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The EPA Carbon Plan: Coal Loses, But Who Wins?
Lasrick writes: Mark Cooper with one of the best explanations of some of the most pressing details on the new EPA rule change: 'The claims and counterclaims about EPA's proposed carbon pollution standards have filled the air: It will boost nuclear. It will expand renewables. It promotes energy efficiency. It will kill coal. It changes everything. It accomplishes almost nothing.' Cooper notes that although it's clear that coal is the big loser in the rule change, the rule itself doesn't really pick winners in terms of offering sweet deals for any particular technology; however, it seems that nuclear is also a loser in this formulation, because 'Assuming that states generally adhere to the prime directive of public utility resource acquisition—choosing the lowest-cost approach—the proposed rule will not alter the dismal prospects of nuclear power...' Nuclear power does seem to be struggling with economic burdens and a reluctance from taxpayers to pay continuing subsides in areas such as storage and cleanup. It seems that nuclear is another loser in the new EPA rule change.
I think you can be sure no matter how this plays out, power is going to be more expensive. In addition, if the coal-fired plants are removed from the equation before replacement sources of power are in place, there will be power shortages.
Nuclear power does seem to be struggling with economic burdens and a reluctance from taxpayers to pay continuing subsides in areas such as storage and cleanup. It seems that nuclear is another loser in the new EPA rule change.
Make those Regulatory burdens.
The idea is that we reduce carbon emissions to slow the rate of the effects on climate. They're not trying to pick winners and losers; why would you try and make winners and losers out of this?
All of the non-coal fuels each have their own challenges, and this rule doesn't alter that. It's like free market, but with the addition that the cost of altering the climate is factored into regulation because a commodity-priced market is unable to react to a result with a 100 year return period.
You still can't find anybody willing and able to properly store spent nuclear fuel, nor someone looking to invest billions of dollars and a decade of zero income in an industry which has a low-growth potential.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
We freeze in the dark.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Nuclear reactors stand and fall mostly on their own, what the government does is determine if you can open one. Because of our dear presidents own stance, we will not be opening new nuclear plants until he's gone. Nuclear is the cheapest per megawatt power source we currently have. Renewable are nice, but they cannot provide base load, they take a far longer payback time period than nuclear, they continue to advance(meaning the new stuff will be out dated before it pays for itself), they are only usable in certain areas, etc. You want to tell me that the government screwing nuclear power by making reprocessing illegal is a subsidy? If they were allowed to reprocess then the amount of nuclear waste would drop dramatically, costs would drop further, we wouldn't have such a shortage of medical isotopes, etc. The problem is that nuclear power has been demonized and made to seem useless. You think that if nuclear couldn't compete it would be the heart of all of the most effective warships on the planet, the reasons it isn't used in satellites are mostly treaties and laws, the other is mass and heat dissipation from higher power plants. Hell, nuclear is the most viable option to reduce environmental impacts in a manner which preserves quality of life, requires minimal governmental interference, and does not require that researchers create regular miracles just to keep society working.
EPA wasn't on the ballot.
If they were though, I might not have voted for them, because they are such hypocrites. Get caught by them with so much as a dirty old eagle feather found in a ditch, and see what happens to you. Yet windmills in CA are up to 3000 Golden Eagles killed, and like 1 point something million birds total. Free pass. Doesn't matter if I love windmills or not; the birds are worth protecting with felonies and giant fines for regular citizens, or they are not. I'm a big fan of equality under the law.
My power bill is high as fuck now. So are other peoples'. I can't think of a reason why the EPA would care about that though.
Where is my Congress?
Of course nuclear power doesn't seem viable if you look at it's current state! All the reactors we have now were designed in the '50s. They use water as a moderator (ie thermal neutrons) and coolant, requiring complex assemblies of fuel rods and control rods. Thermal neutrons also cause way more incidental nuclear waste (irradiated steel cores, wires, etc). They use
It doesn't have to be that way! The most recent design for a fast reactor seems to be the most legitimate and feasible new design to date. It's called the dual fluid reactor. http://dual-fluid-reactor.org/
It separates the fuel loop from the coolant loop. This has numerous advantages. You can alter the rate of either independently to best suit the current need. The coolant used isn't liquid sodium. Which, aside from not playing nice with air and water has a low boiling point and high neutron cross section. This reactor uses liquid lead as its coolant. Its so stable and resistant to radiation that the coolant loop can be piped into the non-containment area for power generation. In the papers I've read they mention coupling it to an MHR generator then a super-critical water loop en route to turbines.
It is engineered to run at 1000C, which at that temperature, makes it possible to do pyro-chemistry with electrodes to filter out the daught products in line with the fuel loop. The separated daughter products are then sent to a passive cooling chamber (the super short lived ones are hooked up to the coolant loop where it contributes to energy production) where they remain hella hot for a few hundred years. Then they become inert. There are supposedly lots of valuble metals after about 90 years that make the waste itself a hot commodity.
The reactor is designed to be a 2 meter cube, for simple production there are no bowed parts, only 90 angles with straight pipes. A reactor this size can put out 1500MW thermal.
Couple this with the recent advancement of laser-based particle accelerators and you wouldn't even have to start with enriched fuel! The power required to drive the laser would be
As Elon Musk would say (probably): Seriously guys, it's the 21st century, act like it!
Clearly, the order of investment/research should be
Solar - we need to up the efficiency, pick a proven 'winning' system (parabolic trough would be my choice) and GO with deployment, Germany has shown that this can be done in even sub-par areas, and even with transmissions losses, the sun produces magnitudes more energy than we could possibly ever use.
Wind - offshore where appropriate, inshore where available, enhancing the solar production into both day and night.
