Veiled by discussion of headline global trends in new renewables capacity investment is the fact that almost all the incremental progress is currently being made in one country: China. …
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While China surges ahead, the rest of the world remains stuck.
This raises a crucial question. What is different about the development of solar and wind resources in China from the rest of the world?
The main answer is that in China, such development is capitalist in only a very limited sense. Certainly, the entities centrally involved in building out new solar and wind farms in China are companies. But almost all are state-owned. Take wind. Nine of the country’s top 10 wind developers are owned by the government, and such state-owned players control in excess of 95 percent of the market.
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Add to this the fact that the banks financing all the new renewables development in China are generally also state-owned and directed, and a stark reality comes into focus. This is essentially central planning in action.
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Why are renewables returns so low? Numerous factors conspire to drive down profits, but one is particularly important: competition. … There is no OPEC-like cartel in renewable electricity.
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The alternative? To face a growing risk of climate catastrophe.
One day soon Chinese people will realise most of their investment savings have been lost by incompetent and corrupt bank managers and government officials, or even worse, that their savings are still in the bank, but have lost all their value. There have already been minor bank runs and collapses, though so far the Chinese government has somehow contained the situation, my guess is by printing more money to rehydrate the failed banks.
China is not a model to copy. At least Professor Brett Christophers admitted renewables are unprofitable, but Chinese government officials directing banks to invest in unprofitable renewables is not helping China’s beleaguered banks to balance their books, and has almost certainly exacerbated the Chinese Communist economic crisis.
Professor Brett Christophers is right that the free market has not produced the climate outcomes he wants, but this is because the free market is driven by demand. People just don’t want expensive unreliable energy. The communist part of our economies, government subsidies for green energy and other boondoggles, is not something to be admired, it is something to be excised, like the political tumor it is.
Let us hope the 2024 election cycle delivers us the politicians we need, to set our societies right.
The basis of physical science is measurement. Measurement is just another word of quantification. Quantification is another word for counting.
In addition to quantification, science entails the qualification of things.
quantify means to find or calculate the quantity or amount of (something).
qualify means to characterize by naming an attribute, basically it means to state any property or characteristic of something. [ reference ]
Taxonomy is a qualitive science – it classifies life forms according to types, characteristics, etc.
The so-called “hard sciences” depend on quantification: measurement and counting. [ reference ]
There is little controversy about the importance of measurement and counting in the enterprise of the sciences, despite the occasional objections from philosophers.
In our modern Mass and Social Media world, numbers are presented to give a sense to “factualness” to ideas. It has been known that numbers have been used to tell lies probably since the beginning of the general use of numbers. “How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff was published in 1954 to explain this phenomenon and became a classic.
Forbes published an interesting piece by Christopher Kim in 2013 “6 Ways Numbers Can Lie To Us”. Kim’s list includes:
1. Small sample size: Drawing conclusions from small samples
2. Using Big Meaningless Numbers: 14,097,321 . . .
3. Correlation, not causation: Numbers stated in such as way as to imply causation, when they only show a correlation
4. Selection bias: using numbers imply that data came from a random sample when in actuality, the sample has been carefully (or carelessly) chosen
5. Visual trickery: Think Global Temperature graphs with a top-to-bottom range of 3 degrees, to make the increase look huge and alarming or this example:
6. Arbitrary cutoffs: “This is another form of selection bias. Setting arbitrary start-and-end points that impact the meaning of data.”
Great list, but certainly not exhaustive.
And the Biggest Omission? Failing to admit that Numbers are Just Numbers. Numbers are not the things they quantify. Sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? Of course, just telling you the number “687” isn’t useful or informative if I don’t also tell you “687 whats” – 687 apples, 687 inches of string — 687 degrees Celsius – 687 touchdowns.
Similarly, telling you “627 then 687!” has the same problem – nonsensical without the “whats” and “whens”.
And the #2 Biggest Omission? Failing to make a clear statement of exactly what was counted/measured and exactly how the counting/measurement was done. (this could and often does extend to exactly whens.)
In order to prevent the Biggest Omission – How many whats? – every number needs to be accompanied by (even if just implicitly) a clear statement of what has been counted and how it has been counted.
If we want any number to be considered scientific, the rules for this specification [“describing or identifying something precisely”] become stronger and stronger – we should consider this requirement paramount. In a scientific journal paper, this information is sketched out in the ‘Methods’ section and hopefully is more fully specified in the Supplemental Materials.
