Global Climate Change Science News

[mistermack]

mm
" Models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s."

Summer. 2030. We are not getting rid of winter. Is that clear?

And these are the descendants of the models that predicted an ice-free arctic before 2010.
They churn out models like kellogs churn out rice crispies. Whatever the climate is like in 2030, they will be able to point to a model that matched it.
Which is why the models are not worth one second's attention.
When they unite around one single model, that they will sink or swim by, then it might be worth taking an interest.
Anyway, forget 2030, how about 2016?
If you think that they can accurately model fifteen years ahead, just take a look at what their models were predicting in the year 2,000. ( which is my point that you are replying to ). If they got it so wrong in 2,000, what makes you think that they have it right now?

[mistermack]

In response to Seth's last post, (too long to read, let alone quote),
you are talking about fifty years time. All of that bollocks you quoted applies today. But in fifty years time, it won't.

Take a look at the lap times for electric bikes around the Isle of Man TT course.
Five years ago, they had an ambitious target of 100mph, which is phenomenal for an electric bike, over a twenty minute lap.
Five years later, they are lapping at nearly 120. And the grand prix petrol bikes lap record is 132.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TT_Zero#F ... ap_by_year



And the bollocks about infra-structure is really bollocks. Most of our electrical distribution is idle at night, when most charging would be done. It's cost of electricity, not infrastructure that's the deterrent at present.
Most vans and trucks could carry batteries to run all day now. They are designed for load carrying, and batteries are getting much smaller and lighter. They've even got them in formula one cars today, adding horsepower.

It's all down to cost. And costs go lower and lower, with economies of scale.

[Tero]

As we keep measuring the ice, the estimates of the ice free summer will get more accurate. None of the scientists involved thinks that summer ice will remain by the end of the century. That trend is not reversible. Well, unless we all die or a meteor hits etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline

[cronus]

As we keep measuring the ice, the estimates of the ice free summer will get more accurate. None of the scientists involved thinks that summer ice will remain by the end of the century. That trend is not reversible. Well, unless we all die or a meteor hits etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline

I'd say there is a good likely-hood of a large scale human die-off in the next fifty years.

[mistermack]

I'd say there is a good likely-hood of a large scale human die-off in the next fifty years.

And you're absolutely right.
However, about six or seven billion babies are likely to be born in that time, to replace them. Sorry.

[Jason]

What we need is a good old World War to thin out population numbers and bring us down to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. With the current level of technology and automation a world population of 300 million or so could live like royalty compared to the average quality of life on Earth today.

[Seth]

In response to Seth's last post, (too long to read, let alone quote),
you are talking about fifty years time. All of that bollocks you quoted applies today. But in fifty years time, it won't.

Sure it will, I've been around for sixty-one years and the fundamentals haven't changed in my lifetime, just the scale, which makes it even harder and more expensive to change.

Take a look at the lap times for electric bikes around the Isle of Man TT course.
Five years ago, they had an ambitious target of 100mph, which is phenomenal for an electric bike, over a twenty minute lap.
Five years later, they are lapping at nearly 120. And the grand prix petrol bikes lap record is 132.

So what? That has nothing to do with what we're discussing. An electric bike on a race course doesn't prove anything except that its range is shorter than the gasoline-fueled race bikes. It's irrelevant that electric motors have more torque and battery powered bikes have a lower center of gravity because that's not what we're discussing.

Difficult: Setting a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Impossible: Setting a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt flats 36 years after you've passed away.

And yet, here we are, in the year 2014, and a new record has appeared in the most recent tally at Bonneville, showing one Burt Munro holding the AMA Land Speed Record in Class S.A. 1000, at 184.087 miles per hour, set aboard a custom 953cc 1920 Indian streamliner motorcycle. If you were to look at last year's list of records, you'd also see Burt Munro, except that the speed listed would say 183.586 mph.

