This is what Decarbonization Failure looks like:
After three decades of effort, twenty-six glorious international COP meetings, six IPCC reports, and the installation of around 400,000 wind turbines, the total energy supplied in the big renewable energy transition still amounts to about 5% of total energy production.
The artificial Global Green energy transition is but a decoration on the energy cake. Twenty five thousand commercial planes aren’t electric. 6,225 bulk carriers are not powered by solar panels. And 260 smelters are molten hot and none of them work on wind turbines.
While the media green junkies tell how inevitable the renewable energy transition is, the wave we ride is the massive increase in the use of coal, oil and gas.
And it’s still growing.
REFERENCES
There were 341,000 wind turbines in 2017. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/08/there-are-over-341000-wind-turbines-on-the-planet-why-they-matter.html
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/d0031107-401d-4a2f-a48b-9eed19457335/GlobalEnergyReview2021.pdf
..
As I keep saying, the alarmists are losing, so we skeptics are winning.
In the same vein, here is my latest, on Methane Madness. Another set of global promises that will go nowhere.
https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/04/cop-26-methane-madness/
Here is the beginning:
The grandly aspirational announcements getting all the COP 26 press actually have nothing to do with the COP, which is basically a business meeting. Most of these big news events are in reality trivial, such as India saying it will try to hit net zero 50 years from now. Greta Thunberg will be pushing 70 so she is right that this is not action. (As blah blah goes this is the real deal, hence her strident take on coming around the mountain, which I love. See https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/02/cop-26-greta-thunberg-sings-shove-your-climate-crisis-up-your-a/)
One grand aspiration, however, is worth a closer look, because it is worse than empty. It is dangerously stupid. This is the growing pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
Here is how Climate Home News put it: “The US and EU got more than a hundred countries on board with a commitment to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030, putting oil and gas sector leakage in the spotlight”.
Wow, more than a hundred countries. And who needs leakage, right? Leakage sounds like waste, although like recycling it might be ridiculously expensive to stop the waste. The problem is that very few countries outside the EU and US generate a lot of methane from extensive oil and gas production. For most countries the methane comes from FARMING. If you cut farming by 30% a lot of people quickly starve to death. No one seems to have noticed this inconvenient truth.
The estimates of methane emissions by source are all over the place, which is another reason promising a 30% cut in 8 short years is stupid. But here are some standard global numbers that frame the issue. The three big sources are energy, livestock and rice growing and they are roughly equal. In the US and EU energy is huge, while rice is very small and livestock is just sizable. In many developing countries energy is small while either rice or livestock are huge as a fraction of methane emissions. It does not matter how small your economy is, your target is still a 30% cut.
More in the article. Please share it.
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“In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to [global warming].
In it’s report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases – allegedly more than the entire world’s transpiration.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the report to forecast that Himalayan glaciers might vanish within 25 years.
Outside groups reacted to the U.N.’s claims by launching efforts to slow global warming by getting the public to go meatless one day a week, as way of lowering demand for livestock products.
>> Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant it’s claim in 2010.
The U.N. report estimated the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from every aspect of raising meat.
The U.N. did not do the same when estimating the green house gases from cars.
However, scientists insist livestock methane is still a source that should be mitigated even if belching, farting animals have fallen in the U.N. rankings of polluters.”
https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/prof-debunks-flatulence-as-major-cause-of-global-warming/article_1c6c9c5e-2dbb-11e2-9e51-0019bb2963f4.html
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Clearly the UN has no idea of the Law of Conservation of Matter. All the Carbon in CH4 comes from the grass the animals eat which comes from the CO2 in the air. Any CO2 or CH4 returned to the atmosphere by the animals came from there in the first place. Farm animals are carbon sinks.
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The claim is that methane is a much more powerful “Greenhouse Gas (TM)” than CO2.
Whether this claim is accurate is highly arguable, and I’m sure it has been argued many times … but that’s their story and it doesn’t entirely violate Conservation of Matter.
03
Particularly as its adsorption wave bands are completely swamped by water vapour. It has practically no input to the “greenhouse effect”.
230
Calculations confirm your assertion that the greenhouse gases are saturated.
The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures
“The HITRAN database of gaseous absorption spectra enables the absorption of earth radiation at its current temperature of 288K to be accurately determined for each individual atmospheric constituent and also for the combined absorption of the atmosphere as a whole.
From this data it is concluded that H2O is responsible for 29.4K of the 33K warming, with CO2 contributing 3.3K and CH4 and N2O combined just 0.3K.
Climate sensitivity to future increases in CO2 concentration is calculated to be 0.50K, including the positive feedback effects of H2O, while climate sensitivities to CH4 and N2O are almost undetectable at 0.06K and 0.08K respectively. This result strongly suggests that increasing levels of CO2 will not lead to significant changes in earth temperature and that increases in CH4 and N2O will have very little discernable impact.”
50
This is a link to the paper which I quoted in my above comment.
https://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfojournalid=298&doi=10.11648/j.ijaos.20210502.12
00
Hi William, I think that this outline is built on the IPCCCCC type thermodynamics that mixes a few bits of science in with a lot of dubious assumptions.
Previous authors have assumed some basic “original” temperature for the Earth, mixed that with unscientific use of the black body radiation concept and then gone for it and proving that the Earth was “warmed” by greenhouse gases.
The assumed “excitation” of water by CO2 was the last straw.
🙂
40
Even if powerfull, it’s fast decompsed into water and CO2
30
Great point, Peter. If burning wood pellets instead of coal is okay, why not burning grass which is what these critters do?
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Peter, it doesn’t matter that the carbon cycles around, it matters how much carbon is moving through the cycle at any one point in time.
Consider a lake. If you pump water into the air that falls back to the lake. It will be a big problem if everyone does this en-mass because the lake water level will go down, because at any point in time a huge amount of water will be in the air.
So it is livestock. They both sink and release large amounts of carbon so at any point in time more is in the air. Of their population grows the overall amount of carbon in the air will always grow.
00
Cow population depends on grass population that needs carbon to grow.
Human population is on track to decline. See book: Hans Rosling:Factfullness.
20
Additionally, atmospheric methane is measured in parts per billion- with a B. Talk about a made up issue.
50
Adding to your list David, Mangrove swamps, rubbish tips, soggy backyard compost bins, any carbon based life form that dies and rots in an anaerobic
environment. The North Atlantic Rift also gives off Methane.
Methane is broken down by sunlight near the Equator into the essential molecules of CO2 and H2O.
The Climate alarmists must be grateful that the Americans virtually wiped out the millions of Bison that roamed the Great Plains. Perhaps they can tackle the massive herds of herbivores across Africa. (Sarc)
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Quite so, Chris.
Indeed, the experiment has been done, and, no return to a stable climate was observed …
https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-bison-skulls-documents-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction-148780
40
But David,
more methane comes from termites than from bovines, so if we get rid of them how will we be able to switch to an insect diet that our would-be masters are prescribing.
150
Yep, around seven times as much; 20 million tonnes compared to 1.3-1.4 million tonnes. But in both cases, still a very small fraction of total global methane emissions of 570 million tonnes.
70
Graeme we can’t eat termites !
We’ve all got to veganise ourselves
If we want to be counted among the holy & the saved !
🙂
50
Bugs, that they want us to eat instead of cattle, sheep etc, probably put out as much methane per kg of food produced as cattle and sheep do.
Termites, for example, are probably the planet’s largest contributors to atmospheric methane.
