The thing(s) with climate change

[Theo520]

Like I said, where is the hard data to back that up? Specifically, the “They do not generate enough power to pay for themselves”?

How is it that you don’t understand the role of subsidies? They are essential because it doesn’t pay without them. Wind gets x20 the subsidies per MWH vs normal fuels.

Good video - Tilting at Wind Turbines

If wind energy is ‘strong,’ why does it need subsidies?

What do we have to show for government subsidies of wind power?

FAQ on Wind economics

 

[LeafByNiggle]

FAQ on Wind economics

From that FAQ on wind power you quoted, a wind power facility costs 1-2 million dollars per megawatt to build. Electricity sell, on the average, for 12 cents per kW-hr. A megawatt is 1000 kW. So 1 MW of power generation sells for 1000 x 0.12 = $120/hr. Assuming the worst case construction costs of $2,000,000 per megawatt, a wind power plant will pay back its construction costs in 2000000/120 = 16,667 hours, or 1.9 years. But it will not run 100% of the time, so let’s double that to 3.8 years. I’m sure a wind turbine lasts longer than that, so it has a net profit. Even counting the occasional maintenance, it seems to make a profit. So the one link you gave that actually had hard numbers to address the question of viability seems to support my position more than yours. Let me ask again, does anyone have hard numbers that show that wind energy costs more to produce than the electricity can be sold for? Anyone?

 

[vz71]

I am curious.
If it is so profitable, why haven’t you taken out a small businesses loan, purchased a turbine and then sold the electicity back to the grid for a profit?

 

[Theo520]

From that FAQ on wind power you quoted, a wind power facility costs 1-2 million dollars per megawatt to build. Electricity sell, on the average, for 12 cents per kW-hr. A megawatt is 1000 kW. So 1 MW of power generation sells for 1000 x 0.12 = $120/hr. Assuming the worst case construction costs of $2,000,000 per megawatt, a wind power plant will pay back its construction costs in 2000000/120 = 16,667 hours, or 1.9 years. But it will not run 100% of the time, so let’s double that to 3.8 years. I’m sure a wind turbine lasts longer than that, so it has a net profit. Even counting the occasional maintenance, it seems to make a profit. So the one link you gave that actually had hard numbers to address the question of viability seems to support my position more than yours. Let me ask again, does anyone have hard numbers that show that wind energy costs more to produce than the electricity can be sold for? Anyone?

A wind farm earns wholesale prices for its energy, which is ~6 cents per kW-hr.
30% of rated capacity is a more realistic generation rate.
Add in Operation and Maintenance costs (not insignificant)
Your numbers are no longer attractive without subsidies.

Add to that the price of a natural gas generator that must be installed to supply power when the wind isn’t blowing.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

A wind farm earns wholesale prices for its energy, which is ~6 cents per kW-hr.

Then double the break-even time, but then cut it down by 75% because as time goes by the cost of construction can only come down as better ways are found to make wind turbines, and economy of scale kicks in. So now we have break-even at 5.7 years.

30% of rated capacity is a more realistic generation rate.

30% instead of 50% means we now have break-even at 9.5 years. Since wind turbines last 20-25 years, this is not a problem.

Add in Operation and Maintenance costs (not insignificant)

I can’t add it in unless you give me some hard numbers.

Add to that the price of a natural gas generator that must be installed to supply power when the wind isn’t blowing.

There is no reason to add that in because that is a cost you would have whether or not you built the wind turbine.

As cheap oil gets harder and harder to find, we have to resort to more expensive oil. This will raise the price of oil, making wind turbines more attractive as time goes by.

 

[vz71]

Again, this sounds like a great deal.

Why haven’t you taken advantage of it?

 

[Theo520]

1000 x.06$ x 30% = $18/hr
Let’s ballpark operating and maintenance at 10%, or $2.80
That gives us $16.20/hr of revenue

That’s 123,456 hrs for cost recover, or 14 yrs.
That also ignores the time value of money

14+yrs is not attractive, which is why subsidies are required.

