Natural gas is crushing wind and solar power

[pfarley@bigpond.net.au + 42]

On 2/23/2020 at 11:18 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

Wind power is crushing trees.

Scotland’s Wind Industry Clear-Fells 17,283 Acres & Wipes Out 14,000,000 Trees To ‘Save’ Planet

Wiping out entire forest habitats is all part of our ‘inevitable’ transition to a wind powered future. Across Germany, millions of acres of forest have been clear-felled and great swathes cut through others, to allow some 30,000 of these things to be speared across Deutschland.

The same wanton destruction has been integral to Scotland’s wind power disaster, where, so far, 13,900,000 trees have been chainsawed and/or bulldozed out of existence. All, of course, in order to ‘save’ the planet. Where phony eco-warriors jump for joy, real environmentalists are left to weep as natural habitats for all manner of birds and animals are turned into industrial wastelands.

More than 13.9 million trees felled in Scotland for wind development, 2000–2019
National Wind Watch
Scottish Forestry
16 January 2020

A Scottish citizen made a freedom-of-information request, to which Scottish Forestry replied as follows:

Thank you for your request dated 26 November and received on the 5 December and the clarification dated 19 December 2019 under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs).

You asked for:

a) the number of trees felled for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

b) the area of felled trees, in hectares, for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

I enclose some of the information you requested.

Specifically data covering renewable developments on Scotland’s national forests and lands, which is managed on behalf of Scottish Ministers by Forestry and Land Scotland. The area of felled trees in hectares, from 2000 (the date when the first scheme was developed, is 6,994 hectares [70 km², 17,283 acres]. Based on the average number of trees per hectare, of 2000, this gives an estimated total of 13.9M.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Namely data on renewable developments on privately owned woodlands.

Download original document: “Scottish Forestry information request 19-02646”
National Wind Watch

 

Scotland’s forests before ‘green’ energy arrived ….

and what’s left after the wind industry showed up to ‘save’ the Planet.

And Scotland's forest are increasing by about 100 square km per year i.e. land used by wind farms is less than 5% of the forest expansion. Germany's have increased by 10,000 square km since the 70's . The idea that Germany has destroyed millions of acres of forest for wind farms is just fanciful. A wind turbine in a forest occupies about 250 square metres and at a spacing of 500 m that is  0.1% of the forest. Most of Germany's wind turbines are located in open country particularly near the north coast where forest are quite rare so even if 10,000 of the 30,000 were located in forests that would mean a total area cleared of 250 ha.

If you want to be respected at least have some respect for the facts

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

“A wind turbine in a forest occupies about 250 square metres and at a spacing of 500 m that is  0.1% of the forest.”

You may be correct, BUT YOU DO NOT PARACHUTE A WIND GENERATOR INTO A FOREST! You clear cut so that you do not have to build a windmill ABOVE the tops of the trees! Surely you can understand that! Plus there is the issue of access/maintenance roads and transmission lines.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no justification for clear cutting/bulldozing square miles of mature forests for these things, there are other (more expensive) options.

[pfarley@bigpond.net.au + 42]

7 hours ago, WayneMechEng said:

As a retired mechanical engineer, I find Tom Kirkman to always be at least 99% right when shooting down the idea that RE is a panacea for the world's energy and climate change challenges.  I sent a recommendation to my elected officials here in Alberta (I am a dual citizen born in the US) to initiate an unbiased Engineering Infrastructure Study to determine how we can migrate to the best technical, economical, and politically feasible outcome (with timeline) in order to reduce our carbon footprint.  Arbitrary and unrealistic goals set by federal and global politicians are only proposed to garner popular votes.  Review the Foxy Loxy and Chicken Little story.

There are many private firms working on a myriad of storage system designs.  Some are in use.  May the best designs win.

Regarding the space needed for storage.  Voltage generated by wind turbines is not high enough to push power into the grid.  So step-up transformers and complex control systems are required.  No problem for the electrical engineers, and they have devised control systems.  However, very high voltage is needed to efficiently send power and even so has a transmission limit of several hundred miles.  Therefore, many power plants are needed to establish a redundant and reliable (base power needed) grid across our continent.

