2250-MW Navajo coal-fired plant shut down, under demolition

[winnie]

The atmosphere exchange in CO2 is about 750 Gigatons per year. Man-made emissions are about 36 Gigatons per year. Yeah, 5% is not exactly a game changer, and over the last 20 years or so there has been a huge "greening up" of the biosphere. NASA article here. Keep in mind that no one really knows what the true bioexchange rate is. Keep in mind also that the oceans contain another 55,000 Gigatons of CO2.

As I understand it, the background CO2 sequestration is about 1% of the net exchange, and human emissions are about 4% of the exchange, in line with your 5% number. Net result is that atmospheric CO2 is going up a bit every year rather than going down a bit every year.

The problem is, the electrons don't care if the load they serve is dispatchable or not. How do you tell "wind" electrons to go to the dispatchable load? Do you intend to construct an entire parallel grid?

No, everything uses the same grid, but dispatchable loads get _turned off_ to balance loss of renewable generation. You don't need constant loading, you need loading that matches generation. Not trivial, but not impossible.

I can't find anywhere in the LCOE calculations that they accounted for the different life spans of the capital assets. And you can't ignore storage costs. Run the exercise in my post #10.

I saw that the LCOE analysis linked in the Forbes article included the expected lifetime of the generation assets. If you want dispatchable energy, it did _not_ include energy storage costs. IMHO electricity from wind at $36 per MWh is worth less than electricity from a dispatchable source; I like being able to turn the lights on when I want light. Not going to run the calculation in post #10; I've run similar in the past and agree with the basic point: energy storage is expensive.

-Jon

 

[gadfly56]

That comparison has little bearing on the fact of anthropogenic global warming due to CO2 production. This system was in equilibrium, and a small perturbation to one of the inputs can easily change the equilibrium point.

Cheers, Wayne

If you make a graph of anthropogenic emissions, you will see a nearly monotonic increase from the late 1800's or so until now. If you likewise graph global average temperature, you will find that all the time that CO2 was going only upward, temperature was rising, falling, and staying the same. CO2 can't be the control knob, by simple inspection. Take the interval from 1910 to 1940 versus 1975 to 2000. Most claims are that after 1950 man-made emissions ruled the roost, yet both intervals show similar increases. With a decrease between them. What would be your explanation?

 

[wwhitney]

If you make a graph of anthropogenic emissions, you will see a nearly monotonic increase from the late 1800's or so until now. If you likewise graph global average temperature, you will find that all the time that CO2 was going only upward, temperature was rising, falling, and staying the same. CO2 can't be the control knob, by simple inspection.

Simply false.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[gadfly56]

No, everything uses the same grid, but dispatchable loads get _turned off_ to balance loss of renewable generation. You don't need constant loading, you need loading that matches generation. Not trivial, but not impossible.

OK, I can see that. Now, what do you consider "dispatchable" and do we have any idea what percentage of the total load that is? Realizing that types of loads can vary from morning to afternoon to night.

 

[gadfly56]

Simply false.

Cheers, Wayne

Wow, you just make this too easy.

I await your reply with some interest.

 

[wwhitney]

[On your last graph, is that annual emissions, or emissions to date? The latter would be more appropriate. Actually atmospheric CO2 concentration would be best.]

Let me expand on my last post. Of course global temperature is going to be a noisy signal. And the effect of anthropogenic emissions is going to increase over time, as the emissions accumulate. So initially the noise may overwhelm the effect of anthropogenic emissions. But in more recent history, the effect is large enough to discern over the noise.

And your graphs show a clear correlation between emissions and rolling average of global temperature (to smooth out the noise). I fail to understand how that does not immediately jump out at you, you've basically proven my point.

Of course, all it really show are two increasing functions. So they could both be increasing in time for entirely different reasons. But given the prima facia plausible physics model that tells us to expect rising temperature with rising CO2 concentration, as well as a dozen other sources of data I'm not familiar with as I'm not an expert on this subject, the data confirms anthropogenic global warming.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[gadfly56]

As I understand it, the background CO2 sequestration is about 1% of the net exchange, and human emissions are about 4% of the exchange, in line with your 5% number. Net result is that atmospheric CO2 is going up a bit every year rather than going down a bit every year.

From what I've seen, the annual ppmv increase represents about 50% of the anthropogenic emissions, with the other 50% getting sequestered. This is on a mass basis.

