PV Solar - If not Florida, Where?

[dannyf]

And predicting the future is hard.

Predicting the future is easy: I can predict what will happen to you 1000 years from now with 100% certainty, or the earth's temperature with high degree of confidence.

Plus, what consequences are there if my prediction about the next millennium turns out to be false?

Unverifiable predictions are always right.

Predicting what happened in the past is incredibly difficult.

[dannyf]

What is actually done is closer to extrapolating a couple of hundred of years

Let's say that I measured a temperature rise of 0.1C between 8am and 8:00:0.2, every day consistently. Extropolating that leads you to conclude that everyone would be cooking by noon. "OMG, that's the end of the world!!!!" We must do something about it, right?

For a 4 billion+ year old earth, that 0.2 second is equivalent to 10,000 years of temperature data.

Hopefully those extropolatists understand that,

If you look back at the earth's temperatures, you will see lots of ups and downs - we call them ice ages. Between ages, you have warming up and cooling offs, for reasons we don't fully understand.

If you look at the long-term tread, we are now below the average temperature for the earth. So we should see some reversion to means -> temperature rises.

Sure, CO2 will have an impact on temperature but we don't know exactly how. For example, CO2 is a fertilizer to plants. More CO2 + high temperature means better plant growth -> bigger carbon sinks -> a negative feedback.

To say that we know little about planet earth is an under-statement. Only fools like those tree huggers and climate fanatics don't understand that.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--I would like to thank DJ and the moderators for tolerating this thread, and for helping to keep it polite and professional. I will strive to help them do this and promise to try not to go mental myself.

--AGW is promoted by the mainstream media, as a theory which which 97% percent of scientists agree. This is somewhat true. Scientists were ask do you think the increase in atmospheric CO2 is responsible for any portion of the recent (not in the last 18 years though), increase in global atmospheric temperature. So if you are a scientist and you agree that anthropocentric CO2 might be responsible for 1% of this increase, you qualify as one of 97% who agree with the AGW hypothesis. Both Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Tree Ring Circus Impresario Michael Mann's Hokey Shtick have been caught out, misrepresenting facts, deliberately trying to deceive, and playing fast and loose with the facts, which is obviously the reason they have never be mentioned in this thread by der warmers. And, oddly enough, when being ask to agree with AGW, scientists are not disqualified because they are not climate scientists. Hmmm, but if you would like to submit documented facts on the matter, you are disqualified for not being a "Climate Scientist", this is known in Logic and Debate circles and the fallacy of the "Appeal to Authority".


--AGW is built on modeling, and the assumption as to the reactivity of global atmospheric temperature to the CO2 fraction is an educated guess by the modellers. It might me much less than the models assume. In which case, the 97% would still be correct (nya nya nya) but all of these huge government juggernauts would be completely insane.

--For instance, having increased UK electric bills by 50%, and having built 5000 Wind Turbines, should the UK should go ahead and build the other planned 85,000? I would bet my burro that it is all going to come crashing down before even another 5000 are built. Picture for yourself huge offshore rusting hulks that never even saw service, let alone having transmission line run ashore, and the same for Germany.

--If anyone thinks I am just woofing, then let them try to prove that Al Gore and Michael Mann are correct and honest.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
William Shakespeare 1564 1616

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[magetoo]

Let's say that I measured a temperature rise of 0.1C between 8am and 8:00:0.2, every day consistently. Extropolating that leads you to conclude that everyone would be cooking by noon. "OMG, that's the end of the world!!!!" We must do something about it, right?

In the absence of any other data than those 0.2 seconds perhaps.  And if you could show a 0.1 degree temperature rise simultaneously around the whole planet in just 0.2 seconds, that would mean a staggering amount of energy being released and everything we think we know about the Earth would have to be scrapped.  So yeah, I would say that would be pretty damn important.

But the flaw here is that we have an everyday experience that tells us that small variations over short timescales don't matter.  We don't have that sort of direct experience with climate over hundreds and thousands and millions of years.  We need models.

If you look back at the earth's temperatures, you will see lots of ups and downs - we call them ice ages. Between ages, you have warming up and cooling offs, for reasons we don't fully understand.

If you look at the long-term tread, we are now below the average temperature for the earth. So we should see some reversion to means -> temperature rises.

Why "should" we see a reversion?  We've rolled ones four times in a row, so now we're due for a six?  The argument assumes that there is something like a natural equilibrium that the planet naturally strives towards, and not just a bunch of random changes piled upon each other.  What's the mechanism for that?

