More studies on the deficiencies of wind energy

I came across this very detail editorial on the "Economics and Performance – The Primary Deficiencies of Wind Power" by Jerry Graf.

Here's the content. See the original for very insightful comments.

When I read this, I wonder why Ontario invested so much in wind energy, did any body made any calculation.

See also my other post on wind energy:

• Real capacity factor of wind farms compared to vendor advertisements
• Wind farms, subsidized to put in place, paid to shut down when wind not blowing?
• Five myths about green energy
• Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar
• Wind farm capacity factor 25% is very good !

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There are many arguments to be made against government subsidization of industrial wind power, some objective and others subjective. We hear about noise, shadow flicker, disruption of wildlife, lack of consistent energy output (intermittency), questionable performance with respect to pollution reduction, and undesirable aesthetic appearance.
It occurs to me, however, with regard to subsidies for energy ventures and technology, three things must be kept in mind:

(1) any good investment must be made in worthwhile ventures that can show a reasonable return;
(2) arbitrarily subsidizing some ventures may cause inadvertent (or advertent) exclusion of others; and
(3) jobs cannot be created by subsidizing ventures that do not provide a viable return. We must keep our eye on the economic ball, and structure our primary arguments against government subsidies for wind power generation around the primary deficiencies of wind turbine technology: performance and return on investment (ROI).

It is obvious that any good investment must be made in worthwhile ventures that can show a reasonable return; and I believe it is fairly apparent that placement of wind turbine power generation technology in my home state of Ohio, vast areas of the eastern or mid-western United States, and indeed in most places in the continental United States, is not worthwhile.

Given the average annual wind speed limitations in most areas, and the relative inefficiency of wind turbines to transform wind into useful electrical power, the wind turbine technology we are subsidizing cannot produce enough electricity to be competitive with other more viable forms of generation, even when a generous allowance for future inflation of electricity costs is considered. The investment is being wasted; with no hope of a reasonable return, and without large subsidies from government entities to offset the investment losses and artificial increases in the cost of electricity, a viable business case for implementation of wind turbine power generation cannot be made.

To illustrate the economic shortcomings, I can point to specific high profile wind development projects I have analyzed in the past several months, including the Great Lakes Wind Energy Pilot Project in Ohio, the Highland Wind Farm expansion in Pennsylvania, and the Glacier Hills Wind Farm in Wisconsin.
The pertinent pieces of information required for the analyses are the power curves for the specific wind turbines, information regarding annual wind speed at the approximate elevations at the sites, and estimates of uptime and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs. This information seems simple enough, but is often difficult to gather because reports are often incomplete and conflicting with regard to economic details (begging the question, “Why?”).

Also, to apply a value to the electricity produced, I have characteristically used an approximation of the average wholesale price of electricity, which has been around $50/MWh for 2009-2010, and has been fairly consistent on an annual weighted average basis throughout the continental United States. It may be noted that the wholesale price of electricity varies widely on a daily basis depending on supply and demand, and also that certain forms of production are inherently more costly.

For example, Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) production is specifically designed to be fast reacting to peaks in demand and electricity generated in this manner can be sold for greater than $100/MWh when in demand. It makes sense to me, however, to use the average everyday wholesale price when analyzing the business case for a production system that is being touted as able to produce average everyday energy needs and to displace conventional average everyday production sources.  It would not make sense to evaluate wind turbines based on a cost comparison to a fast reacting OCGT system which is designed to be responsive to peaks in demand; wind turbines could never serve in this capacity.

Once the basic simple information is obtained, the analyses for these projects are fairly straight forward, and the details are presented in the attached charts and figures in the Technical Appendix. In all three cases, it is quite apparent that the wind turbines cannot produce enough electricity to return the investment and pay the annual operating and maintenance costs.

Considerations Not Included
Other points that should be made to further the arguments are [not included are the costs of required additional transmission facilities]:

• These economic analyses do not account for the cost that will be incurred to maintain and operate a traditional back-up system for generating power when the wind is not blowing adequately, and for the added cost and inefficiency of cycling this back-up system on and off to balance the supply load against the variability of the wind generated power.
• These analyses are presented for a 20 year period, although it is becoming evident that the useful life of many wind turbines is more like 10 to 15 years (see here and here). This can be contrasted to conventional power generation facilities which will remain productive for 40 to 60 years.
• Any supposed reductions in dependency on conventional power generation, and any reductions in associated levels of pollution, attributed to use of wind power generation are highly suspect; because of the need to maintain and operate the back-up systems in an inefficient manner (see here and here).
• The lowest wind conditions and the lowest power output will occur in the summer, when the electricity demand is highest.
• Given the considerations above and the available theoretical power densities at the sites, the turbines will only convert a small fraction of the theoretically available energy passing by their blades. Assuming that as yet unknown and quite miraculous technology improvements implemented in the future are somehow able to double the turbine efficiencies, wondrously without increasing investment or O&M costs; these projects still do not present a truly acceptable business case or ROI.
• Despite their supposed presentation as power sources for average everyday power needs, the wind turbine projects are often granted special Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs) which allow prices for their electricity that are many times higher than average wholesale price. It is disconcerting that a large portion of the feasibility studies and the on-going discussion are often devoted to proposals to make the projects appear viable with public spending and it is evident that, to make these projects work, massive government subsidies and large increases in the cost paid for electricity will be required to offset the investment losses and attract investors.