Hydro - again, renewable, but limited to certain areas and not without its environmental challenges
Nuclear - fission and cleanup of existing fuels using thorium fuel cycle is likely the best approach, fusion research as the long term solution for sustainable renewable power (and yes, with 4th/5th generation reactors, specifically Liquid fluoride thorium reactors, nuclear fission can be safe, and better, it can be the solution to removing/making safe/reusing all that stored nuclear fuel at existing reactors)
Storage (near and long term) - this can be accomplished with better batteries, or better, thermal storage. You can even use kinetic flywheels or chemical storage in the form of fuel (use the excess energy to manufacture hydrogen from sea water anyone? or desalinate sea water to provide fresh drinking water? the uses for excess energy are endless)
Coal - Slowly phase out coal, starting with regulation to reduce/remove/offset the incredible amount of pollution/death it causes
Oil/Natural Gas - We should definitely NOT be using this for fuel, it is much MORE valuable as a resource for making things, think plastics and fertilizer. Granted, we don't have the infrastructure to stop using this stuff for energy, but its coming, so slowly phase it out of our energy systems in preference for the above 4.
Stop thinking small. Even 1% of the existing military budget would be a huge boost for the energy research sector. I'd rather have a failed solyndra, than 10 years of war in Iraq.
Solyndra was just a talking point for the Republicans to pound the President on. The program that the Solyndra loan was a part of was budgeted for a 10 or 11% loss rate and even with Solyndra it still had less than 5% losses. Solyndra lost out because of the unexpected drop in prices of solar modules from China that it couldn't compete with. It's unreasonable to expect that everything that gets tried like this will work out.
Big oil and your standard energy providers win if our electricity bills are going up. They're going up by 50% now around where I live. They figure,"Hey one way to compete with the electric car is to make it as expensive to fill up your electric car as buying gasoline." and it will work for the short run.
God spoke to me
That's who wins. Every time. No matter what regulators do, that's who wins.
If even a fraction of the money spent subsidizing the nuclear and fossil fuel industries had been spent developing renewables and storage technology imagine where we would be now
The rule change doesn't help (or hurt) nuclear power and so therefore nuclear power loses? That's an interesting line of reasoning. I suppose FIFA, dirigibles, and panda bears are also losers in this rule change too, then.
> I think you can be sure no matter how this plays out, power is going to be more expensive.
No, you can't be sure of that. Wind power in the central portion of the country is cheaper than coal now. PV is cheaper than market power in the Southwest and the Northeast now. Many coal plants in tUSA are 50+ years old -- they're going to retire soon one way or another. And, not for nothing, wholesale electric power is cheaper now than it was five years ago due to cheap natural gas (and, by the way, switching from coal to gas helps comply with 111(d) and saves money).
> if the coal-fired plants are removed from the equation before replacement sources of power are in place, there will be power shortage
If my aunt had nuts, she'd be my uncle. There's absolutely no chance that 111(d) will result in reliability performance below the industry standard 1-day-in-10-years. Just won't happen. Retiring a unit requires years of planning. Google "integrated resource plan IRP" for your favorite utility and hunker down to a ~120 page report, produced every 3-5 years, laying out the company's plan, including projected retirements, new units, new transmission, etc.
111(d) doesn't require any coal plants to retire. It requires our fraction of electricity generated from coal to be reduced. The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time. Instead, a combination of new energy efficiency measures, new renewable energy production, more frequent operating of combined cycle natural gas generators, and squeezing even more MWh out of existing nuclear units through uprates or reduced downtimes will be the way states will comply with 111(d).
Seriously slashdot. Pithy remarks more frequently display ignorance than insightfulness.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
The fact the Government is planning to lose so much money in the first place by betting on players in the market is disturbing. Accepting it and justifying losses that weren't as big as planned as a good thing is downright insane.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Peak demand isn't as close to daylight as you might expect in the South. In fact, many systems are winter peaking (central Florida and Appalachia come to mind). Those systems peak winter 7-10am. Sure, the sun is just starting to come up, but PV isn't going to have a significant impact on that peak. Similarly, peak is 3-6pm. PV produces it's best power at high noon. As more PV comes on the system, the "net"-peak will push to 4-7pm, then 5-8pm. Again, solar contributes to meeting some of that peak, but depending on geography it isn't always going to align as well as you might think, including in the south.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Yes. Because STORAGE was the problem at Fukushima.
Sorry son. Shitty MANAGEMENT and lazy engineering practice, plus a metric fuckton of "Mother Nature Always Wins"
The plant actually SURVIVED a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
The reason it finally overheated was because the asshats at TEPCO ignored the calls of real engineers for a MUCH higher sea wall. So the tsunami set off by the TÅhoku quake may as well have had valet parking at the reactor when it hit land.
Right now we have the ability to build reactors that are PASSIVELY safe. It means you don't have to worry about failures in ACTIVE, mechanical cooling systems. When such a reactor is shut down, it dumps its fuel into a dump tank and the entire reactor simply cools off. No need to worry if the generators will kick in. No need to worry if the facility loses power. Natural, powered by a little thing we call GRAVITY. It's about as idiot proof as you're going to get until we figure out how to spot-reverse gravity.
And yes, there's always going to be SOME waste.
The stuff that they're pulling out of reactors today? Mildly radioactive. And will be for hundreds or thousands of years.
The stuff you would pull out of a liquid fuel reactor?
1: Medically useful.
2: Shitty bomb-making material.
3: Scientifically useful (and an element we actually can't get any more of).
4: HIGHLY radioactive. But INCREDIBLY short-lived. Some of it is gone within hours of extraction. The longest lived stuff will be a few years cooking off. As opposed to MILLENNIA with current solid-fuel reactors.
Ideal application for reactors such as these is to take them and bury them in concrete. Let them run their usable lifetime and then decommission them. Once it hits EOL, you drain the device and cap it. Then give it a decade or two to cool off (radiologically speaking).
Maybe we CANNOT guarantee that we can build a facility that'll last thousands of years, through god-knows-what. But storage bunkers intended for product with a 10-50 year shelf-life? Pfft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Half a century (plus) and counting.
And remember, these things can be fairly compact and relatively light (they were initially designed as a power system for a plane). These things could replace diesel generators and even small hydro installations. WORLDWIDE.
Yes. Dropping one into the San Andreas Fault, or Yellowstone National Park, or the New Madrid Fault would probably be a FUCKING DUMB IDEA.
So here's a smarter one. We don't DO that. We drop them in more geologically stable areas instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The earth atmosphere has not warmed for 12-17 years depending on which temperature series you look at.
That only works if you ignore the oceans where over 90% of the heat goes.
I see you're new to how this works.