No big deal, he just beat his old record, right? Not so fast – Munro passed away some 36 years ago, and the official certificate issued for the new record is held by Munro's son, John. The explanation boils down to the use of a calculator. It seems the AMA made an error when it originally calculated the average speed of Munro's two timed runs. John, the son, noticed the discrepancy, pointed it out to the AMA and now holds further proof of his father's high-speed exploits from way back in the year 1967.

Sure, it's little more than a rounding error, but it nonetheless reminds us how perseverance can stand the test of time, even aboard what most might see as an outdated relic; that relic, of course, being The World's Fastest Indian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TT_Zero#F ... ap_by_year

And the bollocks about infra-structure is really bollocks. Most of our electrical distribution is idle at night, when most charging would be done.

Charging what? Batteries that only give a range of less than 200 miles? Not going to cut it. Truck drivers routinely do 500-800 miles a day.

It's cost of electricity, not infrastructure that's the deterrent at present.

Well, yeah, and it's getting more and more expensive as the most abundant and most energy-dense fuel on the planet, coal, is taken out of the equation by political fiat, not by economic forces.

Most vans and trucks could carry batteries to run all day now.

And much, much less cargo.

They are designed for load carrying, and batteries are getting much smaller and lighter. They've even got them in formula one cars today, adding horsepower.

When batteries become small enough and light enough and have enough capacity so that the number of ergs produced by the battery is greater than the number of ergs produced by an equivalent mass of liquid diesel fuel, and when the battery packs can be either recharged or replaced at every existing fueling station on the planet capable of refueling a truck in, let's be generous and say 20 minutes, get back to me.

Until then, you're in unicorn-fart rainbow land my friend.

It's all down to cost. And costs go lower and lower, with economies of scale.

Unless of course there are hard physical limits to the size, weight and energy storage and delivery capacity of electrical batteries that don't beat the energy density and convenience of use of diesel fuel, in which case the only way battery powered OTR trucks are going to be on the road is with government subsidies provided for political, not economic or environmental reasons.

You need to examine the carbon footprint of the electric vehicle, it's not what you think it is once you factor in manufacturing, use and disposal/recycling impacts. All that lithium has to come from somewhere, and it's usually out of the ground, which means it has to be mined, processed, refined and manufactured into batteries, all of which has carbon and economic costs that far outstrip the production of a gallon of diesel fuel...due to the economies of scale and time.

[Tero]

The manufacture is almost beyond the scope of a silly web forum. But the use footprint can be measured. Sure, if you burn coal you can get lousy results.

In coal heavy India, China, Australia and South Africa electric cars using grid power are just like typical gasoline vehicles, in the 25-30 MPGUS range. In the UK, Germany, Japan and Italy they are as good as the best petrol hybrids, in the 45-50 MPGUS range. But in low carbon supply places like France, Brazil, Switzerland and Norway they are in a different league, averaging well beyond 100 MPGUS for equivalent emissions.

Read more at http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric ... tEx3fJz.99

[mistermack]

Seth, you again missed the basic point. Fifty years of development.
Fifty years ago, cars were doing about 15 mpg. Now they do about 50. You say that the fundamentals haven't changed? No but the important numbers have.

You say that a battery has a range of 200 miles? I make that 400 with a single battery change. ( and that's TODAY, not 50 years time. )
As far as carrying capacity goes, diesel takes space too, and batteries can be exchanged in seconds, if a truck is in and out of the depot.

I drove a truck for a year, and in the UK, you could easily run a truck all day on a 200 mile range. Most days involve numerous returns to base so a quick battery change would be no problem.. But in 50 years time, those numbers won't be relevant.

There's nothing stopping transport being mainly electric in 50 years time, except price of generation.

Apart from the advances in battery technology, fifty years will see huge improvements in computing. Many trucks will be driverless electric ones, and might even take to the rails and re-charge their batteries as they go, for longer trips.
With the sort of computing power that will be available in 2065, it should be easy to integrate road and rail. And of course, re-charging the battery as you travel on rails removes the range problem completely.