Back to the point, electrical storage needs be local to the wind turbine generators, at the lowest voltage.  A calculation of space required for one centralized location is only an amusement for Ripley's "Believe It or Not".

The US is beating its Paris Accord goals because of entrepreneur's and a free market.  President Trump does not have to subsidize RE.  Take a look at Wikipedia "Politics of Climate Change".  Remember, if RE costs more, it will come out of the citizens pocketbook, one way or another.

Netflix has a great series, "Islands of the Future" (these systems are in place now and working fine).  These islands started very different RE projects that suited their needs.and unique circumstances decades ago, while we listened to speeches from Kyoto and Paris, and scare speeches from Greta.  No help from Globalists either.  Okay, we are warming.  Engineers can be used to plan a realistic path forward. 

PS  I am not making a dime from my former profession.

All generators operate at relatively low voltage and have step up transformers. No difference there. Germany with old technology wind and solar panels today generates 750 MWh per square km. If they replaced their 20,000 oldest wind turbines with 10,000 new ones and all their 15 year and older solar panels with current technology, that would lift to 1,100 MWh per square km.

The US has more open space and better wind and solar resources so it could generate 1800-2,200 MWh/square km with today's technology and less than one wind turbine every 10 square miles. The US actually uses 400 MWh per square km by upgrading existing hydro for more peak power and installing 60-100 pumped hydro systems and maintaining the existing level of nuclear the US can easily eliminate FF power generation.

 If you install 250,000 modern wind turbines with a container sized battery vertically mounted inside the base at each of them then you would be able to provide 500,000 MW of battery backup to the 103,000 MW of hydro. That is more than half the peak load which occurs in summer which will also be met by residual wind and solar. 200,000 wind turbines and their access tracks etc use about 50 square km of land, 1/13th of the area of Lake Meade. Germany has one wind turbine per 12 square km 200,000 wind turbines in the US would be  one wind turbine every 40 square km. 250,000 modern wind turbines would provide 70% of current US electrical demand  and hydro and rooftop solar could provide most of the rest     

[pfarley@bigpond.net.au + 42]

Go to Google and look up wind turbines in forest aerial view. In fact you do put them in forest with about 40m diameter cleared area adjacent to existing forestry and fire trails

Edited March 1, 2020 by pfarley@bigpond.net.au

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

30 minutes ago, pfarley@bigpond.net.au said:

If you want to be respected at least have some respect for the facts

Heh heh, that type of argument doesn't work on me.

Just like the specious arguments of "97% of scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans" and "17 intelligence  agencies suuport the claim that Russia colluded with Trump to win the election".  Utter nonsense.

Attempting to make me feel bad for poking fun at garbage "science" and garbage "intelligence" just makes me amused, not embarrased.

[NickW + 2,714]

7 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

I note you refuted not one single thing I said.

No, scientists do not think it is due to human activity.  They say, they do not know.  Because anyone who is not an idiot knows the SUN/CLOUDS are in charge of our climate.

  CO2 increasing just increases the partial pressure of the atmosphere and the simple fact CO2 millions years ago was many times as high as it is today, and the temps were same as today, but hey, that is geology so you can ignore it right? Yet abundant life developed just fine.  

As for your "scientists": According to the "models" warming should be several times higher than what is seen currently.  So much for "science".... oh wait...

SCIENCE is SHOWING how you got your results, not HIDING the sausage making.

So, why are so called "scientists" you claim to follow and admire, not publishing their model manipulations?  Because it is not SCIENCE.  They are the modern equivalent of the Paleontology fraudsters in our time.  Only show their buddies who are "in the club"... Science?  Nope, just publish articles with no cross examination by anyone and everyone. 

SHOW YOUR WORK is how SCIENCE works. 

 

I take it radiative physics and the transparencies / lack of transparencies of certain gases to particular frequencies of light are lost on you? 

The suns output increases by about 30% every billion years. It is effectively stable in our geological time but would account* for the repeated observation concerning CO2 levels & temperatures in the distant geological past.

*Their are other factors (neither solar or atmospheric chemistry related)  at work which also affect climate - ocean currents, ocean salinity, albedo effects of land and water etc. 

