Netflix Original: Bill Nye Saves The Earth

[sc281]

I don't care about the terms, my agenda is to vote for people that simply let Solar/Wind/renewable energy win, like it would if oil&gas wasn't spreading lies and lobbying so much (similar to Tobacco). Coal is dying not because of regulation, but because enough people want the cool new stuff - renewable. Generate your own power and have negative electric bills? Sign me up. How about electric Tesla coupes that beat most cars in here at the drag strip? We need more of it.

Here's a different take -- we need this solar/wind/hippie energy because it reduces our reliance on terrorist oil&gas. Look at North Korea right now, they might be royally screwed because China took away their oil. Why not become a country that generates our own energy? Who cares about climate change...it's just smart, and financially doable.

So hate Al Gore all you want, and climate change for that matter, but it just makes sense that oil&gas will not sustain us for ever. Some of us believe its potentially deadly to gurgle down every last ounce of it on Earth, but there's other reasons to side with the renewable fans even if you don't believe that, as laid out above.

I am largely in agreement with this.

We need solar/wind etc. they are the future and I personally want a solar home.

Where I disagree is that we don't still need coal/oil/Nat gas

The tech for solar and battery storage just isn't there yet to not have the vast majority of energy come from fossil fuels.

We're making strides with things like Tesla's powerwall, but without big advances in battery storage technology and PV cell manufacturing it just isn't doable on anything close to a large enough scale.

I am very optimistic about the next 20 years for it though.

[SS Junk]

And the winner by unanimous decision:

Corvette guy.

Don't you have some clapped out coupe that emits more pollution than a third world taxi cab and barely runs 13's?

[Strychnine]

Give me a credible source then. Hopefully not a media conglomerate. Here's a good one:
https://climate.nasa.gov/

Define credible. Most would say that NOAA is a good one, right?

So what about the 300 scientists that signed a letter demanding that the “‘NOAA to adhere to law of the Data Quality AAct

The issue is with bad data, as Dr. Pat Michaels Dr. Richard Lindzen, and Dr. Chip Knappenberger observed related to the switch from buckets on a rope to engine water inlets for measuring sea surface temperature:

“As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and as such, never intended for scientific use,” “Adjusting good data upward to match bad data seems questionable.”

“If we subtract the ERSST.v3b (old) data from the new ERSST.v4 data, Figure 11, we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did.”
“It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise. Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”

Full list of signatories: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpr...ignatories.pdf



Also, that "97% of scientists agree" line is bullshit as well. They came up with that by looking at all the papers published about the climate in a selection of journals over a given time, then looked to see if the theme of the paper was one of consensus or disagreement with their notion of "climate change" and decided that 97% of the papers concurred. After the fact some of the authors whose papers were chosen for that stats exercise came out and said their paper was grossly misinterpreted, and other researchers took issues as well.

Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.

“It is still more astonishing that the IPCC should claim 95% certainty about the climate consensus when so small a fraction of published papers explicitly endorse the consensus as the IPCC defines it.”

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s imminent Fifth Assessment Report, who found the errors in Cook’s data, said: “It may be that more than 0.3% of climate scientists think Man caused at least half the warming since 1950. But only 0.3% of almost 12,000 published papers say so explicitly. Cook had not considered how many papers merely implied that. No doubt many scientists consider it possible, as we do, that Man caused some warming, but not most warming.

“It is unscientific to assume that most scientists believe what they have neither said nor written.”

The problem is that science has been politicized, so now no matter what the actual cause of any warming may be, we're too polarized now for it to ever be "settled"

[Strychnine]

Anyway, on to things we can factually discuss…
Preface: I agree that renewable energy is the future. I’m not arguing against you, just “providing a lot more color” to some things, because this is a MUCH bigger discussion than “just leave it in the ground” or “just install solar panels.”


EDIT: This was much longer than I intended, but i started typing while bored on a plane and your comment just brought up a bunch of thoughts that I put here. Most people have no idea what goes into getting them electricity which means they also dont understand that soundbites and bullshit Bill Nye talking points don’t do anything to change actual policy, they just get people to yell about things.

Coal is dying not because of regulation, but because enough people want the cool new stuff - renewable.

I don’t think it’s “people wanting the cool stuff” that’s killing coal right now. That will come in the future (though it’s starting here and there), but right now coal is being killed purely by market forces. Since 2010 more than 250 coal plants have been closed in the US, and the biggest reason coal is dying is because it’s being displaced by natural gas.




Coal production in the US peaked in 2008, for the last three summers NG power generation outpaced coal generation, there are zero coal plants being built, and of those coal plants operating now, over 30% are expected to be retired by 2030… but there are over 200 new NG plants planned around the US right now.

