Not going to follow the rest of your useless prose, the reality is that I posted already the Reuters article and others with the numbers of what is going on in Germany and in the south west of the USA, they refer to the actual levels of acceptance and **willingness **to pay for the change. In the why this is needed to do, besides the current economical justification, the ecological reason is not gone. In post #70 I linked to site of Michael Tobis that explains why it is not logical to continue to ignore the real costs of using fossil fuels. Mr. Tobis holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.
“So far, as I said at the start, environmental efforts to tackle global warming have failed. The planet’s emissions of carbon dioxide continue to soar, especially as developing countries emulate (and supplant) the industries of the West. Even in rich countries, small reductions in emissions offer no sign of the real break with the status quo we’d need to upend the iron logic of these three numbers. Germany is one of the only big countries that has actually tried hard to change its energy mix; on one sunny Saturday in late May, that northern-latitude nation generated nearly half its power from solar panels within its borders. That’s a small miracle – and it demonstrates that we have the technology to solve our problems. But we lack the will. So far, Germany’s the exception; the rule is ever more carbon.”
And it shows exactly what I have said so far, the only wonderment is why you think that was not the case. This is one of the few times that old saying of “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem” is a valid one. It has to be noticed also that the latest developments on the solar panels and plants dropping in price is an item that article is missing but that is not surprising, most of what I have posted comes from 2013.
The main point stands, not adding the real costs of us treating the atmosphere like a sewer is the real economical nonsense:
It is clear that now solar and even wind on its own is showing that a big part of the change can be done even with savings; BUT, those savings and deployment would be even more pronounced if we do the right thing and set up ways to add the real costs that our emissions are causing and will cause to our economy.
Out of wonder, why do we assume that we need to set aside huge tracts of land for solar? It’s not like wind where you need huge turbines or coal where you’re spewing smog. It seems to me that instead of a dedicated solar farm you could spread out the collection over the cities themselves. Even if it doesn’t eliminate the need for a solar farm, it should drastically reduce its size.
Just start off with incentives like the city selling land for cheaper if the buyer agrees to put up a solar array on the roof, or dedicate a portion of the land to it (say the top of the covered parking). Move up to incentivizing business owners to convert parts of their property to solar gathering. Eventually you could even give tax breaks to homeowners that do so – and subsidize the panels and maintenance.
You can also do it with things like public transportation. City approve a new streetcar track or covered monorail? Require the stops and overhangs to have solar panels.
Now at the beginning, solar may not completely meet every business’ needs, but as the amount of places using it increases, the ones who generate excess would ultimately help feed the ones not producing enough. Direct the excess off the top of that to storage. It may not work out to a pure solar utopia, and we may need supplementary wind and nuclear, but gradually converting the cities themselves into solar farms seems like a better idea and an easier sell than saying “we’re going to just convert half the desert into an array of solar panels.”
Of course, this isn’t super easy, obviously you need a department to go around inspecting panels to make sure they’re clean, safe, and working, trained workers to repair them, and so on. I imagine wiring up the city correctly would also be hard, and would likely make energy grid optimization a lot more difficult.
I’m not an electrical engineer or an energy scientist. I could easily be wrong and what I’m suggesting is technically impossible, or close enough to technically impossible. (And I don’t mean from a political perspective, just a technological one). I just think that it would be a lot easier to deal with if we just converted the roofs and parking lots with space into solar generators instead of trying to sell “set apart a 100x100 mile space in Arizona” and whatnot.
How much have current solar and wind reduced fossil fuel? From what I have seen, they have only added to the total amount of energy available; not reduced anything.
We “need” all the energy we can conceivably make, from all sources, as fast as possible, just to get everyone richer. Maybe not as comfortable as Mr Gore and me, but a lot more comfortable than they are now.
I keep asking you to show me some numbers that suggest this is not the case. Do you have any? If you look at the graph I showed you earlier what you notice is that total energy consumption for all sources just keeps skyrocketing, as we all try to be more comfortable.
So where do you get this idea that solar and wind are going to replace fossils instead of simply being one more source to help the 99% live richer (while us rich guys buy up new renewables as our source so we feel better about our lavish energy consumption)?
