Greens destroy wilderness one innumerate fantasy at a time. If only they had enough fossil fuels underground they might have saved this forest.
A solar wilderness. Tiahang Mountain Solar plant.
“Industrial solar farms require 300-400 times more land than natural gas or nuclear plants” — — Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
Dystopia await all those who think solar power is free
…
Solar panels on Taihang Mountain have a theoretical capacity of 20MW
“It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 tons annually replacing 7,500 tons of coal each year. “
Since China consumes 4,319,921,826 tons of coal each year, that’s one plant down, and only 575,145 more to build…
Not only China is building so many coal fired power stations to more than negate such insane ugliness, what about the cost, short and long term, plus the massive disposal problems when it comes time to replace them?
320
Wild terrain for the job. I think somebody is pulling somebody’s leg. Some of those panels will be putting in time just about edge on to the sun.
130
I worked out one day that to power australia on solar you would need 10% of Australias total surface area covered in panels, using industry accepted methodology for calculating land use by panels.
Clearly, not feasible, but common sense doesnt figure in the eco lunacy….
190
I wonder then how much land for wind turbines is needed to supply full capacity for the country when the suns not shining, you know the other 2/3 rds of the day?
60
When viewed with commonsense the whole renewables theory can be summed with one or two well known cliches.. they’re farting against thunder or they’re pissing in the wind.
Common sense tells one to get going & build HELE or Nuclear Power plants.
What technology can we use to generate common sense. That’s the big question!!
50
It could be worse. Solar is still less land hungry than wind. A solar farm needs only 2 to 3 hectares for each Megawatt of capacity, whereas a windfarm needs 24 hectares.
150
Ken have you got a link for the S & W hectare comparisons?
60
“A solar farm needs only 2 to 3 hectares for each Megawatt of capacity”
That’s plated capacity, so multiple by ????…only when the sun shines Ken.
60
To run Australia solely on ruinables, we would have to literally cover the whole country in solar panels, wind turbines and concrete and Ayers rock size lithium batteries.
110
Too right. But try and tell that to people who are told ( misinformation) that a wind farm array of 5 hectares can power the State of NSW – plus battery storage ( naturally) and that there is no such thing as base load power. Man pours himself another beer..
110
Capital Hill NSW
67 Wind Turbines combined Nameplate Capacity 140 MW.
Capacity Factor AEMO 30% to 35% range.
Land Area 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres).
Scheduled for closure soon Liddell coal fired Power Station Nameplate Capacity 500 MW x 4 generator units = 2,000 MW Nameplate Capacity, Capacity Factor above 90% subject to repairs and maintenance, and forced generator output reductions when the wind is blowing, and the sun is shining.
Liddell to be replaced by a much smaller gas fired Power Station and a big storage battery.
The State Government backed transition to unreliable energy continues despite Federal Government capping subsidies with an end date of 2030, trying to get State required approvals for at least more gas fired Power Stations and a new coal fired Power Station for North Queensland.
Our nation is handicapped by Federation of States powers and responsibilities of States and their Local Councils regulations and planning approvals, and Greens Land & Environment Court challenges when Development Applications are approved. And that includes mining, dams and other projects.
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Or have a fraction of the population….
10
Not quite. If we used just wind, we would need an extra 118,600 sq. km. to meet our current domestic energy consumption, and 6% of our land area to replace our energy production.
See https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2022/01/16/the-challenge-ahead-for-renewables-part-3/
and https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2022/01/13/the-challenge-ahead-for-renewables-part-2/
and https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/the-challenge-ahead-for-renewables-part-1/
10
Solar farms work at 11% of nameplate capacity in the UK, I believe it is around 15%/20% in Australia . To that land area must be added battery storage, cabling, pylons and of course the unfortunate tendency not to produce power at night. There is a shortage of the raw materials so quite where all the rare earths will come from for projects worldwide I don’t know.
40
All in all not a good move to convert to Solar farms… A landscape destroyer also.
30
Wyoming is a very windy place. The last three wind farms approved here have required about 150 square miles of semi-arid prairie and mountains. From the advertized name plate rating they need about 80 acres per 1MW of nameplate — not capacity, but nameplate.
Wyoming currently supplies about 10% of U.S. total energy consumption. To replace it all with wind at 80 acres per 1MW, and assuming about 35% capacity factor, would require 120% of Wyoming.
30
Sorry, been busy.
Solar: https://www.pivotenergy.net/blog/solar-farm-land-requirements
Wind: https://ldcinfrastructure.com.au/wind-energy-lease-explained/
00
This monstrosity is at around 38ºN, and look at the panel orientation.. all over the place.
An exercise in inefficiency.
This is a sculpture, not much else.
Also wondering how the massive increase in run-off will effect the region.
150
Never have been a fan of modern art.
