Discussion > Green Fantasy Universe thru bad maths & spin
Today in the Power Hour podcast did challenge some. Gore was reported as highlighting a green energy miracle in Germany .
"Gemany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. (Indeed, one day this year, renewables created 74 percent of the nation's electricity!)" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618#ixzz35I7SLyu0
Alex Epstein called Gore a liar and brought in a German expert
Renewables all created 24-25%,
#1 the trick is that is includes biomass and hydro
wind & solar are only about 13.3% * ..You can only get 37% by counting installed capacity, but w/s capacity is way lower than other sources ..what they actually produce is about 25% of their capacity.
* But even that 13.3% is actually an over-representation.
(Actually seems to me that since in the first quarter total renewables was 27% of generation (not use) then Gore has misrepresented 27 as 37%)
The 74% was not over 24hours, and is probably one minute .well 1 hour it seems, when the sun/wind were particularly strong
How many homes does wind & solar power ?
1. The home is a dubious measure, cos most energy is not used in the home
2. ZERO is the number of homes wind/solar power as they always need another source idling on back up.
- so subtract #inefficiency1 from 13.3%
3. Those figures don't include the losses due to transmission building & it's inefficiencies etc. That you don't get in a non renewables scenario.
- so subtract #inefficiency2 from
4. You can't just take the output of wind/solar, cos it often produces energy at the wrong time
- so subtract #inefficiency3
- The bottomline is under a freemarket solution with no laws and subsidies the $ provides the judgement. And producers choose to use zero renewables.
You can download more Center for Industrial Progress podcasts
From their RSS feed http://industrialprogress.com/feed/
-before the podcast was Paul Krugman
- I listened to the previous before that podcast and it wasn't very interesting
.. The one before that was John Christy so probably better.
stewgreen
My rebuttal to Gore's fantasy :
More than 80% of the time it is non-renewables that generating all the electricity that is CONSUMED. There are a number of mathematical fallacies that are used to over represent renewables e.g. their peak generation hour is not when CONSUMPTION is highest, supply doesn't equal consumption.
- Also there are massive inefficiencies in a system incorporating renewables, eg backup plant idling and duplication of transmission network *.
- Don't confuse all renewables with solar/wind which are only about half.
* Those inefficiencies and subsidy costs amount to a tax on every product/service you buy. Imagine that when you buy 10 beers they are taking away 1.
stewgreen
"supply doesn't equal consumption"
How can that be?
Martin A
Bad maths and spin can't be the explanation for the victory of the Green religion. All politicians do spin, and bad maths has been around at least since the nineteenth century, when Mark Twain attributed to Disraeli the remark about “lies, damned lies and statistics”.
The Turing Test story had nothing directly to do with climate science, or even with science, but illustrated a tendency of the media to use science as a hook on which to hang a human interest story. Not many people are interested in Turing, or science, or anything much, but lots of people have seen “2001 - A Space Odyssey”. The fact that the “human” in question in this Computer Interest story was a computer that was supposedly indistinguishable from a thirteen year old Bosnian, says it all. I don't know any Bosnians, but I know a lot of thirteen year old French kids, and their mastery of English would fool the most sophisticated electronic brain into thinking that they had been constructed by Sir Alan Sugar in his garden shed. Pull the other one, it's got chips on it.
(Of course, by being rude about Bosnians and thirteen-year-olds and science correspondents all In one paragraph I have put myself beyond the pale of rational discussion. I'll get my coat.)
geoffchambers
Agree with Geoff. Bad maths and spin are proximate characteristics and not core drivers. Big Green is seen as a religion by many now, rightly because it is a social phenomenon that emerges from the same mechanisms that drive the traditional religions. These mechanisms have quite likely existed for at least as long as language, and far more 'applied consensus' societies (mostly religions) have almost certainly gone the way of the dodo without us ever even knowing about them, than the ones we do know. We know about the Lambeyeque for instance, whose consensus society was dedicated to predicting / controlling ENSO. Given that's impossible, you may rightly guess that things didn't go well. But they had several stabs at it in different historic periods, in each of which they built enormous man-made mountains for the purpose. But they would have had their own spin, and their own equivalent flawed logic to our bad maths, which likely even at the time some skeptics would have seen (especially those travelling to other socities). So you're right these things occur, but I believe they are effects not causes.
Andy West
@Martin A
1. Losses in the transmission system (literally heating the planet)
2. When renewables overproduce at the wrong time, the electricity id exported to other countries, at low or even negative prices.
stewgreen
Geoff's getting Bosnians and Ukrainians mixed up
Ukrainian teen created in lab passes Turing Test – famous nutty prof ...
www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/09/software_passes_turing_test/
stewgreen
- Do you live in the Global warming North Korea ?
Seriously when you listen to people like Prof John Christy or Prof Bob Carter you begin to realise what a fantasy universe the BBC and green/left feed us.
- North Koreans and Russians must be laughing at & pitying you.
The spin that 97% of scientists support alarmism, that Germany gets 37% of electricity from wind and solar are just as laughable as soviet-style election results.. yet heaps of people in the UK & US believe them.
- Bob Carter starts this broadcast by asserting "most climate scientists" don't support alarmism".
stewgreen
I rather associate bad maths and spin with sceptics. Ever debated with Doug Cotton?
Entropic man
There is only one real universe , but there as many fantasy universies as you want. As regards Green, the public have a fantasy view of reality as the Green religious use bad maths and dirty spin and media fails to challenge it.
(This weeks blind reporting that the Turing test had been passed, proved main media outlet's 'science journalists' , just churn science press releases ..dangerous when there us an agenda behind every press release)