Solar does make sense on rooftops and parking lots as covers for the cars. Shades the cars and estimates are some 20% of total electrical baseload usage with out additional damage to the environments.
Scott
Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Scott
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by mwgrant
David Springer
” I won’t blame Obama if he isn’t in control and as far as I can tell he isn’t.”
For future reference–may I use that out of context?
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by mwgrant
Being more specific–may I quote that out of context…
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by David Springer
Is there some sort of professional who puts on shows where bears hugs people? Circus acts were famous once for lion tamers putting their heads into the mouths of lions. People payed to see it. Is there something wrong with that?
Here’s my half of our bear pictures for today. People probably pay to see this too. Enjoy.
http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/images/images-new/mark_riding_barney.jpg
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by timg56
David,
OK, fair points. Your scenario sounds very plausible. Also plausible is that President Obama is fully aware of what this organization is doing and implicitly supports it. At least until things start to blow back on him. At which point he will disavow any knowledge and promise to bring his full powers into play to stop such behavior.
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by David Springer
Here we go. Maybe you need to get out more. May I suggest you attend a circus? They have circuses in the UK?
http://i.usatoday.net/news/gallery/2010/n100325_day/10n100325-pg-horizontal.jpg
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by timg56
manaker,
Got to give Max the points on this one. He is correct regarding the cherry picking comment.
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by David Springer
I spent quite a bit of time in Taipei. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re in a 5-star hotel all expenses paid then I can’t recommend it highly enough!
Here’s my digs. Back in days (1990′s) when Michael Dell wasn’t such a penny pincher.
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Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Scott
Here is the link to the article.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/solar-energy-is-ready-dot-the-u-dot-s-dot-isnt
Scott
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Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Don Monfort
Yes Scott, that is why we see PV on nearly every rooftop and parking lot.
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by Rob Starkey
I’ll offer one of my favorite Max Ok silly comments.
” those people in developing countiries don’t need electricity, they can live fine without it”
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by timg56
Max,
You really test my desire to avoid name calling. That a macaw can inflict serious injury is irrelevant to Rand’s point that having to provide documentation to satisfy the government to the level he describes is idiotic.
Amd even if one could come up with a reasonable justification to have a code for “injury by macaw”, what could possibly justify 7 specific codes? Personally, the thought of someone taking the time (at my expense as a tax payer) to think of 7 different ways a macaw could cause injury being involved in making decisions about someone’s health care is worrisome.
As for Rand Paul, you can disagree with his politics, but as far as his intelligence goes, I doubt you are in the same time zone. Comments like that contribute to the impression you haven’t gotten past the stage of 15 year old wanna be.
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by mwgrant
I’d go back to Taipei in a heartbeat. (There this spring.) I suspect a lot of big changes I saw–I was there in the mid 70′s–have taken place since you were there, e.g. Daan District (Daan Park, NTU, Taiwan Normal) is really nice. But to each his own.
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by JCH
My ancestors lived in mansions and had house servants before they had electricity. They probably lived better than any of us.
And now they say they had higher IQs because their nonelectric lifestyle made them think better.
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Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Vaughan Pratt
@PL: <i>You may want to check the basis of your assertion of 10 tons CO2 per year. I’d suggest 0.5 tons per year per kWp is more appropriate as average for the fleet.</i>
A handy table near the top of <a href="http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/how-much-energy-will-my-solar-cells-produce/" rel="nofollow">this page</a> gives average daily production for 10 Australian cities. Only the first column matters since the other four are merely scaled up linearly from it.
Lowest not surprisingly is Hobart with 3.5 kWh per kWp. Highest is Alice Springs (where I spent a few days in 2011) with 5.0 kWh. These translate to respectively 1280 and 1820 kWh per kWp per year.
Using Lang's preferred value of 600 g CO2/kWh, we obtain for Hobart 0.77 tons/kWp and 1.1 for the Alice. If however we use the 771 g CO2/kWh figure that PGE prefers for their grid in Northern California, which is well within Palmer's range of 400-1000, those would be respectively 0.99 and 1.41 tons/kWp.
Lang demands that I cite authorities for my figures. Whenever he doesn't do so himself it's a safe bet he's exaggerated his numbers, as should be clear from his 0.5 tons/kWp here. Even Hobart at 0.77 tons/kWp based on Lang's 600 g/kWh is 50% more than that!
For comparison my system, acquired in 2008 as part of Pacific Gas & Electric's California Solar Initiative (CSI) program, uses the above-mentioned abatement value of 771 g CO2/kWh in its meter. Its inverter provides my house with 7.5 kW, but is fed by 8.46 kW of panels (36 235W Sunpower modules) which I only recently learned is what standardly defines kWp. Its meter lately showed 110903 lbs of abated CO2 over 5 years or 110903*.0004536/5 = 10.06 tonnes per year, which divided by 8.46 gives 1.19 tonnes/kWp.