(I might add the drama queen who wrote the Rolling Stones article should have waited for the 2013 hurricane season before he jumped on Debby as one of his index examples).
For the record, I fully agree that in principle we could win a war against AGW gasses. In practice we won’t, because we won’t sacrifice for the common good and we will not pay a personal penalty of any kind that’s painful now in support of avoiding a future pain that’s undefined. There is no proximate threat great enough, and there is a great deal of suspicion about current putative AGW consequences. One often sees “climate change” articles citing both drought and floods. Or you might see a cite suggesting AGW will drive a particularly severe hurricane season, and when that craps out, another cite suggesting overheating in africa canceled out the hurricanes. On and on, as if the alarmists have realized they better blame everything on AGW hoping to find a proximate enough threat so that we all Do Something.
Same pap, I already said that you need to look at the graphs from Germany, as the article from the Rolling Stones reported, we should follow the example of Germany, repeating again the already acknowledged problems that remain with many other nations not following yet is just demanding that we should stall forever.
And you are only showing willful ignorance here, the surveys made in the south west (and already posted before) shows that people are willing and already paying the “penalty”* by going for solar. But if you want to continue repeating points that should had been modified ages ago and showing all that you are not paying attention, be my guest.
*And as pointed before, people are finding that is saving them money. When you are not reacting to the changes that are going on and you continue to repeat the same old, it does not make you sound better the longer this goes.
The purpose of the subsidy reductions is to reduce the number of solar installations being created. It says so right in the first sentence of the article -
And your own cite says that solar costs more.
Solar power is not cost-competitive. You and I have both posted cites that show this
If it costs more - and it currently does - using more of it does not save money. This is like the proverbial “buy at five cents, sell at three cents, make up the difference in volume”.
I’m all for solar. And I’m all for any free-market solution.
I think I am not making my core question very clear:
What is the evidence that any new renewables decrease the total amount of energy wanted in the world? If solar doesn’t reduce current carbon output from fossils, it isn’t going to ameliorate AGW. What I have observed is that new sources of energy simply help create more energy. And our appetite for energy is insatiable. It will remain insatiabe until we all get as comfortable as me and Mr Gore, which is pretty damn comfortable. We have a long, long way to go to get the world up to western levels of comfort.
We’ve shifted a lot of energy-intensive manufacturing to China and the developing world. But the west still consumes that stuff, so I’m a little underwhelmed if we meet our local needs with solar and start condemning China et al for being dirty.
My little toy rain used to be made in Germany. Now it’s made in China. But it’s me living large that is consuming a new toy train. China is going to meet my demand because it makes the Chinese richer. Germany is going to lower its energy needs by shifting manufacturing to China. The fossil fuel consumption is going to continue to rise because we all want more stuff, and we need all the new renewables we can bring online PLUS all the fossil fuels PLUS whatever other sources we can figure out.
Any realistic approach to solving for AGW gasses must figure out how to reduce carbon output. In theory, that can be done with new renewables. But while we bring new renewables online, we have to reduce consumption. That is not going to happen.
Repeat w/ me: Consumption is not going to be reduced while we wait to swap out the grid. There are too many of us wanting to consume more, and the economic consequences of reduced consumption are too painful (as are the economic consequences of a carbon tax).
There’s a reason we’ve diddled and diddled with AGW with no real successful reduction in carbon emissions: We love the rhetoric surrounding a Great Cause, but we are not gonna reduce consumption.
Curious universe that is reported from the USA then, the savings are very clear for many home owners and business now.
Again, what I said was that you are ignoring that it is becoming more competitive that before, and again you are ignoring that they are very much **more **competitive once the real costs of emitting fossil fuels into the atmosphere are accounted for. The item of alternatives like solar becoming cheaper has been a recent development, that was expected by many experts, but as usual many sources on the right choose to mislead their followers or not report what is going on.
again you can not deny that solar is growing even if you are correct.
And the Chief continues to even deny that there is a reduction in the fossil fuel emissions that comes with the deployment of solar and wind.
They also have wind, and new battery technology that is being applied. And I already reported that nuclear power should not be dismissed.
The only QED for all is that you do not pay attention to what the posts report also, and the source you use are omitting a lot of what is going on on places that decide to make progress on this issue.
I’m not denying anything, including the idea that solar and wind are nice.