If you are replacing older coal plants, you can’t ignore the need to also build a backup gas fired generator for your Wind Turbines.

Then double the break-even time, but then cut it down by 75% because as time goes by the cost of construction can only come down as better ways are found to make wind turbines, and economy of scale kicks in. So now we have break-even at 5.7 years.

30% instead of 50% means we now have break-even at 9.5 years. Since wind turbines last 20-25 years, this is not a problem.

I can’t add it in unless you give me some hard numbers.

There is no reason to add that in because that is a cost you would have whether or not you built the wind turbine.

As cheap oil gets harder and harder to find, we have to resort to more expensive oil. This will raise the price of oil, making wind turbines more attractive as time goes by.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Chapter 6 But What About the 97% Consensus?

But, some of you might object, even if the climate power elites are corrupt, might it still be possible for them to be right? After all, don’t 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous?

My dear bishops (and everyone else), of course it is possible that they are right. I suppose it is possible that the truth of climate change is preserved in the body scientific no matter how nobly corrupt the climate power elites are. But your job is to weigh probabilities based on the evidence, not make decisions based on mere possibilities.

Besides, the 97% claim itself has been shown to be another example of false knowledge produced by the CSE. Your version of it, that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous, is the one promoted by President Obama on Twitter.
It can be traced to the Cook et al study. As we evaluate this supposed 97% consensus we want you to remember two numbers: 67 and 11,944.

One of the first things we notice is that, even taking the Cook study at face value, it does not say what President Obama claims. First, it did not directly measure the opinions and beliefs of scientists. The authors surveyed the scientific literature, not the scientists themselves. Given what we now know about how the climate science establishment has systematically suppressed the publication of research skeptical about global warming, this does not seem to be a reliable way to measure the opinions of working scientists in the field.

The study also does not claim that 97% of scientists endorse the full Global Warming Hypothesis. At most—and even this is a stretch—it concludes that 97% of scientific papers touching on climate change endorse the proposition that humans are causing some global warming with our CO2 emissions, a rather trivial conclusion and something with which most skeptics would agree. The crucial remaining issue not addressed by the study is whether this warming will be so dangerous that we must drastically reduce our carbon emissions.

The Cook study has been severely criticized and very convincingly discredited. Here are some examples from critics of Cook et al:

From Dr. Richard Tol, a former IPCC lead author.
richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/now-almost-two-years-old-john-cooks-97.html?view=classic

The entire study should therefore be dismissed…

From social psychologist Jose Duarte:

joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97

This study was multiply fraudulent and multiply invalid…

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Chapter 6 continued

Why such harsh criticism? Here are some of the reasons:

1. Cook’s sampling methods were biased. The author’s studied almost 12,000 articles, but there was selection bias in the study’s choice of its journal article database. Because they used a more restrictive database, Cook excluded 35% of the literature. Professor Tol also has shown that Cook’s search parameters also excluded important studies from consideration. For example, 33 out of 50 of the most cited studies were not selected.
   wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/01/tol-statistically-deconstructs-the-97-consensus/
2. Many articles skeptical about global warming were not included. For example, famed atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen from MIT, a noted climate skeptic, has written 50 papers. Yet not one was analyzed. See Steven Hayward’s lecture on youtube.

See also Duarte: joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97

1. The approach used to classify the paper was not reliable and probably biased. The authors used a small group of environmental activists, who did not work independently, to rate the selected papers. Many papers were misclassified. Jose Duarte reports:

The Cook et al. (2013) 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change.

They did this even though: “The authors explicitly stated in their paper (Table 1) that “social science, education and research on people’s views” were classified as Not Climate Related, and thus not counted as evidence of scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. All of the papers below were counted as endorsement.”