[NickW + 2,714]

10 hours ago, pfarley@bigpond.net.au said:

Tell that to the 15,000 workers Siemens GE and MHI are in the process of laying off

Doing my bit.

Projects on my house September 2019 - August 2020 will reduce our households gas consumption by approx. 15000 Kwh

Every little helps.....

 

[NickW + 2,714]

On 2/23/2020 at 12:18 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

Wind power is crushing trees.

Scotland’s Wind Industry Clear-Fells 17,283 Acres & Wipes Out 14,000,000 Trees To ‘Save’ Planet

Wiping out entire forest habitats is all part of our ‘inevitable’ transition to a wind powered future. Across Germany, millions of acres of forest have been clear-felled and great swathes cut through others, to allow some 30,000 of these things to be speared across Deutschland.

The same wanton destruction has been integral to Scotland’s wind power disaster, where, so far, 13,900,000 trees have been chainsawed and/or bulldozed out of existence. All, of course, in order to ‘save’ the planet. Where phony eco-warriors jump for joy, real environmentalists are left to weep as natural habitats for all manner of birds and animals are turned into industrial wastelands.

More than 13.9 million trees felled in Scotland for wind development, 2000–2019
National Wind Watch
Scottish Forestry
16 January 2020

A Scottish citizen made a freedom-of-information request, to which Scottish Forestry replied as follows:

Thank you for your request dated 26 November and received on the 5 December and the clarification dated 19 December 2019 under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs).

You asked for:

a) the number of trees felled for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

b) the area of felled trees, in hectares, for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

I enclose some of the information you requested.

Specifically data covering renewable developments on Scotland’s national forests and lands, which is managed on behalf of Scottish Ministers by Forestry and Land Scotland. The area of felled trees in hectares, from 2000 (the date when the first scheme was developed, is 6,994 hectares [70 km², 17,283 acres]. Based on the average number of trees per hectare, of 2000, this gives an estimated total of 13.9M.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Namely data on renewable developments on privately owned woodlands.

Download original document: “Scottish Forestry information request 19-02646”
National Wind Watch

 

Scotland’s forests before ‘green’ energy arrived ….

and what’s left after the wind industry showed up to ‘save’ the Planet.

Most of that Forest was commercial which would have been clear cut anyway. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

18 hours ago, pfarley@bigpond.net.au said:

Tell that to the 15,000 workers Siemens GE and MHI are in the process of laying off

Considering their past decisions, they make the case for being contrary indicators as they buy in at the top and sell out at the bottom as a matter of routine. 

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

10 hours ago, pfarley@bigpond.net.au said:

All generators operate at relatively low voltage and have step up transformers. No difference there. Germany with old technology wind and solar panels today generates 750 MWh per square km. If they replaced their 20,000 oldest wind turbines with 10,000 new ones and all their 15 year and older solar panels with current technology, that would lift to 1,100 MWh per square km.

The US has more open space and better wind and solar resources so it could generate 1800-2,200 MWh/square km with today's technology and less than one wind turbine every 10 square miles. The US actually uses 400 MWh per square km by upgrading existing hydro for more peak power and installing 60-100 pumped hydro systems and maintaining the existing level of nuclear the US can easily eliminate FF power generation.

 If you install 250,000 modern wind turbines with a container sized battery vertically mounted inside the base at each of them then you would be able to provide 500,000 MW of battery backup to the 103,000 MW of hydro. That is more than half the peak load which occurs in summer which will also be met by residual wind and solar. 200,000 wind turbines and their access tracks etc use about 50 square km of land, 1/13th of the area of Lake Meade. Germany has one wind turbine per 12 square km 200,000 wind turbines in the US would be  one wind turbine every 40 square km. 250,000 modern wind turbines would provide 70% of current US electrical demand  and hydro and rooftop solar could provide most of the rest     

NIMBY

The distances have to be substantial from the user base because of turbine noise.

Solar is viable in mostly sparsely populated areas in the SW US. Lots of transmission required to reach population centers. 

You don't place the batteries at the production site, but near the consumption site., if real estate costs allow it 

Your area calculations are meaningless because the wind corridors are narrow and cover a modest portion of the US, so they would be densely populated by wind turbines and have a giant spider web of high voltage transmission to target market populations.