And the biggest reason it’s being displaced by natural gas is feedstock price.
The Navajo Generating Station is a 2200MW plant (largest coal plant west of the Mississippi) that will close as early as 2019 due to financial pressure from NG.

“The economics of the energy industry are changing rapidly and falling natural gas prices are changing how coal-fired power costs compare with other options,”
- Salt River Project spokesman Scott Harelson

In 2016 NG power prices in the US averaged $32/MWh and the Navajo plant was at $38/MWh using coal.
2200 MW * 86% capacity factor for that plant * 8760 hrs/yr * $6/MWh fuel delta = roughly $100 million per year in extra cost… over the 25 years left in the plant’s planned life that’s $2.5 billion to be pissed away. Coal plants just can’t sell power at a competitive price when going up against NG post-"shale revolution." There are utilities up the northeast trying to get 10-15 year rates locked in right now for their coal plants as a “bailout” just to help buy them time to figure out what to do to survive the money war, not the "im not cool anymore" war.

Not to say renrwables haven't had any impact at all, but it's not exactly as much as it sounds like. People love to report how much new renewable power is coming online each month and year. Example:

noted that 468 megawatts (MW) of wind power and 145 MW of solar power accounted for 100% of new electrical generation capacity brought into service in January 2016. FERC's December 2015 "Energy Infrastructure Update" revealed that renewables were responsible for 64% of all new electrical generating capacity installed last year.

That’s 613 MW installed nameplate power. That’s not the same as a 613 MW NG plant. Those wind and solar sources have an average capacity factor of 34.7% and 27.2%, respectively, while NG combined cycle plants average 56%. So renewables have a lot of “installed capacity” each year, but it’s not apples to apples.



And a side note on the part about renewables being the “cool new stuff.”
Xcel Energy recently started allowing customers to pay a premium to get “renewable sourced” energy to their homes and businesses. Basically, you can pay 1.3x – 1.4x (or whatever) to get up to 100% wind or up to 100% solar power to your meter. Or at least that’s what they’re marketing, because in reality an electron doesn’t care where it came from, you can’t tell a single electron where to go, and it does the same job at the end no matter its source.

Joe Blow might pay 1.4x his normal bill to tell his neighbors that he’s 100% renewable when in reality no one knows where his electrons originated (sure, you can get an idea of what Xcel’s total production portfolio looks like and make assumptions). A hippie-type homeowner might do this, they might not, whatever… but it’s also offered to businesses. By paying a premium to Xcel a business can now market themselves as “green” or “100% renewably powered.” They’re paying Xcel an advertising fee. Xcel came up with a way to actually sell the exact same product (electrons) at a premium to someone who wants a certain image.

This does show that its becoming cooler, but not enough to displace coal on it's own yet. But commercial and industrial customers account for 62% of the electricity consumption in the US (residential = 37%), so if anyone's going to get the cool ball rolling it's them.



I’m sitting in a hotel in Edmonton and it’s been a long day - forgive the lack of citations. I’ll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime, fuck Bill Nye

[CWO]

I feel good about which side I stand with.

[SS Junk]

[mschmoyer]

I am largely in agreement with this.

We need solar/wind etc. they are the future and I personally want a solar home.

Where I disagree is that we don't still need coal/oil/Nat gas

The tech for solar and battery storage just isn't there yet to not have the vast majority of energy come from fossil fuels.

We're making strides with things like Tesla's powerwall, but without big advances in battery storage technology and PV cell manufacturing it just isn't doable on anything close to a large enough scale.

I am very optimistic about the next 20 years for it though.

Great thoughts. Like another poster said, we're already moving to natural gas, which is a good move, and wind/solar are picking up steam too, which is even better.

There are other ideas for the storage problem as well, such as solar power raising a giant piston during the day, and at night it falls via gravity generating energy. Problem is this hatred of science and scientists blocks funding for advances in this kind of stuff. Thank goodness we have billionaires who do the research on their own dime regardless of the backasswards political influence (Solarcity).

And yes I do drive a 'vette now, but a Tesla is in the future. Then I'll run 11's if I want to, have a fricken' self driving car, avoids wrecks, no oil changes, and a badass coupe to boot. Good thing Elon Musk bought himself a shitload of scientists...GM/Ford would be wise to do the same.

[BLAKE]

I'd just like to hop in here and make sure that everybody knows that I don't know shit about any of this.

I see a future where my daily driver is a bad ass electric car that actually has range (battery manufacturing's impact on the environment be damned) and my fun 60's hot rod can still find fuel and the world still hasn't ended.

Maybe I'm just an optimist.

