Michaelyya/contrarian-claims huggingface dataset:
By the end of 2013, and despite having spent $2.5 billion, Michigan??s nine oldest coal plants will continue to operate while having their emissions trimmed by no more than 5 percent. But had we chosen to build gas plants instead of wind plants, that same $2.5 billion could build 2,500 MW of gas generating capacity instead of only 225 MW. This is enough to permanently close half of the nine ???dirty coal?? plants in question.
The study states that if cars in Europe reach the required10% biofuel target set by the EU for its cars by 2020, massive damage will threaten the environment and poor citizens globally.
The EPA is the governments ultimate enemy of energy, though the Department of the Interior and other elements of the government participate in limiting access to our vast energy reserves and energy use nationwide. By government edict, the incandescent light bulb has been banned. How insane is that?
Clean Power Plan: In June 2014, the EPA proposed a rule to control greenhouse gases from existing power plants, known as the Clean Power Plan. The unprecedented rule would regulate the entire electric industry, rather than on a source-by-source basis as had been EPA's practice for 40 years. As such, the proposed Clean Power Plan would grossly expand EPA's authority into the states' traditional authorities. For 80 years, States have overseen retail electricity markets shielded from federal intrusion. The Clean Power Plan would radically alter this arrangement, which dates from the New Deal, such that state authority would now fall under the thumb of EPA approval. In addition to posing grave federalism concerns, the rule would be the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector, costing between $41 billion and $73 billion per year.
This group naturally includes the United Nations and all of its subsidiaries, the EU, and left wing politicians and media everywhere. At a news conference in Brussels recently, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.??s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but to change the economic development model ie destroy what is left of free enterprise and private property. See:
And here is Christopher Moncktons powerful explanation of what it will really mean, which can be summed up in three points: global government, global wealth redistribution and global enforcement, all without any democratic process whatsoever:
The one thing you dont hear President Obama mention is how much his proposed emissions reductions will reduce global warming, wrote Curry. The social costs of carbon estimates made by the White House require assumptions out to the year 2300 for drastic carbon dioxide reductions to be cost effective.
The fundamental problem with Obama's approach to carbon-dioxide emissions is the idea that the U.S. can solve the problem. No matter what the U.S. does, emissions will continue to soar, because so many people in the developing world want to come out of the dark and into the bright lights of modernity. Proof of that can be seen in yet one more number that's easily found in the BP data: Over the past decade, global carbon-dioxide emissions would have risen by 2.6 billion tons even if U.S. emissions had gone to zero.
Someday, China's leaders may, for their own reasons, alter their stance on climate. If so, and if Beijing can verify that it will adopt a price on carbon emissions, Washington should be ready to match it. For the foreseeable future, though, Beijing's verifiable preferred price on carbon is zero. Until that number changes, the main U.S. line of defense against the risks of climate change is not a carbon tax. It remains a free and productive economy.
The global temperature savings of the Kerry-Lieberman bill is astoundingly small0.043C (0.077F) by 2050 and 0.111C (0.200F) by 2100. In other words, by centurys end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be. That is a scientifically meaningless reduction.
"A strategic initiative that is aimed at substituting alternative fuels for fossil fuels in the production of one kind of energy is doomed to failure unless it somehow eliminates the value of using the same fossil fuels to produce other kinds of energy. If Mr. Gore really wants to spur the United States and other countries to use alternative fuels to produce electricity or any kind of energy, he should just sponsor legislation to prohibit the use of fossil fuels. Otherwise, he is just blowing smoke."
That isnt all; a Department of Labor program to create green jobs has largely misfired. It has created only 2 percent of the projected jobs and the cost per job created is more than $120,000 .
How many workers does it take to change an incandescent light bulb in California? Two. One to install its energy-efficient replacement, and another to ensure the job complies with government regulations. BeholdTom Steyers green jobs stimulus, which a new report from the Associated Press shows has been a colossal failure even by its proponents standards.
The White House ordered the review after criticism of a $528 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a solar company that went bankrupt.
The new rules are part of President Obama's effort to combat global warming, but are only anticipated to reduce global temperatures by .018 degrees by the year 2100.
Kyoto was supposed to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide below 1990 levels during the period 2008-2012. But since it was signed, the atmospheric concentration of this putative pollutant continued to rise, pretty much at the same rate it did before Kyoto. (Even if the world had lived up to the letter of the Kyoto law, it would have exerted an influence on global temperature that would have been too small to measure.)