So there really is nothing stopping transport going electric, except price of generation.
As far as that goes, solar is nearly at parity now in some areas. And onshore wind is pretty close. Give it fifty years, and it will be the other way around unless fossil fuel prices go through the floor.
Add in new generation nuclear, and possibly fusion generation, and I'd say it's odds-on that fossil fuel will be well on it's way out, in 2065.

[Seth]

The manufacture is almost beyond the scope of a silly web forum. But the use footprint can be measured. Sure, if you burn coal you can get lousy results.

In coal heavy India, China, Australia and South Africa electric cars using grid power are just like typical gasoline vehicles, in the 25-30 MPGUS range. In the UK, Germany, Japan and Italy they are as good as the best petrol hybrids, in the 45-50 MPGUS range. But in low carbon supply places like France, Brazil, Switzerland and Norway they are in a different league, averaging well beyond 100 MPGUS for equivalent emissions.

Read more at http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric ... tEx3fJz.99

Problem is they are talking MPG not carbon emissions, and they usually ignore the indirect carbon emissions required to manufacture the electric vehicles.

And you're ignoring both range and cargo capacity.

[Seth]

Seth, you again missed the basic point. Fifty years of development.
Fifty years ago, cars were doing about 15 mpg. Now they do about 50. You say that the fundamentals haven't changed? No but the important numbers have.

And there's a hard limit to that advancement when it comes to gasoline. There is X amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline, and it takes Y amount of energy to move Z amount of mass A distance. That's basic physics. The trade offs we make to gain MPG don't change the fundamental physics involved. You only get higher MPG by reducing the mass being moved once the efficiency of an internal combustion engine has been maximized, which it pretty much has at this point. But at some point the need to reduce mass bumps up against the functionality, expense and consumer acceptance of the design. That's why as government mandates smaller, lighter cars people stop buying them and buy giant pickup trucks instead. It's not all about the physics, you see, it's also about consumer willingness to compromise safety, comfort and load capacity in favor of MPGs. I reached that limit long ago and will no longer seek out MPG at the expense of comfort, safety or payload capacity. So have most other consumers.

You say that a battery has a range of 200 miles? I make that 400 with a single battery change. ( and that's TODAY, not 50 years time. )

In what size of a car, weighing how much and capable of carrying what payload?

As far as carrying capacity goes, diesel takes space too, and batteries can be exchanged in seconds, if a truck is in and out of the depot.

So long as the truck operates at a "depot" you could be right. Plenty of warehouses use electric forklifts that have just enough capacity to work a shift and which then recharge overnight. But when a long-haul truck leaves Pittsburg for Los Angeles, in order to make electricity feasible there has to be a battery exchange station located on every possible route at intervals coinciding with the effective operating range of the majority of the fleet. Then there's the issue of battery aging and reductions in capacity that normally occur. When the truck reaches St. Louis and needs a charged battery, presuming that the quick-change infrastructure exists in the first place, how are the relative values of the discharged battery and the new battery dealt with? With diesel fuel the fuel vendor doesn't care how many miles the truck gets on a gallon of his diesel, he just sells a gallon. But with a battery pack it's like he's getting half a gallon in exchange for a gallon's worth of new energy.

So the market system has to be built to deal with things like that, but first the distribution network for battery replacements nationwide has to be built, and who's going to pay those up front infrastructure costs? Not the consumer. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. I won't buy an electric OTR truck until I am guaranteed that I can get a new electrical charge in less than 20 minutes anywhere in the country within the range of my existing battery pack. That's tens if not hundreds of thousands of "recharge/exchange" stations that have to be built, and nobody's going to build them until there's sufficient demand for the product.

I see EV recharging stations at many Walgreen's pharmacy locations, which were installed at Walgreen's expense as a part of a campaign to improve their profitability by pandering to the Greenies. Not once have I ever actually seen an EV plugged into one of them. Not once. One of the reasons is that in the typical amount of time someone shops at Walgreens, the amount of charge provided (for a fee by the way) is insignificant and not worth the trouble.

Multiply that problem by an entire nation and EVs are simply not viable products, ignoring for the moment the time needed to fully charge an EV.