70
The run-off will also affect the panels themselves as the plants beneath them die through lack of sunlight and their root systems stop binding the soil and the rain washes it way as the panels dip and slide down the hill. Then the additional problem becomes where to put all these busted panels that can’t be recycled
90
I hope the region doesn’t get hail storms 😉
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/47/3/2007jamc1603.1.xml
“There are some relatively isolated high hail frequency areas associated with isolated mountains over the eastern and southeastern plains of China. For example, the mean annual hail frequency for the Taishan Mountain and Wuyi Mountain is more than 1 day yr−1.”
20
and….
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vUzqCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=Taihang+Mountain+hail+storm&ots=YqSUkSLbpG&sig=ACfU3U1h29k_usqcJ-uV1poIpouAQnUv8A&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Taihang%20Mountain%20hail%20storm&f=false
00
So negative.
🙂 🙂
00
They made a fortune from offering the West a small charge to dispose of their faulty panels.
‘Junk Art’
Lucky there isn’t lightning, hail or snow to obstruct such a work of art.
30
You are going off name plate, a couple of hours in the middle of the day in the middle of summer, 15% average actual. 21 hectares per Meg.
Wind has a 30% average.
Both are massive virtue signalling monuments, built by the tax payer, pushed by the tax takers.
130
It’s rare to find a “green” who genuinely cares for the environment, or even one who actually goes into the wilderness to bushwalk (hike) or camp, etc.. Any you certainly never see them as volunteers doing rubbish clean up or weeding of invasive species.
290
They are absolutely clueless David. Supposedly well educated but totally absorbed in themselves and their attempts at high end virtuouness. Talk to your IT specialist or academic about nature and the practicalities of life and you get this wall eyed look.
110
Former Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown is one, after all he opposes a planned wind turbine installation and business venture on the hills near his property in Tasmania.
sarc.
50
Of course none of these TOXIC S & W fantasies will make the slightest difference to temps or climate by 2050 or 2100 at all.
And China has told us that they might start to think about reducing co2 emissions by 2060 and India has set their their date at 2070.
AGAIN here’s the only REAL DATA you need to understand about co2 emissions since 1970. Yet it seems this is far too difficult for the MSM + pollies + so called scientists etc all around the world. Unbelievable but true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#/media/File:World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png
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Anyone else notice the trees growing in between the panels and above the height of the panels ?
100
It has got to be a photoshop job, and a poor one at that.
40
See my link below for actual footage of the area. Those photos above have a very peculiar depth of field. Anyway fools are easily fooled.
09
Images taken in winter from a distance fool those who want to be fooled.
40
See my link further down as to what the Tiahang Mountain really look like..
They are not the dry brown ga’s video portrays.
30
especially by links
40
Do a search for Taihang Shan solar system. From the many links, going back to 2018, it seems to be a genuine system.
40
Look at this video for more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQxp9ekPe0
20
And the original report in December 2018: http://chinaplus.cri.cn/photo/china/18/20181218/224696_1.html
20
Exactly what I was thinking when I saw that photo. How on earth could you build that in those Mountains. That photo looks like the back of a giant armadillo. And I thought that this year was the year of the Tiger………………………
80
Apparently plant mass totals 450Gt of carbon. And according to NASA and the CSIRO, the greening of the earth is about 15% since 1980, so 0.15*450/40 or 1.7Gt per year.
Firstly, why isn’t CO2 going down? Please explain.
Then as the planet is obviously pulling CO2 down by growing a massive 1,700,000,000 tons of trees a year, what’s 20,000 tons from solar panels? Absurd. Irrelevant. Pointless.
The unproven idea that CO2 is in some sort of nett sum game is clearly busted. There is only one huge sink, a sink which is also a source. The vast oceans which cover 3/4 of the planet to a depth of 3.2km. And 98% of all free CO2 is dissolved. Heat the surface and CO2 goes up and the world of plants booms. It’s as transparently obvious as the world is round when you stand on a cliff and see the curve and watch the tall boats disappear over the edge.
The UN/IPCC/EU/CCP have seized on the hugely emotional environmental movement to get emotional children topple Western democracies. Why else would Grump Greta get to address the US Congress, Davos, and much more. A barely educated child. But there is no great carbon cycle in the sky. It’s simple physical chemistry. Heat the ocean and CO2 goes up, not down.
And how has anyone explained that CO2 significantly heats the ocean surface when it cannot heat the air. January 1980 and 2021 had identical temperatures. How is that heating the vast oceans?
220
The big lie is obvious when you look at the department of catastrophe of NASA. If you look at the graph, you will see all the world’s CO2 in the ‘deep ocean’. Trapped forever. Who says?
Now pour a glass of soda/lemonade/beer/champagne and notice. All the bubbles come from the bottom. Warm beer goes flat. It does not absorb CO2.
Or you can believe that CO2 is heating the oceans and that heat is destroying the Great Barrier Reef. Just explain how?