The EC diktats have burned their NG fired electric production. It had much to do with cost when LNG was $8, but it doesn't now that it is <$5 and falling. 

Only Sahara solar can compete with $4 LNG. It is a matter of geopollitical risk, of rather low probability events that is driving the EC to solar. That same kind of risk avoidance is also preventing solar on the Sahara from supplying EU.

So there is a sharp trend to renewables that are now cheaper than ever. However, it is becoming difficult to meet demand for such materials as Lithium due to a shortage of Iridium crucibles to process it. Prices are already at $1500/oz. 3X more expensive than  in 2015. After 2 decades of trying, nobody has found a substitute for Ir crucibles that can withstand exposure to Li. Existing inventory is routinely 100% recycled. But increased volumes require new material. 

 

.

[0R0 + 6,251]

17 hours ago, Guillaume Albasini said:

You are free to disagree but do it in a polite manner. Insulting your opponents isn't the better way to convince them.

If you consider as ignorant idiots those who agree with the overwhelming evidence gathered by the scientific community, you are probably living on a flat Earth.

 

The scientists consider that global warming is due to human activity. The natural factors would have resulted in a cooling rather than a warming over the past 50 years.

 

 

While there are natural factors that affect the Earth’s climate, the combined influence of volcanoes and changes in solar activity would have resulted in cooling rather than warming over the past 50 years.

The global warming witnessed over the past 150 years matches nearly perfectly what is expected from greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity, both in the simple model examined here and in more complex climate models. The best estimate of the human contribution to modern warming is around 100%.

Some uncertainty remains due to the role of natural variability, but researchers suggest that ocean fluctuations and similar factors are unlikely to be the cause of more than a small fraction of modern global warming.

 

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-100-of-global-warming-is-due-to-humans

 

As @footeab@yahoo.com would doubtless respond, the database is pretty much irrelevant to measurements of reality as it does not leave any original data, all of it is recalculated so as to show the curve plotted above. Without the recalculation, using like for like raw data with no "harmonization" or "corrections" there is no trend in the 20th century. Fitting the ACTUAL data does not result in global warming models predicting significant warming. 

This is only evidence of scientific fraud and misconduct. 

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

27 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

As @footeab@yahoo.com would doubtless respond, the database is pretty much irrelevant to measurements of reality as it does not leave any original data, all of it is recalculated so as to show the curve plotted above. Without the recalculation, using like for like raw data with no "harmonization" or "corrections" there is no trend in the 20th century. Fitting the ACTUAL data does not result in global warming models predicting significant warming. 

This is only evidence of scientific fraud and misconduct. 

 If the "recalculated" curve seems too suspicious for you, connect the black dots (observed measures) and you'll see a very clear trend.

 

But I imagine you'll come back saying  "thermometers are a fraud" or something like that. 🙄

[WayneMechEng + 89]

17 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Where in Alberta? I'm in E-town.  You still think voting UCP was a good idea? HaHa (increased deficits, reduced industry investment, reduced services, nothing good).

I am a retired engineer in Calgary.  73 years old.  When I have time I research items of interest, then send the unsolicited facts to my MLA, MP, and the Premier.  I looked up AB revenues and budgets online and found that when the NDP was recently in power, revenues declined around 15% while their spending went up around 15%.  AB credit rating went down a notch.  UPC inherited the imbalance.  NDP joined the Liberals on the Climate Change bandwagon and shut down coal plants.  They are almost all converted to natural gas now, but the NDP had to pay $1.2 billion of taxpayer money for stranded assets.  I can see why natural gas is better, but there is no free lunch when changing our energy infrastructure.  No doubt all the provincial workers in Edmonton are worried.  What about all the energy workers out of work the last few years?  Consequences roll downhill.  My real Canadian wife (former Service Canada 26 years) knows the pattern of Liberal spending having to be curtailed by incoming Conservatives for decades.  I have only been in Calgary for 20 years.  Reduced investment is well known to be a consequence of Liberal policies that tend to shut down oil related projects.  Oil revenues and highly paid oil workers taxes (I was in the 42% bracket) fed the government employees paychecks.  However, without thinking through the drivers of the Canadian economy, these government supported workers bit the hand that fed them.  I don't wish our government supported workers ill will, but this is just how things are right now.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

We’ve had this debate on this forum several times in the past, there has never been a ‘winner’ and it usually devolves into a name calling, finger pointing, adolescent bun fight.