1. All this leads to the conclusion that the data used by the researchers was of poor quality.

We would add that the authors themselves were biased. John Cook and his co-authors are partisans who operate a website called Skeptical Science, which advocates for the climate science establishment. The Cook study was part of a campaign called The Consensus Project whose aim was to prove there is an overwhelming consensus and influence public opinion. Before the study was even begun, lead author John Cook announced:

It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW [anthropogenic (man-made) global warming]. So Jim Powell, Dana [Nuccitelli] and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus. …

So, even before starting the study, they advertised the results they were going to get. Not only that, Cook proposed an entire PR campaign saying: “We [will] beat the consensus drum often and regularly and make [Skeptical Science] the home of the perceived strengthening consensus”.

thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15624-cooking-climate-consensus-data-97-of-scientists-affirm-agw-debunked

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Chapter 6 continued

Even more disturbing than their methodological flaws and research bias is researchers’ misconduct. Professor Tol reports that requests for the data were met with dishonest evasion and foot-dragging. In this they were aided and abetted by the journal itself and also the University of Queensland, Cook’s employer. We will find that this has become standard operating procedure for activist scientists such as Cook.

So where exactly does the infamous 97% figure come from? Here is where we get to use the numbers 67 and 11944. The authors attempted to categorize the articles according their level of endorsement of human-caused global warming. Articles whose abstracts contained statements which explicitly stated that humans were the primary cause of the recent global warming had the highest level of endorsement and were put in the Explicit Endorsement with Quantification category. At the opposite end of the endorsement spectrum was the category Explicit Rejection with Quantification. In between were the categories of varying degrees of endorsement and rejection, with the No Position and Uncertain categories in the middle.

Based on all the hype surrounding study, we are very interested in knowing how many papers turned up in the first category, those which explicitly stated that humans are the primary cause of global warming. **But you will search their paper in vain for this number. ** It simply is not reported! Instead the authors consolidated the original 7 categories into 4: Endorse AGW, No Opinion, Uncertain, and Reject AGW. They also threw out all the No Opinion articles, a full two thirds of the articles reviewed. Otherwise the percent endorsing AGW would have been only around 33%.

So the 97% represents the percentage of articles expressing an opinion on global warming which express that humans are causing at least some to global warming. As we have pointed out earlier, this is not a significant result because most skeptics would also agree with this.

Yet somehow this less than startling finding has turned into an overwhelming endorsement of the full GW hypothesis. In no small part this is due to the dishonest misrepresentations of the authors themselves. In another paper, Bedford and Cook (2013), John Cook states: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Yet we know this is a patently false characterization of that study’s principal finding. Because they collapsed categories of agreement into one, the most they can claim is that 97% endorse the view that human emissions are causing some warming.

In order to claim that 97% endorse the view that human emissions are the main cause, Cook et al needed to report how many Category 1 papers there were, but that number was never reported in Cook et al. Why didn’t they report it? Because, it turns out that actual number of Category 1 papers was only 67, according to one auditor who actually looked at the data.

It therefore appears that on 67 out of 11,944 papers expressed the highest level of endorsement. That is less than 1%. We can therefore conclude that the 97% claim is bogus and that the Cook study can be entirely dismissed as a dishonest piece of propaganda performed by activist researchers serving the global warming establishment.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

1000 x.06$ x 30% = $18/hr
Let’s ballpark operating and maintenance at 10%, or $2.80
That gives us $16.20/hr of revenue

That’s 123,456 hrs for cost recover, or 14 yrs.
That also ignores the time value of money

Even with your own numbers, you have not shown wind power to be a money-losing operation.

If you are replacing older coal plants, you can’t ignore the need to also build a backup gas fired generator for your Wind Turbines.

No one said wind power has to replace older coal plants. Wind power replaces some of the coal itself. That’s all. But that is enough. When figuring whether or not wind power should be deployed, the cost of backup gas-fired generators is irrelevant, because you are going to need those fossil fuel generators whether or not you build wind turbines. Their utility is as a supplemental source, not as a major source.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

So where exactly does the infamous 97% figure come from? Here is where we get to use the numbers 67 and 11944. The authors attempted to categorize the articles according their level of endorsement of human-caused global warming. Articles whose abstracts contained statements which explicitly stated that humans were the primary cause of the recent global warming had the highest level of endorsement and were put in the Explicit Endorsement with Quantification category. At the opposite end of the endorsement spectrum was the category Explicit Rejection with Quantification. In between were the categories of varying degrees of endorsement and rejection, with the No Position and Uncertain categories in the middle.