180
Give me 1 billion Australian dollars and I’ll explain how 🙂
110
“Or you can believe that CO2 is heating the oceans and that heat is destroying the Great Barrier Reef. Just explain how?”
Because Communism.
40
I think CO2 is naturally rising because of thermal lag in the ocean causing delayed heating and subsequent release of CO2 from the oceans due to the warming after the Little Ice Age.
60
At 1400x the heat capacity of the air, the oceans have not changed temperature, except at the top. You cannot heat the bottom of the ocean. Or cool it. However our human experience only concerns the top few meters, not the kilometers below. What is changing is in the oscillations of this gigantic reservoir of millions of years of solar energy, the top insulating the bottom completely. These oscillations are lateral and vertical, the currents we know well.
And consider that the pushers of man made Global Warming which is not happening blame every problem on ocean currents. Mainly the Pacific which covers half the planet to a depth of up to 7km. And they call the surface effects of these currents El Nino or La Nina. Plus we know the oscillations as the PDO, Pacific Decadal Oscialltion.
Amazingly, as far as I know, the major world ocean currents which control all climates including the Humboldt, the Indian Dipole, the Gulf Stream, the PDO and AMO and many more are not in the vaunted infallible Climate models. Why? Because of the implicit assumption that only man controls the weather, not millions of years of ocean heat capture.
So we also get these mad apocalypse ideas. What if the man made CO2 driven Global Warming causes changes in the oceans which move the Gulf Stream? This has the same scientific basis as zombie horror movies.
And CO2 is rising steadily with constant seasonal temperature oscillations on top of the actual steady rise of ocean surface temperatures as predicted as a combination of solar activity and known AMO/PDO oscillations. And that warming increases CO2. What has happened in the last 150 years in terms of the industrial revolution has had no discernible impact on the graph of CO2 over time. And one proof of the truth that (surface ocean) warming increases CO2 and nothing else changes CO2 is the graph of CO2.
40
Or put simply, CO2, air temperature in general has nothing to do with ocean temperature. Really, +1C in air temperature is heating the oceans significantly? Really?
Even in the glaciers the temperatures at depth are unchanged for all time. You cannot reach the depths without warming everything on the way. But unlike glaciers, the water in the oceans is highly mobile, dragged around by centripetal and gravitational forces in great swirling motions and great upwellings, sinking and collisions with land and shallow water.
What is odd is that any scientist would consider they understood the climate perfectly when they cannot predict most of the significant features like Monsoons, El Nino, La Nina. And the idea that they cannot get the immediate weather right because of ocean variations has to make you conclude they have no hope at all of getting long term predictions right.
Climate is not weather. But what is climate without weather?
80
David, everyone ignores geothermal heat. CO2 rises continuously from fissures, chimneys etc out of the ocean floor. In some areas these are diving attractions , divers call them soda streams .
Furthermore, there are 5 monitored inactive terrestrial volcanoes which put out megatons of CO2 annually, coming from the core not from the atmosphere.
In the 1950’s the Russians put forward a hypothesis that hydrocarbons were a waste product created by fusion within the core. This gradually moves through cracks and crevices until it reaches the surface .
The Gulf of Mexico bubbles with methane rising from the ocean floor, a favourite spot with divers.
The extraordinary thing is, fish have a particular bacteria growing on their gills which prevents the methane from disrupting the ability of fish to breathe in water.
30
The proponents of the IPCC actually argue without any evidence that CO2 in the deep oceans never rises to the surface, that it takes thousands of years. So they ignore the 98% of all CO2 circulating at high pressure in the depths. But what every expert chasing petrochemicals in the ocean knows is that this core unproven idea that CO2 does not rise is completely wrong.
30
Again here’s the latest co2 levels from NOAA using Mauna Loa data and now nearly 417 ppm.
You can click for the decadal trends as well at this link.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/mlo.html
40
Yup! I can definitely see the drop in CO2 when Covid hit and humans stopped producing it.
All those graphs show is that every solar panel & wind farm has been a complete waste of money!
70
Neville >”Again here’s the latest co2 levels from NOAA using Mauna Loa data and now nearly 417 ppm”
Clearly from those graphs any anthro component is negligible – co2 levels are naturally driven.
Why? Covid lockdowns, fleets of aircraft mothballed, streets devoid of cars, effectively the co2 reductions demanded, none of which made any discernable change in the inexorable rise of co2 levels.
Then there’s the IPCC’s scientific fraud – attribution (actually speculation) of ocean heat rise to GHG sourced “air-sea fluxes”. Given ocean heat represents 93% of observed energy increase (atm a negligible 1%) the IPCC must claim ocean heat otherwise their GHG radiative forcing theory is stone cold dead.
