The harder the Alarmists try ...

[skierinvermont]

Philip,

I don't have a great deal of time today, so I will be brief. You seem to not have a good understanding about the nuclear industry and what it takes to build a plant. It is highly regulated, thus it is not a free market industry. It is difficult to get capital to flow toward nuclear energy when it can take 15-20 years to get a permit, if you can even get one. While I agree that regulation is required since public risk CAN be great, I also feel that many unreasonable rules are in place to prevent nuclear plants from being built unduly. Overall, a better lot of govt officials would be helpful in turning away these specious fear-caused regulations. I hope that answers your question.

As for wind energy, allow me to answer them in turn:

1. I don't like their looks, and since they are inefficient forms of energy harvesting, I would prefer they not stain the horizon. They are just about the least efficient energy source, and I've yet to see independent verification that the payback is better than anything else out there, and under a 20 year life cycle cost payback.
2. I defy you to drive by ANY large scale wind farm in CA and not find grease leaking from the casing on a MAJORITY of the windmills. Same probably goes for any other farm. Why the EPA hasn't fined the sh!t out of these operators is beyond me. I personally know a guy that repairs those things and he claims they're dirty as hell, and the grease is all over the ground.
3. Lower avian mortality is not none, but I am happy to hear that it is lower at least.

All-in-all, not a good technology to spend good money on. I prefer solar farms or nuclear for "clean" energy.

I've been reading a fair amount about nuclear lately and even assuming the regulatory process were streamlined, it is still more expensive than coal. Read the report I posted earlier.

Also, you're completely wrong about wind. Wind is about as cheap as coal to build. Solar is much more expensive.

[Sunny and Warm]

I've been reading a fair amount about nuclear lately and even assuming the regulatory process were streamlined, it is still more expensive than coal. Read the report I posted earlier.

Also, you're completely wrong about wind. Wind is about as cheap as coal to build. Solar is much more expensive.

when in my post did I ever use the words cheap or expensive regarding wind or solar.

Here is what a capitalist would say:

They are just about the least efficient energy source, and I've yet to see independent verification that the payback is better than anything else out there, and under a 20 year life cycle cost payback.

[bobbutts]

no, I'm saying when you ask a random group of Americans the open-ended question of what they thing the biggest challenge/problem facing the country right now the obvious answer isn't going to be "global warming". it's clear from the response history that priorities shift over time.

the rest of your post is gobblety-gook you just made up as it has zero to do with this poll question or with the poll itself.

If I'm parsing your post correctly, you are saying that the poll results we see would be expected, and that the poll/result says nothing valuable about how Americans feel or don't feel about agw? I am no expert on polling, I'm willing to accept your opinion there.

Gobblety-gook or no though, these questions are interesting to me.

We have a group of media and politicians saying things that would suggest that agw should be considered a dire threat that compels immediate action, yet it's not considered that way by the public within the context of other issues. The disconnect there is the central point of this thread, no?

I guess what I'm saying is regardless of the validity of the polling or your opinion of the rest of my post, I'm buying the hypothesis that agw activists are failing to convince people that the problem is as serious as they're reporting. And that a significant factor is loss of trust due to alarmist predictions that people simply don't believe.

[skierinvermont]

They are just about the least efficient energy source, and I've yet to see independent verification that the payback is better than anything else out there, and under a 20 year life cycle cost payback.

And what I am telling you is that wind offers as great a payback as coal, even excluding any subsidies, which is why it is 35% of new power capacity in the U.S. annually, more than coal or gas combined, the limiting factor being project approval and land availability). Solar does not even come close. Nuclear is less efficient than coal or wind.

And efficiencies are usually calculated over an expected life cycle.. which for nuclear is much longer than 20 years. Because the initial construction costs are the primary expense of nuclear, over a 20-yr period it is not even remotely close to being cost effective.

In this case that is what "cheap" and "expensive" mean. What did you think I was talking about? The initial construction costs? That makes zero sense in context.

