Tom
Take off your rose tinted glasses regarding Scandinavia
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden
tonyb
Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by climatereason
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Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by vukcevic
Hi Tony
The Bore Hole gets good attention from many of the RC readers.
Even the forever ‘adjusted’ data can’t escape good correlation with the natural forcing.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by beththeserf
Agree with Chamberlin,
and like-wise Socrates,
never dig-in.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Chief Hydrologist
The essential idea is the underlying dynamical mechanism of climate change.
‘Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=14
It has significance for the persistence of the current temperature trajectory and for future shifts in climate. As the NAS said – we should expect surprises. But it is a completely different theory and brings into sharp relief the importance of internal chaotic processes. Like it or nor – understand it or not – this is the new and powerful climate paradigm.
BTW – the 20th was special with peaks in all sorts of things – including El Nino.
The
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by climatereason
dennis
looks like an expanded version of this;
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken’
tonyb
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Chief Hydrologist
Very well done – a breath of fresh air. You too Beth. Hate the song btw.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by HAS
The ruling theory is intimately about attribution.
It has a simple and relatively ancient underlying premise – the CO2 theory of climate change (see for example Plass (1956) “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change” Tellus Vol 8 No 2).
If it ain’t CO2 you find it hard to attribute to humans (although Heartland offers “Human forcings besides greenhouse gases” as another theory that would support attribution but in the context one can be forgiven for putting it to one side).
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Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by Chief Hydrologist
Thanks for your kind thoughts – for all of us there is a battle of hearts and minds to be fought and the prize is the future.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Frederick Colbourne
Interesting comments about T.C. Chamberlin and his role in American science. Naomi Oreskes devoted 20 to 30 pages to Chamberlin scattered throughout her book The Rejection of Continental Drift.
She showed that American scientists, at least geologists and other Earth scientists, prefer multiple working hypotheses because they were suspicious of “grand theories” and wished to guard against deductive approaches to Earth science, preferring inductive methods.
The Epilogue, entitled Utility and Truth, began with a reference to Rollin Chamberlin (T.C.’s only son) and ended, “And we are placing responsibility for making new knowledge in the hands of those who have the most old knowledge to unmake. The recognition of scientific expertise — the very stuff that enables scientists to build on prior results — at the same time makes scientific judgments inescapably personal and historical, undermining our deepest wishes for knowledge that might somehow be transcendent.”
Naomi Oreskes, The Rejection of Continental Drift, Oxford U Press,1999, p. 318.
I share with Dr Oreskes her admiration of T. C. Chamberlin and what he stood for as well as the views she expressed in her paper, Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences. Naomi Oreskes; Kristin Shrader-Frechette; Kenneth Belitz. Science, New Series, Vol. 263, No. 5147. (Feb. 4, 1994), pp. 641-646.
URL: http://courses.washington.edu/ess408/OreskesetalModels.pdf
Quotation from the concluding sections:
“A model, like a novel, may resonate with nature, but it is not a “real” thing. Like a novel, a model may be convincing–it may “ring true” if it is consistent with our experience of the natural world. But just as we may wonder how much the characters in a novel are drawn from real life and how much is artifice, we might ask the same of a model: How much is based on observation and measurement of accessible phenomena, how much is based on informed judgment, and how much is convenience? Fundamentally, the reason for modeling is a lack of full access, either in time or space, to the phenomena of interest. In areas where public policy and public safety are at stake, the burden is on the modeler to demonstrate the degree of correspondence between the model and the material world it seeks to represent and to delineate the limits of that correspondence.”
“Finally, we must admit that a model may confirm our biases and support incorrect intuitions. Therefore, models are most useful when they are used to challenge existing formulations, rather than to validate or verify them. Any scientist who is asked to use a model to verify or validate a predetermined result should be suspicious.”
I am therefore puzzled how, as an author of the book Merchants of Doubt, Dr Oreskes managed to juggle these views with her critique of those who are skeptical about climate alarmism.
