Very inspiring article John, especially to those of us who were educated in schools 30 or more years ago when we were taught doing mathematics by hand on paper, and practiced science methodologies in labs to learn their fundamental principles. This knowledge is gradually disappearing in the general public as you say.

As a practicing design engineer in the electronics industry, I would submit however that your phrase "time-tested scientific methodology examinations" are very important but not enough by themselves to deal with the myriad problems we face in our energy industries. Let me explain.

For successful design engineering in any discipline it is crucial to understand the science behind a technology or materials one uses to solve a technical problem. In the real world there is often more than one solution approach to technical problems, and a designer in principle should explore all alternatives, weighing the technical merits, business merits, and societal merits of each one, provided you are afforded the time and money to do so. Without the time or money to do so forces an engineer to make his / her own judgment calls based on experience and sometimes gut feelings, which usually translates to taking certain levels of risk.

As is often the case, any solution’s ultimate business costs, societal impacts, and impacts on the earth’s environment are not fully discovered until a statistically large enough scale of implementation takes place. This is because even the best scientific methods cannot always take into account all the variables in the very complex interdependent world we live in.

Power generation methods are no exception, and many have grown into huge world-wide scales of implementation. The average Joe on the street sees our polar ice caps and glaciers shrinking, and anyone over 40 can see that drastic changes in world climate patterns have emerged over the years. Economic and public pressure considerations often dictate what solutions policymakers in governments take. The end result can be, and often is, that the paths we end up taking are no longer based on pure science testing methods, but on other factors that sometimes are more important to humans, especially when time and money are not available to do proper scientific studies. It is risky, certainly.

Sorry John. Your little treatise reads like a polemic, and doesn't do anything significant to clarify any issue before the public. I'll stick to listening to someone who actually knows science. Like those who published the scientific papers on which the IPCC based it's conclusions.

One of the primary advantages of a (relatively) free market economy is competition for market advantage among varied commercial interests. While this may not assure that every possible approach is evaluated, it tends to favor the evaluation of multiple approaches. The successful approaches then compete in the market for consumer acceptance.

One of the primary disadvantages of a planned economy is the picking of "winners" by the planners. As both you and the author suggest, the objectives of the planners are often not based on science, but on other factors.

However, the inescapable fact is that the results achieved by the planners decisions, or by the market's decisions, will be determined by the science, regardless. In some cases, this may not be obvious, because the decision which would have been dictated by the science is not exposed and tested. In these cases, the societal cost of the suboptimal decisions might not be immeasurable, but they certainly are unmeasurable.

One of the areas which has remained largely unexplored is the modeling of the integrated national energy markets. For example, a comprehensive model of the US energy market, or perhaps the North American energy market, could allow analysis of the impact of increasing percentages of wind generation capacity on the stability and reliability of the grid. Such a model could illustrate the potential impacts of increasing wind generation at far lower cost and with far more flexibility than the full scale, real market experiment currently underway in California. They cost of a grid failure, or of persistent grid instability, in a computer model run is trivial compared to the actual event.

Another interesting model could analyze the likely impacts on the market's various energy suppliers and users of a progressive reduction in carbon emissions to, for example, "80% below 1990 levels by 2050" in a country or region projected to grow in population by ~50% over the period. I would suggest that such a model would be somewhat less complex than the current climate models. It would arguably be far more useful.

There has been a common tendency in the current climate/energy debate (diatribe?) to focus on only a subset of the issues, rather than on the entire picture. There has also been a tendency to focus on actions rather than goals. One of the key examples, for me, is CAFE standards. If the ultimate objective is to reduce dependence on foreign oil, they may be defensible. However, if the objective is to eliminate carbon emissions from the transportation sector, they are a waste of valuable resources, since the objective cannot reasonably be achieved by high CAFE gasoline or diesel powered vehicles.

The process must begin with a clearly articulated goal, based on solid science (for example, climate science) and broadly accepted by the market. The market participants are then positioned to apply science to individual market sectors to determine how best to meet the goal; and, develop a plan to do so timely and cost effectively. Along all other paths lies disaster.