[mschmoyer]

Joe Blow might pay 1.4x his normal bill to tell his neighbors that he’s 100% renewable when in reality no one knows where his electrons originated (sure, you can get an idea of what Xcel’s total production portfolio looks like and make assumptions). A hippie-type homeowner might do this, they might not, whatever… but it’s also offered to businesses. By paying a premium to Xcel a business can now market themselves as “green” or “100% renewably powered.” They’re paying Xcel an advertising fee. Xcel came up with a way to actually sell the exact same product (electrons) at a premium to someone who wants a certain image.

If you ask for 100% renewable, your dumped into the general pool of demand for energy with that stat. So you may increase the "promised" renewable counter by .000001 or whatever. With enough people choosing this, Texas consumers may cause Oncor to require X% of energy to be renewable. You contributed to how many more wind/solar plants Oncor may choose to build next.

Regardless, we should just skip this convoluted setup anyways, and push more subsidies to homeowners to build solar panels instead. Having a centralized power generation system with huge losses across the wires is a big part of the problem. Germany is doing very well at this. Lots of homes in the Austin areas starting to pop up with solar panels, and now businesses too.

[Strychnine]

Regardless, we should just skip this convoluted setup anyways, and push more subsidies to homeowners to build solar panels instead. Having a centralized power generation system with huge losses across the wires is a big part of the problem. Germany is doing very well at this. Lots of homes in the Austin areas starting to pop up with solar panels, and now businesses too.

Yup, microgrid stuff is pretty fascinating. Here's a good read on something going on in NY, with a lot of background and info on regulatory issues as well.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-microgrid-grows-in-brooklyn/

And just a thought on something you posted earlier:

So hate Al Gore all you want, and climate change for that matter, but it just makes sense that oil&gas will not sustain us for ever. Some of us believe its potentially deadly to gurgle down every last ounce of it on Earth, but there's other reasons to side with the renewable fans even if you don't believe that, as laid out above.

Our ancestors didn't progress from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age because they ran out of bronze. They found something better. The oil age will end long before we run out of carbon based fuels.

With a couple breakthroughs in energy storage, and at least a start toward revamping the national grid (get rid of the three interconnects and move to a nationwide HVDC system) we'll see things change retarded-fast.


But being beat about the head by a douche like Bill Nye will make people dig their heels in and resist.

[Silverback]

all these mutha fuckas marching for "science", couldn't even pass High School Chemsitry!

[Silverback]

I can't fap to this.

try harder

[ELVIS]

watched "generation iron" on there last night. pretty good.

god bless.

[BLAKE]

Our ancestors didn't progress from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age because they ran out of bronze. They found something better. The oil age will end long before we run out of carbon based fuels.

Very interesting point. I bet you're right.

Edit: What a coincidence. Very timely article on that very subject here:
http://jalopnik.com/we-will-hit-peak...ink-1794673065

[Strychnine]

Very interesting point. I bet you're right.

Edit: What a coincidence. Very timely article on that very subject here:
http://jalopnik.com/we-will-hit-peak...ink-1794673065

Oh, it will happen in our lifetime.

The World Energy Council has estimated peak demand to be around 96MM bbl around 2030.
BP is guessing 2040.
Shell has said more like 5 – 15 years (2021 - 2036)

Exxon hasn't said anything about a peak demand prediction, but they expect a 20% growth in petroleum liquids demand from now until 2040 (but I think they’re predicting a lot of demand into petrochem, plastic feedstocks, etc for other developing technologies). They also predicted that hybrid car sales will go from 2% of total to 40% over that time, so read into that how you will.



Companies are having to really think about that transition right now and how to survive such a switch.

Bernard Looney, BP’s head of exploration and production, argues that large oil companies face a new competitive landscape as a result of the US shale revolution, the falling costs of renewable energy, and governments’ efforts to combat climate change by curbing use of fossil fuels.

Shell CEO warns too-fast shift to renewables could imperil dividends
May 24, 2016 10:56 AM ET|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor

• Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) cannot switch too quickly to producing renewable energy without risking its dividend payments and even its very existence, CEO Ben van Beurden says in response to critics who say Shell should do more to mitigate climate change risks.
• Making a switch to other forms of energy would take time, Van Beurden says, adding that the world's top 10 solar companies represent $14B in capital employed and invested $5B in solar energy, but none had so far paid any dividends.
• "We cannot do it overnight [transition to renewables] because it could mean the end of the company," the CEO says.

And here's a stat about 97% of people that's actually based in fact (that will probably look like a shitty decision in hindsight)

• However, 97% of Shell shareholders at its annual meeting today rejected a resolution to invest profits from fossil fuels to become a renewable energy company.

And fuck Bill Nye.