Worse Than Worthless: Intermittent Wind & Solar Cost A Fortune, But Have No True Value
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Electricity that can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it, has no commercial value. Sure, the wind might be ‘free’ and the Sun may never send an invoice to solar panel owners, but wind and solar power are readily the most expensive way of generating chaotically intermittent electricity, known to man.
And the reason for that is as stark as it is simple: calm weather and sunset are natural occurrences for which there is simply no solution. Not mega-batteries, not hydrogen and not pumped hydro.
For every MW of wind or solar power capacity there is, and will always be, a MW of generating capacity which is instantly dispatchable, which in Australia means coal-fired plants holding spinning reserve or fast start gas or diesel generators ready to compensate for routine and totally unpredictable collapses in wind output and sunset.
Gail Tverberg takes a look at the notion that, despite all that, somehow heavily subsidised wind and solar might lead us out of the economic malaise that’s set in post coronavirus lockdowns.
Why a Great Reset Based on Green Energy Isn’t Possible
Our Finite World
Gail Tverberg
17 July 2020
It seems like a reset of an economy should work like a reset of your computer: Turn it off and turn it back on again; most problems should be fixed. However, it doesn’t really work that way. Let’s look at a few of the misunderstandings that lead people to believe that the world economy can move to a Green Energy future.
[1] The economy isn’t really like a computer that can be switched on and off; it is more comparable to a human body that is dead, once it is switched off.
A computer is something that is made by humans. There is a beginning and an end to the process of making it. The computer works because energy in the form of electrical current flows through it. We can turn the electricity off and back on again. Somehow, almost like magic, software issues are resolved, and the system works better after the reset than before.
Even though the economy looks like something made by humans, it really is extremely different. In physics terms, it is a “dissipative structure.” It is able to “grow” only because of energy consumption, such as oil to power trucks and electricity to power machines.
The system is self-organizing in the sense that new businesses are formed based on the resources available and the apparent market for products made using these resources. Old businesses disappear when their products are no longer needed. Customers make decisions regarding what to buy based on their incomes, the amount of debt available to them, and the choice of goods available in the marketplace.
There are many other dissipative structures. Hurricanes and tornadoes are dissipative structures. So are stars. Plants and animals are dissipative structures. Ecosystems of all kinds are dissipative structures. All of these things grow for a time and eventually collapse. If their energy source is taken away, they fail quite quickly. The energy source for humans is food of various types; for plants it is generally sunlight.
Thinking that we can switch the economy off and on again comes close to assuming that we can resurrect human beings after they die. Perhaps this is possible in a religious sense. But assuming that we can do this with an economy requires a huge leap of faith.
[2] Economic growth has a definite pattern to it, rather than simply increasing without limit.
Many people have developed models reflecting the fact that economic growth seems to come in waves or cycles. Ray Dalio shows a chart describing his view of the economic cycle in a preview to his upcoming book, The Changing World Order. Figure 1 is Dalio’s chart, with some annotations I have added in blue.
Figure 1. New World Order chart by Ray Dalio from an introduction to his theory called The Changing World Order. Annotations in blue added by Gail Tverberg.
Modelers of all kinds would like to think that there are no limits in this world. Actually, there are many limits. It is the fact that economies have to work around limits that leads to cycles such as these. Some examples of limits include inadequate arable land for a growing population, inability to fight off pathogens, and an energy supply that becomes excessively expensive to produce. Cycles can be expected to vary in steepness, both on the upside and the downside of the cycle.
The danger of ignoring these cycles is that researchers tend to create models of future economic growth and future energy consumption that are far out of sync with what really can be expected. Accurate models need to include at least some limited version of overshoot and collapse on a regular basis. Models of the future economy tend to be based on what politicians would like to believe will happen, rather than what actually can be expected to happen in the real world.
[3] Commodity prices behave differently at different stages of the economic cycle. During the second half of the economic cycle, it becomes difficult to keep commodity prices high enough for producers.
There is a common belief that demand for energy products will always be high, because everyone knows we need energy. Thus, according to this belief, if we have the technology to extract fossil fuels, prices will eventually rise high enough that fossil fuel resources can easily be extracted. Many people have been concerned that we might “run out” of oil. They expect that oil prices will rise to compensate for the shortages. Thus, many people believe that in order to maintain adequate supply, we should be concerned about supplementing fossil fuels with nuclear power and renewable energy.
