WolfStock1

Yes perhaps, but one would also need to include the costs for lower lifespan of solar and wind, the costs for recycling the very hard-to-recycle materials, the environmental costs of the things that can't be recycled (e.g. carbon-fiber blades), the costs for acquiring the land (including the huge amount of community-by-community fights that inevitably happens), the environmental costs of dead and disturbed wildlife - birds, whales, etc. (how to quantify?), and of cleared balsa forests, the cost for additional land and steel required for additional transmission lines, etc. etc. Also keeping in mind that this does not scale linearly. As the scale of projects get larger and larger (e.g. Spanberger's proposal for 277,000 acres of solar in Virginia), it drives the costs of material - e.g. silver for solar panels - up, due to their relative scarcity. These things are not nearly as simple as people make them out to be, due to the immense amount of factors, which is why you have to look at the bigger picture, such as what's been happening in Europe (and to a smaller extent the US). I mean - just step back and think about it. Electricity prices (especially in Europe) have been rising - faster than inflation. Is it because of rising oil prices? No - it can't be, because we don't use oil for generating electricity. Is it because of the price of coal? No - that's generally been flat (save for a big spike in 2022) since 2008 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-prices. Is it because of the price of Natural gas? No - that's been *down* the last couple of decades: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm. Why then? Why have electricity prices been going up so much? Is it just coincidence that it happens to be happening at the same time as we've pushing for replacement of fossil plants with renewable? No. Keep in mind that this is *despite* the money that's been flowing into the renewable energy industry, vis a vis our taxes. Without that electricity prices would be even higher. (and lest one be tempted to blame the price increase on increased demand from AI and data centers - keep in mind that the electricity prices started getting higher long before that recent demand spike) P.S. that Fresh Energy link is from what is essentially a renewable energy lobbying organization - extremely biased. The EIA link doesn't really provide any useful information for the conversation.

Look at the data. Europe in general has had a heavier push for renewables, and has seen higher rises in electricity prices than has the US as a result. It's clear. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/climate-policy-reality-europe-energy-costs-gas-coal-11632754849 https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/europes-green-energy-rush-slashed-emissionsand-crippled-the-economy-e65a1a07 etc. etc. Don't just look at the costs of individual projects and "peak output" which is what's often widely touted. Peak output is meaningless by itself. The problem is that renewables can't exist in a vacuum - they are too unreliable. Thus *even* if renewables could be less expensive than fossil on a per-KW basis (it generally isn't) - the overall *solution* is more expensive, because the fossil cannot be removed - it has to also stay in place to pick up the slack when unreliable wind and solar aren't present. Taking a specific case near where I live. There's an 800-acre 100 MW solar plant being installed right here (northern VA). Cost is $200 million. Since the capacity factor of solar here is about 20%, that makes it roughly $10M per MW. Compare that with a natural gas plant just down the road - 774 MW (about 540 MW w/capacity factor of 70%), and a cost of $778M. Thus it cost about 4x as much to build - but will be producing about 28x the electricity, and much more reliably so. Then compare with Kemmerer SMR being built in Wyoming. Cost is estimated to be $4B; will be putting out about 345 MW. Thus will be about $11.5M per MW - about the same cost as solar. And that's the *first* SMR being built - costs of future ones will come down a lot. Look at the numbers. Look at the *actual* numbers, not the theoretical ones. Look at the constant stream of renewable projects that have to be canceled to high costs - either during construction or during maintenance. Look at the interplay between sources of energy. Look at geography. Look at weather. Look at where people live, and what it takes to get electricity from there to here. Look at infrastructure. Look at land space usage. Look at materials usage (rare earths, silver, etc. etc.). Look at life spans, cycles, and recycling of materials used for generation. Etc. etc.

There are many reasons for our energy cost increases, but the vast majority has been renewables. There is reams of data and articles on the subject, going back to before the current supply disruptions. Posting data from ERCOT is cherry picking. Texas is the one state that has the best blend of geographical conditions for wind and solar. As I say - low hanging fruit. Now do the same PJM (largest grid) and others. It's kind of like when people point out how Norway is so green with their renewables - well duh; they live in a population-sparse country with tons of mountains - perfect conditions for hydro. Most of the rest of the world doesn't have that geographical luxury.

I think you're generally reinforcing my point, which is that this thing is much harder than most people thought it would be, and we're making less progress than people thought we would even given the increase in the use of renewables that we've seen. You say "Renewables only began to move the needle in this decade.", but there is no "this decade" in that chart - there is only "this year", which happens to be an extreme outlier w/El Nino, showing anything other than the same trend upward. I think that's likely the main factor, and not primarily due to energy policy. Only time will tell though, in the years ahead. If it's truly due to energy policy then we should see a continued bending-down of the curve. My additional assertion would be - this is also turning out to be more economically disruptive than anticipated; vis a vis the increases we've seen in electricity prices, and the resulting economic headwinds that have been experienced, in particular by countries that have had more aggressive renewable policies.