I will be the first to admit that I have routinely used computer modeling of electronic circuit behaviors to predict multiple proposed designs’ technical performances, since it is far faster and cheaper than actually building circuit samples. However it’s accuracy and success as an engineering methodology hinges precisely on having accurate component models, and as you suggest, clearly defined (performance) goals.

So yes I agree when it comes to climate change, oil dependence, spending money on badly needed generation sources or grid refurbishments, our policy makers usually have poorly defined goals or none at all. When they do have such goals, they often change like the wind from year to year (pardon the joke), or when there is a change in political stripe in government office. This is extremely counterproductive to society. Many energy related goals will take several years if not decades to achieve, so it makes more sense to stick with any goals once they are set.

Given energy marketplace models are lacking, long range climate models are still evolving, and our future economies in the west are very uncertain, it makes it a very daunting task to commit to doing exhaustive scientific studies when their results are based on many assumptions today, the latter of which can get blown out of the water tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, the right solutions will indeed depend on science, and I am in full favor of doing as much of it as we can to get answers. The real problem is as many will say we cannot wait 30 years to find out if choices made have worked. So I tend to agree with some policymakers, in some cases, where they put resources into several energy approaches, knowing fully well that some are going to go the way of the dodo birds down the road. It’s more commonly known as trial-and-error using multiple parallel solutions.

My guess is that the exhaustive scientific studies would be far cheaper than the wrong multiple parallel solutions.

Ed

Our political system is failing us.

The problem with convincing the public of the need for exhaustive studies is that past studies have been blown away by wrong predictions. It gets widely publicized when a prediction fails, so the average Joe and politicians gradually lose faith in exhaustive scientific studies. As Len says, the public needs to know ALL the factors before doing them.

Indeed the conclusions of science can conflict with powerful interests, but what other basis should we use? The fact is that so far we have not used scientific methodology to arrive at our national (or states') energy policy, which is why we are going off the road and into the ditch, just as what happened with Wall Street.

Please read "http://tinyurl.com/abb4x8" for a specific solution.

"Our political system is failing us."

I would argue that we are failing our political system by electing and then reelecting absolute dolts who understand only the next election cycle. Count the scientists and engineers, or the successful entrepreneurs, among our elected representatives. In the US, I doubt you'd have to take your shoes off to use your toes for the counting.

These otherwise undistinguished politicians have staff who are, as a general rule, extremely bright recent graduates with no life experience and no technical experience. The Congress of the US is run by the committee and subcommittee staff, who are generally both knowledgeable and experienced. However, they have not stood for election and largely represent their own interests.

I personally believe that no elected representative should be permitted to vote on a bill which he/she has not read in its entirety. It would be better if they had to pass an objective test on its contents. The "porkulus" bill has probably not been read in its entirety by any of the congresspersons who are voting on it.

I am far from ready to sign on to: "Do something, anything, even if it's wrong."

I am not a power systems guy. However, I know from experience with other types of systems that the US (or North American) power grid would become unstable when the fraction of intermittent sources of power serving the grid approaches the conventional capacity reserve margin. That is particularly true of wind without storage.

The energy system, while complicated, is capable of being modeled accurately; and, the models can be tested in the real world in real time. Failure to do so would be egregious, as California may soon demonstrate in a full scale, real life test. Hopefully, the instrumentation and recording systems in place at the time will be sufficient to accurately record the the events for future analysis.

Too bad we can't sell tickets!

Ed

"The problem with convincing the public of the need for exhaustive studies is that past studies have been blown away by wrong predictions."

What happens if trillion dollar investments are "blown away by wrong predictions"?

Don't begin vast programs with half-vast ideas.

Ed

Here's an analogy to making investments without scientific studies done beforehand. Businesses ROUTIINELY make huge investments, and sometimes these investments get blown away if they fail to be successful as predicted. The practice of investing within a recognized level of uncertainty is more commonly known as risk taking.

Many businesses in today's world often cannot afford to wait to do proper exhaustive scientific studies in advance of a large project, and ultimately their engineers and scientists use their own better judgments and gut feelings to make the decisions to invest.

There is another common phrase in the business world known as "paralysis by analysis", which describes the state of zero progress (or doing nothing) while study after study is conducted, or while detailed modeling and predictions are pursued constantly in fear of failure.