Full implementation of all nations' commitments under the Paris agreement, at a cost of $1 to $2 trillion annually from 2030 onward, would, as Bj rn Lomborg calculates even while assuming the IPCC's exaggerated estimates of CO2's warming effect, reduce GAT in 2100 by just 0.17 C, an amount too little to have significant impact.
In other words, by regulating companies that provide more than 80% of our primary energy out of business and raising subsidies sky-high for windmills and sunbeams that provide 4%, we will be able to reduce global temperatures by an estimated 0.03 Celsius before the next century.
But let's not stop there. Let's use our imagination and assume that China reduces its emissions by 20 percent by 2030. That gets us two tenths of a degree. Throw in a 30 percent reduction by Europe and Japan and the rest of the industrialized world, also by 2030. That's another two tenths of a degree, for a grand total of 0.425 degrees, under a "climate sensitivity" (loosely, the effectiveness of greenhouse gas reductions) assumption 50 percent greater than that adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest assessment report. Is an effect that small worth 1 percent of global GDP, or roughly $600 billion to $750 billion per year, inflicted disproportionately upon the world's poor?
Should you respond that any journey begins with a tiny step, consider the following. The Obama climate policy calls for a 17 percent reduction below 2005 levels in U.S. GHG emissions by 2020. If we apply the EPA's own climate model, that would reduce temperatures by the year 2100 by fifteen one-thousandths of a degree. In addition, the U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change calls for an additional 10 percent reduction by the U.S. by 2025. (The Chinese commitment it's unenforceable is for a "peak" in their emissions by 2030. Total emissions at that peak and the emissions path after the peak are not addressed.) The additional 10 percent U.S. reduction yields another one one-hundredth of a degree. The standard deviation of the temperature record is about 0.1 degrees, so that these effects would be too small even to be measured, let alone to affect sea levels and cyclones and all the rest.
Denmark was responsible in 2010 for about 0.15% of the worlds human emissions of CO2. Global temperatures by 2100 should rise by less than 3C. If their emissions dont change, the Danes are therefore likely to be responsible for up to about 3 0.0015 = 0.0045C of that global temperature rise, which nobody will detect in the environment. For that undetectable reward, they will endure much.
"For both developing and industrialized countries, net GDP per capitaalbeit an imperfect surrogate for human well-beingshould be (1) double the current US level by 2100 under the warmest scenario , and (2) lowest under the poorest IPCC scenario but highest under the warmest scenario through 2200. The warmest world, being wealthier, should also have greater capacity to address any problem, including warming. Therefore, other problems and, specifically, lowered economic development are greater threats to humanity than global warming."
Focused adaptation designed to reduce vulnerability more broadly to todays urgent health problems would deliver greater reductions in deaths at a lower cost than climate mitigation policies, Dr Goklany added.
JC comments: Over the last 5 years or so, I have been framing my research and applications related to extreme weather events around the concept of resilience. I viewed resilience as a concept that was orthogonal to sustainability, and realized that infrastructure designed for sustainability may make it more vulnerable to natural hazards. Zollis essay makes the argument that sustainability and resilience are tied to two different world views, and I find his argument convincing. Resilience thinking is associated with systems thinking, uncertainty, and wicked problems. Resilience is arguably a concept that has broader political palatability than does sustainability. Resilience thinking seems to be a particularly good match for dealing with extreme weather events, which is arguably associated with the greatest impacts from climate variability and change.
Finally, in case we do conclude that we want to roll back atmospheric carbon levels, we should look into things like carbon sequestration, or geo-engineering, that might let us influence the climate without plunging ourselves back into an economic stone age.
To build on these promising beginnings during the course of the negotiations will in my view require several further recognitions and realizations. First, the major developing nations need to recognize that playing the game they have been playing may seem clever now, but won't work over the long haul. China and India have enthusiastically supported a second round of mandatory emissions cuts for the developed nations, but not for them. They hope that in a second round the developed economies will have to pay billions and billions of dollars to them to install modern emissions-saving technologies and also that energy-intensive industrial production will continue to move from carbon-constrained economies to theirs. China, India, and other developing and poor countries understand that going on an energy starvation diet when you are already energy poor offers far more pain than gain. The potential harms caused by global warming are minor annoyances when compared to the immense benefits of affordable energy. Instead of playing a cute double-faced game, China and India should articulate the reasons why the demands from the energy-rich nations for them to accept mandatory emissions reductions before the technology is available to make those reductions affordably are simply another form of eco-imperialism.