If we examine oil prices (Figure 2), it is apparent that, at least recently, this is not the way oil prices actually behave. Since the spike in oil prices in 2008, the big problem has been prices that fall too low for oil producers. At prices well below $100 per barrel, development of many new oil fields is not economic. Low oil prices are especially a problem in 2020 because travel restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic reduce oil demand (and prices) even below where they were previously.
Figure 2. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Strangely enough, coal prices (Figure 3) seem to follow a very similar pattern to oil prices, even though coal is commonly believed to be available in huge supply, and oil is commonly believed to be in short supply.
Figure 3. Selected Spot Coal Prices, from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. Prices are annual averages. Price for China is Qinhuangdao spot price; price for US is Central Appalachian coal spot index; price for Europe is Northwest European market price.
Comparing Figures 2 and 3, we see that prices for both oil and coal rose to a peak in 2008, then fell back sharply. The timing of this drop in prices corresponds with the “debt bust” in late 2008 that is shown in Figure 1.
Prices then rose to another peak in 2011, after several years of Quantitative Easing (QE). QE is intended to hold the cost of borrowing down, encouraging the use of more debt. This debt can be used by citizens to buy more goods made with coal and oil (such as cars and solar panels). Therefore, QE is a way to increase demand and thus help raise energy prices. In the 2011-2014 period, oil was able to maintain its price better than coal, perhaps because of its short supply. Once the United States discontinued its QE program in 2014, oil prices dropped like a rock (Figure 2).
Prices were very low in 2015 and 2016 for both coal and oil. China stimulated its economy, and prices for both coal and oil were able to rise again in 2017 and 2018. By 2019, prices for both oil and coal were falling again. Figure 2 shows that in 2020, oil prices have fallen again, as a result of demand destruction caused by pandemic shutdowns. Coal prices have also fallen in 2020, according to Trading Economics.
[4] The low prices since mid-2008 seem to be leading to both peak crude oil and peak coal. Crude oil production started falling in 2019 and can be expected to continue falling in 2020. Coal extraction seems likely to start falling in 2020.
In the previous section, I showed that crude oil and coal both have the same problem: Prices tend to be too low for producers to make a profit extracting them. For this reason, investment in new oil wells is being reduced, and unprofitable coal mines are being closed.
Figure 4 shows that world crude oil production has not grown much since 2004. In fact, OPEC’s production has not grown much since 2004, even though OPEC countries report high oil reserves so, in theory, they could pump more oil if they chose to.
Figure 4. World crude oil production (including condensate) based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. Russia+ refers to the group Commonwealth of Independent States.
In total, BP data shows that world crude oil production fell by 582,000 barrels per day, comparing 2019 to 2018. This represents a drop of 2.0 million barrels per day in OPEC production, offset by smaller increases in production for the US, Canada, and Russia. Crude oil production is expected to fall further in 2020, because of low demand and prices.
Because of continued low coal prices, world coal production has been on a bumpy plateau since 2011. Prices seem to be even lower in 2020 than in 2019, putting further downward pressure on coal extraction in 2020.
Figure 5. World coal production based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
[5] Modelers missed the fact that fossil fuel extraction would disappear because of low prices, leaving nearly all reserves and other resources in the ground. Modelers instead assumed that renewables would always be an extension of a fossil fuel-powered system.
The thing that most people do not understand is that commodity prices are set by the laws of physics, so that supply and demand are in balance. Demand is really very close to “affordability.” If there is too much wage/wealth disparity, commodity prices tend to fall too low. In a globalized world, many workers earn only a few dollars a day. Because of their low wages, these low-paid workers cannot afford to purchase very much of the world’s goods and services. The use of robots tends to produce a similar result because robots can’t actually purchase goods and services made by the economy.
