM, delivering its full rated 365MW for ….. 1,073 days of continuous operation, just 22 days short of three years.
Let’s actually compare that with an equivalent Wind Plant with the same Nameplate, 365MW, which is a large scale wind plant with 146 of those huge towers. That wind Plant will take 9 years and ten Months to deliver that same amount of power, but hey, again, who cares, as it’s only for around 7 hours a day on average.
The cost of the electricity is incidental here, and after using every trick in the book, they still cannot manage to make renewable power cheaper.
Tony.
210
I suggest an even more meaningful set of questions ask and answer before falling down the rabbit hole of the ridiculously inadequate and the impossible.
1. Can an opinion, even an extremely popular opinion, force reality to match the opinion?
2. Can changing the name of a thing change the thing?
3. Can a legislative body change natural law merely by passing legislation that is counter to that natural law?
4. Can ignoring what is protect you from the consequences of acting upon the assumption that it isn’t?
5. Are there enough government boots on necks, knives in the stomach, ropes around necks, whips on backs, and guns to the head sufficient to force a population to do what reality says is impossible?
In spite of the Clinton Proposition “It depends upon what is ,is”, there is only is. Things can be only what they are and one can do only what reality and the nature of things in that reality allow.
Even the ancients understood this: “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect”. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.).
The fundamentals are really quite simple and few in number. Google paid a high price for their error of failing to pay attention to them.
80
Oh Lionell! Don’t you know that the left can indeed force things to be contrary to reality? Just ask them, they’ll tell you so right down to the very last one. Climate change is causing a disaster right now as I type this. Obamacare is working. The economy is OK. All of this and more is all true because they have forced it to be true — contrary to reality.
The perception trumps reality every time.
Their downfall, when it finally happens, will be an unimaginable tragedy for all of us, taking everything down with it unless we can manage to stop them. And almost no one is asking the right questions.
50
Doublethink is alive and well in the ‘NGO’ New Green Order, when this NGO machine is running at full capacity there’ll be NO permission to ask the right questions because the right Q&A’s have already been provided and enemy’s of the NGO peace have passed away or were subdued when they refused to understand ‘the science’.
A ‘right to bear arms’ is in your constitution for a very good reason Roy. 😉
00
Our Founders were wise from experience. Can you imagine what King Barak the First would be doing if he had a disarmed populace? I shudder at the thought… and then double check my magazines.
00
Yes it is, Yonni. But the ability of the common man, armed only with the common man’s weapons, to fight the government and win has long passed. There is no way an armed citizenry could withstand the domestic army our Department of Homeland Security has put together. And the evidence for that army is there in spite of there being no proof I can point you to.
So I can hope to defend my home adequately from an intruder but not from the government.
But the story doesn’t end with that. An armed conflict with the government will destroy the very Republic we would be trying to save. The plain truth is that a Constitution like ours (and any other constitution, including yours) will only work when both those in government and the citizen on the street stay honest. Once the dishonesty crept in the Constitution stopped working. So if we cannot get back control of our country by lawful means the United States of America will soon be gone forever.
The dishonesty crept in through the back door long ago and has been chipping away at the Constitution ever since. The deal was sealed the instant we began to believe the government owed us something.
00
Sorry for the late reply, I agree the citizens wouldn’t stand a chance against a fully trained, armed and motivated army, they would have a chance if divisions of the armed forces could be ‘bought’ but the you would have another civil war possibly more damaging than the first one, stay alert and stay safe Roy.
00
You didn’t say “if”. You said “when”. We agree on that.
What can we do? Stay out of their way and stop feeding them. That’s tough to do but it would be very effective. If nothing is produced, their stolen wealth would have nothing to buy and they would soon start consuming each other.
00
Lionell,
I like your attitude about it. But the plain truth is that the average American cannot simply stop producing without soon starving to death. That may be a bit dramatic but it’s the basic truth.
Now if all 330 plus million of us could be somehow persuaded to prepare for it then strike at the same time and hold out for a few weeks it might work out differently. But we both know that won’t happen.
By the way, the president’s powers both to declare an emergency and to deal with it are quite broad. And he has plenty of willing supporters, even after November 4th. The Republican win wasn’t exactly a landslide. I would much, much prefer a political solution at the ballot box.
00
Now all we need is for the Google engineers to send a copy of the report to the Abbott Government to give them ammunition to cancel the RET’s and Clean Energy Corporation $billions. Lets see The Greens and Labor call Google ‘deniers’ for not supporting their ‘Green Economy’ fantasy.