Scientific fraud because:
1. The IPCC’s own surface energy budgets show no such terrestrial IR-C (as distinct from solar IR-A/B) “air-sea fluxes”. Net surface IR-C is a cooling flux i.e. outgoing longwave infrared radiation (OLR)
2. The IPCC has no physical evidence whatsoever of these speculated worldwide fluxes.
3. The microphysics of ocean surface radiation-matter interaction precludes IR-C being an ocean warming agent. Solar IR-A/B heats the ocean in the tropics. The IPCC neglects to defer to the body of optics and oceanography literature that has been available for decades.
4. The IPCC simply “imputes” excess energy (ZetaJoules) that climate models generate at TOA to the ocean, thereby bypassing their surface energy budgets – because, well, where else can they sink their excess energy to reconcile with observations?
Meanwhile the latest surface temperatures are not responding to the IPCC’s theoretical GHG “forcing”. A weak sun the likely driver and the nemesis of the IPCC’s house of cards.
40
Part of the problem with the unreliables is that most of the Sheeple have no clue about the relative scale of the size of apparatus required to produce a certain amount of power.
All that environmental destruction with solar panels as shown above, to produce a mere 20MW peak nameplate power but only for a few hours a day when the sun is at maximum intensity and only when the sun is actually out.
Similarly for windmills which often require the destruction of trees and create a huge visual eyesore plus shadow flicker and infrasound to annoy local inhabitants plus destruction of wildlife and require a vast number of units to produce a small amount of expensive energy of wildly variable output. The eletricity produced is essentially useless but for the fact it enables the harvest of subsidies for its owners, courtesy of high power bills for poor people
A proper power station that uses coal, gas or nuclear power occupies just a few tens of acres or hectares for the power plant plus in the case of the coal plant it may have an associated open cut coal mine of hundreds of acres or hectares.
But the proper power station will consistently and cheaply and reliably produce perhaps 1000MW to 2000MW. They are usually in a remote area and invisible to most people and have little visual impact or annoyance to neighbours and don’t kill local wildlife.
120
“All that environmental destruction”
Hey, lighten up… That is a thing of beauty to the greenies… ! 😉
What else would you use pristine wilderness for. !
Hills of Vermont.. also cheered on by the environmentalists
60
My brother is having his own little solar adventure, as he has discovered that his 6kW solar system, some 6 years old, has only ever been generating circa 2.5kW on a clear sunny day. Solar experts still scratching their respective heads, after wasting lots of time. Different inverter did not fix it, and voltage and short circuit current tests on the panels did not reveal much. Present excuse is that all the panels are defective, and he is now waiting on a warranty claim.
Around the same time , I bought a 9kW diesel Genset ( made in China ). After fixing the multiple issues it had from new ( rusting, leaks and poor electrics ) it now behaves beautifully. Works night or day at the press of a button. I love the smell of fossil fuels in the morning.
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Be aware that there are a lot of fake or over-rated panels out there.
I recently bought a “200W” panel for my shed but worked out it was really 100W.
A simple rough calculation is to take the area of the panels in m^2 and multiply it by about 1100W/m^2 for solar irradiance then multiply it by typical panel efficiency of 17% (0.17).
That will tell you (roughly) if panels have enough area to produce the claimed power.
100
Sounds like there is something wrong. I’m currently seeing more than 3.8kW from my 5.2 solar system, and on some days around 4.2kW.
10
I worked briefly at Wallerawang Power Station near Lithgow in the mid ’80s. At the time there were a large number of coal trucks coming in every day. I asked about it and was told that the conveyor belt had broken down so they had to truck the coal in. The figure they gave me stuck with me — 7000 tons of coal per day.
So they just have to build 300 or so of these solar farms to replace one of NSW’s smaller power stations. And build them again in a decade or two when the panels expire.
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Correct Robert and don’t forget that you have to replace this TOXIC mess every 15 to 20 years FOREVER and the entire unreliable disaster then ends up in landfill, FOREVER.
So much for their so called CLEAN, GREEN energy. And yet people believe this lunacy. And ditto for their TOXIC super expensive EV disasters.
And yet the religious fanatics still believe they are saving the planet?
130
And with a price tag of $27.6 million so far, the 20,000 tons of carbons saved in one-year, it costs a minimum of $1340/ton and with a potential 15 year life, that is almost $100 per ton. That a pretty high carbon price. The Chinese would likely not pay that but they could probably convince western governments to fork over that kind of cash.
50
They won’t need to be great salesmen either; Morrison gave $1000,000,000 to the fraudsters “saving” the GBR. He must have been away when Peter Ridd was being sacked for telling the truth. He could have won many Brownie points by taking the Bill out of the ABC’s Bill. After all the ABC is very worried about the GBR and I am sure would love to have helped out if asked.
70
On Sky News Professor Peter Rudd was recently asked about that spread over nine years donation for the GBR and why is it needed.
He said it keeps thousands of people in employment related to GBR research and related work, but emphasised that really the payment is blackmail paid to discourage UNESCO discrediting the GBR and impacting adversely on tourism in Queensland and the rest of Australia from foreign visitors who might decide against visiting Australia and the GBR if world heritage status was removed or degraded.