I'm not seeing any slowing in the growth rate: (black line is a straight line) There *might* be a down year this year, but that's clearly just noise if so. Trends like this don't change that rapidly. Even the early 90's apparent flattening was clearly just a noise fluke.

I'm sensing a cognitive disconnect here. We keep hearing about supposedly-good shifts in CC trends, for years now, and yet this most-important trend - the end result - seems to be unaffected by these shifts:

You're wrong on pretty much all that. - China's labor costs are roughly 1/3 that of the US. And there is no such thing as "unskilled labor" any more - any thing that used to be unskilled is done by machines now. - China's environmental policies have generally been way worse than the US. They're doing things that in no way would be feasible on the US - displacing cities and filling valleys to build dams, thousands of square miles of solar panels in wetlands and lakes, transmission lines that run all over without community pushback, etc. etc. - Renewables have gotten vastly more subsidies on a per-unit-of-energy basis than fossil fuels, which is what counts. - While wind farms *can* be built near the coast - they provide tiny amounts of energy and at huge environmental and economic costs, which is why so many projects have been canceled lately, and why you see numbers like 2.3% for the PJM region, even though it abuts the coast. The only region that's gotten any kind of bang-for-the-buck on offshore wind is places Denmark and the North Sea, because they've got the perfect geographical conditions for it there. The rest of the world not so much. - Can't speak to your house situation, since there are a host of untold factors (e.g. your location etc). But I suspect if you took at honest look at all the factors, including things maintenance and replacement costs (not just your system but the whole roof), and subsidies - you'd find it's not as cost-advantageous as you think. Also you're talking one tiny part of overall energy consumption - a house. That doesn't help things like factories, aviation, commercial transportation, etc. that use lots of fossil fuels. And it doesn't help the 95% or so of people who have living conditions that aren't amenable to rooftop solar, like non-south-facing houses, and multi-story apartments - virtually anything with a city. You've bought into all the green lobby talking points. You need to look under the hood more at the whole story.

Yes and the vast majority of that was low-hanging fruit - in rural areas of a tyrannical country - China, where they have cheap labor and little regard for the environment or human rights. Here in the rest of world though things aren't so easy. As an example - here's the mix for the past month for PJM interconnect - the largest electrical grid in the US: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/pjm Only 2.6% was wind, and 3.7% solar. The vast majority is natural gas, nuclear, and coal. This is after several decades of big subsidies for renewables - still only 6% of the mix, in the largest grid in the country. Why, may you ask? Because a lot of people live here. It's just really hard to put solar and wind where people live. Because as I say - it take a lot of room, and a lot of resources. And people don't like it when your replace their local forests and farmlands with fields full of man made industrial stuff.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news then - coal's of course not the only fossil fuel in play: Net zero by 2050's not looking so likely. IMO the *only* thing that really has real potential to bend that curve down is nuclear - not solar, not wind, not hydro. Those can make dents, but only small ones. Physics - specifically energy density - really, really matters. If you don't have density you have to make up for it with size - but you can only go so big before you start running into problems.

Without hope of what? Re: the chart - that's only for electricity production. Now do *all* energy, and in nominal not percentage terms, which is what really matters. I'll start with coal, the use of which isn't actually going down:

Yeah good point / info about the earthquakes. This kind of thing (glacier collapse) seems pretty similar to earthquakes in that there's just no way to know why or when a given one happened at a given time and place - the variables (essentially infinite number of land connection points / stresses) are just too numerous, and basically just not measurable. With meteorology at least the inputs - while still numerous - are actually *measurable*.

Yes very true - it appears very evident that it did. Question is - was it a case of "hastening" (as in - it would have collapsed at some point, warming just made it collapse sooner than otherwise), or was it a case of "causing" (as in - if this level of warming hadn't happened - it would not have ever collapsed)? Probably will never know of course. Plenty of glacier collapses of course happened in pre-warming times, e.g. several big ones in the early 1800's in Switzerland, France, and Caucasus mountains.

Why do you say that? Theoretically AGW could have actually *delayed* this collapse. (devil's advocate - bear with me) If we go with the freeze/thaw loosening theory (seems quite plausible, at least as a contributing factor): From what I read - there can be some freeze/thaw cycles that happen underneath glaciers, due to some cyclical nature of their movement; they accelerate and decelerate some with the seasons; the changes in friction then resulting in some temperature swings. In some cases I would imagine there are glaciers for which the ground (bedrock etc.) underneath is typically thawed more frequently than it is frozen. In some areas in such cases an overall increase in atmospheric temperature can result in *less* freeze/thaw cycling, rather than more. This can be true on the surface, but could also even be more true at depths due to dampening of the atmospheric effect. An increase in freeze-thaw cycles would actually only actually happen at places that are specifically on the thresholds where for any given season the ground under the glacier sometimes - but not always - thaws in any given season, and where the thawed period is less than the melted period. In general - it seems like folks are doing their damndest to try and pin any and all natural disasters on AGW, when mostly they're likely just, well, natural, and would have happened whether AGW was a thing or not.