Based on all the hype surrounding study, we are very interested in knowing how many papers turned up in the first category, those which explicitly stated that humans are the primary cause of global warming. **But you will search their paper in vain for this number. ** It simply is not reported! Instead the authors consolidated the original 7 categories into 4: Endorse AGW, No Opinion, Uncertain, and Reject AGW. They also threw out all the No Opinion articles, a full two thirds of the articles reviewed. Otherwise the percent endorsing AGW would have been only around 33%.

So the 97% represents the percentage of articles expressing an opinion on global warming which express that humans are causing at least some to global warming. As we have pointed out earlier, this is not a significant result because most skeptics would also agree with this.

Yet somehow this less than startling finding has turned into an overwhelming endorsement of the full GW hypothesis. In no small part this is due to the dishonest misrepresentations of the authors themselves. In another paper, Bedford and Cook (2013), John Cook states: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Yet we know this is a patently false characterization of that study’s principal finding. Because they collapsed categories of agreement into one, the most they can claim is that 97% endorse the view that human emissions are causing some warming.

In order to claim that 97% endorse the view that human emissions are the main cause, Cook et al needed to report how many Category 1 papers there were, but that number was never reported in Cook et al. Why didn’t they report it? Because, it turns out that actual number of Category 1 papers was only 67, according to one auditor who actually looked at the data.

It therefore appears that on 67 out of 11,944 papers expressed the highest level of endorsement. That is less than 1%. We can therefore conclude that the 97% claim is bogus and that the Cook study can be entirely dismissed as a dishonest piece of propaganda performed by activist researchers serving the global warming establishment.

This criticism of the 97% figure is a good example of how statistics can be misinterpreted. First there is a misunderstanding of the significance of the number 11,944. This number is essentially meaningless. It is the number of papers that passed the first-level computerized search of papers based on keywords in the abstract. If different keywords were chosen, there would be a different number instead of 11,944. So the number is irrelevant since it depends on an arbitrary choice of keywords.

Next there was a further selection based on more careful examination of the papers to eliminate those papers that passed the first-level screen, but turned out upon closer examination to be irrelevant papers. These would be papers that did not address the question of global warming at all, but passed the first-level screen because they had a keyword hit in their abstract. For example, a paper on calibration techniques for remote temperature sensors used in satellite measurements is clearly not intended to address the question of global warming. Yet it might have global warming mentioned in its abstract because global warming research is one chief area in which calibration of satellite temperature measurements is applied. So such a paper is dropped from the pool. After papers like this were eliminated, the number remaining was about 4,000. This is the true number of papers in the study that actually addressed questions about global warming in some way or another. The 4,000 number is much more relevant than the 11,944 number, so stop referencing 11,944 in your calculations.

Of the 4,000 papers that remained, it is not surprising that many of them did not take a position on all the questions in the survey. Academic papers are about many interesting topics, and most of them do not take positions on questions that are essential political, such as “what should be done about global warming?”. This is not really a scientific question. It ought to rely on science, but it is not the kind of question that scientists generally deal with. So your category of “the highest level of endorsement” is a category that one would not expect to be well represented in as set of academic papers on global warming. But if you look at the other categories in the survey, you find substantial agreement on levels of endorsement that many here in this forum disagree with. So how about explaining that. Why do so many people here disagree with the “lowest level of endorsement” of global warming theory, such as the fact the global warming is even occurring at all? That is where I think the 97% figure does challenge the thinking of many here who deny what 97% of the scientists agree about.

 

[Theo520]

Even with your own numbers, you have not shown wind power to be a money-losing operation.

