Non-renewable energy

Agreed. I think Mr wilkinson must think that climate change is only affecting Australia, for being naughty? Sure, exported coal is not good, but will decrease.

China is taking great strides, in progress towards to a lower carbon footprint. It will take time, but they are busy (at installing low carbon energy) with far greater installation of low-carbon generation than in any other country in the planet.

The western economies have moved their ‘dirty’ industries to China to give the impression of being lower carbon than they were. Labour was cheaper, too. But remember, it is western society with a throw-away attitude that is driving imports. Cheapness, not longevity, being the priority apparently.

I believe the following to be true although I can't provide references without going to more trouble than I care to:

reliable, standardised temperature records for the last hundred years are available for only very few places, such as the UK and Eastern US, there are scant records for most of the planet, so how do we know what global temperatures have been doing; senior climate scientists whose research doesn't support the prevailing dogma have been refused publication and hounded out of jobs; computer models of chaotic systems are exquisitely sensitive to imput variables; those who decide what variables to imput are scientists in whose interests it is to support the prevailing narrative. The most rabid groups screaming for "action on climate change", demanding that we listen to the science, and who likely eschewed maths, physics and chemistry at school, will rapidly retreat from the much simpler science of genetics, into magical thinking, and will abuse and vilify you, if you suggest that XX = female and XY = male, or that someone with blond hair and blue eyes isn't " indigenous".

I tend to believe that human augmented warming is real, but I worry about the forces at work. Ultimately, the planet has only a single problem: vastly too many humans. You won't get politicians or ecologists going anywhere near that one.

Simon you have just mentioned the unmentionable elephant in the room - well nearly 8 billion of them to be nearer the mark!

However, I have seen interviews with noted climate scientists who have proclaimed, with a straight face, that humans do not contribute to global warming it is only their activities that cause this. They then go on to condemn farm animals as shameless contributors to green house gas production. Could these be possibly the rantings of religious vegans?

Apart from the breathing, belching and other unmentionables expelled by humans, the loss of habitat, destruction of soil and watercourses, lakes and marshes are all a result of the gross overpopulation of all of the continents and most of the islands on the planet. That includes Australia which, although it has an extremely low population density, we have still managed to irreversibly damage most of the more benign parts and a large area of the parts that are not quite so benign.

Since Australia has a low birth rate population growth is largely determined by the immigration rate but while we have a housing driven economy in which predominantly migrants build houses for other migrants using imported building materials and then fill them with imported appliances and government, industry and the unions think this is a good thing it is unlikely that things will change in the short term.

There endeth today's sermon ( well tomorrow's actually - this is just my first draft ).

Pero

reliable, standardised temperature records for the last hundred years are available for only very few places, such as the UK and Eastern US, there are scant records for most of the planet, so how do we know what global temperatures have been doing.

I spent quite a time helping to transcribe Metrological data from Navy Warships from all over the world for a citizen science project on climate change. High quality data exists for much of the planet from sources such as this for the time span you talk of. Your statement seems to be erronious and I see you don't cite a source. The last ship I did was based in South Africa in the decades befor the first world war.

regards Martin

Phil's post contains bloopers! For example:

