The mystery refers to how clouds work in regards to them being a positive or a negative feedback in the Global Warming puzzle, How they work regarding precipitation and other common phenomena related to them is not a mystery.
One of the few skeptic scientists, Lindzen, has had many theories on how the clouds will become a negative feedback, meaning that then global warming will not be so bad; unfortunately, almost all of his ideas have failed to pan out in real life or are discredited.
How about knowing what the fuck you’re taking about for a change. I do not deny global warming. I just think that GIGO treats it like a religion, which he does.. Anytime there’s even a tangential mention that he can tie to global warming we get preached and evangelized to. Hell, you’d have a better chance of getting Elmer Gantry renounce God that you would trying to get the Father Gigo to admit that man might not know all he thinks he knows about AGW. So, do yourself a shut the fuck up. For a change.
And by the way, do you have any idea how weak your “our Dopetards” is? No, of course you don’t. :roll eyes:
You may now go back to fellating the Al Gore’s acolyte..
So, no credentials off any import.
Noted.
And so do you, what matters is what the science says and it is duly noted that you are only ignoring it and you are still demonstrating to all that you are a klutz on identifying good sources from the bad ones.
No, I don’t want to show my work. Saying “I wouldn’t be surprised” is not “I have this great peer reviewed and mathematically sound theory”.
Probably works on a principle similar to rainbows.
Yeah right, what we have here is that there is overwhelming evidence for this, what sucks really is that currently most of the Republican party and conservatives are indeed pushing retarded ideas on this subject, and for some reason you think that putting me down will make a difference…
Nah, most of the Republicans, specially the Tea partiers are indeed that dumb and **do **deny global warming, I only can observe here that it must suck to be you when you encounter day in and day out that the ones you are involved with or the media you rely on just spew denialism.
Ha. Not a Republican. Not a denier of AGW. Sorry. But you’re 0 for 2. You cannot even understand the point being made. You’re too wrapped up in The Cause. And when you get a scintilla of a notion that someone is not cheering alongside you with pom-poms, you default to, “E-n-e-m-y…M-u-s-t a-t-t-a-c-k.”
Can I get an “Amen”? Or an “Algore”?
Sure, like if it is not clear where your usual sources are, as mentioned before one only needs to do a search on who pushes Lovelock and a flurry of denial sites comes up, point being that I have seen your kind before, a right wing guy that is only a concern troll and a fake environmentalist to boot.
And once again, this was not invented by Al Gore.
Of course, that last bit about Al Gore also shows where are you coming from, so you are not fooling any one.
Cost competitive doesn’t mean it’s actually even close to competitive on a utility scale, in terms of capacity factor, availability, stability through the day (and night), etc. I have tried and tried to get this message out on this on this message board for more than 10 years.
I’m currently working on a greenfield coal power plant project* where we are spending more than $5M studying to see if biomass, solar, or wind could be in any way competitive with this new MACT coal plant, because yes this “evil utility” really does want to use renewable energy if they can. And the answer has repeatedly turned out to be in practical terms they’re not even close, as in, 3-5x more expensive when you consider the all-in cost of covering availability (wind actually isn’t an option due to poor resources, so really the only viable renewable competition is biomass and solar). Availability requirements are 90% or higher, because the area is currently experiencing “voluntary reductions” and there have been some brownouts due to several old plants having FO. What they would have to do is build about 3x the nameplate capacity in solar, and supplement with 1x capacity in CCGTs for the evening through morning hours, as well as any day it’s cloudy. Even with $2.80/MBtu gas, that’s not a winner.
And of course the PUC won’t let them recoup their cost via rate increases via solar, and thus no renewable power. This is the real world of engineering and science where I work every single day, not the pie-in-the-sky estimates of teenaged bloggers and academics far removed from the actual sweat and blood of permitting and building a power plant. There may be other areas where this can work, but this situation appears fairly typical IME for 2011-2012 projects I’ve been hired onto.
Note that I would love to see the plant be solar. Although I am “the coal goddess,” about 2/3 of my work is in renewable energy and environmental controls, and growing each year. People don’t pay me to say “no”, they want me to say “yes.” But when we run the numbers, it’s just simply not going to happen, not by a mile.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ralph124c View Post
Its more a case of periodic drought in the American Southwest-we may be entering a phase similar to that of AD 1300-1400 (when the cliff dwellings, Chaco Canyon, etc. were abandoned).
Why would you think that?
Seriously, why?