The more parsimonious explanation is that such changes happen for a variety of unrelated reasons, and that rising temperatures now are due to basic physics, not some magical gamblers-logic Gaia BS.


And, of course, we can't send thermometers back in time.  The reason we know that temperature was different is in part due to - you guessed it - climate models.

So can we agree that climate models do tell us something important about temperatures?

Sure, CO2 will have an impact on temperature but we don't know exactly how. For example, CO2 is a fertilizer to plants. More CO2 + high temperature means better plant growth -> bigger carbon sinks -> a negative feedback.

We know pretty well what impact CO2 has.  Higher temperatures, as you mentioned.

More plant growth does not imply negative feedback, recall this thing called the "carbon cycle" that you probably read about in biology class.  For there to be a sink, you need plants to grow, and then be taken out of circulation.  If you just grow more trees, they still eventually fall down and decompose, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere.

To say that we know little about planet earth is an under-statement. Only fools like those tree huggers and climate fanatics don't understand that.

And to say that we therefore know nothing is nonsense.  We do know that CO2 traps heat (since the 1800s!), and that more CO2 will trap more heat.

[dannyf]

But the flaw here is that we have an everyday experience that tells us that small variations over short timescales don't matter. 

So look at the data we have over hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years. Not decades, as that's no different than attempting to predict afternoon temperature by extrapolating from early morning observations.

We don't have that sort of direct experience with climate over hundreds and thousands and millions of years. 

We do, if you are willing to listen to science.

We need people who are honest an open to have an honest debate about climate changes.

We do know that CO2 traps heat (since the 1800s!), and that more CO2 will trap more heat.

Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we have to address it, or address it now: your fart traps heat and the more you fart the more heat it traps.

But I wouldn't propose that we plug you now.

[magetoo]

Both Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and ... Michael Mann's Hokey Shtick have been caught out ... which is obviously the reason they have never be mentioned in this thread by der warmers.

What's this obsession with Al Gore?  He's not a scientist, Inconvenient Truth is not a scientific paper, and both are completely irrelevant to any discussion about AGW.

Mann, as far as I know has not been "caught out", and even if he were, that would make no difference.  Here's why:

Saying that "Michael Mann is lying and therefore AGW is false" is the exact inverse of saying "Michael Mann is honest and therefore AGW is true".  I am sure if I were to claim the second statement as ironclad proof for AGW, you could spot the appeal to authority fallacy that you argue has no place in the discussion.

--For instance, having increased UK electric bills by 50%, and having built 5000 Wind Turbines, should the UK should go ahead and build the other planned 85,000? I would bet my burro that it is all going to come crashing down before even another 5000 are built. Picture for yourself huge offshore rusting hulks that never even saw service, let alone having transmission line run ashore, and the same for Germany.

Putting all your eggs in the wind basket would be insane.  Fortunately it seems that nuclear at least gets a go in the UK.

[dannyf]

Mann, as far as I know has not been "caught out"

Even though I don't share that particular belief of yours, I will fight to your right to believe whatever you want.

That is the biggest difference between the global warming fanatics and the rest of us: To those global warming fanatics, you are evil, you don't care about the environment, you don't care about our future generations and their well beings, if you don't believe in global warming as much as they do.

[dannyf]

What's this obsession with Al Gore?  He's not a scientist, Inconvenient Truth is not a scientific paper

What's this obsession with science and scientists?

At any given point, 99% of the scientists and 99% of the science are wrong on any given subject.

[magetoo]

But the flaw here is that we have an everyday experience that tells us that small variations over short timescales don't matter. 

So look at the data we have over hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years. Not decades, as that's no different than attempting to predict afternoon temperature by extrapolating from early morning observations.

That's what climate scientists do!  And the data, over hundreds of thousands of years, shows that levels of CO2 is correlated with temperatures.

We don't have that sort of direct experience with climate over hundreds and thousands and millions of years. 

We do, if you are willing to listen to science.

No we don't have direct experience.  Unless you have a specially equipped Delorean you haven't told me about, we never will.  There were no thermometers offering direct temperature measurement hundreds of thousands of years ago.

That doesn't mean we know nothing, we still have climate models and enough data to plug into them.

We do know that CO2 traps heat (since the 1800s!), and that more CO2 will trap more heat.

Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we have to address it, or address it now: your fart traps heat and the more you fart the more heat it traps.

But I wouldn't propose that we plug you now.