Thus, modelers looking at Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) for wind and for solar assumed that they would always be used inside of a fossil fuel powered system that could provide heavily subsidized balancing for their intermittent output. They made calculations as if intermittent electricity is equivalent to electricity that can be controlled to provide electricity when it is needed. Their calculations seemed to suggest that making wind and solar would be useful. The thing that was overlooked was that this was only possible within a system where other fuels would provide balancing at a very low cost.
[6] The same issue of low demand leading to low prices affects commodities of all kinds. As a result, many of the future resources that modelers count on, and that companies depend upon as the basis for borrowing, are unlikely to really be available.
Commodities of all kinds are being affected by low demand and low selling prices. The problem giving rise to low prices seems to be related to excessive specialization, excessive use of capital goods to replace labor, and excessive use of globalization. These issues are all related to the needs of a world economy that depends on a high level of technology. In such an economy, too much of the output of the economy goes to producing devices and to paying highly trained workers. Little is left for non-elite workers.
The low selling prices of commodities makes it impossible for employers to pay adequate wages to most of their workers. These low wages, in turn, feed through to the uprisings we have been seeing in the last couple of years. These uprisings are part of “Revolutions and Wars” mentioned in Figure 1. It is difficult to see how this problem will disappear without a major change in the “World Order,” mentioned in the same figure.
Because the problem of low commodity prices is widespread, our ability to produce electrical backup of all kinds, including the ability to make batteries, can be expected to become an increasing problem. Commodities, such as lithium, suffer from low prices, not unlike the low prices for coal and oil. These low prices lead to cutbacks in their production and local uprisings.
[7] On a stand-alone basis, intermittent renewables have very limited usefulness. Their true value is close to zero.
If electricity is only available when the sun is shining, or when the wind is blowing, industry cannot plan for its use. Its use must be limited to applications where intermittency doesn’t matter, such as pumping water for animals to drink or desalinating water. No one would attempt to smelt metals with intermittent electricity because the metals would set at the wrong time, if the intermittent electricity suddenly disappeared. No one would power an elevator with intermittent electricity, because a person could easily be trapped between floors. Homeowners would not use electricity to power refrigerators, because, as likely as not, the food would spoil when electricity was off for long periods. Traffic signals would work sometimes, but not always.
Lebanon is an example of a country whose electricity system works only intermittently. It is hard to imagine that any other country would want to imitate Lebanon. Lack of reliable electricity supply leads to protests in Lebanon.
[8] The true cost of wind and solar has been hidden from everyone, using subsidies whose total cost is hard to determine.
Each country has its own way of providing subsidies to renewables. Most countries give wind and solar the subsidy of “going first.” They are often given a fixed rate as well. Both of these are subsidies. In the US, other subsidies are buried in the tax system. Recently, there has been talk of using QE to help wind and solar providers lower their cost of borrowing.
Newspapers regularly report that the price of wind and solar is at “grid parity,” but this is not an apples to apples comparison. To be useful, electricity needs to be available when users need it. The cost of storage is far too high to allow us to store electricity for weeks and months at a time.
If we were to use intermittent electricity as a substitute for fossil fuels in general, we would need to use intermittent electricity to heat homes and offices in winter. Sunshine is abundant in the summer, but not in the winter. Without storage, solar panels cannot even be counted on to provide homeowners with heat for cooking dinner after the sun sets in the evening. An incredibly huge amount of storage would be needed to store heat from summer to winter.
China reports that it has $42 billion in unpaid clean energy subsidies, and this amount is getting larger each year. Countries are now becoming poorer and the taxes they are able to collect are lower. Their ability to subsidize a high cost, unreliable electricity system is disappearing.
[9] Wind, solar, and hydroelectric today only comprise a little under 10% of the world’s energy supply.
We are deluding ourselves if we think we can get along on such a tiny total energy supply.
Figure 6. Hydroelectric, wind, and solar electricity as a percentage of world energy supply, based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Few people understand what a small share of the world’s energy supply wind and solar provide today. The amounts shown in Figure 6 assume that the denominator is total energy (including oil, for example), not just electricity. In 2019, hydroelectric accounted for 6.4% of world energy supply. Wind accounted for 2.2%, and solar accounted for 1.1%. The three together amounted to 9.7% of the world’s energy supply.
None of these three energy types is suited to producing food. Oil is currently used for tilling fields, making herbicides and pesticides, and transporting refrigerated crops to market.