When this is not done properly, we end up with numbers and graphs like those we see in the Climate Change field: Global Sea Level Rise and Global Surface Temperature. The general public, encouraged by the activists, climate change crisis advocates and complicit journalists, are led to believe that these “numbers” are something real and are, in fact, the thing they are labelled: that the numbers on the graphs are something that could be found in the physical world. This is not true – and I have exhausted myself explaining this here in the past.
Today I will share an example that has created a controversy in the field of medical statistics. An unlikely topic for discussion here at WUWT, but it is a near perfect example and will avoid all the food-fighting over Climate Change.
“A maternal death is defined by the World Health Organization as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes. Maternal mortality rates, which are the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, are shown in this report by age group and race and Hispanic origin.”
The news carried by the media is based on the simple statement:
“In 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes in the United States compared with 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019 (2). The maternal mortality rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019.” And this graph:
Clearly, as shown the total U.S. MMR [Maternal Mortality Rate] nearly doubled from 2018 through 2021.
That is a shocking statistic. To round out the picture of MMR, here’s two international views:
Our World In Data supplied the above charts on MMR around the world. The little inset in the left panel shows the slight uptrend in the US MMR over the period reported by the CDC. The good news, that MMRs have dramatically fallen, almost everywhere, to near zero since 1950 (invention of antibitoics, I suggest) is not mentioned. But the barely visible uptick in U.S. MMR is shouted from the rooftops and front pages.
“National Vital Statistics System reports show that maternal mortality rates in the United States have nearly doubled, from 17.4 in 2018 to 32.9 per 100,000 live births in 2021. However, these high and rising rates could reflect issues unrelated to obstetrical factors, such as changes in maternal medical conditions or maternal mortality surveillance (eg, due to introduction of the pregnancy checkbox).”
The big story is this: “But controversy broke out last week over just how bad the situation is, when a paper by academic epidemiologists published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) provoked unusual pushback from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The paper suggested a widely reported tripling in the U.S. maternal mortality rate (MMR) over the past 2 decades was in fact largely due to a CDC-led recording change on death certificates, the addition of a “pregnancy checkbox.””
“The “pregnancy checkbox” was inserted on death certificates starting in 2003 to address what was at the time a widely acknowledged, substantial underreporting of maternal mortality: At the time, as many as 50% of physicians completing death certificates failed to report that a woman was, or was recently, pregnant. On death certificates, physicians now are asked to check a box indicating a person was pregnant when they died, or within 42 days of the end of the pregnancy. Doctors are not to check the box if a person died of accidental or incidental causes unrelated to pregnancy, for instance, in a car crash or from a gunshot wound. Although the agency rolled out the feature in 2003, it took 14 years before all 50 states adopted the surveillance tool. After that happened in 2017, the agency began to compute the nationwide rate using the checkbox.” [ as reported in Science]
Now we see the issue here. There was a change in what was being counted. When did this change? 2017. When did MMR start “skyrocketing”? At the end of 2017 (years 2018 onward). Once all 50 U.S. states had a checkbox covering possible pregnancy, the CDC started using the checkboxes (counting checkboxes as opposed to counting maternal deaths) to determine Maternity Mortality Rate.
“The high and rising rates of maternal mortality in the United States are a consequence of changes in maternal mortality surveillance, with reliance on the pregnancy checkbox leading to an increase in misclassified maternal deaths. Identifying maternal deaths by requiring mention of pregnancy among the multiple causes of death shows lower, stable maternal mortality rates and declines in maternal deaths from direct obstetrical causes.”
The Joseph study looked at death certificates and only counted deaths as Maternal Mortality if the death certificate actually listed pregnancy as one of the contributing causes of death. “Cause of Death” is seldom simple short of something as obvious as a bullet to the head — I covered this during the Covid days in Cause of Death: A Primer – that essay has this image of a death certificate (which also shows the pregnancy checkbox, labelled “If Female”, in the center):
Joseph et al. maintain that the death be counted as a Maternal Mortality only if pregnancy or a related issue of childbirth is specifically mentioned in Parts I or II. When the counting is re-done that way, Joseph et al. found “stable maternal mortality rates and declines in maternal deaths from direct obstetrical causes.”