Cape Wind Project
As another example of poor economic performance, the largest loser I have reviewed to-date is the massive Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts. The pertinent information regarding the specific wind turbines to be employed is difficult to come by (again the question, “Why?”) and my analysis is not as detailed; however, from published information the Cape Wind Project is supposed to produce three-quarters of the 230 MW power demand of the Cape and islands, which means a real average output of 172.5 MW, or about 41% of the rated 420 MW capacity.

Applying a generous assumption of 85% uptime means the turbines will operate 7446 hours per year; giving us 172.5 MW x 7446 hours = 1284 GWh/year. This estimate is actually more-or-less confirmed, within about 11%, on the Cape Wind website itself; which currently offers an updating display indicating that about 11,588,000 MWh of energy could have been produced since wind monitoring commenced. This seems like an impressive number until you divide it by the 8+ years of monitoring, and you get 1449 GWh/year.
Considering the annual average wholesale value of electricity in Massachusetts is also about $50/MWh per the DOE EIA, the annual energy generated by Cape Wind will be worth about $70 million per year; and subtracting annual operating and maintenance costs may leave about $50 million per year of this revenue. Again, this sounds impressive, until it is compared to the $2 billion that the project is expected to cost.
Even if a generous inflation rate is applied to the cost of electricity, the cash flow will not even come close to a return of this investment in the life of the wind turbines; unless someone deliberately raises the cost we pay for electricity. Unfortunately, this is already happening because a New England based utility company, National Grid, has already agreed to pay $207/MWh (4 times the current wholesale price) beginning in 2013 for half the power produced by Cape Wind.  National Grid is doing this to comply with a state law forcing them to purchase a certain amount of power from “renewable energy” sources, and the deal is considered critical to attract investors.

Exclusion of Other Ventures
Other than the harm to the national economy of the waste itself, the real problem with expending resources subsidizing non-viable wind turbine projects is that this inadvertently (or advertently) diverts resources from other efforts to improve our energy production strategy.

Because of recent events, we are hearing quite a few emotional comments regarding the need to reduce U.S. dependence on oil; and the recent tragic spill in the Gulf of Mexico is being used to justify investment in wind energy projects. However, it is reasonable to point out that oil is used to generate about 1% of the total electricity used in the USA, and one can effectively say that oil has nothing to do with the generation of electricity. Unfortunately, by increasing the cost of electricity, it is likely that we will make it more difficult to transition away from oil given that this fossil fuel is used for home heating and gasoline powered automobiles.
Also, in the rush to promote wind generation, development and improvement of other more viable means of energy generation are being ignored.  Instead of diverting resources to prop up wind projects we could be improving natural gas, nuclear, and coal generation.  We could also be improving the distribution system (grid) to reduce losses and improve reliability. Further, by subsidizing and offsetting the current deficiencies of wind generation, we take away the incentive to make the necessary improvements that might make it viable in some cases in the future.

Job Creation: The Green Myth
Tying back to point (3) regarding job creation and going beyond the specific arguments regarding the performance of the wind turbines themselves, I will point out that proponents for subsidized implementation of wind turbine power generation believe that this activity will create “green jobs.” I contend, however, that creation of jobs by subsidizing ventures that do not provide a viable return cannot work, and job creation cannot be a justifiable end unto itself.
This is simply an extension of the points I have made in the preceding paragraphs, and I will use an old tried-and-true analogy to make my point. If we wanted to simply create jobs, we could employ people to dig holes in the ground for no particular reason, and then employ other people to fill those holes in. By purchasing large earthmoving equipment, we could dig really big holes really fast, and stimulate employment at the manufacturing companies that make the earthmoving equipment and their steel and component suppliers.
Now, if we dig holes in both Ohio and Wisconsin, we could transport the dirt from Ohio to fill in the holes in Wisconsin, and conversely transport the dirt from Wisconsin to fill in the holes in Ohio. This would stimulate employment in the transportation industry for truck drivers and for truck manufacturers. The wear and tear on the roadways would also stimulate the need for road maintenance workers and all their equipment.
The analogy is facetious and I apologize for digressing into the absurd; however, I believe it illustrates my point that making jobs by subsidizing non-viable ventures cannot be an effective strategy.

Back to Economics
Keeping in mind the three principles that good investments must be made in viable worthwhile technologies, that we will be risking detrimental effects on ventures that are not being subsidized, and that job creation cannot be an end unto itself; it seems we need to coordinate the arguments against subsidies for wind power generation about the economic analysis. These are the easiest arguments to understand, and I believe these arguments will hit home for the majority of people. Other more in-depth technical analysis and subjective arguments will always be valuable and must be developed and presented as well; however, by keeping our eye on the economic ball, and clearly educating the investors and the public about the primary economic and performance deficiencies of wind power generation, we may be able to succeed in correcting the course of public opinion on this issue.

The basic economic analysis of the aforementioned Great Lakes Wind Energy Pilot Project in Ohio, Highland Wind Farm expansion in Pennsylvania, and Glacier Hills Wind Farm in Wisconsin are provided in detail in the next section. As previously indicated, with revenues based on realistic wholesale electricity costs, the cash flow analyses demonstrate that these projects will not break even within the projected 20 year period.

