Climate Action Plan

Live talk from Galway today with a particular emphasis on Hydrogen use.

https://youtu.be/DAgTkI8sII0

(Very interesting so far. One factoid is that earthquakes are increasing in northern Holland due to the gas field starting to run down in the area.)

Kivaro wrote: »

Funny that you bring that up.
Recently I was talking to an environmentalist about the resources that are extracted from deep underground the earth's surface, plus natural gas extraction, and of course fracking. Not that I think that the planet will collapse within itself from these extractions, but you cannot indefinitely remove mass from beneath our feet and think there will be no natural consequence as a direct result.

It's the geology of northern Holland that's really harming homeowners. It's peat.
So any earthquake hits, the ground liquifies. Banks won't give mortgages and insurance companies won't provide cover.


That's a very interesting talk I linked to from the Ryan Institute in Galway.
The main advantages for using hydrogen is it's pollution free and it can use the abudance of windpower in this country to make it. It's being pushed more for public transport at the start. Buses, taxis, lorries. High fuel users and to have a fuel station in cities that'll be utilized.

Toyota Ireland gave their take on it and showed their current model and they're working with Wright's in Ballymena developing buses. They also showed a fuel station in Germany where cars can fuel up and the station is located beside a river to use the water to make the fuel.

Does renewables pioneer Germany risk running out of power?

In the next three years alone conventional energy capacity is expected to fall by a fifth, leaving it short of the country’s peak power demand. There is disagreement over whether there will be sufficient reliable capacity to preclude the possibility of outages, which could hammer the operations of industrial companies.

<snip>

Germany’s rapid and radical shift makes the scenario more precarious.

German output accounts for around 20% of the European Union’s electricity, with France another 17%, according to figures from Eurostat, the EU statistics office.

Germany is a net exporter to Austria, Switzerland and Poland and also the Netherlands, which sends some of the power onwards to Britain and Belgium. Thus, if Germany alone was to stop reliably producing surpluses, several parts of the continent could see power shortfalls - and outages - as a consequence.

There have already been warning signs this year as Germany’s net exports in the first half of 2019 fell by 14%. The situation has been exacerbated by a European heat wave that drove demand in France to near record levels in June, curbing its export availability.

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Ireland is at the end of energy supply lines to the continent like gas and electricity interconnects. What happens when there is no longer any surplus or reserve generating capacity available in the grid? Typically this is managed by load shedding and surge pricing, but what happens when that is not enough?

Peak demand in the British Isles usually happens during winter time and on occasion where we get severe cold weather, this can happen any time from November to March e.g. 1947, 1962-63, 2009-2010. Such events usually affect a wide swath of the European continent and are not favourable to wind or solar electricity generation.


Typically when deciding to site a house you would look at the 100 year flood levels as part of the investigation. Extreme cold weather conditions could potentially last up to 3 months in the British Isles and now there is increasing demand for electricity specifically for transport and heating, computing and air conditioning, is the electrical grid being designed to cope with extremely high demand that could last a month?

Water John wrote: »

EirGrid would always have been very conservative so I wouldn't worry too much on that front.

I hope so. The pressure is coming from politicians who will over-ride common sense and as the controlling body do Eirgrid have authority to say no to destabilising the grid? They will likely assign a probability to such an event that means it becomes an acceptable risk similar to when a storm force wind storm hits the country when they expect that some customers will loose power, however I content that either a grid collapse under such adverse weather conditions would be a life and death situation for marginal customers and that surge prices due to limited electricity availability would mean marginal customers will need to limit their consumption or eventually be cut from the grid. Marginal customers are typically those on low fixed income who do not have capacity to absorb price spikes and must limit their consumption even in the course of a normal Winter. It is often referred in reports as fuel poverty.


Germany’s green energy shift is more fizzle than sizzle

For years Germany was one of the world's energy transformation leaders. It was German cash that helped finance the technology revolution that has turned solar and wind into viable technologies that now generate increasingly cheap power.

But for consumers, that has come with a cost. Many households grapple with ever more expensive electricity prices, bearing the cost of shuttering nuclear power plants early and building up renewables.

"Many consumers can't get rid of the feeling, 'I support the Energiewende and pay a lot for it, but climate protection isn't really advancing,'" Klaus Mueller, head of the German consumer lobby Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband told German radio earlier this month.

"An average four-person household has to pay more than double for power in 2017 compared to 2000," Mueller said, adding that retail customers feel they're bearing the brunt of the cost of transformation, which is added to their power bills, while big industrial users get off much more lightly.

The powerful German business lobby BDI is also unhappy, saying in a recent report that high electricity costs, delays in boosting the energy efficiency of buildings, and a “lack of vision” on transport are "worrying German industry.”



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There have been many restructuring and bankruptcies in recent years among wind and solar suppliers in Germany once the supports were removed.


Commission scraps tariffs on Chinese solar panels



The question I'm left with is what is the worst case scenario with this green energy technology and has it been accounted for and by whom?

skooterblue2 wrote: »

Hilarious.... we have only have 12 years to save the world. The world will continue to turn. This is really a grab for power.

Not really. It is more a case of follow the herd by those in power who sign the agreements and treaties and don't necessarily care to pay much heed to the constraints of the technology, physics or economic costs involved, their motives are primarily votes and finance.