[Sunny and Warm]

And what I am telling you is that wind offers as great a payback as coal, even excluding any subsidies, which is why it is 35% of new power capacity in the U.S. annually, more than coal or gas combined, the limiting factor being project approval and land availability). Solar does not even come close. Nuclear is less efficient than coal or wind.

And efficiencies are usually calculated over an expected life cycle.. which for nuclear is much longer than 20 years. Because the initial construction costs are the primary expense of nuclear, over a 20-yr period it is not even remotely close to being cost effective.

In this case that is what "cheap" and "expensive" mean. What did you think I was talking about? The initial construction costs? That makes zero sense in context.

your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. Since you're reading things that aren't there, let's agree to stop replying to one another, okay?? Have a nice day.

[skierinvermont]

your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. Since you're reading things that aren't there, let's agree to stop replying to one another, okay?? Have a nice day.

nice cop out... you said the payback for wind isn't as good.. you are wrong. run along now.

As long as you post factually incorrect information, I will correct you.

[Sunny and Warm]

nice cop out... you said the payback for wind isn't as good.. you are wrong. run along now.

As long as you post factually incorrect information, I will correct you.

I'll let you get the last word, as you need the affirmation and ego trip more than most do. I will say though that WeatherRusty wouldn't stoop to your level of troll posting, so you are indeed well behind him as a quality poster. Consider yourself officially ignored (first for Amwx).

[WeatherRusty]

If I'm parsing your post correctly, you are saying that the poll results we see would be expected, and that the poll/result says nothing valuable about how Americans feel or don't feel about agw? I am no expert on polling, I'm willing to accept your opinion there.

Gobblety-gook or no though, these questions are interesting to me.

We have a group of media and politicians saying things that would suggest that agw should be considered a dire threat that compels immediate action, yet it's not considered that way by the public within the context of other issues. The disconnect there is the central point of this thread, no?

I guess what I'm saying is regardless of the validity of the polling or your opinion of the rest of my post, I'm buying the hypothesis that agw activists are failing to convince people that the problem is as serious as they're reporting. And that a significant factor is loss of trust due to alarmist predictions that people simply don't believe.

I consider the disconnect to be with what the science has to tell us as opposed what the public believes it is telling us. Some of that is probably due to the perception of failed predictions, although in reality I don't agree that the basic science has failed at all.

The science has a message to impart on the citizens of the world, and that is that mankind's activities are warming the planet and if it continue, disruptive climate change will be the result. Specifics in this field are difficult to quantify, particularly as to how much, where and how fast. Yes temps will rise and ice will melt. Sea levels will rise etc., These are the general findings which are not strongly disputed in the scientific literature.

It is my impression that people expect changes which will occur unevenly over decades to centuries to be obvious in the short term. Change which occurs slowly can be difficult to perceive and specific events can not be tacitly attributed to AGW, yet in the collective over time they become part of a new normal...a new climate.

If people expect the world to come crashing down around them as proof then it is no wonder people fail the see the more subtle warning signs. They may not see it for what it is, and if they don't see it for themselves they won't necessarily be convinced by white coated scientists and distrusted media and political figures. Then of course there is the impact had on public perception of climate change by the ideological, industrial, political opposition and their disinformation campaign.

[skierinvermont]

I'll let you get the last word, as you need the affirmation and ego trip more than most do. I will say though that WeatherRusty wouldn't stoop to your level of troll posting, so you are indeed well behind him as a quality poster. Consider yourself officially ignored (first for Amwx).

wow.. all i did was introduce some facts to the discussion. You are this offended by somebody telling you wind is as efficient as coal?

[Strongbad]

wow.. all i did was introduce some facts to the discussion. You are this offended by somebody telling you wind is as efficient as coal?

Would you mind sharing non-partisan sources that verify this claim?