Coal is heavily subsidized, both in extraction and in land lease conditions.
In addition costs of pollution are rarely if ever borne by the miners or shippers.
The only thing that is being changed is the conditions under which Power Plants burn coal.
Water scrubbing has been used since (forever) to remove pollutants, including acidic CO2 and SO2 from coal but is rarely used for existing plants, and never for coal exported overseas. I used to clean the scrubbers from Tek Cominco stacks that basically operate the same way, in my first adult job.
After these minor adjustments, coal will continue to be heavily subsidized at all other levels of production and distribution, just not as much at usage.
Which will still make it artificially cheaper than wind, but not artificially cheaper than already cheap solar. Passive solar today is cheaper for heating/cooling in the US, and is near coal costs in active solar for certain applications.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The government has been running different programs like that for a long time (more than 50 years) to help encourage new technologies to get off the ground. They always write in a 10 or 15% loss rate into them and the programs seldom reach that rate. In fact the boost to the economy for the ones that do succeed probably far outweigh any losses in the programs.
I'm sure they're quite aware of that fact, and probably rather annoyed that they had so much nuclear waste stored near the reactors instead of recycling the stuff.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The next challenge will be natural gas - it's a decent improvement over coal on paper, but only if leakage is kept to a minimum, and the evidence right now is that NG leakage is high enough that it's forcing global warming faster than te extra CO2 from coal would be doing. But at least the environmental damage is hidden deep underground in contaminated water supplies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As soon as you consider places where there is industry consuming electricity instead of merely residential usage then you get plenty of consumption in full daylight. Slicing the top off that big daytime peak has resulted in a couple of coal fired units being mothballed near me and some expensive to operate gas turbines having a lot less running time.
It could even be argued that the competition in China is entirely due to years of political pressure in the USA to not develop the results of US research and have a viable US photovoltaic industry based in Texas or Silicon Valley where items were developed almost to the point of the current Chinese products. By actively opposing a domestic solar industry that left the Chinese plenty of room to take over the market.
The government didnt plan to lose money.
In fact, the government didlost lose money at all.
The energy program that the Solyndra loans were a part of has not only NOT lost money, it's turned a profit with the overwhelming majority of participating companies repaying their loans in full. Tesla is merely the most famous example.
So once again, you prove yourself an ignorant dingbat.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
There's more. The current trick in some parts of the world is spend a lot of money on "poles and wires" (they used this dumbed down term for infrastructure in general even when major parts of the cost are substations) with no oversight whether it is needed or not and charge that on to the consumer. For example in Australia there has been a lot built rapidly despite declining consumption which has led to a major gap between some of the lowest generating costs in the world and close to the highest bill per kW/h for consumers in the world.
Hang on - wasn't most of that done in the 80s and 90s? I thought I saw the tail end of precipitators, bag filters etc going in when I went into the electricity generating industry in 1994, and only holdouts like China did without.
Anonymous Luddite would be a more accurate handle.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Source:
http://www.energyfactcheck.org...
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(copypasta)
The DOE loan guarantee program is an overwhelmingly successful program that played a critical role in the development of new renewable energy technologies by offering long-term capital when private financing was not available.
The Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program has an approximately 97% success rate. As of late July, 2012, Solyndra, Abound Solar and the handful of other DOE-backed renewable energy companies that went bankrupt represented total investments of less than 3% of the entire DOE portfolio. (Source: U.S. Department of Energy, April 2013, http://1.usa.gov/Nv1OeU)
It was well-known that the DOE’s loan programs would include a measured amount of risk. Before offering loan guarantees, Congress moved to protect taxpayers by appropriating nearly $10 billion to cover potential losses, acknowledging the risks of funding new technologies in industries that were facing significant market and economic challenges. (Source: Department of Energy, April 2013, http://1.usa.gov/10dWZIE)
Following reports of Fisker Automotive’s financial difficulties, the Department of Energy acted decisively to protect the taxpayers’ interest. In June 2011, the Department ceased making disbursements to Fisker after the company began to fall short of the milestones required in the loan agreement. (Source: Department of Energy, April 2013, http://1.usa.gov/10dWZIE)
There is no evidence to suggest that Fisker Automotive’s loan was a political handout. Fisker was approached by the Bush administration about a potential loan in 2008. In early 2009, Fisker underwent a nine month-long review by DOE and several independent consulting firms to assess all aspects of Fisker’s business plan, technology, and finances. In 2009 – nearly 4 years ago – their business was deemed sound. (Source: House Oversight Committee, April 2013, http://1.usa.gov/10dWgY6)
The Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program have many success stories. For example, as the American automobile industry fought to recover from the brink of collapse in 2008, DOE provided a $5.9 billion loan to Ford Motor Company to upgrade and modernize thirteen factories across six states. (Source: Department of Energy, April 2013, http://1.usa.gov/10dWZIE)
Another success story: In early March, 2013, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla will pay off their $465 million federal loan in five years, rather than the 10 years specified in the loan. The company made its first payment of nearly $13 million in December 2012 and hopes to pay off the loan by 2017 – 5 years ahead of the 2022 deadline. (Source: Associated Press, February 2013, http://bit.ly/WpP4b1)
Loan guarantees have a long history in the United States, and have been used to support many of America’s critical industries, including housing, transportation and agriculture. (Source: DBL Investors, September 2011, http://bit.ly/uV14lf)
The Loan Guarantee Program is not part of the Obama stimulus. The LGP was created in 2005 with bipartisan support under the George W. Bush administration and designed to provide government support for “innovative technologies.” (Source: CNNMoney, J
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I forgot to add: in light of all these actual facts...would you care to retract your ignorant bullshit statement sir?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
LOL. It's remarkable how minimal expectations are for government work and "investment". A few years in and there was already a 3% default rate on the loans.
And they're comparing this to a "successful VC strategy"? VC don't guarantee a half billion in loans to businesses that will clearly go bankrupt. They start small.
Nor do VC guarantee loans for crap, over-priced projects. For example, several of these projects are run by career public works businesses like Abengoa SA. They specialize in turning public funds into green elephants. I notice also that the price on these projects tends to hang around $4-8 per watt of generating power. That's not good enough to be competitive.