50
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Amazon and Google Change Places on Going Green
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amazon-and-google-change-places-on-going-green/
20
News alert.This is sophisticated and planned damage control marketing.Google vacates some of the green marketing space so Yahoo is pulled in to imply it is filling the space when it is really business as usual. The climate juggernaut then works this into a marketing message for the media machine that tries to hide the renewable energy project failure.
This is a direct and huge hit on the credibility of the renewable energy industry. More exposure is needed. Not less.
30
The $1 Billion a day worldwide spent of renewables and climate change can buy 600MW on Molten Salt Reactors every day or around 200 GWs yearly of power generation added every year. Green Energy’s waste stream of Rare Earth Elements tosses away enough of the super fuel Thorium yearly that can power the entire planet using MSRs. China has a crash program using the US ORNL’s MSR design. The west needs to wake up to MSR energy or China will own it all!
http://www.energyfromthorium.com
10
Karl
You cannot be a scientist and a propaganda tool for a the biggest organised crime gang in the history of humanity.
So stop calling yourself Doctor or recant.
10
Two ‘engineers’? It would be nice to know a little more about them. It would be nice to know their specialties, their history, their age and therefore how likely it is that they are vulnerable to social pressures, their political leanings, how much mental conditioning they were subjected to by peer pressure during tertiary studies, whether they arrived at their view on climate change after critically examining all views and, more importantly, the people putting forward those views, or whether they just fell into lockstep with the orthodoxy of their peer group, and so on.
The reason it would be of interest to know these things is that it would serve to explain how it could be that an ‘engineer’ would seem not to understand the nature of computer ‘modelling’. I have a tertiary qualification in computing and I worked as a programmer for 10 years and I can tell you with absolute and utter certainty that a computer model will ‘predict’ warming from increased CO2 only if the code you wrote says that will be the outcome. A computer program is incapable of reasoning through a problem. It executes the instructions you write and the output it produces is entirely within the range of values or conclusions your code contains. It cannot be otherwise.
No matter what sort of self-indulgent witchdoctory some people might engage in by talking about quantum computers and fuzzy logic and so on, the one inescapable fact is that a program is just a set of instructions and conclusions that you wrote. Not only can a computer not reason through a problem but it can never understand that there is a human element to the issue as well as a purely mathematical one. It cannot understand the motives of people. It cannot question how bucket-loads of taxpayers money might influences some people. It cannot see the defensive, guarded look in Al Gore’s eyes and consider possible reasons for this. It cannot understand the concept of making money out of the issue. It cannot understand people adopting the belief system of their peer group. It cannot understand that a person consumed by self-loathing might want to promote socially destructive causes in order to take revenge on society. It cannot understand that for social reasons a person might want to adopt a set of apparently virtuous beliefs that would elevate them socially within their peer group.
A computer is just a dumb calculator. It cannot understand or even know of the human element in an issue. Surely an engineer would know all of this – or, to be more precise, they cannot NOT know it. So that begs the question: why would they not examine the presumptions on which a theory is based?
70
Oh I really wish people would quit calling the “human generated CO2 causes global warming/climate change” hypothesis a theory. It has never even remotely come close to advancing beyond the hypothesis stage.
But, as to models, if the algorithm is designed to show in increase in temperatures for an increase in CO2 and the person running it puts successively larger and larger values in for CO2 then the output is going to show them exactly what it was designed to do. Their model will show an increase in temperature regardless of whatever is really occurring.
50
The Google effort reminds me of the legend of King Canute (actually, his name is correctly Cnut)and his supposed efforts to command the tide to turn back. Delving deeper though, it seems that Cnut was actually trying to demonstrate that his kingly commands had no effect on the forces of nature.
According to the story, the king had his chair carried down to the shore and ordered the waves not to break upon his land.
When his orders were ignored, he pronounced: “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws,” (Historia Anglorum, ed D E Greenway).
Perhaps the Google engineers should Google it?
30
So what happened to the dyslexics?
40
They all ended up looking like silly Cnut’s,
90
We all know it has nothing to do with CO2 -it is all about politics and achieving the left-wing Marxist dream of an unelected ‘knows best’ global government through fear.
If there was truly a concern about renewables or non-polluting energy then the billions wasted on climate change ‘research’ would have been spent in pursuit of small scale thorium (and other) nuclear reactors along with hydro-power etc.