[skierinvermont]

Would you mind sharing non-partisan sources that verify this claim?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that by 2016 levelized costs of various sources to be as follows ($/MW):

Conventional Coal: 94.8

Advanced Coal: 109.4

Coal with CCS: 136.2

Advanced Nuclear: 113.9

Wind: 97.0

Solar: 210.7

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

Levelized is a comprehensive measure of economic efficiency essentially taking all costs over the lifetime divided by the power over the lifetime.

Levelized cost represents the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle, converted to equal annual payments and expressed in terms of real dollars to remove the impact of inflation. Levelized cost reflects overnight capital cost, fuel cost, fixed and variable O&M cost, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type.

[Strongbad]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that by 2016 levelized costs of various sources to be as follows ($/MW):

Conventional Coal: 94.8

Advanced Coal: 109.4

Coal with CCS: 136.2

Advanced Nuclear: 113.9

Wind: 97.0

Solar: 210.7

http://www.eia.gov/o...generation.html

Levelized is a comprehensive measure of economic efficiency essentially taking all costs over the lifetime divided by the power over the lifetime.

Levelized cost represents the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle, converted to equal annual payments and expressed in terms of real dollars to remove the impact of inflation. Levelized cost reflects overnight capital cost, fuel cost, fixed and variable O&M cost, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type.

So it's a projection, without any empirical evidence to say it will be the case yet? Also, coal still appears cheaper, unless I'm not reading this correctly?

Are they accounting for technological increases? Or do they try and predict the future using today's technology as our baseline? I just don't understand the point of 2016. How about 2011?

[Strongbad]

And really, not to pick on you skier, just that the source also shows this:

However, there is significant local variation in costs based on local labor markets and the cost and availability of fuel or energy resources such as windy sites (Table 2). For example, regional wind costs range from $82/MWh in the region with the best available resources in 2016 to $115/MWh in regions where the best sites have been claimed by 2016.

You gotta take projections with a big grain of salt. As of now coal is still cheaper, and technological increases on that side may make it more so? No? I only ask cause my own research does not bring up a bevy of resources to use.

[skierinvermont]

And really, not to pick on you skier, just that the source also shows this:

You gotta take projections with a big grain of salt. As of now coal is still cheaper, and technological increases on that side may make it more so? No? I only ask cause my own research does not bring up a bevy of resources to use.

Coal and wind are fairly mature industries. Their costs will not change much now between 2011 and 2016. There are other sources that show wind costing the same as coal at present. The estimates are based on realistic estimates about technological improvement which would be most applicable to nascent industries like solar and CCS. Those are the areas where costs would be projected to drop, and yet they will still be more expensive.

The 97.0$/MW number I provided is the average and is the most representative number. Wind can be slightly cheaper or slightly more expensive than coal depending on where it is built. The average, is approximately the same. This is why it represents 35% of now power installation in the U.S./year, more than coal and gas combined.

They actually projected the inflation adjusted capital costs of wind to INCREASE due to various factors (they will more frequently will be built on rougher terrain, and/or in remote areas that require building or upgrading transmission lines).

[Sunny and Warm]

if you're buying a hypothesis you made up because it supports your personal opinion, and won't accept the explanation for the poll results I've provided several times, then I guess it's useless to try to have a discussion on the subject.

Trix,

From the first post in this thread ...

**********************************************************************

Here’s question 88:

88. Which statement comes closest to your view about global warming? 1. Global warming is caused mostly by human activity such as burning fossil fuels or 2. Global warming is caused mostly by natural patterns in the earth’s environment. or 3. Global warming does not exist.

And here’s the results:

12 percent don’t think global warming exists. 42 percent say it’s man-made and 33 percent say it’s natural. 7 percent say it is a mixture of both, and 6 percent are in the “I dunno” or didn’t answer category. With only 42 percent saying it is human caused, that puts it in the minority view.