My view is that in twenty years not a single one of these projects will be relevant to the renewable energy technologies of that future. They'll be a historical footnote about the US blowing a bunch of money on projects that didn't go anywhere and completely ignored by the people who think this approach works.
In fact the boost to the economy for the ones that do succeed probably far outweigh any losses in the programs.
What boost? Perhaps we could discuss some of these examples and see if they really live up to your claims.
You really dont understand plain English do you.
Private sector: 70% failure is acceptable and usually still yields a profit.
DOE: 11% is the goal. They achieved only 3%.
Again: Solyndra and the couple of others that failed represent only 3% of all funds the DOE loaned out.
Minor footnote? This is one of the most successful loan programs the government has ever run.
The few that failed did so because of the Chinese flooding the market with cheap panels they couldn't compete with.
Meanwhile they've had more than 19 others that are unequivocal successes, right now, today, including Tesla Motors the most famous example.
Your view is as ignorant as you are.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Rich campaign donors who bought this. Is that even a serious question?
Do you have ESP?
You could argue that. You could also argue global warming is a conspiracy. You could argue Obama was abducted in 2010 and the person we think is obama is actually an alien. You could even find people who would believe you too. But you would be wrong.
US solar is about to its peak economically because costs are different in China. The quality is different and the availability of resources are different. It really is that simple.
What magically caused the oceans to all the sudden be so important other than excusing a gap in warming?
I mean why were they ignored previosly and cannot be ignored now? Its a bit like comparing apples to cars when the goal posts are changed to keep this warming notion alive.
> in Southern states where peak demand is during daylight hours.
Specifically, 11AM-2PM. Human eyes see brightness log(n), so we don't realize that the sunshine is a hundred times brighter at some times than at others. It would suck if noon appeared to be a hundred times as bright as morning, so our eyes compress the difference. Solar panels DO notice that, and don't produce much at all during what we call daylight 7AM-10AM and 3PM-8PM. Same with cloudy days. What looks to be a little bit less bright is actually FAR less energy.
So what you end up with is "southern states, for a few hours per day while everyone is at work, on sunny days". Peak usage in most cases when people get home from work, turn on the TV and start cooking dinner. At that time, there's no solar available. Also in the morning when everyone is rushing around blow-drying their hair, microwaving breakfast, etc. Solar is AWESOME in theory, at first glance. Beyond that first glance, looking at the details, it starts to look like we've wasted a few billion dollars that could have saved about 200 million hungry people.
Minimal? They set a goal of no more than 10/11% failure. That's already higher than private sector by 3:1.
First, failure means merely that the business didn't go bankrupt and default on the loan. It doesn't even mean that the business ever does anything productive with debt that's being backed. Meanwhile, a VC's failure is a business that fails to generate a sustainable profit. Do you really think that not defaulting on a loan is the same as successfully taking a business from nothing to long term profitable?
It's ridiculous to compare these loan guarantees to business creation. The expectations are vastly lower.
What part of "the government's loan strategy is OUTPERFORMING the public sector in its ROI" dont you get?
LOL. The public sector doesn't do ROI.
The public sector accepts 70% failure as a cost of doing business.
VC's accept a 70% failure rate because the successes more than pay for the failures. The government program doesn't have that going for it. It's a substantial and hidden loss of wealth that generates a bunch of one-off renewable energy projects that are vastly oversized for the purpose of prototyping new technologies.
The DOE only has a 3% failure rate.
Over a period of about two to three years. And these are the worst sorts of failures - default on the majority of the loan. They are deliberately hiding the other sorts of failures, such as building something that has negative ROI.
Anyone who can claim that this loan guarantee program has a 3% failure rate has no clue what failure means.
DOE: 11% is the goal. They achieved only 3%.
Please be an idiot somewhere else. It doesn't even remotely make sense to compare private sector failure rates for attempts to create profitable businesses from scratch to loan defaults on government loan guarantees.
For example, the US government could have indefinitely extended loan guarantees to Solyndra which would have kept the business from defaulting ever, but only by creating a perpetual money sink. The failure rate on that scheme would by your reckoning be 0% (making it an "unequivocal success" to use your term for it) even though substantial wealth of the public is being destroyed.
No matter who wins, WE all lose...
One mistake! ONE MISTAKE! AUUUGH! ONE MISTAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!!11111ELEVENTY!!!
So you're OKAY with coal plants just chucking tons of radioactive crap into the air ON A DAILY BASIS. Stuff that's going to KEEP on being radioactive in the environment for thousands of years.
But because there's some infinitesimally off chance that in a planet-shattering catastrophe, a little bit of material that'll decay in a few years gets into the environment that we just SHOULD NEVER?
So, you live in a cave right? These huts and house things are just frickin' unproven technology and they'll never catch on. Right?
And we should just revert to a hunter-gatherer society because this centralized food production thing just is SO iffy!
And cars, planes and trains man! We need to WALK everywhere! Better exercise! We could crash in one! We could crash someplace and spill a bit of gas/oil/etc on the ground and have NO WAY to EVER clean it up!
Sorry, but the whole "Just one mistake" crowd needs to grow the hell up and stop expecting to be coddled. The argument is a childish cop-out that forswears any and all progress in the falacious pursuit of "perfect safety". Dude, you're living on a ball of rock, water and gas with in a 10 minute travel time of a giant fusion reactor. Get your perspective here.
And we're talking about a molten salt reactor. NOT a typical solid fuel reactor. With cooling, there IS no mistake to be made. It's a 100% PASSIVE system, The plug in the reactor melts if the system gets too hot. Gravity then takes over and dumps the molten salt into a dump tank to cool off.
Or are you saying that gravity and precise temperature control of a plug so that it does NOT melt are suddenly going to stop being constants.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Rich crony capitalists earned vast amounts of money, a little part of which they donated to certain political interests. How can you not have noticed the boost in that?
People like Nancy Pelosi don't get rich on their own, ya know.
Frankly, I wish more of them had failed. The ones that haven't failed are still sucking on the government teat.
Tesla Motors, for example, collects $10,000 from the government for each Luxury Sports Car they sell.
Guess what? A lot of that stuff CAN be used as seed fuel for next-gen reactors. So drop it in, cook it down, and let's get rid of it!
