ABG: U.S. carbon emissions spike in 2018 after years of falling

[WetEV]

The above looks like a post that I made a while ago, but it should have come from me, not from WetEV. Did I accidentally edit an existing post, or is this some sort of glitch? Since I no longer see the post I replied to, I suspect the former. If so I apologize! Let me know which it is, WetEV and I'll see if there is anything I can do.

You might check IP addresses. Might have been a Russian Troll, coming in on a VPN. Or maybe some other type of Troll.

And do keep your sense of humor. Even when Trolls don't have one.

[SageBrush]

The believers who have not been formally educated in green power generation will continue to insist that wind turbines and solar power will replace all fossile and fissile fuel power.

From the fellow who cannot perform simple arithmetic. You are no more educated than my turtle. However, if you would actually read and understand academic studies like this recent one from Stanford (that is a world leading University, by the way)

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/08/ne ... le-energy/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8118301526

You might actually get a clue. In any case, you are as usual distorting the view. Storage, place and time shifting, and supply signals are integral parts of the clean, renewable energy puzzle.

[RegGuheert]

From the fellow who cannot perform simple arithmetic. You are no more educated than my turtle. However, if you would actually read and understand academic studies like this recent one from Stanford (that is a world leading University, by the way)

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/08/ne ... le-energy/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8118301526

You might actually get a clue. In any case, you are as usual distorting the view. Storage, place and time shifting, and supply signals are integral parts of the clean, renewable energy puzzle.

WetEV spoke of pseudo-scholarship recently. The Stanford "work" you reference is an excellent example of that. Simply put, you cannot simply assume that the production of dispersed wind farms can be modeled as Markov Chains. As a result, you cannot simply add more wind turbines and then expect to get level electricity production from the some of them.

Put another way, the wind often does not blow over a VERY wide range. When that happens, the production will be necessarily low. I have provided to data from Germany which shows this clearly. Data for the whole of Europe is very similar to the Germany data. In other words, all of Europe tends to be calm when Germany is calm.

As more and more Germans begin dying in the cold, you can be assured that this insanity will be stopped by the people.

[Oilpan4]

The believers who have not been formally educated in green power generation will continue to insist that wind turbines and solar power will replace all fossile and fissile fuel power.

From the fellow who cannot perform simple arithmetic. You are no more educated than my turtle. However, if you would actually read and understand academic studies like this recent one from Stanford (that is a world leading University, by the way)

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/08/ne ... le-energy/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8118301526

You might actually get a clue. In any case, you are as usual distorting the view. Storage, place and time shifting, and supply signals are integral parts of the clean, renewable energy puzzle.

It only seems simple to you because you think 1 watt of solar or wind generating replaces 1 watt of coal or natural gas generating capacity.
With that much blind optimism any thing seems possible.
Energy only seems like a puzzle to you becauae you don't understand it.

[Oilpan4]

Awwe that science direct link is cute.
I'm surprised an adult can still believe in fairy tales.

Then cleantechnica literally appears to be a propaganda site for clean power. No real numbers or anything useful.

Now that I know you study propaganda, fiction and various tripe, alternative energies equivalent of the tabloid magazines as your source material, it explains everything.

[iPlug]

Not sure why Germany keeps coming up. While not as optimistic as Sagebrush, his argument is the more compelling and supported by data. An exception (if there is one) does not prove that it can not work. Examples such as that already shown (California) are enough to disprove an assertion that it can not work.

The United States is most certainly not Germany in terms of wind resources and variability; it would be a hefty mistake to extrapolate from it.

This study examines the spatial and temporal variability of wind speed at 80 m above ground (the average hub height of most modern wind turbines) in the contiguous United States using Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) data from 1979 to 2011. The mean 80-m wind exhibits strong seasonality and large spatial variability, with higher (lower) wind speeds in the winter (summer), and higher (lower) speeds over much of the Midwest and U.S. Northeast (U.S. West and Southeast). Trends are also variable spatially, with more upward trends in areas of the Great Plains and Intermountain West of the United States and more downward trends elsewhere. The leading EOF mode, which accounts for 20% (summer) to 33% (winter) of the total variance and represents in-phase variations across the United States, responds mainly to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in summer and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the other seasons. The dominant variation pattern can be explained by a southerly/southwesterly (westerly) anomaly over the U.S. East (U.S. West) as a result of the anomalous mean sea level pressure (MSLP) pattern. The second EOF mode, which explains about 15% of the total variance and shows a seesaw pattern, is mainly related to the springtime Arctic Oscillation (AO), the summertime recurrent circumglobal teleconnection (CGT), the autumn Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), and the winter El Niño Modoki. The anomalous jet stream and MSLP patterns associated with these indices are responsible for the wind variation.


See numerous figures in the link:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/1 ... 14-00322.1

It is not true that the United States is homogenous with regard to windspeed on any given day. There are those who watch such things periodically, so it must be corrected for the unsuspecting who would just take someones word on it (take a look at the high variability today, for example):

http://hint.fm/wind/

Quite fitting that as of writing this post the upper midwest and northeast are getting a very generous amount of wind to help them with the record cold, eh?