A big problem in government and in the utility industry is their pervasive culture of risk aversion and red tape in implementing any big changes or new investments. The result is the snail's pace of change we see, which in the case of our looming problems in energy and the environment, many feel we simply cannot wait for.

Point taken. Been there; done that; wore out the tee shirt.

However, the larger and more complex the issue, the greater the difficulty for the scientists' and engineers' to comprehend the compete picture. While those in each discipline may rely on their gut instincts regarding their portion of the issue, the full extent of the issue frequently eludes their (our?) grasp.

Then, in today's world, corporate or government management gets involved. At that level, nobody understands the issue, or even its component parts. Most management today is composed of lawyers and/or accountants. As one of my supervisors used to remind me constantly, both professions "manage through the rear view mirror", since their primary focus is on what has happened rather than on what will/could happen.

I believe it is wise to "learn what you can learn and then go with what you know". Decisions in uncertainty involve risk - the greater the uncertainty, the greater the risk. However, the greater the uncertainty and the greater the cost, the more important it is to minimize the uncertainty to the extent feasible. Spending several millions of dollars to carefully define and model an issue seems reasonable when the costs involved in the possible "solution(s)" are measured in trillions of dollars.

There is a big difference between a decision which could sink a product, a decision which could sink a division of the company, a decision which could sink the company, a decision which could sink the country and a decision which could end the world as we know it.

In the context of the article, it is important to remember that the cost of a failure of the power grid, for example, is far greater than the utility's lost energy sales revenue and the cost of restoration. The losses incurred by customers typically dwarf the costs to the utility.

Ed

I will agree completely with you here that we certainly could use more legislators and regulators that understand technical issues better. If I sound like we need more engineers and scientists in office, I do. Obama seems to understand this too from the sorts of people he has appointed as advisors around him. Perhaps I should look for a job in political office too, they have marvelous benefits and pensions compared to the private sector, but I'm afraid I would spend most of my time attempting in vain to educate the droves of non-technical people already there.

I admit the power grid is a critical infrastructure, and failures are very costly to business and society as a whole. I don't think they will let massive investments fail though by keeping all the large central generating stations we already have and building more of them along side the renewables. We will probably find out we have spent lots of money frivolously on some forms of new generation, and on wide scale demand management programs, but I don't think the grid will be allowed to fail dramatically. The price we will pay is much higher consumer rates and perhaps taxes cover any bad investments.

Managing the grid and our power systems will continue to be very political to say the least, and I'm sure our governments will remain involved in all of it come hell or high water. I would love to solve all its looming problems but I'm afraid that is a pipe dream.

I appreciate your comments Ed, many of your points are valid concerns with many in the power industry. Keep up the great commentary on this website forum.

I'm forced to reply. I don't mean to be critical, as I think this is a very well-meaning essay. However, I wish to make a few points and point our the real problem that the author apparently does not see.

First, it's w00t, not woot. (Using two zeroes.)

Second, people having been pseudo-ignoring the scientific method for time immemorial. it's great when you have the time to completely clarify and explore your findings. But no one seems to have the time for that. So they do the best they can. Look at the initial papers on Cold Fusion. Or DOE Secretary Abraham on hyping the hydrogen economy (2003). Or the Laffer curve (1980). The good news is that eventually, science (even economic science) does clean these things up. As it will clean up the global warming debate. The problem is time. (More on this later.)

I do agree that the younger generation does seem to think that if it is not on the web, it doesn't exist. This is not true, however, there are many good things on the web. I think that is a cautionary problem, but not necessarily a fatal one. Ironically, really old stuff is not becoming available on the internet via google books, so some very old (and good) stuff is appearing on the net.

I find the whole 'Are we running out of energy' paragraph specious. No, of course we aren't running out of energy, but that's not what we really want. We want stored, easy to exploit exergy, in the form of convenient hydrocarbons or other materials. (This is due to the old field of thermodynamics naming key components poorly, so this whole argument is more semantic than anything else. Young people are not stupid, they are just adapting to a world that old people do not understand, and never will.) And yes, many hydrocarbons ARE renewable, if the human race is willing to wait millions of years for them to be renewed. We are not. We are burning a million years of hydrocarbon "renewables" annually. The fact you even phrased them as renewables is basically erroneous. From the timeframe of humans and their energy consumption, they are NOT renewable.