But maybe later?  I guess if we were sharing a room you might change your mind.

[zapta]

What's this obsession with Al Gore?  He's not a scientist, Inconvenient Truth is not a scientific paper, and both are completely irrelevant to any discussion about AGW.

He got a Nobel prize for his AGW scare campaign. Hard to ignore that.

[magetoo]

That is the biggest difference between the global warming fanatics and the rest of us: To those global warming fanatics, you are evil, you don't care about the environment, you don't care about our future generations and their well beings, if you don't believe in global warming as much as they do.

Believe what you want; that doesn't describe me at all.

Sounds like you only talked to political activists who wanted to use AGW as a stick to beat someone with.  We have greens here too, and I don't get along with green dogma either.

What's this obsession with science and scientists?

Science is the most successful system of learning about the world that humanity has ever had.  I'd say that makes it pretty relevant.

At any given point, 99% of the scientists and 99% of the science are wrong on any given subject.

And we still managed to invent vaccines and send probes to Mars.  Science succeeds in spite of people being flawed, which is why it is so great.

Edit: Well, I disagree about 99% of science being wrong, obviously.  Incomplete would be a better word.

[dannyf]

Science succeeds in spite of people being flawed,

Scientific advances are due to "flawed" people, people who refuse to accept the status quo, people who are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, people who firmly believe in science being wrong and strive to come up with a better mouse trap.

Science would die if we adopt the global warming fanatics' "science on that is settled" approach.

[magetoo]

Scientific advances are due to "flawed" people,

I don't know, most scientific advances seem to be due to really boring people.

People who are willing to do the same experiment over and over again, with tiny variations, three hundred times in a row.  People who spend days writing code to make sense of enormous datasets that are bigger than any sane person would deal with.  People who can spend a decade preparing for launching a probe into space, watch it crash into the ground on another planet, and then go back to do another one.

Science would die if we adopt the global warming fanatics' "science on that is settled" approach.

Science is never settled.  But if you want to argue that CO2 has negligible impact on climate now, you'd have to come up with some pretty amazing data to demonstrate that, since so much of the evidence points the other way.

If anyone is looking for people who are willing to challenge the status quo of AGW and put in the work, check out the Berkeley Earth project.

No, it may not confirm what you already believe, but the project was started in order to evaluate the methods used in climate science with a skeptical eye, and has run on no-strings-attached funding.

[dannyf]

There is pretty broad political agreement on the science of AGW in most of Europe though

I think the last time they had similar agreement was in the 1600s, about some flowers there. That didn't turn out great for those smartie pants, did it?

Whenever there is broad agreement or "consensus", there is euphoria, there are systemic risks, there is a bubble coming your way. It is a sign that something bad is about to happen.

Diversity in opinions is as much valuable to our survival as diversity of genes.

[dannyf]

People who are willing to do the same experiment over and over again, with tiny variations, three hundred times in a row.  People who spend days writing code to make sense of enormous datasets that are bigger than any sane person would deal with.  People who can spend a decade preparing for launching a probe into space, watch it crash into the ground on another planet, and then go back to do another one.

Sounds like some seriously flawed people there.

But if you want to argue that CO2 has negligible impact on climate now, you'd have to come up with some pretty amazing data to demonstrate that, since so much of the evidence points the other way.

First of all, that's not the assertion.

But more importantly, it seems the burden is on the party advancing a point of view, asking for more favorable resource allocation.

It is like it wouldn't fair to insist that you prove your innocence, or my assertion that you are a crook wins by default.

That just doesn't seem to be the way science works, science man.

[magetoo]

I think the last time they had similar agreement was in the 1600s, about some flowers there. That didn't turn out great for those smartie pants, did it?

The free market at work.  Since we seem to have moved straight into snarkiness, let me just say I'm glad that bubbles and crashes in the financial system could never happen in the strictly regulated socialist utopia that you call home.

No, tulip mania was bad for everyone who had the misfortune to be involved, but the "facts" of a bubble economy where everyone acts on what they think other people will do is not comparable to actual verifiable facts of the physical world.

Diversity in opinions is as much valuable to our survival as diversity of genes.

We can agree on that, at least.

[dannyf]

let me just say I'm glad that bubbles and crashes in the financial system could never happen in the strictly regulated socialist utopia that you call home.

Yea, except that in all of the western world, the financial services industry is one of the most regulated industries.

