I won't bother putting up another reply to Serriadh (life is too short...), although you'll notice a lot of statements there, but not many numbers.As Lovins puts it 'In God we trust, all others bring data'.
Gosh. Well, you're evidently not going to counter my single most important remark (if wind and solar is so cheap, why can no one afford to build it? and why does it cost consumers so much?) but I'll give you a couple of fairly easy to digest numbers anyway cos I'm a reasonable chap
Grumpily anti nuclear energy secretary points out that nuclear power is half the cost of wind even taking into account waste cleanup and decomissioning costs (and this is with a much more generous estimate of the cost of wind power than that given above): http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-huhne-far-from-clear-on-nuclear/8230
Finally, Without Hot Air is worth a read, but it is a book (albeit a free, online one) rather than a short article like those above. It is rather more pro-renewables than my postings above, but not exactly optimistic.
A perfectly polite thread it has to be said, until someone criticized someone for quoting articles out of newscientist magazine. Trolling refers to intentionally misleading posts whose only purpose is to get the readers to react, I was putting the ideas of others forward without any assumptions and leaving the topic open "no one knows ! I even ended with don't believe eveything scientists tell you, so ending my own post by debunking it !
Anyway one thing I do believe is nuclear is fine until something goes wrong, renewable has to be the way to go but from which source?...
Serriadh - lets start with the statement ' you're evidently not going to counter my single most important remark (if wind and solar is so cheap, why can no one afford to build it? and why does it cost consumers so much?)'.
Firstly, people are evidently building large scale wind/solar, so my assumption is that they can afford to build them, and although FITT's/Renewable Obligations, etc are subsidies, those subsidies are relatively small when you look at the UK energy mix. Although nearly 10% of UK electricty came from renewables during April-June 2011, the subsidies on them are far too low to account for the rise in bills for gas/electricity (and are about to be cut anyway). The reason is simple. Natural gas prices were $143 in March 2011, but were $163 by June (their now about $140). The trend long-term is likely to be up, and since about 45% of electricity is produced by burning gas, thats why energy prices generally have climbed.
The actual costs of the various forms of production are very difficult to pin down, since different methods end up with different numbers. If you'd read down the page at the Channel 4 link you gave, it says ' A study by Mott MacDonald for the independent government advisory committee on climate change came up with a similar spread of prices but added this important point: “It is clear that pushing deployment can affect the relative costs of technologies…it is possible to find cases where offshore wind, CCS, and nuclear are each lower cost than the other two.” .. In other words, it is the government itself that effectively chooses which form of energy is most expensive by deciding which kind of technology it wants to push.'
In fact if you actually read the report, its more confusing than that, since it claims that on-shore wind is cheaper than nuclear, but off-shore is more expensive, and it talks about the costs of CCS, etc. Of course it depends on whether you believe the nuclear industries figures or not, etc.
In the real world, CCS in the UK is now basically dead (cancelled by Scottish Power), and RWE and SSE have cancelled their plans to build nuclear. Basically, all those assumptions from various reports have been hit by reality, so lets see what the market decides?
Hot Air has a fair number of critics on the net, due to the authors love of nuclear and his way of massaging his numbers to get the result he wants (Wind farm land use, for example). The Register? The firsdt para reads' unpopular renewable energy policy that punishes the poor, British industry, and will keep inflation high. ' Unbiased? I think not.
Enough for now - my wife is telling me to get off the PC ...
I like reading this forum post, but could peeps stop using 'shortcut letters' for things.
Not being 'up to speed' on these things, I have no idea what the likes of CCS, RWE, SSE, etc. refere to or mean, so I don't always know what poster means or is talking about.
CCS means Carbon Capture and Storage (now seemingly dead, despite the governments hope that it is not). PV refers to Solar panels (there is also passive solar, solar heating, and solar using mirrors).
RWE is the name of the group which owns Npower, and SSE is now the name for Scottish and Southern Energy (I don't no why they bothered either).
So just going back on topic for a moment - nice slide show and the message is that if you want to see a glacier in real life you'd better get down there now as they may not be there soon....
....which may or may not be man's fault, and climate change may or may not be the same as global warming..erm... or cooling, but carbon based fuels are, or sometimes not, cheaper than the carbon nuetral alternatives such as wind or PVC, BBC or ITV....
......but we all agree that TNF is a bad thing... right?
Berkeley Institute review of the evidence has concluded, case dismissed (again) for the sceptics concerns. Not that it will change the minds of the array of conspiracty theorists, bloggers and assorted media charlatans making up 99% of the denialist corner...
Berkeley Institute review of the evidence has concluded, case dismissed (again) for the sceptics concerns. Not that it will change the minds of the array of conspiracty theorists, bloggers and assorted media charlatans making up 99% of the denialist corner...
Actually they had made a mistake, but that's by the by I think most people believe the icecaps and glaciers are melting, the real issue isn't so much whether its man or a natural cycle, but more a case of if we can do anything about it.
Its unlikley that we can switch off global industry and even if we did temperatures might continue to rise, so is building wind farms just moving the deck chairs about on the titanic or should we be investing in improved agricultural technology so we can have crops in drought areas or areas of flooding or cold? Feed the world and all that
We seem to be tinkering around the edges rather than preparing for full global climate change and all the issues that will bring to that planet and all who sail on her
I've been holding my peace after reading the conversation among the usual sheep on this forum.
