Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Hillhater said:
Statistics is not a science, it is a mathematical technique.

"Statistics is a mathematical body of science"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics

Hillhater said:
Statistics are used to analyse data for scientific purposes.
If you want reliable outputs, you must have accurate inputs..reliable “hard” data.
Estimates are not reliable data.
..Sh1t in ,..Sh1t out !

PS:.. You are sweating over details again !

You're right, I should just do as you do: wave my hand dismissively and say "this is right, that is WRONG!" and ignore the subtlties and distinctions inherent to the real world.

You have repeatedly demonstrated that you cannot or will not grasp the basic concepts of measurement being discussed here, so I official give it up as a lost cause. Feel free to revel in a world whereby a single line carved in a rock on a shoreline a century ago is "right" and entire fields of modern science are "just making it up".
 
Hillhater said:
....If you had a temperature reading from the Shetlands, and another from Jersey, could you use them to derive an accurate temperature in Leek ?
...because that is the way some “data points” are established for the global data set !

They could do that and probably get a fairly good approximation, perhaps with some adjustments for any change in elevation. However, why would they? They have thermometers in Leek, too, just like every other city and town in the world. Then there are thousands of buoys measuring ocean temperatures along with thousands more ships that cover vast areas in between buoys. They also have satellites that can be calibrated to all these tens of thousands of actual measurements and then used to infer temperatures in the spaces between measurements. Interestingly, at least five different independently derived data interpretations all yield similar temperature histories to within less than a tenth of a degree. HadCrut, UKMet, JapanMet, NOAA, NASA, and Berkely Earth all show very similar warming trends--are they all in on some vast conspiracy? Or are all of these highly educated and trained scientists all incompetent and by some strange coincidence all their errors happen to yield the same result? Hell, even UAH's fudged satellite data interpretation had to admit a warming trend after their multiple (deliberate?) calculation errors were pointed out to them and corrected. Interestingly, the Berkely Earth interpretation was funded by the Koch Brothers with the initial intent to prove everyone else wrong, but in the end, they got the same results as everyone else. So, what is your source of analysis to say the temperature data are wrong? I welcome your well-reasoned scientific analysis.
 
Hillhater said:
Statistics yes, ...but not hard science...you are using statistics to help you make a guess at the missing data.
AlL you have is an “ Estimate” , You do not actually know what the temperature was in that location , you are making an assumption that it is following a previous pattern. It is not a hard data point and not valid for rigorous analysis, and it certainly is not good science.
OK.

So when your doctor tells you you have a heart defect, and need immediate surgery if you want to survive, he is only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore him since it's bad science.

When you are planning a trip on a boat, and the national weather service tells you there is a small craft warning, they are only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore it since it's bad science.

When doctors tell you you shouldn't smoke because smoking often causes cancer, COPD, heart disease and emphysema, they are only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore them since it's bad science.

When your fuel gauge tells you your tank is empty, it is only giving you an "estimate" - so you will keep driving indefinitely since it's bad science.

When you use a laser tape measure to measure an opening you need to cover with plywood, it is only giving you an "estimate" - so you just buy whatever size is cheapest, because the measurement you have is bad science.

I suspected before that you did not understand statistics. Now I know for sure.
 
A message from the future after the Green New Deal. Everything has to change.
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https://youtu.be/d9uTH0iprVQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=d9uTH0iprVQ
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billvon said:
OK.

So when your doctor tells you you have a heart defect, and need immediate surgery if you want to survive, he is only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore him since it's bad science.

When you are planning a trip on a boat, and the national weather service tells you there is a small craft warming, they are only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore it since it's bad science.

When doctors tell you you shouldn't smoke because smoking often causes cancer, COPD, heart disease and emphysema, they are only giving you an "estimate" - and you will ignore them since it's bad science.

When your fuel gauge tells you your tank is empty, it is only giving you an "estimate" - so you will keep driving indefinitely since it's bad science.