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Comment on Overreach at the EPA by Slywolfe
Yes.
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Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by David Springer
Make yourself scarce again. No one missed you. The blog improved in and through your absence.
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Comment on Week in review – politics and policy edition by Peter Lang
[I tried to post this comment on the ‘True cost of wind electricity thread’, but it wasn’t accepted.]
Planning Engineer and Rud Istvan,
My apologies for late responses here. I’ve been busy preparing to testify to the Australian Senate ‘Select Committee on Wind Turbines’. I testified on 19 May and have been busy with follow up since.
This is an excellent post. I’d suggest it could be a very valuable peer reviewed paper in ‘Energy Policy’. If you submit it there it will be influential – and very helpful to Australia, UK and other countries. We need papers like this.
Since at least 2010, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has been assuring NGOs and the public that wind would be cost competitive by now, all things considered
The wind advocates from CSIRO and elsewhere and academia have been arguing that since 1990 in Australia.
Yet incentives originally intended only to help start the wind industry continue to be provided everywhere. This fact suggests wind is not competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation.
In Australia we have legislation for a Renewable Energy Target (RET). If electricity retailers do not buy a specified proportion of their electricity from approved renewable energy sources, they have to pay a fine. The fine is legislated at $93/MWh. The current price of the Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) is $36/MWh. So there is huge incentive to build more wind farms. But it’s driving the wholesale cost of electricity down and the retail price up (because the price of the REC’s has to be passed on to consumers). It’s sending the dispatchable generators broke – It’s a disaster for reliable energy supply and competitive electricity priced. But the renewable energy advocates love it and reckon its saving the planet.
The record US annual wind capacity factor was 2014 at 33.9%. EIA itself says the median CF over the past decade is 31%. (Still better than the UK, where CF ranged from a low of 21.5% in 2010 to a record high 27.9% in 2013.) The assumed US 35% CF is unrealistically optimistic. [3]
For comparison, the average capacity factor of wind power in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) was 29% in 2014.
In other words, the capital annuity component of non-wind LCOE should be reduced by ~25% to reflect longer useful lives (40 rather than 30 year annuity, EIA capital only, 0.065 r). That is $8.35/MWh lower LCOE for coal …
Is that correct? I haven’t checked the calculations. However, changing the amortization period from 30 to 40 years doesn’t make a great deal of difference to LCOE because of the effect of the discount rate. The NREL simple LCOE calculator is useful for doing quick checks like this: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe.html
For example, GE’s FlexEfficiency 50 is a 510MWCCGT that can ramp 50MW/minute.
An off topic factoid: The 1600 MW EPR is also designed to ramp at 50 MW/min down to 50% of rated power, and can operate stably at 25% of rated power.
Your conclusion includes this:
We can only approximate the ‘true’ cost of wind, and how much the reality differs from ‘official’ EIA (and industry) claims.
Can you give me your rough guestimate of what factor the EIA LCOE’s should be raised by. Part way through the post you mentioned 50%. Would that be a reasonable rule of thumb to use?
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Comment on Week in review – politics and policy edition by Peter Lang
This is the key point I wanted to get across in my testimony:
What’s the cost of CO2 emissions abatement?
Answer: much higher than recognized. This is the key point of my testimony.
The Warburton Review estimated the cost of abatement under the LRET at $32-$72/tonne CO2 in 2020 (Section 5.6 – Cost of abatement’ – from estimates by ACIL-Allen, Frontier Economics and Deloitte).
But the actual cost is likely to be much higher because the estimates apparently do not take the CO2 abatement effectiveness into account.
Wheatley estimates wind energy in the NEM was just 78% effective at abating emissions in 2014, and would be about 70% effective if wind power’s share was doubled .
Under the current RET legislation, wind energy would have to supply about 15% of electricity in 2020. At 15% share, wind is likely to be about 60% effective .