[10] Few people understand how important energy supply is for giving humans control over other species and pathogens.
Control over other species and pathogens has been a multistage effort. In recent years, this effort has involved antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines. Pasteurization became an important technique in the 1800s.
Humans’ control over other species started over 100,000 years ago, when humans learned to burn biomass for many uses, including cooking foods, scaring away predators, and burning down entire forests to improve their food supply. In my 2018 post, Supplemental energy puts humans in charge, I wrote about one proof of the importance of humans’ control of fire. In the lower layers of a cave in South Africa, big cats were in charge: There were no carbon deposits from fire and gnawed human bones were scattered around the cave. In the upper layers of the same cave, humans were clearly in charge. There were carbon deposits from fires, and bones of big cats that had been gnawed by humans were scattered around the cave.
We are dealing with COVID-19 now. Today’s hospitals are only possible thanks to a modern mix of energy supply. Drugs are very often made using oil. Personal protective equipment is made in factories around the world and shipped to where it is used, generally using oil for transport.
Conclusion
We do indeed appear to be headed for a Great Reset. There is little chance that Green Energy can play more than a small role, however. Leaders are often confused because of the erroneous modeling that has been done. Given that the world’s oil and coal supply seem to be declining in the near term, the chance that fossil fuel production will ever rise as high as assumptions made in the IPCC reports seems very slim.
It is true that some Green Energy devices may continue to operate for a time. But, as the world economy continues to head downhill, it will be increasingly difficult to make new renewable devices and to repair existing systems. Wholesale electricity prices can be expected to stay very low, leading to the need for continued subsidies for wind and solar.
Figure 1 indicates that we can expect more revolutions and wars at this stage in the cycle. At least part of this unrest will be related to low commodity prices and low wages. Globalization will tend to disappear. Keeping transmission lines repaired will become an increasing problem, as will many other tasks associated with keeping energy supplies available.
Our Finite World
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August 15, 2020 at 02:31AM
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Green Energy Crisis: Residents Asked To Reduce Power During Californian Heat Wave
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Power supplies could be even tighter, as cloud cover is expected to cause a drop in solar power.
A blistering heat wave over the next several days is prompting the California Independent System Operator to issue a Flex Alert for Friday, which means residents are being asked to reduce power usage from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.
California is expected to have record-breaking heat, up to 10-20 degrees above normal in some areas.
At La Tapatia restaurant in Martinez, they like heat in the food but not so much in the kitchen.
“It’s difficult. I tell you the guys in the kitchen they should be awarded special hazard pay, cause it gets very warm in the kitchen,” said Ernesto Guerrero, the restaurant owner.
Guerrero, the restaurant owner, had a small air-conditioning unit installed Thursday. He says without indoor dining, they are able to save on cooling, but it’s hard for restaurants to conserve much more during dinner hour.
“We ventilate the place prior to opening up. We turn on the air conditioners last, because not only do we want to conserve energy but it’s also costly. Stoves and refrigeration we can’t do much about,” said Guerrero.
The main concern is people running air conditioners longer will put a strain on the power grid. Power supplies also could be even tighter, as cloud cover is expected to cause a drop in solar power.
“The cloud cover obviously reduces the solar output and so that further tightens our electricity supplies,” said Anne Gonzales, a California ISO spokeswoman.
Full story
“Rolling blackouts” have returned to California, as utilities announced on Friday they would be turning off power on a rotating basis for hundreds-of-thousands of customers so as not to overwhelm the electrical grid during the current heatwave.
PG&E says it will be turning off power for up to 250,000 customers “in rotating blocks” until 11 p.m. Friday, at the direction of the independent nonprofit that oversees the power grid.
The utility says it will not be able to give people advance warning.
The California Independent System Operator, which called for the outages, has not imposed such action on the state’s energy grid operators in two decades, since the “rolling blackouts” in 2001.
“We urge our customers to take immediate steps to reduce their power usage. We will work to restore power safely and as quickly as we are able,” PG&E interim president Michael Lewis wrote in a statement.
The rolling blackouts are unrelated to last year’s power shutoffs during high fire conditions, and would last approximately an hour.