And never mind the straw man that anyone here is suggesting that we go only with onshore wind. Overlay this with offshore wind and solar and other resources has been the only point mentioned.

[GRA]

In his "Energy Transitions", Vaclav Smil evaluates one of Jacobson's and Delucchi's (Note, in an earlier post, which I think was upthread although I can't find it, I mis-remembered it as Isaacson) previous studies, which claimed that it would be possible to go 100% fossil-fuel free by 2050 (this was 2009). Smil pointed out not only most of the systems of the sizes used in the study either didn't exist yet or were just entering service, and that even if they did exist, the numbers called for in that study would require scaled-up deployments amounting to 1000s of %, all of which would supposedly take place within 21 and 41 years, and cost was said to be no problem! Here's part of the abstract of that study, which gives the numbers required:

. . . 3,800,000 5 MW wind turbines, 49,000 300 MW concentrated solar plants, 40,000 300 MW solar
PV power plants, 1.7 billion 3 kW rooftop PV systems, 5350 100 MW geothermal power plants, 270
new 1300 MW hydroelectric power plants, 720,000 0.75 MW wave devices, and 490,000 1 MW tidal
turbines can power a 2030 WWS world that uses electricity and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.
Such a WWS infrastructure reduces world power demand by 30% and requires only 0.41% and 0.59%
more of the world’s land for footprint and spacing, respectively. We suggest producing all new energy
with WWS by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social
and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to
that today.

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jac ... icyPt1.pdf

From memory, Smil pointed out that there were no 5 MW turbines at the time (the largest one now is 9.5 MW offshore, but the structural issues get harder and harder to solve as you try and go bigger), no 300MW CSP plants (IIRR Ivanpah was the first @ 392 MW, the Mojave parabolic trough plant is rated at 354 MW, and those remain the largest in the world as of 2017), no wave generators or tidal turbines of the size given (ignoring siting limitations, the power density of these sources, and the near total lack of any commercially deployed units at the time and mostly still true since) and so on through the list.

The land use claims are equally airy-fairy. So, while we will probably be able to do it eventually and can and IMO should speed the process up considerably, studies like that one fall in the realm of fantasy. Hopefully the more recent one here has been toned down to better reflect real-world constraints.

[Oilpan4]

I'm not saying to only go with on shore wind.
I just pointed out the fact that the nimby useful idiots have successfully blocked every large off shore wind project proposed so far.
The only over the water wind power capacity in the US has right now is the one 30Mw experimental off shore wind power farm and that was only completed within the last 2 years. It was an uphill battle just to get that.

When I call them useful idiots, that's not a compliment.

I already said off shore wind is more expensive, but it sees higher utilization, is more predictable and tends to run well into the night when compared to over land turbines. It's also located right next to gigantic population centers, instead of being out in the middle of no where like most of the over the land wind power.

I got no problem with any kind of wind power. I have had my wind turbine climb certification and I have had wind farms try to recruit me.
I was planning on working on wind turbines, but took a job that stated out paying $6 more dollars an hour than a wind tech job and was an hour less driving, each way.

[RegGuheert]

Not sure why Germany keeps coming up.

Germany keeps coming up because the German people were sold the same simplistic beliefs that you guys are dishing out. They were told that the wind varied spatially and that sufficient interconnects would allow it to even out across the country.

Now that much of Europe is covered with wind generators, we know the truth: wind production *never* achieves 100% of nameplate and often drops to below 10% across the entire continent. In addition, the landscapes in Germany and elsewhere have been destroyed by these monstrosities. Forests are leveled for their construction. Far from being an environmental "solution" it is more of an environmental nightmare.

Finally, I will point out that Germany really doesn't intend to get rid of fossil fuels in 19 years. Instead, they intend to increase their dependence on Vladimir Putin by building Nord Stream 2:

"I believe we would be well advised to admit that if we phase out coal and nuclear energy then we have to be honest and tell people that we'll need more natural gas," said Merkel in Davos last week.

She said that natural gas would "play a greater role for another few decades", and referred to the discussion about Russian gas.

[RegGuheert]

. . . 3,800,000 5 MW wind turbines, 49,000 300 MW concentrated solar plants, 40,000 300 MW solar
PV power plants, 1.7 billion 3 kW rooftop PV systems, 5350 100 MW geothermal power plants, 270
new 1300 MW hydroelectric power plants, 720,000 0.75 MW wave devices, and 490,000 1 MW tidal
turbines can power a 2030 WWS world that uses electricity and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.
Such a WWS infrastructure reduces world power demand by 30% and requires only 0.41% and 0.59%
more of the world’s land for footprint and spacing, respectively. We suggest producing all new energy
with WWS by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social
and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to
that today.

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jac ... icyPt1.pdf

I have to wonder how anyone could consider such a system an improvement over what we have today. In reality, it would be a huge step backwards both in terms of the environmental impact and the cost of energy.