I hope the Climate Activists are proud of the effect their lies are having on the younger generation

davezawadi (David Stone): Now I will reiterate the costs of the electric solution. 

There are many issues here. One of them is, as you raised, the Indian and Chinese burning of coal.

Quite a few members of the IET are Indian and Chinese. If you read the IET Membership newsletter, you will see that many eminent Chinese engineers are becoming FIET. A discussion about continuing/rejecting continued use of coal in these very WWW pages can involve influential engineers in India and China, if we moderate our language so as to include them.

The issue in Germany gives an example of the difficulties. Let me explain.

Germans largely accept the claims of CO2 emissions affecting global warming. There are large open lignite mines in Garzweiler and Hambach, S and SW of Cologne, in my state of NRW, operated by the company RWE, which you can see in large grey areas on Google maps. 

Germany has committed to elimination of coal-fired energy in the near future. Still, RWE is aiming to extend its open-face mining operations up until the time limits set by the German government. (It is currently in open conflict with protesters, as well as government, concerning its right to do so.) The company is currently claiming compensation from the government – that is, from taxpayers such as myself -- for foregone profits, had the government not decided to exit coal-fired energy production; that is, had the German public not decided that fossil-fuel fired energy production was no longer appropriate. 

People such as myself think that RWE should stop lignite mining, now. This very instant.

This is a politically momentous issue. German taxpayers such as myself are not in agreement that our money should contribute to RWE profits as they would have been had CO2 emissions been benign. Which they aren't and will never be.

Just an example.

davezawadi (David Stone): 
 

Ok, the estimate is from the oil trade but you can see it yourself, the oil price went down to $30 a barrel and now is about $68 as demand has recovered.

Referring to your suggestion of 25%, here is a reliable estimate of 4%-7%

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x

Thanks for the suggestion to “see it [my]self”, I can see unfortunately that we still have a way to go in changing your tone.

Now I will reiterate the costs of the electric solution. 

I'll address that elsewhere.

Costs are relative to, well, politics. Let me remind ourselves of the words of John Maynard Keynes in the midst of WWII: “Anything we can actually do, we can afford.” (1942 BBC Address, Collected Works XXVII).

I think we can cover our rooves with PV plates, cover our walls with insulation, and exchange our windows. We can “actually do” it. Ergo, according to Keynes, we can afford it.

Ok, the estimate is from the oil trade but you can see it yourself, the oil price went down to $30 a barrel and now is about $68 as demand has recovered.

Now I will reiterate the costs of the electric solution. 

We need to replace the entire heating load of the country with electricity, and the government seems to favour heat pumps, but that is another story. The average gas boiler output is around 15 kW, and with a heat pump one might get a COP of 3, so 5 kW of electricity. The existing housing stock is about 30 million units, so the electricity required is 150 GW. I am not going to allow for any other use at the moment, because all properties will not need heat all the time, but this seems a reasonable estimate overall.

Distributing 150 GW will need the entire electrical infrastructure to be replaced with roughly 3 times as much equipment, the most expensive part being the cables to those 30 million homes. Presently about 1.5 kW per house is the maximum capacity available, again because of supply load diversity, we don't need it for everyone at once. The distribution is buried in most places under roads and pavements, with substations at regular intervals, again connected to the big grid ones via buried cables. Every one of these substations will need new transformers and switchgear, and often more land and new buildings. This is a huge civil engineering task, and the most interesting point is that this is likely to use more energy than is saved for many years.

National Grid has estimated that the cost will be around £3 Trillion, but we still have no electricity. Whilst wind and solar provide some electricity the average is only 30% of nameplate capacity, and solar only works for daytime and good sunny weather at anything like nameplate capacity. Most generation will therefore have to be nuclear, and we need 150 GW at something like 4 - 6GW per station of two reactors. This needs about 30 new nuclear plants, at around £35 billion each, so another £1.2 Trillion. If gas is not to be used for backup electricity supply this is the only option available.

You will know that China is building new coal-powered power stations on a huge scale all around the world, about 2 a week for itself and more for India and others. Compared to this Britain's emissions are tiny, but net zero of these coal stations is 50-60 years away as they wear out. Coal is much the cheapest energy available, and available in huge quantities from mines around the world. Much of this is “brown” coal, a kind unlike the British stuff, which produces less energy per kilo and much more pollution.

I will repeat my question, why is it so important that Britain, producing 1% of world CO2 becomes fossil fuel free? You can see that there is no intention from China, Russia, or India to do so from COP 26, and our change will make no perceptible difference, even if warming is as you believe. £4.2 trillion is more or less 4 years GDP, even if we could get the manpower, materials, etc. together without moving world commodity prices, which it would.

davezawadi (David Stone): 

Peter, I mentioned the CO2 data, and as you know very well, it shows no decline at all during the last 2 years, when it is known that fossil fuel use declined by something like 25%. 

Can you source that estimate?

I understand you wish to have a discussion about this, and you will note that I have posted many times here and elsewhere that “electric everything” is simply not possible for many reasons, but the biggest one is that it is completely unaffordable. 

Can you argue that, with numbers, in a convincing way?

I am glad that your tone has changed. 

Peter, I mentioned the CO2 data, and as you know very well, it shows no decline at all during the last 2 years, when it is known that fossil fuel use declined by something like 25%. I asked why you thought this to be the case, no reply in scientific terms.