• As any of you who remember the 1970s may remember, there was scientific concensus then too. All the scientists were in agreement, the planet was heading for another ice age, and we were all going to have to get used to living on a much colder planet... only one reason scientists address the senate, and that is to obtain funding for research. Funding was granted, and lots of scientists started doing research that would ensure the continuation of the funding. This misunderstands science. Science collects evidence, tests it against a hypothesis, and if evidence match predictions hypothesis is promoted to Theory. Science gets to the truth in steps, as early ideas stand or fall. 1970's evidence based on studies of the effect of Thermonuclear War suggested global cooling was more likely than heating due to large quantities of dust and smoke in the upper atmosphere - nuclear winter. The significance of green-house gases wasn't understood. 1970's ideas being wrong is irrelevant: different time, people & situation. It's the evidence now that matters. Claiming scientists report global warming only in order to get funding is dodgy. Are 'they' really paying science to mislead the public for purposes unknown? Surely leaders would be happy if global warming was fake.
• CO2 is NOT A POLLUTANT, it is plant food. True CO² is plant food. False it isn't a pollutant. Put a plastic bag over your head and see how long you last. Not all plants thrive in high CO², and many other lifeforms die. Many substances are necessary to life in small quantities only. Nitric Acid made by lightning is a fertiliser. Water isn't normally bad for people, but...
• Has anyone considered what happens when the planet warms a paltry few degrees? Yes, because solar energy drives weather. Phil claims a few degrees are 'paltry' but its the amount of heat that matters, not temperature. The seas are about 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometres of water. Raising sea temperature by 1°C requires an enormous amount of heat: 4.184kJ per kilogram or 5794840000000000000MJ, equivalent to the heat released by exploding 1,385,000,000,000,000 one megaton Hydrogen bombs. Sea heat is a problem because it does work as it cools by moving air and seawater on a huge scale. The resulting weather isn't spread evenly, effects are concentrated wherever the consequence of doing work ends up. The accumulation of weather adds up to climate change, which varies by location. 1 degree is a lot of energy
• no doubt that the climate is changing, because it has always changed. Yes, but the flaw is assuming that previous events were acceptable, and so man-made climate change will be OK. Not so, many civilisations failed due to persistent bad weather wrecking their agriculture. The last ice age made the British Isles uninhabitable. Lasted 100,000 years and only ended 12000 years ago. Whatever causes climate change, it's bad. Self inflicted change is stupid.
• In the seventies after a night out in Sheffield, we used to drive up to Wolley edge services, and sit watching the Twin steel towns of Sheffield and Rotheram, it was like looking into Dantes inferno, and when you consider that it went on 24 hours a day, and probably had done on some scale for about 300 years, one can only imagine what the carbon footprint was... No need to imagine it. The amount of coal extracted in the UK is well known. Apart from accounts kept by buyers and sellers, geologists can get within 20% rather easily. At the time it was believed that the oceans and vegetation would absorb CO² as Phil suggests. Not totally wrong, but CO² produced by early industry is still in the air, and current activity is adding more faster than the Victorians. Although much diluted CO² has a disproportionate greenhouse effect.

When looking at evidence it's useful to weight it. Iffy:

• Vested interests
• Personal experience
• Anecdote, politics, propaganda and opinion
• Narrow range of time and/or circumstance
• Small samples
• Conspiracy theories
• Extremists
• Websites
• Logic errors: "A cat is a mammal; dogs are mammals; therefore dogs are cats."

Better:

• Published science, with open data, methods & conclusions
• Independent reports from reputable organisations who identify sources
• Statistical analysis of large datasets
• Multiple reputable reports coming to the same general conclusion.
• Reviewed material
• Numbers not words

Best: understandings reached by application of Scientific Method - repeatable experiments failed to show anything wrong. Although global warming isn't nailed down to that extent there is no scientific evidence proving the hypothesis is wrong.

Low-quality opinion and 'facts' can be published free on the internet even if the author is a swivel-eyed loon#, while authoritative information has to be paid for. Most of us believe cheap websites, pub blather, & Daily Wail rollocks rather than pay money for a difficult to understand Scientific Report.

Dave

# Even me.

I do remember the 1970s, and there was no such consensus. In fact there was a debate about whether warming or cooling would happen with a significant bias towards warming by the 80s. This reflected that we had much less data 50 years ago and the amount of warming was small enough not to be a clear signal. We now have data that goes back vastly further and in more detail and with greater confidence.

I think the most valuable asset in the face of so much data and contradictory opinions is an open mind. It pays to look at the data (like the diagram below). The most useful site I have found as a repository of links to meaningful data and modelling is skepticalscience.com/

I must avoid proselytising, but it strikes me that the sort of intelligent, enquiring people who populate this forum are largely the sort of 'informed laymen'* able to look at the evidence and contribute constructively to conversations in the communities you live in. Not seeking to ridicule or belittle, but helping our friends and neighbours understand we do have choices, what those choices are and what their consequences might be.

Therefore, I'm happy to allow this debate to get a little more vigorous than usual, as long as it remains respectful and avoid the party political. For example please don't blame individuals for actions by nations that you don't agree with or making unnecessary digs at people's beliefs or lifestyles.

Neil

*you are mostly men.

The argument will always be skewed by vested interests, and by personal prejudices, so the truth is going to VERY hard to find..

The climate of the earth has cycled for thousands of years..

As human beings, we have spent centuries burning fossil fuels

From the first living being, we and our way way back forebears have been exhaling CO2 , and methane, etc into the atmosphere. Not to mention volcanic eruptions and wildfires, possibly exacerbated by mankind.

Thankfully, plant life has been removing and using some of the CO2.

However more and more mammals exhaling CO2 and reducing the area of plant life, must increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere, are likely to result in warming to add to, or deduct from, natural climate cycles.