When you use a laser tape measure to measure an opening you need to cover with plywood, it is only giving you an "estimate" - so you just buy whatever size is cheapest, because the measurement you have is bad science.

I suspected before that you did not understand statistics. Now I know for sure.

Haha, those are good ones. :bigthumb:
 
Meanwhile, back in the real world:

California hits 93% instantaneous renewable grid power on April 13th: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/04/15/californias-solar-power-record-setting-season-is-here/

Total over whole year of 2018, solar alone: 19% https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar

In 2017, 29% of total grid energy came from renewables: (up from 9% in 2007) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California

And this will really bake your noodle - a few weeks ago I checked on the production from my first solar install, on the house I bought in 2003. It is still producing 90-95% of what it produced back then! 16 years ago! It's inconceivable that anyone wouldn't trash their panels right at the 9 year mark like Youtube tells them to - but the new owners seem to want to keep getting free power for some reason.
 
Complicated creatures we are. I have repeatedly presented the link to the Hagens lecture to at least 200 people. It is seemingly complex at first so most people that actually do start to view it get uptight and switch to something else more immediately entertaining.
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The few solar advocates or university professors that I approached won't even click on it. They already "know everything" they need to know and there is nothing that a person like me ( 40 year auto mechanic ) could ever find out about that would be of any relevance to them.
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Out of all of that, I have had 3 people report back that they viewed the lecture. One seems to be a self educated expert on new energy and found it necessary to find a way to dismiss a few statements on nitpicks so as to discredit the whole thing and start calling Hagens (and me) foul names. Too dissonant to their embedded view. Another, from a new economy group, said he watched it twice and took notes.
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This is a concise distillation of Hagens' 1,200 pages of classroom material. Viewed on 1.5 speed it will be less than an hour. Mind blowing stuff that explains the relationship of how everything fits together. Energy, economy, ecology/ resources, evolutionary human behavior. And is unknown to most people including the world scientists and economists that council our leaders.
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I am driven to keep trying. I'm going out next week in two different cities to table and hand out flyers. Please take 1 hour in honor of Earth Day this year to watch this lecture.
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https://youtu.be/YUSpsT6Oqrg
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57462850_2164586463620454_8897794459048083456_n.jpg

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sendler2112 said:
Mind blowing stuff that explains the relationship of how everything fits together. Energy, economy, ecology/ resources, evolutionary human behavior. And is unknown to most people including the world scientists and economists that council our leaders.

That's an interesting claim as I watched a David Attenborough documentary last night called "Climate Change: The Facts". Considering it was only a hour to cover all aspects of climate change from the underlying science, the effects, the dangers (including societal collapse), the causes, climate modeling, the fossil fuel industry misinformation campaign and what governments and individuals can do, it made clear the intimate relationship between fossil energy and our whole way of life.

Frankly, I'm not surprised you find people turned off if they're repeatedly told we're all going extinct because fossil fuels are running out and there is no possible replacement. Effectively "the end is neigh! Repent now!". It must be especially irritating if you work in the renewable energy industry and have daily first-hand experience of the capabilities of alternative energy sources.

At the current rate of warming we risk a devastating future.

The science is now clear that urgent action is needed. What happens now and in these next few years will profoundly affect the next few thousand years.

We are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale. It may sound frightening but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade we could face irreversible damage of the natural world, and the collapse of our societies.
 
Punx0r said:
Frankly, I'm not surprised you find people turned off if they're repeatedly told we're all going extinct because fossil fuels are running out and there is no possible replacement. Effectively "the end is neigh! Repent now!". It must be especially irritating if you work in the renewable energy industry and have daily first-hand experience of the capabilities of alternative energy sources.

I have never even alluded to any vague possibility of humans going extinct. This must some kind of defensive reaction to discredit me in your own subconscious mind the you have developed. I don't personally even believe humans would go extinct in the literal interpretation of the word if we had 5C warming and 50 meters sea level rise. Though it would be obviously catastrophic. Extinct is an extreme word and humans are really smart.
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Confirmation bias is an extreme limit on our ability to learn new information. I'm sorry to see that even you can't be bothered to dedicate an hour to learn something new. I'm quite certain you would find a great deal of value in it if you would let down your wall.
 