No, tulip mania was bad for everyone who had the misfortune to be involved,

Not really - crashes like that are critical for a market to be efficient, for people to invest in price discovery so that it would not happen again. Someone won the nobel prize on that notion alone.

but the "facts" of a bubble economy where everyone acts on what they think other people will do is not comparable to actual verifiable facts of the physical world.

Only if you could verify the future predictions.

That's why those climate models fail so miserably in predicting the past.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Below link is about recent energy rate increases in the UK, and history since 2005. See graphs at bottom showing marked increases in energy prices.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19921042

"Britain's North Sea gas supplies are running out and British Gas has to pay the going rate for gas in a competitive global marketplace."

--Meanwhile they are knee deep in frack gas and are refusing to tap it, cause that would be bad carbon policy, much better to buy it from Putler.

--And a good article about UK wind power.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/01/02/as-britain-freezes-wind-farms-take-power-from-grid-to-prevent-icing/

"As Britain shivers under a blanket of snow and ice, it has emerged that offshore windfarms have been idling to prevent icing up – and drawing electricity off the national grid to do so. Critics have pointed out the “folly” of having windfarms idle in a cold snap, but industry experts insist that all forms of power generation involve some electrical input."

"Theoretically, Britain’s wind farms, both onshore and off, have a combined capacity of 12.1GW, enough to power 8.8 million homes. However, a report published last October by the Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute found that the chance of all Britain’s windfarms running at full capacity together was “vanishingly small”, meaning that actual output is often far lower. Rather, they found that the average output was just eight percent of the headline figure"

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” "
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[dannyf]

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” "

So profound no wonder our "experts" have trouble understanding it,

[dannyf]

No-one ever claimed they would hit 100% output.

So if you bought a car rated at 100HP, and you found out that it can generate that much power only if the sun, the moon and your neighbor's dog are perfectly aligned.

That's OK in your book, right?

Maybe your boss should give you a salary like that.

[tom66]

Diversity in opinions is as much valuable to our survival as diversity of genes.

Silly example,  but why does there need to be diversity on scientific opinions when one "opinion" is so close to being fact that it may as well be called a fact?

For example, the existence of bacteria, or atoms, or a heliocentric solar system, it's OK to disagree with them, but you'd be rightly mocked for being an idiot because there is overwhelming evidence that they all exist. There are some who disagree with these points - a diversity of opinions if you like - but they're usually regarded as crackpots or religious zealots.

"Theoretically, Britain’s wind farms, both onshore and off, have a combined capacity of 12.1GW, enough to power 8.8 million homes. However, a report published last October by the Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute found that the chance of all Britain’s windfarms running at full capacity together was “vanishingly small”, meaning that actual output is often far lower. Rather, they found that the average output was just eight percent of the headline figure"

See, I don't believe this. The capacity factor for British wind farms is about 0.2-0.3, or 20-30% of the nameplate capacity. Anyone who ever bought into wind farms thinking they would contribute 100% of their power 100% of the time is a fool.

Real time data on UK grid, right now 2.5GW from wind: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Long term data shows 32% capacity factor: according to DUKES 2014 report from UK govt (page 194) for wind and about 10.2% for solar.

Did you know that's actually higher than most CGGT stations, and only half that of nuclear? (pg 146 of same report)

Shock fact! Did you know that coal power and nuclear power both require power to operate? You didn't really think they used magic pixies for the lighting? Or hamsters to turn the coolant pumps? And it's not negligible! A nuclear power plant can use 15MW backup diesel generators! (Source) And that's just for an emergency, to keep the plant ticking over.

[zapta]

Silly example,  but why does there need to be diversity on scientific opinions when one "opinion" is so close to being fact that it may as well be called a fact?

Earth being flat used to be a fact.

[tom66]

Silly example,  but why does there need to be diversity on scientific opinions when one "opinion" is so close to being fact that it may as well be called a fact?

Earth being flat used to be a fact.

Almost no-one believed the earth was flat.  The earth being approximately spherical was a known fact by the ancient Greeks, including  Erathosthenes who used a simple calculation to compute Earth's circumference to within about 15%. Unless you are referring to very early civilisations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth.27s_circumference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

During the early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among the educated was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.[2]

According to Stephen Jay Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."[3] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[4]

[zapta]

Almost no-one believed the earth was flat.

Wrong again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

[zapta]

Plus, he still hasn't justified his position on pollution. I guess he is hoping the question just goes away...

Mojo Chan, you are confusing life footprint with pollution and grossly exaggerate its implication. People are living now longer than ever so stop complaining.