Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Hillhater said:

An independent free opinion is worth more than a thousand sponsored ones.

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So you have gone from "he's an astronaut so he's really smart" to "he's not a part of the system so his opinion is worth more." OK. (I still bet you take medical advice more seriously when it comes from your doctor than when it comes from some guy at a bar.)

In any case, if you really believe that, that's good news. Hopefully you will now disregard the climate change denials from the Heartland Institute, Willie Soon, Steve Milloy, Bjorn Lomborg, Fred Singer, the Global Climate Coalition etc etc. and start heeding results from researchers who get paid to do science, rather than make oil companies money.

But I doubt it. So far you have echoed those deniers almost word-for-word - same claims, same tactics, same goals.

mark5 said:

TheBeastie said:

I am so sick of you other guys talking about climate change in this thread, start a new thread if you want as this is just getting so annoying.

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Thanks for agreeing.
I am thinking about contacting the admins here to see if I could get access to mod or something at least just for this thread and delete or move all the climate change posts because it just keeps getting taken over.
While it's nice to have proper freedom of speech, the off topic-ness and baiting is over the top on ES vs the massive Australian based whirlpool forums I post to now and then. https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/
They just brutally delete posts for being even a bit off topic/baiting posts, and at a minimum suspend accounts for weeks if they do it more than a few times. It's over the top but part of me wishes it was done here.
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Interesting image about next-gen nuclear costs here
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqFRiBGU8AAJOWh.jpg


This is for the ThorCon nuclear reactor for cost per KWh
Web page loads slowly for me https://www.energy-reporters.com/opinion/cost-of-nuclear-for-dummies-and-future-generations/

Why don't you stop posting long rants about Australian domestic politics studded with fake-news memes about how solar "doesn't work"?

Unfortunately, Power generation, CAGW, and Politics , are inextricably bound togetherlike wild dogs on a bitch in heat.
..But i agree it does seem that certain parties like to take any opportunity to drag the discussion off on trivial tangents , rather than focus on the core topics.!

Actually, the only reason who keep straying onto AGW is because of your belief that forever burning coal is the best option for mankind because it has no drawbacks because GW is a lie. Hence, having already dismantled your false assertions about the technical/practical/economic feasibility of RE we have to then debunk your denier myths. TheBeastie is another serial offender for posting misinformation across this forum.

Hillhater said:

Unfortunately, Power generation, CAGW, and Politics , are inextricably bound togetherlike wild dogs on a bitch in heat.

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Exactly. Political types - especially people with connections to the energy industry - have a vested interest in denying climate change. Climate change denial pays VERY well, and lots of people want on the gravy train.

Economy is also seemingly OT but cannot be separated.
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-10-16/peak-oil-review-15-oct-2018/
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The Wall Street Journal responded with an Op-Ed accusing the UN of ignoring the reality of economics and asserting that no climatic conditions could be so bad that it would be worth spending some $50 trillion to mitigate. Rather than a crash program, the Journal recommends spending more on R&D so that new cheaper sources of energy could be developed. On Capitol Hill, a parade of GOP lawmakers dismissed the report’s policy recommendations as wildly impractical, using ridicule to do so. “They might as well be calling on me to sprout wings and fly to Canada for the summer,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), a climate change skeptic, said of the actions urged by the report. “It’s totally unrealistic,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “They must have parachuted in from another planet.”

From the reactions to the report, it was evident that a critical mass realizing that climate change is a significant threat to human civilization has not yet formed. While the endless succession of drought, floods, and unprecedented storms continues, they are not yet deemed frequent or damaging enough to overcome the costs and dislocations that would be caused by a rapid shift away from the fossil fuels that supply some 85 percent of the world’s energy.

There's been lots of discussion about unsubsidized solar going for 2 cents per kwhr in sunny places like Saudi Arabia.