There are very few areas of the world that are not dependent on energy and food imports. North America (Canada, USA and Mexico) are probably the only exception. Japan is wholly dependent on energy and food imports. Europe as a whole is dependent on energy imports so the current situation presents geopolitical risk which is why a shut down of the straits of Hormuz presents a major concern and a divergence between Europe and the United States concerning Iran. The push for renewable energy is borne out of the experience of the two major oil blockades 1970s. For Margaret Thatchers government it presented a way to break the stranglehold of the unions (Arthur Scargill and co.) on the British economy while at the same time subsidising nuclear energy as a means to secure energy independence.

The illusion of Socialism as a viable economic alternative finally collapsed in the 90s with the implosion of the Soviet Union and liberation of the their western buffer zone. However the socialists who see Capitalism as the enemy regrouped under the environmentalism banner and borrowed from the Green party, a socialist party that use environmentalism to implement their aims. You may have noticed in the recent elections that the Marxist socialist parties lost ground to the Greens picking up votes from the urban middle class. The extremists see control of energy as a way to restrict the human population and implement greater control over peoples lives, these are the Malthusians and Club of Rome types.


There is also a financial appeal to those with power, for government monetising the air is an exciting new source of tax revenue and for the financial sector carbon credits are a new way to earn fees. The money also attracts the usual hangers on like economists and rent seekers (i.e. subsidies).


The problem with all the hype generated is few are asking questions about what sort of population or economy this technology supports and when you are looking for answers the only reply you get from those in power is "because science" or "because CO2".


Where does all that stuff go that you put in the recycle bin go? Out of sight and out of mind perhaps. How much of it is shipped to South East Asia? How much of it is burned? How much of it actually makes it's way back into new products?

skooterblue2 wrote: »

All stuff to keep us busy while the Elites are busy taking away our civil rights and taxing a regulating us to death.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken

Rather than worry about Mr. Pike et al you should check out H.L. Menckens Notes on Democracy. (PDF)


There is nothing in the current political scene that has not happened before, the technology available has been updated but the old superstitions remain since human nature has never really changed in millenia. The idea that you pay a tax to control the weather is as risible as it is laughable, carbon credits are just an updated variation of the indulgences scam. Likewise it is not hard to make a prediction that empires will fall and rise since such cyclical behaviour has been known since events have been recorded over time.


The "elites" do not want change since they are doing just fine from their perspective under the current system, that's what they don't get the cognitive dissonance at work when they tell us plebeians not to use planes and auto-mobiles but use the most conspicuous and inefficient forms of transport themselves. This blindness can be seen in the election of Trump, the wall street protests, BREXIT and the rise of national sovereignty movements across the EU and beyond. The yellow vests protests are still ongoing in France, carbon taxes may have been the straw that broke the camels back, the powers that be have noted this and are calling for the boiling frog treatment (sic).


Climate Change Requires Big Solutions. But Baby Steps Are the Only Way to Go.
Ted Nordhaus

Yet the Green New Deal contains a crucial insight. Economists argue for carbon pricing because it makes the social cost of carbon visible in our day-to-day consumption. Voters and politicians, by contrast, have generally preferred to hide the costs of climate mitigation. Policies to subsidize clean energy technology—including nuclear, wind, and solar—have tended to be far more successful politically than efforts to price carbon.

Government subsidies typically make economists pull their hair out. They encourage rent seeking and require policymakers with imperfect knowledge to make decisions about which technologies to champion. And it’s true, from synthetic fuels to biofuels, Solyndra solar cells to plutonium breeder reactors, governments have bet on plenty of energy technology losers.


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The Albert pike letter is a known hoax btw

Water John wrote: »

Here is an interesting interview with Greta Thunberg
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/jul/21/great-thunberg-you-ask-the-questions-see-us-as-a-threat

And here is a summation of the child from a book written by her mother.

https://quillette.com/2019/04/23/self-harm-versus-the-greater-good-greta-thunberg-and-child-activism/

Water John wrote: »

Yes the girl has Aspergers. I wouldn't be going to Quillette as an unbiased source.
She isn't the basis of anyones reason for supporting a Climate Action Plan. Don't think Richard Bruton or any of his officials consulted her.

She is being used as part of a propaganda campaign.


https://twitter.com/SteveSGoddard/status/1138909288548585477

43c in Paris today and 39 in london. I find a bit scary!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49086783

Surely even farmers must be starting to think its real at this stage?

Most people believe the science but no one wants less money or to be inconvenienced and no one will vote for measures that reduce their quality of life so theres nothing we can do really

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

43c in Paris today and 39 in london. I find a bit scary!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49086783

Surely even farmers must be starting to think its real at this stage?

hit 40 degrees in toulouse when i was there in 2003

mad muffin wrote: »

Yeah. It used to hit 40 a few times when I lived in London from from 2000-2002

No it didnt

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

She is being used as part of a propaganda campaign.


https://twitter.com/SteveSGoddard/status/1138909288548585477

Socialists and national socialists were obsessed with eugenics and creating a culture of blind obedience too, their dogmas were unquestionable. Nothing has changed, the watermelons are exactly the same.