We wouldn't have this problem had the US government NOT played favorites and handed virtual monopolies to companies in the solid nuclear fuel arena.
This is also why we have regulations against doing something INTELLIGENT with spent fuel (like reprocessing). Well, it's not that you CAN'T. But the regulations penalize you so badly that the cost of doing so isn't worth the returns. Not because it's technically unfeasible or even hard to do.
This is why companies like GE don't BUILD new nuclear reactors. They just sit on top of fat, compulsory contracts with nuclear power providers to supply fuel for their reactors. And these power providers can't negotiate price. Why? Because they simply can't put another provider's fuel into their reactor. It doesn't work like that. And pretty much EVERY fuel provider locks their customers in this way.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Go back to Democratic Underground. Your talking points are stale.
Fucking Martinet.
Okay I missed this bit of "Did Not Read The Fine Manual" on the first pass.
The fact that every design which produces any substantive amount of power will always require active cooling.
Sorry, but you're pretty much WRONG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Look at the entry "Fail Safe Core".
The only part that needs to be "actively cooled" is the plug to the dump tank. Usually by a small fan.
And even if that pipe to the dump tank somehow breaks, the fuel and coolant (which are in solution together), simply spills into the bottom of the reactor vessel, which has a drain that dumps into the dump tank.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
US solar was IMHO hampered from being commercialized by being a political whipping boy so the US paid for the R&D and China got to make a profit from it. Best in the world doesn't matter if a bank is not going to lend you money to build a process line due to scaremongering.
When Obama first proposed Obamacare, he didn't jump in with specifics; he just laid out some high level guidelines and let the Democratically controlled Congress hash out the details. This was politically costly, because in the absence of specifics all kinds of claims were made about what was allegedly in the program, like "death panels". The house ended up passing something that looked like the plan Heritage Foundation put together for Bob Dole in the 90s. This was essentially the least they could do that met Obama's specifications for health care reform, and the long period over which it was impossible to defend because it had no concrete form cost Democrats control of the House.
This plan looks an awful lot like that. Broad goals, but implementation details kicked down the road and downstairs (in this case to the states). The one specific detail that's being talked about is a 30% reduction in emissions from coal in 26 years -- and even that's not very specific. The total CO2 emissions associated with mining, transporting and burning coal is at present about twice that of natural gas. It's possible that coal will be mined at even a higher rate than today if the industry develops more efficient ways to use it. Twenty-six years is a long time in technology.
In any case it's kind of a no-brainer that you can't allow coal emissions to grow in proportion to how the country's economy will grow in 30 years; not if you want to reduce pollution. It's the dirtiest fuel we use across the board, not just in terms of CO2.
But however you slice it, this is a very abstract plan that won't be translated into any kind of concrete action until long after Obama is out of office, if ever. The only thing that's close to certain is that it'll create a lot of political turmoil.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What facts? That the program has lost money, and it was planned to lose money? Is that the "ignorant bullshit" you think is worthy of retraction?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Let's take the example of Tesla Motors, mentioned above. The received $465 million in government guaranteed loans which they've since paid off. In January of 2014 they employed about 6,000 people (up from nearly 3,000 in December 2012), most of them well paid. They're also have supply chains for the parts they don't make in-house. They had over $2 billion in revenue in 2013. That's a nice chunk of economic activity they're driving. I'd say that's a pretty good return on investment.
They are deliberately hiding the other sorts of failures, such as building something that has negative ROI.
Perhaps you could provide us some concrete examples of some projects that have a negative ROI but aren't contributing to the failure rate of the program. If they're as common as you say they are that can't be too hard.
How much nuclear waste from coal is acceptable?
How much environmental damage from Wind, natural gas, oil and Hydro is acceptable?
Hmm?
The problem all the anti-nukers have is they keep looking at nuclear power in a vacuum.
There is NO SUCH THING as 100% safe. Not with ANY power source. And continuing to insist that one of these conform to zero tolerance and not the rest? Well, it carries the distinct effervescent scent of bovine feces.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In short, you engineer it to be as safe as possible.
And, with LFTR, that's pretty damn safe, since you don't normally have to worry about gravity reversing itself or a supercooled plug NOT eventually melting once the cooling on it shuts down.
Also, with LFTR, you're working with NO WATER and no high pressure gasses in the containment vessel. So blowing it apart pretty much JUST CANNOT HAPPEN.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Enigma
They weren't ignored previously. I've known the oceans were important for over 20 years. I can't imagine that climate scientists weren't aware of it since at least the 1950's. Since they started deploying the Argo floats in the early 2000's the amount of data we have on the oceans has gone up by orders of magnitude. They show that the ocean continues to warm. The emphasis started out on surface temperatures because that's where we live and so it's important to us. But anyone who studied weather or climate would know that there are large energy exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean. It's really kind of obvious.
When you flagrantly cherry pick your data, you can make it prove almost anything you want it to.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way.
We've had weather prediction down well enough for the last century or so to be able to handle that kind of lead time. The bigger problem is the cost of maintaining a coal plant for such infrequent use.
Isn't it obvious that in the near-term, fracking wins?
Let us hope that the methane it leaks doesn't do more damage than the carbon emissions it saves.
The plant actually SURVIVED a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
No, it was damaged by the earthquake and that damage was a major contributory factor to the subsequent meltdowns. Here are two NHK documentaries about what happened. They are 45 minutes each but well worth watching if you want to know what the current understanding of the disaster is:
http://youtu.be/vpA0TOgB9-o
http://youtu.be/ayW4mC1o8CQ
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Lol.. i know they have been part of the models. That is beside the point. They are part of the so called warming but when the warming seems to have stoped for a decade or two, all the sudden it is being trotted out separately as if it refutes yhat lack of warming.
So i reitrrate, what all the sudden makes the oceans so magical other than a lack of warming?
Lol.. thats fine and all. But assuming that is ttue, the oceac temps have historically been recorded as part of the warming. However, all the sudden when warming appears to have stopped or paused for a dihnificant amount of time, ocean temps are ttotted out as if there are magical qualities no one ever knew and it lays waste to the observations of lack of warming.
Hmm, I just thought of a better rebuttal to your statement, actually.