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At 20 million tonnes out of a total of 570 million tonnes, not really. The entire total of enteric emissions is only 27% of the total emissions. However, termite emissions still exceed the total of all livestock emissions.
80
I meant, animal contributor.
Wetlands, rice etc contribute far more.
10
And with one more volcano going off, the Methane target gets blown to smithereens. Then there are those hidden volcanos beneath the Oceans. Who reports on any of those when they erupt and where does the Methane eventually end up? Whoops !!!!!!!
90
There are massive methane seeps beneath the Bermuda Triangle, who’s gonna fix that.
20
“As I keep saying, the alarmists are losing, so we skeptics are winning.”
Are you sure about that? The evidence does not seem to be in your favour.
What did the alarmists lose at COP26? Absence of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Putin? Both countries have sent delegations to the talks, which are due to run for two weeks until 14 November. So not much evidence of an alarmist loss there.
Pledges from more than 100 world leaders to halt deforestation by 2030? That doesn’t seem to be a loss for the alarmists.
The results of the Peoples’ Climate Vote, the world’s biggest ever survey of public opinion on climate change covered 50 countries with over half of the world’s population, and included in the 1.2 million respondents over half a million people under the age of 18, a key constituency on climate change that is typically unable to vote yet in regular elections does not suggestive alarmists are losing. In fact just the opposite
The survey shows a direct link between a person’s level of education and their desire for climate action. There was very high recognition of the climate emergency among those who had attended university or college in all countries, from lower-income countries such as Bhutan (82%) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (82%), to wealthy countries like France (87%) and Japan (82%).
Are the climate change doubters less well educated than climate alarmists? Apparently.
When it comes to age, younger people (under 18) were more likely to say climate change is an emergency than older people. Nevertheless, other age groups were not far behind, with 65% of those aged 18-35, 66% aged 36-59 and 58% of those over 60, illustrating how widely held this view has become.
Are climate change doubters primarily in older age groups? Possibly.
https://www.undp.org/press-releases/worlds-largest-survey-public-opinion-climate-change-majority-people-call-wide
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The really funny thing is that the “younger” left-oriented people don’t seem to see what they are wishing upon themselves.
This “net zero” nonsense can never work without nuclear.
The whole idiotic edifice will collapse once electricity supplies starts to be too expensive or two erratic.
So far the virtue-seeking leftist propaganda is probably winning in political circles…
.. but I think we can all be reasonably hopeful that reality will be the winner in the long run.
People just need a solid wake-up call.
There is no future that is sustainable, without solid reliable electricity and energy supply.
The alarmists will lose because that have no way of providing that.
The net-zero farce certainly cannot provide that.
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“Are the climate change doubters less well educated than climate alarmists?”
On this site it is very obvious that the opposite is the case.
The one or two climate “tragics” that post here, seem at a loss for defensible data or valid reference.
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I can’t see any references, valid or otherwise, in any of your three comments (1.4; 1.6.1; 1.6.2) nor is there any evidence whatsoever of any defensible data in your comment 1.6.1. Lots of flamboyant statements but data of any kind just aren’t there. You must have been at a loss too. Or at a loss two if you prefer
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You haven’t been paying attention, then!
Every time they are asked for scientific data and evidence, they fail magnificently.
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And my comments in 1.6.1, which of them is incorrect ?
20
You’re asking the wrong person there.
20
He’ll need a poll to decide what to think.
20
Perhaps a pole would be more appropriate.
20
Simple – the younger age groups are ‘true believers’ due to modern day brainwashing.
– the ‘more educated’ have spent more time exposed to modern day brainwashing.
– the older age groups have lived long enough to experience no noticeable change.
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The trouble with older people, just because they have lived through floods, droughts, fires, food shortages, wars, hurricanes, pestilences. Without swimming pools and air conditioning, when people burnt coal ( briquettes in Victoria) for warmth. No phones, pre television or black and white only and one radio in the house. You had to walk / ride your bike to go see a mate. Houses weren’t insulated, and kids had to walk to school regardless of the weather conditions. What would old people know ?
200
Yea. And when you had to walk to school I seem to remember it was uphill both ways. Them’s were the days before all this new fanged globule warming.
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And one can be very certain they were “very systematic” who they collected data and information from. 😉
We all know how much the far-left agendas have infected education in the western world, and judging by what comes out of other countries, the indoctrination via selective education is rife at all levels there as well.
Without the ability to look at the actual data and see how little there is behind the anti-CO2 nonsense, all they have to fall back on is that wall-to-wall propaganda that the agenda has swamped the world with.
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“The survey shows a direct link between a person’s level of education and their desire for climate action. There was very high recognition of the climate emergency among those who had attended university or college in all countries, from lower-income countries such as Bhutan (82%) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (82%), to wealthy countries like France (87%) and Japan (82%).
University attendees are mostly leftists, the poor countries, Bhutan, Congo etc, just see a buck in it and the others, who knows.
And education does not confer intelligence upon anyone, they are usually tunnel-visioned morons that barely know how to fit a light bulb.
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“University attendees are mostly leftists, the poor countries, Bhutan, Congo etc, just see a buck in it and the others, who knows.
And education does not confer intelligence upon anyone, they are “usually tunnel-visioned morons that barely know how to fit a light bulb.”
Indeed but, as you point out, they can the light bulb whereas those who did not go to university are still in the dark
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Some people can’t see “the dark”.
To them, everything is bright and just as described by tripple jjjjjjj.
Why bother observing and thinking when it’s all supplied for you.
50
Substitute ‘Indoctrination’ for ‘Education’ and you have your answer.
80
The COP26 losses are huge! Under the Paris Agreement everyone was supposed to adopt new 5 year plans with dramatically increased “ambition”. Did not happen. Beginning 2020 the developing countries were supposed to get $100 billion a year. Did not happen.
Instead we are getting distant targets, from 10 to 40 years out. In addition to being distant these are not plans, just political promises. Even worse, countries are now scrambling to get more oil, gas and coal. There is no threat to Jo’s chart. Emissions may well go up.
When an invading army gains no ground and possibly loses it that is a very big loss.
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David,
The UK and Germany appear to be planning to commit economic suicide trying to get to zero CO2 emissions using the green scams.
The ‘Green’ parties are ideological and form their ideologies independent of logic, reason, and facts.
The general population will continue to support the green scams until there is severe economic impact or cooling. There is currently a race as to what will come first: Economic collapse or cooling.
The past cyclic Dansgaard-Oeschger warming periods correlate with high solar activity. The past D-O warming periods where 100 to 150 years in duration. The end of the past D-O warming periods has a short 25 or 30 years period in which there is about 1C warming which ends rapidly.
40
I was reading some dude called Kearney was looking at using corporate power ( banking mostly ) to try and shut down all fossil fuelled industries, including the oil, gas and coal industries themselves, then shut down cattle farming and replace it with lab grown “meat”.
Guess what Gates is getting into?
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/wrapup-politicians-exit-cop26-130tn-worth-financiers-take-stage-2021-11-03/
“GLASGOW, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Banks, insurers and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged on Wednesday to put combating climate change at the centre of their work, and gained support in the form of efforts to put green investing on a firmer footing.
“And in another development at the COP26 U.N. climate conference, at least 19 countries are expected to commit on Thursday to ending public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022, two sources said. read more
“In an earlier announcement at the meeting in Scotland, financial institutions accounting for around 40% of the world’s capital committed to assuming a “fair share” of the effort to wean the world off fossil fuels.
80
It’s clear that they have failed to cut Co2 levels and now they are going to concentrate their effort on methane reduction. A direct attack on our food chain and must not be allowed to happen.