If there was truly a concern to reduce energy consumption then again the billions would have been pushed towards research to achieve that.
But neither has been happening and that alone tends to give the lie to political ‘concern’ over ‘global warming’. At least it does unless you take the view that our politicians are complete idiots, and that is certainly true of many.
Forget wasting money trying to develop mass storage of electricity, if they must play with solar and wind power, use it to create stable,very low cost energy storage through pumping water into reservoirs and new hydro facilities. Hydro electric power generation is a tiny fraction of the costs of other methods and creating new storage via stored water is a fraction of the cost of trying to create new types of battery or other storage.
20
A bit OT,
but what a COOL picture
(courtesy Leon, on WUWT.)
30
Global warming … obviously.
10
Griss,
Aw, that’s cute, the house is smiling…
00
Nice puppy dog 🙂
That’s what I see, anyway.
00
Griss,
Could be an albin rottweiler.
Q. Say, whats the difference between a rottweiler and a climate alarmist?
A. A rottweiller will eventually let go.
10
Easier to potty train too as the Rottweiler will eventually learn.
20
am currently reading Ken Auletta’s “Googled – The End of the World As We Know It”. apparently, theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, was a hero of Sergey Brin’s when he was a young man, as referenced here as well:
Sergey Brin: I remember really enjoying (Richard) Feynman’s books. He had several autobiographical books, and I read them. It seemed like a very great life he led. Aside from making really big contributions in his own field, he was pretty broad-minded. I remember he had an excerpt where he was explaining how he really wanted to be a Leonardo, an artist and a scientist. I found that pretty inspiring. I think that leads to having a fulfilling life.
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/pag0int-1
Nov 2013: WUWT: Anthony Watts: A view of science worth reflecting upon
Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman:
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! –
For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.
The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/16/a-view-of-science-worth-reflecting-upon/
if Google demanded as much from the self-proclaimed “climate experts”, we wouldn’t have Google’s Al-Goreithms relentlessly pushing/advertising CAGW as fact. plus they could use their considerable fortune on more practical ways of solving real environmental problems.
30
The notion of wind and solar being renewable engergies is laughable. They are not renewable. They are supplemental. They are not dispatchable.
For every undepenable wind or solar facility, there must be a dependable fossil or nuclear facility to do the heavy lifting. Thus, why pay for only one dependable form of energy when a second undependable form of energy can be added to double the generating cost?
Proponents of all these “renewable energy” schemes should be demanded to produce the Energy Returned On Energy Invested Embodied Energy Analysis for any project. The reason proponents cannot produce these analyses is they do not want you to know the truth. The truth is: wind and solar power generating facilities have an EROEI of less than 1.0, demonstrating that these “alternative” energies are – by definition – unsustainable.
20
Reality at work:
http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Prof%20Mike%20Kelly%20-%20FENand%20ER.pdf
or
Why Do Non-technical Advocates Hate Engineers/Applied Scientists ?
The latter is not a silly question, or at least has non-trivial implications. When did the technically-illiterate MSM ever publish information such as is in Kelly’s paper ? Why are such data excluded from the meeja ?
I know the answers are obvious
30
ianl8888,
thanks for that link.
Tony.
00
When I read what is at that link, why am I reminded of this Post of mine from April of 2009.
Salazar’s Wind Power: First Open Mouth, Then Change Feet
Tony.
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A useful charts on proposed coal-fired plants referenced in that presentation via Tom Nelson/Tallbloke.
Two points of the Summary Conclusions on p36:
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Joanne actually posted this same diagram of proposed new Worldwide coal fired power plants back in February of 2013 at this following link to the Post.
Who actually took notice of the Kyoto Protocol? Coal fired plants going up everywhere.
Tony.
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Ah… I bow to your superior memory.
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***google – finance this, & help develop Pakistan, reduce poverty, etc!
23 Nov: Pakistan Tribune: Energy crisis: Pakistan looking to form coal supply chain
KARACHI: Pakistan has started work on establishing a coal supply chain for various power plants in an attempt to address the country’s electricity shortage and reduce the reliance on expensive furnace oil, said an industry official on Saturday.
Coal, in the millions of tons, would have to be imported for power plants, which the government has been pushing investors to build in Punjab and other parts of the country.
***But difficulties in arranging huge amounts of loans and regulatory issues have delayed the start of work by at least a year.