And then there's some more bitching about how politicians make poor policy decisions. Agreed.

Anyway, you are missing the real problem, which is that humanity is reaching certain kinds of growth limits. Some say this includes the atmosphere and CO2 emissions, but frankly, it is occurring in many other areas as well. it mostly takes 2 incomes to support a household now. It didn't in 1960. It's costing upwards of $40,000 to send a kid to college now, to take that quasi-utile education that employers demand. Most manufacturing is shifting to developing countries in the mistaken belief that service industries can adequately replace those jobs lost. (Who's lack of critical thinking let THAT one slip by?)

Our economy from time immemorial has been based on continuous growth. We need to either figure out how to keep growing (without killing ourselves) or figure out an economy based on sustained numbers. I don't think either of these chores are going to be particularly easy. And you can't blame this on our stupid youth as we've been seeing this coming for some years. When a resource finally peaked (Oil, July, 2008) it helped cause the world economy to collapse. An economy weakened because it had been deluding itself that it wasn't expanding unsustainably in the first place.

So young people are unconsciously aware that they have to scramble. All the time. Such is a world no longer of plenty. So give them a break if they don't seem to have the time to do anything as cleanly and as precisely as we all used to. Because they don't.

Lack of time and money to find alternatives and solutions to the myriad problems we're facing in energy and growth limitations is perhaps the biggest underlying problem. One thing the internet and computers have done over the last three decades is dramatically speed up the pace of business and technological change. This has created a situation where many companies cannot afford the time and money to invest properly in scientific methods and research and development any longer. As a result, sometimes the only course of action by industry and policymakers is more risk taking, with higher probabilities of failure.

I have much sympathy for scientists who know they are capable of doing things properly to avoid risk taking, but as I learned a long time ago in the commercial world, capabilities and knowledge are worthless if they are not employed or capitalized on.

Thank you for taking the time to make comments.

One person’s polemic may well be another’s paradigm shift.

My fundamental point was that we need to utilize scientific methodology to solve our most serious energy problems. This is categorically NOT what is happening today, so it seemed worthwhile to remind us of this profoundly significant weakness of our current approach to dealing with such issues.

However, if an individual was deluded into believing that scientific methodology already is already used as the basis of our energy policy, then they certainly could conclude that what I had to say didn’t clarify any issue before the public.

Sorry about the w00t typo: it was my doing, not EnergyPulse’s.

Re: not having the time for utilizing scientific methodology, but that “they do the best they can.” I can simply not accept that as reality. Now if the statement was “they do the best they can to promote their own interest” I would agree with.

The blind promotion of renewable energy is being driven by environmentalists (which I am card carrying member, so I know of what I speak) and lobbyists (e.g. for businesses who profit from the implementation of renewables). The science part is an after-the-fact minor consideration that is typically only employed to justify the environmentalists and lobbyists agendas. In short it is an effort to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Re: “eventually science does clean these things up” is also akin to saying two wrongs make a right. In the case we have before us (Trillions of dollars of expenditures + a serious threat to our very survival) we simply cannot rely on an assumption that eventually science will clean this up.

Indeed service industries can not be expected to replace manufacturing jobs and agreed that there are other planetary limits — but this article was about energy, not to solve all of the issues facing civilization.

“So give them a break if they don't seem to have the time to do anything as cleanly and as precisely as we all used to.” The implication here (and prior) is that the bigger and more complex the problem we face, the more careless and superficial the solution we should tolerate. Sorry, I’m just not onboard with that illogical conclusion.

I fully agree that proper scientific studies would be FAR cheaper than the wrong multiple parallel solutions.

Re how scientific methodology can be objectively implemented in a timely fashion, please read "http://tinyurl.com/abb4x8" for a specific solution.

I agree with you in theory, but energy is more about politics than it is about science. I don't know precisely why that is the case, but it definitely IS the case.