GeoffW
200
David+Wojick,
Of course the IPCC and their doomster followers do not accurately account for the pre-LIA/industrial revolution numbers for mammalian life on the planet.
How many millions of Bison were there on whole of North America before the white man arrived and wiped them out? How many similar mammals across India and Asia before people and their farms displaced them?
On the African continent how many millions of elephants, hippos, rhinos, and other large, long lived, mammals were there before the trophy hunting craze took hold? And similarly in the Far East when there was abundant numbers of pygmy varieties of these animals.
All of these animals eat vegetable matter (including today’s ruminants), green plants made from atmospheric CO2, then surely overall they are ‘carbon’ neutral at the worse, ‘carbon’ sinks at best — even with the farts.
140
It is very annoying for me when I hear fools on radio news talking climate nonsense, this morning a farming group representative who said the evidence of climate change is twenty past years of drier weather.
Droughts (and flooding rains) have been taking place here since the last major climate variation gradually took place around 130,000 years ago, rainforests retreated to become only three per cent of forest area today and eucalypts that tolerate hotter and drier conditions replaced them.
The early 1900s drought was far worse than experienced during the past twenty years, one of many examples.
Obviously these delusional people follow the climate hoax religiously and accept that the science that is never settled has been settled?
It is all about global politics and money including an attack on the free enterprise, free market system the left call capitalism.
180
The middle part of the 20th century was quite rainy in SE Australia, a fact that has been fully exploited by Climate Science to scare people about drying, and that rainy period would be remembered by many farmers. One problem has been that gridded rainfall data (AWAP) only starts in 1900, looking all the way back to 1860 (which is easy to do, but not popular with climatologists) there is nothing exceptional about recent decades.
One exception is SW Western Australia, it does look like the weather patterns there that produce rain may have “permanently” shifted towards the SW:
https://diymetanalysis.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/example-07-perth-wa-rainfall/
00
The amount of methane in the atmosphere is 1800 parts per billion or 1.8 parts per million and so a reduction of 30% would be 0.54 parts per million. This whole thing is getting more and more ridiculous bye the day.
150
Why?
115
Because to thinks that methane which is a only 0.00018% of the atmosphere can in anyway affect the climate is just nuts.
230
That’s why!
150
Methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 28–36 times more than carbon dioxide over 100 years.
016
But methane is only 0.00018% of the atmosphere thus your 28-36 times more potent over 100 years than CO2 as a greenhouse gas is still irrelevant.
90
Simon you haven’t yet shown any mechanism for CO2 causing warming and now you claim Methane has the “Potential” of being worse than CO2 over a hundred years ! Do you get this from a clairvoyant or the Guardian ?
150
I think I saw the 28-36 times more potent per molecule than CO2 statement in the Guardian. There is a saying, “is that the truth or did you hear it on the BBC”, well that goes double for the Guardian.
40
Come, come Simon, the last “alarmist” claim I heard was that it was 75 times more potent than CO2. Not bad when it started out at 14 times.
Mind you, if you look at the IR spectra……No, I don’t suppose they would mean anything to you. Still, even at 36 times (and assuming that ALL warming since 1855** has been due to Greenhouse Gases, that would amount to 0.3℃ of warming. But don’t spread that figure around or you will be savaged by the “CO2 is total evil” mob.
** Bearing in mind that the temperatures in the whole Southern Hemisphere for the years 1855 to 1857 are based on ONE thermometer (and that in what is now Indonesia).
90
Cool.
20
In a sealed glass jar.
10
If you knew anything about basic thermal transfer, you would realise that the “potential” warming from CO2 and/or CH4 is basically zero.
Energy transfer in the atmosphere is a product of pressure and thermal gradients.
Neither CO2 or CH4 can counteract the control mechanisms of the gravity based thermal gradient.
Neither can cause any warming… Period.
11
Methane is in so far irrelevant as it decompose fast to water and CO2
30
The sky high methane GWPs are literally a fiction. They are based on spectral analysis in dry air, which does not exist on Earth. In our world water vapor runs on the order of 20,000 ppm with methane around 2 ppm. The active methane absorbsion spectrum is completely overlapped by the water spectrum and water is around 10,000 times more abundant.
Real world spectral analysis shows that doubling methane would create a forcing increase about 20% of doubling CO2, but in both cases the increase is tiny because of saturation. So instead of methane being 28 or 85 or whatever big number you like more potent than CO2 it is around 80% less potent.
In short the methane scare is a true hoax because the experts know all this already.
31
Negative feedbacks probably reduce that effect to insignificantly small amounts of warming just like they do with CO2.
Still no hot spot.
00
The share of energy generated by fossil fuels is steadily decreasing. Also remember that power generation from fossil fuels is highly inefficient, typically around 38-40%.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix?country=#energy-mix-what-sources-do-we-get-our-energy-from
061
Do you know the efficiency of photovoltaics?
300
About half that of thermal. LOL
220
Again more cherry picking. The energy input cost of renewables is FREE, while that for fossils is high. This greatly increases the efficiency.
Removable of the fossil fuel subsidy gravy train would also make the comparison clearer.
02
Fuel is nothing compared to the cost of capital, labor, insurance, land, compliance, storage, stability, transmission lines etc etc etc etc.
There is no big fossil fuel subsidy in the West. Nothing like the size of the renewables scam forced payments. – Jo
60
You do know that wind and solar could never exist if were not for fossil fuels, don’t you.!
The amount of fossil fuels embedded in the manufacture, installation, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning and burying, of wind and solar, is probably more than they save in CO2 emissions in their short life times.
Wind and solar are the absolute opposite of environmental sustainability.
20
The efficiency is zero at least 50% of the time, in reality a lot more often than that.
00
The UK has finally twigged – if you want to go electric everything, then nuclear is the ONLY solution. The sooner OZ embraces it, the better off we will be.
290
You mean that the expansion of energy production is steadily increasing in renewables over fossil.
That is small and also indicative of overall increasing energy usage
08
If efficiency is the key issue, Simon, why not to go straight to nuclear energy?
Within few short decades Oil & Gas will disappear as fuel.
130
As woke countries descend into green unreliables, watch the chaos ensue as winter descends on them in about a month or two, popcorn, lounge chair.
191
Thanks for that Simon. The other inconvenient reasons fossil fuels continue to dominate are they’re cheaper (despite being less efficient) and they’re capacity densities are far more efficient. Coal: 1000 w/sq m; gas 5000-15000 w/sq m; solar 5-20 w/sq m; and wind 300-500 w/sq m. (See The.Azimuth Project: Power Density). The power density becomes important for poor, high density population countries like India, where 60% of land is devoted to agriculture.
250
What sort of metric is W/sq,m ..for coal or gas ??
It is applicable for Solar radiation, ( but that 5-20 W/sq m is way off !)
30
I think he is referring to the area of land use to generate equivalent amounts of energy.
20
Simon. Let’s get back to basics.
What’s wrong with fossil fuels?
And if you claim the CO2 by-product is bad, please provide actual evidence.
310
Which is about the same as humans. Maybe it’s a carbon thing. Your point being…..
00
Simon,
where do you get those figures? Renewables are lower than that – solar 21% maximum and usually around 17% (in southern Australia) and wind turbines deliver 30% of capacity. The UK (where I hear there is some conference of private aeroplane users) is short of electricity because those off-shore wind turbines aren’t delivering much (below 10% for about 70 days this year), solar is contributing ZERO and they have closed down most of their coal fired stations and are relying on diesel and peaker gas plants – maximum 40% if continuous but more like 35% is cycling). The latest CCGTs are listed as 62% efficient (in continuous operation) and the latest Chinese coal-fired stations just over 49%. India is installing 55 new coal-fired plants with efficiencies well over 40%.
