Percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar is 1.1%

[Red + 252]

6 minutes ago, mthebold said:

This, in particular, illustrates your technical ignorance. 

"Radiation Shielding" is an engineering text covering the interaction of all radiation with all matter.  That includes electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun and earth - the subject of our radiative forcing. 

We are talking about a "forcing" effect, so your points were not relevant to climate, and are distinctly different to the concept of radiation shielding.  This is a plain and simple matter of you not knowing what you are talking about.  Moreover, if you did have a clue you would have introduced how forcing effects were pivotal the the planet's energy budget.  Swallowing a text book and regitating irrelevances does not cut it.

It's difficult to know how to respond to you because you appear to have no demonstrable knowledge of climate science.  

You do, however, continue to make unusual claims.  For example, you said " You < meaning I > appealed to the "authority" of peer-reviewed articles."  Please learn some logic.  The peer review process is one where those with expert knowledge of a subject area review claims being made which are relevant to that subject area. 

I requested something factual from you.  Will you continue to disappoint with yet more irrelevances?

[Red + 252]

11 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Nope.  I've seen the endless back and forth between climate armageddonists and climate skeptics on oil & gas forums.  It is unlikely that either side will budge, as they are worlds apart.

With respect, you know nothing about me.

My share portfolio is 25% oil and gas - holding BHP, Santos, Woodside, Oil Search and Beach - total value in ecxcess of $300k even after the greatest monthly oil price collapse in a very long while.

I deal with facts.  If people throw up nonsense, I call it for what it is.  

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

7 minutes ago, Red said:

With respect, you know nothing about me.

No problem, point taken.

Please note that I have viewed endless back and forth arguments over the years about climate change being caused by humans (or not) and I tend to be a bit jaded about the arguments from any side.

[Red + 252]

55 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

No problem, point taken.

Please note that I have viewed endless back and forth arguments over the years about climate change being caused by humans (or not) and I tend to be a bit jaded about the arguments from any side.

The argument needs to be about the physics.

Warming can and will occur irrespective of human activity, as will cooling.  If the physics is shown to be deficient, by "argument", then that would be useful 😉.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Red
Because I seldom spell check!

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, mthebold said:

Very well then.  Enlighten me on what causes "forcing" and how that's different than "shielding".  

How about you enlighten me given that you claimed I was technically ignorant.

Principles of "shielding" relate to predominanlty ionizing radiation.  Is it your argument that UV and IR radiation should be similarly categorised?

Edited December 1, 2018 by Red

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, mthebold said:

I made a claim about "shielding" and "forcing" being the same thing and backed that claim with validated knowledge: the university engineering curriculum in mathematics, physics, and the application thereof.  You then stated - unequivocally and without evidence - that I was wrong:

I provided evidence as I understand it in a manner that someone with similar technical knowledge could easily understand.  You disagreed on the grounds that you prefer other reasoning and sources.  That being the case, I'm very interested to know how "radiation shielding" and "radiative forcing" are different - and what sources led you to that conclusion.  Please enlighten me.  

Exactly where is your evidence that a single claim of yours is valid (in that it's relevant to climate science)?  

I asked you a very simple question: "Is it your argument that UV and IR radiation should be similarly categorised < with ionizing radiation > ?"

As usual, your response was to ignore it.

By the way, you ideas about peer review are equally nonsensical.  The fact that some professions are highly commercialised while others are not has no impact on the actual "process" of peer review.  Furthermore your comment that "It's not supposed to be a gold standard for validated knowledge; it's a forum for introducing & debating new ideas" simply confuses what it is about.  It is indeed regarded as a gold standard, but instead it's where science subject matter experts evaluate the quality of other scientists’ work to ensure it is credible, rigorous, coherent and, ideally, adds materially to our existing knowledge of that matter.

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by Red
To highlight the question I asked

[Red + 252]

41 minutes ago, mthebold said:

There you go avoiding the question again.  

Out of curiosity, what do you do for a living? 

