The Climate Change Debate Thread

[Pat Gill]

And the cost of the resultant electricity?????




Of course, we could always build a few thousand windmills and then wonder what the f_uck we should do when it isn't windy enough, or too windy or whatever...


...probably go build some coal or gas plants to double up on the capacity......

Well Moneypoint burns 7000 tonnes of coal a day at full output and cost just shy of a £billion to build in the late 80's. I gave you the price of thermal coal earlier.

Course it rarely runs at full output these days because ......



Did you see the front page of the SBP last Sunday, if not here is a fascimile Report: German wind energy firm looking at Mayo | BreakingNews.ie



Its all those market signals Tombo...

[Pat Gill]

Well Moneypoint burns 7000 tonnes of coal a day at full output and cost just shy of a £billion to build in the late 80's. I gave you the price of thermal coal earlier.

Course it rarely runs at full output these days because ......



Did you see the front page of the SBP last Sunday, if not here is a fascimile Report: German wind energy firm looking at Mayo | BreakingNews.ie



Its all those market signals Tombo...

Oh did I mention that we have spent in excess of €700 million on upgrades since it was built.

Dont feel too badly about being wrong, the luvvies didn't listen to cold hard facts in the 80's either.

[owedtojoy]

Oh did I mention that we have spent in excess of €700 million on upgrades since it was built.

Dont feel too badly about being wrong, the luvvies didn't listen to cold hard facts in the 80's either.

Deniers are still in the (literal) Dark Ages, before the idea of a Smart Grid or renewable energy was invented. If our ancestors lived in caves burning carbon, then they have to get as close that as they can.

[GreenIsGood]

Well done Canada.

[Tombo]

Oh did I mention that we have spent in excess of €700 million on upgrades since it was built.

Dont feel too badly about being wrong, the luvvies didn't listen to cold hard facts in the 80's either.

Money point 30 years old.

Stacks up incredibly well.


€1.7 billion capital costs over 30 years.

What is the capital cost for a wind based system that could meet the equivalent demand over 30 years?? Don't exclude the gas or coal fired back up generators now, nor the duplicated infrastructure required to link the wind plus back up up to the grid.


There's a good boy.



ETA

And by the way, I did say coal and GAS. Diversifying our energy needs. Run the number on gas while you're at it there.

[owedtojoy]

Money point 30 years old.

Stacks up incredibly well.


€1.7 billion capital costs over 30 years.

What is the capital cost for a wind based system that could meet the equivalent demand over 30 years?? Don't exclude the gas or coal fired back up generators now, nor the duplicated infrastructure required to link the wind plus back up up to the grid.


There's a good boy.

You have not included the health costs - ESB refused to install scrubbers until 2009, claiming the costs were too high. Moneypoint dumped excess sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere for years. So the costs of the health damage and acid rain pollution were borne by the public either though individual costs, or though the taxpayer.

Oieachteas Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security:

Moneypoint in fact had its origins in the 1960s and Carbon Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide etc were very much of concern then, perhaps not for the same reasons as now, but the decision to resort to coal raised basic questions of polluting emissions with the Atlantic air and consequent acid rain inland at that time. The consequences were disastrous. Moneypoint was the single largest source of CO2 emission in Ireland and cost 1/3 Billion euro to retrofit. Scrubbers (filters) were available and widely discussed in the 1970s, but were expensive. It is still the single largest power station in the country with three generators of about 350MW.

Coal is not an option for Ireland in fact it was a flawed choice dating to a previous era however the other options as mentioned above all have potential for power generating in the future.

And that is before you get to the cost of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

[Tombo]

Here is science as it should be practiced in "climate science".


Stop masturbating over your backcasting and properly assess you predictive skill. If you don't have any, say so. Don't make up some nonsense about "it's worse than we thought" or "it's still consensus" or other such muck.


CSU’s Klotzbach and Gray Suspend December Hurricane Forecast | Watts Up With That?

We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year and giving a more qualitative discussion of the factors which will determine next year’s Atlantic basin hurricane activity. Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill. Reasons for this unexpected lack of skill are discussed.

You could (should) apply this to attempts at global climate change forecasting.

[owedtojoy]

Here is science as it should be practiced in "climate science".


Stop masturbating over your backcasting and properly assess you predictive skill. If you don't have any, say so. Don't make up some nonsense about "it's worse than we thought" or "it's still consensus" or other such muck.


CSU’s Klotzbach and Gray Suspend December Hurricane Forecast | Watts Up With That?




You could (should) apply this to attempts at global climate change forecasting.

The reputation of Anthony Watts and his website continue to degenerate, approaching the - infinities. Count the scientists who take it seriously, and you end up with less than a half-dozen. Even then they are usually dubiously credentialled characters on the fringe, or once-good scientists who have now sadly aged beyond their ability to keep up with the science.

This latest sad escapade is recorded by the Watts-satire site Wotts up with That:

[Watts] I have removed this guest post [by Shub Niggurath] because it has been brought to my attention that it is unfair and has caused inflamed reactions [especially in comments] that were unintended. It was my mistake for posting it without seeing this, and my decision to remove it. – Anthony Watts

What brought this on? Roger Pielke Jr., author of last year’s tepid “science” book The Climate Fix and until now a reliable comfort to denialists, recently said:

The debate over climate science is over and has been won by those who assert a human influence on the climate system.

This seems to have made him the target of denialist’s Two Minutes Hate (did Al Gore feel a momentary abatement in the voodoo doll ******************************ing?).

So Roger Pielke Jnr has nailed his colours to the mast, and follows Dr Richard Muller into the arena of hate and rage, after once being a science denialist poster child.

Pielke Junior on: The climate debate is

[owedtojoy]

Some climate scientists talk about the connection between extreme weather and global warming.

[owedtojoy]

"Kate" is a young science student with ambitions to be a climate scientist. At the American Geophysical Union, she and her supervisor presented at a poster session. http://eposters.agu.org/files/2011/11/agu.pdf

Here she gives her impression of the conference. General Thoughts on AGU « ClimateSight

I shook the hand of James Hansen and assured him that he is making a difference. I talked about my research with Gavin Schmidt. I met dozens of people that were previously just names on a screen, from top scientists like Michael Mann and Ben Santer to fellow bloggers like Michael Tobis and John Cook.

Kate is one of the main differences between true climate science and denialism. Denialists are mostly aging old angry white males. If there was anything in their ideology, they would be attracting young scientific rebels like our Kate.

Incidentally, she also has a very good blog.