Technical Appendix: Details of the Economic Analysis
 

Wind farms, subsidized to put in place, paid to shut down when wind not blowing?

This is nuts.  When will we wake up to the fact that wind farms are not a solution.  Receiving large subsidy to be put in place because otherwise not profitable, selling their electricity at higher price than other forms of energy like nuclear and now, being paid to stop producing electricity when the wind is blowing!!!

Those low density energy sources are bad for the environment and the overall economy.


Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing Photo: ALAMY

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.

Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK's energy needs in the future. They claim that the 'intermittent' nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.

The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.
The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution – known as the 'balancing mechanism' – is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.

The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid – and ultimately consumers – far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative 'green' subsidies for that electricity.

The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.
It raises the prospect of hugely profitable electricity suppliers receiving large sums of money from the National Grid just for switching off wind turbines.

Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: "As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong."

Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.
The proceeds of the levy, known as the Renewables Obligation (RO), are divided between the main renewable energy sources, with wind receiving 40 per cent, landfill gas 25 per cent, biomass 20 per cent, hydroelectric 12 per cent and sewage gas 3 per cent.

Professor Michael Laughton, emeritus professor of electrical engineering at the University of London, said: "People will find it very hard to understand that an electricity company is getting paid the market rate plus a subsidy for doing nothing. It is essentially a waste of consumers' money."

A National Grid spokesman said: "The trial demonstrates that wind can help balance supply and demand just like other generation types: this is potentially useful to us on warm but windy summer days when generation outstrips the low demand – and a higher proportion of generation is made up of wind and inflexible nuclear."
The spokesman added: "The trial is something supporters of wind energy should welcome, as it gives evidence to their case that wind generation does not bring insurmountable problems to balancing supply and demand."
A spokesman for RenewableUK, the trade body which represents the renewable energy industry, said all suppliers to the National Grid periodically were asked to reduce output to control the balancing mechanism. He said it was simply evidence of the growing part wind energy had to play in Britain's supply needs that turbines would occasionally be taken off the National Grid. He added: "REF exists to misrepresent any piece of information and turn it into a scandal or crisis. The reality is the National Grid's job is to ensure we have adequate capacity to meet demand at any one time."

Five myths about green energy

Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302220_pf.html

By Robert Bryce

Sunday, April 25, 2010; B04

Americans are being inundated with claims about renewable and alternative energy. Advocates for these technologies say that if we jettison fossil fuels, we'll breathe easier, stop global warming and revolutionize our economy. Yes, "green" energy has great emotional and political appeal. But before we wrap all our hopes -- and subsidies -- in it, let's take a hard look at some common misconceptions about what "green" means.

1. Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. Even an aging natural gas well producing 60,000 cubic feet per day generates more than 20 times the watts per square meter of a wind turbine. A nuclear power plant cranks out about 56 watts per square meter, eight times as much as is derived from solar photovoltaic installations. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of "energy sprawl," including tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities.

Nor does wind energy substantially reduce CO2 emissions. Since the wind doesn't always blow, utilities must use gas- or coal-fired generators to offset wind's unreliability. The result is minimal -- or no -- carbon dioxide reduction.

Denmark, the poster child for wind energy boosters, more than doubled its production of wind energy between 1999 and 2007. Yet data from Energinet.dk, the operator of Denmark's natural gas and electricity grids, show that carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2007 were at about the same level as they were back in 1990, before the country began its frenzied construction of turbines. Denmark has done a good job of keeping its overall carbon dioxide emissions flat, but that is in large part because of near-zero population growth and exorbitant energy taxes, not wind energy. And through 2017, the Danes foresee no decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation.

2. Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.

In the new green economy, batteries are not included. Neither are many of the "rare earth" elements that are essential ingredients in most alternative energy technologies. Instead of relying on the diversity of the global oil market -- about 20 countries each produce at least 1 million barrels of crude per day -- the United States will be increasingly reliant on just one supplier, China, for elements known as lanthanides. Lanthanum, neodymium, dysprosium and other rare earth elements are used in products from high-capacity batteries and hybrid-electric vehicles to wind turbines and oil refinery catalysts.

China controls between 95 and 100 percent of the global market in these elements. And the Chinese government is reducing its exports of lanthanides to ensure an adequate supply for its domestic manufacturers. Politicians love to demonize oil-exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, but adopting the technologies needed to drastically cut U.S. oil consumption will dramatically increase America's dependence on China.

3. A green American economy will create green American jobs.

In a global market, American wind turbine manufacturers face the same problem as American shoe manufacturers: high domestic labor costs. If U.S. companies want to make turbines, they will have to compete with China, which not only controls the market for neodymium, a critical ingredient in turbine magnets, but has access to very cheap employees.

The Chinese have also signaled their willingness to lose money on solar panels in order to gain market share. China's share of the world's solar module business has grown from about 7 percent in 2005 to about 25 percent in 2009.