 

[winnie]

It is clear _historically_ that CO2 trailed some other factor that caused climate change. It is absolutely true that there are multiple knobs twiddling the system.

I think that it is extremely likely that CO2 is part of a feedback loop, where non-CO2 triggers can cause an increase in CO2 which then causes an increase in temperature until additional factors come into play. Look at climate history and you can see these events. The fact that there are multiple climate knobs and that natural factors mean changes to a bunch of these knobs.

This doesn't change the fact that humans are directly tweaking one of the climate feedback loops, I believe to the detriment of a human desirable climate.

No, humans won't destroy the climate. We could double atmospheric CO2 and that would not destroy life on Earth. But we could change the climate from one that we like to one that we like much less. More likely we will change the climate such that which places are most desirable will change. Anyone want to buy farmland in Siberia?

-Jon

 

[gadfly56]

[On your last graph, is that annual emissions, or emissions to date? The latter would be more appropriate. Actually atmospheric CO2 concentration would be best.]

Let me expand on my last post. Of course global temperature is going to be a noisy signal. And the effect of anthropogenic emissions is going to increase over time, as the emissions accumulate. So initially the noise may overwhelm the effect of anthropogenic emissions. But in more recent history, the effect is large enough to discern over the noise.

And your graphs show a clear correlation between emissions and rolling average of global temperature (to smooth out the noise). I fail to understand how that does not immediately jump out at you, you've basically proven my point.

Of course, all it really show are two increasing functions. So they could both be increasing in time for entirely different reasons. But given the prima facia plausible physics model that tells us to expect rising temperature with rising CO2 concentration, as well as a dozen other sources of data I'm not familiar with as I'm not an expert on this subject, the data confirms anthropogenic global warming.

Cheers, Wayne

The second graph is annual emissions.

If you want cumulative, see here. I wasn't able to paste the table in this post. However, it shows the same general shape.

For ppmv, there is the famous Keeling curve, but it goes back to only about 1957 or so.

The point is, if CO2 is so overwhelming, you shouldn't see any periods of decreasing or flat temperature, but you do. That's like expecting that as you increase the current in a wire, all other things being equal, its temperature might go up, down, or be flat within a overall upward trend. That doesn't happen, or you couldn't make hot-wire anemometers work. And again, I gave you examples of two periods showing similar temperature trends, one supposedly before anthropogenic CO2 was controlling and one after. If you can't explain why that is, you don't have a good case for your proposition.

 

[wwhitney]

The point is, if CO2 is so overwhelming, you shouldn't see any periods of decreasing or flat temperature, but you do.

OK, so it's not so overwhelming. On a short term basis the magnitude of the effect may not exceed the magnitude of the noise. So what? Over time, the noise will average to zero, while the signal will accumulate. Which is what the temperature graph shows.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[gadfly56]

It is clear _historically_ that CO2 trailed some other factor that caused climate change. It is absolutely true that there are multiple knobs twiddling the system.

I think that it is extremely likely that CO2 is part of a feedback loop, where non-CO2 triggers can cause an increase in CO2 which then causes an increase in temperature until additional factors come into play. Look at climate history and you can see these events. The fact that there are multiple climate knobs and that natural factors mean changes to a bunch of these knobs.

This doesn't change the fact that humans are directly tweaking one of the climate feedback loops, I believe to the detriment of a human desirable climate.

No, humans won't destroy the climate. We could double atmospheric CO2 and that would not destroy life on Earth. But we could change the climate from one that we like to one that we like much less. More likely we will change the climate such that which places are most desirable will change. Anyone want to buy farmland in Siberia?

-Jon

To quote a famous punch line, "What do you mean we, paleface?" About 8,000 years ago, the Sahara was a verdant savannah, teeming with life and stippled by lakes and crossed with rivers. When we were about 5F warmer than we are now. How do you think the folks eking a living in the Sahel would feel about that scenario? Granting, for the sake of argument only, that CO2 is the wundergas, it also acts logarithmically. Doubling the concentration gets you about 1.5C of warming give or take. So, to go up from 410 to 820 at our current rate of about 2.5ppmv per year it would take about 164 years. I submit that this is not an emergency for anyone, and arguably for the good of all. More people die from cold than hot. And even if you get all nervous about it, the warming is predominantly at night and the winter. Summer day temperatures are not going up much at all.