This debate has become so polarized and bias driven that it is pointless. For every data set or scientist one side produces, within minutes the other side trots out a data set or scientist to refute the first.

Do we really want to get back into the name calling, character assassination arena which we have visited previously many times?

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

10 minutes ago, WayneMechEng said:

I am a retired engineer in Calgary.  73 years old.  When I have time I research items of interest, then send the unsolicited facts to my MLA, MP, and the Premier.  I looked up AB revenues and budgets online and found that when the NDP was recently in power, revenues declined around 15% while their spending went up around 15%.  AB credit rating went down a notch.  UPC inherited the imbalance.  NDP joined the Liberals on the Climate Change bandwagon and shut down coal plants.  They are almost all converted to natural gas now, but the NDP had to pay $1.2 billion of taxpayer money for stranded assets.  I can see why natural gas is better, but there is no free lunch when changing our energy infrastructure.  No doubt all the provincial workers in Edmonton are worried.  What about all the energy workers out of work the last few years?  Consequences roll downhill.  My real Canadian wife (former Service Canada 26 years) knows the pattern of Liberal spending having to be curtailed by incoming Conservatives for decades.  I have only been in Calgary for 20 years.  Reduced investment is well known to be a consequence of Liberal policies that tend to shut down oil related projects.  Oil revenues and highly paid oil workers taxes (I was in the 42% bracket) fed the government employees paychecks.  However, without thinking through the drivers of the Canadian economy, these government supported workers bit the hand that fed them.  I don't wish our government supported workers ill will, but this is just how things are right now.

At least you accept that natural gas is superior.  Yes the conversion cost money but it is better in the long term.  I don't think Kenny's policies align with the platform he ran on - I guess we will see.

I was a federal public servant too (Environment Canada) so I am very familiar with waste; but it happens under both liberal and conservative governments.   I survived several changes in government and in my experience the unelected directors have more control than people think.  The party in power can make a few tweaks to the treasury board policy and some funding levels but they are fairly minimal.

Conservative spending curtailments, in my department, was almost exclusively hiring freezes hoping attrition would reduce the size of the public service. Any program that was fully cut the "affected employees" were essentially all offered alternative positions.

Careful, some here really resent people collecting government pensions.   They probably think working for Service Canada was all fun and games not realizing they deal with the unemployed, drunks, druggies, and annoyed people wanting passports (me Haha).  I hate that place, I am so happy all my clients were internal to the government - no dealing with the public - no speaking French.

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 hours ago, Guillaume Albasini said:

 If the "recalculated" curve seems too suspicious for you, connect the black dots (observed measures) and you'll see a very clear trend.

 

But I imagine you'll come back saying  "thermometers are a fraud" or something like that. 🙄

Since I actually did look at the data, I know that the dots are not like for like.

If you actually wanted to know what was going on in climate change you would look at pristine locations where temperatures have been consistently measured for a centrury without the locations changing character. Meaning that they are not locations that had been under a particulate cloud till the 1960s or 70s when clean air regulations brought down the cloud cover they had been under for a century. You would also take out hot spots - city locations that had warmed up or cooled down because their urban hot spot environment had changed. 

I don't know the database from which those dots were taken, so don't know them to be actual observations or the standard database's heavily doctored ones. They don't actually tell you what the data status is upfront.

[WayneMechEng + 89]

4 hours ago, 0R0 said:

While there are natural factors that affect the Earth’s climate, the combined influence of volcanoes and changes in solar activity would have resulted in cooling rather than warming over the past 50 years.

The global warming witnessed over the past 150 years matches nearly perfectly what is expected from greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity, both in the simple model examined here and in more complex climate models. The best estimate of the human contribution to modern warming is around 100%.

What was the source of the graph so I can read?

Volcanoes have caused cooling for the last 7,000 years.

Sea level rise history is interesting since melting ice caps are the reason.  See the attached graphs from Wikipedia articles.  Click on the Post-Glacial Sea Level Rise chart in the Sea level rise article, they are interactive.