You have talked about "radiation forcing" and "radiative shielding", neither of which are terms used in climate science.  Your ramblings on radiation shielding seemed to have overlooked the basic fact that the concept related to effects on matter, rather than the atmosphere. At no time in a any of your posts have you indicated how your terminologies (concepts if you will) affect climate.  Indeed, your only real forays into climate were about global cooling - an area which received short shrift in the science community once its protagonists learned how aerosols impacted global climate.

Conceptually, radiation shielding is about ionizing radiaton's affects on matter, which has absolutely no bearing on the planet's energy budget which is a factor of radiative forcing.  There are 5 IPCC Assessment Reports which deal in significant detail with radiative forcing and I could cite many hundreds of published papers outlining the concept.  I just completed a key phrase search of the last 3 IPCC Reports for "radiative shielding" and drew a blank.

For a person who claims to have aced this subject area, your knowledge seems somewhat limited.

[NickW + 2,714]

10 hours ago, markslawson said:

Sorry but this is either all wrong or irrelevant. Sure the IPCC report is peer reviewed but the editors are the same as the authors in the report process so they can ignore the reviews they don't agree with and pick those they do. Peer review is, in any case, irrelevant for forecasting. As for energy companies paying huge sums, that's activist nonsense. The bulk of the IPCC critics are part timers with no funding at all. I met one of the WUWT people when they came to Australia some years back - 2010 I think - and the organisers of the "tour" had to pass the hat around to raise their air fares. There is simply no funding on the sceptics side - or pitifully little compared to the warming side - no climate fellowships, no jobs at well-funded NGOs, nothing. The energy companies give grants to think tanks which might, also, take on some of the global warming nonsense among other matters but the funding is tiny, and they still get pilloried for it. 

Yawn

Actually you may have a point. Having worked for two of the biggest oil companies and one of the bigger coal miners the conclusion of all the critics (even in coal) I met was that there was little or no mileage in challenging the science of climate change itself because the evidence was so overwhelmingly supportive of anthropogenic induced climate change that the effort was futile. 

Edited December 1, 2018 by NickW

[NickW + 2,714]

9 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Nope.  I've seen the endless back and forth between climate armageddonists and climate skeptics on oil & gas forums.  It is unlikely that either side will budge, as they are worlds apart.

 

Delete the Renewables and politics sections then because climate change is a significant feature relevant in both fields. 

 

[NickW + 2,714]

2 hours ago, Red said:

You have talked about "radiation forcing" and "radiative shielding", neither of which are terms used in climate science.  Your ramblings on radiation shielding seemed to have overlooked the basic fact that the concept related to effects on matter, rather than the atmosphere. At no time in a any of your posts have you indicated how your terminologies (concepts if you will) affect climate.  Indeed, your only real forays into climate were about global cooling - an area which received short shrift in the science community once its protagonists learned how aerosols impacted global climate.

Conceptually, radiation shielding is about ionizing radiaton's affects on matter, which has absolutely no bearing on the planet's energy budget which is a factor of radiative forcing.  There are 5 IPCC Assessment Reports which deal in significant detail with radiative forcing and I could cite many hundreds of published papers outlining the concept.  I just completed a key phrase search of the last 3 IPCC Reports for "radiative shielding" and drew a blank.

For a person who claims to have aced this subject area, your knowledge seems somewhat limited.

Look - he did do two semesters of Physics (Trump University😄)

[NickW + 2,714]

17 hours ago, mthebold said:

Go study calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, statistics, two semesters of physics, thermodynamics, and at least one course dealing with radiation (I aced this one, but I'm sure others cover similar material).  Then we can talk about radiation forcing and energy budgets.  

 

Reputable Climate Scientists Have Screwed Up Before
The image I linked contained a quote from Reid Bryson, (1) an atmospheric scientist, geologist, and meteorologist, who concerned himself with global cooling.  Reid was no hack.  In fact, he was faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison - an institution respected around the world - which means he should represent the upper crust of the academic community.  So here we have a respected scientist at a respected institution popularizing ideas that academia now claims are false.  That's a problem.  Which respected scientists should the public trust?  If badly incorrect results were widely published before, why should we believe it won't happen again?  How did a hack make it into the upper crust of the scientific community?  That's where predictive models - which the scientific community has yet to produce - are useful (2) .  "Consensus" is irrelevant; results are the only thing that matters.

 

The Climate "Scientists" Don't Know What They're Doing
Logic is the understanding that inference doesn't work.  Science is the hope that it does.  Everything scientists do is based on the *hope* that their data is sufficient.  Climate scientists are trying to predict across millenia using mere decades of sparse data pulled from a system they don't fully understand that sometimes operates on geological time scales.  That's asinine.  You don't even have to look at the data to know they're on a fool's errand. 

To make predictions based on such paltry evidence, they would need to know every important variable a priori - but they can't know that.  That's not how science works.  Climate science's latest claims are the equivalent of claiming they've harnessed LaPlace's Demon.

Another way to look at it: in statistics, we talk about a "universe" of possibilities.  If you don't know what your universe is, you don't know the true probability of anything.  You can do probability assuming all the variables we don't know both stay constant and are independent of all the variables we do know - but that won't tell us anything about the real world.  

 

Climate Scientists Have Conflicts of Interest
If the science community is truly interested in getting this right, they should talk to people who've actually been correct: actuaries.  Actuaries are the subject matter experts on determining what and how much data is sufficient because their livelihoods depend on that expertise.  Climate "scientists", on the other hand, get paid when they provide particularly juicy predictions to politicians.  If anything, that's an incentive to produce "consensus" about a dystopian future.  It certainly doesn't promote accuracy.  

Perhaps climate scientists should have their livelihoods tied to their predictive accuracy.  Those with poor records should be thrown out on the street - or perhaps in jail for misuse of public funding.  I'd bet that attaching real consequences to their behavior would drastically alter the predictions.  At the very least, watching them squirm under real consequences would be interesting.  

 

The Disingenuous Behavior of Climate Activists
There were two sides to the image I linked.  One side was relevant data: a respected scientist on his soapbox being wrong.  The other side was a photo-shopped image from Time magazine.  You zeroed in on the image from Time - not because it was germane to the climate change discussion, but because you found it convenient to your pre-selected point of view.  In your zeal to prove yourself right, you lost all perspective.  You're just debating to win - a consistent, annoying feature of climate activists.  

If you really wanted to have a discussion, you'd ask whether Time did, in fact, print articles about global cooling.  They did.  

One might also ask whether there were other magazine covers predicting global cooling.  I have seen & easily Googled these in the past.  Curiously though, they seem to have disappeared from popular search engines.  It's almost as though they're politically inconvenient.  

 

(1) The Global Cooling fallacy of the 1960's and 70's was not a widely held scientific view but was grasped by the media then and today we are constantly reminded of this by deniers, sceptics, Trump Uni Physics grads etc. During this period there were significant issues with localised aerosol effect from particulates and sulphur aerosols which may have had a temporary cooling effect that then got interpreted into a global cooling trend. 

 

 

(2) So far the  AR4 model (Developed 2005-6) appears to be reasonably accurate at forward predictions and when applied to the previous 120 years. I am certain there are other comparable models but I'm not going another data trawl to perpetuate an endless argument with you. 

 

 

[NickW + 2,714]

11 hours ago, mthebold said:

Very well then.  Enlighten me on what causes "forcing" and how that's different than "shielding".  

Its significantly different and if you can't articulate an answer to that you must have studied Physics at Trump Uni. 

Forget about 'climate science' this one could be easily answered by a British student with an A Level in physics. seriously - you don't need a post Doctorate in Physics to give a reasonable explanation.

Go on -give it a try. 