Full story
The post Green Energy Crisis: Residents Asked To Reduce Power During Californian Heat Wave appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).
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August 15, 2020 at 02:04AM
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Greta Thunberg ‘Losing Relevance’ In Wake Of Global Pandemic
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Climate activists like Greta Thunberg are having to grapple with their sudden loss of relevance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
The post Greta Thunberg ‘Losing Relevance’ In Wake Of Global Pandemic appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).
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August 15, 2020 at 01:49AM
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CSIRO: An Entire Covid-19 Lockdown Worth Of Cumulative CO2 Emission Cuts Required Each Year
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; If you thought the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on your financial circumstances or the national or global economy was bad, imagine if a similar amount of money was cumulatively sliced permanently off the global economy every year for the next 10 years. This is what the UN and national science bodies like the CSIRO want the world to accept, to hit their 1.5C Paris Agreement target.
Carbon dioxide levels over Australia rose even after COVID-19 forced global emissions down. Here’s why
August 13, 2020 12.18pm AEST
Zoe Loh
Senior Research Scientist, CSIROHelen Cleugh
Senior research scientist, CSIRO Climate Science Centre, CSIROPaul Krummel
Research Group Leader, CSIRORay Langenfelds
Scientist at CSIRO Atmospheric Research, CSIROCOVID-19 has curtailed the activities of millions of people across the world and with it, greenhouse gas emissions. As climate scientists at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, we are routinely asked: does this mean carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have fallen?
The answer, disappointingly, is no. Throughout the pandemic, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels continued to rise.
…
Research in May estimated that due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, global annual average emissions for 2020 would be between 4.2% and 7.5% lower than for 2019.
…
The road ahead
It’s clear COVID-19 has not solved the climate change problem. But this fact helps us understand the magnitude of change required if we’re to stabilise the global climate system.
The central aim of the Paris climate agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and pursue efforts to keep it below 1.5℃. To achieve this, global CO₂ emissions must decline by 3% and 7% each year, respectively, until 2030, according to the United Nations Emissions Gap Report.
Thanks to COVID-19, we may achieve this reduction in 2020. But to lock in year-on-year emissions reductions that will be reflected in the atmosphere, we must act now to make deep, significant and permanent changes to global energy and economic systems.
The following is a scolding from the United Nations, explaining what we naughty children have to do to get back onto the CO2 emissions path the UN has set out for us.
5. Dramatic strengthening of the NDCs is needed in 2020. Countries must increase their NDC ambitions threefold to achieve the well below 2°C goal and more than fivefold to achieve the 1.5°C goal.
- The ratchet mechanism of the Paris Agreement foresees strengthening of NDCs every five years. Parties to the Paris Agreement identified 2020 as a critical next step in this process, inviting countries to communicate or update their NDCs by this time. Given the time lag between policy decisions and associated emission reductions, waiting until 2025 to strengthen NDCs will be too late to close the large 2030 emissions gap.
- The challenge is clear. The recent IPCC special reports clearly describe the dire consequences of inaction and are backed by record temperatures worldwide along with enhanced extreme events.
- Had serious climate action begun in 2010, the cuts required per year to meet the projected emissions levels for 2°C and 1.5°C would only have been 0.7 per cent and 3.3 per cent per year on average. However, since this did not happen, the required cuts in emissions are now 2.7 per cent per year from 2020 for the 2°C goal and 7.6 per cent per year on average for the 1.5°C goal. Evidently, greater cuts will be required the longer that action is delayed.
- Further delaying the reductions needed to meet the goals would imply future emission reductions and removal of CO2 from the atmosphere at such a magnitude that it would result in a serious deviation from current available pathways. This, together with necessary adaptation actions, risks seriously damaging the global economy and undermining food security and biodiversity.
Read more: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/EGR19ESEN.pdf?sequence=13
United Nations personnel, top civil servants and government scientists would be unlikely to experience any personal hardship if the proposed cuts were implemented.