In the last 7,000 years or so, the rate of sea level rise has slowed markedly.  In recent history (125 years), it has risen only 1.6 mm per year.  Scientists now say the rate will be increasing.  Recent satellite measurements (shown on the 125 year graph) agree with the measurements.  Volcanic Winters could be one reason the rate of polar cap melting slowed.  There have been about 20 VEI 7 eruptions in the last 7,000 years, and few identified prior.  A VEI 7 caused the Little Ice Age and the European year without summer, with famines and tens of thousands dead.

However, the Sea level rise article says the rise has been 3.3 mm/year since the 1990's.  I need to review the source studies to understand the difference.  Even at 3.3 mm/year it would take about 7,200 years for the ice caps to melt 100%.  By the popular political date of 2050, at 3.3 mm/year the sea levels would rise about 3.9 inches or 100 mm.

In summary, we have time to deal with sea water rise.  Build floating cities.  But the real issue is loss of drinking water from glacier fed rivers.  The Netflix series, "The Future of Water", should alarm folks more than global warming or climate change.  Build more desalinization plants.  The Chinese knew this way back and now control Tibet and all the glaciers that feed China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.  Chinese companies are building massive dams in Africa.  Worry about declining fisheries and skyrocketing population growth.  The scientists say the number one cause of global warming is population growth, followed by transportation, then cement production.

The increasing world population has been fed by increased productivity. That is due to energy replacing horses and manpower.  We need more energy, per the IEA.  Build RE to its practical limit, but carbon based fuels will be needed for longer than the arbitrary date of 2050.

 

Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.pdf Sea level rise - Wikipedia.pdf 15 Volcanic winter - Wikipedia.pdf

[0R0 + 6,251]

35 minutes ago, WayneMechEng said:

The scientists say the number one cause of global warming is population growth, followed by transportation, then cement production.

The increasing world population has been fed by increased productivity. That is due to energy replacing horses and manpower.  We need more energy, per the IEA.  Build RE to its practical limit, but carbon based fuels will be needed for longer than the arbitrary date of 2050.

 

Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.pdf 48.65 kB · 0 downloads Sea level rise - Wikipedia.pdf 878.54 kB · 0 downloads 15 Volcanic winter - Wikipedia.pdf 198.21 kB · 0 downloads

Population growth is gone. We hit Peak Babies over a year ago. The OECD+China industrial country block which consumes most fossil fuels hit peak babies 60 years ago. The active adult population is starting to shrink. The prime consuming age population (first car, kids, first house) is shrinking, it has been shrinking in Europe since 2002, Started shrinking 10 years ago in China (savings stage) and are now retiring. There is no population explosion. Read "Empty Planet" of the population implosion ahead. Even Africa is not expanding any longer. And India hit peak babies over a decade ago. Its current generation of school children is the largest it will ever have. The major reason is urbanization, whereby women learn to control their fertility and uniformly decide on fewer children. The cell phone has made for a virtual urbanization where information is now available to rural women as to how they would avoid unwanted pregnancies. Current fertility rates are well below 2.1 necessary to maintain population. UN numbers on the matter are over a decade out of date and don't even take into account the China one child policy in estimating fertility, as it has not increased any in China since the 2nd child policy came up. 

The entire population explosion story was dead already when it first showed up in the late 1960s. 

[WayneMechEng + 89]

On 2/21/2020 at 12:37 PM, Tom Kirkman said:

"Gas is such a bargain that it's being viewed less as a bridge fossil fuel driving the world away from dirtier coal toward a clean-energy future," the story tells us, "and more as a hurdle that could slow the trip down. Some forecasters are predicting prices will stay low for years, making it tough for states, cities, and utilities to achieve their goals of being zero-carbon in power production by 2050 or earlier." Ravina Advani, head of renewable energy at BNP Paribus, complained: "The fact that there's an abundance of it makes the move to complete decarbonization much harder … Gas is a tough competitor. It's reliable, and it's cheap."