From this article: The report also suggests that allowing carbon-constrained U.S. firms to trade credits with firms in China or India, where emission reduction measures are relatively inexpensive, would yield an estimated U.S. carbon price as low as $15 per tonne rather than $40 per tonne, thereby saving the American economy about $145 billion per year in increased energy costs. So while the Earth appears to be cooling , we should pay real money to China for highly-questionable "emission reductions" that would, at best, "cool" the world by an additional amount too small to measure? And while we make those payments, China would continue to build two new coal plants per week ?!
But there's the rub. To get results will require widespread cooperation among countries. Even if developed countries froze their emissions, worldwide emissions would still grow around 150 percent by 2050 because of the increase from developing countries. Moreover, if China or India does not eventually agree to binding targets, some greenhouse-gas producers will simply set up shop there because it is cheaper.
The problem is that the basic approach is unworkable. International negotiations have centered on placing the economic burden of addressing climate change on a few dozen developed countries while asking nothing from more than 150 developing countries. But the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly the developing world. Any approach to effectively address increasing emissions of greenhouse gases must capture emissions from developed and developing countries.
China and India, among other developing countries, argue that they should be allowed to increase carbon emissions. They're still developing and require higher rates of economic growth. Moreover, they aren't responsible for previous emissions, and on a per capita basis U.S. emissions are much higher.
The idea of just flicking the switch from coal and other fossil fuels to renewable energy is a fantasy. It cannot be done.
The challenge for Spain was to transform that free resource into an industry that made economic sense and attracted investors. The first problem lawmakers encountered was price. Solar power, like wind and other renewable-energy sources, cant yet compete on price against electricity generated from natural gas or coal.
Renewable energy is both more expensive than and as damaging to the environment as energy produced from natural gas or coal, says Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute. Writing in the Washington Times (Aug. 4), he points out that the usual argument that traditional energy fuels are unfairly subsidized has been judged groundless by the General Accounting Office. The GAO said fossil fuel subsidies are "too small to have a significant effect on the overall level of energy prices and consumption in the United States."
I may comment further on these reports in a future post. In the meantime, Iwill simply observe that if Babcock is correct, and U.S. biofuel policies have only a small influence on food prices because ???a large expansion in US ethanol production would have occurred even if the subsidies and mandates had not been in place,?? then U.S. taxpayers get little or no energy-security bang for billions of biofuel bucks.
Costly renewable energy policies are already set to raise California power costs by $5 billion or 33 percent due to expensive and unreliable wind and solar energy. However, that may be only half of the additional cost, since the"California Public Utilities Commission has called on utilities and private companies to install about $5 billion worth of batteries and other forms of energy storage to help the state power grid cope with the erratic power supplied by wind and solar energy."
This says a lot for the lack of economic viability of palm oil biofuel if it doesnt look favorable with high subsidies. Maybe there is an upside to this. Havent we been hearing about deforestation from palm oil or other biofuel production being an environmental and climate problem?
The report uses an economic model of New Zealand which is totally unsuited to analysing the effect of 20% energy generation from wind. Any model that does not take into account the intermittent and seasonal nature of wind and its effect on power prices and the fact that, in a dry year, hydro cannot back up wind, is worthless. The model makes no allowance for the fact that over peak demand periods, only about 10% of the wind generation can be relied on. It also does not consider the need for extra transmission lines and the poor efficiency of the gas fired power stations that must be built to back up wind. For example, one study in the United States showed that, in Texas, a large amount of wind energy results in a tiny reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate sceptics have been asking about discrepancies in the economics of solar panels for years. We still have questions about their carbon footprint, but they become moot as solar panels are killed off by economics.
This refers to the cardinal problem of solar and wind energy, the intermittency of power generation that depends on the weather. The year has 8,760 hours; wind turbines, however, only produce for 1,530 hours at full power, photovoltaic systems even just for 980 hours. To make matters worse, no one knows in advance when green electricity is fed into the grid, and when its not available.
The highly touted, government-subsidized, unreliable, intermittent and expensive alternative power schemes currently in vogue are nothing but a phenomenal waste of money. As evident from the described wind farm in Germany, the required technology is not in place at this time, perhaps may never be.
Wind energy proponents cling to the idea that we must reduce fossil fuel use and believe, therefore, that the extra cost is worth it. However, because of the intermittency issues with wind and the reliability demand from the consumer, it requires fully dispatchable back-up power generation. Natural gas is the best form of backup because it can be easily adjusted to produce more or less electricityhowever, the constant adjustment required to supplement wind or solar energy results in less efficient use and more CO2 emissions.
But what has all this doom and gloom got to do with the governments drive for renewable energy, you might ask? Well, the entire problem with renewables almost all renewables is that they are dangerously intermittent power sources.