I drove a truck for a year, and in the UK, you could easily run a truck all day on a 200 mile range. Most days involve numerous returns to base so a quick battery change would be no problem.. But in 50 years time, those numbers won't be relevant.

Prove it. Do the math. Tell us how big the battery would have to be, how many amp hours of capacity, how much weight, what is the size of the pack and how much do the heavy batteries reduce the cargo capacity of a standard box truck dedicated only to local delivery. Then address the problems with OTR cross-country trucking, which is the main problem.

There's nothing stopping transport being mainly electric in 50 years time, except price of generation.

And physics, and engineering, and the costs of infrastructure and batteries and a thousand other things you haven't considered. EVs have been available for more than two decades and they have never once even begun to make a dent in the transportation fleet because they simply can't cut the mustard. They are toys for the elite and that's all, and likely all they will ever be. Electricity has been being used commercially for short-range duties like forklifts for many decades, and an electric forklift from 1950 looks pretty much like a brand new one and the new one still takes all night to recharge.

Apart from the advances in battery technology, fifty years will see huge improvements in computing. Many trucks will be driverless electric ones, and might even take to the rails and re-charge their batteries as they go, for longer trips.

Actually it's railroads that are most likely to prevail in long-distance transport because they are incredibly efficient. But trains still use diesel fuel even though it's to drive giant electrical generators to drive the wheels. If and when battery packs have the same number of ergs of energy as a tank of diesel fuel in the same or smaller space at the same or lesser weight, then battery-powered trains are a definite possibility and I'm all for it. But part of the reason for that is because trains move on defined routes and are owned by a small number of companies who can collaborate on design as they have done for over a hundred years, which means that a "standardized" battery-powered diesel engine will have a standardized battery pack with standardized construction which can be quickly and automatically replaced at on-track facilities carefully placed so as to maximize efficiency along that route.

That's nothing at all compared to the challenge of duplicating the tens of thousands of diesel and gasoline fueling stations that currently exist on every highway and in every town in the country.

Railroads can justify a shift to battery-electric locomotives because of the limited number of them that need to be built and the ability to build the refueling infrastructure in tandem with the existing liquid fuel refueling system on the very limited number of stations that every train must pass through.

OTR trucking, much less consumer level battery recharge/swapout infrastructure will cost trillions of dollars and will be of no use to anyone unless there are enough EVs to justify the expense, and no one will by EVs unless and until the recharge/swapout infrastructure is already available nationwide.

Now this limitation does not necessarily apply to short-range urban commutes at all. It is already possible to efficiently use an EV for commuting provided the to/from range of the commute is within the range of the battery and recharging can take place at either or both ends of the commute during times the vehicle is not in use. However, while commuting may represent the largest use of a passenger car for many people, it is not the ONLY use to which they put the vehicle. Practically speaking most people cannot afford an EV commuting vehicle and a second vehicle for those tasks and trips where the EV does not have the range or payload capacity to work, like traveling and vacationing, so people largely still pick liquid-fuel vehicles or hybrids that can be "recharged/refueled" anywhere in minutes rather than pure electric vehicles.

So once again consumer preference, need and acceptance are key to even the plan to switch most commuters to EVs, and this ignores the wider needs for transportation that EVs are unsuitable for because of the aforesaid lack of infrastructure to recharge them.

As I said before, when they invent an F450 pickup truck that will go 400 miles on a charge and carry six thousand pounds of cargo or pull a 26,000 pound trailer that can be recharged in less than 20 minutes anywhere in the country, I'll gladly buy one. I don't see that happening for at least 50 years and more likely 100 to 200 years.

With the sort of computing power that will be available in 2065, it should be easy to integrate road and rail. And of course, re-charging the battery as you travel on rails removes the range problem completely.