An example: The Federal Carbon tax to be imposed on natural gas in the prairie provinces makes no sense, climate wise or economically.  We have cold winters and need heat.  We burn natural gas, which Ottawa is taxing, "so the higher price will cause us to seek alternatives".  What then, use electric heat?  How is electricity generated in Alberta - mostly using natural gas with some hydro, wind, and solar. Paying the tax will make it impossible to afford changing all of our furnaces to electric, with new electric panels.  $7000 bucks maybe?  And the efficiency losses burning natural gas to make electricity, then distribute it to homes at a higher cost per kW?  We would use more natural gas than we do now.  What about reliability?  If we lose electric power, we can still heat with natural gas.  A redundant source.  And if we turn down thermostats, there will be health costs.  Our Premier is looking into Small Modular Nuclear Reactors for electric power (each about 1/10 output of a big nuke plant).  Better for carbon but will people embrace nukes after Fukushima and Chernobyl?

So when will we be able to afford changing all our furnaces to electric and having electricity only generated by nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar?  Especially when the province has had to cut budgets due to economic hard times.  It isn't going to happen!  Voters have been brainwashed so they will vote for politicians who preach climate change.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Then how do you explain the fact that around 1800 there were about a billion people on the planet and now we are nearing 8 billion? The rate of increase is NOT decreasing.

Yes, developed countries are nearing zero population growth, but this is more than overcome by the developing nations - developing.

[WayneMechEng + 89]

11 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

The entire population explosion story was dead already when it first showed up in the late 1960s

World population is estimated to peak around the year 2100.  The United Nations website has about 80 pages on detailed projections for all countries.  Math and data used is impressive.  Some advanced countries have low birth rates.  How did the world grow from about 2.2 billion in 1950 to over 7.6 billion now?  I will attach some articles.  Take a look at the UN "World Population Prospects 2017" (too big to upload) and IEA websites.  Population is still growing, but a limit will occur around 2100.  War, famine, and pestilence will rule in the end.  Add some natural disasters.

Canada has a growing population due to immigration.  See attached.  It is colder here, so when we increase population we burn more fuel.  If we were smart, we would all Snowbird to Arizona (but they use more power for air conditioning).  Major lifestyle changes are needed in the developed countries to use less fuel.  But I just can't get my wife to move to a teepee at her sister's rural property in Saskatchewan.  My wife likes her energy efficient townhouse.

Does Population Growth Impact Climate Change_ - Scientific American.pdf Population, Tech Innovation, and Climate Change.pdf Canada at a Glance 2017 - Population.pdf

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

2 hours ago, WayneMechEng said:

What was the source of the graph so I can read?

The Graph is from the Carbon Brief article and the data for the black dots is from Berkeley Earth.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-100-of-global-warming-is-due-to-humans

http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

 

Global mean surface temperatures from Berkeley Earth (black dots) and modeled influence of different radiative forcings (colored lines), as well as the combination of all forcings (grey line) for the period from 1850 to 2017. See methods at the end of the article for details. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

25 minutes ago, WayneMechEng said:

World population is estimated to peak around the year 2100.  The United Nations website has about 80 pages on detailed projections for all countries.  Math and data used is impressive.  Some advanced countries have low birth rates.  How did the world grow from about 2.2 billion in 1950 to over 7.6 billion now?  I will attach some articles.  Take a look at the UN "World Population Prospects 2017" (too big to upload) and IEA websites.  Population is still growing, but a limit will occur around 2100.  War, famine, and pestilence will rule in the end.  Add some natural disasters.

Canada has a growing population due to immigration.  See attached.  It is colder here, so when we increase population we burn more fuel.  If we were smart, we would all Snowbird to Arizona (but they use more power for air conditioning).  Major lifestyle changes are needed in the developed countries to use less fuel.  But I just can't get my wife to move to a teepee at her sister's rural property in Saskatchewan.  My wife likes her energy efficient townhouse.

Does Population Growth Impact Climate Change_ - Scientific American.pdf 1.95 MB · 0 downloads Population, Tech Innovation, and Climate Change.pdf 49.28 kB · 1 download Canada at a Glance 2017 - Population.pdf 149.87 kB · 0 downloads

The UN data, as I noted before, is woefully out of date and is a deeply primitive forecast. Look up "Empty Planet". 