I’m wondering if you have any data showing the total world use of fossils is reduced as more solar and wind come online.
The problem is the massive increase we need in total energy in order to get the masses comfortable. We’ll use all the solar, wind, nuclear and fossils that we make. All of it. And we’ll still be asking for more.
I have already said it’s theoretically possible to solve AGW gasses with new renewables. But we are not going to wait at a world level any more than Germany has waited for replacing its nuclear with renewables instead of coal.
We want our comfort levels, now.
There is no chance the approach of a wealthy and fiscally responsible nation like Germany can be extended to the world, especially the developing world. That sort of luxury approach is available only to the already-rich, for whom it can be an AGW-fighting hobby, and for whom the dirty manufacturing can be passed off to the developing world. The developing world, in turn, (along with countries whose economies cannot afford it) will stick to whatever sources they get can get online as cheaply as possible.
There’s no realistic way to get fossil fuel off the grid fast enough.
I’m hoping we find good ways to capture carbon output, and I’d be a first investor if that technology comes along.
Need to calibrate your declarations again, the south west and other places in the USA are following as it was posted already.
This exudes ignorance, scientists and economists settled and accepted that no immediate change is coming or recommended.
The recommended targets about how much PPM could be accepted as relatively safe levels were considered and adopted by the experts for years to accept the march of civilization, but those limits exist with the understanding that we should soon start with the control of our emissions.
Please note what start means, it does not mean like your imagination is telling you about limiting emissions “fast enough”
Let the record show how adept you are at moving the goalposts.
In the meantime, as your original demand from awhile did actually go, it was not related to capture carbon but where to invest, so invest in solar, wind, and new battery designs.
I gave up as soon as the silly points ignored that the costs are not there just for the solar deployment. He is ignoring the investing and progress going on, now batteries are coming and the money available is going to improve the electrical grid to deal with the **overproduction **of energy that is affecting the grid now. That takes care of many of his complaints in the following pages. He also misleadingly not tell his readers that the increase in fossil fuels was recent and related to the nuclear power plants taken off line. As others reported that increase is bound to be reduced in the near future.
So, it is the same old and from a source that supports denialists.
One very silly point from the Forbes article was that since Germany has less sun than the USA it is not a good example to use but then what about the places that then should be employing the technology? He lamely declares that:
Well, I have to say that this guy is really misinformed,
My advice? Remove the subsidies fossil fuel companies still have in the USA and use the money to help the electric companies to offset the lost revenue the electrical companies are seeing, after all they also need to modernize the aging electrical grid of the USA ASAP.
The Forbes article was written by Ryan Carlyle, an author adamantly opposed to coal, calling it *“arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the industrialized world.” *
He is in favor of solar. He is in favor of nuclear.
What he is not in favor of is the mindless stupidity which has driven Germany’s solar policy, creating insanely expensive solar energy, the subsidy of which–all by itself–costs more than buying zero-carbon electricity from neighbors.
His “kicker” example of stupidity at the end of the article is that 38% (!) of Germany’s “renewable energy” is from firewood. Because new trees will replace the forests they are chopping down, it makes economic sense to destroy forests, further pollute the environment today, and call it an energy policy.
There are too many points for me to recite here. For anyone interested in the topic, I advise reading the article, making your own decision about GIGObuster’s dismissal of it, and of the author’s neutrality.
It’s very very sobering. And it concludes thusly:
“Every time a renewables advocate holds up Germany as a shining beacon, they set back the credibility of the environmental movement. It’s unsupported by reality and…gives ammunition to the enemy.”
But hey; I know GIGObuster is so far down the Great Cause road that everything which sobers up an opinion that we just have to get our experts to show us the way is suspect. So read it for yourself and make your own decision. German solar is what happens when we shoot first and ask questions later.
No one that makes articles for Forbes about how nice the oil industry is and not reporting on the cost of emissions (just in passing only) is a reliable narrator.
Most readers already learned about how reliable Forbes was and is, your cause is to defend the oil industry. As I pointed many times before, when people like a Subsea Hydraulics Engineer talks about what Germany and the south west is doing with solar power and he is caught missing a lot, one has to remember: he is only giving his opinion in an opinion page on a biased magazine.