Punx0r said:
Frankly, I'm not surprised you find people turned off if they're repeatedly told we're all going extinct because fossil fuels are running out and there is no possible replacement.
There is no possible replacement that is as cheap, as portable and as available as quickly. There are lots of possible replacements that don't hit all those pluses, of course.

Let's take one example. Let's say we go all solar and cancel oil tomorrow. Great. To store the energy we need to build batteries. They are expensive, and if they are to run everything, everything will get more expensive - shipping, farming, housing, transportation. At the end of the day, "expensive" means labor. So the labor you perform will not be able to buy as much. Maybe that means you'll be able to afford a house (or apartment) and food but that's it. No cars; all our efforts to electrify will barely support farming and shipping. That will dramatically change our society.

Or maybe cars are such a huge priority that we decide we can't live without them. Something else has to give. Perhaps then the future looks like much smaller cars with everyone eating a plant-based diet (since meat is a huge energy sink.)

And for both cases it means the end of growth; future society will have to contract in terms of economic output. And all our economic models are built on constant growth. So what kind of new economy will allow a decent lifestyle with a contracting, instead of expanding, economy? No one knows yet. All the existing examples are pretty grim (think 1929.) But perhaps we will be smart enough to manage to avoid that.

That does not mean "the end is near!" of course. If we returned to an 1850s era (or even 1929) lifestyle in terms of transportation it is certainly not the end of the world. But it also means that the future doesn't look like Star Trek; it looks more like Blade Runner. (But with fewer flying cars.)
It must be especially irritating if you work in the renewable energy industry and have daily first-hand experience of the capabilities of alternative energy sources.
I do. But I also think that it's unrealistic to think that renewable energy will replace fossil fuels as anything like a 1:1 replacement. If we put everything we had into building out a non-fossil-fuel energy system (massive solar/wind, HTGR nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen, batteries, HVDC transmission, electrified highways, new sources of concrete and fertilizer etc) then the changes might not be too painful. But since we are not willing to do that, the changes will be more painful when they come. There are a lot of people like Hillhater and Beastie out there - and people even more selfish than that. So any progress we make will be limited by that sort of short term thinking.
 
billvon said:
Let's take one example.
Thanks for that. I can now chalk up one more person that understands. This is all I have been saying. But it is not a popular thing to hear so people instinctively shut it out. We're not getting that (solar powered) pony that we always wanted for christmas. But we can still get something nice. Like a new bicycle instead.
 
No one is expecting a 1:1 easy replacement for fossil fuels, but you've preached a post-apocolyptic world and the end of humanity as we know it.

This simply encourages the "no point even trying" mindset.

Endless consumerism has to give, that's widely accepted.
 
sendler2112 said:
I'm sorry to see that even you can't be bothered to dedicate an hour to learn something new. I'm quite certain you would find a great deal of value in it

That's exactly what someone told me yesterday when they tried to get to watch an hour-long video by a guy telling us how the "golden cross" is coming in cryptocurrency and we all have to buy bitcoin now to win big. The guy is apparently an expert in his field (although I noted he's trying to make money from youtube ads rather than raking in millions using his own investment advice).

Liklihood that any given lengthy monologue on youtube is by a crank and will be a waste of your time = high

Life = short

So I'm sure you can understand my blanket rule on random youtube videos recommendations.

Frankly, I'd only be interested if this video contains an actual "here's what we need to do to avoid all these problems" action plan. If it does, then surely you could summarise it here in a paragraph rather than expecting the readers of this thread to collectively commit dozens of man-hours to sitting through the whole thing? If it's alljust "we're all doooomed!" [in Scottish accent] then I CBA as where's the utility in it?
 
sendler2112 said:
To sum up what I say in the fewest words :" Things will be much smaller and simpler in the future".