I've been arguing for some time that rather than building "light rail" and "commuter rail" and "high speed rail" systems what needs to happen is a massive change in rail transport paradigm. The model I support is the Channel Tunnel model where the trains don't carry passengers or cargo, they carry cargo and vehicles in which the passengers ride. My vision is high-speed rail links like Chicago to Denver using double or triple-wide rail gauge trains with drive-on, drive-off rail cars that will accommodate the largest of highway-legal OTR trucks and trailers, and everything else down to a Smartcar or guy on a bicycle.

The reason I favor this is because of the traveling habits of Americans (and most other people) who travel long distances. The reason I don't use Amtrack is not because I don't want to travel by rail over the long hauls, but because when I get where I'm going, generally speaking, I need to have my personal car for travel to my ultimate destinations. I'm not about to hop an Amtrack train from Chicago to Denver for the purposes of visiting Boulder, or Vail, or some 4wd high pass using Uber or a taxi. I want MY vehicle with MY stuff in it so I can go wherever I want whenever I want. I only need a train for the long routes between major transportation hubs, and that would be best served by high-speed vehicle-carrying trains, not passenger trains.

So there really is nothing stopping transport going electric, except price of generation.

And all that other stuff I mentioned.

As far as that goes, solar is nearly at parity now in some areas.

Well, that's just complete horseshit. Nowhere on earth is solar power anywhere near "parity." If it happens that solar generating capacity when the sun shines is at parity with available fossil fuel power generation it's only half the day at best and it is ALWAYS subsidized heavily by tax money. There is not one single solar installation in all of the US that is paying its own way and hasn't been subsidized by government (taxpayer) money. The new omnibus budget bill proposed to strip government subsidies from solar power and that was one of the things the Democrats got cut from the bill because of pressure from the solar panel industry, which will cease to exist overnight if it doesn't get massive government subsidies.

And onshore wind is pretty close.

Again, horseshit, for the same reasons solar isn't ever going to be practical. The entire "green" alternative energy industry in the US produces less than 4 percent of the present generating capacity of the nation.

And who want's more fucking windmills! They are an utter nuisance and a complete eyesore and ought to be banned for that reason alone, not to mention their inefficiency and costs of maintenance that leaves half the ones around here not turning most of the time.

There's nothing as visually frustrating as going out and looking to the east at night and seeing the flashing red anti-collision beacons all flashing at the same time, which leads to a line of bright red lights flashing over more than one-third of my visual field. It's a fucking environmental and aesthetic disaster, those damned windmills.

Give it fifty years, and it will be the other way around unless fossil fuel prices go through the floor.

Don't hold your breath.

Add in new generation nuclear, and possibly fusion generation, and I'd say it's odds-on that fossil fuel will be well on it's way out, in 2065.

Fusion is a good thing, but it's not likely to replace fossil fuels anytime in the next 200 years or more.

[pErvinalia]

Seth, you again missed the basic point. Fifty years of development.
Fifty years ago, cars were doing about 15 mpg. Now they do about 50. You say that the fundamentals haven't changed? No but the important numbers have.

You say that a battery has a range of 200 miles? I make that 400 with a single battery change. ( and that's TODAY, not 50 years time. )
As far as carrying capacity goes, diesel takes space too, and batteries can be exchanged in seconds, if a truck is in and out of the depot.

I drove a truck for a year, and in the UK, you could easily run a truck all day on a 200 mile range. Most days involve numerous returns to base so a quick battery change would be no problem.. But in 50 years time, those numbers won't be relevant.

There's nothing stopping transport being mainly electric in 50 years time, except price of generation.

Apart from the advances in battery technology, fifty years will see huge improvements in computing. Many trucks will be driverless electric ones, and might even take to the rails and re-charge their batteries as they go, for longer trips.
With the sort of computing power that will be available in 2065, it should be easy to integrate road and rail. And of course, re-charging the battery as you travel on rails removes the range problem completely.

So there really is nothing stopping transport going electric, except price of generation.
As far as that goes, solar is nearly at parity now in some areas. And onshore wind is pretty close. Give it fifty years, and it will be the other way around unless fossil fuel prices go through the floor.
Add in new generation nuclear, and possibly fusion generation, and I'd say it's odds-on that fossil fuel will be well on it's way out, in 2065.

