Never mind how bonkers it is.
Just do it:
The organization manages a series of funds aimed at helping developing countries meet their climate goals, such as those established by the Paris Agreement, which sets a target of limiting global heating to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
No one has explained how they are going to control the weather, but whatever.
**
Imagine you build a machine. It’s very expensive to build, but once it’s done, it makes Things. These Things are identical in every way to Things made by other people. Making Things is very cheap: the machine runs on wind/sun/water and has no fuel costs, and no raw materials are required. Making Things is essentially free once you have built the machine. What will you charge to sell your Things?
Normally you would want to recover the cost of building the machine and make some profit. Ten years is reasonable to recover capital costs, so you work out how many Things you will make over ten years and spread the cost plus some profit between them. After ten years, you’re happy to more or less give the Things away, selling them for a minimal amount.
But here’s the rub. Down the road is another Thing factory that was built eleven years ago, whose upfront costs have already been recovered. Those Things are being sold for next to nothing. Who is going to buy your Things now unless you also charge next to nothing? But if you do that, you can’t pay back the money invested in building your machine. That means that unless you can earn money from something other than selling Things, you will never build your factory in the first place.
In the electricity market, we get round that problem with subsidies. Originally, subsidies were paid because the technology for producing renewable electricity was immature meaning upfront costs were exceptionally high, but after more than 20 years of subsidies, this is no longer the case. Today, electricity prices are still determined for the most part by the cost of fossil fuels, so renewable electricity can be sold at much higher prices than the short term cost of production (which is next to nothing). But even then, renewables still require subsidies. ...
If projects are not economic when electricity prices are at record highs, how will they work if a time comes when electricity prices are very low?
That’s the dirty little secret of the renewables game. The very high upfront costs mean developers have to be paid lots of money, and if the money from selling electricity isn’t enough then it has to come from elsewhere. But ultimately it comes out of consumers’ pockets, whether directly through higher bills, or indirectly through higher taxes.
That’s not all. Developed countries built their electricity grids decades ago when electricity came from a few large power stations. Renewable generation is built where it’s windy/sunny or has good access to water at height or moving fast (for hydro). These places tend to be not where old power stations used to be or where consumers are. This means lots of new infrastructure is needed to connect it all up. Guess who has to pay for that?
Next is the issue of intermittency: wind and sun vary from moment to moment. Individual clouds make a measurable difference to generation, as do gusts of wind. This creates two additional challenges – one is that if there’s no wind or sun, renewable output falls – the famous California “duck curve” measures the way solar output changes through the day with a major drop at sunset, when gas power stations need to take over.
Other sources of generation (there is no at-scale energy storage solution) have to be on standby to run when renewable output falls. But no-one builds standby anything unless it’s worth their while – and that’s another big chunk of change consumers have to cough up.
The other problem with intermittency is that electricity grids need supply and demand to be finely balanced in real time. Grid equipment can be damaged if this balance is not maintained within narrow tolerances. If clouds and gusts of wind change supply from moment to moment, grid operators have to use a range of techniques such as discharging batteries, getting conventional power stations to vary output, or large users to vary consumption, over short timeframes. Unsurprisingly, nobody does any of this for free. Another cost to consumers.
The final sting in the tail is that the grid infrastructure, despite expansion to cope with renewables, often can’t use all the renewable electricity generated. This electricity is wasted, and the renewable generators have to be compensated through “curtailment” or “congestion” fees, again paid for by consumers. According to consulting firm Grid Strategies, costs to consumers from congestion on the US power grid jumped 56 per cent in 2022 to an estimated $20.8 billion from $13.3 billion the year before. In Britain, data from the UK Wind Curtailment Monitor show that consumers paid £125 million in 2022 to turn windfarms off and £717 million to buy replacement gas-fired generation.
Even if the wholesale price of electricity fell to zero to reflect the short-run marginal cost of producing renewable electricity, the price paid by consumers would simply be more disconnected from the wholesale price than it is today. Consumers pay the wholesale price, plus a network cost (including congestion costs), plus a balancing cost, plus a subsidy cost, plus the retailer/supplier operating costs, plus some profits for everyone in the chain from the generator to the network owner to the network operator to the retailer. And then some taxes on top.
And to hit net zero the whole electrical system – expanded renewables, expanded grid, backup fossil, balancing, subsidies, curtailment payments and all – will have to be expanded to multiple times its current size, as fossil fuels used directly in such things as heating and transport are replaced with electricity.
**
Even if all the world’s ambitious carbon-cutting promises were magically enacted, these policies would only slow future warming. Stronger heat waves would still kill more people, just slightly fewer than they would have. A sensible response would focus first on resilience, meaning more air conditioning and cooler cities through greenery and water features. After the 2003 heat waves, France’s rational reforms, including mandatory air conditioning in care homes, reduced heat deaths 10-fold, despite higher temperatures.
Avoiding both cold and heat deaths requires affordable energy access. In the U.S., cheap gas from fracking allowed millions to keep warmer on low budgets, saving 12,500 lives each year. Climate policy, which inevitably makes energy more expensive, achieves the opposite.
Along with temperature spikes, alarming images of forest fires share the front pages this summer. You’d easily get the sense that the planet is on fire. The reality, however, is that since NASA satellites started accurately recording fires across the entire surface of the planet two decades ago, there has been a strong downward trend. In the early 2000s, three per cent of the world’s land area burned each year. Last year, fire burned 2.2 per cent of the world’s land area, a new record low. Yet, you would struggle to find that reported anywhere.
This year, fires have burned much more in the Americas than over the past decade. This has constantly been reported in the media. But fires have burned much less in both Africa and Europe compared to the last decade. Cumulatively to Aug. 12, the Global Wildfire Information System shows that the whole world has actually burned less than the average over the last decade.
While the media constantly focuses on Greece, which has burned much more, it omits the fact that most of Europe has burned much less. Indeed, by Aug. 12, all of Europe has cumulatively burned less than it has by this point in the year during any of the last 10 years. Yet, this has scarcely been reported anywhere.
The fire in Hawaii is deeply tragic. Yet, it is lazy and unhelpful for pundits to use the tragedy to incorrectly blame climate change. They claim it was tinder-box dry, but through most of the past 23 years, Maui County was drier than the week that it burned. Hawaii’s drought is blamed on climate, but the most recent scientific study shows no climate signal.
About 900 people from West Kelowna were allowed to return home on Friday, he said, though active firefighting continues and many remain on evacuation orders.
Is anyone going to mention poor forest management and arson?
Also - and why would anyone trust the RCMP?:
Complicating matters have been the tensions over evacuation orders, with some Shuswap residents refusing to comply and saying they felt abandoned by authorities.
The blockade protesters are seen in videos telling officers they do not believe politicians have the right to prevent them from using the road, and that it is illegal for the RCMP to block it.
The group, which organized itself on Facebook, had hoped to rally enough support to push through the blockade to enter the evacuation zone, saying they planned to support those who have chosen to remain inside to protect their property.
“This is a warning to all you Canadians out there, this is what’s coming,” one man says after confronting police in a video of the incident, referring to the RCMP blockade at the intersection of Blind Bay Road.
The group dispersed after about an hour. RCMP say in a statement that officers de-escalated the situation safely, without incident, adding no one was arrested and no charges are expected to stem from the confrontation.
The Mounties have stepped up their presence “in response to ongoing efforts by some individuals who have undermined BC Wildfire Service fire suppression work through the movement of vital equipment, and have (compromised) emergency personnel safety through threats of violence,” the police statement says.
The area under evacuation order is not safe due to active wildfires, as well as damage to power lines and unstable trees and structures, it says.
RCMP Cpl. James Grandy said in an interview Thursday that it’s a “stressful situation” for both first responders and the public, and “in other communities, we’ve had great patience and understanding and co-operation.”
He said the situation has since subsided and the situation is back to “relative normal,” though police have diverted resources to the roadblock area outside Sorrento where the protesters showed up. Grandy said the protesters weren’t locals.
Derek Sutherland with the Columbia Shuswap Regional District said he’s heard from residents who were “adamantly” opposed to the protest action.
“They are not supportive of this freedom convoy that was coming to the area and were not a part of it,” he said. “At no point did I ever think that this was our residents. I think there is an element out there that grabs onto these certain things, and I think that’s what this was.”
And there it is.
Way to (proverbially) burn your bridges there.
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