I don’t understand why you for some reason seem to think politics trumps science. If I start making gravity political, using politics to argue it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t somehow make it less true all of the sudden.
Things that are about the natural world are not politics. Politics has no way of determining if something is true. It is silly to base your map of reality on politics.
Look at the data yourself. Don’t let some talking heads on TV tell you what to look at. Come here and ask questions. Don’t accept politics as reality. Because what is politics but people trying to make you believe what they do, whether it’s true or not?
I’m not a climate scientist. I can’t sit here for the next week pulling together various cites, cross checking them, analyzing the data, etc and then handing you the distilled result. I can point out once again that given both sides have been playing fast and loose with numbers and interpretations it seems a bit crazy to have an absolute opinion as you so obviously do.
Then we have the call it smell test…
Every journalist on the planet who doesn’t work at Fox throws softball questions to the pro-AGW interviewee and tosses the fastballs at the anti-AGW. This concept extends pro-AGWs are all liberals, anti-AGW conservatives (whoops there is the politics again). We have constant bombardment via news, TV shows, movies, books, etc that AGW is real with instant endorsements and favorable reviews of these shows, again indicating leftist agenda (thought).
ClimateGate: Bunch of emails by leftist scientists commenting on how to marginalize anti-AGWs among other things. Said to be nothing worth notice by leftist media.
ClimateGate II: Bunch of emails by right wingers this time stolen by fraud not leaked as before. Said to be gospel according to Gore by leftist media.
Chesapeke Bay fiasco: Sierra Club takes money from Natural Gas to protest and mess with Coal over global warming concerns! :smack:
Hockey Stick Graph: Many consider it faked
Alarmist Graph: Global Warming Trend often shown only until the year 2000 when… the warming stopped but this point not frequently raised.
If I wanted to spend more time I could google my brains out and do nice little cites and cutesy links to Wiki articles by Bacon of Scientific Method fame. That was cute btw. A little childish but cute. Do try to remember… people who disagree with you are not crazy, stupid, uneducated, or illogical.
Now if you don’t mind I’m going back to reading Discworld: Soul Music:cool:
I’m primarily just standing back and watching this thread, but I can’t let this statement go unmentioned. The Climategate I emails were stolen, not “leaked.” The email servers of of the University of East Anglia were hacked. While some of the language and tone sounded bad (especially out of context), the researchers had not committed any wrongdoing or faked data.
I assume the Climategate II incident is the incident where a professor obtained a list of donors and expenditures from an AGW-denying institute. (My Google is failing to come up with a name, and I’m pressed for time.) In that case, it was fraud, not theft, and the professor has been castigated by much (though certainly not all) of the AGW-confirming institute.
Oh boy. We successfully avoided this becoming another nuclear power debate only to have it instead be turned into a soapbox for climate change denying (What do 99 plus % of all climate scientists know compared to a few conservative pundits on Fox?) and the eeevils of regulation. Excuse me if I skip this one.
Meanwhile back to NG and coal …
Let us assume a medium term future in which NG prices if not spike at least go up somewhat substantially. How fast can the utilities pass that cost on to consumers? If fairly quickly then they really have no motivation to hedge much with alternatives, do they? If not fairly quickly then a utility with excessive NG concentration may end up getting hurt bad enough that they need to be saved or fold … and I suspect that many of them are as too big to fail as many banks were.
I suspect I don’t quite understand the dynamics here, but perhaps Una could clarify what sort of risks the utilities take on versus how much they can safely assume they can pass along, one way or the other? Thanks.
A lot of states still have regulated electricity. Also, I don’t know the percentages, but I would have to thing that many customers are not on month-to-month variable rate plans. They probably lock in a rate for 12-months at a time usually. The utilities may hedge that production.
With respect to gas, I defer to Longhorn Dave. I agree that regulation would moderate increases, although no regulators are going to let a power company lose too much money to risk going under if the only reason they need to raise prices is that the base commodity fuel price has increased.
I don’t know the specific graph you are referring to, but I think we can take rising CO2 levels as a fact. Is this what you are disputing?
I know someone who collects air samples and designs and uses the instruments to measure the compositions of those samples. The work is peer reviewed by other professional scientists. She has a PhD in atmospheric science and does this work for NOAA. It is very believable that the data on CO2 levels are accurate. Do some research on the Carboniferous- we’re digging up old carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere, among other things. It makes sense.