No one said wind power has to replace older coal plants. Wind power replaces some of the coal itself. That’s all. But that is enough. When figuring whether or not wind power should be deployed, the cost of backup gas-fired generators is irrelevant, because you are going to need those fossil fuel generators whether or not you build wind turbines. Their utility is as a supplemental source, not as a major source.

So, I’m guessing no finance classes in your education background?
$16.20/hr returns $141,912 annually.
Assuming a 20yr life, you get a 4% IRR on your $2m investment.

Most businesses target above 20% IRR on projects.

If I’m going to build NG generators, then I can just skip the $2million wind turbine all together

The decision always rolls back to political motivations, not smart investment, and that is why subsidies are essential.

 

[Ender]

From that FAQ on wind power you quoted, a wind power facility costs 1-2 million dollars per megawatt to build. Electricity sell, on the average, for 12 cents per kW-hr. A megawatt is 1000 kW. So 1 MW of power generation sells for 1000 x 0.12 = $120/hr. Assuming the worst case construction costs of $2,000,000 per megawatt, a wind power plant will pay back its construction costs in 2000000/120 = 16,667 hours, or 1.9 years. But it will not run 100% of the time, so let’s double that to 3.8 years. I’m sure a wind turbine lasts longer than that, so it has a net profit. Even counting the occasional maintenance, it seems to make a profit. So the one link you gave that actually had hard numbers to address the question of viability seems to support my position more than yours. Let me ask again, does anyone have hard numbers that show that wind energy costs more to produce than the electricity can be sold for? Anyone?

This site comes up with different numbers.“ROI = .04157 or 4.15 %. This is a fairly low number for ROI. Generally companies will require an ROI of 8% or higher if they are to invest in an idea/product.”

“Therefore, the Break Even Point in our example is 24.05 years.”
I wonder: do wind turbines last 25 years?

Ender

 

[LeafByNiggle]

So, I’m guessing no finance classes in your education background?
$16.20/hr returns $141,912 annually.
Assuming a 20yr life, you get a 4% IRR on your $2m investment.

Most businesses target above 20% IRR on projects.

The fact that this investment is not as good as many other investments for a business today does not change the fact that the IRR is still positive. Therefore it can be sustained without subsidies. (I agree that subsidies should be removed - then we will see if it works or not.) Now take into account the value of having an energy source that is not going to go up in price in the future like oil will. The wind will most likely continue to blow. And the fact that it is locally produced and immune from embargoes by foreign countries. Now also take into account that being still an immature technology, there is every reason to believe that prices for construction and maintenance will fall in the future. Take all that into account and it is clear that your narrow view of the current IRR does not tell the whole story.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

“Therefore, the Break Even Point in our example is 24.05 years.”
[/INDENT]I wonder: do wind turbines last 25 years?

Ender

Even if this were true (which I doubt), much of the wind turbine installation will most likely last much more than 25 years. Things like the concrete foundation, the tower. Items that will last a shorter time, like the blades, the bearings, the alternator, the switching electronics, can be replaced indefinitely at a lower cost than building an entire wind turbine from scratch. And the cost of replacement parts will probably be going down as the technology matures.

 

[vz71]

So why haven’t you done it?

You profess it to be a wise investment that will turn a profit but have yet to explain why you will not take part.

Get a loan.
Buy a turbine.
Sell of your excess power.
Pay off loan with proceeds.
Reap profit after that.

Put up or…

 

[LeafByNiggle]

So why haven’t you done it?

You profess it to be a wise investment that will turn a profit but have yet to explain why you will not take part.

Get a loan.
Buy a turbine.
Sell of your excess power.
Pay off loan with proceeds.
Reap profit after that.