Meanwhile, the very concept of a green job is not well defined. Is a job still green if it's created not by the market, but by subsidy or mandate? Consider the claims being made by the subsidy-dependent corn ethanol industry. Growth Energy, an industry lobby group, says increasing the percentage of ethanol blended into the U.S. gasoline supply would create 136,000 jobs. But an analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that no more than 27,000 jobs would be created, and each one could cost taxpayers as much as $446,000 per year. Sure, the government can create more green jobs. But at what cost?

4. Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.

Nissan and Tesla are just two of the manufacturers that are increasing production of all-electric cars. But in the electric car's century-long history, failure tailgates failure. In 1911, the New York Times declared that the electric car "has long been recognized as the ideal" because it "is cleaner and quieter" and "much more economical" than its gasoline-fueled cousins. But the same unreliability of electric car batteries that flummoxed Thomas Edison persists today.

Those who believe that Detroit unplugged the electric car are mistaken. Electric cars haven't been sidelined by a cabal to sell internal combustion engines or a lack of political will, but by physics and math. Gasoline contains about 80 times as much energy, by weight, as the best lithium-ion battery. Sure, the electric motor is more efficient than the internal combustion engine, but can we depend on batteries that are notoriously finicky, short-lived and take hours to recharge? Speaking of recharging, last June, the Government Accountability Office reported that about 40 percent of consumers do not have access to an outlet near their vehicle at home. The electric car is the next big thing -- and it always will be.

5. The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.

Over the past three decades, the United States has improved its energy efficiency as much as or more than other developed countries. According to data from the Energy Information Administration, average per capita energy consumption in the United States fell by 2.5 percent from 1980 through 2006. That reduction was greater than in any other developed country except Switzerland and Denmark, and the United States achieved it without participating in the Kyoto Protocol or creating an emissions trading system like the one employed in Europe. EIA data also show that the United States has been among the best at reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per $1 of GDP and the amount of energy consumed per $1 of GDP.

America's move toward a more service-based economy that is less dependent on heavy industry and manufacturing is driving this improvement. In addition, the proliferation of computer chips in everything from automobiles to programmable thermostats is wringing more useful work out of each unit of energy consumed. The United States will continue going green by simply allowing engineers and entrepreneurs to do what they do best: make products that are faster, cheaper and more efficient than the ones they made the year before.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His fourth book, "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future," will be out Tuesday, April 27.

Go natural, go nuclear

NOTE: I posted my comment on the hill on March 10th, but it seems they choose not to publish it.!


Interesting article in "The Hill" opinion section.  This need to be debated more.  Read my comment below after the story.  I have documented a large part of this discussion here on this blog.

Go natural, go nuclear

By Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Theodore Rockwell - 03/08/10 07:48 PM ET

The fantastic success of the movie “Avatar,” in which an interplanetary Stone Age species of people overcomes an expeditionary force that looks suspiciously like the U.S. Army, is convincing millions of Americans that the secret of success in the modern world is to “go back to nature.”

President Barack Obama mirrored this in his Inaugural address when he said, “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” It all sounds so easy — free energy all around us, waiting to be harvested at little or no environmental cost, putting us back in tune with nature.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds. The rhythms of nature are not always our rhythms. The sun shines only 10 to 14 hours a day, while we consume electricity around the clock. We don’t want our TVs and refrigerators running only when the wind blows. Until electricity can be stored in large quantities, we will need something that can provide electrical power on demand.

So far, fossil fuels and hydroelectricity have filled the bill, but each has its limitations. We’ve already developed all the good hydroelectric sites and people object to the way they drown valleys and interrupt fish migrations. There are more old dams being torn down these days than new ones being built.

Despite new natural gas finds and new technologies for coal, oil, and natural gas exploration, the supply restrictions of fossil fuels are also well known.

These are limited resources. We already import two-thirds of our oil. Coal, oil and gas also have an enormous environmental impact. They cause pollution and are widely considered to be major contributors to global warming.

Make no mistake — solar, wind and other “renewables” have their own environmental impact as well. Solar and wind farms will occupy dozens — even hundreds — of square miles to produce ordinary amounts of electricity. The Nature Conservancy has labeled this “Energy Sprawl.” Even geothermal energy — tapping the Earth’s heat — is creating problems. In December a long-term project in Switzerland was called off because it was causing earthquakes. The developer is facing criminal charges for causing property damages. The next day an almost identical project in California was called off, also because of fear of earthquakes.

So what other options does America have? Republicans have proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors in the next 20 years, just as we built 100 reactors between 1970 and 1990. Americans have been using nuclear power for a half-century and are quite familiar with the technology. We have worked out the kinks and established an impressive record for reliability that no other power source is able to match. The average American nuclear reactor now produces electricity 90 percent of the time, as opposed to 70 percent for coal and 20 to 30 percent for wind and solar. And no member of the American public has ever been killed by commercial nuclear power — a record unmatched by other fuels.

Since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, there has been a highly subsidized, worldwide effort to develop wind and solar as reliable sources of electricity. (France skipped that phase, went straight to nuclear, and now sells its electricity all over Europe.) Despite favorable policies and generous incentives, neither solar nor wind has been able to establish a significant presence in the marketplace. Denmark has installed wind power for 19 percent of its electrical demand yet must dump up to 85 percent of this production abroad, sometimes at a significant loss, because wind is so unreliable. Denmark still has a large carbon footprint, since it must burn fossil fuels as a backup.

