[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I'm not familiar with that act, but 1) These are politicians we're talking about, no? and 2) Recall what I wrote earlier about everyone wanting to skim off a bit for themselves. Of course, if you let a certain type of politician at things, they can spend endless amounts of money while achieving negative results - see for just one instance the US War on Drugs.

I think we can agree that idiot politicians are idiots. Only 3 MPs voted against, the rest don't even understand it.

Stark raving madness.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I think "unreliable and expensive" is a pretty good description of the current fossil fueled power systems of most 3rd world countries. First off, no one is forcing them to use energy at all. If they want to use energy, it is, in the current state of things, probably cheaper* and certainly more reliable to use renewables. Consider phones as a parallel case: the 3d world isn't stringing millions of miles of copper wire (or even fiber) to provide telephone service.

What is unreliable about a gas or coal station - you turn it on, fuel it and it works - sorted. If the wind decides not to blow or the sun decides not to shine you have no power from renewables. You can store some energy but not a lot - how do you power (for example) a steel plant from that ?

You can't which is why the UK energy system requires loads of gas stations as backup to renewables, sitting there at idle just waiting - consuming gas and emitting CO2 but no energy being produced.

Again, stark raving madness.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

*Note that renewable is now cheaper than fossil in Australia, per this: Renewable energy now cheaper than new fossil fuels in Australia | Bloomberg New Energy Finance

*cough - Are wind and solar really cheaper than fossil fuels? | Climate Spectator

The reality is that wind, solar PV, solar thermal, bioenergy and even energy efficiency have a long way to go before they are the ubiquitous default options for meeting our energy needs. Even including a $23 carbon price the wholesale electricity prices on the eastern seaboard is averaging about $55 per megawatt-hour (MWh). That is still well below the price required to get-up the cheapest renewable option, wind power.

The reality is simple - if renewables were cheaper why does my energy bill (and most of them in the 1st world) include subsidies for renewables and why do they need FITs ? Surely if they were cheaper then that part of my bill (15%) could be cut immediately.

And why has the head of the UK energy grid just warned us that we might run out of power ?

And again, stark raving madness.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I don't believe I said that the negative effects the 3rd world is now experiencing are due to climate change. They are due to the adoption (often forced) of western lifestyles, urbanization, etc.

We touched on this before - they actually want that kind of lifestyle because life in the city is better than life in the country. Yes we in the west like the country ideal but for those in developing countries it means less of everything - opportunity, health, money. So they move to the cities. It happened in the UK in the 18th and 19th century, and the US in the 19th and 20th ones. And now there.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I suppose I could, if I wanted to do a bit of research, but that'd be entirely missing the point. It'd be like the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building complaining, as he passes the 20th floor, that the wind is mussing up his hair a bit.

In summary then the key effects of climate change so far are, er, nothing much really. No additional disasters, no bad weather, no droughts, no floods (see Australia for worked examples of both of those in the last 2 years), no loss of ice, no reduction in snowfall.

Well nothing really.

We might see a lot of additional "disasters" but that is mainly because we have better TV to show us it all than we did before, and more access to the science.