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Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by sciguy54

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Thanks for the summary, Peter!

I would love to have a good handle on the soup-to-nuts extra costs incurred by the distribution, transmission, storage, and consumer sectors when high penetration is reached for solar and wind.

As you noted, there are significant costs for transmission and storage. Are good estimations available? I also believe that we are greatly underestimating the costs which are and will be absorbed by consumers in order to improve reliability and offset the cost of increased rates. Is there a realistic and comprehensive study which addresses these issues?

Finally, is there a worthwhile study which examines the risks associated with the “connectedness” required to make the future grid work as envisioned?


Comment on Week in review – Paris edition by peter3172

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So coming to one conclusion ignores uncertainty, but coming to another conclusion doesn’t?

Comment on Week in review – Paris edition by cerescokid

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When the Sun said “Melting Arctic ice will raise sea levels….” I wonder if the author understood the distinction between Arctic sea ice and Arctic ice as in Greenland ice sheet. The former won’t add to sea level rise at all and the latter will only if the worst kind of hysterical forecasts come true. It wouldn’t be the first time the MSM didn’t understand the non-roll Arctic sea ice played in rising sea levels.

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by nickels

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“Let us now consider exchanges on the free market. Such an exchange is voluntarily undertaken by both parties. Therefore, the very fact that an exchange takes place demonstrates that both parties benefit (or more strictly, expect to benefit) from the exchange. The fact that both parties chose the exchange demonstrates that they both benefit. The free market is the name for the array of all the voluntary exchanges that take place in the world. Since every exchange demonstrates a unanimity of benefit for both parties concerned, we must conclude that the free market benefits all its participants. In other words, welfare economics can make the statement that the free market increases social utility, while still keeping to the framework of the Unanimity Rule.57”

Various other destructions of the notion of a welfare utility as presented by the Austrian school:

https://mises.org/library/toward-reconstruction-utility-and-welfare-economics-0

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by ordvic

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The impossible task of trying to ameliorate, as Joshua suggests above, seems to have come to fruition:

Why the Paris climate deal is meaningless

http://www.politico.eu/article/paris-climate-deal-is-meaningless-cop21-emissions-china-obama/

“This year, in Paris, has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can,” said U.S. President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Alaska. Miguel Cañete, the EU’s chief negotiator, has warned there is “no Plan B — nothing to follow. This is not just ongoing UN discussions. Paris is final.”

But the more seriously you take the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, the angrier you should be about the plan for Paris. With so much political capital and so many legacies staked to achieving an “agreement” — any agreement — negotiators have opted to pursue one worth less than…well, certainly less than the cost of a two-week summit in a glamorous European capital.

Climate talks are complex and opaque, operating with their own language and process, so it’s important to cut through the terminology and look at what is actually under discussion. Conventional wisdom holds that negotiators are hashing out a fair allocation of the deep emissions cuts all countries would need to make to limit warming. That image bears little resemblance to reality.

In fact, emissions reductions are barely on the table at all. Instead, the talks are rigged to ensure an agreement is reached regardless of how little action countries plan to take. The developing world, projected to account for four-fifths of all carbon-dioxide emissions this century, will earn applause for what amounts to a promise to stay on their pre-existing trajectory of emissions-intensive growth.

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Curious George

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Oh, a new revolutionary idea! Let’s throw money at the problem!
(Tax credits welcome.)

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Curious George

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by RiHo08

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In the November 24, 2015 Journal of the American Medical Association is an article on the Prevalence of Body Mass Index Lower Than 16 Among Women in Low-Middle-Income Countries.

“A BMI <16 is the most severe category of adult undernutrition and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality and poor maternal-fetal outcomes.."

Data analysis comprised nationally representative surveys from 1993 to 2012 of women ages 20 to 49 years from 60 low-middle-income countries. A subset of 40 countries were resurveyed 2 decades later.

The prevalence of BMI <16 in the middle wealth quintile was Odds Ratio of 0.4 and for low wealth quintile O R of 3. Among the 24 of 39 countries with repeat surveys, there was no decrease in prevalence.

The annual UN Conferences on Climate Change beginning in Berlin in 1995 and the COP21 begins today. The focus of these conferences has been to stop CO2 emissions from all countries, wealthy or not. The primary mechanism to stop CO2 emissions has been to eliminate all fossil fuel use, particularly coal for generating electricity. Recently leading developed countries were able to eliminate international banking sources from financing coal fired power plants. Further, efforts at deep de-carbonization of electricity grids makes coal fired power plants even less likely.

I juxtapose the dates from the above study (1993-2012) and the efforts of Conference of Participants (1995 to 2015). I believe these dates reflect efforts of the mostly isolated intelligencia and their impact upon societies. The financial impact upon developing countries has been felt; i.e., no progress in mitigating extreme undernutrition, morbidity, mortality and poor maternal-fetal outcomes. No progress in mitigating CO2.

What would you call this form of social welfare function?


Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Billionaires Making Monkeys of Themselves Over Green Energy Scam? | al fin next level

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[…] __ Costs of Decarbonisation […]

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Curious George

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How is a demand for wind-generated electricity different from a demand for coal-generated electricity? Maybe we mean an expensive electricity versus a cheap electricity?

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Stephen Anthony

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PA I am impressed by your breadth of knowledge. You seem to have this and other subjects such as CO2 intake by plants at your fingertips. So if you are a professional/retired scientist, in what (a mix will do) ?