“I don’t know how long it takes but the fact is that circumstances require the addition of at least 10,000 MW based on coal,” said Aasim Siddiqui, managing director at the Marine Group of Companies, in a meeting with a group of journalists.
Marine Group is building a 12-million-tons a year terminal at Port Qasim to handle coal imports. It is also hoping to get into the business of transporting coal through rail.
But he said that Pakistan Railways has already issued a tender for purchase of 50 locomotives, powerful enough to move large shipments of coal.
Pak-China Economic Corridor
Siddiqui, who is also the All Pakistan Shipping Association (APSA) chairman, sees 7 million more containers passing through Pakistani ports once China starts using Gwadar port and road link via its neighbour…
“Imagine the economic activity this amount of cargo will generate. Entire cities will prop up along the routes — there will be hotels, restaurants and petrol pumps. Cargo villages and other affiliated industries will come up,” he said.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/795640/energy-crisis-pakistan-looking-to-form-coal-supply-chain/
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sigh …
Without releasing information I am under contractual obligation to keep out of the public domain, in 2008 I did a due diligence project in Pakistan, in the westernmost province of Balichostan (capital Quetta) for the supply of suitable thermal coal for a proposed 1GWh power station
1) the few coal deposits in that region are of very thin, steeply-dipping and dirty (high ash) seams. Mining methods are primitive and dangerous. No hope at all of ramping up to suitable guaranteed tonnes/pa. In any case, we (myself and an engineer) were accompanied at all times by two guards armed with AK47’s
2) infrastructure is almost stone-age. The roads are eroded to the point of being impassible and are anyway completely snow-bound in the northern region during the longish winter. Rail is non-existent
3) there are large tonnages of peat rank seams in the Thar desert (Punjab region). The infrastructure need is completely daunting, but even worse is that the strata overlying these dirty seams is so soft and unconsolidated that even exploratory drill holes cannot be kept open, let alone high walls or drifts/adits. And the security issue is even worse
4) we were introduced to the provincial Director of Mining, who apparently hoped we could suggest ways to solve his problems (ie. he was keen enough, but had no clue against overwhelming odds). But even his own geologists put up brick walls – they fought persistently to keep us from even viewing the drill core – it is THEIR information, thank you, and they intend it to stay that way
From my experience, Pakistan is a semi-failed state. Trying to build a reliable, affordable power grid across the country is a very long, dangerous nightmare
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in other words, China will be using more and more coal for decades to come!
21 Nov: Bloomberg: China Needs 1,000 Nuclear Reactors to Fulfill Its Climate Pledge
by Bloomberg News
China, which does nothing in small doses, will need about 1,000 nuclear reactors, 500,000 wind turbines or 50,000 solar farms as it takes up the fight against climate change…
The pledge would require China to produce either 67 times more nuclear energy than the country is forecast to have at the end of 2014, 30 times more solar or nine times more wind power. That almost equals the non-fossil fuel energy of the entire U.S. generating capacity today. China’s program holds the potential of producing vast riches for nuclear, solar and wind companies that get in on the action…
China has already run into difficulty managing its renewables. About 11 percent of wind capacity sat unused last year because of grid constraints, with the rate rising to more than 20 percent in the northern provinces of Jilin and Gansu, according to the China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute…
For China to succeed, it will have to install the clean energy equivalent of Spain’s entire generating capacity each year until 2030, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data. It has achieved that only once — last year…
Electricity demand will rise 46 percent by 2020 and double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. China currently depends on coal for two-thirds of its energy, more than any other Group of 20 country except South Africa.
The shift to renewables stands to benefit nuclear reactor makers including General Electric Co. and Areva SA, along with wind turbine manufacturers led by Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. and Vestas Wind Systems A/S…
In all, China will spend $4.6 trillion upgrading its power industry by 2040. Nuclear and renewables alone will garner $1.77 trillion in new investment, taking 79 percent of all the funding for power plants built in China, the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook on Nov. 12. Fossil fuels get the remaining share…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/latest-china-revolution-seeks-great-leap-for-clean-energy.html
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more wishful thinking than magical thought:
21 Nov: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: The Magical Thought That’s Assumed in Climate Studies
At the rate we’re going, the budget may burn up by the 2040s. Now, in finance, the notion of a budget deficit make sense. When someone overspends, he pays the money back at a later date. Ecological deficits make less sense. How do you pay the ground back in carbon minerals once they’ve been vaporized and are hanging in the atmosphere?