Edited December 1, 2018 by NickW

[DA? + 301]

12 hours ago, markslawson said:

As for energy companies paying huge sums, that's activist nonsense.

ExxonMobil, Koch brothers and so on.

[NickW + 2,714]

1 hour ago, DA? said:

ExxonMobil, Koch brothers and so on.

I think Exxonmobil, prima facie have had a conversion of sorts. In truth, probably to promote gas as a clean alternative to coal. Tillerson, in his Sec of State capacity is on record as saying - we can live with the Paris Agreement. 

Meanwhile Koch Bros donations to climate change denial organisations at least $100m since 1997.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/

Edited December 1, 2018 by NickW

[DA? + 301]

15 hours ago, mthebold said:

After re-reading your comment, it seems... off.  @Rodent and @Tom Kirkman, is this a bot?  It's hard to tell with the climate people

For those that think climate change is some sort of conspiracy theory run by the Chinese with bot's. 

[NickW + 2,714]

37 minutes ago, mthebold said:

 

lol.  I've had my fun, but it's time to move on.  Let's wrap this up. 

I'm going to do you a favor and be brutally honest; you can do what you want with that.  Nick, this is aimed mostly at Red, but I'm including you because you've been tagging along & agreeing with him.  

I'm a mechanical engineer.  Specifically:
- I studied at an institution widely recognized within the STEM community.  This isn't the sort of thing you can use school rankings to judge; you have to get into the program, prove yourself, and discover the more advanced opportunities available.  This school feels people into multinational corporations & national labs.  
- I use math, science, and empirical data for a living - in the real world on real systems that provide constant, brutal feedback. I understand the limitations of modeling in a way climate scientists cannot, simply because they can't iterate quickly.  If you're not familiar with the concept of faux experts, read Taleb.  
- I've taken no less than 10 courses on mathematics & logic - including proof writing - along with many more courses applying them.  I'm at the level where, when I need to use a different branch of mathematics, I teach myself.  
- Heat Transfer, which is the fundamental knowledge used to analyze planetary temperature changes, is the domain of mechanical engineering.  I.e. I was formally trained on the topic of this thread.  
- I took electives in nuclear engineering, including radiation shielding, which means I'm particularly adept with radiative heat transfer.  

The next thing you'll argue is that mechanical engineering is not climate science.  I'll let you in on a secret: all human knowledge is built on the same logic, mathematics, science, and practical techniques of engineering.  Even at the undergraduate level, STEM people take courses in a variety of departments and professors "cross list" (offer the exact same course within multiple departments) classes because it's the same material.  This is how polymaths exist.  It's also how you can throw chemical engineers into manufacturing plants, mechanical engineers into software development, and physicists into algorithmic stock trading.  Give a competent STEM person time, and they can self-teach any subject.  STEM is the state-of-the-art in human knowledge built on at least 2500 years of advances in human thinking.  If you had studied & understood math, science, or engineering at a reputable institution that teaches the fundamentals, you would know that.  

Another little secret: competent STEM people know how to ask questions in a way that other competent individuals will understand, but incompetent individuals will not.  We typically do this for two reasons:
1)  Before discussing a technical subject on which one is an expert, it's important to know the other person's capability.  You can't just ask people if they're competent though; people are remarkably bad at judging their own competence.  They're also prone to lying or just avoiding the subject.  You have to test people without them knowing they're being tested.  
2)  If a person can't recognize their own ignorance, no amount of fact or reasoning can sway them.  They simply won't be able to assemble fact & reasoning into a coherent picture.  A competent individual will begin a conversation by picking a subject they know well, letting the other person talk about it, and occasionally throwing out hints & nudges to see how that person responds.  By doing this, the competent individual builds a map of how the other person thinks, how they respond to cognitive dissonance, what they know, and - most critically - whether that person recognizes their own limitations.  The competent individual then decides whether an in-depth discussion is possible.  