The people proposing that we continue depleting the environment are the ones proposing sweeping changes, for the viability of life on this planet. Or, you know, so says science. Ignore it at your peril — the peril of looking like a dbag.
Fucking A slashdot, how will this comment improve by making me wait to submit it? I have figured out what is wrong with slashdot, the people running it are incapable of more than one act of insight per two minutes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Remarks to which "khallow" was responding:
So the US has been using similar failed approaches for half a century? I'm supposed to be impressed by this why?
In fact the boost to the economy for the ones that do succeed probably far outweigh any losses in the programs.
What boost? Perhaps we could discuss some of these examples and see if they really live up to your claims.
The loss rate for venture capital is 33-50%. Typical loss rate for "safe" conventional commercial investment strategies are 15% for leveraged buy-outs, and 13% for growth equity. A 10-15% loss rate for government is similar, or better than, commercial investment strategies. The stated 10-11% target indicates a very conservative approach, and an actual 5% loss rate is exceptionally conservative.
But is, as it seems, your operating principle is "what ever the government does is bad (perhaps outright evil)" then none of this will matter to you.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Please provide concrete evidence, you know, actual facts with numbers, that are checkable (citations optional if Googling will bring them up) to support your arguments as others repeatedly requested instead of continually "arguing from your personal hatred of government" which, in your mind, excuses you from having to support your case.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The facts that dywolf linked to showing that the overall program made money, not even counting the revenue the government will continue to collect in taxes from the economical activity generated.
You haven't shown that it lost any money.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The loss rate for venture capital is 33-50%. Typical loss rate for "safe" conventional commercial investment strategies are 15% for leveraged buy-outs, and 13% for growth equity. A 10-15% loss rate for government is similar, or better than, commercial investment strategies. The stated 10-11% target indicates a very conservative approach, and an actual 5% loss rate is exceptionally conservative.
You are comparing pigeons and bowling balls. Government isn't investing here. It's giving a bunch of money indirectly via loan guarantees to cronies to squander. It's just another siphon for sinking public funds in useless projects and activities.
Here's the scam as I see it. The business sets up a shell company which receives the loan and the loan guarantee. The project gets built with the shell company contracting the original business for all services and construction. Then when the loan money runs out, the shell company declares bankruptcy (or the loss gets hidden with another infusion of public funds) and the original business walks away with a significant profit from all that contract work even after losing the modest initial stake they had to put in for the appearance of propriety. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The 3% of loan amounts that immediately went south are merely an indication of the complete lack of due diligence on the part of the feds and the incompetence of some of the pigs at the trough.
Taxpayers in the red - that means losses
Since its creation it's lost $800 million
Energy Department projects $2.9 billion in losses
I can provide many more if you like - because the program hasn't made a dime. It's lost billions (and it was planned to lose even more billions, but the program's not done yet - there's still time to lose more. Dywolf's link showed nothing about a gain. It said losses were less than expected - but still losses. I can't find anything that says the program is making money - it's all losses. And if you want to dig further, read the White House's independent review of the program where it states we're on the hook for 30 years, we have inexperienced people managing it, poor oversight, no planning, no accountability, and no goals.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Let's take the example of Tesla Motors, mentioned above. The received $465 million in government guaranteed loans which they've since paid off. In January of 2014 they employed about 6,000 people (up from nearly 3,000 in December 2012), most of them well paid. They're also have supply chains for the parts they don't make in-house. They had over $2 billion in revenue in 2013. That's a nice chunk of economic activity they're driving. I'd say that's a pretty good return on investment.
And the government(s) could have just done nothing at all with similar results.
Perhaps you could provide us some concrete examples of some projects that have a negative ROI but aren't contributing to the failure rate of the program.
Anything with a cost over $4 per watt. They could have instead done nothing and let the businesses figure out on their own how to provide solar thermal and other renewable power systems for far less than that amount.
The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Stormv's argument was flawed, but it was unnecessary also. Coal has never been able to do load following, so other technologies were always required. Mothballed coal plants CAN be used as spare capacity when other generators are taken for maintenance or due to accident, with the same argument - they aren't operating all the time. This still reduces infrastructure, and thus overall, cost since otherwise spare (but unused) capacity must be built.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Follow me around and mod me down, so that you can't use up your mod points on someone who doesn't have an inexhaustible fount of karma. (They used to be called a clue.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Please provide concrete evidence, you know, actual facts with numbers
My previous post is more than adequate. Let me repeat myself in case you just didn't read it:
For example, the US government could have indefinitely extended loan guarantees to Solyndra which would have kept the business from defaulting ever, but only by creating a perpetual money sink. The failure rate on that scheme would by your reckoning be 0% (making it an "unequivocal success" to use your term for it) even though substantial wealth of the public is being destroyed.
Now that I satisfied your question, will you address the problem I describe?
The thing about opinions is that they are what you think about something real. When oil was climbing through the roof under Bush to the point of an eventual economic collapse, banks weren't needed. Plenty of investment bankers and venture capitol was available. I agree, that dropped when the economy collapsed and oil magically dropped over night too. This took a lot of the investment money away but it wasn't because no one could make a sound business plan, it was because no business plan could show a profit in the US. That is largely why no banks would loan money- because they couldn't get a return on it or the loan returned.
Now, a few years before the collapse, banks would have been inclined to write the loans and then immediately package it into a default swap and let someone else worry about it. But after the collapse, that was one of the largest claimed reasons for the economic collapse so it wasn't going to happen while congress was bitching.
As an aside, I'm not surprised that someone so profoundly ignorant of what "investment" means, would link to a gratuitously ignorant site like governmentisgood.com.
But... Kos says there's death panels for Black people! Death Panels actually do exist... if you're Black....
Shielded by its own coolant. And its visible and detectable. It makes you wonder why sodium was ever considered? Certainly, they must have tossed the two up in the air, and sodium was chosen despite its evilness. Do you know why?
You are still posting the same ignorant crap.
The fact its only 3% doesnt mean they didnt do any due diligence.
That fact its only 3% is PROOF THEY DID.
You are one stupid sack of crap.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No, my link was to the DOE's own analysis of ALL their loans as presented to the Congress in an official hearing.
