Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized 28 Jun 2017

Green Schism: Guardian Contributor Accuses Greenpeace of Misleading about Nuclear Power

via Watts Up With That?
http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

If Greens want to decarbonise the economy to prevent climate change, why are they so opposed to nuclear power? A small but growing number of greens are also asking this question. Some of them accuse their fellow travellers of misleading the public.

Climate change is an energy problem, so let’s talk honestly about nuclear

David Robert Grimes

Fear of nuclear energy runs deep but it may be the most efficient and clean energy source we have, albeit with complications.

…

The vast majority of the carbon and greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere are generated by our need for energy, prompting the late Prof Sir David MacKay to observe that “the climate problem is mostly an energy problem”. Clearly then, we must reduce our carbon emissions drastically, and it is likely that nuclear power will play a substantial role in this endeavour. Yet despite the pressing nature of the problem, there are few topics as consistently contentious as the one of nuclear power, and the long history of opposition to it cannot be ignored.

Fears about nuclear energy run deep: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster remains a towering linchpin in anti-nuclear narratives, presented as an irrefutable case that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe. These claims are so profoundly entrenched that it is almost accepted as common knowledge that the Chernobyl disaster killed thousands.

Yet, as I’ve written here before, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny and persist in the face of report after report to the contrary. Years of subsequent investigation place the death toll of the disaster at approximately 43 people, with deleterious health effects failing to materialise at any appreciable rate. That this information is surprising to many is indicative of quite how polarised the discussion on such a vital topic has been.

Much of the reason for this is ideological – Greenpeace is but one organisation that has been criticised for releasing misleading anti-nuclear information, claiming that up to 200,000 deaths are attributable to Chernobyl. This figure has been roundly debunked, but predictably strikes fear into the public conscience, encouraging panic in place of reason.

…

No hiding this decline

via Ice Age Now
http://ift.tt/2qcAwB3

Google “Record high temperature” … …You get about 7,910,000 results (0.61 seconds).

Google “Record low temperature” … …You get about 148,000,000 results (1.15 seconds)

Even Google cannot “hide the decline”

Thanks to Norman Grant Smith for this info

“LOL,” says Norman.

The post No hiding this decline appeared first on Ice Age Now.

via Ice Age Now http://ift.tt/2qcAwB3

June 28, 2017 at 07:31PM

Uncategorized 28 Jun 2017

ALICE IN ONTARIOLAND – The Great Ontario Electricity Sale

via Friends of Science Calgary
http://ift.tt/2on3Vep

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, spellbound his readers by writing a story in which everything seemed topsy-turvy and counter to the ways people think things generally should be. Even Lewis Carroll, however, could not have imagined how the province of Ontario sells electrical energy to its export customers in New York and Michigan.

379px-MadlHatterByTenniel.svg wikipedia lyman ontario

Source: Wikipedia – see copyright details at bottom of the page

It is an extraordinary tale, and so I will give you the simple version. Since 2005, the Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO), the Ontario government agency responsible for managing the electrical energy system, has purchased an increasing amount of electricity from new generators at 20-year fixed term contracts. It also purchases power from the government-owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG). The generators receive two streams of revenue. One stream comes from the price that power sells for in the competitive wholesale market. The other stream is the revenue they receive from the Global Adjustment (GA). The Global Adjustment is a charge on Ontario electricity ratepayers (i.e. consumers) that makes up the difference between what a generator receives on the market for their output and what it was promised in its contract.

Even though electricity demand has been falling in Ontario, IESO, under government orders, has been adding more and more generation capacity, especially from wind and solar power generators. This has created a large and growing power surplus. The surplus has, in turn, driven down the market price, resulting in generators receiving higher payments through the Global Adjustment from ratepayers.

Electricity generally cannot be stored except at very high cost. Consequently, when supply exceeds demand, IESO first seeks to curtail purchases from generators (i.e. it pays them not to produce) or, when even that is not enough to balance supply and demand, it sells surplus power to export customers.

The export customers, mainly in New York and Michigan, buy at the market price – the wholesale rate. This leaves Ontario domestic customers on the hook for the Global Adjustment on electricity exports. It is added to electricity bills and acts as a subsidy from Ontario ratepayers to those in New York and Michigan.

According to a joint study by Energy Probe and the Consumer Policy Institute, the cost to Ontario electricity customers for exported power rose from $100 million per year in 2006 to $1.8 billion per year in 2016,.

The cost per kilowatt hour (kWh) exported drops furthest on days when there is low demand and high wind. During the week from May 24 to 30 2017, the market rate dropped to 0.11 cents per kWh (eleven one hundredths of a cent per kWh). During that one week, IESO exported 278,712 megawatt hours (MWh), which cost Ontario ratepayers $35.6 million in Global Adjustment costs. But wait, it gets worse. During the previous week (May 17 to 23), the market price was actually negative at -0.5 cents per kWh, so 308,616 MWh were exported. Ontario paid export customers $148,000 to take the electricity but Ontario electricity customers were charged $39.4 million. Eighty per cent of these charges are paid by residential customers.

If you were wondering who the Mad Hatter is, look no further than the Premier’s office.

~~~

Mad Hatter image: By John Tenniel – vector version of Image:MadlHatterByTenniel.jpg),

This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or less. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.Public Domain, http://ift.tt/2t2qKUy

via Friends of Science Calgary http://ift.tt/2on3Vep

June 28, 2017 at 07:18PM

Uncategorized 28 Jun 2017

What Will Happen When The Wind Forgets To Blow In Ireland?

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

By Paul Homewood

http://ift.tt/2rYgyLP

You will no doubt remember yesterday’s about Jillian Ambrose’s latest propaganda piece for Renewable UK in the Telegraph.

She stated:

As on the UK mainland, Northern Ireland is under pressure to attract investment in new power generation as older fossil fuel plants steadily shut down. It currently relies heavily on imports from the Republic of Ireland but is eager to reduce this dependence.

You would of course be entitled to believe that the Republic of Ireland is doing everything that Northern Ireland is not.

But you would be wrong.

These are the electricity stats for 2016. (Note – the total electricity generation figures for N Ireland, but not the split, are based on govt numbers for 2015, the latest available).