I noticed days ago a threat to the NSW State Government based on UNESCO works heritage potential loss if a planned project to raise the main Sydney water supply capacity at Warragambah Dam proceeds. A while ago when the new Badgerys Creek International Airport construction start was announced, Western Sydney, another world heritage rating threat was issued if UNESCO was not consulted about flight paths for aircraft.
Professor Ridd knows what is going on, we blame our governments and politicians but rarely do we get to know about the international politics involved, and being about 2% of the global economy and a relatively small population Australia is vulnerable to trade sanctions, consider the position of China right now, and other pressures from the global community via UN, G20 Meetings/G7 as invited guests, allies with woke leaders like UK and US and more.
40
For the information of people who wonder about the influence of the UN, soon after it was established after WW2 Australian Labor (Communist Faction) Attorney General Evatt created the plan for the UN to get member nations to sign as many treaties and agreements as possible that could be used by compliant governments to get around constitutions and constitutional laws.
For example, the 1975 Lima Protocol Whitlam Labor signed agreeing to the gradual transfer of most manufacturing industry to developing nations, like China.
Another example, the circa 1990s UN Agenda 21 – Sustainability signed by Keating Labor with many impositions I call economic vandalism, check it out.
Now the WEF arm of the globalist octopus wants to change the economic model, as UN Official Christiana Figureres admitted was the major purpose of climate hoax, she admitted in October 2015 just before the IPCC Paris Conference, to change the “capitalist system” – free enterprise system that has delivered economic prosperity to developed nations, what made America a world leading wealthy nation, and Australia a wealthy nation and many others. I posted the video link address to WEF Davos Conference January 2022, he rejected the new economic leftist model and made it clear that Australia will continue to drive free enterprise and businesses.
30
And you will need to source the materials needed to make the new panels, even if you can reprocess the metal from the basic frames which itself will need energy.
So how much of a panel’s energy production is needed to reproduce itself?
Is it a month’s worth, or a year or longer out of a 20 year panel’s life?
20
This is what greenies and their mentally devoid schemes are good at..
… destroying wilderness that they once fought so hard to preserve.
https://stopthesethings.com/2021/05/01/black-forests-bleak-future-german-wilderness-wiped-out-to-make-way-for-1000-wind-turbines/
https://stopthesethings.com/2022/01/23/getting-away-with-green-murder-wind-industry-destroying-vast-tracts-of-australian-wilderness/
https://www.rainforestreserves.org.au/news/188-oppose-the-chalumbin-wind-farm-development-proposal
Good thing the Tarkine isn’t that windy .. or it would be next…
http://www.windturbinewildlifehell.org/site/the-destruction-of-the-environment/
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In Orwellian Newspeak the destruction of wilderness is what true environmentalism is all about.
We conservatives who value wilderness will be considered the real environmental vandals.
“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.”
80
The Tarkine appeafrs to be on its way out. Gum trees are spreading up through the Tarkine from the south. Quite a few years ago, I was there and saw that the gum trees, already prolific on the south side of the Pieman River, had crossed the river and established themselves on its north bank. The gum trees bring fire, and with each fire their presence rachets up. Without a big campaign to remove the gum trees, the Tarkine may be doomed.
30
And the plants are already fighting back (image taken in 2018)
https://i.postimg.cc/k4DgM2Xf/Plants-fighting-back.jpg
That means plenty of “green jobs” for the local peasants, cutting back the scrub and tree growth from the solar panels.
40
To provide a reality check, China mines around 12,000,000 tonnes of coal PER DAY.
A claimed saving of 7,500 tonnes per year or 20 tonnes per day for this solar virtue signaling farm represents just 0.00017% of that.
How much more land does China have left to cover in solar panels?
100
That is environmental crime on an industrial scale.
100
It’s happening here to albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. Regardless of that it’s an environmental crime on an industrial scale here too, especially when we include wind farms. Yet our governments are aiding and abetting in said crime. Add that to the list of crimes they are perpetrating. If they were a company, the executive offices would all be serving lengthy prison sentences by now. It’s pretty obvious that governments have a licence to perform a lot of crimes. James Bond would be envious.
20
Coal varies in calorific value but a typical figure I have seen is that to produce 1MW of power continuously for 1 year, so 1MW-year, requires 3750 tonnes of coal for a proper power plant (taking into account efficiency factors, not the actual energy content of the coal).
So the claimed saving of 7500 tonnes of coal for this solar power “thing” (I won’t call it a power plant) represents an equivalent saving of a 2MW real coal power plant.
Of course, due to the wildly varying output of the solar thing, it is not useful like a real power plant.