The natural case for nuclear power is compelling. Today nuclear power produces 19 percent of our electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Nuclear plants occupy a fraction of the land required for wind or solar and can be built in locations near where the actual power is needed rather than being transported from faraway places where wind and sunshine are stronger. And nuclear reactors operate 90 percent of the time while wind and solar are only available about a third of the time. So why aren’t we building nuclear power today?

President Obama’s recent actions have been encouraging. He has endorsed a “new generation of nuclear reactors,” appointed a commission to make recommendations about used nuclear fuel, and supported increasing loan guarantees for new nuclear plants to $54.5 billion. This is a welcome change from an administration energy policy that looked more like a national windmill policy, which was the equivalent of going to war in sailboats.

Polls show that the American public increasingly favors nuclear power. Still, the fear-mongering and prejudice against the technology persist. A nuclear power plant is not a bomb. It cannot explode. Ninety-seven percent of a spent fuel rod is recyclable. The French store all their “nuclear waste” from 30 years of producing 80 percent of their electricity beneath the floor of one room.

When properly understood, nuclear energy is as clean and natural as wind, sunshine or any of the supposedly more “natural” alternatives. The tremendous power that lies at the heart of the atom is part of nature as well.


Alexander is the Republican Conference chairman. Rockwell is a member of the Health Physics Society, a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and a vice president and a founding director of Radiation, Science and Health Inc.

My comments to this story:

All this is known and very logical but there a more problems to be addressed.

When you have nuclear power operators, investing in wind and solar and stopping the construction of new reactors, because this would push prices of electricity up and push up the profit margin more than building new reactors. 

The problems in our societies are:
 - A lack of common sense policies
 - Profit only logic
 - GREED
 - Fear of the unknown

A good portion of this, is caused in my humble opinion, by a lack of a proper education in science by the people in power and the tendency of the human species of working for his own profit instead of the profit of the community.

This is what we saw in the Avatar movie, a sense of community, working for the group before ourselves.

I have heard so often the word "socialism" when referring to the nuclear power in France. 

Those misconception and problems needs to be address at the same time as educating oneself to basic science.

One thing we often forget to mention. is that we use in average 90% of fossil fuel for all of our energy use on this planet.  Therefore it is safe to assume that 90% of the money spent on an energy system will consume fossil fuel to build and maintain it, until the percentage of our power base is switched to a non-fossil fuel base power. 

This is the main reason why we need to have high energy density energy sources that give power near to 100% of the time.

We may not have much time left in term of fossil fuel reserve to build the nuclear power base infrastructure needed to power 7+ billion souls to a descent energy level we are used to have in our industrialized society.

Good luck to us all.

Best regards,

Simon Filiatrault from Québec, Canada.

Wind farm capacity factor 25% is very good !

Here's another example of the capacity factor of windmills. Next time you see a number of MW advertised, you can safely divide it by 4.

This means that a 10MW wind farm plant like this one in India, will give you this 10MW 25% of the time or just 2.5MW in average.  According to this article, this capacity factor is very good.  Look at the months of March and April, it looks like the capacity factor is under 10%.  Therefore you definitely need another source of power to compensate.  Nuclear seems the best choice for them in India.

Full article from the PDF:

Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL)has a wind farm in operation at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) since January 2007.

For the second year in succession since its inception, KKNPP wind farm has performed exceedingly well in terms of generation of electricity in the financial year 2008-09. KKNPP wind farm, consisting of eight 1.25-MWe wind turbine generators (WTGs), became operational on January 24, 2007 and since then, it is in commercial operation, generating electricity through wind power.

The power thus generated is being fed to Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) grid, earning revenue for NPCIL. In the year 2007-08, KKNPP wind farm generated 22.423 Million Units with a plant load factor (PLF) of 25.53%, and quite significantly, there is an improvement in the performance of wind farm in the year 2008-09. Generation of 22.996 MUs is higher by 2.56% compared to the generation of previous financial year (2007-08). Plant load factor of 26.25%, achieved in 2008-09 is better than the average PLF achieved in the region.

KKNPP wind farm turbine generators have been among top-performing generators in the region. This is attributable largely due to better windy conditions that prevailed in the year 2008-09 when compared to 2007-08 and also, to some extent, due to improvement seen in the machine and grid availability around this time.

The impact of attaching Wind and Solar to the power grid

Here's an interesting article in the New York Times by MATTHEW L. WALD about the impact of making renewable, reliable. As may may not know, the biggest hurdle with renewable is the reliability of the power output. When the wind does not blow or when the sun does not shine, you have to compensate with a more stable source of energy.

Here are some excerpt from the article.

Managers here discuss new tools, like Doppler radar on remote hilltops to detect the speed of the wind hitting the windmill blades and to forecast what it will be in 15 or 30 minutes, so natural gas plants can be started in time to meet demand when the wind stops, or shut down before the gusts come through and overload the system.

Managers also explore how they might forecast haze and dust, which change the output of solar cells. They worry about rogue clouds that will disrupt solar fields. They talk about batteries of an unprecedented scale that will go from fully charging to fully discharging in one second, to smooth out the herky-jerky output of mammoth new renewable developments.