Looks like unsubsidized solar is now also competitive in places with much worse weather, like Germany.
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Germany: Tendered PV projects need no public subsidy in August

Marking a historic moment in the German renewable energy sector, no public incentive was paid in August for PV installations up to 10 MW and selected under the country’s tender mechanism. This was due to the fact that market prices were higher than the price including the feed-in premium tariff, awarded in the tender.

OCTOBER 15, 2018
SANDRA ENKHARDT

The final average price in Germany’s tender for solar parks not exceeding 10 MW in size has fallen sharply in recent years. The lowest ever average price of €0.0433 cents per kWh was achieved in February 2018.

At the same time, the market value for solar electricity rose to unprecedented heights this summer. As a result, projects selected in tenders were able to work without any public incentive granted under Germany’s renewable energy law, EEG, for the first time during the month of August.

This occurred for a solar park built by Wattner, which was selected by the German government in a tender held in June 2017. The project was granted a tariff of €0.0542 per kWh, the company said at conference held by the German Renewable Energy Association (BEE) on Friday in Germany’s capital, Berlin.

The plant, the construction of which was completed in almost a year, is selling power to the market with the support of Germany’s Next Kraftwerke. In August, the market value of solar power reached its highest level this year – €0.05595 cents per kWh. This was above the tariff granted in the tender, thus making the level of public subsidiy from the EEG drop to zero. This means the PV plant owner will be able to finance the investment solely through the proceeds from the sale of electricity.
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Geothermal remains an under-utilised resource, but that may change due to a number of projects experimenting with "super-critical" wells. Rather than the ~200°C water of regular geothermal, these wells run at up to 600°C, yielding 10-times the continuous power (50MW rather than 5MW per bore).

Iceland, blessed with geothermal resource, is positioning itself to become a large exporter of geothermal power to Europe. However, super-critical wells, combined with the deep-drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry could make geothermal economical in places with thicker, cooler crust, such as Europe and the U.S. The predicted timeline is significant changes over the next 20 years.

Geo Thermal has a part to play for sure....but it will only ever be a small part .
Even in regeons where there are good GT resources, experience, and funding, (EG , California) ..GT is not a technology of choice for new power generation due to its uncompetitive costs relative to other options.
Iceland has less than 1.0 GW of GT generation, so it is unlikely to become a "large "exporter of power in European terms...even if they believe that it can be compettive with other sources.

Hillhater said:

Even in regeons where there are good GT resources, experience, and funding, (EG , California) ..GT is not a technology of choice for new power generation due to its uncompetitive costs relative to other options.

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Well, it is indeed expensive (~100$ per megawatt-hour.) But it's cheaper than nuclear (~120) or natural gas peaking (~185.) And it's not hard to throttle, unlike nuclear - and it's dispatchable, unlike solar or wind. So in good locations it's pretty competitive.

billvon said:

..... So in good locations it's pretty competitive.

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But obviously not competitive enough to attract significant investment where other options exist.!
Its the same problem as other Energy system ,..the energy source is cheap, but the development and facilities to convert that source to useful power, is expensive.
It would seem the recent explosion in gas and oil drilling demand has made drilling much more expensive , ..especially deep drilling,.. such that costs for GT power production are increasing ($100-$200/MW ). Whilst costs for wind and solar are ...as you keep telling us...decreasing.

Hillhater said:

But obviously not competitive enough to attract significant investment where other options exist.!

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?? You mean, to you, 160 billion dollars isn't "significant?" (investment in solar 2017) OK.

Its the same problem as other Energy system ,..the energy source is cheap, but the development and facilities to convert that source to useful power, is expensive.

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Well, the energy source is free, to be more accurate. And thus people are willing to pay more for the infrastructure to harvest it.

Wake up bill..
We were talking about GT investment , not solar
So as i said, investors are going with the cheaper option (solar), rather than the better option (GT).
Most energy sources are free..oil , coal, gas, wind, sun, ..
..its converting them to sparks that cost the money.