In my mind, generating electricity by using (Predictable ) tidal power, and wave power (Always there in some amplitude ) deserve much more research and implementation. But possibly the implementation will cause an increase in pollution before we start to obtain the benefits. (A bit like a capital investment gaining interest )

This thread is contributing to global warming, by the heat that it is obviously generating among all the contributors, and by the useage of electricity needed to maintain it. Mea Culpa!

Howard

It has been stated the major problem is too many people on the planet. Agreed. However, as the ever increasing world population grows at an ever increasing rate so will the demand on fuel, food and water for those people, and therefore conflict will follow as those people will require ever more fuel, food and water from every diminishing sources to survive. So the argument would follow that world population requires to be drastically reduced and stay reduced.

However, be careful in what you wish for.

In the past the big reducers to population (but on a far too localised scale to apply to the world at large) have been disease and war, think back to events like the Black Death, the Plague of London, the Spanish Flu and the two World Wars - each did their share of reducing the population in big numbers. But, the way the population is going we are going to need a much more evil "Covid", far more world widespread and deadly than the current rona, and/or WW3. The present Covid came out of no-where, whats to say another bigger and more evil one could be coming down the track. And there are enough risky and/or over-ambitious nations in the world with very nasty weapons to suggest WW3 may be a possibility some time in the not too distant future. Not nice thoughts.

Place your bets on what will happen next.

Happy days!

Chris

I'm going back to my pint and happier thoughts!!

I opened this thread simply stating an inconvenient fact which few understand , politicians especially,that no matter if we install three times more wind turbines , they produce near to no electricity in times of static high pressure over the UK.

So, an equivalent GW back-up of non-renewable power has to be available in that situation.

WE know that, THEY do not.

In 1968 I was lucky enough to visit Mao's China , twice, for a few days.

The streets of Shanghai were full of bicycle rickshaws, cars were rare.

But what I saw was a nation with a common goal and, guess what, a 'population control' policy.

Q E D.

In 1969 , a book was produced by the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council with the title

Resources and Man.

On every subject, the future median predictions up to the year 2000 are chillingly accurate.

And it says, " only Japan, Hungary and Bulgaria have a birth-rate to sustain a stable population".

Our policies have only moved the pollution to China, instead of removing it at source, here.

But then we all know that.

Interesting about the naval ship data Martin but I wonder if they used Stevenson screens, and anyway, I was referring to continental land masses.

We in NSW are presently enduring an unprecedented (that word again) heat wave in what officially is still spring until 1st December. Sydney and most of the state had 40+ degrees yesterday, overnight min of 29-30, and 40 odd today. A cooling Southerly change is due this evening. Summers have got hotter in my lifetime and winters milder, that is certain whatever the drivers.

No you did not. You actually simply wrote:

Today now.

Coal 7% Wind 1.7%

Other stuff red-lining to get to 39GW

Don't switch your kettles on all at once.

Not quite the same? Do think, and understand, that high pressure over the UK likely means there is ‘low pressure’ somewhere else around the globe. Energy can be moved around the planet (think tankers for oil and natural gas/LPG, etc). Think international electrical transfers like those in current use between European and other countries.

Clearly to all, I would hope, that (not mentioned in your initial thread) there is no solar gain during the hours of darkness (although some have claimed to get some photovolyaic-derived electrical energy at night under certain conditions). That is no different than the simple fact that wind is not always copiously available - except that it is decidedly more predictable.

However, with multiples of excess energy converters (turbines/ solar panels, solar concentators, etc there is absolutely no reason why a couple of weeks (or more) of stored energy could not be accumulated during periods of glut.

At present, not much better than a 70% conversion rate, energy surplus to immediate needs, harvested from free sunlight (solar, wind and hydro are very much dependent on our star as the primary energy source), could easily be converted to hydrogen and stored (exhausted natural gas wells used to hold years of gas supply and we clearly currently store natural gas before use). Or it could be liquified (like in the tankers that currently transport it around the planet) or stored as other commodities (liquid ammonia is just one possibility).

Voila! An energy store that could then be used for power generation? Burning, without using fossil fuels. Clearly not as cheap as raping the planet of its natural resources (as we humans are doing at present) but a viable alternative. One really just need to open our eyes to the possibilities of turning on our kettles (not all at once, as that could overload the power generation side - like half time during world cup football match finals) without burning fossil fuels.

