Maxok
The only thing you have in common is two shared letters in your name.
now why don’t you stop thinking we are all afraid of renewables and accept that perhaps sceptics just live in the real world and don’t get scared of every little shadow?
Tonyb
The ‘subsidies for fossil fuels’ talking point is nonsense. There are not and never were specific subsidies or even tax breaks for the fossil fuel industries. What there are are accounting rules that go back to the beginning of the income tax code that allow for depreciation of mining assets. These rules apply to all mining activities and recognize the fact that mines are depreciable assets. If that’s a ‘subsidy’, then so is all depreciation.
Some accounting literacy would help.
Jimd
I’m not against any of those things if it creates more efficient and cost effective renewables than we currently have. It’s a 10 year time scale to get something into production and in the meantime I see no point in installing more expensive white elephants that masquerade as energy solutions
Tonyb
Another gem from Peter Lang:
“Some here don’t understand that power must be generated precisely when demand calls for it.”
______
A suggested title for Peter’s biography: MY LIFE WITHOUT BATTERIES.
If Peter starts his car with a hand crank. he better be careful. Those things can kick back like a mule.
Attacks on legitimate scientific skepticism and the smear tactics and personal attacks employed by the Left are, as Brad Minor observed, demonstrates an unpatriotic lack of “respect for and trust in the American people, and in the inherent wisdom of the democratic process.”
“Some activists simply couldn’t make the transition from confrontation to consensus; it was as if they needed a common enemy. When a majority of people decide they agree with all your reasonable ideas the only way you can remain confrontational and antiestablishment is to adopt ever more extreme positions, eventually abandoning science and logic altogether in favour of zero-tolerance policies.”
~Patrick Moore, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout…
The other losers that you don’t want to mention are all the classic cars, modern boats, and general aviation airplanes that can’t reliably use gasoline with 10% ethanol.
Harold, I don’t know, but you can Google Exxon tax breaks, and tax breaks are equivalent to subsidies, to find out more. Maybe not in your country(?), but the US does do this. I believe they do it to be competitive in world markets, and this is an approach that can be extended to renewables, so I am not against it as long as it is realized that their profits are not only due to the cheapness of fossil fuels.
It’s amazing to go to see this web page and reading the views of all colleagues regarding this paragraph, while I am also eager of getting familiarity.
Germany could end up leading the world in these technologies with their self-imposed deadlines. It is an interesting and bold move that could go either way, but I would not put it past the Germans to be able to succeed.
“Statistical significance” is forever being misunderstood. If present, it simply mens that , statistically, there is a non-zero effect, even though that effect maybe, well, small (and insignificant). Use a large enough sample size and a truly miniscule effect can be shown to be present (in all likelihood).
JimD – you haven’t pointed to a single tax break that goes to fossil fuels that isn’t enjoyed by other industries.
Personally, I believe that the corporate tax rate should be between zero and , say, 3% and the citizens should bear the burden of government.
This would achieve a couple of goals. First, even more companies would move to the US, bringing in a ton of jobs that we desperately need in the US. (Many are moving here now for cheap energy from Europe.) Second, it would make the citizen very sensitive to the cost of government.
Then, take away all tax breaks for individuals. Implement something like a negative income tax, that pays a supplement to the poor, old, and disabled; but if they get work, the total income for them goes up even as the government subsidy goes down. This maintains the incentive to work and also cuts out a huge chunk of bureaucracy and government spending.
I took the trouble to download the data and get some averages.
Over the last two and a bit years the average wind power generated has been 1.5GW, which comprises just 4.2% of the average demand.
So we would need six times the installed capacity to get to 25% on average, and we’d still need the same amount of backup.
And, even if we had some practical means of storing vast amounts of power, we’d need twelve times the installed capacity to get 25% without backup.
And, even if we could get around the fierce public resistance to anything like that number of wind turbines, the big question still remains: who’s going to pay for it?
You can bet Al Gore won’t be paying for it – instead he will get special treatment from the government to make money from it.