Here is another on for you to test your faith in AGW and practice your character assasination skills on boys..
[youtube]frviKqDWRl4[/youtube]
https://youtu.be/frviKqDWRl4

Really? Why get your information from Nature when you can get your opinions from a Fox News show hosted by a man who believes various conspiracy theories and has stated that Evolution isn't a science and is chairman of the Landmark Foundation, which:

• Nominated Rush Limbaugh (a member of it's board) for a Nobel Preace Prize(!)
  Has the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil as its donors
  Ran a smear campaign against Climatologist Michael E. Mann

Is there a bottom of any barrel which you will not scrape? If you really believe this stuff then judging by the comments to that YouTube video then at least you are in good company.

Right wing lies are like an addictive drug that makes bad people feel good about themselves instead of being better.

Hillhater said:

Here is another on for you to test your faith in AGW and practice your character assasination skills on boys..

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So far, so good.

Punx0r said:

Is there a bottom of any barrel which you will not scrape? If you really believe this stuff

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Is there anything specifically that Patrick Michaels said that you would like to debunk? Or is it just that you hate Fox so that anything said there must be a lie?

sendler2112 said:

Is there anything specifically that Patrick Michaels said that you would like to debunk?

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Sure.

He said this in 1992: "Here's an easy prediction: By the year 2000, plus or minus a few, the vogue environmental calamity will be an ice age. And this nouvelle apocalypse, revised version, will predict that global warming will cause sea level to fall, exposing Bangladesh to wrenching cultural changes, and therefore we should give more money to the Third World." No need to comment on whether that happened.

1999: "I'm willing to wager two things. First, I'll bet that anyone who said global warming is an overblown bunch of hooey had a terrible time at this year's holiday cocktail parties. Second, I'll take even money that the 10 years ending on December 31, 2007, will show a statistically significant global cooling trend in temperatures measured by satellite. . . . Starting with 1998, there will almost certainly be a statistically significant cooling trend in the decade ending in 2007." 2005 then set a new temperature record.

In 2013 he said "it's a pretty good bet that we are going to go nearly a quarter of a century without warming." 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 were all warmer than 2013.

In 2001 he said this about the Prius: "[Toyota] already demonstrated the futility of trying to produce the impossible [a hybrid] cheaply. And both were in the process of finding out that gas is so inexpensive in this country (despite its 40 cents per gallon tax) that no one except diehard technophiles and hyper-greens are willing to shell out several thousand extra for a hybrid. . . . both Toyota and Honda let it be known they were losing big bucks on these cars, and neither company, when pressed, would say if or when they would make a profit on them. That's because the answers are no and never." The Prius became the world's third bestselling car by 2012, and has been making a profit for Toyota for over a decade. There is now a line of different Priuses offered by Toyota.

So why is he saying these things? During an interview in 2010:

INTERVIEWER: Can I ask you what percentage of your work is funded by the petroleum industry?
MICHAELS: I don't know. Forty percent? I don't know.

billvon said:

Sure.

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:thumb:

Fair play to Bill for taking the time to post the above. I took a simpler approach: looked at the length of the video (44 minutes) and realised that if something looks like a dog turd and smells like a dog turd, then I don't need to actually go to the bother of tasting it to be pretty sure it is, in fact, a dog turd.

A proponent of eating dog turd might try and claim I have no right to say whether or not the item in question is a dog turd without first eating the whole thing and because he ate it, only his opinion on it can be valid, but I think it's clear that would be a ridiculous (and pitiful) position to take.

To an objector I would say: show me the remarkable evidence for the remarkable claim that it's actually carefully disguised chocolate moose and I will pay attention. Until then, the burden of proof rests on the s**t eater.

The last line might have been a little much :lol:

Punx0r said:

s**t eater.

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Your whole post is crap

It makes the point. There is a lot of crap out there and, for some reason, some people gladly and unquestioningly swallow it.

So this guy has a history of being a paid climate denier. I am glad to know that. But what I originally asked was if anything he said in the video was blatantly wrong. As it seems he has cleaned up his rhetoric. But then the red mist sets in when we see what he did in the past and what forum he was invited to interview on and all rational discussion goes out the window.