Well, for one thing , scientists have studied the climatic data encoded in ancient tree growth rings. This data has been analyzed over the past 70 years-and it shows periodic cycles of drought in the Southwest. The period I referred to was preceded by a period of abundant rainfall in the SW-so much so that desert areas were inhabited by thousands of people-who were able to grow corn, beans, squash, etc., in these now-uninhabited area.
Look it up…its all there…have I answered the question?:smack:
Sure, but it is a misleading answering the end because it always implies that then the area will naturally change back to a similar level in the future, unfortunately human factors are overwhelming the natural ones.
I have seen reports now that one of the things that is killing coal now is that natural gas is cheaper nowadays.
And what you say overall is true and the reason why I did not say that alternatives can be as effective in economical terms now; however, what is happening is indeed a complete lack of responsibility from the part of many fossil fuel companies for any of the extra costs of adaptation that all will have to pay for the changes the use of their product causes (and we are beginning to pay now as the evidence is showing), once the real price to pay is added then we will see that alternatives are more beneficial in economical terms:
Michaels, like Lindzen is also a researcher that often gets is wrong, although in this case the evidence shows that he is misrepresenting what the economist said, it has to be pointed out here that Michaels gets a lot of his funding from fossil fuel supported think tanks.
Ahem. The Lovelock interview was found on The Guardian.
All together now, “ALGORE”!
I recently posted a detailed summary of what is actually killing coal in GD. I have some experience in this area…
Nope, the point was that whoever told you that interview was the beesnees was an idiot, generally what happens is that a retarded denial or right wing site told all that that interview showed how climate change scientists are discredited, when in reality it is Lovelock who is. BTW this double down of yours only demonstrates that I was correct, you are indeed incapable of identifying good from bad sources and in this case it Lovelock who I’m talking about, not the Guardian as they do get to interview the other side that is in the super-majority:
And I have no problem with your assessment, I only point out that one new factor is also the issue of natural gas suddenly being cheaper.
I hoped someone would comment on that bit, and who better than Una Persson…
First of all I don’t tend to think of utilities (or you either for that matter) as evil. Yes, coal pollution kills thousands every year, but what were we supposed to have done for power over the last 100 years?
-I don’t understand the abbreviation FO.
Tell me if I have the gist correct: You are saying that the price per watt of solar falling below the price per watt of coal-generated power is not the whole story since 1) Solar requires installing 3x the required capacity because of its variability, 2) this variability also requires something like a peaker plant to pick up the slack and therefore 3) here in 2012 the numbers point to going forward with coal for the clear cost advantage.
If all that is the case, well ok, but see below.
I hope you aren’t calling me a teenaged blogger :mad:
Issues with the local PUC really vary with region, no? Some populations are willing to pay extra to speed up the switch to renewable power while others are very sensitive to price increases. I don’t know where your project is located but it sounds like the latter is the case there. I can dig it.
Not by a mile perhaps, but how about by a decade? I don’t have the expertise to make a prediction of when, if ever, large-scale solar will be truly competitive with its rivals. But consider how suggestive some of the specifics can be, starting withthis chart of solar prices. As economies of scale and other factors kick in over time, the price per watt of solar has dropped in a dramatic Moore’s Law kind of way. To date it has not dropped low enough to be competitive, but at what point does that change? Isn’t fossil fuel generation projected to increase in price over time?
Also consider projections from ostensibly respectable sources like this one, who suggest your above claims won’t be true for long:
Yes, they are talking about something a little different that a centralized power plant, in a different country no less, but overall do you think these kinds of projections are misleading wrt the potential of solar power?
Finally, concerning cloudy days and the need for a backup plant- what about smart grids endowed with lots of auto batteries storing excess electricity and giving it back during periods of low sunshine? What about utility-scale batteries? Solar’s modular nature? I really have no idea of the costs of large-scale batteries but can’t they at least mitigate the use of a backup generator and pay for themselves over time? And as electric cars become more popular, won’t the cost of municipal batteries be effectively picked up by consumers who will each be providing a small amount of battery backup to a future smart grid, mostly if not altogether eliminating the need for a backup/peaker plant?
That’s a lot to toss in your lap at once. In a nutshell I’m asking if the case for solar can be de-bunked looking 10, 20, 50 years into the future, even if it isn’t utility-practical right now.
I’m a Coloradoan and the fires are making me miserable, but Colorado goes through wet and dry spells. We’re in a dry one. There are lots of studies that come out of CU about climate change and Colorado weather, but some of it is cyclical. Long dry spells are not uncommon. I can’t really recount all of my Colorado history prof’s lectures, but I doubt human destruction had anything to do with a dry spell, of, say 1884 or 1483. Our indigenous history pretty much shows that.