I spent this entire thread signaling my understanding of the fundamental science, hinting at the very obvious answers to some of these questions, pointing you towards the logical starting point of a technical discussion, and watching you prove to the whole world that you haven't a clue.  Everything I said went right over your head.  There were key words & phrases in my comments that you would have recognized if you had even rudimentary scientific understanding; you failed to see them.

You also made a fool of yourself in the process:

- You drew a distinction between "atmosphere" and "matter".  The atmosphere is matter.

- You drew a distinction between "radiative forcing" and "radiation shielding".  Anyone who studies the underlying math & science knows those are two applications of the exact same thing.  When climate scientists discuss "radiation forcing", they're talking about the interactions of radiation with matter.  When nuclear engineers design "radiation shielding", they harness... the interactions of radiation with matter.  Often, "shielding" and "forcing" are the exact same phenomenon.  E.g. the neutron "shielding" on a nuclear reactor serves the dual purpose of protecting those outside the reactor and regulating power output.  It does this by reflecting them off the shielding, creating a "forcing" effect on the neutron population.  Here's another one you can add to your list of equivalent terms: insulation.  Some insulators reflect infrared electromagnetic radiation, creating a "forcing" effect on the internal temperature of the house - just as the atmosphere does for the planet.  "Radiative forcing", "Radiation shielding", "Insulation" - call it whatever you want; it's all applications of the same thing.  

Of note: between nuclear engineering and climate science, nuclear engineering is more difficult because nuclear engineers & health physicists are held to standards.  If a health physicist or nuclear engineer makes a mistake, people die and they go to jail.  If a climate scientist provides a wildly inaccurate report that is nonetheless politically convenient, whichever politicians liked the report funnel them more money.  

- You drew a distinction between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.  The sun emits both, as do nuclear reactors.  If you understood high school physics, you would have realized that both involve the electromagnetic spectrum , which contains both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.  You could have also considered why we wear sunscreen and realized that climate models do, in fact, involve ionizing radiation.  More importantly, every type and energy of radiation interacts with matter in its own way and must be handled individually.  "Ionizing" is a classification we use when discussing certain phenomena.  E.g. a health physicist talks about X-rays damaging cells, and an automotive engineer talks about UV sunlight damaging paint.  For the purposes of modeling radiative heat transfer, however, we don't need that term.  If we've modeled each type/energy of radiation accurately, the model will tell us if our atmospheric composition changed.  

 

Let's put you in perspective based on what you've said thus far:
- You don't understand the science, and it's unlikely you ever will.  
- You rely on peer-reviewed articles in lieu of other resources because that's what you were told to do.  You don't understand their limitations
- You're able to extract numbers from articles and do arithmetic on them, but your knowledge isn't advanced enough to know what they mean or understand how important they are.  You've brought a cudgel to the fencing club.  
- You imply that only climate scientists can understand the subject because you have zero ability to see similarities across disciplines and assess technical competence.
- Your opinions are based entirely on looking for self-proclaimed experts and trusting their authority.  You're unable to do analyses and arrive at your own conclusions.
- You pettily latch onto minor differences in vocabulary when you think you've caught someone; you don't realize these are often traps, and falling for them makes you sound like an high school student full of half-baked ideas. 
- You avoid answering technical questions - even on points you claim definitive knowledge of - for fear of making a mistake.  I.e. when there's skin in the game, you cower, proving that deep down you know you're ignorant.  Your personal ignorance is another reason why you hide behind peer-reviewed articles.  
- Your writing indicates a supreme confidence in your handling of topics, a certain aggressiveness in judging others, and a desire to "get to the facts".  This may be a result of operating in business, trading, academia or another field where confidence/socializing is more important than competence.  At the very least, it indicates that you haven't mastered certain topics in logic or tackled a truly difficult technical problem.  People who have don't behave the way you behave.
- If you manage or work alongside competent technical people, they're all aware of your ignorance.  They tell you whatever they need to tell you to get the results they need - or to make you go away.  If they dislike you enough, they'll amuse themselves at your expense.  You're incapable of knowing when this is happening.  
- You'll deny all of this because your knowledge hasn't advanced enough to see it.  Somewhere, someone with technical chops will laugh his ass off because I actually said it.  