Total BS– Germany joined with France with their anti-American allies in the UN to push the AGW agenda knowing full well it was money in the bank. After taking back East Germany with an infrastructure that had been destroyed by socialism, the West Germans were set to get credit for every dated E. German powerplant that was torn down and replaced with modern technology–something that would have been done 40 years earlier by a free people.
Max_OK,
A car battery stores around 500Wh
A country like the UK uses around 35GW
To store enough energy to power the UK for just one hour would require the equivalent of 70 million car batteries.
Get your head around that and stop making ignorant remarks.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” R.W. Emerson
Bart R | June 17, 2013 at 9:35 am | Reply
See what I was saying about the dull level? ;)
Alas that Willis isn’t impressed by obscure wordplay. Oh, well. If a joke needs explaining, it can’t have been that good.
Still, “Bayesian Additive Regression Trees in R” (BART R) and .. you know, I ought have gone with ‘scandals’ over ‘sandles’ on reflection.. ancient greek footwear aside, you’ve addressed everything in Willis’ straw manned, cherry-picked argumentum ad populam even before he echoed WUWT’s position, and nothing in his answer seems to move the discourse forward.
Jeez, Bart, if that was supposed to be humor, don’t quit your day job for a spot doing standup … you desperately need a [joke] tag. Although upon explanation, the “Bayesian Additive Regression Trees in R” works, without that explanation, it just sounds like your usual lack of logic.
In any case, four years ago, Science magazine noted the pause that you and Jan say doesn’t exist. At that time, it quoted folks like you about the pause, and what they said was, wait a few years and the warming will start again.
Now, I’ve waited a few years since then, four to be exact, and the pause continues. And after the failure of their claim, you pop up to tell me to have patience, wait a few years and the warming will start again?
Sorry. I fell for that line last time, and the scientists claiming that turned out to be full of BS. The warming didn’t resume.
This time, if you want me to wait, give me a number. If there is no warming for another 3 years, will you agree that there is a pause? Five years? Seven years? At what point does your global warming panic meme pass its use-by date?
Jan claims he wants science, but he, like you, is making no scientific statements. Because if it’s not falsifiable, it’s not science … and to date, the claims have been “wait a few years”, a most unfalsifiable notion.
w.
PS—Will the warming start again? Well, we have to consider that the world has been generally warming in fits and starts, at something like a half-degree per century since the Little Ice Age, for reasons that neither you, I, Jan nor anyone else on this planet can explain.
So the wise money would have to bet that that gradual rise would continue, for the same unknown reasons. However, that’s just the human addiction to thinking the future is like the past. My brother used to say “It’s easy to predict the future … as long as it’s like the past”.
But it’s not always like the past. For example, at some point during the Medieval Warm Period, temperatures stopped gradually rising, and started the slide towards the cold time of the Little Ice Age … and then at some point during the Little Ice Age we hit the local nadir and starting warming again … and since no one can explain why that centuries-long cooling or the succeeding warming happened, your confidence that you understand it all well enough to predict the future climate is … well … I’ll just call it “optimistic” and leave it at that.
But claiming that you have some inside scientific information that if we wait a few years the warming will resume? Naw, that’s just your hope and your bet and your fervent prayer. That’s not science, because sadly, no one knows which way that frog will jump.
Russian Science Institutions have never bought into the AGW belief system or narrative (much less cAGW).
A well-worn delaying tactic by those with minority views is to try to blur the meaning of consensus.
Funny, but I’ve been a skeptic since 1992, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually seen anyone seriously ask this question, what is the definition of “consensus” as we are using it in this context. I’ve seen then ask if their really is consensus, but not what the actual working definition is.
Now I’m sure someone else has, somewhere, but, it certainly has not been common. In order to be “well-worn”, according to THAT definition:
1. Showing signs of much wear or use.
2. Repeated too often; trite or hackneyed.
So I’m not sure that your accusation holds any water at all, really.