70
Note that the solar thing described in this article is a claimed “20MW” but if the claimed saving of 7500 tonnes of coal per year is real then it means the real (average) output is 2MW, only 10% of nameplate. in fact, it is probably worse than that because they probably lied about the coal saving.
That’s typical of the huge exaggeration in the unreliables industry.
There ought to be a law against claiming the output of a solar or wind subsidy farm in terms of its nameplate output which bares no connection with reality.
60
Bears not bares.
10
Yes David and the golden rule should be if it doesn’t deliver reliable, BASE-LOAD power it is a clueless waste of time and money.
Jo has estimated spending of 1 to 2 trillion $ a year globally on this so called clean green lunacy and for a very long time.
Unfortunately we’ll probably have a mad Labor, Greens govt after May 2022 and these clueless fools have no doubt they will be saving us from an EXISTENTIAL THREAT.
Then the billions of $ wasted on their religious fanaticism will really push us over the precipice. What a disaster and every dollar wasted on a silly, unreliable, TOXIC fantasy.
90
Not too long ago NASA’s “Earth Observatory Pic of the Day” showed a before and after of a mountain in Spain, showing a solar plant that got built quite quickly. The attached article stated that the solar plant had a nameplate capacity of 500 MW and covered 4 square miles.
I converted 4 square miles to acres (becuz I’m ‘murrican 😉 ) and that came out to be 2760 acres.
I then looked up the average footprint of a 500 MW natural gas plant. I found that an *800* MW plant ranged from as little as 8 acres up to about 50 at maximum, but 30 acres seemed to be the generally accepted “average footprint.”
So… about 92 times more land used for the solar plant for 500MW (nameplate, actually is probably closer to 150 to maybe 200) vs 800 MW of reliable stuff.
Awful.
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146374/the-largest-solar-power-plant-in-europe-for-now
70
I would have thought 4 square miles would also only be of use to an American
30
Is this a trap? 4×640=2560 In science credibility requires being correct.
00
Here’s something to think about…
The Chicomms are not exactly known for their honesty.
So are the panels even real?
Might they be fake and a giant virtue signaling operation to pretend they care about CO2 for the benefit of the gullible Leftists of the West?
It’s like how the British set up inflatable fake tanks in WW2 to fool the enemy.
50
Fake virtue seeking to con the world.
China would never do that 😉
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600×900/p06j7zyr.webp
60
The panels are real.
Taihang Mountain has warmed by 0.3 °C/decade over the past five decades and they are doing this to cool things down.
20
That photograph is Monstrous and the reality of the situation is quite clear and undeniable; its primary purpose is to advertise ChiCom renewable hardware For Sale to the formerly rich West.
The statement of CO2 savings, is like most of this stuff, a deliberate and knowing lie;
“It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 tons annually replacing 7,500 tons of coal each year. “
I am sure that this comparison only applies to the operational estimates with all equipment in place and does not include costs of construction, cost of land, cost of conversion of power to A/C and transmission nor lifespan and associated demolition costs.
CO2 induced global warming is a sham and this ongoing untruth just demonstrates how far we have come along the road to creating and managing a real democracy.
KK
40
Had to do something with the excess panels once things started to slow down.
10
“It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 tons annually replacing 7,500 tons of coal each year. “
But only if it actually replaces coal fired power. In China, renewables don’t replace coal, they’re in addition to coal.
20
Here’s the honest data for those of us who are interested.
Fully evolved Humans were poor and sick for the past 200 K years and life expectancy was under 40 years.
But after Britain’s Industrial REV in 1810 ( pop 1 billion) the world was set on an incredible increase in wealth and health.
Fossil fuels were the trigger that allowed us to increase population to 3.7 billion by 1970 and life exp of 56.4 years.
But today our pop has increased to 7.8 billion (an increase of 4.1 bn in just 50 years) and life exp has increased to 73 years.
Can somebody explain how our climate since 1970 is so dreadful and why we’re supposed to be facing Biden’s EXISTENTIAL THREAT?
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Trees?
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“Trees?”
Once upon a time, before this environmental vandalism… yes there were. !
Even trees now, here they haven’t been chopped down to make way for the panels.
https://joannenova.com.au/wp-content/tiahang-mountain.solar_.jpg
Bow down and worship the greenie destruction, ga.!
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It is so part of being far-left to actually try to defend this sort of environmental destruction.
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Pineapples?
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They haven’t factored clouds into the equation, here are some very interesting papers on the cloud issue. The one on the GBR is a standout for me.
https://notrickszone.com/2022/02/03/2021-the-year-scientists-ascribed-shortwave-modulating-cloud-variability-as-the-driver-of-climate/
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How do you know what they have factored?
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“They” haven’t really isolated any “factors” yet so any discussion or modeling is extremely Premature.
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I should have asked who “they” is.
El G is seemingly privy to the business case or engineers report or something like that, of a Chinese public works. He has access to every document and has read it so thoroughly that he knows what they didn’t include in their thinking before building.