190
Like Green Germany, the UK is relying on France for power. Closed own their coal stations and buy nuclear power from across the Channel.
30
The amount of fossil fuel energy is continuing to increase.
(more CO2 for the world’s plant life, with zero measured warming = totally beneficial)
Solar, Wind, as can be seen from the data, are bit players, at best.
110
Fine you are able to spell efficiency, but unfortunately you lack the meaning 😀
10
Yes the share of fossil energy has dropped from an estimated 83% to 82%. Jo’s chart shows that. But the amount of fossil fuel consumed still grows rapidly.
20
Wind generators have, positive estimate, 35-40% efficiency, seems to be big deal, but:
56 – 60% (LEV) for combined-cycle gas-fired plants.
10
FALSE (word games). Overall demand has increased. Overall use of oul/gas/coal has increased. So called “RE” plays on the margins of increased demand in its usual expensive and destructive manner.
10
Well, well, well…
https://scc.klimarealistene.com/2021/10/new-papers-on-control-of-atmospheric-co2/
10
We could just wipe out all the termites, there’s 10% of the 30% straight away, I hear DDT works well!
Love it when a plan comes together!!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3837726/
240
And of course the figures for the total amount of termites may be in error.
Have their figure been adjusted since 2018(?) when …
From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181120073648.htm
Even these little termites show that they too (like so much of life) will change their surrounding to best effect their survival.
30
Termites are an integral part of the carbon/life cycle.
Wiping them out would have unknown and very disastrous consequences.
10
Simon says “The share of energy generated by fossil fuels is steadily decreasing.”
Over the last two decades the global demand for fossil fuels has grown by 50%.
The $100 billions of taxpayers’ money diverted to wind and solar projects over this period has barely made a dint in the demand for fossil fuels, especially in the developing world where taxpayers’ money is not so easily wasted on Green Dreams
320
They are not finished with their war against carbon-based energy and are now starting to heavily promote “green” (sic) hydrogen, which is also carbon-based.
The hydrogen is an energy carrier only and not a primary energy source.
It is proposed to make it from coal.
3C (i.e., coal) + O2 + H2O → H2 + 3CO
CO + H2O → CO2 + H2
The Australian Government already has a pilot plant to do this in Vicdanistan.
The resultant CO2 has to be sequestered forever, in Australia while the hydrogen is to be exported to Japan.
Back in the day, most high school students knew enough real science to understand why hydrogen is impractical as a general transport or other fuel.
LH2 is a nightmare to use, and alternate storage as a metal hydride is too heavy.
It is even avoided for rocketry use but was used on the Saturn V and Space Shuttle, no expense spared.
Space X uses liquid methane. Musk is very woke and produces the methane by electrolysis of CO2, no expense spared.
CH4 is produced from CO2 and H2O with solar electricity via CO2 methanation, CO methanation and the reverse water-gas shift reaction.
CO2(g) + 4H2(g) → CH4(g) + 2H2O(g)
CO(g) + 3H2(g) → CH4(g) + H2O(g)
CO2(g) + H2(g) → CO(g) + H2O(g)
This takes a LOT of energy, high temperature and high pressure.
Heh, if you can afford it, why not…?
160
CH4 from CO2 and H20 is based on the Sabatier reaction, BTW.
20
I’m not saying that CO2 causes climate change, but for those who do, it seems to me that there is a difference between the CO2 emitted high in the atmosphere, for example by SpaceX as it burns methane, or the private jets used to travel to Glasgow, and the CO2 emitted by coal burning generators, cars etc. The difference is the time the CO2 remains in the atmosphere. CO2 emitted at ground level or near ground level is immediately available for plant food and removed from the atmosphere.
100
David:
I thought that Green hydrogen was produced by electrolysis using electricity from wind turbines (when they are working). I could be wrong, it is hard to keep track of green/blue/purple (pink?) hydrogen.
Making it from brown coal is the cheapest way although the cost will still be more than natural gas.
My thought is that we would be better advised to turn those (vast reserves) of brown coal into liquid fuels. Anything from butanol upwards (it can be blended into diesel). What happened to that plant the Kiwis installed to convert methane into methanol, and the process they were thinking of adding that turned methanol into petrol?
80
It can also be produced by electrolysis from the otherwise unusable electricity from windmills. It makes a useful “dump load” I guess because unlike aluminium smelting, you can shut down electrolysis as the wind comes and goes.
Forrest plans to use windmills for his hydrogen project but the coal to hydrogen project is already underway in Vicdanistan.
50
Most of the “Green” hydrogen projects proposed so far ..WA, Asean, Broome, etc…are based on Solar electricity as the power feed….many, many, GW of it !
00
Green is from hydrolysers, blue is from coal or natural gas.
00
Good news from Glasgow!
20
I don’t mean to be a party pooper OldOzzie, but it’s never good news when wokeness and the Australian Government is involved.
If we didn’t sign that pledge, what else might we have committed to? Few other countries are as committed to the anthropogenic global warming fraud as is Australia.
I fear the Government may have committed us to something far worse. After all, there isn’t anyone in the entire Government (or their highly overpaid “advisors”) that even understand basic thermodynamics.
200
Reply about the scientific understanding of anybody in Australian politics CANCELLED (language! There are ladies present).
40
We keep talking as if any of this is about energy, the environment, or public health.
It is about the restoration of elite power which suffered a setback as result of the Reformation and the machine age.
230
Correct.
50
Hence the Left’s war against Enlightenment values such as.
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of thought.
Freedom of action as long as it harms no others.
The pursuit of happiness.
Evidence-based reason (evidence of what you can see, not dogma).
Science.
Liberty.
Appreciation of history, uncensored (no rewriting of history).
Ongoing progress.
Toleration of others.
A laws and constitution based society.
Fraternity and freedom of association.
No excessive confiscation of private property by the state (reasonable and fair taxes).
Freedom of religion and practicing such values (sanctity of family unit, only two genders, ability to practice moral values as espoused by one’s religion) etc. Plus no replacement of traditional religion with Leftist substitutes such as communism, nature worship etc.. Separation of religion and state.
230
Testify.
Amen brother.
50
The USA is being taken apart from within as the socialist/marxist left endeavours to ‘cancel’ most of those liberties. Education, the armed forces run by woke 5star generals, independence of energy supply, open borders, extreme debt etc. Then there is Christine Lagarde with her ‘nobody will own anything. We will run everything so you have no worries. Everybody will be happy!’ She obviously thinks Russians, Chinese and North Koreans are happy and enjoy life to its fullest. She even forgets there was ever a cold war, so she is aiming at bringing down the Western Democracies making Russia, China and North Korea very happy because there is no way they will fold to her ideas. Still, according to her logic, the whole world will then be happy!
Be Happy, as the song says! The problem is the bloke that sang it, if I recall correctly, committed suicide.
61
5% of total energy production.
The problem is that the 5% is almost completely random and largely unable to be stored, so in a world which requires steady or commandable energy, close to useless. Like solar in the UK in winter. Currently 0%. Or wind in midsummer, often 0%.
And if you have to duplicate this 5% to make sure there are no holes in your supply, why pay twice? It’s like having to buy a second car so you can get home because the Tesla’s flat.