Should we start culling people now while we still have fossil fuels to make metal tools? Or should we just wait for 90% of the population to starve to death in our new medieval world?
 
Wife and I don't have kids.

Take as many electric cars, solar panels, permaculture gardens and vegan diets as you want, but our decision will still have more impact.
 
jonescg said:
Wife and I don't have kids.

Take as many electric cars, solar panels, permaculture gardens and vegan diets as you want, but our decision will still have more impact.

Your decision also carries the highest cost of opportunity. What if your kids grow up in your image and come up with the greatest breakthroughs in sustainability ? :) And then of course for every child not born in the developed world there are 500 born in the developing world... what was the impact estimated to be ? 1:100 ?
 
cricketo said:
jonescg said:
Wife and I don't have kids.

Take as many electric cars, solar panels, permaculture gardens and vegan diets as you want, but our decision will still have more impact.

Your decision also carries the highest cost of opportunity. What if your kids grow up in your image and come up with the greatest breakthroughs in sustainability ? :) And then of course for every child not born in the developed world there are 500 born in the developing world... what was the impact estimated to be ? 1:100 ?

Hogwash. The rule of regression to the mean suggests that to the nearest approximation, everybody's kid will be a liability. And to look at the world as it is, that's absolutely true.

No kids no cars is not only the best for the world. It's undeniably the best for whoever observes the code. I just turned 50. My childfree friends are vibrant, on average. My kid-burdened friends are old.

The last thing anyone needs is more of us.
 
I mean hell, this is an e-bike forum. Of course we can't afford kids :lol:
 
Keep in mind also that the Hagens lecture I linked was just an off the cuff local Earth day presentation he threw together not even intending it to be any kind of Magnum Opus. Not a rehearsed and produced Tedx. And seeks to condense an 80 hour, 1,200 page class into 1 hour. Maybe it is just much easier for me to understand what he is getting at since I have taken the whole class?
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There is a more thorough short video series available now which he just finished and that all incoming freshmen to the Honors College at U of Minnesota are required to view. The production is still slap dash but the information is excellent as usual. Again, he speaks deliberately when narrating so the videos can be watched at 1.5 speed to save time. Watch each group in order. 1, 2, 3. The last few in #3 I find very insightful.
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There is no one else that I have ever read that has put together such a complete understanding. And I have read a lot.
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLL1uobWCltqNQlOrXBpLsA/playlists
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If you google "nate haggens" you won't find anything about what the guy teaches, just links to videos.

I watched/skimmed the first of the 30(!) videos in the above links. One quote jumped out:

"This videos series...is not going to provide answers"

There was nothing new in it, a statement that human civilization has grown rapidly by using fossil energy, an introduction to the theory of evolution starting with the big bang(!) and a bit of pop psychology.

If the rest of the videos follow suit, it'll be an inch-deep & mile wide summary of a raft of technological and scientific subjects. Possibly interesting or entertaining, especially if your prior education was according to the Bible or you never realised externalities aren't costed into consumer goods & services, or ever thought about what life was like pre-industrial revolution.
 
Yes. Skimming the first 10 minutes of intro out of a 4 hour video series isn't going to be very enlightening. Like reading the preface of a book and calling it done. I know 4 hours is a lot. That's why I always recommend for newcomers to start with the 1:20 Earth Day 2017 presentation. This is a fast, 20 second per bullet point, 200 slide lecture which highlights a lot of great concepts in a very short amount of time. 50 minutes on 1.5X speed. Keep in mind also that this lecture was just an off the cuff local Earth day presentation he threw together not even intending it to be any kind of Magnum Opus. Not a rehearsed and produced Tedx. And seeks to condense an 80 hour, 1,200 page class into 1 hour. Maybe it is just much easier for me to understand what he is getting at since I have taken the whole class?
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https://youtu.be/YUSpsT6Oqrg
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