If you want to have meaningful discussions with the technically competent, I'd recommend a little humility until you've seriously studied the topic.  

Thanks for the lesson on EMS. However the definitions of radiative forcing and radiative shielding as you describe it are different. Despite all the rhetoric in the lengthy tome above you haven't identified the key reason for that difference. 

Even if you did it would still be an F- for grossly exceeding the word count😄

[NickW + 2,714]

22 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Nope.  I've seen the endless back and forth between climate armageddonists and climate skeptics on oil & gas forums.  It is unlikely that either side will budge, as they are worlds apart.

 

As I have seen 10001 times on this type of thread, which to be fair is about renewable energy, specifically solar and wind it is someone in the denialist / Sceptic camp that introduces something about climate change.

On this thread it was Danakil (page 1) with this statement: 

once more folks realize they were manipulated into thinking CO2 is a substantial greenhouse*.......

This is of course at 180 degrees to the usual claims later on  from the Denialist / Sceptic camp that 'Environmentalists are always hijacking these threads with their own agenda etc' 🤦‍♀️

 

* anyone with a 'physics mental age' exceeding 13 can refute this

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by NickW

[Red + 252]

11 minutes ago, mthebold said:

 

lol.  I've had my fun, but it's time to move on.  Let's wrap this up. 

I'm going to do you a favor and be brutally honest; you can do what you want with that.  Nick, this is aimed mostly at Red, but I'm including you because you've been tagging along & agreeing with him.  

You appear to be somewhat delusional with your claims and have no idea what you are talking about from a climate perspective.  

To your credit, you did write a lot of nonsense and have sustained it over many posts.  So I will take a few snippets from above and show how your knowledge is deficient:

You said "I (meaning "you") spent this entire thread signaling my understanding of the fundamental science..." yet you still do not realise that radiative forcing is totally different to radiation shielding.  Indeed, you repeat the use of "radiation forcing".  So you certainly wasted a lot of your time by being unable to distinguish engineering matters from climate science.

It is true that I drew a distinction between atmosphere and matter, and it is again due to you not understanding that principles of radiation shielding apply to ionizing radiation on matter (which typically means materials - as outlined in the text book you referenced), whereas forcing effects (in climate science - which is what we are supposed to be discussing) relate to non-ionizing radiation and other significant contributing factors.  I note that your response above ignores this and, instead, goes off on another of your tangents. For me, the clincher is your completely false claim "When climate scientists discuss "radiation forcing", they're talking about the interactions of radiation with matter." No climate scientist would say that  because they would never use that terminology to begin with, and also know that a forcing effect relates to energy transfer mechanisms and not radiation per se.  You reinforce your climate knowledge deficiency with this additional false claim: "Radiative forcing", "Radiation shielding", "Insulation" - call it whatever you want; it's all applications of the same thing."  Whereas in fact a forcing effect may be due to convection or conduction and have zero to do with radiation.  

I suggest that you become scientifically competent if you want to kep launching your drivel into forums discussing climate because I will otherwise keep nailing you to the wall.

[Red + 252]

9 minutes ago, mthebold said:

My definition is based on the fundamental physics involved in heat transfer.  May I have your definition? 

In which case you certainly deserve an "F".

A wonderful read to this day is Theory of Heat by James Clark Maxwell because it proposes the novel concepts of conduction and convection which appear missing from your notion of fundamental physics.

[markslawson + 1,058]

8 hours ago, NickW said:

Meanwhile Koch Bros donations to climate change denial organisations at least $100m since 1997.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/

NickW - go back and look at the link you cite. The evidence they actually give is for $12 million  or so over 29 years - count it from the table. Trivial amounts like I said. Sure you can find some money, but its characteristic of Greenpeace that they are so desperate for evidence for this shadowy support that they simply multiply what they can find by 10. The amount cited is not enough to pay the rent over that time period. If you want further evidence of this fantasy, then consider how many climate organisations have a permanent secretariat (like Greenpeace), and then how many sceptic organisations have even a permanent office. I can only think of two - GWPF in the UK and the Heartland Foundation in the US. Both specifically say they don't accept money from energy companies. You should have known the $100m figure was wrong the moment you saw it.  