160
Yes, ultimately the “contribution” of random energy has to have a real energy producer behind it. You are simply paying twice for the same energy production infrastructure.
Although it’s far worse than that. The true cost of the random energy infrastructure and defective product it produces (on the rare occasions it produces) is far more than proper energy producers due to the high cost of the subsidies that have to be paid to the rent seekers who own the random generators. That’s not even counting the huge visual and noise pollution of windmills and wildlife destruction.
120
Renewable policies in the UK are good news for Drax who’ve fired up their (previously shutdown) 2 coal burning units to supply electricity at £4,000 per MWh (that’s not a misprint). And I understand that Solar producers will shortly be producing (once they’ve got those diesel generators ready).
80
We are indeed a FF world. Everything we eat, make and do revolves around FF. The only net zero existence here on earth is that of a hunter gatherer, such as our own indigenous people in Australia before European settlement. Even solar panels, wind turbines and those expensive batteries can only be made with FF. It’s therefore not surprising that every year the world uses more FF than the previous year, as population increases and more people transition from hunter gatherer or primitive subsistence existence in Africa and Asia.
With COP26 just completed and the developed world now committed to Net Zero we now enter the period of decline of western power and the start of the takeover of communist totalitarianism. In reality we don’t really know how fast this will occur and exactly how it will impact people downunder, but it won’t be good. What we do know with 100% certainty is that FF usage will keep going up as the developing world transitions to a modern economy and global population keeps rising. COP26 provided the perfect setting for India to announce this with clarity, placing a 2070 target on the table, which was basically a middle finger to Net Zero and with some rotation.
Down in OZ, even though Scomo has rejected more GHG cuts before 2030, we should all be very worried about the near future due to political interference from banks with regards to FF finance. With China now the only country that is funding FF and only for internal projects, the world’s FF production will drop like a stone. This is already happening, but will greatly accelerate over the next 3 years, creating the mother of all energy crisis. For Australia it means high prices for coal and gas, but on diminishing export volumes as our own outputs reduce due to finance drying up for mining project expansions. Now, any sensible person would just think that the finance tap would be turned back on to avert a deadly outcome, but this is no longer a world managed by sensible people and those running the show are infected with green Marxist ideology. If you were to allow these people to look into the future and see the millions of dead people they caused by their own actions, they would still make the same deadly decisions in full knowledge of the outcome. The only salvation for the western world lies with the USA and a return to Trumpism style politics for at least a decade and with a complete gut of the institutions to remove the Marxist infection. Unfortunately I can’t see this happening, but we can always hope.
140
How did you conclude that the pre-European Australian aboriginal lifestyle is/was “net zero”? Surely the fires they set, some of which were huge, produced large amounts of CO2?
80
If you use the leftist definition of Net Zero, fires are the same as burning biomass for energy, meaning you can burn trees and the resulting re-growth of vegetation will reabsorb the CO2 emitted by the fires.
60
A Chinese company already owns and operates the largest wind farm in NSW using Chinese made wind turbines.
With investment in new fossil fuel electricity production now chocked off by woke bankers, expect China to take control of electricity generation in Australia. Russia now controls the flow of most natural gas into Europe which is required when the wind does not blow and the Sun does not shine.
No need to invade a country when clueless politicians had over control of the lifeblood of any country – energy supply to China and Russia.
70
Woke bankers – might it lead to broke wankers?
10
Press in NZ are starting to have melt down on Nuclear rearing its head at flop26 wait for the hit job
120
Fun Fact.
When you go to the beach for a swim – you take a Uranium bath!
Seawater contains 3 ppb of Uranium which in the form of uranyl ions can be extracted dipping plastic fibers containing a compound called amidoxime into seawater.
Natural erosion of Uranium containing rocks will replace the Uranium extracted for nuclear power generation make this a “renewable” source of energy.
120
Fossils fuels
produce CO2
resulting in vegetation
which expire
returning to the Earth
producing new fossil fuels
The Original Renewable Energy
Just not on a time frame convenient to the Godless
120
Flat White
Glasgow and the greenhouse gap
Pete Shmigel
As we watch the bureaucratic minions and the behemothic motorcades circulating in Glasgow, the ‘Greenhouse Gap’ appears to be growing.
On one side of the ‘Gap’, there is the Elites’ intense international advocacy about climate change. On the other side, there is the very different experience of the Normal, those Australians whose lives consist more of living than perhaps talking about life.
That ‘Gap’ represents a big risk to both sets of people. Without broader community and political support, efforts to prudently minimise greenhouse gas emissions for posterity will fail; Elites then fall in the Gap. Without the pragmatism that regular punters bring to policymaking, the costs of adaptation won’t be sufficiently checked and balanced; the Normal then fall in the ‘Gap’ and pay all the way to a hard economic landing.
And there’s something else also going on around the ‘Gap’. It might be called cognitive dissonance a societal scale. For many Normal, there’s an experiential disconnect between what they read and see every day in the mainstream and social media about climate change, and the concerns that actually fill their daily lives.
For example, using a basic tracking tool, it’s determined that there were nearly 200,000 social media posts about #cop26 in the week up to November 2, Melbourne Cup Day. That compares 6,000 posts for #MelbourneCup.
30
Latham’s Law
Mark Latham
The calamity that is net zero
Climate change is the longest-running show in Australian politics. But for one group in particular, they have seen this movie many times before.
They are the victims of the great environmental swindle of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, when the Howard government was desperate to give the appearance of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions without affecting our heavy industries.
It invented the Australia clause as a novel part of the international Protocol, whereby the bulk of our contribution to ‘saving the planet’ would come from restrictions on land clearing. If Australia kept enough trees that soaked up carbon, we wouldn’t have to do any real emissions reduction.
It was sneaky politics and clever economics. Except for one excruciating catch: it pushed the heaviest burden of Australia’s Kyoto compliance onto farmers in a relatively small part of the country – Central West and North Western NSW and regional Queensland. Their land was locked up, like wards of the state, with its financial viability sacrificed at the altar of climate change.
They were the first victims of this wretched policy and now, as Scott Morrison tells Glasgow of his commitment to net zero, we should remember them. These farmers can teach us about the true impact of selective climate sacrifice.
For starters, they never received any compensation for the way in which governments prevented them from clearing their land for agriculture. The New South Wales and Queensland state governments did the dirty work for the Commonwealth, thereby avoiding the ‘just terms’ compensation clause in the Australian Constitution.
There’s nothing new in the net zero debate. The nation’s first experiment with coercive climate laws commenced twenty-four years ago. State land-clearing laws have resulted in devastating economic and environmental impacts on the farmers, their communities and the land itself.
These are the Australians who have shouldered the nation’s Kyoto burden. In practice, they fear government regulation more than climate change itself.
If this is what net zero looks like, it hurts like hell and can have terrible, unintended consequences. Australia’s city and townsfolk please take note.
180
Yes,the newspaper story about the hero who shot & killed the Lands Dept inspector is up on the kitchen wall at a mate’s place. He’d been harassed and hounded by the Govt about not clearing his farm and locking it up, until one day he just snapped. No doubt he’s still rotting in Australia’s equivalent of Guantanamo Bay somewhere while the Green bulldozer runs on over the farmers in NSW.
50
The chap in question died in prison a couple of years ago. Turnbull, I think was his name. I understand his frustration.
