This is the time to talk about climate change

[gwb-trading]

Judith Curry is another paid shill, she is DIRECTLY paid by oil companies, forget groupthink, she is a groupshill. And what groupthink is she talking about anyway, she has always called climate change a hoax since she started getting paid for it.

Here is her financial disclosure from page 14 as part of her Congressional testimony.

Funding sources for Curry’s research have included NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOD and DOE. Recent contracts for CFAN include a NOAA contract to improve subseasonal weather forecasts, a DOE contract to develop extended range regional wind power forecasts and a DOD contract to predict extreme events associated with climate variability/change having implications for regional stability. CFAN contracts with private sector and other non-
governmental organizations include energy and power companies, reinsurance companies, other weather service providers, nongovernmental organizations and development banks. Specifically with regards to the energy and power companies, these contracts are for medium-range (days to weeks) forecasts of hurricane activity, surface temperatures, hydropower generation and wind power generation. CFAN has not received any funds from energy companies related to climate change or any topic related to this testimony.

 

[exGOPer]

CFAN has not received any funds from energy companies related to climate change or any topic related to this testimony.

How specific, no denial that she was paid by them but not for climate research!

 

[d08]

Why would we ever want to waste a bunch of money on renewables when we are sitting on a mountain of coal and nat gas? This is merely a tactic by the evil Europeans to hamper our efforts to MAGA. The best way to do that is to build a big wall and burn as much coal, oil and nat gas as possible. A little warming would be a great thing for the US, as idiots from NY and NJ would not be so desperate to migrate to Palm Beach and Boca.

Not sure if trolling or being sarcastic, I'd like to think ET members are not this dumb.
Warming does not mean the weather will just get warmer. It means greater volatility - very harsh winters and very hot summers. On top of that it messes with the Gulf stream. This means NY will freeze in the winter and the costs of heating will skyrocket, in the summer expect flooding and heatwaves.
You think burning some coal and nat gas is going to MAGA? keep that 19th century dream alive, man, don't let reality disturb you.

 

[d08]

First let me say that the issues regarding renewable power in Germany have been well covered in German publications including Spiegel and newspapers. This included documented coverage of summer days where renewables provided near 100% of the power in the country, the risks of excess power taking out the grid, and the winter days where renewables & traditional utility power nearly came up short. Covered in detail in the German media is the financial fiasco where wind power is being taken off-line after it was put in place at significant expense.

There is not a "grid across the EU" being built. While there has been much fanfare from the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) about the Synchronous Grid. This is all about keeping the status quo and allowing the trading of electricity, not about evolving to an advanced infrastructure. While there are interconnects using traditional overhead transmission in place across national borders to share power via electricity sales; each country effectively maintains its own national grid. Nor could the European cross-border transmission structure possibly power Germany on a low day from sunny Italy - a mere 1% of the power needs would be met from cross-border arrangements.

The issue with Germany (and Europe) gets back to the grid. Basically the entire continent (just like the U.S.) has an aging power infrastructure based on a hub & spoke architecture using traditional power plants. Adding a few more transmission power meters and few more transmission lines does not magically enable the European power infrastructure to become a "smart grid".

In order to support a "green" distributed power network which is reliable, a modern micro-grid architecture must be put in place to support the distribution of power across the local & distant areas. The modern grid must include necessary local back-up (small gas power plants) that only need to be used as lulls (in winter for instance), support large-scale net-metering (customer selling power back from the solar array on their roof), and full monitoring/routing capability of power in real-time with predictive support.

I am a huge supporter of green power. However in order for either Europe or America to properly implement it, the power grid will need to be re-designed and nearly completely re-implemented. This would be a very significant cost that power companies do not want to take on (what is the benefit to them?). It would require government mandates and money to drive this type of change to create a modern smart grid which support distributed green power.

The other thing to keep in mind is that while the Green Party in Germany may think the idea of implementing green power to support "climate change" is great -- the actual driver for Germany to make this change to renewables is to reduce their dependency on using natural gas to generate power from an unfriendly power (Russia). This drives the decision to revert to using existing coal power (to replace the removed wind power) instead of adding natural gas power plants. This, of course, will hold back any evolution to having small natural gas power plants as a local back-up to renewable power.

Yes, it's hard and with many challenges. It doesn't change the fact that it's possible and completely worth doing. You're absolutely right that it's not just about global warming, Russia is a big factor because it's already proven that Russia will extort Europe whenever they have a chance.
The fact is in 2015 the percentage of German ren. energy was 33%, even if the supply is unstable, the number is massive and will only grow. 14% in 2007, so that's a huge growth in just 8 years.
Good, worthwhile things are typically very challenging, this is one of them.

 

[smallStops]

Not sure if trolling or being sarcastic, I'd like to think ET members are not this dumb.
Warming does not mean the weather will just get warmer. It means greater volatility - very harsh winters and very hot summers. On top of that it messes with the Gulf stream. This means NY will freeze in the winter and the costs of heating will skyrocket, in the summer expect flooding and heatwaves.
You think burning some coal and nat gas is going to MAGA? keep that 19th century dream alive, man, don't let reality disturb you.

Your way of explaining things is vey much welcome on P&R :
some people are so brainwashed that they have even difficulties of understanding the obvious.

 

[WeToddDid2]

Then do explain how a Koch funded skeptic who analyzed the data himself says it's real? He was paid to prove the opposite and yet he says climate change is real.

"CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html

Uhhhhh.....he is a professor at Berkeley. Do I need to say anything else?

 

[jem]

in statistical terms your Berkeley guy is saying the best correlation he found is co2... correct? (read the last sentence below if you don't know what you posted)

but as can been seen above we know that co2 follows but lags temperature.

So you berkeley guy just found that the dependent variable has a nice fit with the leading variable.


Which is why stats professor drills into his or her students that correlation does not prove causation.


"The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.


==

Finally who cares if he worked for the Kochs. Many of the top companies in the energy production industry flipped on this co2 stuff when it seems the co2 credits game was rigged to favor the top players. Its cronies locking in their production and keeping out competition with the help of the politicians they own.

Then do explain how a Koch funded skeptic who analyzed the data himself says it's real? He was paid to prove the opposite and yet he says climate change is real.

"CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html

 

[Scataphagos]

Its cronies locking in their production and keeping out competition with the help of the politicians they own.

Seems "truth/fact" is more a function of "who gets paid and how much".