It is that conclusion that has resulted in a broadside attack on Joseph et al. from the other stakeholders in maternal health, including the CDC itself [quoted] and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Many mass media outlets covered the story slamming Joseph et al. as threatening to “… reduce the U.S. maternal mortality crisis to an ‘overestimation’ is irresponsible and minimizes the many lives lost and the families that have been deeply affected.” [ source ]
This counting controversy isn’t restricted to the Joseph et al. paper. The CDC’s very own National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in a report dated January 30, 2020, had previously reached the exact same conclusions as Joseph: “NCHS found that the increase in maternal mortality in the United States is not likely due to a true increase in the underlying extent of maternal mortality. Rather, the majority of the observed increase in the MMR is attributed to changes in data collection methods (i.e., the gradual adoption of the checkbox). Based on the pre-2003 coding method, the MMR was 8.9 in 2002 and 8.7 in 2018.”
Bottom Lines:
1. Nothing about this controversy changes the real-world number of women who died. Those women died, from whatever cause. Their families, their children, their husbands, their parents suffered their loss.
2. But the over-count has made a big difference in health politics. If Maternal Health stakeholders can point to alarming statistics and create a National Health Crisis from them, more sympathy and money will pour into their cause. More attention and money may actually be a good thing if it leads to more research and actions that can reduce maternal deaths.
3. However, it is never a good thing to create a crisis out of the miscounting, mis-measurement, and mis-reporting of numerical facts.
4. The numbers you see reported (and hyped) in the media are probably false, mis-counted, mis-measured, mis-labelled and do not factually represent the thing they claim to show. [follows from John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”.]
5. Always, if it is important to you, carefully dig in to find out exactly what was counted/measured and exactly how it was counted or measured.
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Author’s Comment:
I shouldn’t have to point out the parallels between this controversy and Climate Science. Alarming numbers are created, labelled as something shocking, public is alarmed and politicians react. Cooler heads reexamine the numbers and point out that “it isn’t really that bad”. Cooler heads are attacked and vilified (even though the official IPCC science agrees with them).
We can all be fooled by numbers – this seems to be a human trait. Personally, I think it stems from a deep innumeracy. This tendency can be overcome with doing due diligence and applying critical thinking skills.
At minimum, we need to ask: What exactly did they actually count? Exactly how did they count it? Does the number really represent the thing (idea, physical fact, actuality) they say it does?
UK plans mean ‘we will be covering an area of countryside the size of Middlesex with Chinese solar panels’ by 2035, while China’s market share in the EU has reached 97%. Can energy/climate policymakers explain what is supposed to happen to all these millions of panels at replacement time?
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Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices, says The Telegraph (via Yahoo News).
Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed.
The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve.
This sounds like great news for the EU, which recently pledged to triple its solar power capacity to 672 gigawatts by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to 200 large nuclear power stations.
In reality, though, it has caused a crisis. Under the EU’s “Green Deal Industrial Plan”, 40pc of the panels to be spread across European fields and roofs were meant to be made by European manufacturers.
However, the influx of cheap Chinese alternatives means that instead of tooling up, manufacturers are pulling out of the market or becoming insolvent. Last year 97pc of the solar panels installed across Europe came from China.
The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) has warned of a looming “wave of bankruptcies” including Dutch panel producer Exasun and Austrian module manufacturer Energetic.
. . .
The sheer scale of the problem was revealed in a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
It warned that although the world was installing at record rates of around 400 gigawatts a year, manufacturing capacity was growing far faster.
By the end of this year solar panel factories, mostly in China, will be capable of churning out 1,100 gigawatts a year – nearly three times more than the world is ready for. For comparison, that’s about 11 times the UK’s entire generating capacity.
Britain is less involved. Its last remaining solar panel maker, GB-Sol, caters to niche and upmarket customers, not the mass market, so we have little choice but China.
The Government’s solar taskforce is about to publish the UK Solar Roadmap, which will commit the UK to an even greater reliance on the People’s Republic.
Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, the industry’s trade body, chaired the taskforce with energy minister Andrew Bowie. Hewett said the report would recommend a fourfold expansion of UK solar power.
That means Britain’s solar farms will expand from 18 gigawatts now to 70 gigawatts by 2035 – mostly in big solar farms across the English and Welsh countryside. In practical terms we will be covering an area of countryside the size of Middlesex with Chinese solar panels.
When the sun shines on Europe and the UK, it is the Chinese who are smiling.
Full article here.
– – – Image: UK solar installation [credit: BBC]
Iowa Climate Science Education 