A small case in point is CAFE standards vs. a gas tax. Most of the players (automakers, oil companies, etc.) agree that a gas tax is the best way to modify consumer behavior and motivate new, more efficient technology. But such a tax is politically unpalatable. This is not a problem with SCIENCE; this is a POLITICAL problem. If bad politics twists behavior around into some weird configuration, it's not surprising if strange, unscientific solutions follow.

Note California's concern about vehicle CO2 emissions, vs. net emissions overall, including those from out-of-state power plants that feed electricity to California. You don't need to examine the scientific method to realize this is simply crazy. Getting these politicos to change their behavior (a behavior which feeds into national politicians like Pelosi and Waxman) is another story altogether.

We are in full agreement as to what the situation is — and what the problem is.

However, I am not willing to just accept it as OK just because we have deteriorated to this situation. It's wrong, pure and simple. My opinion is that this political situation exists because we have allowed it to. I, for one, am taking a public stand this it is unacceptable.

And the main reason why we just can not continue on with business as usual (i.e. lobbyists running the energy show) is that we have reached a situation where the economic and environmental stakes are just too high.

We absolutely must make these life-and-death decisions based on scientific methodology.

Well, while you are at it, be prepared to stand up against most organized religions as well, most of which regard breeding as an important method of increasing their numbers.

I don't think there has been much deterioration. This situation has ALWAYS existed; i.e., the refusal of the public to accept scientific principles long understood and accepted by scientists. Look at Galileo and Darwin (Darwin even today, sigh...) (To be fair, sometimes scientists screw up, i.e. Thalidomide, feeding their own brain matter back to cows, etc.)

You are correct that in reaching growth limits, we can no longer conduct this business as usual. But we are probably going to keep trying.

I have some experience with the kinds of power system models that would be required to conduct the analyses you suggest and I can tell you that they lack the required degree of granularity, at least for the time being. Moreover, they depend heavily on assumptions that are highly uncertain.

I can also speak to the California experiment. First, California is somewhat behind the curve in terms of the amounts of their supply derived from renewable energy. ERCOT, Spain, Germany and Denmark all have higher penetration rates and I believe ERCOT has more installed wind capacity. Second, it appears there is plenty of conventional generating capacity available to backstop wind and solar at penetration levels of up to 20% though an effort by California's State Water Resources Control Board to limit thermal discharges into estuaries and rivers could change that assessment. The California ISO, California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission are all aware that renewable resources, particularly wind, cannot be counted upon to provide their nameplate capacity during peak load conditions. All of California's investor-owned utilities and the California ISO (somewhat independently of one another at times) are attempting to assess the grid's ability to accommodate renewables above the 20% RPS goal. Based on the limited amount I (or anyone else for that matter) knows about this topic, a combination of improvements in wind and solar forecasting, changes in the design of ancillary services, and relatively modest improvements in fossil-fired generation technology should be sufficient to reach the 33% goal. In spite of the Governor's decrees, reaching 20% let alone 33% will be challenging for reasons that have much more to do with siting, availability of transmission and financing for renwable energy projects, and less to do with availability of suitable volumes of ancillary services.

The problem is far deeper. People on the street were asked, “What is 50% of 70?” The guy eventually gave up; he couldn’t find anyone who knew. College students in Texas were asked what foreign country lies south of Texas. I’m not making this up, about half didn’t know. Students in an advanced placement English seminar in a California University were asked to identify Chaucer. Turns out not one student knew he was an English author. Seniors in a Baltimore High School were asked to find France on a world map. Fewer than half could. A “research project” for credit was to find out who was president during WWII. Fewer than half the students asked could put the Civil War in the right century. I was on a cruise that called at Cozumel off the Yucatan Peninsula. The tour guide was asked “Are we near Baja?” And one of my favorites was at the Grand Canyon. We were talking to a bonefide Ranger after a lecture. He told us he has been asked a number of times whether that was Canada they were seeing on the far rim.

Didn’t I see where 70 % of university students believe there are angels? Forgetaboutit, we are light years away from who cares that energy is not the same as power?

I've read many articles on EnergyPulse but have never responded to any until now. First, I agree that home power is "the rate at which energy is consumed" however, I believe it is measured in KW-hrs, please check your meter. I am a Technical Trainer at a municiple power plant in Florida and I agree that the vast majority of people (our customers) have no idea what we sell them. They open their "light bill" and say "D#%mn, that's a lot!!". Here in the Sunshine state because of air conditioning issue, your "light bill" is typically in the top three of just about every home's monthly expenses. The knowledge shortfall has plenty of "blame" to go around but here's the action my company has taken; We started a Power Academy at a local high school this year to address as many of the gaps as we can. Amazingly enough many teachers and parents are also extremely interested in the program and we may even get a few good entry level employee's out of the future graduating classes. Filling the "power knowledge" void is an enormous task. But then; "How do you eat an elephant?" One bite at a time. Have you taken your bite today?

Please forgive me if I am a little rough around the edges. I'm extremely old school and the only letters after my name would be USN (retired). I also don't know the difference between woot and w00t but feel to call me and we'll talk about it!!

Thank you for your time,

Joey Tamondong Lakeland Electric

The lack of public education (on many subjects) has always been an embarrassment to our so-called advanced education system. On the subject of home power and energy, the public has never needed to know the difference between them. Historically a home owner did not need to be concerned at all with power because the grid's reliability translated into as much power available as demanded, up to the service limits set by a home's utility panel fuses or breakers.

If consumers could observe their instantaneous power consumption in watts in real time and know how it relates to cumulative energy consumption in kwhrs, in exactly the same way we buy gasoline at gas station pumps that show a running display, consumers would learn very quickly the difference between power and watts. Power is analogous to the speedometer on a car, and energy is analogous to the odometer. Consumers could also educate themselves about the relative power demands for the myriad of loads in a home, and learn what it actually costs to run a light bulb versus an air conditioner for a given period of time.

To do this requires consumers have an in-home real-time energy display that communicates with the utility meter to obtain instantaneous power demand in watts, cumulative energy consumption in kwhrs, and also convert it to their running utility bill by getting accurate billing rate information from the utility company, particularly if it changes in real time with pending Time-Of-Use rates.

Would you care to compare the granularity of current power models with the (virtual lack of?) granularity of current climate models, which are arguably why we are having this discussion in the first place? How about the degree of certainty of the assumptions involved?

California is in a better position with regard to RPS than most states because of both geothermal and hydro, although CA had some issues early in this decade because it misjudged the fraction of hydro capacity which was reliable, as opposed to source of opportunity, power.

Certainly increased ability to predict wind and solar availability would allow greater confidence in higher RPS levels, as long as either the conventional capacity margin is adequate or sufficient sheddable load is available. Efficient storage would probably help more.

Obviously there is also a significant difference between renewables as 20% of installed capacity and renewables as 20% of delivered energy.

You may be aware that while ERCOT West has a higher percentage of installed wind capacity than CA, it also experiences negative power prices far more frequently. I will grant you that enhanced transmission capacity would allow that surplus wind power to be spread over a larger area, perhaps even coming into balance with available demand.

Fortunately, I get to watch the issue from the other coast.

Ed

Actually I wasn't even thinking of education (that is, schooling) when I gave the examples of ignorance above. I'd guess that those on this site would have made few of those boners if they had but three years of school. How does one not know where France is or when the Civil War was fought? This ignorance has developed while I watched.

Was watching a movie the other nite where the scriptwriter had a youthful protagonist protest to a public official something like "I graduated my highschool third in my class!" Funny thing was, what he was protesting was being forced to enter a remedial reading and writing class, being found completely illiterate.

As for the general public - the mentality is exactly the same as the general public in Galileos day who were quite prepared to burn the guy at the stake rather than admit he was right and the Earth DOES revolve around the Sun. I am sure that many believe electricity comes out of the wall. Most could care less where it comes from as long as it does not go off when they are watching Super Bowl. So don't expect the public to understand anything any time soon. They don't want to understand.

But I think this lack of knowledge and education is not unintentional. A poorly educated public can be manipulated so much more readily than a public that questions. This is particularly noticeable with respect to nuclear energy which you use in your article. The publics that live and work around these power plants are very supportive because they understand the risks are miniscule compared to the benefits (jobs, businesses, high and dependable standard of living). Those that are not knowledgeable about nuclear power and who likely have never been in a nuclear plant will have the view (perpetuated by main stream media) that they are just a hairs breadth away from a nuclear explosion. Complete scientific nonsense of course - but believed by many nevertheless (remember Galileo). They will also believe they are unsafe except the facts are that nuclear power is the safest method of producing electricity mankind has ever devised.

But facts are whatever the ad agencies create them to be....facts have nothing to do with science today and the fiasco of global warming is but one sad example.

Even educated folks like Len Gould here can often not see the wood for the trees....apparently unable to provide rational explanations as to why the earth has been much hotter than it is today with far less CO2 in the atmosphere. Or why the "feedback effect" of the lack of arctic ice apparently has occurred before without the demise of all living things on earth.

That I find particularly discouraging.

Malcolm

I basically support John's view on the social drawbacks of todays society. I saw it back in the early 70's, people getting complacent and dumbed down over social panaceas. But I would like to clarify one point about renewables. They were pushed first as a means of independence of corporate power by the bohemian Hippy generation. They then became the battle cry of the global warming alarmists,- Green and clean. John is right, it's about as green as cow and horse manure and attracts all those politico and lobbying flies.

The overlooked fact here is that global warming has been occurring since the last ice age. It was quite rapid at first and then tapered down to a constant 0.5C per century with chaotic dips and peaks of climate irregularities. Iceages have 100,000 year cycles with 12,000 year optimums that we are experiencing now. But some climatologists say that we are nearing the end of the 12,000 year optimum cycle and the next ice age is upon us. I have seen several scientific proofs that show that CO2 has a maxim forcing of around 325ppm that varies with solar irradiance. Hansen claimed back in 1990 that we were approaching the tipping point at 350ppm. It's now at 385ppm and sensors show climate cooling in temps that are following the sun's waning of sunspot activity, which is linked to irradiance. The truth is being suppressed for politico and corporate special interests like Picken's plan.

I urge everyone to take the IPCC's mantra with a big plug of cow/horse puckie. Go to www.iceage.us to learn the opposite viewpoint, you may find it more reasonable then the mantra of the Man made (anthropogenic) global warming alarmists. It's about as bogus as the stimulus program bailing out the economy. Human's impact on the climate is probably more local and mostly due to land use and particulate emissions. CO2 is only responsible for about 5% of warming since the preindustrial 'green age'.

The issue with what energy resources to develop is not primarily scientific, or even technological. And whle political jockying and favor-seeking obviously play heavily, it's not primarily a political issue either. It's economic.

Under our current economic system, it's very difficult to escape the "race to the bottom". Whatever can deliver the product for the least cost wins. If it happens to entail damage to the commons or undesirable social effects, well, too bad. The market mostly doesn't consider that.

The tie-in to what Jim wrote about is limits to growth -- and bumping up against same. As long as human numbers were small and their activities a negligible factor in the global environment, then the downside of the market system was unimportant, compared to its advantes. (And yes, it does have advantages.) Continuous economic growth was able to overpower a lot of ills. But when a growth-oriented economy is forced to confront its limits, that's when TSHTF.

I suspect that that's the source of much of the passion that drives the anti-AGW movement. The notion that human numbers and human activity have reached a level where we really do have to worry about our impact on the environment is anathema to those committed to open frontiers and a future without limits.

Thank you for your good comments. Count me among those who strongly believe that we "DO have to worry about our impact on the environment."

That's why this energy business is a three-legged stool: technology, economics, AND environment.

The only way the position that "economics will provide us with the best solution" will be true, is if there is a Free Market situation. Regarding renewables, it is NOT a free market, as these are given an unprecedented amount of artificial support — for political reasons.

I have no problem in encouraging alternatives — but only alternatives that are technologically, economically and environmentally sound.

In other words, alternatives based on science, not lobbyists.

Assessment of Parabolic Trough and Power Tower Solar Technology - Cost and Performance Forecasts - Sargent & Lundy LLC Engineering Group Chicago, Illinois

[QUOTE]For the more technically aggressive low-cost case, S&L found the National Laboratories’ “SunLab” methodology and analysis to be credible. The projections by SunLab, developed in conjunction with industry, are considered by S&L to represent a “best-case analysis” in which the technology is optimized and a high deployment rate is achieved. The two sets of estimates, by SunLab and S&L, provide a band within which the costs can be expected to fall. The figure and table below highlight these results, with initial electricity costs in the range of 10 to 12.6 ¢/kWh and eventually achieving costs in the range of 3.5 to 6.2 ¢/kWh. The specific values will depend on total capacity of various technologies deployed and the extent of R&D program success. In the technically aggressive cases for troughs / towers, the S&L analysis found that cost reductions were due to volume production (26%/28%), plant scale-up (20%/48%), and technological advance (54%/24%).[/QUOTE]

The ONLY difficulty is getting that first 2 to 8 GW built. Without the volume build, costs hover in the range of $0.20 t $0.26, which no free enterprise will go near voluntarily. Without a push, that will remain the situation right up until the day the last bit of fossil fuel is gone. Free-market systems cannot look far enough into the future to deal with issues such as fossil depletion, without government direction.

That's the theoretical justification for subsidies, and in theory, I agree. The trouble is that in practice, the ecosystem of government subsidies is so heavily parasitized as to be almost totally nonfunctional. A different approach is in the culture of Silicon Valley, where those who have "made it" nurture those on the way up, and take risks with their own money. That goes some way toward keeping down the parasites, but it also has its limitations.

I fully understand the premise that you are promoting, and have NO problem supporting solutions based on objective scientific evidence.

Reading what you referenced, I see that it is loaded with qualifications and caveats: "projections," "developed in conjunction with the industry," "best-case analysis," "high deployment rate is achieved," etc. They forgot to add that their numbers are assuming a blessing from the Pope.

This screams out one thing to me: "EXTREMELY SPECULATIVE." In my view we can NOT afford high speculation with such issues as the lives of billions of people at stake.

So what is "objective scientific evidence"? One might say peer-reviewed journals, but many AGW skeptics might indicate that can be a tainted source; untrustworthy. You seem to be striving for ideals that I frankly can't see how they can be readily achieved in a timely fashion. (Eventually, we do recognize bad ideas: Graphite moderated reactors, dirigibles for passenger transportation, disco, etc., but it takes time. Very hard to determine the winners and losers a priori.)

Also, you act as if oil and coal are not subsidized. There are. Take for example, the Iraq war. Or the DOE, which at this point is the handmaiden for big coal and oil.

In my opinion, I think it is "extremely speculative" to continue business as usual in the reality of peak oil. So what do we do about it? You seem to be advocating deep thought until some pure, objective, definitive answer will be realized by all of us. I'm sorry, but I don't things work that way, and never have.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my obviously poor communication.

1 - I do NOT advocate business as usual. We need to change to BETTER power sources (and not just go from the frying pan into the fire).

2 - I do NOT advocate just deep thought, but action. We need to aggressively work on exploring our options to be able to choose what will work best.

3 - I won't define "objective scientific evidence" as I'm sure that was said in jest. Hint: it is NOT peer reviewed journals. We need to assess the options we have using scientific methodology.

4 - Coal and nuclear ARE subsidized and I never said otherwise. The facts are that they provide essential power (like base load - which wind power does not) and that their per KWH subsidies are less than 10% of what wind power's is.

5 - Skipping the employment of scientific methodology because it may not produce results "in a timely fashion" is exactly the rationale that will doom us to be victimized by lobbyists.

If you have a better way than science to ensure that we will get maximum results at minimum cost, please write it up in your blog.

Looks to me like the USA is operating in much the same mode for some reason, particularly regarding solar thermal generation, and likely soon nuclear power generation.

I put some differential equations on a blackboard last year, and was informed by my 'superior' that the students - most of whom were engineering students or graduates - had complained about this departure on my part. That gentleman's desk was filled with technical literature, mostly in the form of books opened to pages that displayed equations from top to bottom, and whose purpose was obviously to impress students and colleagues. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he succeeded.

I didn't expect to encounter that sort of thing in a technical university, and was I glad to get that plane taking me back to Sweden. As it happened though, the young Swedish chap who walked into the departure lounge ahead of me curled up on the floor and went to sleep. although there were 20 or 30 very comfortable and well padded chairs only a few meters from where he decided to rest his weary bones. Etc, etc.