This stuff is complex enough, and the data incomplete enough, that I can't imagine anyone coming to a conclusion with any degree of confidence. I mean - we're talking about somehow mapping the details of the bedrock *beneath a glacier* no less, and trying to analyze the freeze-thaw cycles (if they existed in that location, under the glacier) over the past N years to determine if CC contributed to extra loosening that wouldn't have occurred otherwise without CC. That seems like an impossible task. The best we could do I think is to somehow measure the amount of these over time and see what is the trend. This is difficult of course due to the nature of the remoteness of the areas we're talking about; it would require a lot of satellite data details.

OK - you were sounding sensible up until those last couple of paragraphs. Entire Greenland ice mass "sliding off" and causing 22-ft global tsunamis that would kill 3.8 billion people? Not even suspension-of-disbelief Hollywood goes to that lengths of ridiculousness. Sorry but it's crap like this that feeds deniers. They like to point to dire predications that didn't come true, and just deny the whole thing as a result. Suggest you revisit your strategy, because it's counter-productive, and very un-realistic/un-scientific, and it does your discipline a disservice. (assuming that you actually are a meteorologist)

Yeah wow that's weird. Wouldn't a calving event though cause the level to go up, not down? (given that this a measure of sea ice, not land ice) I believe that this measure allows for ice that has broken free but is still within the area of measure. Perhaps a large berg just exited the area being measured, and thus is not longer considered "Antarctic sea ice"?

Re: Putin and Trump - that's politics, not science. Re: Observatories - these have *always* been in place high in the mountains, since long before CC became a thing. E.g. Mauna Kea in 1901, Kitt Peak in 1960, etc. Mountain air has *always* been known to be cleaner/clearer than seaside air since the beginning of time, and that has nothing to with CC. It's basic physics / meteorology, as well as where people live. It's actually the opposite of of what you claim - part of the reason why mountain air is so clear is ironically *because* for most people it's more desirable to live on the coast. So - perhaps try again with your reasoning.

O....K.... Sorry, but lots of really wacked out stuff here. I'll happily buy land near sea level from anyone who happens to own it and shares your viewpoint. I kinda like the beach - good sunsets and waves and all that (to answer your "why" point). I won't, however, be investing in any boreal farmland futures.

Look at the context here though - the climate change discussion thread. If this were a "weather events" thread - I would agree that there's no implication of a tie-in between the big France wildfire spike, and I wouldn't have made my point about having to look at the bigger picture. But since this is in fact a climate change discussion thread, and since there are lots of assertions out there that CC causes increase in wildfire activity - it seems reasonable that there's an assertion of implied tie-in with that set of stats that was posted; vis a vis France's big spike in wildfires being due to CC. My point then of course being that no - it's not due to CC (the context of the thread), it's due to a localized weather event (and possibly other factors such as bad fire control management).

How about we look at *all* areas: Africa: Americas: Asia: Europe: Oceania:

So you're saying CC's effect are somehow limited to the EU, and do not include Russia? Sorry - that's still cherry picking data. The more data you include, the better picture you get. Stop excluding data that doesn't fit your narrative. (Also Nature isn't exactly an unbiased reliable source. Also - "is expected to"? Since CC is already here - if it results in wildfire growth - shouldn't this already be happening? Why would this need to be a prediction, rather than an observation?)

Indeed - not an expert on the subject but that's almost certainly the case. Not just better firefighting equipment so much, but better detection and tracking methods (primarily satellite). Of note is that, in the US at least, there are essentially no more manned fire towers - they're all just obsolete and for tourists these days. That plus there are more people living in areas that used to be remote, thus it's less likely that given fire will grow to unmanageable size before it gets noticed. To the subject at hand though - in general it's completely invalid to point to localized (time or region) flare-ups of wildfire activity and blame them on climate change, since the overall trend is downward. MMGW deniers will point to this and assume / assert that the data cherry-picking is done for all data. As such - my advice to anyone trying to use data to prove MMGW - don't use wildfire data, because it's not a valid indicator.

Re: "Wildfire swept" - I hope people don't think that's due to CC. Because if so - look what Europe as a whole shows: It's an extremely low wildfire year across Europe as a whole. https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.statistics/seasonaltrend

OK thanks. I see the description of the two: "Sea ice extent is the integral sum of the areas of all grid cells with at least 15% ice concentration, while sea ice area is the integral sum of the product of ice concentration and area of all grid cells with at least 15% ice concentration." I *think* I get the distinction but not sure. Is it the case that "extent" include 100% of every grid cell, for cells with > 15% concentration; whereas "area" includes only the area of ice itself within all those cells? (thus why extent is larger than area) (I had been using the NSIDC page which only shows extent - https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph)

Guess I haven't seen the other - the actual area thing. Got a link? I'm wondering how they would define that. Presumably the 15% thing is because there's no well-defined line of the "edge of the ice" eventually the ice starts just breaking up into a bunch of floating icebergs, that extend out for hundreds or even thousands of miles (all the way down to Bermuda even sometimes); how would one measure the "area" of such a thing, especially on a daily basis? Would they just sum up the total of the surface area of all icebergs? (including "the big one in the middle") That seems like an impossible task.