Here’s what’s weird, what the Emissions Gap report calls out. It has to do with these “carbon deficits” that result. We’re burning through so much of the budget today that in “safe” projections of the 2070s and 2080s, greenhouse gas emissions must go negative for the climate to stay safe. Smokestacks will have to start inhaling rather than exhaling…
Many climate projections “routinely assume” that pollution will have to run backwards, according to the UNEP…
Whenever anyone starts talking about negative emissions, “the feasibility of these assumptions still needs to be explored,” the UNEP writes.
That “feasibility” phrase seems like a charitable euphemism to suggest that a key tool in fighting climate change is still magical thinking, and that the dominant, de facto world policy on climate change is to hope that it won’t get as bad as scientists think it will.
There’s still some time to change that. China today announced it would cap its coal use in 2020, a dramatic admission unthinkable even months ago…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-20/the-magical-thought-that-s-assumed-in-climate-studies.html
21 Nov: Bloomberg: Louise Downing: U.K. Green Bank Invests in 110 Million-Pound Wood-to-Power Plant
The U.K. Green Investment will invest in a 110 million-pound ($172 million) plant to generate power and heat from waste wood in the country’s northwest.
The bank will provide 16.9 million pounds of loans and 13.2 million pounds in equity via a fund managed by Foresight LLP, it said today in an e-mailed statement. The plant will have 20 megawatts of power capacity and 7.8 megawatts of heat…
“This investment in one of the largest green power plants in the U.K. will create more than 200 local jobs, cut greenhouse gas emissions and generate enough renewable energy to power 35,000 homes a year,” Business Secretary Vince Cable said in the statement…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/u-k-green-bank-invests-in-110-million-pound-wood-to-power-plant.html
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Could it be that Google missed Climategate?
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I posed a question on Judith Curry’s blog the other day, based on something that Phil Jones of East Anglia said a while back:
Considering that there is no statistically significant difference between the warming rates of these four periods, where then is the “signature” for CO2 forcing?
No answers.
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Oh, they found the signature but it turned out to be a forgery.
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I have yet to see a warmist attempt to answer this question, which to me seems to be the first thing to ask before postulating a “forcing” from CO2.
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I read the full story here originally
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
which was posted on Facebook by the most fervent “warmist” I know.
I posted back as follows “While some of the statement in here are in dispute, such as the life of CO2 in the carbon cycle and the cataclysmic predictions, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the rest. The article argues for a more useful distribution of energy R and D, for reforestation, (good work Tony), for carbon sequestration initiatives (are you listening Christine Milne), against carbon taxes (good work Tony) and for encouraging industry into the use of cleaner fuels by way of incentives. Maybe I am just reading the article with my own filters on, but on the whole it would seem that the more pragmatic approach being taken by the current government is very much in line with what is being promoted here.
This was his considered reply “Only you XXX could be so deluded as to write that with a straight face. Part of me thinks you are just shit stirring.”
When I suggested he re-read it with an open mind he replied”
You saying “open minded” proves it IS delusion not shit-stirring. The article is about how you approach research to develop radical solutions, not about any specific solution itself. And the entire background is that we are massively unprepared for the world beyond 2050, largely because of people like you who will pretend a thing doesn’t exist rather than have to change their mind.” Rather than give up I reposted in part…..” they are saying even if all the renewables were advanced and adopted in their most optimistic forecast, it would make little difference. (So a massive carbon tax achieved nothing and only wrecked local industry while the same industry was exported offshore to countries with lower standards) They instead say more has to be done about carbon sequestration, (The area Christine Milne objected to) and that the only proven way at present is reforestation. (The area promoted by Tony Abbott) They also suggest more needs to be invested in existing non fossil fuel methods of energy production. (Say dams and nuclear. Both opposed by the greens) They also suggest investment in novel solutions. I read the article thoroughly and I found it instructive. You are so close minded on the subject you don’t afford others the courtesy of being open minded. Reread it. I am no fan of Hansen’s models they use, or their dire predictions, but they say a lot of things that are contrary to the views you post.”
Long post I know but am I wrong in the view that this article acknowledges even those who believe in CAGW are on the totally wrong path?
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21 Nov: Scotsman: Ilona Amos: Wave power firm Pelamis goes into administration
A WORLD-LEADING Scottish wave energy firm is being put into administration after failing to raise sufficient funds to develop its renewable technology.