10
Whether the emission reduction scam will last or not is sort of beside the point. The gl0balists are still running the show and there is yet no sign that is changing any time soon. Anyone who thinks it is only needs to look follow the money and the politics for several decades. In fact the CAGW scam is a side issue. They are pursuing a more widespread attck on the people in general. If the CAGW issue went away there are already others in the works and more in the pipeline to keep the gl0balists busy for decades more to come. They wield so much power it’s inevitable they will win but that won’t last as always. Only a full blown upr1sing by the people ASAP will have any hope of turning things around, and that appears unlikely for some time as there is still insufficient pain. People are too busy with their toys, which is one of the tricks used by the gl0balists to misdirect most people.
90
It’s moot as to who is ‘winning’ this Climate Change Debate.
The whole thing revolves around the emissions of CO2, and one of the largest sources of those CO2 emissions is coal fired power. So, the whole focus revolves around closing those coal fired power plants.
When they find out that they cannot do without those coal fired plants to deliver the absolutely huge amounts of power required to keep the Country running, it’s only at that point of realisation, when someone will HAVE TO come out and actually explain why they do need it, that the Debate will turn away from power generation.
If the plan is to electrify every car on the road, then again, someone will need to explain where all that extra electrical power will be coming from.
Over the last decades, power consumption in ALL the things which ‘use’ electrical power has decreased with the advent of much better technology.
And yet, despite that, overall power consumption is inexorably rising. There are very few more areas where consumption CAN be decreased, if at all.
And now, on top of all that, they want to electrify everything, and take away the only source of power which can actually deliver those massive amounts of power which are required, and in fact, required ABSOLUTELY.
Until people start asking questions, and until someone comes out and explains why, then this talk about the ‘closure’ of CO2 emitting coal fired power plants, and then Natural gas fired power plants will persist.
Someone is going to HAVE to do that explanation, and the time is fast approaching.
Tony.
222
Tony, youve missed a critical point here – the basic maths comes down to the dirty litte secret that the Elite will keep coal, but are keen to drastically reduce the number of humans that need it…..its possible that Act as part of the Elites power play, is currently in progress, which is a very visible chunk of the covid response.
130
Tony this unreadable from the ABC explains it all – sarc\
30
Tony, we have discussed this several times before and the result is simple…
Even if ALL the cars were made into EVs overnight, it would only increase the electrical demand by less than 10% . ! ..Which is probably within the existing grid generation capacity.
I can run through the numbers again if you like but it wont alter the fact that EVs do not require some huge imagined electical capacity.
012
I thought the goal was zero fossil fuels, are you suggesting we increase it by 10%?
How Dare You
50
I thought the issue with househokd EVs is each one is like adding another 2 houses to the street. The grid transformers won’t cope so it’s a huge time and cost.
10
That is BS !
A typical house uses 25-30 kWh per day.
The average car in Oz travels 30 km per day… which is equivalent to 6 kWh @ 200 W/km..about the same as keeping the A/C on for an hour or two !
But with just 6kWh used there would be no need to recharge every day, and you cannot pretend they would all recharge at the same time.
03
Are you sure?
My Ergon bill says that the average 5 person household in my area uses 24 kWh with an “all household” average lower than that. Personally I am half your lower figure. Disclaimer: I have a little dog that the meter reader saw once so will not enter the yard so my readings are a dog’s breakfast.
20
Maybe you are right, although electrical systems are usually designed to cope with maximum capability in case overloads and fires, etc.
Am sure plenty of guru’s will provide details.
00
Why would any explanation be necessary? Don’t you read history? Evil people need not give any explanation for their work. They just do it. On the other hand good people in high places tend to do nothing but talk all day to prevent the evil from growing from strength to strength, until it gets so bad that we all do wake up and act accordingly. There are countless examples to prove this throughout history.
30
I don’t see it as an attack on the people in general. I see it more as a harvesting exercise. Sort of like the Eloi being harvested by the Morloch.
42
But if we save just one life, it will be worth it.
20
Lomborg provides a very sobering summary of the Glasgow con merchant’s clown show.
Even if the USA hit NET ZERO today it wouldn’t make any measurable difference to temp.
And the cost would be horrendous for every citizen and would certainly wipe out the DEMs at the next election.
https://nypost.com/2021/11/01/glasgow-climate-summit-is-an-elite-farce-innovation-is-the-solution/
110
Perhaps I should be clear that the cost above of 11,000 $ per US citizen is the cost for EVERY YEAR, not just for one year.
Anyone not starting to see a problem? DUH?
And BTW this is not Lomborg’s guesstimate, but from a NATURE journal study.
90
This is peanuts compared with the UK. Estimates for the up front cost to convert individual dwellings to high efficiency abodes is GDP100,000 or USD135,000. UK has not got to the annual costs yet. But this winter they will get an inkling of what constrained energy supply looks like.
USA leaches off the rest of the world. They enjoy the privilege of creating the world’s money so foreign debt does not matter while other countries consider it as a store of value. Biden’s rampant inflation will mean USD loses its shine. Fewer countries will want to hold US debt. Once USA has to start paying its way in tradable goods the costs will be much greater than $11,000 per year. Every US citizen already owes the rest of the world USD45,000. It is going to be a tough road once other countries no longer accept USD. China is working hard to establish the CYN as the global currency. They are now the dominant manufacturing country and possibly the most powerful military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_position
42
No matter which way you look at it, the slight warming since the LIA is never going to be a problem…
… but the policies being put in place, intended to prevent a problem that only exists in hype and in models,
… will almost certainly turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for human kind..
70
The whole point is this;
There is No Mechanism by which atmospheric CO2 can cause variations in the world’s “temperature”.
There IS NO SCIENCE to endorse this monstrous imposition on humanity.
Why is this truth Concealed and denied.
170
When this truth is liberated and acknowledged on the twelfth of never, only then will we move back to cheap electricity.
90
KK – see https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/08/31/the-impact-of-co2-h2o-and-other-greenhouse-gases-on-equilibrium-earth-temperatures/ for a paper by David Coe. David did a full analysis of the warming effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but without taking into account the effects of cloud variability. Based on radiative effects alone, therefore, it turns out that a doubling of CO2 will produce an 0.5°C rise in temperature providing all other things remain equal. Of the nearly 1.5°C rise since 1850, therefore, at most 1/6 of that could be from the rise in CO2. Most of that rise was caused by *something else*. It’s thus not quite correct to say that a rise CO2 cannot cause any rise in temperature, but instead that any rise is pretty negligible. Most of that temperature rise since 1850 is natural, and we neither know the cause nor can predict what will happen in the future.
This lack of effect of CO2 on temperatures is in any case pretty obvious if you look at the temperatures from the first instrumental record (in 1659) till now, since we started coming out of the Little Ice Age in 1700, long before the CO2 started to increase.
21
That’s a mixed bag.
Who is David Coe? Did he use the IPCCCCC formulas.
An economist?
The truth is that we only receive one batch of incoming solar energy each day and if we are lucky we keep enough of it to get us through the night.
Nobody has any evidence that CO2 “traps” heat in the atmosphere.
P.V = n.R.T
20
KK – David Coe used Modtran, which takes into account the actual absorbance of the gases at the concentration and pressures up through the atmosphere and at each spectral band using very narrow bands. Point is that the Earth can only lose energy to space by radiation, and though convection can and does take heat from the ground up to the top of the troposphere, above that point convection stops and energy can only be radiated away from the gases there.