At 60% effective, the CO2 abatement cost would be $53-$120 per tonne CO2
Compare these abatement costs:
Source Year $/t CO2
Warburton review 2020 32 – 72
With effectiveness included (at 60% in 2020) 2020 53 – 120
Carbon price at 2013 election 2013 24.15
Direct Action (based on first auction 2015 13.95
EU ETS price 2015 9.50
International carbon permit futures (to 2020) 2020 0.56
Therefore, the cost of abatement under the LRET would be:
• 2 to 5 times the 2013 carbon price
• 4 to 8 times the Direct Action average price achieved at the first auction
• 6 to 12 times the EU ETS price
• 100 to 200 times the international carbon price futures to 2020
The most important recommendation from my submission is;
The CO2 abatement cost estimates in the RET Review be re-estimated taking CO2 abatement effectiveness into account.
If the Department of Industry, ACIL-Allen, Deloitte or Frontier Economics can be tasked to re-estimate the CO2 abatement cost taking into account the CO2 abatement cost effectiveness (e.g. from Wheatley’s analysis), the estimated abatement costs will be much higher than is currently recognised.
Once The Treasury, Department of Finance, Department of Industry and the responsible Ministers recognise the high cost of CO2 abatement with wind power, this could be the catalyst for change. It could be the beginning of widespread recognition that the RET is a high cost way of reducing emissions and that the costs will escalate dramatically to 2020.
These cost increases will harm Australia’s international competitiveness, the economy, jobs, wages and standard of living.
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Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by dynam01
Reblogged this on <a href="https://ididntasktobeblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/a-global-iriai-in-place-of-the-ecomodernist-neologism/" rel="nofollow">I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog</a>.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by dynam01
Reblogged this on <a href="https://ididntasktobeblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/the-method-of-multiple-working-hypotheses/" rel="nofollow">I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog</a>.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Barnes
Maybe if the “ruling theory” started from a point other than “the only possible explanation for gw/cc is the level of co2 in our atmosphere” it would have some credibility. As it stands, the ruling theory, as defined by the alarmists, has little to none.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Barnes
Great, so I guess the blue team is young and dumb?
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.3
BrainH, An ECS of 0.3 is possible, but unlikely and not all that useful since it only considers about half to 2/3 of the overall changes. For just CO2 equivalent gases and with a 1980 to 2010 reference, “sensitivity” to CO2 equivalent should be about 0.8 C and depending on what time period should be considered “climate” have a range of uncertainty of about +/- 0.2 to +/- 0.8. If you are a JCH kinda of micro trend watcher, there is about 0.8 C of uncertainty thanks to the extra noise. A 100 year climate watcher would have about 0.2 and a 30 year watcher should have about 0.3 C. Then Gray’s 0.3 +/- 0.3 would put him the the lowest of the low end.
ESC isn’t that useful though because it requires a reference that isn’t set in stone. If you add CO2 in the depths of a glacial period you would have a higher sensitivity and at the peak of an interglacial a lower sensitivity. To add to the fun, the depths and peaks really depend on the average ocean temperature not the average surface temperature. Since the ocean appears to have a roughly 1700 year equalizing time frame, ECS has a value close to teats on a bore hog without some killer paleo ocean data.
That is part of the reason why the “ruling theory” has a small T.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.3
Actually the red team has a few young up and comers. Oppo, Rosenthal and Linsey are technically red teamers since the blue team is so anal. That forces Schwartz, Stephens, Stevens, Webster and a number of others into the red if you use 2.0 C as the line in the sand.
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Peter Lang
Does Jerry Taylor’s argument for a carbon tax hold up?
No argument for a carbon tax or any form of carbon pricing stands up because it cannot succeed in the real world. Part 1 and Part 2 here explain why:
Why carbon pricing will not succeed Part I: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/26/cross-post-peter-lang-why-carbon-pricing-will-not-succeed-part-i/
Why The World Will Not Agree to Pricing Carbon II: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/27/cross-post-peter-lang-why-the-world-will-not-agree-to-pricing-carbon-ii/
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