Do go away and think positive for once. Think which, in the long run, might be better for the human race - using up all the planet’s natural resources of oil, coal and gas (while further polluting the atmosphere we breathe) or using the renewable energy from our Star (that will run out at some time in the distant future, of course) which is far, far in excess of human-kind’s daily needs. Just think about the possibilities for the future....

Edited By not done it yet on 29/11/2020 07:36:07

Well not it isnt. So no it's not.

Repeated surveys of published peer-reviewed articles, papers and studies by the world's climate scientists have established that 97 per cent agree that manmade global warming is a very real problem. That is the truth, according to the experts who know the truth from an internet rumour.

The myth that those scientists, all thousands and thousands of them worldwide, are only saying that in order to get grant money, ie vested interest, is clearly ludicrous. Most are tenured academics who do not rely on grant money for existence. For those who do rely on grant money for a non-tenured existence, the anti-climate-change private sector has massive amounts of grant money available too.

The fossil fuel industry has millions upon millions available. We are not seeing many scientists taking their money and coming up with a pro-fossil fuel result. Only that three percent of contrarians and outliers, many of whom work for the fossil-fuel funded Heritage Institute and similar right wing "think tanks" with their vested interests.

Plus, the way science works, new theories that oust old ones are more likely to get funded. That's how progress is made. That's why many of the 3 per cent of contrarians are giving it a shot.

There is absolutely no evidence at all to support the myth of widespread scientific bias on the grounds of grant funding for pro-climate-change science. It is only unfounded supposition.

Edited By Hopper on 29/11/2020 08:14:53

Hi, no matter what energy we use, it all has a cost and that cost is not only a financial cost. Every living thing on this planet needs to exploit the earth's resources one way or another and nothing is absolutely free. In my mined, even wind power is taking natural energy out of the global climate system, OK so wind power has been used for decades, but not on the scale that it is currently and not really as wind farms. I think our biggest problem is the throw away trend and reusing and recycling everything we can, should be adopted much more widely. The trend over the last 20 or more years of having the latest computer or mobile phone for example, that is, it seems to be, once you've bought it and started to use it, it's already out of date. So I think one of the biggest questions to ask is; is our ratio of consumption over time. getting too big.

Regards Nick.

The problem is not really too many people. There is enough arable land and water to support a much larger population, if managed well and using modern farming methods and fertilisers etc.

The problem is too many people living a western, middle-class, high-energy consumption lifestyle. IE, getting out of poverty and living better. Look at China. The carbon footprint there is not just because the West outsourced their dirty industry there, but thanks to manufacturing, 400 million Chinese have joined the world's middle-class, living in houses with electrical appliances, hot water etc and driving cars burning petrol. And a similar but smaller number in India. Plus Africa and South America are modernising fast, thus burning more fossil fuels to power it.

The answer is not to reduce the world population, which we can't control anyway, but to reduce the carbon output of the burgeoning wealthy middle class. Hence renewables etc.

History shows that as nations become more wealthy, birth rates decline due to availability of birth control, higher education levels, women having more say over their lives and so on. So allowing the middle class to continue growing worldwide will slow population growth, which will also slow carbon output etc. We just have to make sure that growing middle class doesnt poison the planet in the meantime. Hence, renewables.

Absolutely. At a time when we should be working hard on reducing manufacturing carbon footprints, things are being made increasingly to last only a short time then get a new one.

things are being made increasingly to last only a short time then get a new one.

A governmental issue from the point of taxation - replacement items are more easily taxed and suppliers are employed (even if only ‘middle-men&rsquo.

A manufacturing issue of trade - long-lived items is not good for their future business.

An efficiency issue - whole life costs need to be considered by purchasers.

A buyer's issue in that they want cheapness - often at any cost overall (short-sightedness, even to the point of ‘buy cheap, buy twice&rsquo.

A fashion issue - people want to ‘keep up with the Joneses (as they used to say).

Solve that lot and the place might be better for it.🙂

Where I worked, for some time, plant from the 1920s was still in use. Surpassed by energy efficiency eventually, but it took until the 1980s before the earlier technology was effectively surpassed and out-dated. Some of that was simply industry trading agreements (price fixing).

For most threads it does not matter, but for threads like this it might be useful if posters would please indicate where in the world they live as this would help the rest of us to understand their viewpoint better.

Rod

Where in the world do you live, Rod ?

MichaelG.

Michael,

Cheshire, England. Our weather is not as extreme as some posters on here apparently endure.

Rod

Thanks for that, Rod

... as you will see from my public profile, we are in the same county.

MichaelG.