**********************************************************

What's hard to understand about that question? The question is unambiguous, and shows that the public is split between manmade and natural cause for global warming. The AGW crowd, with the backing of most scientific orgs, scientific journals, and govts, has been unable to do better than a split with "anti-science blogs" as you and others put it. A better poll question is to ask people why they don't believe in AGW. I suspect you'd see politics, unethical scientist behavior, unfounded alarmism and the like as reasons for a skeptical view rather than the economy, jobs, blah, blah, blah ...

[bobbutts]

if you're buying a hypothesis you made up because it supports your personal opinion, and won't accept the explanation for the poll results I've provided several times, then I guess it's useless to try to have a discussion on the subject.

It seems that you are here to nitpick my posts and perhaps goad me into a personal battle, not talk about the thread subject or reality even. I'm agreeing with the OP, not creating my own hypothesis/opinion. You called it "gobblety-gook" and have suggested multiple times that I'm unfit to participate in a discussion with you.

The main reason I'm posting in this thread is I see it as a rare CC forum subject where the people here who typically disagree about almost everything may find some common ground.

[LithiaWx]

The moment the AGW movement decided to use Al Gore as the defacto spokesperson for AGW they failed. He is a political figure that is polarizing, the country was split right off the bat and the AGW movement lost about half of their potential support by picking a polarizing political figure. I was at a party this weekend in the north Georgia mountains. Yes, Georgia is a very conservative/republican state. I was sitting around a large fire pit with quite a few other people. We were burning some wood from a few trees that had been cut down. One guy says out of the blue " Here ya go Al Gore, here is your Global Warming" He was referring to us burning wood... Then another guy says "Yeah, **** you Al Gore!" I'm sitting here at this point thing wow, these guys immediately associated Global Warming with Al Gore who they dislike because they are most likely conservative republicans, not a big surprise in my area of the country. A few more guys jokingly say " Yeah!, **** you Al Gore!!" This is just an example of how the AGW movement has failed miserably and have yet to recover from putting a guy like Al Gore as their "spokesman".

The AGW movement is going to have to do a better job of trying to get their point across. The arrogance and bad choice of having a guy like Al Gore as their "spokesperson" is literally killing the movement in places like the deep south which is heavily conservative.

[Sunny and Warm]

The moment the AGW movement decided to use Al Gore as the defacto spokesperson for AGW they failed. He is a political figure that is polarizing, the country was split right off the bat and the AGW movement lost about half of their potential support by picking a polarizing political figure. I was at a party this weekend in the north Georgia mountains. Yes, Georgia is a very conservative/republican state. I was sitting around a large fire pit with quite a few other people. We were burning some wood from a few trees that had been cut down. One guy says out of the blue " Here ya go Al Gore, here is your Global Warming" He was referring to us burning wood... Then another guy says "Yeah, **** you Al Gore!" I'm sitting here at this point thing wow, these guys immediately associated Global Warming with Al Gore who they dislike because they are most likely conservative republicans, not a big surprise in my area of the country. A few more guys jokingly say " Yeah!, **** you Al Gore!!" This is just an example of how the AGW movement has failed miserably and have yet to recover from putting a guy like Al Gore as their "spokesman".

The AGW movement is going to have to do a better job of trying to get their point across. The arrogance and bad choice of having a guy like Al Gore as their "spokesperson" is literally killing the movement in places like the deep south which is heavily conservative.

nice post. I travel a lot, and get those types of comments all the time. People also ridicule the alarmist proclamations about all the things caused by AGW. It's really a joke at this point, and the arrogance will not allow for a change of course.

[Vergent]

I guess we have to wait till Greenland is burning to raise the alarm.

[LakeEffectKing]

I guess we have to wait till Greenland is burning to raise the alarm.

WOW! Is this an actual satellite picture of the flames ripping across equatorial Africa????

[Vergent]

WOW! Is this an actual satellite picture of the flames ripping across equatorial Africa????

http://lance-modis.e...ry/firemaps.cgi

Each of these fire maps accumulates the locations of the fires detected by MODIS on board the Terra and Aqua satellites over a 10-day period. Each colored dot indicates a location where MODIS detected at least one fire during the compositing period. Color ranges from red where the fire count is low to yellow where number of fires is large. The compositing periods are referenced by their start and end dates (julian day). The duration of each compositing period was set to 10 days. Compositing periods are reset every year to make year-to-year comparisons straightforward. The first compositing period of each year starts on January 1. The last compositing period of each year includes a few days from the next year.

[SVT450R]

I guess we have to wait till Greenland is burning to raise the alarm.

No alarmism here folks.

[LithiaWx]

When did wildfires become something abnormal?

[LithiaWx]

do some reading.

about what? He posted a stupid image that does not prove or disprove anything on AGW. Wildfires are natural, if the poster had an ounce of good faith he would have added some substance.

[Vergent]

http://drought.mssl....SPI12+countries

World drought map.

Population in the current view under exceptional drought:194,817,000. Greenland is having a drought bye the way.

Is Global Warming Causing More,Larger Wildfires?

Wildfires add an estimated 3.5 × 1015 g to

atmospheric carbon emissions each year, or

roughly 40% of fossil fuel carbon emissions

(13). If climate change is increasing wildfire,

as Westerling et al. suggest, these new sources

of carbon emissions will accelerate the buildup

of greenhouse gases and could provide a feedforward

acceleration of global warming.

http://www.arcfuels....l%20Warming.pdf

[Vergent]

Deadly bushfires kill 131, dozens still missing

Weary firefighters and rescuers pulled the remains of dozens of people from charred buildings on Monday as the death toll rose to 130 from southern Australia’s deadliest bushfires. "Everybody’s gone. Everybody. Their houses are gone. They’re all dead in the houses there. Everybody’s dead," cried Christopher Harvey, a survivor from Kinglake, as he walked through the town.

http://www.welt.de/e...ll-missing.html

Ask the people of

Kinglake Australia if they are alarmed about global warming, oops, too late. Someone should have warned them earlier, an alarmist maybe?

[Vergent]

about what? He posted a stupid image that does not prove or disprove anything on AGW. Wildfires are natural, if the poster had an ounce of good faith he would have added some substance.

MariettaWX,

Please learn to use google before making your pronouncements, you just make yourself look foolish.

http://www.google.co...ng%22+wildfires

10,900,000 things to read about wildfire relationship to global warming.

[LithiaWx]

MariettaWX,

Please learn to use google before making your pronouncements, you just make yourself look foolish.

http://www.google.co...ng%22+wildfires

10,900,000 things to read about wildfire relationship to global warming.

I don't use Google to research things but thanks for your concern. If you had posted some substance things would have gone much better for you in that regard. Posting a map of wildfires and making some ridiculous claim about Greenland doesn't make a case for anything. If the point of your post was to say Global Warming was responsible for those fires then some type of substance would have gone a long way. How is anyone supposed to know what you were thinking off of one image?

[Vergent]

I don't use Google to research things but thanks for your concern. If you had posted some substance things would have gone much better for you in that regard. Posting a map of wildfires and making some ridiculous claim about Greenland doesn't make a case for anything. If the point of your post was to say Global Warming was responsible for those fires then some type of substance would have gone a long way. How is anyone supposed to know what you were thinking off of one image?

1/20/2001

1/20/2012

These dates are not cherry-picked, check for yourself.

http://lance-modis.e...ry/firemaps.cgi

[LithiaWx]

the MODIS images from the NASA website are pretty well-known images. if you didn't recognize it, you could have simply asekd what it whas and where you could find it in order to find out more about it.

I've seen the images before. I know what it is, but it still does not show anything other than wildfires in the last year. What exactly does that image prove or disprove? Without some type of context it's useless other than showing wildfires over the last year.

1/20/2001

1/20/2012

These dates are not cherry-picked, check for yourself.

http://lance-modis.e...ry/firemaps.cgi

Better but still not there yet Vergent.

I'll disengage both of you now. All you did was prove the OP's point Vergent, well done.