In 50 years time teh Marxists will have enslaved us all and we'll have to generate electricity by grinding up babies into fuel pellets.

[mistermack]

Seth, your posts are far too long to respond to properly. Don't get so excited.

Anyway, most of it is directly out of your own head, why don't you try supporting your case sometimes?
As in

Fusion is a good thing, but it's not likely to replace fossil fuels anytime in the next 200 years or more.

Did you pull that out of your own head, or your ass? Either way, it's full of shit.
Iter, the international tokamak, is going up as we speak,

The facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2020 with full deuterium-tritium fusion experiments starting in 2027.

Iter is designed to produce 500 megawatts output for 50 megawatts input. The research costs have already been spent. Building the next, and the next, comes down in price enormously. Unless they hit a brick wall, tokamak fusion will be economically viable within fifty years. After all, the decommissioning costs are tiny, compared to fission plants, and so is the cost of fuel.
Another thing you need to bear in mind is that for nuclear plants, most of the cost is kept in the country. The money circulates as wages etc, unlike fossil fuel imports.

As for other renewables, maybe you can understand a graph better than written facts :

This is the value of the industry for the period shown :


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... k_exchange

And this is the expected figures for up to 2017 :


The facts speak for themselves. People don't invest billions on a whim, or for short-term subsidies. The long-term facts are that fossil fuel is getting overtaken.
You just can't see the trends, granddad. People in the future won't give a toss about windmills. They will be used to them. Personally, I like them, and most people I talk to have nothing against them.

When I said they were reaching parity, they are, in generation costs. But obviously not yet in overall supply costs, because of the uncertainty of wind. But when you have a mixed industry of wind, solar and nuclear, you don't need a lot of fossil fuel to fill the gaps.

And stop pulling false facts out of your arsehole :

Again, horseshit, for the same reasons solar isn't ever going to be practical. The entire "green" alternative energy industry in the US produces less than 4 percent of the present generating capacity of the nation.

Renewable energy reached a major milestone in the first quarter of 2011, when it contributed 11.7 percent of total U.S. energy production (2.245 quadrillion BTUs of energy), surpassing energy production from nuclear power (2.125 quadrillion BTUs).[4] 2011 was the first year since 1997 that renewables exceeded nuclear in US total energy production.[5]

You've just got no idea of what you're talking about have you?
If you add nuclear and renewables together, it makes your 4 percent ex-rectal figure look rather silly, doesn't it?
In any case, you don't seem to be capable of understanding the industry trends, as shown in the graphs above. Fifty years of those sorts of trends will produce a hugely different energy market to what we have now.

[pErvinalia]

Iter is going to create a big plasma sucky thing that will eat Europe. I saw a documentary on it called Spiderman 2.

[Seth]

Seth, your posts are far too long to respond to properly.

Only for tiny-minded wipers of other people's bottoms.

Anyway, most of it is directly out of your own head, why don't you try supporting your case sometimes?

Ah, Socrates is spinning in his grave right now.

As in

Fusion is a good thing, but it's not likely to replace fossil fuels anytime in the next 200 years or more.

Did you pull that out of your own head, or your ass? Either way, it's full of shit.
Iter, the international tokamak, is going up as we speak,

The facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2020 with full deuterium-tritium fusion experiments starting in 2027.

Iter is designed to produce 500 megawatts output for 50 megawatts input. The research costs have already been spent. Building the next, and the next, comes down in price enormously. Unless they hit a brick wall, tokamak fusion will be economically viable within fifty years. After all, the decommissioning costs are tiny, compared to fission plants, and so is the cost of fuel.

What part of "experiments starting in 2027" is unclear to you? It may be two years, or ten years or fifty years before those experiments result in commercially viable fusion power generation. Or it could be never. That's why they are still "experimenting." Now I'd love to see it come to commercial fruition, but that still doesn't mean fossil fuels are going away any time soon because fusion reactors are huge, complex and expensive and you can't fit one under the bonnet of a Mercedes Benz.