Pelamis Wave Power (PWP) invented the pioneering “sea snake” energy converter, which uses the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity…
It won inventor Dr Richard Yemm the 2012 Saltire Prize medal for his outstanding contribution to developing the marine renewables sector…
Last year, the firm was awarded a share of the Scottish Government’s £18 million Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund to help bring the sea snake to market…
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/wave-power-firm-pelamis-goes-into-administration-1-3612769
the Portuguese Pelamis wave project failed some years ago, but Click Green has a headline today: “Industry shock as marine energy leader Pelamis to call in the administrators”.
Wikipedia: Agucadoura Wave Farm, Portugal
The farm was designed to use three Pelamis wave energy converters…
The farm was officially opened on 23 September 2008, by the Portuguese Minister of Economy. The wave farm was shut down two months after the official opening in November 2008…
Developed by the Scottish company Pelamis Wave Power…
The project was originally conceived by the Portuguese renewable energy company Enersis, which developed and financed the project and which was subsequently bought by the Australian infrastructure company Babcock & Brown in December 2005. In the last quarter of 2008, Babcock & Brown had its shares suspended and has been in a managed process of selling its assets, including the Agucadoura project. In March 2009, Babcock & Brown went into voluntary administration…
In November 2008, the Pelamis machines were brought back to harbor at Leixoes due to a technical problem with some of the bearings for which a solution has been found. However, the machines are likely to remain off-line until a new partner is found to take over Babcock & Brown’s 77% share in the project. This seems unlikely, because according to Pelamis “those machines are sub-optimal” and the owner is trying to sell them.
Pelamis is now focusing its efforts on the new P2 machine, which is being tested in Orkney in Scotland since 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agu%C3%A7adoura_Wave_Farm
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22 Nov: Herald Scotland: Jobs threat as cash troubles sink wave firm
A WORLD-leading renewables firm that has received more than £15 million of funding from the Scottish Government has entered administration, placing 56 jobs at risk…
Hailed for its innovation by Alex Salmond when he was First Minister, the firm also supplied and commissioned the world’s first multiple machine wave farm.
Scottish Enterprise has given £12.9m to Pelamis since 1998 in the form of grants, equity and loans, while the company has also received £2.47m from the Government’s Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund…
The firm has received significant private sector investment of about £70m, as well as additional funding of £4.89m from the UK Government’s Marine Renewables Proving Fund…
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/jobs-threat-as-cash-troubles-sink-wave-firm.25935147
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Seems these blokes didn’t tell anyone at Google it wasn’t going to work.
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dutch-windmills-to-power-googles.html?m=1
“(Google had signed) a new long-term agreement signed this week with Dutch power company Eneco … our Eemshaven datacenter will be 100% powered by renewable energy from its first day of operation, scheduled for the first half of 2016. We’ve agreed to buy the entire output of a new Eneco windfarm”
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I just googled “Google’s RE<C program "
strangely enough , lots of how we are going to provide cleaner energy than,,,blah blah , lots of we at google support blah blah , nothing about ignominious failure .are you sure your story is correct , if it is not on google ,,, shhhuuuuurely!
For the benefit of the Americans here , this is called Irony.
PS I love America and Americans.
PPS Why has Obama not been impeached?
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I just googled “Google’s RE<C program "
strangely enough , lots of how we are going to provide cleaner energy than,,,blah blah , lots of we at google support blah blah , nothing about ignominious failure .are you sure your story is correct , if it is not on google ,,, shhhuuuuurely!
For the benefit of the Americans here , this is called Irony.
PS I love America and Americans.
PPS Why has Obama not been impeached?
PPS Karkinos alternate self number ,,dunno ,must be 10 at least now, banned at the Guardian , Cook is soooooooooooo sensitive , although obviously not to temperature.
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I can’t really see how this ‘admission’ that the renewables wern’t cutting the mustard changes the AGW alarmist agenda. Won’t the attention now just turn to collecting money to make these coal fired stations ‘clean’? Surely the huge installed base as well as the rapid deployment of more coal fired stations is a far greater marketing vehicle for the AGW agenda than the piddly amount of wind and solar to date? Enviro Minister Hunt has been banging on about spending taxpayer billions on ‘cleaning up coal’ and talks about crazy notions like collecting the CO2 from coal fired stations and re-sequestering it underground. How much money can we blow on such crazy notions? Potentially a lot more than we have wasted already on the solar and wind. Is Hunt secretly a Lefty too? Was this whole wind solar fantasy all just part of the bigger plan to dupe us into wanting to ‘clean up’ coal?
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