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August 15, 2020 at 12:40AM
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New Video : No Lie Is Too Big For Scientists
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August 14, 2020 at 09:45PM
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Thoughts on the 75th Ann. “Victory” in the Pacific
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
The end of WWII in Europe was less than stellar from a Western point of view due to the USSR push west as far as they could. Similarly in the Pacific theatre hundreds of millions of war weary people ended up being ruled by Reds and it is fascinating to explore why this had to happen. My reading tells me that the US Govt and White House was so “riddled with reds” since the 1930’s that many around FDR were working towards this Good Old Uncle Joe friendly outcome. The West is still paying for this.
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August 14, 2020 at 08:35PM
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It was a DEBATE !
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Short video – Does this mean it’s acceptable to lie during debates and lie to journalists?
Dem VP pick implies she was lying during the debate, and that it is OK for her to lie during debates. It also implies that you can’t trust anything she tells journalists
You may not think this post is climate-related until you realize that this liar strongly supports the Socialist-inspired Green New Deal, which aims to destroy capitalism and our way of life.
Thanks to Winston Smith for this video
The post It was a DEBATE ! appeared first on Ice Age Now.
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August 14, 2020 at 07:49PM
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Max Planck Institute For Meteorology Director Not Worried About Climate Tipping Points…Worried About Panic
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
In an interview with flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ here), Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPIM) Director Dr. Jochen Marotzke said predicting how many degrees of warming we need to prepare for was like reading tea leaves and that he is not worried about “climate tipping points”.
He also spoke of the wide disagreement among climate models.
Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPIM) Director Dr. Jochen Marotzke told the FAZ he doesn’t worry about climate “tipping points”, but worries about panic. Image: MPIM.
He told the FAZ that the worst case scenarios put out by some models were useful for the purpose of risk assessment, i.e. scenarios that are unlikely but cannot be ruled out. “In the latest generation of models, there are some models that are much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previous models in terms of their temperature increase,” he said.
Five degrees “very very unlikely”
When asked about the results of the French model released earlier this year, which assumes five degrees of warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, Marotzke expressed his amazement, telling the FAZ what he thought of the French scientists: “My God, what are you doing? Because it is very, very unlikely that the true climate is as sensitive as these new models show.”
“The issue of climate sensitivity is extremely complex. Therefore, the results of a model should first be treated with caution,” Marotzke said.
When asked why the French model produced such a high warming for a doubling of CO”, Marotzke said he didn’t know why: “No one understands why they published it without first reflecting. The British did it differently, they said the new value is a mystery to us. They first want to investigate what the reason is and whether the warming rate is realistic.”
No worries about climate tipping points
Later in the interview, the FAZ touched on the so-called “tipping points in the climate system”, which are “threshold values that set irreversible processes in motion that, once started, can no longer be stopped.” Possible tipping points named by some scientists include the Greenland Ice Sheet, Gulf Stream, West Antarctica:, coral reefs, Amazon dying etc.
On whether they could happen, Marotzke views it as “conceivable” and that it “cannot be ruled out” and with “almost all of them we don’t know where we stand.”
When asked which one is most worrying, he replied: “None”.
“I don’t see any risk with Greenland”
And not even the melting of the Greenland ice sheet worries the MPIM Director. He told the FAZ: “It’s gonna take so long – a couple thousand years. I don’t see any risk with Greenland.”
Arctic not a tipping element
On the subject of the Arctic, Marotzke says he is “quite sure that it is not a tipping point” – and that the ice albedo feedback “is not the dominant effect”.
“The ice comes back every year – in winter, said Marotzke, who has been Director at the MPIM in Hamburg since 2003. “When the temperature goes down again, the sea ice will come back.”
No worries about thawing permafrost
He is also not worried about the permafrost thawing, saying the contribution to warming “is relatively small.”
“Besides, even if the permafrost thaws, it is uncertain how much of the methane actually reaches the atmosphere,” said Marotzke. “Methane can be converted by bacteria to CO₂. I am not worried about methane.”
Worries “panic will backfire”
When asked about what he is worried about, he replies: “That the panic will backfire.” Marotzke warns against spreading panic: ” It can become incendiary. The question is, at what point do the risks of climate protection measures exceed the risks of climate change? Panic does not help here, only relatively sober analysis and weighing up – and a democratic discussion will help.”
Hat-tip: Die kalte Sonne.
