How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course

[senona]

Even tho solar energy and wind energy may be cleaner, they just are not reliable.
And some countries are running into issues, resorting back to fossil fuel.

Is the global effort to combat climate change, painstakingly agreed to in Paris seven months ago, already going off the rails?

Germany, Europe’s champion for renewable energy, seems to be having second thoughts about its ambitious push to ramp up its use of renewable fuels for power generation.

Hoping to slow the burst of new renewable energy on its grid, the country eliminated an open-ended subsidy for solar and wind power and put a ceiling on additional renewable capacity.

Germany may also drop a timetable to end coal-fired generation, which still accounts for over 40 percent of its electricity, according to a report leaked from the country’s environment ministry. Instead, the government will pay billions to keep coal generators in reserve, to provide emergency power at times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.

Renewables have hit a snag beyond Germany, too. Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.

In Southern Australia, where wind supplies more than a quarter of the region’s power, the spiking prices of electricity when the wind wasn’t blowing full-bore pushed the state government to ask the power company Engie to switch back on a gas-fired plant that had been shut down.

But in what may be the most worrisome development in the combat against climate change, renewables are helping to push nuclear power, the main source of zero-carbon electricity in the United States, into bankruptcy.

Source

"....Instead, the government will pay billions to keep coal generators in reserve, to provide emergency power at times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine."   <<-- oh that is  just rich. Actually, very costly indeed.


I like this part here....yes, why is the U.S, so obsessed with renewable energy?
Bottom line, they don't care what consumers pay as long as the companies make billions.

The United States, and indeed the world, would do well to reconsider the promise and the limitations of its infatuation with renewable energy.


“The issue is, how do we decarbonize the electricity sector, while keeping the lights on, keeping costs low and avoiding unintended consequences that could make emissions increase?” said Jan Mazurek, who runs the clean power campaign at the environmental advocacy group ClimateWorks.


Addressing those challenges will require a more subtle approach than just attaching more renewables to the grid.

Thought this tid bit to be interesting as well

An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, narrowly distributed two weeks ago, estimated that nuclear reactors that produce 56 percent of the country’s nuclear power would be unprofitable over the next three years.

If those were to go under and be replaced with gas-fired generators, an additional 200 million tons of carbon dioxide would be spewed into the atmosphere every year.

Kinda would be defeating the purpose, eh?

Oh what a conundrum they have got on their hands.

They cry "global warming is due to mankind, we need cleaner energy".
Yet at the end of it all, when all is said and done, it may be worse than what it is now where carbon emissions are concerned.


And no, I'm not talking about the cows.  




Also, there are issues with the natural gas leaking, making the situation worse for our climate.

Some recent research has shown that leaks in various spots along natural gas pipelines release enough methane gas—another gas that causes warming—to complicate the equation.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak outside of Los Angeles, which released more than 100,000 tons of methane in the four months before it was sealed in February, drew attention to the risk of massive blowouts, but environmental policy experts say the real risk may lie in smaller leaks that can go undetected.

When methane gets out it is more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide at holding heat in the atmosphere over a 100-year period, according to the EPA.

Linky


Ah it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Except "the doing" is costing millions more and may not actually accomplish anything.


Especially being as one will never be able to stop the natural evolution of a planet.
What is now called Climate Change.
The natural cycles that this planet goes thru, over millions and millions of years.

It is only arrogance -- the god-like attitude -- that scientists think they can actually stop Earth from changing.
LMAO on that one!!

[727Sky]

Not to mention one major volcanic eruption puts more Carbon plus billions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than all of man's endeavors is less than a two week period.

Does not matter though for there is money to be had from the resident eaters who have to live on this world.

[senona]

Not to mention one major volcanic eruption puts more Carbon plus billions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than all of man's endeavors is less than a two week period.

Not to dispute your word, for I believe as you do.


But now there are scientists saying that HUMANS put out more CO2 than volcanoes.

Will try to find that article, because it goes against what I had read before, about there being no way to calculate just exactly how much CO2 is put off by man versus other natural causes, but they implied we were the lesser of the 2.

Then read the other day where they claim we DO make more CO2 than anything else, and I was like huh???
Make up your damn minds, would ya


Let me go hunt that down right quick......

[senona]

This isn't the exact article I was looking for, but it talks of the same thing...putting down people who claim volcanoes put out more CO2 than humans.

This one has to do with the volcano in southern Iceland-- the Eyjafjallajokull, back when it erupted.



April 21, 2010

.......But one opportunity the volcano has gifted us in particular is the chance to put to bed once and for all that barrel-aged climate sceptic canard which maintains that volcanoes emit far more carbon dioxide than anthropogenic sources. It's always been a favourite, but has been pushed even further up the charts of popularity in recent months by the repeated claims of Ian Plimer, the Australian mining geologist who wrote the climate sceptic bible Heaven and Earth last year.
Here, for example, is what Plimer wrote on Australia's ABC Network website last August:

The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth. Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.

John Cook of the increasingly popular Skeptical Science website currently lists the "volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans" viewpoint as number 54 on his ever-growing list - 107, to date - of debunked sceptic arguments.
It was also a point picked up by my colleague James Randerson when he interviewed Plimer last December. In Heaven and Earth, Plimer says: "Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined." Randerson challenged Plimer on this point, stating that the US Geological Survey (USGS) states: "Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes."
Plimer responded by saying that this does not account for undersea eruptions. However, when Randerson checked this point with USGS volcanologist Dr Terrence Gerlach, he received this reply:

I can confirm to you that the "130 times" figure on the USGS website is an estimate that includes all volcanoes – submarine as well as subaerial ... Geoscientists have two methods for estimating the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges. There were estimates for the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges before there were estimates for the global output of subaerial volcanoes.

Despite having seemingly lanced this festering boil for good, the focus on Eyjafjallajokull over the past week has allowed this question to bubble back up to the forefront of people's minds. It was enough to trigger the Paris-based AFP news agency to seek some answers:

Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano is emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure placing it in the same emissions league as a small-to-medium European economy, experts said on Monday.

Assuming the composition of gas to be the same as in an earlier eruption on an adjacent volcano, "the CO2 flux of Eyjafjoell would be 150,000 tonnes per day," Colin Macpherson, an Earth scientist at Britain's University of Durham, said in an email.

Patrick Allard of the Paris Institute for Global Physics (IPGP) gave what he described as a "top-range" estimate of 300,000 tonnes per day.

Both insisted that these were only approximate estimates.

Extrapolated over a year, the emissions would place the volcano 47th to 75th in the world table of emitters on a country-by-country basis, according to a database at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which tracks environment and sustainable development.

A 47th ranking would place it above Austria, Belarus, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, according to this list, which relates to 2005.

Experts stressed that the volcano contributed just a tiny amount – less than a third of one percentage point – of global emissions of greenhouse gases.

So, please, can we now put this hoary old chestnut to bed?

Source



I personally do not like how climate change activists act like bullies towards those people that question it.
 

Let me correct that....they do not question climate change itself, but rather the 'man-made global warming agenda' is what they question.

And in science, one is supposed to question and research and study.

Yet with GW climate change, oh no you are NOT allowed to question it at all. Period.
Which is what makes it so suspicious, because despite what 'statistics' they throw at you (in favor for GW mind you), there are well known scientists who do question it.

[guohua]

@"senona" You said: 

Yet with GW climate change, oh no you are NOT allowed to question it at all. Period.

Which is what makes it so suspicious, because despite what 'statistics' they throw at you (in favor for GW mind you), there are well known scientists who do question it.

So right you are!!!

In news that should shock and anger Americans, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that not only has she discussed internally the possibility of pursuing civil actions against so-called “climate change deniers,” but she has “referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action.”
Source

[senona]

@"guohua" ,

And I raise you one Dr William Happer to counter Lynch.
But being as this was in 2012,  they must have blown him off and ignored what he had to say about man-made GW.



"Dr William Happer Destroys Climate Change Hysteria in 7 minutes"