When insulating a house, adding in a mirror layer (“space blanket”) slows down heat loss significantly. The IR is reflected back, so the temperature of what’s in the house doesn’t drop as fast. It stays warmer for the same energy input. The greenhouse gases aren’t such a good mirror, since when they receive a photon they re-emit it a bit later in a random direction. On average, you’ll get around 50% of the radiation going downwards rather than upwards. Still, they do reduce the nett rate of radiation of heat by reflecting some back. However, for all the greenhouse gases except Ozone the bands are close to saturation, so adding more of those gases makes very little difference. In any case, water vapour swamps nearly everything else, since it has a lot more absorbance bands which overlap the others and there’s a lot more of it anyway (20,000-40,000 ppm). Exception is again Ozone. Net result is that doubling the quantity of any of the greenhouse gases has very little effect (except Ozone). It does however have some effect, and that effect is calculable. However, that effect is smaller than a 1% change in cloudiness, and the climate models have an error of maybe 20% in cloudiness, thus even though we can calculate how much effect the greenhouse gases have, we still can’t say that any temperature changes are actually due to them – it’s lost in the noise.
It’s worth reading Coe’s paper to see how the calculations are done, since that gives an upper limit to that “climate sensitivity” parameter that the IPCC used to set at between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, and where for the latest CMIP6 models they’ve allowed up to around 6°C per doubling of CO2. Coe says it’s around 0.5°C. Will Happer (also ignoring clouds and their feedback) came up with a figure of around 1°C. Either way, it shows that the majority of the temperature change since 1850 is mostly natural (and rather welcome). In fact I’m not seeing a downside to that warming whatever caused it. I’m seeing a lot of benefit from the increased CO2, which gives us increased yield for crops.
Given that the majority of the warming from 1850 (or 1700 if we’re being picky) is natural, we should expect some outgassing of CO2 from the ocean as the water warms, so it’s actually debatable how much of the increase in CO2 is anthropogenic anyway.
So much of this “climate crisis” seems to be manufactured based on Bad Science (TM) and mistaken beliefs. I’m not seeing a crisis yet, let alone from getting too warm. There may well be a problem from not being warm enough in future, though, and that’s much more deadly.
12
Hi Simon,
Will J mentioned Modtran in his posts too but the giveaway about the IPCCCCC “models” is the concept of spitting out “photons” “in all directions”.
As Will said effectively; that’s not the case.
To put it in very blunt thermodynamic terms; any CO2 sitting way up there at 11,000 metres and Minus 34°C is not going to “send energy ” back down to Earth where the temperature is nominally Plus 13°C. Heat moves down the temperature gradient and this means that deep space is the only practical destination.
Then there’s mention of “climate sensitivity” again by the IPCCCCC.
Just what does this mean?
We are being misled by this type of speculation where the o.Lyn purpose is to keep the CAGW meme alive. Think of the money.
10
Correction.
, only purpose.
10
KK – one of the assumptions here is that heat only goes from hotter to colder. That is after all what we can feel with our fingers, and it’s been baked-in to the way thermodynamics is taught since Sadi Carnot thought of heat as being a fluid (Caloric) that flowed from hotter to colder. That’s not actually what happens, though – heat doesn’t actually act as if it’s a fluid, and in fact spreads by a random walk (kinetic theory of gases) or is radiated. In a random walk, the temperature of the source and destination have no effect whatsoever. Ditto with radiation, where the emitting body emits in random directions and, if the photon is absorbed at the receiving body, the energy of that photon is added to the total energy in that body whatever the temperatures of the source and destination are. Thus the photons emitted by a standard microwave oven are about equivalent to a black-body source at 0.042K, yet still heats up my bowl of baked beans or cup of coffee.
What we actually measure is a net flow, and since the flow of energy from the hotter object to the cooler one is greater than the flow in the other direction the net flow is always from hotter to cooler. However, there is a real energy flow from the cooler to hotter body too. That CO2 at -34°C does send radiation back to the ground at +13°C, and that does slow the cooling of the ground. If you consider causality here, then the emitting body can’t know what the temperature of the receiving body will be because that reception is in the future (it takes time for that photon to travel, and the reception of the photon is beyond the horizon). Thus the emitting body emits as if the rest of the universe doesn’t exist. The receiving body also can’t tell what the temperature of the emitting body was (again that’s beyond the horizon) and that photon will be either reflected or absorbed independent of whatever emitted it, but just based on local parameters of the surface.
It took me a long time (around 40 years) to see that that intuitive statement that heat only goes from hotter to colder was indeed wrong, so I’m not expecting you to change your ideas instantly either. Another problem here is that we tend to think of temperature as being a single number that specifies the kinetic energy a particle has, when it is in fact an average energy and specifies a particular probability curve of the kinetic energy any particle has over a sufficiently-large timespan and number of particles. At any temperature, the possible kinetic energy any particle has ranges from zero to a large number (theoretically infinite). At any point in time, each particle will have a specific kinetic energy and direction (thus a momentum vector) and it’s only on average that that momentum vector sums to zero. Something that averages to zero is not the same as something that always is zero, and that difference could well be useful.
I think the idea of climate sensitivity is useful. If we change one of the parameters (in this case the CO2 concentration) then what is the effect on the system? David Coe’s calculations tell us that that effect is actually pretty small, which is useful – we don’t need to worry about CO2 emissions causing overheating. As I said earlier, though, this is pretty obvious if you look at the temperature/CO2 plots for the last 2000 years or so. Though as clarence.t states there may be other causes for those temperature changes, AFAIK nobody has put together a set of hind-cast predictions that match the actual history, so I’d rather say that we don’t know what caused them and thus we can’t predict the future either. I’d think it’s a fair bet however that the Sun has a lot to do with the changes, given that we can also see changes to the Martian ice-caps over time (and human-emitted CO2 surely can’t affect Mars).
“We are being misled by this type of speculation where the only purpose is to keep the CAGW meme alive. Think of the money.” Yep, I’d agree with that. Though it’s pretty obvious that the predictions of doom from the 80’s for now haven’t eventuated, and New York isn’t under water (or ice), the endangered polar bears have diminished from around 7000 to around 30,000 (and look pretty well-fed despite the lack of sea-ice), and the Maldives haven’t disappeared under water but have built more airports (and the newest airport there was built at 1m above sea-level), we’re still getting more predictions of doom. It’s got to be hard for the UN to admit that they’ve cocked up on the predictions, and lose all that finance. Instead, they’re doubling down on the rhetoric and asking for more money.
11
Thanks Simon,
Nice talking to you but maybe we aren’t getting anywhere.
With concepts like those you mention I didn’t even bother to look at David Coes paper and the microwave oven thing again?
And poor old Carnot, resurrected in the name of the IPCCCCC.
00
“and we neither know the cause “
All the highly beneficial warming is easily explained but ocean cycles, and solar energy.
https://i.postimg.cc/7hGLTqdc/Soon-Connolly-2015-NH-Temps-and-TSI.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/1tSTqBTZ/Solar-vs-CET.jpg
As for radiative effects.. Net radiation is a product of the thermal gradient.
Unless it is strong enough to change that thermal gradient, it remains a product.
There is absolutely no evidence of increased atmospheric CO2 perturbing the natural thermal gradient.
20
Try telling Africans and Indians to knock off cattle. In the one case they are a store of wealth in poor societies, and in the other they are religiously valued. Again, it will be the brain-dead politicians of the West that will move to comply with the methane edicts.
God help us all! Our politicians are supposed to be our defensive bulwark, yet all we see on a daily basis is how blind they are to the global contest between capitalism and communism. They have no appreciation of just how damaging their AGW remedial actions are to our economies and our defences. We may as well put our hands up and let the traditional foes just take us over, especially when their economies aren’t depressed by the actions of their own governments. To the contrary, in the West we are told about how we must get used to dropping our standards of living ‘to save the planet!’