The grid experts are often reticent about their concerns, because when they speak up, “we get perceived as we are not supportive of renewables”

Those grid operators live in the real world and need to provide for real, constant power. One thing that the "green" energy does not provide. What is the cost of all this. What is the backup power when the wind does not blow or when the solar panels do not work because of clouds? Fossil fuels mostly in the form of natural gas. No wonder those providing natural gas like to see more "green' energy deploy, because they understand perfectly that those fields of solar and wind provide power 25% of the time in average.

The public may expect that with a proliferation of solar panels and wind machines, companies will shut plants that run on coal and natural gas. But all of it will be needed if the system is to remain stable and ride through periods of low wind.

So when the "greens" push those "green" energies, they do not put those need in the equations. Doing so, would mean it would be impossible to sell it to the public.

Some news and research on "green" energy

I stumble across those articles and blogs about "green" energy you may find interesting. In the end, you cannot hide the truth. If the Energy density is lower than the best technologies we have, like nuclear, it is not worth pursuing.

Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: the German experience

In the end, Germany’s PV promotion has become a subsidization regime that, on a per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per-worker subsidies as high as 175,000 € (US $ 240,000).
Although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a “shining example in providing a harvest for the world” (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.

Wind Tax Windfalls, Nuclear Tax Burdens

How favorably short depreciation schedules for wind have created a “gold mine” for investors, virtually independent of how much electricity the wind turbines produce.

Listen to the podcast here:


Michael Trebilcock - "Wind power is a complete disaster"

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario's current rate of about 6¢).

Real capacity factor of wind farms compared to vendor advertisements

From this web page, the following table, actually only the first 3 lines are showed.  I added some rows and calculated:

• Annual MWh at 100%
• This would be produced if the wind turbine would work as advertised 100% of the time
• Capacity factor advertised
• This is the capacity factor, see wikipedia for a good explanation
• Real capacity factor
• This is one real number from 2008 on a wind farm in India, where they got a "good" year.
• Real MWh produced
• So with a capacity factor of 25% in the real world, you only produce 3614 MWh annually from an advertised (named plate) capacity of 14454 MWh

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	1981	1985	1990	1996	1999	2000
Rotor (meters)	10	17	27	40	50	71
Rating (KW)	25	100	225	550	750	1650
Annual MWh advertised	45	220	550	1480	2200	5600
Annual MWh at 100%	219	876	1971	4818	6570	14454
Capacity factor advertised	21%	25%	28%	31%	33%	39%
Real capacity factor						25%
Real MWh produced						3614

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This means that 75% of the energy will come from another source of energy (Coal, Natural gas) to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind farms.

So claiming that a wind farm does not produce any form of pollution is not really telling the whole story.

"Free" Energy a quick view

Areva M5000 monster windmill.

Design life time 20 years
Cut-in wind speed 4 m/s Rated wind speed 12 m/s Cut-out wind speed 25 m/s

5 MW at an average of 25% capacity factor = 1.2MW.

This is the average power output of those monster wind mills.

I did not find the price tag of those windmill, but I am quite sure the energy from those will not be "Free".

The Climate-Industrial Complex

Copie d'un article apparu le 22 mai 2009 dans le wall street journal.

Point de vue très intéressant... Plus ont nous fait peur, plus on fait d'argent. Le problème est que l'économie physique et l'environnement réel vont en souffrir.

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Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green movement.

By BJORN LOMBORG

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

This phenomenon will be on display at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen this weekend. The organizers -- the Copenhagen Climate Council -- hope to push political leaders into more drastic promises when they negotiate the Kyoto Protocol's replacement in December.

The opening keynote address is to be delivered by Al Gore, who actually represents all three groups: He is a politician, a campaigner and the chair of a green private-equity firm invested in products that a climate-scared world would buy.

Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is "rent-seeking."

The world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN's "Climate in Peril" segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas's earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore's green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon.

Even companies that are not heavily engaged in green business stand to gain. European energy companies made tens of billions of euros in the first years of the European Trading System when they received free carbon emission allocations.

American electricity utility Duke Energy, a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has long promoted a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme. Yet the company bitterly opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill in the U.S. Senate that would have created such a scheme because it did not include European-style handouts to coal companies. The Waxman-Markey bill in the House of Representatives promises to bring back the free lunch.

U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities -- including Duke -- spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.

The massive transfer of wealth that many businesses seek is not necessarily good for the rest of the economy. Spain has been proclaimed a global example in providing financial aid to renewable energy companies to create green jobs. But research shows that each new job cost Spain 571,138 euros, with subsidies of more than one million euros required to create each new job in the uncompetitive wind industry. Moreover, the programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs for every job created.

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

The World Business Summit will hear from "science and public policy leaders" seemingly selected for their scary views of global warming. They include James Lovelock, who believes that much of Europe will be Saharan and London will be underwater within 30 years; Sir Crispin Tickell, who believes that the United Kingdom's population needs to be cut by two-thirds so the country can cope with global warming; and Timothy Flannery, who warns of sea level rises as high as "an eight-story building."

Free speech is important. But these visions of catastrophe are a long way outside of mainstream scientific opinion, and they go much further than the careful findings of the United Nations panel of climate change scientists. When it comes to sea-level rise, for example, the United Nations expects a rise of between seven and 23 inches by 2100 -- considerably less than a one-story building.