Curiosity rather than irony is where are I am coming from ;-)

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by nickels

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“The problem of “welfare economics” has always been to find some way to circumvent this restriction on economics [that economics cannot make ethical conclusions], and to make ethical, and particularly political, statements directly. Since economics discusses individuals’ aiming to maximize their utility or happiness or welfare, the problem may be translated into the following terms: When can economics say that “society is better off” as a result of a certain change? Or alternatively, when can we say that “social utility” has been increased or “maximized”?

Neoclassical economists, led by Professor Pigou, found a simple answer. Economics can establish that a man’s marginal utility of money diminishes as his money-income increases. Therefore, they concluded, the marginal utility of a dollar is less to a rich man than to a poor man. Other things being equal, social utility is maximized by a progressive income tax which takes from the rich and gives to the poor. This was the favorite demonstration of the “old welfare economics,” grounded on Benthamite utilitarian ethics, and brought to fruition by Edgeworth and Pigou. Economists continued blithely along this path until they were brought up short by Professor Robbins. Robbins showed that this demonstration rested on interpersonal comparisons of utility, and since utility is not a cardinal magnitude, such comparisons involve ethical judgments.”

“What Robbins actually accomplished was to reintroduce Pareto’s Unanimity Rule into economics and establish it as the iron gate where welfare economics must test its credentials.47 This Rule runs as follows: We can only say that “social welfare” (or better, “social utility”) has increased due to a change, if no individual is worse off because of the change (and at least one is better off). If one individual is worse off, the fact that interpersonal utilities cannot be added or subtracted prevents economics from saying anything about social utility. Any statement about social utility would, in the absence of unanimity, imply an ethical interpersonal comparison between the gainers and the losers from a change. If X number of individuals gain, and Y number lose, from a change, any weighing to sum up in a “social” conclusion would necessarily imply an ethical judgment on the relative importance of the two groups.48″

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by nickels

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Is that math book for young Einstein less necessary than that crust of bread for nobody? What utility function can see into the human soul or determine the future determined by any given transaction?
Ultimately utility is Marxist as one can see immediately by U = U(C).

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by catweazle666

Comment on Climate Heretic. Part II by catweazle666

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Jim D: “ATTP also has good comments.”

You missed off the /sarc tag.


Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by bobdroege

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You got the first one right, and then you went totally off of the rails.

“2. The current reactors are basically a sub reactor converted to land use.”

Depends, there are two basic types of light water reactor, the PWR and the BWR. No subs were or are powered by BWRs.

And sub reactors use fuel that is more enriched than commercial power plants use.

This is just freaking bonzo wrong on so many levels

“3. Water cooling isn’t a problem in sub reactor because if worst comes to worst you can flood the reactor with water that is frequently under more pressure than the reactor.”

For one, the seawater pressure at crush depth is less than 1000 psi and reactor coolant pressure is about twice that.

If you had an accident where you needed to flood the reactor cooling system cause it was leaking, best idea would be to hit the “chicken switches” and head for home on the diesel.

The reason the water in a PWR is at high pressure is because low pressure steam turbines are gihugic (I just made that word up) while high pressure turbines are sorta smallish, and heat transfer reasons.

“9. All the negative consequences of a reactor issue are due to high pressure and the dissociation (into hydrogen and oxygen) during an overheat which must be released – typically into the reactor building.”

Nope, not even close

The main issue during an overheat is this reaction

Zr + 2 H2O –> ZrO2 + 2 H2

Which caused the negative consequences at Fukishima.

Speaking of Fukishima and “Further the “lessons learned” from Fukushima are going to increase construction costs”

I though the lessons learned from Fukishima was to put you diesel generators behind 3 foot of concrete like IP did at the one nuclear power plant I was working at. As well as installing hydrogen recombiners, which were installed at a US BWR6 and not refitted at Fukishima.

The lessons from Fukishima were that the lessons learned from TMI were not put in place there.

I am in favor of Advance Boiling water reactors, Simplified BWRs and even the AP1000.

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by Peter Lang

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-1=e^iπ,

Sorry, I should have made my question clearer. I am seeking an independent, check on the actual discount rates that are implied by investments in long life infrastructure projects over the past century, and multiple centuries. That is a chart like the one I showed of interest rates from the Bank of England. By independent I mean without resorting to the mumbo-jumbo economists jargon like the Ramsay equation. Refering to more of the Ramsay and other economic mumbo jumbo is not answering my question. I am asking you for a reality check – i.e. “sneak up on it from another direction”.

You are correct that the chart is of nominal interest rates. Bu I am seeking a chart of the implied discount rates used in the decisions to build the large, long life infrastructure projects.

Comment on Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids by Don Aitkin (@donaitkin)

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Great piece, Peter!

Comment on A buoy-only sea surface temperature record by ehak (@ehak1)

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T Eddie:

So sampling is a problem in comparing the MSU with radiosonde?

Really. Tell Christy that. Who presented graphs to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality with no subsampling when comparing radiosondes and MSU.

Also tell Gorline that. Who thinks those graphs validates the MSU series.

Comment on Decision making under uncertainty – maximize expected social welfare by -1=e^iπ

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@ Peter Lang,

Based on our previous conversations I know this isn’t going to go anywhere. You are being unreasonable and are a lost cause.

You keep asking me to come up with data on interest rates from centuries ago even though no such data exists and despite the fact that it isn’t very relevant. Then you confuse interest rates with discounts rate and dismiss all economic theory that explains observations about interest rates, including the economic theory that forms the foundation of cost-benefit analysis.

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