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The people building the construction are unaware that it will become wetter as the planet warms. So low cloud cover should automatically increase.
‘The Taihang Mountains have a typical East Asian Monsoon climate, with an average temperature of 11.4 °C and an average annual precipitation of 456.5 mm. Rainfall shows high seasonal variability, with the highest precipitation being in July (130 mm) and the lowest precipitation in December (10 mm).’ (Science Direct)
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so you know this because you asked them? You just make something up and then drop in a sort-of related link. Whatever rocks your boat.
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No professor, paleo climate history indicates it will become cloudier with global warming.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1695-0
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This is what non-destroyed areas of the Taihang Mts look like.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/28/139246365_13170634151n.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Beijing_Changping_-_local_Taihang_Shan_mts_IMG_6128_Guangou_Scenic_Area.jpg/4032px-Mapcarta.jpg
https://previews.123rf.com/images/ylgw1688/ylgw16881906/ylgw1688190600032/124847730-taihang-people-on-the-cliffs-of-the-taihang-mountains.jpg
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Under the bottom video, Joanne has this in quotes. (my bolding here)
You know, the same amount of coal burnt by a large four Unit coal fired plant of 2000MW+ (with all Units operating) in, umm, ….. a little under NINE HOURS.
A single 660MW Unit at a four Unit plant, running at its operational maximum will burn a tonne of powdered coal every 17 seconds.
Across ONE WHOLE YEAR, That 20MW solar plant will generate an average of 30.7GWH of power.
You know, the same amount of power delivered by that one 660MW Unit in, umm, ….. just under TWO DAYS.
Or, if it’s all four Units in operation, then that coal fired plant will deliver the same power in twelve hours and forty minutes.
Also, no matter what they say, no solar plant, even at the height of maximum power generation at around Midday will reach it’s Nameplate. Australia currently has a total Nameplate of 5965MW for all of its sixty nine Solar Power Plants. On the best cloud free day of MidSummer, the highest total generated power it can reach is a little over 4000MW, so they are hard pressed to reach even 70% of their Nameplate at the Peak for the day.
Oh frabjous day, Solar power will one day real real soon replace all those coal fired power plants.
Yeah! Right!
Tony.
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Do we know if that damn thing is actually plugged in to the Chinese grid? Quite possibly the Chinese just built it to show how virtuous they are.
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Advertising.
https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/who-needs-trees-welcome-to-a-black-glass-wilderness/#comment-2515866
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Good way of avoiding a World Heritage listing.
Destroy the place before it happens.
https://www.worldheritagesite.org/tentative/id/6188
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How much CCS-capacity (also known as trees) has been removed in the process of solar mountain?
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Somehow I can imagine I will be derided for considering both sides of the “argument”.
The Chinese “solution” as published is ridiculous. Or perhaps I should say ill-conceived.
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Aside: I hate ill defined hot link keys.
The idea of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels in the production of electricity (or transportation fuel) is a “desirable goal” but there should be a cost/benefit analysis. Putting solar panels on your roof in Australia is a financial “no brainer” if you have access to the installation funds. Unless your house does not need a roof. Car parking areas in urban areas are another “superb” opportunity. And there are some extremely marginal agricultural lands which with PROPER spacing and single axis tracking will not only produce electrical power but allow for better grazing. And there is no reason not to use the land around a wind generation tower for the same function as before its installation (allowing a small amount of land will be used for roads and the tower).
The creation of urban heat sinks (high rise concrete buildings and hot mix surfaced roads) do seem to be missing from the discussions, though a (large?) percentage of green leaning urban people have mentioned they could not live in the “country” because of the absence of social conveniences.
Will renewable energy solve 100% of our future needs? Well I would suggest we need a better “path” to get from here/now to there/then. There is no magic in infrastructure building. Western Australia in setting aside a domestic reservation of natural gas has created a much better path than is available in the eastern Australian states. But is there the political will to shut down the coal fired plants with their associated particulate pollution (and perhaps politically necessary employments).
I may not live long enough to see the outcome.
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As Prince Charles once said;
” Whatever that means”.
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Dr Spencer shows a sharp drop in temp during January (this year).
https://electroverse.net/global-cooling-is-undeniable/
It’s starting sooner than I thought it woukd ,,,
Of course the Warmist Half Wits can’t tolerate it. Gee, isn’t life tuff when you’re Stupid?
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I find it utterly fascinating that the environmentalists aren’t adamantly opposed to this.
Think for a moment about the biodiversity that lived in the canopy where the panels now exist. Plants denied access to sunlight in the under canopy (fauna) and frankly, from the images, the overall canopy itself. It has radically altered the environment for the birds and mammals that thrived there formerly. The food web has been altered rather dramatically and the higher vertebrates will be impacted significantly. New food webs will of course evolve, but we’re about preserving the status quo, are we not?