[markslawson + 1,058]

10 hours ago, DA? said:

ExxonMobil, Koch brothers and so on.

JH - again total disinformation and fantasy. Go and look at the link that NW cites 

 

9 hours ago, NickW said:

Meanwhile Koch Bros donations to climate change denial organisations at least $100m since 1997.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/

The $100m figure is obviously wrong and blindingly so. The figure is $12m or so on a rough count over 30 years, which is about in line with a corporate grants program.  The individual amounts listed are trivial, as I said previously. As an exercise why don't you list the number of climate organisations you can think of with a permanent secretariat - Greenpeace, WWF and so on - and then those specifically sceptical. I can only think of two specifically sceptical that have been prominent in the debate in any way at all, and both of those - GWPF and Heartland in the US - say they do not accept energy company donations. As you can see this business about shadowy energy company funding scepticism is complete fantasy. I trust you won't repeat it. Leave it with you.

[NickW + 2,714]

19 minutes ago, markslawson said:

NickW - go back and look at the link you cite. The evidence they actually give is for $12 million  or so over 29 years - count it from the table. Trivial amounts like I said. Sure you can find some money, but its characteristic of Greenpeace that they are so desperate for evidence for this shadowy support that they simply multiply what they can find by 10. The amount cited is not enough to pay the rent over that time period. If you want further evidence of this fantasy, then consider how many climate organisations have a permanent secretariat (like Greenpeace), and then how many sceptic organisations have even a permanent office. I can only think of two - GWPF in the UK and the Heartland Foundation in the US. Both specifically say they don't accept money from energy companies. You should have known the $100m figure was wrong the moment you saw it.  

Err no - you need to add up the contributions to each of the organisations listed in the drop down list - thats how you come to the $100m mark, Mark. 

Donations to the Cato institute alone were $17m

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by NickW

[Red + 252]

On 11/24/2018 at 9:33 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

So I'm just going to quietly wait over here for the cries of outrage, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and assorted brickbats.

Another report reluctantly admits that 'green' energy is a disastrous flop

Amid hundreds of graphs, charts and tables in the latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) released last week by the International Energy Agency, there is one fundamental piece of information that you have to work out for yourself: the percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar. The answer is 1.1 per cent. The policy mountains have laboured and brought forth not just a mouse, but — as the report reluctantly acknowledges — an enormously disruptive mouse.

Getting back to the initial post, sometimes what is reported is a tad outdated if not outright misleading.  Let's take this claim in the article, for example, “As for declining costs, solar is at least twice as expensive a generator as coal and almost twice as expensive as gas."

I searched high and low for where that data existed and conclude it relied on very old numbers. I would place a greater reliance on this: LCOE particularly given Lazard's data is not quite current and the trend is for continuously less expensive solar power generation while existing technologies have either flatlined or are costing more.

A problem with nonsense claims in the media is that they get latched onto and regurgitated by people who will never take the time check their facts.

Another issue seldom discussed is that so called "developing economies" are able to avoid massive transmission infrastruture costs by installing (new) renwable energy capacity where it will be used.  Whereas in modern economies it actually costs extra to integrate renewables into the grid.  It's therefore not a good idea to regard LCOE as the definitive basis for determining any particular country's future energy mix.

 

 

 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

4 hours ago, Red said:

A problem with nonsense claims in the media is that they get latched onto and regurgitated by people who will never take the time check their facts.

^ Irony.  This amuses me greatly : )

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

14 hours ago, DA? said:

For those that think climate change is some sort of conspiracy theory run by the Chinese with bot's.