It was actually shown way back in 1861 that CO2 was a greenhouse gas. That forgotten champion of science was John Tyndall.
It has stood the test of nearly 160 years so that is well respected.
And you can read his work here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/108724?cookieSet=1&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Anyway folks. Youāll be able to put a 6.6kW system, battery ready on your roof for $1k in 2-3 years. The duck curve will go extreme and the new fun thing will be to avoid the afternoon peak. Industry will drive the push for grid stability because they canāt survive without it and if they have to, theyāll do it themselves. Decentralisation, big time. Obviously not a good way to do it.
Whereas what will ACTUALLY happen is that the people who have roof space for panels and can afford batteries, will buy them and then go off-grid because the paltry returns from selling solar back to the grid donāt make up for increasingly ludicrous connection fees. So the only suckers left on grid, whoāll then be asked to cough up the entire cost of the grid via connection fees, will be renters, who are the ones probably least able to afford it. Becasue so much solar capacity has gone off-grid, the coalition will fund profoundly uneconomic life-extension programs for creaky old coal plants, but because these plants are crocks and need increasing frequent and major repairs, this wonāt help much. Then the energy minister will no doubt return to his bed and rub lumps of coal lasciviously all over himself, giggling all the while.
The result of this will be cheap power for the well-off, expensive, unreliable power for people who are struggling, expensive taxpayer-funded subsidies for obsolete coal generators, and high levels of greenhouse emissions. Worst of all worlds.
One thing we do know is that being a Warmist now pays a lot more than being an Ice Age alatmist then.
An obscene amount.
Answer me the golden question thar every Alarmist avoids:
How many times have computer models and all if their versions and all of the data changes and parameters and adjustments to temperature records and projections has any of them been correct?
How many of those millions of those are there?
They canāt even hindcast one.
Name ONE.
Donāt forget to include Universities weather organisations, private institution and governmental departments or anyone with a vested interest, include wind farm operators, and every organisation that receives subsidies, commercial bankers, investors like Malcolm Turnbull etc.
People could make their solar system an on off grid system. Look at the appliances which use the most power. Fridge, Washing Machine, Dryer, Vacuum Cleaner, TV equipment. A 12/24 volt fridge like they have in RVās would do the job, they donāt use a lot of power however they are more expensive to purchase. Or a gas fridge? The most efficient Fisher and Pykel energy efficient washing machine, get people back into putting their clothes either on a clothes line outside or as we do, hang our washed clothes on clothes horses in the garage facing East. Its little a little hot house.
Iām looking forward to getting a much bigger and more efficient battery bank. We have two batteries now which would run our lights in a black out, a radio, small t.v. some small electrical appliances - juicer, vitimizer, etc.
At the moment, batteries are way to expensive but I am certain they will come down in price, in the same way as panels have over time. We will certainly purchase enough batteries and get our system tweaked so we can switch the grid off. and/or have it hooked up to a sensor where if there is a power glyche, it automatically turns the grid off and turns the back-up system on. We have lived this way before for 15 years and had a 10-kva Lister diesel genny as back up to solar/wind. My grandparents always had a Coolgardie safe on their back veranda.
Back in the day, you could source old 2 volt deep cycle batteries from the PMG /Telecom phone exchanges when they replaced them. Theyād just give them to us gratis, as it saved them getting rid of them.
Once you had your 55 of them, you would wire them in series, and get 110 volts, then run them through an old inverter, and buy appliances that had the 110 V setting on them for the US market and switch them to that. Along with all the lighting from car globes set up on a separate 12 volt circuit, (2 deep cycle 12 V batts in parallel) and a slow combust stove with a water jacket, backed up by LPG for both the water and a cooktop, we were well and truly set.
Just had to spark up the generator once a week or so during Winter to run the Washing machine, but the same set up today with the increased efficiency and negligible cost of new Solar Panels (by comparison to their cost then), you could do away with the Generator altogether, with appliances being way more efficient now too.
At one point we had an old washer with the rolling wringer on top, that we set up to run from a mounted old pushbike with no wheels, and the chain running from pedal sprocket to a cog where the motor was, so you could get your exercise up while washing your undies.
Like this,
But using one of these, ā¦
It was all great fun.
When the zombies take over can I stay at your camp BSD?
As long as weāre going down this road we might as well include Carmichael getting green lighted by the Qld government, Adani flicking it to Clive and Gina because it was a Ponzi scheme from the outset, Clive and Gina getting the whole thing opened up on tax revenue and making money off the now artificially cheap thermal coal coming out of the basin at a staggering volume and the world locked into an extra decade of the same.
Putting aside public opinion and the very low probability of a reactor issue, are there genuine reasons why Australia shouldnāt explore Nuclear power whilst transitioning to a full renewable energy grid?
From my very limited knowledge omissions are significantly lower than Coal fired, we donāt have Tsunamis nor earthquakes, nor the GDP of the Ukraine.
We donāt have too much of an issue exporting uranium so why not explore this option at a site thatās safe on non impactful in terms of indigenous land.
The transition to a sustainable energy grid sans coal is incredibly challenging. Is this simply a āgreenā issue or are there things Iām clearly missing?
That is impossible to put aside.
Forgeddaboudit.
Technically we are better placed now to do nuclear power. But environmentally we are between a rock and a hard place. I would go nuclear if it meant we could leave all our coal in the ground.
But it would make the proponent a big target for aneat and juicy scare campaign and the nimbys would appear from 3000 km away.
You know how long it takes, and how much it costs, to build a Nuclear power plant, ā¦ right?
Completely unviable considering how quickly renewables are progressing, ā¦ before we even get to the Dangers of it or nimbys, let alone the waste disposal problems.
Have a look at my post up thread a bit, but basically nuclear is enormously expensive (far more so than renewables) and takes ages to come online (>10 years in many cases, especially once the shitfights about where the reactors are going to be sited are taken into account). And in Australia, we donāt have the look of qualified nuclear people to build/run them - building that expertise takes decades.
Environmentally speaking, we canāt wait that long. We need to have the guts ripped out of emissions by 2030 if weāre going to avoid catastrophe. Nuclear isnāt going to be ready in time.
For someone whoās not close to this, whatās logical in terms of projects for mass renewable energy generation over the next 5-10 years, thatās capable of feeling into the grid when demand is high?
Are we talking more Broken Hill solar farms, industrial sized storage units, more hydro, wind? Iām keen to know.
Has anyone outlined a layman succinct plan for renewable projects that are feasible? Keen to explore further.
Good points. Solar and batteries is low risk low tech and we have very high rates of insolation and lots of open land near the load centres.
Clearly solar needs storage to provide baseload and replace coal. One method is solar heat concentrator (guided mirrors) to storage medium to steam boiler to generator. The issue is finding the ideal high heat capacity medium thats good for maximum high grade heat during the return
phase . This competes with the high cost battery inverter systems. Base load systems need to be big and preferably sited close to the major load centres.
The term ābaseloadā is very often wildly misunderstood and/or misused, most commonly to make solar look less feasible than it actually is.
Baseload is NOT a good thing. The actual definition of baseload is āthe base level of power that you generate even when nobody needs it, because your generator canāt be taken offline or brought back online at short noticeā. As a rule, coal generates FAR TOO MUCH baseload power, because coal boilers basically run all the time (puking out CO2 as they do). This is why, here in Vic at least, you can look at your power bill and see that power in the middle of the night is far cheaper than power through the day. Too much baseload power is being wastefully generated, and the power companies have to give people a discount on it so that itāll get used.
What is desirable is RESPONSIVE power, power thatās available when necessary and which can be held back when itās not. This is where storage comes in (and grid improvements, but thatās another issue). But because as a rule the highest power loads are during the day (normally on hot days, when solar generation is the highest conveniently enough), itās simply not necessary to replace every GW of baseload coal generation capacity with a an equivalent GW of storage-backed renewables. We wildly overcater the baseload/offpeak market already because of the limitations of coal tech. We donāt have to continue to overcater once we transition to renewables.
Ah, sorf, Gish galloping again? Spewing a torrent of new garbage to be rebutted after your previous point is proven to be full of crap, without ever acknowledging you were wrong?.
Funny how you continue to change the subject rather than actually present evidence, isnāt it?
Seriously, I could use you as exhibit 1 in a course on dishonest debating tactics.
Hahahaaa. Climate research at the CSIRO has been continually strangled by years of budget cuts under successive PMs of all political parties. CSIROs climate division was specially targetted under Abbott and nearly gutted. The Climate Council was completely defunded and only contuinued due to private donations.
If you want to cash in on climate, be a denialist shill for oil and coal interests like your mate Dr Soon (brought to you by Exxon and Koch Industries). Far more cash, and you donāt even have to have a relevant qualification! Soon is an aeronautical engineer, Ian Plimer (brought to you by Gina Rinehardt, director of both coal and oil mining companiesā¦) is a geologist. Funny how few actual climate scientists take up the 30 pieces of silver though, isnāt it? Maybe they actually know too much about whatās going onā¦
Demand impossible standards of proof from your opposition, demand no proof at all from those on your side. Standard climate denialist tactic. Why are you so determined to ensure the climate genocide happens?
But anyway, since you asked, hereās a graph of actual global temperatures, vs time, with IPCC predictions in solid lines and and various climate genocide denialist predictions in dotted lines. The original only goes up to 2012 so Iāve done my best to extend it with very approximate data for more recent years (based on GISS data). Whose predictions have been more accurate?
I donāt even know what youāre talking about here. Seriously, repeating names of the people you donāt like is not an argument. And nothing that Turnbull or any bank does or says will change the basic physics. CO2 and similar gases trap heat in the atmosphere. The more CO2 etc, the hotter it will get.
I admire HM for his indefatigable responses to dud posts.
Anyway, here is a peek over the horizon at some great tech by a new Australian startup:
They have a new tech to store energy as heat in ābatteriesā made from cheap recycled metal. Like most AUS high tech companies they are getting more interest from overseas than from Australiaās short-sighted āinvestorsā.
Do check their website - they have a lot of potential.
This tech has been mentioned here before and if successful could also be part of the solution to storage:
