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On Lacklustre Results From The Colorado Integrated Solar Project
Thanks Nathan, yes, we'd worked this out over in the comments stream attached to this post on bravenewclimate.com (22 rather than 2.2% for the fuel). There's some discussion on BNC about what might have contributed to the poor performance, which complements your comments here on TEC.
On OZ-ENERGY-ANALYSIS.ORG – open science for the new millennium
OzEA is an Open Science website focused on developing scenarios and solutions for high renewable penetration - join us!Oz-Energy-Analysis portal page has now been launched, with info on current focus, activites and newbie guide: http://www.oz-energy-analysis.org
On Climate debate missing the point
Jesse, my view is definitely the latter, i.e. that policies should give all low-carbon technologies meeting a common-sense set of criteria an equal opportunity to become competitive. If we are going to have subsidies, feed-in tariffs, production credits etc. then they must be available equally across these qualifying technologies.Your point about the total amount of subsidies is well made -- it doesn't seem that big. But if its done in a way that ultimately makes the subsidizing economy -- be it the US, Australia or whatever -- uncompetitive with high-carbon economies that have no such subsidies, then we all end up losing.
On Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics
Stephen, no, the short-term gap cannot conceivably be closed. The path to zero emissions by 2050 -- or whatever level we can achieve -- will almost certainly be a result of an exponential replacement of fossil fuels, not a linear one. The linear partitioning was for illustrative purposes only, to underscore the size of the challenge.On Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics
Stephen, Gen III+ nuclear power is not 'imaginary' by any definition, and this is what we should be building in great number over the next two decades as Gen IV (IFR, LFTR are brought to full commercialisation and industries-of-scale).If you look at my post:
You'll see that all my future demand scenarios have a 30% improvement in energy efficiency through to 2050 already built in.
On Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics
Thanks for the comments Marc and Peter, you make good points. Of course, if the cheaper-than-coal works out for renewable technologies too, then more's the better.There are various response to Stephen Gloor's comments, and a raft of other observations, over on BraveNewClimate.com (running at 160 comments and climbing). I tend to respond to comments over there on my blog, rather than here on EC, as I'd go mad trying to following multiple threads. But I'm happy for EC to mirror these posts and expose non-BNC readers to my thinking.
On Nuclear power debate, Adelaide, Australia, 5 Feb 2010
Further to Mark Diesendorf's intellectually bankrupt appeal to authority, I offer this quote from Karl Popper (http://bit.ly/9SI3Il):
Today, the appeal to the authority of experts is sometimes excused by the immensity of our specialized knowledge. And it is sometimes defended by philosophical theories that speak of science and rationality in terms of specializations, experts, and authority. But in my view, the appeal to the authority of experts should be neither excused nor defended. It should, on the contrary, be recognized for what it is - an intellectual fashion - and it should be attacked by a frank acknowledgement of how little we know, and how much that little is due to people who have worked in many fields at the same time. And it should also be attacked by the recognition that the orthodoxy produced by intellectual fashions, specialization, and the appeal to authorities is the death of knowledge, and that the growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.
On CO2 is a Trace Gas, But What Does That Mean?
Willem, my calculation is correct, you have inadventantly dropped a zero after the 0.1, i.e. 0.104... not 0.14...:
44.64 x 0.000389 x 6.022142 = 0.104574
0.104574 x 10^23 = 1.04574 x 10^22 = 10^22 (rounded)