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August 14, 2020 at 11:24AM
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Testing errors – People who have recovered still test positive
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Tests can’t distinguish between live virus & dead matter. They “falsely identified dead viral matter as active COVID-19 infection.” Recovered patients who tested positive again were not due to reinfection or reactivation but, rather, to testing errors.
_________
A team of South Korean infectious disease researchers has concluded that patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and subsequently tested positive again for SARS-CoV-2 were not due to reinfection or reactivation but, rather, to testing errors.
According to Dr. Oh Myoung-don, MD, head of Seoul National University Hospital’s division of infectious diseases, the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests used to determine the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and help diagnose cases of COVID-19 cannot distinguish between the virus and harmless fragments of the virus.
Vaccine developer Seol Dai-wu of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea agrees. “The RT-PCR machine itself cannot distinguish an infectious viral particle versus a non-infectious virus particle, as the test simply detects any viral component,” Seol said.
You have won the fight, you’re immune. But the test cannot discriminate.
As immunologist Beda Stadler, PhD, former director of the University Institute of Immunology at the Insel Hospital in Bern, Switzerland notes, people who recovered from COVID-19 can still test positive for SARS-CoV-2 because…
… the coronavirus test measures only a very tiny tiny piece of the genome of the virus, and if your immune cells have killed the virus, then you have debris, you have rotten pieces of the nucleic acids in your blood and everywhere, and the assay can pick up these rotten pieces and then it look like as if you’re infected. You’re not. You have won the fight, you’re immune. So [the test] cannot discriminate.
The findings by Dr. Oh and his research team have been confirmed by the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The KCDC studied 285 cases of patients who had recovered and later tested positive again for the virus. Despite the positive tests, the agency determined that the patients were not contagious because they did not actually have the virus—that the PCR tests has “falsely identified dead viral matter as active COVID-19 infection.”
People now allowed to go back to work or school
The new research has led to new protocols for handling cases involving people who recovered from COVID-19. Now in South Korea, even if they retested positive, there is no longer a requirement for people who have recovered from COVID-19 and gone through isolation, to test negative for SARS-CoV-2 before going back to work or school.
Thanks to Penelope for this link
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August 14, 2020 at 01:48PM
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Energy Freedom Resolution
Posted on August 15, 2020 Leave a Comment
Ed. Note: The Resolution below brings together a number of pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, free-market groups in favor of affordable, plentiful, sustainable energies. An opening membership list is provided here.
This resolution is a statement on the relationship between energy, freedom, and human wellbeing. The members of this coalition agree: a free market is the means through which affordable, reliable energy can best enhance people’s lives, here in America and across the world.
I. Affordable, reliable energy is a vital aspect of human wellbeing, providing electricity for our factories and hospitals, heat and light for our homes and schools, and locomotion for the cars, trucks, trains, and ships that move people and goods about the planet. Affordable, reliable energy enables the modern standards of wealth and health we enjoy.
II. Energy derived from carbon-based fuels fits the affordable, reliable profile necessary for human wellbeing. Carbon-based fuels—given their energy density, abundance, portability, and dispatchability—are key resources, both here in America and across the globe, where as many as a billion people still lack electricity. If technological developments give other energy sources advantages over carbon-based fuels, then people in a free market will naturally adopt them.
III. Political schemes designed with the explicit intention of increasing the cost of the carbon-based fuels deprive people of affordable, reliable energy. A tax on carbon dioxide emissions, commonly called a carbon tax, is one such scheme. A carbon tax would hinder access to affordable, reliable energy and therefore harm our quality of life.
IV. Private decisions made in a free market best reflect people’s interests. Central planners claim the mantle of the public good, but through energy taxes, mandates, and subsidies—whoever the beneficiaries may be—they only impede our decision-making. Energy freedom—the liberty to produce and use affordable, reliable energy—empowers people to manage life’s challenges as they see fit.
V. The American principles of individual liberty and decentralized governance endorse energy freedom. Implementing a carbon tax in order to satisfy speculative computer models is contrary to those principles. Energy freedom ensures affordable, reliable energy will continue to promote human wellbeing, here in America and abroad.
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August 14, 2020 at 11:10AM