There would be an outcry -- and rightfully so -- if big oil organized a climate change conference and invited only climate-change deniers.

The partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners truly is an unholy alliance. The climate-industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everybody. We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act. Spending a fortune on global carbon regulations will benefit a few, but dearly cost everybody else.

Mr. Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus, a think tank, and author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" (Knopf, 2007).

Plastic or reusable bag?

February 28th 2014, I posted this on Twitter...

You want to be #GREEN, use #plastic bags... forget about those "green" bags that use resources: http://t.co/Mt7A9d3Xlh
— Simon Filiatrault (@SimonFili) February 28, 2014

And got this response

@SimonFili I'm so confused... next you'll be telling me ethanol is not Green fuel but #nuclear is. #paradigmshifts
— Atomik Rabbit (@Atomikrabbit) March 1, 2014

This warrants a bit more explanation than just 140 chars twitter feeds contains.

The news I linked to is this:

Plastic bags can be recycled into diesel fuel

Here's some excerpt from this new:

• Given that each year an estimated 100 billion shopping bags are thrown away in the US alone, this is great news indeed.
• we can recover almost 80 percent fuel from it through distillation.”
• The process works by heating the plastic bags in an oxygen-free chamber to obtain the oil.
• through pyrolysis into different petroleum products, and have achieved their goal of producing a fuel that meets the standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel and biodiesel fuels.

So this is indeed great news, we can now recycle those plastic bags and renew them.

One may ask...
Does this become a renewable resource?

This is a complex question... like Atomik Rabbit commented... on Ethanol and Nuclear.

The important concept here to understand is about physical economy. Physical economy has nothing to do with money or maybe a little bit, since money is a mean to exchange work. But let's not get into this now.

Humans consume resources, that we understand.  What is less understood is that for each resources we use and "consume", we need energy to transform it.  I put consume in quote here because we don't really consume resources in the sense that the resources is gone (apart from energy), we only transformed it.

Take for example your toast in the morning.  You used energy to grow, extract, transform wheat in the form of bread, need energy again to cook it.  Then you consume the toast.  Did we loose that resource, the original wheat? No, we simply transformed it.  We did loose part of the energy in the process, because we probably used a mix of energy from fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro to do the transformation.  Part of the energy used was also transformed, like burning fossil, you create CO2 which is used by plants through photo-synthesis to grow.  The more they have the happier they are.

Other source of energy like hydro, you simply moved water around in a endless cycle.  For nuclear, you use the energy stored in unstable atoms by a fission process and created new elements, this is another type of transformation, but the energy used in the process, is lost in a sense, you cannot simply re-used once the work is done.  You may have added energy in form of heat to the system, but in the end, this will be lost in space.

So the question is, what type of energy make sense to use and which process/type is better for the whole physical economy of the planet ?   This seems a complex question, but in the end, you can boil it down to a simple "black box"!  Energy in - Energy out.

Here we see that for any energy system, you will have:

• An input of energy
• To create the system: Metal, concrete and other basic elements
• To feed the system: Wind, Solar, Nuclear, Fossil sources
• And output of energy
• In the form of resources (heat and elements) and electrical energy

The system that make more sense from a physical economy point of view is where the ratio of Out/In is the largest. This equate to energy density. The more dense the energy source, the more OUT you will get for the IN you put in.  This transform in cost, normally cents/kWh.

You also need to take into account the following:

• Availability of the resource to feed the system
• Impact on other system (humans, nature, , etc)

From a physical point of view, Nuclear fission used today in over 450 nuclear power stations, is the most dense form of energy.  Wind and Solar is the less dense. There's a factor of 6 million between Solar and Fission.

So from a physical economy point of view, the more dense you are the better.  This graph tells it all. I needed an exponential Y axis to compare all sources since the difference is so great!

So to get back to the original question, is it good that we can recycle plastic.. I would say, sure it's good, but at what cost.  We have for now plenty of Fossil resources, but for how long?  So from a storage perspective, it's probably better to recycle plastic if the cost is not prohibitive, but it would not make sense to use energy from fossil fuels (low density) to recycle plastic... If we could use the high density electricity from Nuclear to recycle all the world plastic cheaply to use in transportation where we don't have a good solution yet on the electric side... that would make sense. 

There's also the pyrolysis process that can recycle about anything... A plant is in operation in Ottawa, Canada from the company Plasco Energy.

For the question about ethanol... For sure, this has been proven many time that using corn (that uses large amount of fossil) to produce ethanol does not make sense in any way... it's been called a crime against humanity by the UN food program.

You will find on this blog many article about energy, nuclear and other types... Again, we need to have the best ratio of IN/OUT in any human endeavor.  Having a ratio close to 1 for solar/wind, does not make sense.  The ratio is greater for coal and gas, but why would you want to burn a limited resource where you can use a higher density one like nuclear.  Unfortunately, the anti nuclear and all the regulations have push the price point of nuclear over that of cheap shale gas... but this cheap shale gas will not stay cheap and available for ever.  So like any greedy wall street banker can tell you... there's money to be made now on the shale gas, but from a physical economy point of view, we should keep this resources for all other usage outside electricity generation.