The only reason you can't find anything is because you didnt bother to read a single source document that I provided.
You're stupidity is almost as bad khallow's.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
IT HASNT LOST MONEY.
That's the entire fucking point.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
There's a reason facts become talking points. Being a talking point in no way reduces their legitimacy. Your words are the response of one who has neither a legitimate counter argument, nor counter facts with which to argue his position. In short, youre no better than the trolls khallow and lynnroosterwhatever, and just as ignorant.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No, we didnt survive. Because that last time it was this hot we didnt exist.
It has never been hotter on earth during the existence of humans or polar bears.
The "medieval warm period" was colder than today, and it only affected northern europe whereas global warming is.....global.
No, it is not cooling.
No, the models do NOT fail to predict the current trends. In fact, the models accurately recreate all conditions seen from 1900 to present.
Again: you are wrong, and full of crap.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
And now sumdumass is joining the troll game.
A refresher for your ignorance:
They weren't ignored. The scientists just didnt realize just how much they would be affected.
When running climate models, about 10 years ago they noticed the models at the time were diverging from observed conditions. Essentially, the models were predicting higher temperatures than what we were seeing. We know how much energy was going into the system, but for some reason we werent observing the energy in the real world. It was missing.
Turns out, they underestimated how much of that energy the oceans would absorb.
They noticed that while air temperatures increased at a lesser rate than expected, oceans were warming more than expected.
Thus, they realized more of the heat was going into the oceans.
The models have since been adjusted, and once again the predictions and the actual observational data once again tracking together.
Predict, observe, adjust.
No magic required.
Just science.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
nothing magical.
they simply underestimated how much heat the oceans would absorb.
turns out right now about 80% of the energy is going into the oceans.
the models previous to the correct anticpated a fair less than that.
this turns out to be a big deal because with the ocean warming so much faster than expected, certain other processes will also speed up. there's also the bit about oxygen content (warmer water holds less O2....bad thing for fish), and changing currents.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The difference is that water vapor tends not to stay in the atmosphere very long and the amount is relatively constant due to precipitation. CO2, on the other hand, tends to accumulate in the atmosphere. The oceans absorb much of it but there's only so much that can be absorbed and the oceans are acidifying due to this. Water vapor also tends to form these white things called clouds which reflect a lot of sunlight back in to space.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
My, how the ignorant pretend to be smart. The amount of heat the oceans absorb is already included in the surface air recording as it is all part of the process. You say 80%, fine, so 100 degrees air temp already includes 80 degrees of energy going into the oceans. If there is no warming, in air temp, there is no warming in the oceans right? If there is a warming in the oceans, there will be a warming in the air temp. Like you said, they are interconnected..
So what is so magical about oceans that they are so important now. Of course they changed the models because as a lot of people have been complaining about, they weren't accurate. That's models, not observations. But when someone says the warming stopped for the last couple decades and someone replies with only if you don't count the oceans- what is so fucking magical now outside of explaining the lul in warming. In real world measurements, how can the warming of the oceans (which we do not have accurate records of) disprove the lack of warming in the atmosphere.
Did the oceans change how much heat it absorbs? If not, the recorded temps would be the same so if it stopped showing an increase, the oceans have the same effects as when it did show an increase. Or in other words, 100 degrees average temp would be 100 degree average temp in 1920, 1469, 2000, and 2010 or even 2014. So what makes them so important now that they can disprove a lul in the temps increasing?
Look I realize you are a clueless idiot. So this reply isn't for you. It's for everyone else who looks at this thread and thinks, well isn't 3% better than 70%?
First, there's what should be the nail in this coffin. People like dywolf define as a success, nay an unequivocal success, a business that just happens not to go bankrupt in five years after receiving one of these very ample loan guarantees (this part, "section 1705" started in 2009 due to passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in that year). It's "one of the most successful loan programs the government has ever run" to use dywolf's words.
Imagine if a sports team defined as an "unequivocal success" and "one of the most successful seasons we've ever had" merely because 97% of their team showed up for preseason practice with maybe one or two games actually played by the point they start to brag. And as long as 89% of the team sticks around through the end of the season, whether or not they ever win any games, then they'll meet expectations too.
The expectations are absurdly low.
Second, he conflates different loan guarantee programs. Solyndra and Tesla weren't in the same program and Tesla's loan wasn't a loan guarantee, but rather a low interest loan. This point is a bit pedantic, but I just want to point out yet another symptom of dywolf's ignorance in this matter.
Third, the cited, biggest success of this "program", Tesla is massively subsidized by both the federal government and the state of California. I believe the subsidies are large enough to make the difference between a successful company and also-ran.
There was an earlier discussion of a major "bond manager" of Tesla stating that the company should drop auto manufacture altogether and go full bore into car batteries. At the time, it didn't make sense why someone would suggest that. That now strikes me as further evidence that Tesla doesn't actually make cars that would be profitable on their own.
I don't think Tesla is unusual in being heavily subsidized, but rather that is a typical feature of the businesses which picked up these sorts of loans.
Moving on, dywolf and several others have conflated the loan guarantee program with a variety of risky business activities such as venture capital, leveraged buyouts, or growth equity, spinning some bullshit about how "conservative" the investments were (from the link "an actual 5% loss rate is exceptionally conservative").
Note what they don't compare this program to - actual private lending. An actual 3% loss over five years is bad. While those levels were being hit by banks during the real estate crisis and subsequent recession, that resulted in banks collapsing, not bankers high-fiving each other over the unequivocal success of their lending programs.
Why should we consider VC-level risk appropriate for what should be mundane industrial project lending? Venture capitalists have more or less the same universal strategy. They put small amounts of money (and often technical or business expertise lacking by the founders of the startup) into a startup. The startup proves itself by meeting whatever goals have been set. Then those that survive to that point may get funded further by the VC or by other investors. Every such investment is graduated. They don't dump half a billion dollars in and hope the business works out.
This strategy of dumping huge sums in and building huge projects is completely alien to how the private world does investments in new, untried things.