At 771 g/kWh, 1.19 tons/kWp is halfway between Hobart and Alice Springs, numerically if not geographically.
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Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Don Monfort
“The result is a burgeoning rooftop revolution. The SEIA says almost 52,000 residential rooftop systems were installed in the U.S. last year, up 30 percent from a year earlier. ”
52k
How many would have been installed without federal, state and local subsidies?
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Comment on Calling out climate change deniers in Congress by timg56
izen,
Since I lean towards the opinion that there is enough evidence to show AGW has progressed from hypothesis to theorem, I should be predisposed to your point of view. But my ability to give credence to your argument is hulled by your use of the 97% figure. It is a made up number. Both sources for that number (George Mason survey & Cook study) are grossly flawed.
And even if the majority of climate scientists do accept the AGW theorem as valid, that is not justification to ignore competing hypotheses. Is the hypothesis that human impacts on climate may be swamped by natural variation without merit? I would argue otherwise. Is the hypothesis that climate models are insufficient at predicting future climate change bogus? Based on our current (lack of) knowledge about our climatic system and the divergence between model output and recorded temps the past 15 or so years, I’d say this one has certainly developed legs.
So when I see comments like yours, it provides fuel to further call into question some of the arguments from scientists backing the AGW theorem. If you can get something like the 97% thing wrong, what else have you gotten wrong?
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Comment on Forget sustainability – it’s about resilience by Max_OK
timg56, if it’s your employer’s computer there may be restrictions on what you can download.
If it’s your computer, and you want more than one browser, just Google “Chrome” and/or “Firefox” and follow the instructions to download one or both of these browsers. I have an Mac which came with Safari as a browser, but I prefer Chrome so I use it most of the time. I use Firefox for Youtube because fewer things are blocked.
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Comment on Mainstreaming ECS ~ 2 C by Pekka Pirilä
What’s the real full cost of solar PV in reducing CO2 releases is a complex problem and the answer depends very much both on local conditions and on framing of the question. No answer is uniquely the right one and answers that are right in some specific way may differ from each other by a factor of well more than two.
Every client of power company gets a service that’s not limited to the total amount of electrical energy delivered to him. Delivering the energy at a time optimal for the power company would induce costs only a small fraction (sometimes as low as 20%, perhaps even less) of the cost of delivering the same amount of energy according to the needs of the customer. The real value of the solar electricity produced by a homeowner to his own use is equal to the reduction in the cost of the power system. Some savings are obtained from reduction the the use of fuels and other variable costs, but that saving is much less than the reduction in the electricity bill of the customer. The difference is largely subsidy for the owner of the solar panel.
A few people do install solar panels here in Finland. Here the peak load is always at a time of exactly zero solar generation, and here most of the solar electricity is produced at a time, when the cost of the alternatives is near their annual minimum value. The situation gets so extreme in Germany and Denmark that the price of electricity is sometimes highly negative (like euro -100/MWh) on the power exchange. That sounds crazy (and it is) but it’s, indeed, common that those get paid who reduce production or increase consumption.
Here in Finland the value of $600/ton(CO2) may be an underestimate, but in those parts of California, where the peak power coincides with maximal sunshine the value is much less. What it is, I cannot say, but certainly far below that value.
A short term calculation gives some results, a longer term calculation where the generation is considered as part of newly optimized power system, gives different results. For many important factors no agreement can be obtained on the most correct way of doing the estimate. Thus only very crude bounds can be presented reliably.
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Comment on Forget sustainability – it’s about resilience by Berényi Péter
Hurricane Sandy hit New York hardest right where it was most recently redeveloped: Lower Manhattan [...] “The buildings were designed to generate lower environmental impacts, but not to respond to the impacts of the environment” — for example, by having redundant power systems.
Well, fortunately I happen to know a particular building in lower Manhattan rather well. Unfortunately this one, as all the others, was hit by Sandy.
Among many other things, there is a datacenter in that building, fortunately on the 25th floor or something like that, well above flood level. Unfortunately it was not the case with exploding downtown transformers, so it was left with no power. Fortunately it had UPS & a backup generator on the roof. Unfortunately fuel tanks for that generator were located in the basement, which was flooded. Fortunately the fuel pumps were well designed, so they kept operating even under several feet of salt water. Unfortunately authorities, fearing fuel leakage (and a major fire in its wake) ordered them to be shut down.
Therefore the data center was left with no power whatsoever. In spite of its redundant network connections & all the fiber still in good operating condition under water, it went utterly dead for a week, generating untold frustration in its customers, major companies all.
Can we blame any design flaw for this issue? No, it was administrative business entirely. The fuel system was in fact safe against leakage, but no one in charge dared to take responsibility, because of lacking official certificates. True, the city of New York, or rather, its administrative branch never even thought of issuing such certificates (while the building did have all available green certificates indeed). Therefore it is quite understandable, that the datacenter failed to apply for a certificate on safety of its fuel system while flooded by seawater.
That’s how lack of resilience enters the world.
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