I'll just break my radio silence to point out the following:
1) clearly Moonlight Shadow is incapable of having any thoughts unless they have first been printed on the Guardian. A few pages back he regurgitated the usual lie about 99% of scientists endorsing the AGW thesis. That too was published in the Guardian (it was 97% actually, the claim) and that was debunked as another Iraq dossier like affair. A botched PhD survey sent to 10,000 scientists. Only 1200 or so replied. In the end the 'authors' of the report whittled down the sample to 77 scientists. So the claim that 97% scientists support the AGW boils down to 77 scientist. Talk about charlatans, you are a master of the trade, MS.
2) the link you provide to the Guardian is to a PRE-PRESS RELEASE by the authors of a paper THAT HAS NOT YET GONE TO PEER REVIEW. So it's not worth the paper it's written on. Obviously fact checking when it comes to quoting from what you guys call 'unbiased' sources is not something you engage in.
3) And on the matter of bias and hypocrisy: your main provider of thought matter is the Guardian which would long have gone out of business were it not for a) the practice of hiding funds off-shore b) its reliance on the Auto Trader series of magazines. So the most vocal proponent of 'green' measures gets its money from the most polluting means of transport. Priceless. Other links from you lot included a piece by Robert Black, a man who makes thousands a year talking to propaganda outfit. And the BBC have invested so heavily in wind energy through their pension funds that they cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as unbiased.
I could go on another while picking your sources apart, but I'll just say this: go on in thinking in autopilot mode (whatever is in the Guardian is true, whatever Lindzen says is crap).
It would be fun if you lot weren't so vocal about wind farms. Endorsing the destruction of the hills for no good purpose at all will be on your conscience for as long as you live.
Maybe one day you'll start thinking on your own without first checking what the Guardian says you should be thinking.
When pandas go bad, I like your post but the glaringly obvious seems to be ignored in this debate and that is that our planet is overpopulated (with humanity) several times over. We need a world dictatorship and a radically different economic model to solve that one.
1. 10257 scientists (of all disciplines) were sent the survey, 3146 answered (an average number the precis linked tells us), of those 79 were climate science specialists (you would assume the most qualified to answer the question) and 77 answered yes to the two questions asked by the survey, 96.2 %. I do not know of one single serious institute studying climate that sides with the sceptics (aside from one university in the USA, the name of which escapes me but they do a good job of asking questions)
2. Fine, let's wait for the peer-review which will take a considerable amount of time considering the scope of the work done. Most likely, it will again confirm the veracity of the data and we'll have wasted a few more years trying to convince people who will never, ever admit they are wrong...
3. The Guardian reeks of hypocrisy when it comes to defend a principled stand on tax affairs, so is the Telegraph (no longuer owned by Black I believe seeing as he is in jail in Canada right now...) but the matter at hand is climate change. Good point about Auto Trader btw. Incidentally, the Telegraph and Guardian are chalk/cheese when it comes to their politics so let me argue that I try to be fair in my linking of sources. Delingpole after all is one of the star bloggers of the Telegraph...Can't comment about the BBC, but investing in wind farms is a pretty popular ethical green energy investment. Obviously, another conspiracy against the truth I was not aware of...
You could go on indeed, be my guess...
I'm not going to start yet another windfarm bunfight on this thread, rest assured my conscience is very much at ease with my position, I don't advocate nuclear energy, shale gas, the wholesale destruction of the Arctic wildnerness to feed our need in energy no do I endore the destruction of the hills for no good purpose...I do endorse windfarms for an excellent purpose, cleaner energy generation. In 100 years, hopefully, they'll be gone and traces of their presence will be on their way out, like so many traces of the industrial past of many places you can visit nowadays...
As for "thinking on your own"...Yeah, of course you do...
Wind energy itself is a great idea, the trouble is those wind farms suck, there just sooo basic in there design imo, at the least they should be in some kind of shell that that helps draw air in and can rotate multiple fins and shield the noise, ok that was very vague but surely there has to be a better way / design to get the job done, and without taking up loads of real estate.. something looks like current power station cooling towers or damn like stuture with 100's of windmills in close proximity. lol sorry I'm just thinking.....
Windfarm technology is progressing all the times, hopefully their impact can also be minimised in the near future and new designs can be introduced. It's not as if I want all hills covered in them, I do enjoy my (relatively) pristine landscapes too...
Fearnmore - re 'regurgitated the usual lie about 99% of scientists endorsing the AGW thesis' - this is a list of the scientific organisations and bodies which think climate change is real. If you want to argue with all of them, go ahead, but your up against strong opposition, and Lindzen doesn't have much juice.
Although you seem to dislike the Guardian and the BBC (I must confess to being a Guardian reader and I listen to Radio 4 all day), climate change is not simply a conspiracy of Hampstead types. A short, but brilliant explaination of climate change is from Richard Alley , who is basically the guy we all really wanted to teach us science (he even dances to explain Ice Age cycles in this one). If your after a long explaination of climate change and its consensus, then check out Naomi Oreskes, whose work on 'skeptics' is very interesting. I just wish climate scientists in the UK had even a fraction of the communication skills of these two.
And of course there is always the fantastic Skeptical Science, which is the best way to kill off the zombie myths that wander around, backed up by peer review.
And since we are the ones causing climate change, rather it being a 'natural' effect, the least we can do is stop doing what we shouldn't be doing, and start doing what we should be.
Wife's telling me to get get off the intertubes now...