Demographic modeling based on up to date numbers and projections of established trends tops the world population at <9 billion in the vicinity of 2050, largely due to longevity. I suggest that you take UN studies as pure socialist and environmental propaganda rather than information. Keep in mind for energy consumption expectations, that older people are saving for retirement and already have a car and a home and don't have kids to raise anymore. They consume far less than the young adult to middle age consumer demographic, Which has already peaked in ALL industrialized nations but for the US. 

Arizona is a free energy state in just a decade as it has excess solar potential with low cloud cover and strong sun. Same for Nevada and New Mexico. They will have a negative carbon footprint as they export solar energy to neighboring states. 

There are no problems in having energy consumption rise in sub Saharan Africa. 1. because LNG is very plentiful and cheap. 2. because they can go solar and get low carbon if political stability holds so that power lines from the low cloud Sahara can provide cheap energy. Unfortunately, political instability and corruption means that transmission lines are targets for metal harvesting.

We don't need any lifestyle changes at all in the US and Canada. Cheap and plentiful NG will fill the gap as LNG displaces diesel and NG displaces coal. Then in the SW we have solar, and in the NE and NW we have offshore wind power on floating wind farms. 

Europe needs it for geopolitical peace of mind since of insufficient domestic natural gas and oil. They prefer not to need to recolonize the middle east if the US does as stated and finally leaves. They also don't trust Russia not to shut them down for political pressure. 

 Global warming concerns are BS, not so much because of the questionable science and hysteria, but because the world will be consuming less oil and coal because of cheap NG/LNG. And because demographics have already turned in industrialized countries that use most of the energy as the consuming demographic group is 30% smaller than it was 15 years ago in Europe, and will be 40% smaller in China of 2030. Meaning that if they stopped investing heavily in subsidized or dictated renewables they would have been reducing their oil consumption even more already, and also would have been in deeper recession. 

Remember that whatever immigration comes to Canada would still have been consuming energy back at home. It is a smaller increment in energy consumption than you think. That is because the countries they come from are "developing" in part because they are very energy inefficient, low labor productivity etc. . 

 

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19 minutes ago, Guillaume Albasini said:

The Graph is from the Carbon Brief article and the data for the black dots is from Berkeley Earth.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-100-of-global-warming-is-due-to-humans

http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

 

Global mean surface temperatures from Berkeley Earth (black dots) and modeled influence of different radiative forcings (colored lines), as well as the combination of all forcings (grey line) for the period from 1850 to 2017. See methods at the end of the article for details. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

 

That is using a calculated observation database. Those are not raw numbers, and not like for like. The only reason the carbon model matches the data is because the data is forced from the model. Go look back at discussions of global warming here. Go to the NOAA database and choose the raw data set to chart for whatever geographies you like. Unfortunately they don't let you group things (at least not last time I was looking).

"scientists" is a misnomer in the field of climatology because they are paid to lie and must publish their work under review of peers that are similarly paid to lie, since their funding came from NOAA and associated government sources that Al Gore forced into supporting only research that shows global warming and damage from it. 

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6 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

We’ve had this debate on this forum several times in the past, there has never been a ‘winner’ and it usually devolves into a name calling, finger pointing, adolescent bun fight.

This debate has become so polarized and bias driven that it is pointless. For every data set or scientist one side produces, within minutes the other side trots out a data set or scientist to refute the first.

Do we really want to get back into the name calling, character assassination arena which we have visited previously many times?

This is why I replied by a "rolling eyes" emoti when YOU restarted the debate :

 

 

On 2/29/2020 at 6:12 AM, Douglas Buckland said:

First off, we need to determine if anthropological climate change is actually fact or fiction before making policy or business decisions which will cost trillions.

Until this determination can be made, on facts alone, you are making uninformed decisions based on fear.

...and don’t come back with I am denying anything unless you can support your assumption with INDISPUTABLE facts. Otherwise it is simply a ‘he said, she said’ bun fight.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence of the global warming. But climate change deniers are convinced they are an enlightened minority knowing the real truth and fighting a global conspiracy. Its rather vain to try to convince them. Everything you would say will be rejected as a "fraud" or "doctored data" if it goes against their beliefs.

Most of the climate change deniers are conspiracy theory believers, the others are just paid by the fossil fuel lobby.

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

Edited March 2, 2020 by Guillaume Albasini