About the reusable bag thing...  Here's an interesting information from wikipedia:

One reusable bag requires the same amount of energy as an estimated 28 traditional plastic shopping bags or eight paper bags. "If used once per week, four or five reusable bags will replace 520 plastic bags a year" according to Nick Sterling, research director at Natural Capitalism Solutions. ^[1] A study commissioned by the United Kingdom Environment Agency in 2005 but never published found that the average cotton bag is used only 51 times before being thrown away.^[2]

So you need to use your reusable bag, 28x.  And people use it only 51 times!  So if you recycle those plastic bags and recover 80% of the energy to be re-used in diesels transport, than not sure you save a lot with re-usable bags.... Again, the whole IN/OUT black-box need to be calculated to see what makes more sense... But for sure, I like better the re-usable bags... Can put more stuff in them and better handles!


So here's my quick answer to a simple 140 char comment!

Comments are welcome.

Simon

Analyse du plan énergétique d'Obama

Voici deux analyses du plan énergétique d'Obama et de son secrétaire à l'énergie Steven Chu.

Rod Adams du Atomic show analyse les questions soumissent à Steven Chu par le comité sénatorial sur l'énergie et ressources naturel.

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John Wheeler du podcast "This week in nuclear" compare l'éolien, le solaire et le nucléaire. Quel serait l'énergie total produite avec un invetissement de 350 milliard de dollars.




Voici mon commentaire sur l'analyse de John:

John,

Very good analysis... Thanks for the work.

Since around 87% of the total energy use in our societies is from fossil fuels.
Since all work we do cost energy.
Since burning fossil fuel pollute and has an impact on nature and human life.

We can therefore say that using those billions to build wind power will pollute and consume 2.2x more than nuclear
(26153/10309)*87% by the way, you are very generous in your calculation of wind.

The same calculation on solar give 12.6x more pollution and consumption of fossil fuel than nuclear.

We also need to talk about the fact the fossil fuel reserves are depleting fast. If we build those low density power source that pollute more and consume more fossil fuel, we are going to deplete the reserves before we have the time and resources to build all the nuclear infrastructure needed to support the world growing energy and desalination needs for fresh water.

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Après avoir étudié et écouté ces deux podcast, ma conclusion est que le monde ne comprend pas l'importance d'utiliser des sources d'énergie dense, non polluante et moins coûteuse.

Sensor Measurement Uncertainty and A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

At last we have some graphics to show that the temperature increase over the last 130 is not statistically significant.  When you can draw a straight line through your data and be inside the error bars, there is no way to safely confirm any temperature increase. Source

What is a temperature anomaly?
The term “temperature anomaly” means a departure from a reference value or long-term average. A positive anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was warmer than the reference value, while a negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was cooler than the reference value.

Grapgic: The global surface air temperature anomaly series through 2009, as updated on 18 February 2010, (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). The grey error bars show the annual anomaly lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C.


More technical on this study here.

Here's a good read from doctor Richard Lindzen : A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
Source

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.

For warming since 1979, there is a further problem. The dominant role of cumulus convection in the tropics requires that temperature approximately follow what is called a moist adiabatic profile. This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.

It turns out that there is a much more fundamental and unambiguous check of the role of feedbacks in enhancing greenhouse warming that also shows that all models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. Here, it must be noted that the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2).

The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative — strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion.

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man. This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no statistically significant net global warming for the last fourteen years. Modelers defend this situation, as we have already noted, by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming (viz Schwartz et al, 2010), and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution (Smith et al, 2007). Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past fourteen years is acknowledged. It should be noted that, more recently, German modelers have moved the date for ‘resumption’ up to 2015 (Keenlyside et al, 2008).

Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980′s, global cooling in the 1970′s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.

References:

Barkstrom, B.R., 1984: The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 65, 1170–1185.

Douglass,D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearsona and S. F. Singer, 2007: A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions, Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651

Keenlyside, N.S., M. Lateef, et al, 2008: Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Nature, 453, 84-88.

Lindzen, R.S. and Y.-S. Choi, 2009: On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, accepted Geophys. Res. Ltrs.

Lindzen, R.S., 2007: Taking greenhouse warming seriously. Energy & Environment, 18, 937-950.

Ramanathan, V., M.V. Ramana, et al, 2007: Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption, Nature, 448, 575-578.

Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E. Taylor, T. M. L. Wigley, J. R. Lanzante, S. Solomon, M. Free, P. J. Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R. Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood, and F. J. Wentz, 2008: Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere, Intl. J. of Climatology, 28, 1703-1722.

Schwartz, S.E., R.J. Charlson, R.A. Kahn, J.A. Ogren, and H. Rodhe, 2010: Why hasn’t the Earth warmed as much as expected?, J. Climate, 23, 2453-2464.

Smith, D.M., S. Cusack, A.W. Colman, C.K. Folland, G.R. Harris, J.M. Murphy, 2007: Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model, Science, 317, 796-799.

Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov, 2007: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288

Wong, T., B. A. Wielicki, et al., 2006: Reexamination of the observed decadal variability of the earth radiation budget using altitude-corrected ERBE/ERBS nonscanner WFOV Data, J. Climate, 19, 4028–4040.

Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advidory Council