The EU is 75% there already. It depends on Russian gas now to stop it from freezing over winter, and it has so much trade dependent on China it is too scared to even criticise it over the destructive power of COVID-19 that it unleashed on the world. Now the foolish elites think they must save the planet – and destroy the people by starvation by attacks on the agricultural industries. The next thing will be back to ploughing, seeding and harvesting by hand due to government bans on fossil fuels. The stupidity is so unbelievable; its almost as though our politicians never went to any educational system outside of law schools.
220
They want to ban rice production because it produces large amounts of methane. Its a no brainer and Beijing will dismiss such silly notions.
41
Yeah get rid of it, full of bad carbs.
10
Ian Plimer writes on the Grettanesque one;
https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/11/the-climate-moaners-need-to-get-some-perspective-from-history/#
“Greta Thunberg rejects all ideas of the enlightenment. Despite what she wails, she is now living in the best times ever to be a child on planet Earth. She can actually go to FLOP26, something that few of us would want to do. Would she prefer to live in the worst of times when there was panic, suffering, environmental damage, death and no hope which she claims exists today? ” and more..
150
Send Greta Thumpingbird to Papua New Guinea and get her to tell them:
“No more Pigs”
She wouldn’t last one minute.
60
Would she qualify as ‘long pig’, not much meat on her bones.
60
I like the Thumpingbird: bird bilong thumping wing.
20
A couple of years ago I did a back of the envelope assessment of the Paris Agreement and the possibility of zero emissions by 2050. The Pain and Pointlessness of the Paris Accord
It’s a fantasy Full Stop So if Zero emissions is a fantasy- what is their REAL agenda about? It certainly has never had anything to do with the climate!
80
It’s about scaring rich nations into building the third worlds infrastructure for them effectively transferring wealth through deceit. If it wasn’t the UN Interpol would be all over it.
21
How did Christiana Figueres stand there and gabble on about saving the planet with a straight face, when we all know what she said about the fraud.
50
The various COP conferences are just taxpayer funded parties for the Elites and assorted hangers-on where they get to fly private jets and helicopters, dine on luxury motor yachts and eat lots of meat, get paid generous travel allowances and generally be treated as royalty. They have nothing whatever to do with the environment, that’s just the excuse.
51
and what energy source doesn’t show is renewables still use fossil fuel( mostly during building). and what they produce doesn’t avoid to use fossil fuel.. at 1 per 1 ratio…
most of the sherry on the top…is an illusion.
it doesn’t avoid to emit CO2 according to what it produces..sometimes it doesn’t avoid ANY diminution of fossil fuel emission ( pure waste of wealth)
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just like making ice cream in winter doesn’t save energy..nobody will buy them it is a waste of energy!!!
intermittency.. !!!!! useless energy!!!
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This statement is misleading. I did the sums for 2020. Out of 160,838TWh of total primary energy production, wind and solar contributed 2422TWh. That amounts to a fantastic achievement of 1.5%. Nothing like 5%.
I find it hard to see that 3.5% comes from modern biomass but maybe. If true, biomass is doing all the heavy lifting in the transition – more than twice wind and solar.
I do believe managed forests offer prospect but find it hard to believe they are already contributing 3.5% of global energy production. Maybe biodiesel is a big player as well.
It is noteworthy that biomass appears once in the text of the report and no actual energy value attributed to it.
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Rick,
there are a lot of people (who don’t live in Europe or the USA) who use twigs and dried camel (or other) dung for fuel. Bad for the health in poorly ventilated shacks but the Greens aren’t concerned about poor people’s life expectancy.
Then it should be noted that Russia (a few years ago) was exporting 500,000 tons of bagged wood chips to Europe. Perhaps people were avoiding the increasing electricity bills for heating and cooking?
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I am 100% in favour of managing/harvesting forests.
There must be better ways than cutting logging tracks and hauling out whole, large logs by bullock train, as it was done, but we must do it.
Every time you break the canopy for a road the stinging nettle, wait-a-while and other nasties thrive. [my experience is in tropical forests] Is structural timber so valuable now that it can lifted out with a blimp?
I did the floatplane trip to Franklin above Gordon [or was that the other way round?] and flying over the forests the largest/oldest trees were obviously dying. What a waste, allowing one of God’s gifts to rot where and when it fall. If harvested that timber could be used structurally and much of it would still be strong 100 years later.
40
Does no one else see the disconnect?
The only way to get back to pre-industrial emission levels is to deindustrialise. That would mean replacing cattle, which are mostly short lived with horses which, not having a rumen, require better quality food and these poor beasts would be worked ’til the day they die. If I were omnipotent I would replace every shackled beast of burden with a Kubota tiller.
40
Bullock teams were used quite extensively for both transport and ploughing.
Cattle tend to be short-lived because they wind up as somebody or something’s tucker.
To be fair, even without that consideration, they tend to live about half as long as horses.
10
Simon’s comment above doesn’t seem to be his own thoughts.
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How could it possibly be. !
20
Well they started the COP meetings with a big bag of BS. They have shaken it up and had a look inside every year for quarter of a century now, and surprise surprise its still BS.
After the theatre is over , very few countries do anything but pay lip service. There are people that have expended all their working lives on this futile nonsense.
51
What are they going to use to offset the La Palma volcano?
10
LOL
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Great cartoon. 🙂
https://i1.wp.com/climatechangedispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cartoon-climate-summit-jets.jpg
00
needs to go to 300,000 TWh ( 300 PWh ) if worlds people are to live comfortably. Bring on the Nuclear power. Crikey it all came from nuclear we will need a near impossible 30,000 1GW nuclear plants or an absolutely impossible 15 trillion 200 watt solar panels ( 30 million square kilometres ) or a billion large wind turbines . We have to get cracking . Green ideology must go
11
COP 26 = SIT 26 (SIT = Snouts in Troughs). Need I say more? COP 26 signals the rise of GREEN CAPITALISM (AKA: The “haves’ controlling the world, as usual). People like Greta have been totally seduced by the “haves” who say they have the environment at heart (reminds me of the time when the rich lorded it over the poor; when children were sent down the mines with the pit horses). When you have people like Gore, Gates, Musk, Bezos and our own Twiggy Forrest embracing the “new” green technology, then GOD HELP US ALL.
10
‘installation of around 400,000 wind turbines,’ So, a thousand turbines for every private jet that flew into Glasgow airport! That’s the price of still being able to go about your carbon loaded year, while the retired taxpayer chooses between overpriced heat or food this week?
So the planet truly is being saved by the Bilderbergers for the eastern tree frog, because the serfdom is irrelevant when they stop filling their coffers!
20
[…] After 26 COP meetings we are a Fossil Fueled World: Coal, oil gas give us 80% of the energy on Earth… After three decades of effort, twenty-six glorious international COP meetings, six IPCC reports, and the installation of around 400,000 wind turbines, the total energy supplied in the big renewable energy transition still amounts to about 5% of total energy production. […]
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The idiots have yet to realize that COAL and OIL are just primarily vegetable matter that has “Matured” for a considerably longer time than the “Approved” renewable timber they burn to make power. IT IS ONLY AT THE END OF ON A LONGER RENEWABLE TIMELINE!!!!(Simplistically speaking)of course.
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[…] After 26 COP meetings we are a Fossil Fueled World: Coal, oil gas give us 80% of the energy on Earth… […]
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