 

[wwhitney]

Doubling the concentration gets you about 1.5C of warming give or take.

There's a lot of uncertainty about the magnitude of the CO2 sensitivity, and you've picked the low end of the expected range, it's more like 1.5C to 4.5C. There's a longer article here that probably has sharper estimates:

Climate sensitivity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cheers, Wayne

 

[Besoeker3]

Navajo coal fired stations...............why is it and other mines closing? Makes no sense.
Based on U.S. coal production in 2019, of about 0.706 billion short tons, the recoverable coal reserves would last about 357 years
The UK has identified hard coal resources of 3 910 million tonnes, although total resources could be as large as 187 billion tonnes.

Drax announces that almost 50 years of coal-fired electricity generation at Drax Power Station are expected to come to an end in March 2021, well ahead of the UK.

Makes no sense.

 

[wwhitney]

On a short term basis the magnitude of the effect may not exceed the magnitude of the noise. So what? Over time, the noise will average to zero, while the signal will accumulate.

To (literally) illustrate my point, I made this graph in a spreadsheet. It's a straight line from -1 to 1, plus a 5-year rolling average of a random sequence between -0.25 and 0.25. Notice how the trend is clearing increasing, yet at times the graph is flat or decreasing for short periods of time. Just like the temperature graph you posted.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[wwhitney]

Navajo coal fired stations...............why is it and other mines closing?

Because coal is the dirtiest and now likely most expensive way to make electricity?

Cheers, Wayne

 

[gadfly56]

OK, so it's not so overwhelming. On a short term basis the magnitude of the effect may not exceed the magnitude of the noise. So what? Over time, the noise will average to zero, while the signal will accumulate. Which is what the temperature graph shows.

Cheers, Wayne

OK, counter hypothesis. The earth is warming naturally as it comes out of the Little Ice Age. All the temperature increase is due to that alone. How could we test that? OK, let's look at the temperature graph. The IPCC says that 1950 is the magic dividing line after which anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was dominant. By inspection, do we see anything resembling an acceleration in temperature after 1950? Doesn't look it to me.

Just for kicks, we can take the temperature graph from above and look for a d²T/dt² which would indicate the temperature curve was getting steeper faster.

Better yet, we can add the slopes of the least square fits for before and after.

Nope, still no signal. In fact, it looks like the post-1950 line is a wee bit flatter than the pre-1950 line, but I wouldn't attach much significance to accelerations that are sub-hundredths of a degree per year. The thing is, there is no current evidence that CO2 is the magic control knob. Maybe something will turn up, but right now we should do exactly nothing about CO2.

 

[gadfly56]

To (literally) illustrate my point, I made this graph in a spreadsheet. It's a straight line from -1 to 1, plus a 5-year rolling average of a random sequence between -0.25 and 0.25. Notice how the trend is clearing increasing, yet at times the graph is flat or decreasing for short periods of time. Just like the temperature graph you posted.

Cheers, Wayne

View attachment 2554713

So, what forcing function did you use? If you just put jitter on top of a straight line, I don't think that tells us much. If CO2 is the magic gas, as it's production goes up, you'd expect the jitter to go down, and we don't see that.

 

[wwhitney]

A few comments on your last post with graphs:

- Why are you using the range of 1900 to 2014 instead of the full data set?
- You've only differentiated once in your graphs.
- I don't know enough about data analysis to analyze such a noisy graph, nor to know if we should expect a trend line.
- I'm pretty sure whatever graphs you come up with, subject matter experts and the IPCC have looked at them. My time to duplicate their work is not infinite.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[bkludecke]

For those of you who have an open mind or will at least consider opinions and facts other than your own, I just finished reading a pretty good book on the subject. "The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein" he wrote it several years ago but his premise seems to have merit.

I'm not much of a tree (or planet) hugger but I do have 10Kw of Solar PV, a 20Kw wind turbine, and a solar thermal water heating system. None of these systems would have been purchased if not for the government imposed incentive programs in place at the time.

 

[wwhitney]

So, what forcing function did you use? If you just put jitter on top of a straight line, I don't think that tells us much.

Yes, I just used a straight line, as I mentioned. I was simply rebutting your comments about reversals. Now you've moved on to more sophisticated objections. For your interest, I remade the graph with the same noise function but overlaid on a parabola with slope 0 at 1900, keeping the values the points (1900, -1) and (2020, 1).

Cheers, Wayne