Toronto Star; Coping with surplus wind power will cost Ontario electricity ratepayers up to $200 million a year if market rules don't change, says the power system operator. Moreover, it says, if it can't control the flow of wind and solar power onto the Ontario grid, then "reliable and economic operation of the power system is, at best, highly compromised and likely not feasible." When there's more power than the system can handle, the IESO sells it to neighbouring provinces and states -- sometimes at a loss, and sometimes actually paying them to take it. No worries, there's plenty of wood in the Greenbelt . h/t AK
The above chart shows German power supply by the various sources available and demand over the last 30 days. The lions share of Germanys installed renewable energy (wind and sun) went just about completely AWOL three times during the period. Chart source: Agora .
Conclusion: The concept of generating and delivering green energy with offshore windmills and cross-country transmission lines for its delivery not only faces a lot of protest, but it would be super-expensive, unreliable, and would require the abandonment of market principles, which happen to heavily favor France right now.
The total electrical energy consumption by Germany during the first 25 days was approximately 33 terawatt-hrs. That translates to anaverage of 55 gigawatts of power every hour. If the wind turbines had operated at 100% capacity for the entire time, they still would have only supplied 60% of Germanys needed power. However, wind turbines rarely run near 100% rated capacity. Very often they produce only a small fraction of their rated capacity because the wind is highly variable and often does not blow very hard. On April 18 wind turbines in Germany produced their peak for the month: 17 gigawatts, but only for about 2 hours, before rapidly dropping off again to 8 GW at around midnight. On that day, all wind turbines together briefly reached 53% of their rated capacity. And that was their best day.
The findings will deliver a body blow to governmental claims that their current target of generating 27 percent of energy from renewable sources mostly wind and solar by 2030 is credible.
But how reliable is the technology? The turbines are intended to run for 20 years but in some cases they have had to be pulled in after only eight years. It remains to be seen whether this is a particular feature of the North Sea conditions or a more general aspect and if the latter, it must seriously jeopardise the future of offshore wind energy. (Forbes)
The project of transforming biomass into fuels by using catalytic pyrolysis, or cracking, an invention by a company in the Netherlands, BIOeCON , turned out to be a renewable money pit for KiOR which produced very little energy.
Since 2000, Germany has used the EEG to promote the expansion of renewable forms of energy. To ensure that the construction of expensive solar and wind farms is worthwhile for private individuals and investors, they receive a guarantee that the electricity they produce will be purchased at a fixed price for a period of several years.
All this argues for a closer look at the cost/benefit relationship of investing in renewable energy projects, to prevent a massive waste of financial and natural resources on unreliable and thus uncompetitive forms of energy. Since every cloud has a silver lining, the ongoing economic crisis might give extra impetus toward that end.
Often wrong but never in doubt, the geniuses of the green community. Repeat after mefor miles driven ethanol produces more carbon dioxide because it is less energy dense. Moreover ethanol burns hotter and is hydrophilic so it is hard on engine parts. Ethanol adds increase the cost of fuel, it has a big land, carbon and water use footprint, and it only survives because of the politics of the ethanol mandate and a little thing called the Iowa caucuses along with our friends at Archer Daniels Midlands and the farmers who are getting rich on high priced corn while mexicans cant afford tortillas.
Widely hailed as "green" sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric dams have been built worldwide at an unprecedented scale. But University of East Anglia research reveals that these major infrastructure projects are far from environmentally friendly. A PLOS ONE study reveals the drastic effects of the major Amazonian Balbina Dam on tropical rainforest biodiversity. It reveals a loss of mammals, birds and tortoises from the vast majority of islands formed by the creation of the Balbina Lake
Environmental groups must first understand the functional failure of industrial wind and focus on that issue alone. For once it is clear that the sacrifice demanded is not worth the benefit derived, the turbines will come tumbling down. Only then will be environment begin to heal.
John Bennett of the Ontario, Canada Sierra Club, has accused Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) as being supported by the Progressive Conservatives (PCs). Im a liberal, and I support and volunteered for WCO after my town was ruined by wind turbines, the Sierra Clubs and the PMs agenda and enforcements.
As Dan Kish, Senior Vice President of the Institute for Energy Research in Washington, D.C., observed in an interview I posted last March , the Obama administrations apparent intent is tomake heavily subsidized, unreliable and costly renewable energy programs they are pushing more cost-competitive. This is the Tonya Harding approach to energy break your opponents kneecap if you cant win fair and square.
Energy storage concepts such as accumulators, power-to-gas, compressed air storage are plagued by low efficiencies and sky-high costs. He reminds readers that using electriccar batteries as a storage media is also a pie-in-the-sky-vision. Gehlert tells IKZ: