Good News: Great Barrier Reef Recovering Nicely!

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

It certainly is true that "The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing," but after that we part company. Many of the links you've provided seem mostly to be accurately reporting scientific observations or scientific consensus, while others are just headlines with no links provided to the source material. Let's go through each of them.

#1) Facts about the Climate Emergency
This is probably the most important link you presented, as it is the U.N.'s climate website, and as such indirectly represents climate science's consensus position, as elaborated by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The warnings presented here are grave, but more measured than the hair-on-fire pronouncements you mention above.


#2) Climate change: It's even worse than we thought
This seems to be a collection of various climate change headlines made over the last decade or so. Most of them are opinion pieces. I'm not quite sure what point you are trying to make?


#3) Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against
This is a review of potential tipping points, and gives an evaluation of the risk level for each area of concern. Here is an introductory paragraph:

Here we summarize evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points, identify knowledge gaps and suggest how these should be plugged. We explore the effects of such large-scale changes, how quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them.

It seems to me like a sober analysis of the current science. I didn't notice anywhere in that article that supported your apparently false assertion that "multiple 'tipping points' have come and gone."

#4) Warming Twice As Fast
These three articles are a real hodge-podge as far a quality.

The Live Science article appears to be an accurate representation of the fact that the Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the world. This is bourne out both by theory and by measurements.

The RealClimateScience site has a number of news articles stating that a whole lot of places are claiming to be warming "two times as fast as the rest of the world," which on the face of it seems absurd. But then you notice that most of the places mentioned are either northern high-latitude regions (Canada, Arctic, Sweden, Finland, Russia, etc), or high altitude regions (mountains, Tibetan plateau, etc). Again, this fits with both scientific theory and actually observations. Here is an explanation for why the northern polar regions are warming faster than the tropics:


Polar versus Equatorial Warming

The final link in this groups is from Holocene Climate. It's just a lot of alarmist headlines with no links to follow. Journalists are paid to create catchy titles to their articles, but without being about to read the body of the article, or see whether they back it up with scientific studies, it's something I would ignore.


#5) Sea levels are going to rise by at least 20ft. We can do something about it
The title of this article is certainly meant to be clickbait, but the actual reporting in the article seems to be of a reasonably researched scientific study. Here is part of what was said:

In that scenario, there could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050, and much more to come.

and

...over the next 2,000 years [sea level is] all but certain to rise by at least 20 to 30 feet.

Sobering, but reasonable.


#5) Natural disasters occurring three times more often than 50 years ago: new FAO report
This is a U.N. article reporting on a U.N. sponsored study. Here is the abstract of the study. It is very sobering, but it appears that they have data to back up their conclusions.

Abstract:

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.

#6) 50% Of The Great Barrier Reef Is Now Dead Or Dying, 93% Is Bleached
This thread has been about the health of the GBR. I'm not sure I can add any more to what has already been said. In the last few decades the GBR has had a number of serious heat-related bleaching events. When the heat goes away the corals do start recovering. But the expectation is that heat-related bleaching events will happen more and more frequently, which will give the reefs less and less time to recover. The phenomena is not unique to the GBR, but is also being seen at many reefs world-wide.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

All-in-all, I find the climate-related science to be pretty solid, however sobering, though I agree that some of the popular journal headlines can be over-the-top hyperventilating.

That's ^^^ interesting. Now you're claiming my "vague assertions" are actually the real deal. You might want to have a think about that in the context of my post you quoted.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

That's ^^^ interesting. Now you're claiming my "vague assertions" are actually the real deal. You might want to have a think about that in the context of my post you quoted.

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet
One quarter of a century into a climate emergency, where it's worst than we thought and multiple "tipping points" have come and gone and everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else and where sea levels are rising exponentially and where a series of unprecedented natural disasters and weather patterns that haven't occurred within the past 40 or even 100 years have been wreaking havoc and, of course, where tropical reefs are dying like red shirts in a Star Trek flick.

And yet here we are. The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing.

It is the quotes in red that I don't agree with, and which science doesn't support. Though maybe if I knew what "red shirts in a Star Trek flick" were I'd agree with that?

The science does indicate that sea levels are rising faster than in the past, and some types of natural disasters are happening more frequently, such as heat waves and both droughts and down-pours.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

It is the quotes in red that I don't agree with, and which science doesn't support. Though maybe if I knew what "red shirts in a Star Trek flick" were I'd agree with that?

The science does indicate that sea levels are rising faster than in the past, and some types of natural disasters are happening more frequently, such as heat waves and both droughts and down-pours.

Wait one minute.


You need to spend less time at the computer and more time watching Star Trek.


Other than that, if you don't agree with your points in red then you need to concede that the media is being fed a whole bunch of B.S. when it comes to the Climate Crisis aka Climate Emergency aka Climate Change aka AGW aka MMGW going all the way back to J Hansen's "turning the air conditioners off". Which, in turn, is being regurgitated to the general populace.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Wait one minute.


You need to spend less time at the computer and more time watching Star Trek.


Other than that, if you don't agree with your points in red then you need to concede that the media is being fed a whole bunch of B.S. when it comes to the Climate Crisis aka Climate Emergency aka Climate Change aka AGW aka MMGW going all the way back to J Hansen's "turning the air conditioners off". Which, in turn, is being regurgitated to the general populace.

I suspect that far-left opinion sources overplay alarmism, and far-right opinion sources downplay what is happening. I try to present what the science supports. There appears to be a lot of folks on this thread that think that people like Tucker Carlson are more authoritative about AGW than the IPCC. That doesn't speak well for their good judgement.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

I suspect that far-left opinion sources overplay alarmism, and far-right opinion sources downplay what is happening. I try to present what the science supports. There appears to be a lot of folks on this thread that think that people like Tucker Carlson are more authoritative about AGW than the IPCC. That doesn't speak well for their good judgement.

It's unfortunate, but you are a victim of what you read. You argue with me about the health of the GBR. You write this:

#6) 50% Of The Great Barrier Reef Is Now Dead Or Dying, 93% Is Bleached
This thread has been about the health of the GBR. I'm not sure I can add any more to what has already been said. In the last few decades the GBR has had a number of serious heat-related bleaching events. When the heat goes away the corals do start recovering. But the expectation is that heat-related bleaching events will happen more and more frequently, which will give the reefs less and less time to recover. The phenomena is not unique to the GBR, but is also being seen at many reefs world-wide.

Which is simply parroting your take on information you have been presented. I could write an essay on why your impression of the state of the GBR is wrong. I have a reasonable idea as to why it is wrong. I'd suggest it's wrong because in true "squeaky wheel get's the most oil" form, it's being propagated by those with a self interest to create an illusion that there's a serious problem. This as a single instance would be unremarkable. The concern is that if the world is being told the GBR is endangered when it is, arguably, healthier than it has been anytime within the past 50 years then one has to wonder if this same approach is being applied to other "climate sensitive" regions?


Sure, you can claim I'm a "climate change denier" (which I'm not), but when you see websites set up specifically to denigrate members of the scientific community that oppose the notion of a "climate crisis" (e.g. desmogblog); or endorsed websites pushing the line that no matter what, absolutely nothing good will come of climate change (e.g. skepticalscience); or formally well respected scientists ostracized because they fail to toe the climate crisis line (e.g. Peter Ridd); or pillars of the pro climate change science community that, it can only be deduced, will outright lie (e.g. "the GBR is 96% dead" - Michael Mann circa 2016). It's a "death by 1000 cuts" scenario that just continues on and on all the way from turned off airconditioners to hockey stick graphs to "An Inconvenient Truth" to annually (re-)homogenised temperature records. At some point you have just got to start questioning, not perhaps the ulterior motives of the movement as a whole, but those of the individuals of that movement as a collective.

[Buzzman]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

And if you figure this stuff is harmless.

Having subsidized "renewables" until they destabilized both the power grid and electrical power economics until the coal fired generators cannot compete during periods when the wind blows and the sun shines and consequently the generators scheduling the demolition of these stranded assets the various culprit governments in Australia have realized that if this is allowed to occur the beer will get warm, the hamburger rot and the lights go out.

Their solution.

The governments will now pay the coal fired generators a subsidy to keep the coal fired power stations maintained in operating condition and on standby with crews in order to keep the beer cold, the hamburger from going rotten and the lights on.

So the consume will now pay subsidies to make unreliable power sources competitive with reliable power sources whilst also paying to maintain the unused but reliable power sources which formerly provided unsubsidized power.

You have to be a AGW/CC zealot to dream this stuff up.

Even if the above scenario is true (which it mostly isn't) it is utterly irrelevant in the AGW amelioration debate.

We simply cannot avoid doing something because it might be 'more costly than business as usual' because that way lies madness - and inevitable decline of ecosystem, society, and the business model the vested interests still prefer.

The ACTUAL problem for the fossil-fuel generation sector is not that renewables are/were being subsidised (and lets not for a second contemplate the long-term - and dangerous - ACTUAL and effective subsidisation of the fossel fuel industry itself, primarily by not factoring in the cost to the environemnet of burning fossil fuels) but the fact that renewables have proven so damned effective at drastically lowering the cost/kWh of our electricity generation.

Naturally, "market forces" automatically select the 'lowest cost' source at each half-hour 'price point' (talking Oz east coast NEM here) and so the fossil fueled plants cannot sell their (now) more expensive power EXCEPT when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow.


The ACTUAL reason this is an issue for them is that their generators are set up, designed, and built to run only as 'synchronous generators', running continuously and at a set speed, producing a largely inflexible 'set' amount of current.

Meaning, essentially, they are neither nimble enough nor flexible enough to keep step with the alternative sources - renewables - and the fluctuating deamnds from the grid.

The "modern grid" needs must be 'flexible' rather than stagnant, and thus old-tech, fossil-fuel powered plants were going to go the way of the dinosaur anyway, it's just that the climate emergency, and the subsidies, have enabled the renewables sector to force them out faster than they might otherwise have expected to be.


As far as the planet, as far as CO2 emissions, as far as future-proofing the worlds biome is concerned, this is unequivocally a "good thing".

Anyone who argues otherwise is fooling only themselves.

And, for the record, there is nothing inherently less-reliable about renewable sources of power, compared to old-tech foosil fiuel generators. They fail often enough to be of concern.


The REAL issue is not the alleged (and untrue) "reliability", but rather, the very nature of the energy source form which said power is derived. Wind flows fluctuate - we sailors all know that. This is not 'new'. Clouds can block the sun, the planet rotates and night occurs form place to place.

These things can mostly be predicted, some quite accurately. The issue has been (and still is) that while we can generate enough power from renewables to run the grid, we can't necessarily do this when we WANT the power in the grid. Hence the need for storage of different types to augment the low-cost but inherently 'variable' supply from renewables.



While much of the focus has been on lithium iron p[hosphate storage batteries, there are numerous other technologies that are rapidly being brought up to 'grid scale', such as molten salt, liquid electrolyte storage, and most notably, stored hydro/pumped hydro.

As these technologies are implemented (and they are being implemented, as we speak) the grid will (eventually) be not just as reliable, but inherently MORE reliable, as it will not have so many eggs in a single (fossil fuel) basket.

As Nth Queenslanders found recently, when one of the generators uop there blew up spectacularly, it was the wind and solar power of renewables that quickly kicked in and re-booted the grid in FNQ.

A decentralised grid is actually MUCH better, in such scenarios, than the old tech centralised grid of the past.

In the long run, this will become self-evident even to the dinosaurs who insist on 'business as ususal'.

[RaymondR]

Hi Buzzman.

Your post is one of the finest collections of AGW/CC I've seen in the forum.

They may not have dotted the Is and crossed on the Ts but they're working on it and since the only option to having the grid crash is to make a deal with the coal fired generators to keep their generators in play is to pay them to do it.

As for the "business as usual". I wish they would shut down the coal fired generators for a week and demonstrate to the public how big a scam the whole renewables thing is and then maybe we could get serious on the decarbonization thing with practicable solutions.

On subsidies. If you are looking for an example of how the language is being perverted in order to control the dialectic you'll find none better than the "subsidies" aspect.

On the health of the planet. The planet and it's biome will do fine with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The Carboniferous was a great time for plant life. warmer climates mean longer growing season, movements of the tropics further into the temperate zones and the tropics are the most prolific for species of both plants and animals.

On market forces. Mankinds evolution of energy generation has evolved from wood firing to nuclear along a path which favours the most energy dense fuels. Wind mills have been around for millennia and have always had the same problem with intermittency and, as you may have found if you have a solar farm on a boat, panels have a large footprint for the limited power they supply.

On synchronous generators. Mains power providers go to a lot of trouble keeping the frequency constant, a lot of industrial processes depend upon the synchronicity of the grid. Be mindful that the power transmitted is related to both the frequency and current and voltage, RMS.

Before the modern grid, grids of limited extent using DC dominated the electrical power business. Then a bloke called Tesla started mucking about with AC. Another bloke called Westinghouse bought his patents and started building far superior networks. The DC networks then went out of business as they were replaced with AC systems. AC rules OK.

On reliability of renewables. Yep if one lives on a boat and relies on solar and wind, the batteries never go flat and one never needs to plug into the grid to recharge them or tun a genset etc.

On the constancy of renewables. So what you are stating is what we need to compensate for the extreme variabilities of wind and solar is good predictive models. ?????.

On storage alternatives. See two above it's gonna take enormous batteries, dams need water and use a lot of power to pump the water back up. The best way to build storage is use neutrons to transmute fertile elements.

North Queensland is connected to one of the most extensive coal fired power grids in the world. A few weeks ago when the Britains heavily wind dependent grid tried to go down because the wind didn't blow they bought nuclear from the French.

[GordMay]

QUOTE=RaymondR;3458813]OK, but since our period of interest only includes the period since a biological history commenced we should not go back in time to before the Cambrian.
I believe that the atmosphere had about 7,000 ppm of CO2 at that time...[/QUOTE]

In the entire history of human civilization*, CO2 levels have never been as high as they are today.

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, between 800,000 to 15 million years ago, modern humans didn't exist, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer, than it is now.

* Homo sapiens first appeared around 195,000 Years Ago, and civilization occurred about 12,000 years ago.

The Cambrian Period lasted about 50 million years, and ended about 490 million years ago, with a mass extinction event.

“Early Palaeozoic ocean anoxia and global warming driven by the evolution of shallow burrowing” ~ by Sebastiaan van de Velde et al
“... Our results suggest that the advent of shallow burrowing in the early Cambrian contributed to a global low-oxygen state, which prevailed for ~100 million years. This impact of bioturbation on global biogeochemistry likely affected animal evolution through expanded ocean anoxia, high atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming ...”

Here ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04973-4

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

On the health of the planet. The planet and it's biome will do fine with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The Carboniferous was a great time for plant life. warmer climates mean longer growing season, movements of the tropics further into the temperate zones and the tropics are the most prolific for species of both plants and animals.

Actually, the Carboniferous period was pretty boring. Mostly ferns, amphibians and reptiles. I'd miss not having mammals and trees.

Originally Posted by RaymondR

On synchronous generators. Mains power providers go to a lot of trouble keeping the frequency constant, a lot of industrial processes depend upon the synchronicity of the grid. Be mindful that the power transmitted is related to both the frequency and current and voltage, RMS.

Before the modern grid, grids of limited extent using DC dominated the electrical power business. Then a bloke called Tesla started mucking about with AC. Another bloke called Westinghouse bought his patents and started building far superior networks. The DC networks then went out of business as they were replaced with AC systems. AC rules OK.

Actually, high-power DC transmission is very useful in dealing with asynchronous systems.

High-voltage direct current

HVDC allows power transmission between AC transmission systems that are not synchronized. Since the power flow through an HVDC link can be controlled independently of the phase angle between source and load, it can stabilize a network against disturbances due to rapid changes in power. HVDC also allows transfer of power between grid systems running at different frequencies, such as 50 Hz and 60 Hz. This improves the stability and economy of each grid, by allowing exchange of power between incompatible networks.

Originally Posted by RaymondR

On storage alternatives. See two above it's gonna take enormous batteries, dams need water and use a lot of power to pump the water back up. The best way to build storage is use neutrons to transmute fertile elements.

Gravity storage systems are being developed that do not require water.

Gravity Energy Storage Will Show Its Potential in 2021

Energy Vault, Gravity Power, and their competitors seek to use the same basic principle—lifting a mass and letting it drop—while making an energy-storage facility that can fit almost anywhere. At the same time they hope to best batteries—the new darling of renewable-energy storage—by offering lower long-term costs and fewer environmental issues.

In action, Energy Vault's towers are constantly stacking and unstacking 35-metric-ton bricks arrayed in concentric rings. Bricks in an inner ring, for example, might be stacked up to store 35 megawatt-hours of energy. Then the system's six arms would systematically disassemble it, lowering the bricks to build an outer ring and discharging energy in the process.

Or use water without the need for mountains.

Gravity Storage

[GordMay]

The Carboniferous Period lasted from about 359.2 to 299 million years ago during the late Paleozoic Era, long before our earliest progenitors appeared.

The Carboniferous Period was the time of peak amphibian development, and the emergence of the reptiles. Insects also grew well in the humid, and high-oxygen conditions.

Most of the great coal basins of the world are of Carboniferous age. During the later part of the Carboniferous Period (Pennsylvanian), 318 to 299 million years ago, great forests grew on the land, and giant swamps filled low-lying areas.

Usually when a dead plant or animal decays, microbes decompose it, and combine its carbon with oxygen in the air, to produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. But as great masses of dead plants became buried under swamps, and out of contact with oxygen, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually dropped, and the world became cooler.

[AKA-None]

Apparently some people equate a tree farm of limited species to a forest

[Buzzman]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Hi Buzzman.

Your post is one of the finest collections of AGW/CC I've seen in the forum.

Thank you, I'll take that as a compliment and an acknowledgement that I, at least, have done my homework!

They may not have dotted the Is and crossed on the Ts but they're working on it and since the only option to having the grid crash is to make a deal with the coal fired generators to keep their generators in play is to pay them to do it.

Sadly, this is a point on which we can agree.

Personally, I'd rather see govt spend taxpayer's funds on battery storage and other storage capabilities, but, not to put too fine a point on it, "paying them to keep the coal-fired stations open" is the only "economic" way to continue to 'balance' the grid in the short term. Coal-fired generator owners are businessmen. If they can't beat the renewable generators on price, then they are not going to spend their own money on keeping ageing, high-maintenance coal-fired generators on stream.


As more and more renewables come on-grid, and more and more storage comes on-grid (with the built-in voltage balancing we now know this can provide), this will become less and less necessary.

It's called a "transition phase" and this is EXACTLY the sort of policy we would expect to see at such a time.


As for the "business as usual". I wish they would shut down the coal fired generators for a week and demonstrate to the public how big a scam the whole renewables thing is and then maybe we could get serious on the decarbonization thing with practicable solutions.


Typically, for a denier, you propose a 'solution' that is actually a problem. No-one - especially not pragmatists like me - is suggesting we should shut down coal-fired generators *while we still need them*.


Renewables are NOT a scam. They are an extremely cost-effective method of generating electricity. Their 'intermittency' is a nature of the beast, it is not a 'negative' as you and other deniers like to portray it. It's just a 'thing' that has to be considered. Managing the fluctuating generation of renewable grids is a 'new' thing that engineers understand in theory, but are only NOW being able to put into practice. There will be hiccups. There will be minor victories. Like the one the engineers at the SA Big Battery discovered recently, that enables them to 'smooth' the voltage fluctations in the grid using just the battery - effectively removing the necessity for synchronous generators that previously performed this job.


The most practicable method of 'decarbonizing' would be to 'tax' everyone and everything that emits CO2. Try getting that one through Parliament! Yet we may be forced to do so if EU goes ahead with it's CO2 border scheme.


On subsidies. If you are looking for an example of how the language is being perverted in order to control the dialectic you'll find none better than the "subsidies" aspect.


Actually, it has now been well and truly proven that coal and oil have been provided with MASSIVE effective subsidies over the past 250 years, simply because there has not been an adequate carbon tax in place to properly add the cost of environmental degradation and CO2 pollution to their price. It was only this lack that made them so atttractive as 'fuel' sources.


On the health of the planet. The planet and it's biome will do fine with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.



No, they won't. See Gord May's post that elucidates the reasons why this is the dumbest thing you've ever posted on CF.


The Carboniferous was a great time for plant life. warmer climates mean longer growing season, movements of the tropics further into the temperate zones and the tropics are the most prolific for species of both plants and animals.


The KEY point to make here is that those changes happened over millenia, giving plants and animals the chance to evolve. The present temp rise is going to occur within a half century. In other words, in a single human's lifetime.

NOTHING will be able to 'evolve'. We humans may, in some places, be able to 'adapt' but it will be to live in a world fundamentally, drastically, and UNpleasantly different to the one we currently (mostly) enjoy.


On market forces. Mankinds evolution of energy generation has evolved from wood firing to nuclear along a path which favours the most energy dense fuels.



I don't actually disagree with this. The issue is that that trajectory is precisely what has caused the catastrophe we are in the final throes of creating.


If nuclear fusion was an option, I'd be campaigning for that!


Frankly, I view the whole 'renewables era' as itself a 'transition' - to the eventual provision of nuclear fusion. But even the most optimistic scientists working in this field still estimate viable fusion is not less than 50 years off. And we simply don't have time to wait for it to be perfected.
So the 'renewables era' will, eventually, be looked back on as a necessary evil to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and something better.


For all we know, somoen may yet figure out how to deploy enormous solar panels in space, and 'beam' the power thus catpured to earth. Who knows WHAT the future wil bring. Problem is, it's not here NOW and renewables are the 'least worst' option available to minimise CO2 emissions.



Fission is too expensive at present, even with the new fast-breed reactors, and still produces the 'deadly for way too long' intractable waste. And even the new smaller plant sstil take 10-15 ers to build. We don't have time, even if they were cost-effective, which they aren't. So no-one is going to put money into a dead asset. Same reason why investors are bailing out of coal.



Wind mills have been around for millennia and have always had the same problem with intermittency and, as you may have found if you have a solar farm on a boat, panels have a large footprint for the limited power they supply.


True. But irrelevant, except perhaps in somewhere like Hong Kong or Singapore, where there is not enough land to spread out the solar farms.

Here in Oz we have an abundance of land, and, as some sheep and cattle farmers have learned to their joy, solar panels and livestock can happily co-exist, providing an additional source of income for the grazier (ground rent).


Twiggy has the right idea. Build MASSIVE solar farms in the northern interior, and put a dirty big fat cable under the sea to Indo and Singapore, and sell power to the neighbours.


Oz could very easily become the 'battery' of South-east Asia, If we don't, China will....


On synchronous generators. Mains power providers go to a lot of trouble keeping the frequency constant, a lot of industrial processes depend upon the synchronicity of the grid. Be mindful that the power transmitted is related to both the frequency and current and voltage, RMS.


True. Voltage fluctation is an issue. But it's a 'known known', as the unlamented Donald Rumsfeld might have said. Sorting this is just 'logistics' and as I pointed out upthread, the sparkies have already got this one covered.


Before the modern grid, grids of limited extent using DC dominated the electrical power business. Then a bloke called Tesla started mucking about with AC. Another bloke called Westinghouse bought his patents and started building far superior networks. The DC networks then went out of business as they were replaced with AC systems. AC rules OK.


Whose arguing this? No-one I know! Irrelevant red herring strawman argument. This is what I called 'Jana's sister'. A 'Nona Wendt'.


On reliability of renewables. Yep if one lives on a boat and relies on solar and wind, the batteries never go flat and one never needs to plug into the grid to recharge them or tun a genset etc.


Again, no one is saying this. But in future, plugging in to the shore power you will be supplied with the same solar gen power you normally make yourself, but it will be being generated on the other side of the country/world where it's sunny, or it will be coming from a storage battery at the end of the dock, where the wily marina operator has already figured out he can sell you power he generated himself and make a cuppla bucks doing so, rather than passing along power someone else generated miles away, and maybe only clipping the ticket for a cent or two.


Decentralisation is the key. As thousands of 'decentralised' boats already understand.

Personally, I wouldn't live aboard without at least two renewable sources, AND the ability to recharge from a dock via shore power. This is called 'redundancy'. If this means we need lots more solar, wind and whatever, and some of it sits idel some of the time, so be it. It's a transition AWAy from fossil fuels, and THAT is the key underlying goal. Stop burning stuff!


On the constancy of renewables. So what you are stating is what we need to compensate for the extreme variabilities of wind and solar is good predictive models. ?????.



No. I am not saying that. I'm saying that as those models increase in accuracy (which they have, dramatically) it is easier to more accurately predict renewable supply, and factor that into the overall supply equation.
For example, if SA knows that they are going to have a pretty windless night out around the wind farms on the Eyre Peninsular, they know they will need to 'borrow' from VIC or NSW, or fire up the pumped hydro they are planning to build at Port Augusta.
It's called 'planning' and 'management'. We're rapidly learning we need to be much better at it than we needed to be in the past.


Cloud cover during daylight hours will affect solar production in those areas, and as this is - relatively - predictable, it enables the NEM managers to pre-advise alternate forms of generation (atm: gas, coal, hydro) that they will be required during those periods, and thus providing some surety of supply. The problem with coal and gas (but especially coal) is that it can't just be 'switched on' in an instant, as battery storage can. Hydro is next quickest to bring online, taking only a couple of minutes to open valves and spin up turbines.
So batteries first, for short term periods, then hydro, then gas, and finally (if it's still required), coal gens can stoke the boilers, build up steam, and spin up their remaining generators.


Yes, it's more complex, more complicated, than it used to be under the old coal-only model. But we HAVE the technology. And it is BEING rolled out. As potential gaps in the grid or supply are noted by NEM, they advise the industry and industry fills the gaps. At present this is tricky in some areas - hence govt having to step in to force the coal-fired plant operators to keep open an uneconomical plant.


Frankly, I think that's a fair use of taxpayer's funds. In the short term. During the transition. But not longer term.


But we should sure as **** be building WAY more dams than anyone is even talking about, never mind planning. But don't get me started on that.


On storage alternatives. See two above it's gonna take enormous batteries, dams need water and use a lot of power to pump the water back up. The best way to build storage is use neutrons to transmute fertile elements.


As above. We need more dams. And as you can probably guess, I am someone who identifies as 'green'. But I'm not a watermelon like the 'Greens'.


On the nucelar question. No argument. But ONLY if it's fusion. See my comments above.


North Queensland is connected to one of the most extensive coal fired power grids in the world. A few weeks ago when the Britains heavily wind dependent grid tried to go down because the wind didn't blow they bought nuclear from the French.

Your final point is interesting. A clear example of 'cherry picking' to make a non-point in the form of yet another red herring. Another Nona Wendt!


The whole point of the Brit's being able to 'borrow' from the Frogs is that the EU grid enables this. The following day, Poland's highly coal-reliant grid was probably borrowing from the Brits who had excess wind gen. See? This is how it's SUPPOSED to work. It's not a negative, as deniers like to make out.



What WE need, here in Oz, is a truly *national* grid - which extends to WA. The west has some EXCEPTIONAL wind resources that we in the east can't access without a West-East interconnector. The entire Bight coast is wind heavy, but has no infrastructure to enable its capture. THAT is one very large hole in our "national grid" that the Feds *ought* to be plugging, as it's uneconomical (yet) for either the NEM (East coast) or the West coast grid managers to fund.

We could build solar farms all along the Trans-Nullarbor railway line, feeding into that non-existent West-East Interconnector, and thus utilising lands which are otherwise unproductive, and providing much needed funds (in rents) to the Aboriginal owners of those lands that might help get them off the public teat a bit. Win win, if you ask me.




[**For the non-Aussies reading this, Jana Wendt (pron. 'Vent') is a famous TV reporter and presenter, whose non-existent, imaginary sister, has long been a colloquialism here, among those of a certain age... so a Nona Wendt is a non-event...if that helps...]

[RaymondR]

Sorry Buzman. The line which reads:

"Your post is one of the finest collections of AGW/CC I've seen in the forum."

should read:

Your post is one of the finest collections of AGW/CC dogma I've seen in the forum.

but I think you got my drift anyway.

dogma, noun:

a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Example "the dogmas of faith".

However not always "incontrovertibly true" and in some cases patently untrue.

[Buzzman]

Except, not in this case!

Every word of it true, provable and logical, rational, reasonable response.


I could be equally rude about your last post, but frankly, it isn't worth the effort.


This is the problem with 'faith believers'.


They believe what they choose to believe, regardless of existential truth.

You simply don't want to accept the self-evident truths. That's OK.

No skin off my nose.

[Exile]

You've made some interesting points Buzzman, several worthy of additional discussion perhaps. But by anointing yourself the holder of existential truth, reason, and morality, you're also quite obviously more interested in preaching your own particular brand of "truth" while dissing all others. As someone once said,

"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it."

We're all susceptible to this, myself included, but the sort of absolutism that accompanies the CC issue continues to baffle. It seems incongruous to believe that the same advocates who find the evidence so convincing are the same ones who most fear any sort of questioning or dissent. What are you so afraid of? It's also ironic that these same advocates are consistently denouncing religious beliefs when their own absolutism has more in common with faith than science. Oh well, it's hard to imagine this approach will win over any new converts but I'm sure you'll keep the sermons going just the same. You're doing your little part to save the world from the "enemy," aka "deniers," and every cause needs an enemy to advance its agenda. Stereotyping and labeling is also essential, and you've shown your aptitude in that area as well. None of this builds the consensus needed to implement your "truths," but why build consensus when it's so much easier and satisfying to simply divide?