Catastrophic deindustrialization and economic collapse are far likelier outcomes of NZ policy on electricity prices than saving us from the trivial costs of a few degrees of warming.
Hi Giga Watt - I do think you should disclose whether or not you have interests in the wind (or any other similar) sector. Fair enough to stay anonymous, but if we can't research who you are, how do we know if you are an independent commentator?
You state "The sceptics are right about the inconvenience caused to renewables during dunkleflaute but they never, ever write articles that praise renewable energy when the wind blows for weeks on end either". Well, actually, there is a big problem when you have a surfeit of one sort of renewable power - electricity drops in price (and costs you even more because you have to pay people to stop providing). Look what happens in Germany during a hot summer - the German grid behaves like a parasite on the overall European grid, flooding neighbours with electricity and then - at night when the sun doesn't shin - ramping up demand again. Lots of people have written about this (I need not provide links as a simple search will yield plenty of articles on this subject).
To blame sceptics for being one-side of a dialogue of the deaf is an unreasonable 'on the one hand, and on the other'-ing of what is a very reasonable point by the sceptics, and - conversely - paints the eco-zealots in a far too flattering light. Balanced reporting on an argument between centrists and extremists should not result in a semi-extremist conclusion.
Your paragraph about Miliband is deeply troubling: "Second, he wants to make sure that anything he does is irreversible. Third, he clearly thinks the mission is so critical that he has to emphasise urgency at all times. Fourth, he’s already been a political failure during his time as Labour leader, so is likely inured to future failure in this role too. In some ways, it’s admirable. If you believe in man-made climate change, then this is the right policy response".
You have essentially admitted that we have a zealot in this role who wants to burn the boats so that we are committed to his plan. This is not right, and it is absolutely out of order to put our children's future at risk just because a zealot wants to get his way.
And that's even before we come to the point that "man-made climate change" is hardly the bogeyman that it is made out to be. The IPCC relies on models that are predicting a modest warming by 2100. But these models - by the modellers' own admission - are flawed: Consider the conclusions of two highly respected establishment scientists at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, USA, in a recent paper published in Climate & Atmospheric Science, a Nature Journals Publication: “virtually all global climate models (GCMs) have had difficulty simulating sea surface temperature trend patterns over the past four decades”… these “models are not perfect and contain biases when evaluated against observations”. Overall, the authors conclude that they expect to see “substantially less global mean warming due to stronger negative feedback and lower climate sensitivity” and they point at other results that show “a prominent model bias in all the periods [from 1958 to 2017] with the later ending years showing larger biases”. (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00681-7).
Enough with this zealotry. Can we bring some common sense back - let's invest in British modular nukes, build some new gas and coal-fired power stations and let wind & solar run riot... but without subsidies and with those generators bearing the cost of the load-shedding / storage such that they are compared "like-for-like" with dispatchable power. This will make "net zero" difference to the world's CO2 output - UK has already hamstrung itself enough, and we can review in 10-20 years whether or not anything further need be done (spoiler: I suspect we will find that things are just fine).
Thanks for confirming, Giga Watt. I think you should declare that interest in solar & wind power-plants more clearly. Your employer may not have assets in the UK or EU, but might be wishing to promote (or just have a vested interest) in the general uptake in wind & solar. That could put you at odds with the 'national interest' that wishes to have energy security, grid reliability and low cost electricity.
I would welcome any responses to the various other points made above, specifically the accusation that critics "never, ever write articles that praise renewable energy when the wind blows for weeks on end either". As pointed out above, (1) many people have written about this and (2) this is a big problem for grids, c.f. parasitical solar in Germany.
Catastrophic deindustrialization and economic collapse are far likelier outcomes of NZ policy on electricity prices than saving us from the trivial costs of a few degrees of warming.
Hi Giga Watt - I do think you should disclose whether or not you have interests in the wind (or any other similar) sector. Fair enough to stay anonymous, but if we can't research who you are, how do we know if you are an independent commentator?
You state "The sceptics are right about the inconvenience caused to renewables during dunkleflaute but they never, ever write articles that praise renewable energy when the wind blows for weeks on end either". Well, actually, there is a big problem when you have a surfeit of one sort of renewable power - electricity drops in price (and costs you even more because you have to pay people to stop providing). Look what happens in Germany during a hot summer - the German grid behaves like a parasite on the overall European grid, flooding neighbours with electricity and then - at night when the sun doesn't shin - ramping up demand again. Lots of people have written about this (I need not provide links as a simple search will yield plenty of articles on this subject).
To blame sceptics for being one-side of a dialogue of the deaf is an unreasonable 'on the one hand, and on the other'-ing of what is a very reasonable point by the sceptics, and - conversely - paints the eco-zealots in a far too flattering light. Balanced reporting on an argument between centrists and extremists should not result in a semi-extremist conclusion.
Your paragraph about Miliband is deeply troubling: "Second, he wants to make sure that anything he does is irreversible. Third, he clearly thinks the mission is so critical that he has to emphasise urgency at all times. Fourth, he’s already been a political failure during his time as Labour leader, so is likely inured to future failure in this role too. In some ways, it’s admirable. If you believe in man-made climate change, then this is the right policy response".
You have essentially admitted that we have a zealot in this role who wants to burn the boats so that we are committed to his plan. This is not right, and it is absolutely out of order to put our children's future at risk just because a zealot wants to get his way.
And that's even before we come to the point that "man-made climate change" is hardly the bogeyman that it is made out to be. The IPCC relies on models that are predicting a modest warming by 2100. But these models - by the modellers' own admission - are flawed: Consider the conclusions of two highly respected establishment scientists at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, USA, in a recent paper published in Climate & Atmospheric Science, a Nature Journals Publication: “virtually all global climate models (GCMs) have had difficulty simulating sea surface temperature trend patterns over the past four decades”… these “models are not perfect and contain biases when evaluated against observations”. Overall, the authors conclude that they expect to see “substantially less global mean warming due to stronger negative feedback and lower climate sensitivity” and they point at other results that show “a prominent model bias in all the periods [from 1958 to 2017] with the later ending years showing larger biases”. (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00681-7).
Enough with this zealotry. Can we bring some common sense back - let's invest in British modular nukes, build some new gas and coal-fired power stations and let wind & solar run riot... but without subsidies and with those generators bearing the cost of the load-shedding / storage such that they are compared "like-for-like" with dispatchable power. This will make "net zero" difference to the world's CO2 output - UK has already hamstrung itself enough, and we can review in 10-20 years whether or not anything further need be done (spoiler: I suspect we will find that things are just fine).
Alex, I work for a power company that has gas-fired plants and solar and wind powered plants. The company has no assets in the UK or EU. Thanks
Thanks for confirming, Giga Watt. I think you should declare that interest in solar & wind power-plants more clearly. Your employer may not have assets in the UK or EU, but might be wishing to promote (or just have a vested interest) in the general uptake in wind & solar. That could put you at odds with the 'national interest' that wishes to have energy security, grid reliability and low cost electricity.
I would welcome any responses to the various other points made above, specifically the accusation that critics "never, ever write articles that praise renewable energy when the wind blows for weeks on end either". As pointed out above, (1) many people have written about this and (2) this is a big problem for grids, c.f. parasitical solar in Germany.
Many thanks.