That’s nothing to say of the smaller macro and micro fauna comprised of the arthropods that have thrived in various environments that have now been substantially altered dramatically. With respect to the entomofauna (and associated athrodpods) this is nothing to say of the massive impacts to the fungal components that existed previously.
While it’s quite nice to suggest this is the way forward, I’m rather baffled by everyone in favor ignoring the substantial impact on literally every phylogenetic Kingdom. Biodiversity has been radically altered and most probably distinctly reduced. I thought that was bad?
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Apologies: I typed fauna but meant flora. I blame beer.
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I have looked into the only continuous 24/7 supply solar RE project I know about.
Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes proposes to build a 100+ square km solar array with vast battery backup (tens of GWh (40-45), a hundred times installed current battery capacity) for 30 billion dollars in the Simpson Desert (the Sun Cable proposal). This will supply a 2.2GWh DC feed to Singapore, for 1 million people (20% of Singapore’s electricity needs), at $1500-2000 invoiced cost per person per year (he states a revenue of “2 billion a year”, which is $2000 per person for 1 million people), and a 0.8GWh feed to Darwin (no revenue given).
The solar array is 2-3x larger than required for 3GWh in order to charge the batteries during the day for 10-14h of steady 3GWh supply at night (10-14h x 3 GWh = 30-42GWh battery requirement).
Economies of scale are already in play, so how much would it cost to reliably supply the Eastern Seaboard by solar and battery backup – around 22 million people? That works out to be 22×30 or AUD660bn. Whoops, that’s a lot.
And look at the per person costs of AUD2000/year, unless there are vast subsidies to the domestic consumer. For a household of 3 people, that’s AUD6000 a year, whereas my current household cost for 3 people is around $1600. Singapore is expensive (I know it well), but not nearly that bad.
And Labor and the Greens think RE is cheap??? Sunlight sure is free (as our ancestors well knew), but the infrastructure required to usefully harness it sure isn’t. Something doesn’t add up.
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As with my post above, the average individual thinks of a desert, in this case the Simpson, as nothing more than a vast wasteland. Go out in one at night and observe the biodiversity that comes alive. Massive negative environmental impact? Think 100 km2 solar array. The entire ecosystem will likely die and we cannot predict the outcome of that happening. Fools.
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So what’s wrong with our climate since 1970 and what does the latest data tell us? Anyone have any ideas?
In 1970 Human life exp was 56.5 years and today that has increased to 73 years.
Just 3.7 bn people in 1970 and today we have 7.8 bn to feed, clothe, house, educate + provide health care and provide jobs at the completion of their education.
Or more than double the burden (?) and in JUST 50 years. Are we starting to THINK YET?
But in 1970 global life exp was just 56.5 years and yet today our poorest continent has a much higher life exp of 64 and a pop increase of over 1 billion people since 1970. !970 363 mil and 1.4 bn today.
That last sentence should wake up even the most stupid left wing fanatics, but we know all these con merchants and liars ignored the data and lined up in Glasgow to promote their crazy anti science agenda.
When will people start to wake up and start to think for themselves? The data is available for everyone if they only want to use it.
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I’ve based my comment above on the increasing pop, health and wealth for humans over the last 52 years. But I’ll also include Willis Eschenbach’s data for the rest of our world and ask if anyone can notice any climate emergency or crisis or apocalypse or even dopey Biden’s EXISTENTIAL THREAT? Anyone?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
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[…] Who needs trees: Welcome to a black glass wilderness […]
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To just replace all of U.S. total energy consumption (average yearly thus no spare capacity for charging massive batteries, etc.) with wind turbines would require an area greater than the coterminous U.S. Solar would require less, perhaps, but nonetheless what one calculates from just simple considerations is destruction of nature on a scale imagined in that old SciFi relic “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clark.
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And yet more massive environmental destruction courtesy of the Green utopia. !
https://notrickszone.com/2022/02/04/green-wrecking-ball-germany-clearing-1000-year-old-forest-to-make-way-for-massive-wind-park/
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Here’s the best UN DATA graph I can find to show the L W donkeys how wonderful our GLOBAL climate has been since 1900. This is population until 2100.
This is from WIKI and covers 10,000 BC to 2100. NOTE that the graph climbs almost VERTICALLY from early 20 th century through to 2022 and up to projections for 2100.
But also note that the rate of increase of GLOBAL population has been decreasing since the 1960s, although this can be difficult for some to understand.
Dr Hans Rosling was the world expert on pop increase and lectured around the world to help people understand the DATA.
Contrary to the recent Glasgow lunacy we know that people have become much wealthier and healthier over the last 100 or 50 years and yet we’ve also added another 6 bn people since 1920 and 4.1 bn since 1970.
AGAIN THINK about it and please WAKE UP. And don’t forget that Fossil fuels still supply 80+ % of our global energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World-population-1750-2015-and-un-projection-until-2100.png
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