It's all over but for the sweating?

[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.

[Arragonis]

Some other news. Dr Pachauri (who is not a climate scientist but leads the IPCC apparently because he is the most qualified) and Dr Hansen have accepted the "no warming for 15 years" argument.

However

Dr Pachauri said a warming pause would have to last 30 to 40 years "at least" to break the long-term warming trend.

So by definition that idea that NOAA had about the 15 year limit to "invalidate models" in their 2008 report, and the recent Met Office model "recalibration" are obviously premature.

The Bank of England has had a go at green subsidies too, you know - the ones we don't need because renewables are cheaper according to the report linked to by James above...

BTW Australia has a carbon tax - this guy explains it nicely, and tax generally in a funny way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=WGHY8XpM6oI

He said: “It’s a bit of an own goal as it looks as if inflation is worse without any change in the underlying behaviour of the economy. Tuition fees [and] ... prices charged by utilities – to pay for green charges, green policies – are pushing up administered prices in a way that [is] ... self inflicted in terms of damage done to real take home pay.”

Also the Amazon Rain Forest seems OK too at the moment. Policies to see it preserved seem a good idea to me though.

The boost to growth from CO2, the main gas from burning fossil fuels blamed for causing climate change, was likely to exceed damaging effects of rising temperatures this century such as drought, it said.

"I am no longer so worried about a catastrophic die-back due to CO2-induced climate change," Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter in England told Reuters of the study he led in the journal Nature. "In that sense it's good news."

So it looks like the world is performing like a child in middle school - doing OK but could do better if we tried harder.

Goodnight all.

[Arragonis]

Triple post - a video about free speech - aimed at Australia, but worthy of a watch by all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=NmuzrHwMkMU

[freebeard]

I watched that last one, but I'm not seeing the connection to the topic.

How about this?

The Next Ice Age - An Introduction to a Possible Shift Soon

-= =-

Wait a minute; how do you make a link to a youtube video without the forum software opening it into the body of the message? That is so cool.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

What is unreliable about a gas or coal station - you turn it on, fuel it and it works - sorted.

The stations aren't the problem (assuming your probably government-run 3rd world utility can afford to buy fuel for the generating station), it's the grid. If you have sufficient generation on the grid to support demand, all is well*. If demand exceeds generation, then you get brownouts, blackouts, destroyed equipment, &c. See any EE text on powerflow & stability.

*Well, all is well until you get a wind or ice storm taking down a lot of lines. (My neighbor's kid works as an electric lineman in the Midwest, and you just wouldn't believe what he makes in a week after a big storm.) Or you maybe have a solar flare blowing out parts of the grid... Then you have the cost of running power lines all over the place - lines made of increasingly-expensive copper, which people will steal even when the lines are energized, lending a double meaning to "hot" merchandise :-)

Now if you, as a person living in a 3rd-world country (or even a rural area of the US or Europe), just happen to want enough power to run lights, charge a cell phone or computer, maybe run a refrigerator or the occasional power tool, a solar or wind system looks like a pretty reliable alternative.

how do you power (for example) a steel plant from that ?

You build your steel plant near a hydroelectric dam or nuclear plant, and ship the steel (or aluminum, etc) to where it's needed. Why do you think that most US aluminium production is (or was at one time) located near the Columbia River? And most other production is located where renewable hydroelectic power is plentiful?

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.

Sorry, but no. Properly designed peaking plants tend to be gas turbines, which can be brought from cold start to full power in minutes. They're also required for grids that are primarily powered by fossil fuels, since demand fluctuates.

----------------------------------------------------
PS: My apologies for thinking it's only 3rd-world countries that might have problems managing fuel purchases for their grid generation. I see in the news today that we have similar problems right here in the US: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...r/#more-155929

[freebeard]

Here's an interesting process:
New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development

"Without Burning" means it delivers oxygen to the process without using air. Which yields CO2 unpolluted with nitrogen as a feedstock for your moonshine still/algae farm.

[NeilBlanchard]

The volume of ice in the Arctic is ONE FIFTH what it was in 1980:

Arctic Death Spiral Bombshell: CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed | ThinkProgress

This is a 3D animated graph of the ice volume data:

Arctic Sea Ice Collapse 1979-2012 (PIOMAS) - YouTube

And this is a 2D animated GIF:

[gone-ot]

...007(Bond)'s answer: "...shaken, not stirred..."

[NeilBlanchard]

The so-called "permafrost" is melting.

New Video: Permafrost – the Tipping Time Bomb | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLCgy...layer_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IjG-...layer_embedded

The tipping point is at about 1.5C above preindustrial times, and we are already at about 0.8C.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I watched that last one, but I'm not seeing the connection to the topic.

The connection is that sometimes people have odd views, like maybe slicing up dead bodies and then delivering babies without washing your hands might be bad ? That was not linked for a long time - Watch again, and think about this topic