But a person who can’t follow the math won’t reach that conclusion. The question will remain unanswered, and this person may choose to trust someone to figure it out for them. The results come first, and for the set without access to the answers, the politization of the issue comes second. Groups with a profit motive will lead astray the vulnerable if they can. One tool they use is the reframing of the issue into conservative and liberal sides. Frankly I don’t accept ‘liberal’ as a descriptive category. Can you define it for us?
I don’t think the regulated states would let the power companies lose a huge amount of money, I really meant only that regulated states reduce some of the more seasonal volatility of pricing, along with customers locking in fixed rate type plans. Basically, electricity expenses to the end customer shouldn’t be as volatile as the underlying commodities.
Would you not agree, however, that relative to coal the price of gas makes up higher percentage of the (non-capital or loan) busbar generation cost? Coal fuel cost can be anywhere from 50% to 80% of the busbar cost, but with gas it seems like at a minimum it would trend to being 80-95%.
I don’t have a clue. My expertise is on the upstream production side. I know a little about midstream, refineries, and gas processing plants. I don’t have a clue about power.
What is the state of competition at either wholesale or retail levels for electricity in most of the American markets right now?
The traditional American model is, I think, pretty monopolistic and vertically integrated with governmental regulation pretty much assuring that no substantial loss will be incurred by the provider and the consumer not having much choice between providers. I understand though that some markets are now open to competition but I am unclear hw that competition actually works. I get mailings and phone messages from a host of companies asking me to switch from ComEd for example, (although ComEd would still deliver it) but I am unclear if these companies are just repackaging middlemen or have their own generators of various sorts.
Now ComEd, well Exelon which owns ComEd as the delivery company more precisely I guess, is pretty heavy nuclear in the Chicago region right now (53% from Nuclear Power, 36% from Coal Fired Power, 7% from Natural Gas, 3% from Wind, Biomass, or Hydro Power, and 1% Other) so perhaps not a great case study.
I know I am, due to some basic ignorance and confusion, asking this very inarticulately, but how does the nature of market competition as it is (existing along side price regulations in many cases) in the United States play out in encouraging, or for that matter, discouraging, a decision to hedge against potential future NG volatility by building alternative capacity that is currently undercut on price by NG?
I think I understand, but let me try. I attended a lecture on a subject similar to this which was basically “how will Obama’s mandate impact unregulated markets” (markets where you have competition between IPPs and traditional utilities, etc.) and the concern here is that most IPPs rely on fast and easy and low-risk generation - typically, simple-cycle natural gas turbines. They now will have to only put in advanced simple-cycle turbines (at a higher cost) or combined cycle plants, and this could make it more difficult for IPPs to enter or expand in an existing market. This could result in slightly less competition and price pressure on the big names. Is that what you’re asking about?
It give some of what I am looking for, but I am looking at the pressures longer term.
The “traditional utilities” are not competing against each other in any meaningful way, correct? The competition, when and where it exists, is between the traditionals and the IPPs. Traditionals have no real incentive to diversify instead of going to where it is currently cheap: make more money now and their exposure to NG prices rising is limited as they’d be able to pass that on to the consumer who has no choice but to pay. The risk of being undercut in price by a diversified competitor in the case of such a price rise is low because those competitors, with rare exceptions, have even more exclusive NG exposure, needing even more to gamble on the cheapest current alternative.
I am getting the flavor of the banking industry and sub-par loans. Taking the higher short term risk (betting on NG for the long haul) is encouraged by the fact that the industry can benefit from upsides but is to a large degree protected from excessive downside risks; there is no fiscal motivation to take out the expensive insurance policy/hedge of a diversified portfolio.
Ah. I think…I think you’re probably accurately assessing a situation in some of the unregulated markets, but regulated states seem to have a better incentive to diversify, as well as to invest in renewables. I confess you’re asking a question beyond my ability to answer and feel confident in my answer.
I appreciate the honesty or humility, whichever is more apt. Relatively less uninformed speculation is still welcome!
On principle I am not fan of governments declaring solutions. (OTOH I have no problem with governments incentivizing them; a significant distinction.) But given that the nature of energy markets means that consumers are likely to be left having to pay for gambles gone bad, some imposed solutions to protect us from risks of excessive volatility seem required.
This news makes me start to consider again some of the natural gas royalty trusts I have been considering for some time. There are a few I’ve had my eye on with expected ~15 year or longer lifetimes, but I feel they’re currently not priced all that great relative to the volatility involved.
If we’re really seeing the end of new coal power plants I think that significantly increases the likelihood of significant natural gas price increases during the lifetime of these trusts (which makes them far more attractive investments IMO.)