I asked you two very important questions at the heart of the subject, again no reply. I assume that you are reasonably numerate, and therefore you must understand that adding a positive “feedback” term to the energy equations used for modeling has no scientific basis and that the result of such a feedback term is the only reason that there is a predicted temperature increase. Lord Monkton's team (not him BTW) that is very highly qualified and capable, has made a calculation of the alleged feedback term from actual data, and the term must be either zero or very small. All the climate models except the Russian one do not match the known data, as I have pointed out, and run hot because of this implied term. Therefore it is plain stupid to use them to predict the future, it is like betting on a horse that came last many times to win, but for some reason climate is different. 

I understand you wish to have a discussion about this, and you will note that I have posted many times here and elsewhere that “electric everything” is simply not possible for many reasons, but the biggest one is that it is completely unaffordable. The only solution to that problem is to change lives in the developed world to put us on a par with the several Africa Countries I have been in, where electricity only works a few hours a day, and life is subsistence at best. At least these tropical countries are reasonably warm, in Britain, it would kill millions of people.

I note that for COP26, a considerable number of people arrived from all over the world, many in the most hypocritical way possible, on private jets. Some brought large numbers of IC vehicles. They have all feasted on the finest food, and none of them are poor. This behaviour is always that of one group trying to repress another group, it is political. The main problem is as I stated above, the science has also become political. Funding is only available for the “believers” any dissent is punished by loss of work or tenure or both, by Universities around the globe. This has made a billion dollars for Al Gore, yet done nothing for the poor. Unfortunately, it never will, any money passed over will be “lost” or end up in the pockets of politicians, very little will ever make any “climate change” improvements. This is almost always the outcome in poor countries, I have seen what happens to charity or UN money, the effect is small or zero for those in need. The charity staff live in luxuary.

We can discuss all this if you wish, but I rather expect that you consider all the above irrelevant?

It is probably worth reiterating my position on anthropogenic climate change (ACC).

First, there are standard references. The IPCC WG1 report; David Houghton's specific text on global warming; textbooks on climate science. There are other references, such as the recent background material to the Nobel prize awarded to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann. Second, I am impressed in particular by the work on the increase in the risk of extreme events. According to a recent survey, by far the majority of reputable published climate science in the last ten years is consistent with the material in these sources. Indeed, why should one expect it to be otherwise?

Second, there are five voluble contributors who appear to want to deny the climate science recognised by the above sources. Two of them have given very cursory, incomplete technical reasons for that; two of them have given none; one I do not regard as a genuine contributor.

Third, I have done my very best to elicit from those two who have proferred technical reasons what their beef with the established science is. To no avail. I have set out a list of propositions for Roger Bryant so he can show me with which of those he disagrees. No answer so far. He did nominally answer a specific question as to why he disagrees with the Karoly/Stott interpretation of recent CET data, but his answer made no sense to me. David Stone raised the Mauna Loa Keeling data for 2020 twice. Apparently he thinks that they represent a counterexample to the established climate science. I have asked what he would have expected the data show, and why. Again, no answer. 

This is very disappointing. I am used to more cooperative technical interactions on professional forums. I had expected better from the IET. I do have my view, of course, as to why Roger and David don't answer those specific questions. 

But it is not only disappointing. Almost all the energy transition paths towards carbon neutrality involve electricity. This is the UK electrotechnical professional society. The speed with which such a transition can be accomplished, and the trade-offs necessary to get it accomplished faster or more slowly are key issues which society needs to address. The IET included. It should be possible to have a reasonable discussion about it, and other pressing matters, on the IET WWW forums. But it appears currently not to be possible. I would welcome any serious ideas about how to enable such a discussion. 

davezawadi (David Stone): 

My analysis may not be accurate,

If you want to know about me, look me up.

Ah, a refusal to respond to a number of posts, none of which is abusive in any way. 

Roger is not the slightest bit abusive, and you keep refusing to engage in any proper discussion of facts or data. You probably don't realise that there are very many, very well-informed, and clever people who are members of the IET, and some of them are prepared to try to educate using the forums. You have no idea the background of posters, in many cases you may be very surprised with what they do, have done and know, and study for a lifetime.

You rudely called one poster a BOT, so a little analysis of you might be fair. You are probably involved in some kind of software, you read the Guardian, you do not know much pure science possibly an A level, have no knowledge of thermodynamics, and probably have leftish political views.

My analysis may not be accurate, but the stance you take implies all of these. No abuse intended.

Roger,

I generally don't respond to abuse, or to abusive posts, except to say I am not going to respond.

Peter, do you actually read what people post?

I post a simple piece of information, and the naysayers all come out of their holes to say it's bunkum. Lots and lots of them.

You posted a couple of URLs to the increasing global CO2 output. No one challenged the increase in CO2 output. 

Jon noted that this does not appear to correlate with global temperature rise. Is that calling your URL’s bunkum or is it valid discussion?

Some global temperature graphs from various ‘official’ resources were then displayed.  The possibly more politically  based one from NASA Climate Change appeared to show an accelerating increase in global temperature. The NASA GISS v4 monthly graph and the UAH graph both showed flat, possibly falling temperatures. Where does this say that your CO2 output URLs are bunkum?

I don’t want to discuss “climate science” with people who can only push URL’s  and cannot actually formulate an assertion in climate science which they are prepared to argue for in any reasonable fashion.

Where have you been formulating arguments and defending? All I have seen so far from you is the standard dogma.