Put up or…

I am not a business person. There are a lot of ways to make more money than I am making now, but I am happy doing what I am doing. If I lived on land with good winds, I would considered putting up a small scale DIY turbine - not to make money, but just for fun. I don’t expect small-scale wind turbines to be cost-effective. The economy of scale really kicks in when you can get up high and put up a really large wind turbine. But even then I would not do it because it would go beyond what I can do myself. It would no longer be fun. I would have to do as you say and get a loan, contract out the construction, pay for an upgraded grid connection, etc. Since you asked the same question three times, I hope this puts an end to that particular train of thought.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Chapter 7 Miscellaneous Objections

But shouldn’t we reduce our carbon emissions anyway, just to be safe? What the scientists tell us is pretty scary; maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

No, we shouldn’t give the CSE the benefit of the doubt. They don’t deserve it. I don’t care about how many scary scenarios they throw up. If they aren’t worthy of belief, don’t believe them.

This also is an appeal to the precautionary principle. Michael Crichton had this to say about that: “The ‘precautionary principle,’ properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.”

But shouldn’t we reduce our carbon emissions anyway just for the environmental benefits?

Well, let’s talk about those benefits and maybe reduce our carbon emissions based on those reasons, if it makes sense to do so and looking at all the costs and benefits. But we shouldn’t reduce our carbon because it will cause dangerous global warming. There is no good evidence for that claim. Do something good, if it makes sense to do so; but do it for the right reason, not some made-up one.

But shouldn’t we reduce or carbon emissions anyway because, if the CSE ends up being correct, the poor will suffer terribly?

No. I am sure your concern for the poor is genuine. However, again, there is no good evidence that the global warming hypothesis is correct, and therefore there is no good reason to be concerned about harm to the poor on that account. If we want to help the poor, let’s help the poor. Let’s don’t concoct phony rationales to redistribute wealth.

And again, isn’t this just another appeal to the discredited precautionary principle? You have to ask what harm will we cause if we act in a precautionary way? Remember, the proposal is to drastically curtail CO2 emissions world-wide and put the fossil fuel industry out of business. Don’t you think there is a downside to that, not only for the economies of the world, but also for the poor and the environment?

Present policies driven by concerns over global warming are very damaging to the poor and the environment. Farmers are plowing up marginal ground so they can grow corn to sell to ethanol plants. Almost half of our corn crop goes into our gas tanks as ethanol, which, in times of commodity scarcity, will cause people to starve. Remember the Mexico City tortilla riots in 2007? But let’s keep building those dang ethanol plants and mandating ethanol. Save the Planet, Starve the World!

Tropical forests in Asia are being cleared to make room for palm oil production for fuel. Poor people in Africa are being evicted from land bought by rich Europeans’ carbon-offset plantations… The baneful effects of climate change policies are upon us now and should be considered.

Consider also that sweeping environmental principles such as “sustainable development” and the precautionary principle serve to protect the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the development world. Paul Driessen has written a very good book on this called Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death. Let’s enjoy all the perks of our lavish western life-style but prevent coal-fired power plants in Africa from being built—all for the environment. Those folks there can have solar-collectors on their huts.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Chapter 8 Dramatic Summation

My dear bishops (and everyone else):

I liken the process by which CO2 has been identified as the leading cause of global warming to a criminal trial. This trial was conducted primarily by the IPCC and it has lasted over 20 years. CO2 now stands convicted, and it is as if you and I are now part of the jury convened to determine CO2’s punishment. The world’s leading expert witness in the sentencing phase, the IPCC, is now urging us to impose drastic cuts in our CO2 emissions.

But we also have put IPCC, along with the entire climate science establishment, in the dock. In a court of law a jury may disbelieve a witness if it finds the witness is biased, has in fact lied, has a reputation for dishonesty, or is guilty of serious misconduct. The testimony of an expert scientific witness can be discounted if it shown that his expertise has been misrepresented or he does not adhere to the disciplines of science. With respect to the IPCC and the climate science establishment in general, all of these grounds are present, and a responsible and rational jury will reject their claims. Rather than accepting their sentencing recommendations, we should be demanding a new trial. And maybe a few heads should roll, or at least some people should end up in the clink.