Another thing you need to bear in mind is that for nuclear plants, most of the cost is kept in the country. The money circulates as wages etc, unlike fossil fuel imports.

Well, except for that whole having to buy radioactive materials from someone else because you ain't got none in your own country.

As for other renewables, maybe you can understand a graph better than written facts :

This is the value of the industry for the period shown :

The facts speak for themselves. People don't invest billions on a whim, or for short-term subsidies.

The fuck they don't, if they are reaping more billions in subsidies in the short term than they are spending there is no reason for them not to do so. And that's the point. No major utility in the US (or anywhere else) would build a single fucking windmill or solar panel plant if it were not for subsidies and oppressive regulations that mandate that they do so. In Colorado, for example, power producers are required by state law to obtain 15% of their power from "renewable sources" by certain target dates, and the penalties for not doing so are harsh. That's not an economic decision, that's a POLITICAL one that completely skews the chart you provided. And the companies that build the windmills are under no obligation to retain ownership of them in the long term, and as soon as they quit making a profit they will unload them to the utilities, who will have to maintain them, and the builders walk away with billions in profits coming directly from government subsidies.

The companies who build windmill farms ARE NOT the power companies themselves, they are independent companies who contract with the power companies to build the renewable infrastructure because, and ONLY because those companies can indeed reap billions in short-term profits building legally-mandated, government subsidized windmills that the utilities must commission by law. The power companies on the other hand buy the minimum amount of power they have to buy to meet the legal standards and have no intention of paying for more than that, and they pass the costs on to ratepayers, arguing with the PUC that they must do so to remain solvent, and so who really gets bilked for this sop to environmentalism are the rate payers whose "energy costs will necessarily skyrocket" under Obama's plan.

The long-term facts are that fossil fuel is getting overtaken.

Only in your fevered imagination and the fevered imagination of whomever ginned-up those ridiculous projections.

You just can't see the trends, granddad. People in the future won't give a toss about windmills. They will be used to them. Personally, I like them, and most people I talk to have nothing against them.

You probably don't live anywhere near one. People who do have all sorts of health problems associated with the low-frequency "whoosh" they make and they utterly despise them.

When I said they were reaching parity, they are, in generation costs.

You're wrong. Whoever is making this claim is simply eliding the costs of the subsidies the taxpayers paid to create them in the first place.

But obviously not yet in overall supply costs, because of the uncertainty of wind. But when you have a mixed industry of wind, solar and nuclear, you don't need a lot of fossil fuel to fill the gaps.

If you have nukes you do not need any of the others.

And stop pulling false facts out of your arsehole :

Again, horseshit, for the same reasons solar isn't ever going to be practical. The entire "green" alternative energy industry in the US produces less than 4 percent of the present generating capacity of the nation.

Renewable energy reached a major milestone in the first quarter of 2011, when it contributed 11.7 percent of total U.S. energy production (2.245 quadrillion BTUs of energy), surpassing energy production from nuclear power (2.125 quadrillion BTUs).[4] 2011 was the first year since 1997 that renewables exceeded nuclear in US total energy production.[5]

You've just got no idea of what you're talking about have you?[/quote]

Oh golly, my bad, it's a whole eleven percent. Big. Fucking. Deal. The other 89.3 percent isn't going to be replaced by windmills and solar panels, ever.

If you add nuclear and renewables together, it makes your 4 percent ex-rectal figure look rather silly, doesn't it?

If you have nukes, you don't need windmills or solar. Derp!

In any case, you don't seem to be capable of understanding the industry trends, as shown in the graphs above. Fifty years of those sorts of trends will produce a hugely different energy market to what we have now.

And you don't seem to understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch and the "industry trends" are all entirely dependent upon government subsidies for renewable energy, and when those subsidies go away the industry will go away too because windmills and solar panels will NEVER be able to replace fossil fuel power plants.

Nukes, on the other hand, can...and all by themselves.

But I'm sure you are aware how difficult it is to build a nuke plant these days.