Then there's my fifth point, there's absolutely
All their loans - in which they lost less money than the projected?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You have only yourself to blame for not knowing the oceans are an important part of the equation. It was something that was talked about in the IPCC's first report back in 1990 when they estimated the amount of sea level rise over the past century due to thermal expansion to 2-6 cm. But the data from the Argo floats has helped us quantify it much better since the early 2000's so it's easier to make quantified statements about it now.
Actually modern coal burning plants can do load following. For example, your 4 hours to reach full power from a warm start is an example.
Perhaps it was the drunk posting from a phone or maybe you are trying to skirt the issue and hoping it somehow is hidden well enough not to impinge on global warming or something, but I'm not sure you even understand the question.
No one said the oceans weren't an important part of the equation. Someone said the warming stopped and the reply was only if you don't count the oceans. Now, the ocean's effect, whether included in models or not, were by default included in temperature readings. So when temp readings show no extra warming in a couple decades, all the sudden the oceans are being trotted out to dismiss it. So what has changed to make the oceans all the sudden magically special insomuch that they cancel the lack of warming?
In other words, unless something significant has happened concerning the oceans, any deviation in its importance or understanding will only affect modeling and not real world temperature readings. The temp taken today will have the same legitimacy as the temp taken in 1620, 1980, 2000, 2014, or 2025- unless someone can explain how the oceans all the sudden matter outside of the norm when no warming has been observed. Otherwise, the oceans cannot be used to explain a period of no or little warming.
The oceans have continued to absorb heat energy and the Argo floats show they haven't slowed down. Since the oceans absorb over 90% of the energy imbalance to begin with it doesn't take much change in how much it absorbs to affect the atmosphere and surface temperatures. In the ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation) cycle the oceans release heat during the El Nino part of the cycle and absorb more heat during the La Nina phase. La Ninas have dominated over the past decade. There are other factors that affect surface too such as the increase in aerosols from industrialization in China and the lowest activity solar cycle in a century. Another thing that affects the surface temperature record is the fact that we don't have a lot of good data from the high Arctic where the warning has been greater than at the mid and tropical latitudes. Despite those things the evidence shows that the energy imbalance continues and the the geophysical system continues to retain more heat energy.
Thats all fine and all but it still doesn't explain why all the sudden the oceans need special consideration when temp measurements show a lapse in warming. These natural mechanisms were in place long before the lapse in warming and contributed to the record with the claimed warming. Ironically, you just made yhe case that the warming has been somewhat attributed to natural circumstances that seem to be absent now which i do not think was your point.
So either the watming is influenced by thrse nstural cycles also or something just happened. All anyone has done so far is explain why the models needed changed but not why the oceans all tje sudden invalidate a lapse in warming. Unless you are saying all that natural cyclical activity just started and never influenced temp records before the lapse in cooling. I don't think that is right either.
Including the oceans there is only no real lapse in warming, just a slightly different and temporary distribution of the heat energy. Climate models are coupled to the oceans but we don't have the computer horsepower necessary to fully model the oceans in the climate models, only the surface interaction between the atmosphere and oceans. So what happens deeper than the top layer of the ocean gets parameterized in the models.
The natural climate forcings are always operational but the forcing due to human emitted greenhouse gases are enough to override the natural forcings on longer time scales (3 decades or more). Lately natural forcings have been more negative than positive side.
La Nina conditions have dominated in the past decade. During a La Nina the trade winds are somewhat stronger which piles up water in the Western Pacific (around the Philippines sea level was up 8 or 10 inches because of that). When the water piles up like that it starts driving warmer water down into the deeper ocean. When an El Nino develops as expected this year the water sloshes back to the Eastern Pacific off the coast of South America and some of that stored heat is released. Right now the waters off Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are some 2.5-4 degrees C above normal. If a strong El Nino develops this year I expect new record high temperatures will be set.
I don't think you understand the problem. All of what you have said has happened in the past. The inverse has also happened causing it to appear warmer also. All that is natural and built in so when temp readings from 30 years ago are brought up, it would be incorect to claim they are inflated and too warm because of the oceans. Now that there is a lul in the warming, it it just as incorect to cite the natural phenom for yhe temp readings.
It either countd then as it does now or it is changing yhe goal posts mid stream. Interedtingly, if hou are to say natural cycles cause the warming to stop, then natural cycles can be behind the majority of reported warming just the same. As several post now solidify, none of this happening with the ocean is new, its just being used by some to excuse yhe failings in models.
They don't need special consideration - honest people honestly talking about the world's climate understand that they have always affected the global temperature, it's only when muppets chime in with their usual "X years of no warming!" nonsense that people need to be specifically reminded about the oceans' role in all this.
You could just - and this is going to sound really strange - study this before showing everyone you can't be bothered and trying to single-handedly take down an entire field of science simply because you find the outcomes of it problematic to your way of life...
note, this is not a troll post.
stop abusing mod points.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Two guys decide to see who is a better driver, one of them or a current record holder. They get the same car and decide to race down the same road. The current record holder made the trip in 10 minutes. The first guy tries and gets a close 10.5 minutes. The second guy tries and gets 9.75 minutes. The first guy complains he was driving into the wind and the second guy was driving with the wind. They look it up and there was wind going both directions when the previous record was set. Now, who was fastest? The second guy of course. The fact there was or was not any wind or which direction it was blowing doesn't change the times reported for the run.
Now, does the temp record adjust for every decadal oscillation event, does it adjust for every single day of low solar activity? Of course it does bevause it is built into the temp as it is taken. But for some reason, it needs to be held separate as an excuse for a lack of warming when it is not held separate to explain the warming. Further, it would be almost impossible to separate it from historic records.
So it is comparing apples to tractors or something because it isn't the same measurment if what was previously influencing the warming is separated and used as a cause for the cooling when nothing changed. All of the reasons are natural and have implications going either way. All the blaming the lack of warming on oceans does is point to cyclical natural events for the differences in temps. That is not what the science is saying though.
The energy program that the Solyndra loans were a part of has not only NOT lost money, it's turned a profit with the overwhelming majority of participating companies repaying their loans
Solyndra had loan guarantees from the US Department of Energy. Those guarantees inherently do not generate profit. The loan is taken from a private lender who reaps the profit of the loan. And when someone defaults on the loan as Solyndra did, that loss is applied straight to the federal government.