Solar PV is not sustainable:
ttp://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/morganesfig1.jpg
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
Comment on Week in review – energy edition by Peter Lang
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by Mike Flynn
Even better, if you use your solar electricity to perform work, heat is created. It has to go somewhere, I guess. Maybe it goes into the deep ocean where it has no effect, and can’t be measured.
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Comment on Ethics of climate expertise by David Appell (@davidappell)
stevepostrel wrote:
“To the extent GCMs are the right way to go at all (a debatable proposition)….”
And the alternative is….?
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by Ragnaar
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/01/tesla-home-battery-price-competition/
To review, I am the volunteer treasurer of a 501(c)(3) ball park with 4 lighted fields. We incur demand charges of about $3000/year. The goal is to have no demands charges.
Our 4 fields, minimum of 72 bulbs X 1500 watts = 108 kilowatt draw
Threshold is 25 kilowatts for 15 minutes for demand charges for the next 12 months
Each Tesla unit gives 10 kilowatts for an hour as far as I can tell
10 units would give us 100 kilowatts for an hour
20 units would give us 2 hours
Cost is $3500 per unit
If any engineers would like to explain to me why I should stick to accounting, I’d appreciate that.
This is too expensive. However, if we could enter the spot market we’d be able to buy for 8 cents and sell and 24 cents, maybe. Which means maybe we can get Xcel to help pay for this for their own benefit of load leveling and short term back up. I read a home uses 1200 watts per hour. We could cover about 80 houses for an hour with 10 units. We may also be able to find some donations or similar things to help pay for this. What if we could flip 100 kilowatts a day? Best case. That would be 16 cents X 100 or $16. $16 X 365 = $5840/year. There’s also the question of this being imperfect in that in Summer we draw at around 8:30 in the evening. On those nights, we will only be leveling our own load, not the grids. I realize most of my assumptions are the most optimistic ones and that I have left some costs out.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by Jim D
Not at the surface, and they say as much.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by David L. Hagen
curryja – excellent to have a separate energy review.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by ristvan
Willard, homework for you, not me. Run the following cross correlations yourself to eliminate duplications. Would teach you how to scrutinize this sort of BS paper. All 137 papers are listed in the new meta analysis unpaywalled SI. The titles and or abstracts list species (purely endemic,or only partly endemic, model type, and temp methods. Any paper based on endemic species only is inherently gravely flawed. Mixed with significant endemics are also flawed, but I have not wasted time running them down. My eyeball count is n=43. Any paper employing the species/ areal range (SAR in the SI) model is inherently flawed. n= 7 Any paper estimating from a regionally, downscaled GCM is flawed. n= 11. That sums ~ MANY.
Now, most other models are SDM (species distribution). I have not analyzed its possible flaws, so don’t know how good those models are.
Do not bring your ‘show me’ rubber knife to a gunfight like this. You were explicitly explained how to figure this one out for yourself. I don’t work for you. Just wanted you to know I always do the homework before commenting. Now you know. Please do not assume otherwise again.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by David L. Hagen
<b>What price does sustainable fuel need to sell for?</b>
$50/bbl? $75/bbl?
See: <b>Peak Oil Price.</b>
<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/3100426-the-last-two-oil-crashes-show-peak-oil-is-real" rel="nofollow">Volte-Face Investments</a> writes at Seeking Alpha:
<blockquote> Using my own thinking and phrasing, I believe civilization has provably passed $25 Peak Oil. This means that if you set the oil price to $25 a barrel, there is no method available to humanity to provide enough oil to meet demand over any period of time that's really relevant. I also believe we are in the middle of proving that we have also passed $50 Peak Oil. My final conjecture here is that we will prove in the near-term future to have reached $75 Peak Oil. . . .
in 2015, oil is still trading more than 50% higher than the 1986 year average, inflation adjusted. In fact, WTI, when adjusted for its current discount to world prices, is trading close to its 2009 average price. Again, nearly double the price of the 1986 crash.</blockquote>
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by JCH
It looks to me like the satellites have to have a balance between El Nino and La Nina to achieve a semblance of accuracy. That balance has not existed in recent years, and they wondering around in the dark. It’s getting really bad.
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Comment on Ethics of climate expertise by Joshua
PE –
Again, whether issues are hyped doesn’t speak to the value of “expert consensus.”
Beth, how many times have a minority of experts been wrong and the majority of experts been right? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
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Comment on Ethics of climate expertise by Willard
> By definition, you cannot do climate science without considering climate sensitivity.
A quote to that definition would be nice, Cap’n. My own impression is that the object of climate science is to study climate. That’s why we call it climate science, after all. There are many ways to study climate that does not involve anything about sensitivity. For instance, Judy only very recently published something related to it. Does it mean she was not a climate scientist before that?
More importantly, please rest assured that considering sensitivity is not exactly determining it in a way to establish “what potential impact that can be expected.” You know, the thing that “matters” and is “absolutely critical” from a “scientific perspective.” Here’s where we might be heading, Cap’n:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/engineerilyderiving
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You’ve just tried to pull a fast one with your “impact” word play on AT, Cap’n. Only Matt fell for it. No big deal.
There’s no need to invoke a non-IPCC ideology to explain it.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by David L. Hagen
Potential to Double Solar Conversion
A new metamaterial rectenna promises to double conversion from 47% to greater than 95% when it is scaled down to light wavelengths!
Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with near unity efficiency
Thamer S. Almoneef1,a) and Omar M. Ramahi1,b)
Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 153902 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4916232
We present the design of a metamaterial medium for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on the full absorption concept. A metamaterial slab was designed comprising 13 × 13 electrically small cells, each loaded with an 82 Ω resistor which mimics the input impedance of a rectification circuitry. Unlike earlier designs of metamaterial absorbers, here the power absorption is mostly dissipated across a resistive load instead of the dielectric substrate. This implies that effective electromagnetic energy harvesting can be achieved. The power is channeled through a via connected to each cell. For a design optimized at 3 GHz, simulation and experimental results show power absorption efficiency of 97% and 93%, respectively.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by Peter Lang
Re: “A solar future isn’t just likely — it’s inevitable” http://www.vox.com/2015/4/28/8506953/solar-photovoltaic-future
Solar PV’s unique way of generating power has another important consequence: it can be highly distributed. Many utilities currently rely on big solar — constructing fields of panels miles long — but solar can also scale down to feet, even inches. Anywhere sun hits, some of it can be harvested for energy.
So what? It’s irrelevant. We need a transmission system to get power from suppliers, whether they are distributed or centralized to the consumers. The big consumers are industry, not residential and commercial. You have to be able to get higher power to concentrated, high power demand, industrial consumers. The grid is the really big cost, and having distributed generators does not reduce the requirement for a reliable grid that can supply peak power demand to consumers.
[distributed generation] will make for a far, far more resilient energy system than today’s grid, which can be brought down by cascading failures emanating from a single point of vulnerability, a single line or substation. An intelligent grid in which everyone is always producing, consuming, and sharing energy at once cannot be crippled by the failure of one or a small group of nodes or lines. It simply routes around them.
I’d like to hear what Planning Engineer has to say on this. I don’t believe it is correct.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by Jim D
Endemic species rely on a specific ecology. If that ecology changes, they are the ones most affected and with no options to migrate. I expect endemic species would be the most likely to go extinct, because whole ecologies will change. This 1/6 extinction rate referred to the RCP8.5 scenario, which probably leaves no ecology alone.
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Comment on Ethics of climate expertise by Danny Thomas
Joshua,
It only matters how the “consensus” is portrayed and if it’s accurate within a specific area of study. You’ve chastised me for stating that my view of the current state of “climate science” being is viewed based on my experience with the cooling of the 1970’s. So I will equally chastise you for evaluating the current state of “climate science” based on “consensus” in other areas of study. Same-same.
We all know the term “consensus” is expanded from the CAGW/AGW side as supporting the entirety of the IPCC view. The skeptical side questions the nuts and bolts which make up that entirety.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by ristvan
Willard, for,the record, you are correct. They did list the ‘poll’ sources. i missed that. So cursorily checked all of them. There is still a big problem. Look at the top bar, climatologists. Looks suspiciously like Cook’s 97% paper, which is not a listed source, not a poll. The two ‘sources’ that arguably address this bar are PEW and PNAS (a meta analysis). Neither supports 97%. The two Gallup and the NJ sources do not address this top bar at all. And NJ is not even a poll, it is a Senate vote tally of Republicans voting against specific legislation.
So on further analysis, I stand by my conclusion about your graphic. A distorted infomercial. Not more.
BTW, thanks for bestowing knighthood. I respectfully decline your honor.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by Willard
> Looks suspiciously like Cook’s 97% paper, which is not a listed source, not a poll.
Ask them and report, Sir Rud.
Or better yet, read harder (h/t BartR):
Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full.pdf
Now, please retract your claim, Sir Rud.
If you could reconcile that you “cursorily checked all of them” and “on further analysis,” that would be nice too.
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Everyone who cursorily checked A10’s results may see that cohere with C13’s. On further analysis, they might even see that C13 cites A10.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by ristvan
DH, I served on the Board of a private VC solar startup out of Argonne for three years. Was a very clever idea to increase thin film efficiency to above thick film crystalline silicon. We spent a few $million making some. Did not work. The devil is in the details. I would be very sceptical of this.
Especially since the Shockley-Quiessner quantum limit for a single band gap PV is only 33%. Claims of designs exceeding that theoretical physics limit are a bit suspect.
Now, maybe they meant thermal aborption. In which case I have a simpler, non-metamaterial invention. Paint whatever dull black. Works great.
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Comment on Ethics of climate expertise by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
willard, “A quote to that definition would be nice, Cap’n. My own impression is that the object of climate science is to study climate. That’s why we call it climate science, after all.”
Yes, climate science studying climate would be nice, but CO2 is the driver for the majority of current “climate science”. That likely has something to do with the term “climate change” replacing “global warming”. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say, “Climate sensitivity is a metric used to characterise the response of the global climate system to a given forcing. It is broadly defined as the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
Here is working group II latest title, Working Group II Report
“Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”
“You’ve just tried to pull a fast one with your “impact” word play on AT, Cap’n. Only Matt fell for it. No big deal.
There’s no need to invoke a non-IPCC ideology to explain it.”
You should credit the IPCC ideology with the “impact” ploy.
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Comment on Week in review – energy edition by Peter Lang
missing chart intended to be displayed above ‘Society’s Hierarchy of Energy Needs’ in the comment above:
The text explains that technologies with an ERoEI less than 7 (or 14) are not sustainable.
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