Greens trashing the environment part 527

[aubrey]

Capitalist enterprises will always tend towards monopolistic behaviour unless they are prevented. But we don't have monopolies in fossil fuel production, do we? Or have I missed something?

We might as well have. The price is pretty much fixed. Companies will not charge products people will buy at a profit - this means at the right price and of the right quality - they charge what the market will stand (see pharma mark-ups for eg). Oil does not make a tiny profit, just over its running costs.



Yes, fossil fuels have enabled us to have a higher standard of living (but only after a couple of hundred years of intensive use, and a lot of regulation. But use of fossil fuel has also discouraged research into other forms of energy creation/use, etc. There was no need for anyone to do that then; there is now.

[excoriator]

But we don't have monopolies in fossil fuel production, do we? Or have I missed something?

Yes, you have missed the fact that they behave as a cartel which behaves exactly as a monopoly does as far as the unfortunate consumer is concerned.

[marchesarosa]

I have already mentioned OPEC, exco. Don't you read other people's posts?

OPEC is indeed a "cartel" but it is by no means a "monopoly". Do you understand the difference? Ask your WEA tutor. Massive new supplies of US fracked oil and gas are what has brought down the price of oil worldwide. This is a result of "competition" between suppliers. Look it up.



Aubrey, no-one objects to research into alternative sources of energy. But they have to be viable and economic and should not be deployed BEFORE they are proved economic and viable. Wind mills have had time to prove themselves and they have not. Battery technology shows no sign of progress either. Windmills are not viable without massive public subsidy and without some sort of cheap storage. It is no use just cobbling another piece of inefficient expensive kit on to an already demonstrably over-priced and inefficient system of electricity generation.

Much research is going into various types of nuclear generation round the world. This will prove beneficial in the long run. Researching the means of exploiting methane hydrates as a new fuel source is ongoing in various locations round the world. New energy sources will have to be as reliable and economic as fossil fuels are otherwise no-one will use them unless mandated to! State control is not and never has been a means of technological innovation. The market IS!

[marchesarosa]

notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/elon-musk-rakes-in-4-9bn-in-subsidies/

[aubrey]

Aubrey, no-one objects to research into alternative sources of energy. But they have to be viable and economic and should not be deployed BEFORE they are proved economic and viable.

The point is that for 200 years or whatever it was there was no perceived need and certainly no commercial need for research into alternatives (the idea of commercial need is always very short term anyway). The research into nuclear was not started to produce power either: it was pure physics with no practical use, and then it was weapons (again: read CP Snow's The New Men: fiction, but written by a bloke who was there, and who knew the people involved): the idea of using it for power came much later, relatively. The research for a long time certainly wasn't economic, or viable, or seen to be.

In any case, there is a need for alternatives now. You see how much fossil power has developed since Newcomen, say; renewable energy is at maybe the Stephenson stage now. There's a long way to go.

[marchesarosa]

Fossil fuel + steam was an advance on windmills back in the 18th century and still is!

The windmill is an ancient technology that was wisely discarded when something better came along.

[marchesarosa]

So, nuclear POWER was an offshoot of weapons technology! Who knew?

That's how technological advances often happen, aubrey, by accident, as unintended consequences of something else. Simply pouring money into research towards a particular end may not be as effective as "serendipity". What about the "discovery" of penicillin? Accident rather than design.

When a TRULY revolutionary new fuel source comes along, aubrey, I predict it will not be as a result of "research" but rather of a happy accident.



But regarding nuclear energy - advances into thorium as a means of electricity generation were held backby the USA's perceived geo-political interests. Research into thorium reactors was dropped by the USA in 1970. Their development, pioneered at the Oakridge research establishment has now been handed to China. "The project is spearheaded by Jiang Mianheng, with a start-up budget of $350 million, and has already recruited 140 PhD scientists, working full-time on thorium molten salt reactor research at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics. An expansion to 750 staff is planned by 2015". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

France has been producing most of its electricity from nuclear power stations for years, aubrey. It's hardly a new or unknown technology. Only prejudice and opposition from Greens has prevented its spread throughout the deloped world.

[aubrey]

Well, yes. It's a mixture.

But the initial research into nuclear stuff wasn't thought to have any practical use at all. If it had been left to commercial interests it wouldn't even have started. (Coal was a huge advance on windmills, for some things. Not all.)

[excoriator]

Jun 3, 2015 7:53:51 GMT marchesarosa said:

The windmill is an ancient technology that was wisely discarded when something better came along.

Interesting this. Many years ago I found myself in the Netherlands over a weekend with nothing much to do and visited some friends in a tiny village celebrating the centenary of a civil engineer responsible for the sea defences of the country. It was an enjoyably alcoholic weekend but during it we visited a restored windmill. In fact they were pumps used to pump water out of country and keep it dry. It was a massive structure and the keeper and his family lived in it to keep it going 24/7. The pump itself was an Archimedes screw running in a tube made of brick, and looking at the figures for the amount of water it managed to pump on average, it was possible to work out that this massive complex structure with all its maintenance effort and attention from humans was managing about 700 to maybe 1000 Watts.

This is easily managed today by an electrically powered unit about the size of a cylinder vacuum cleaner taking perhaps a kW.

But technology has improved since then. Today's windmill would be unmanned. It would be maybe 100 metres tall, and generate, on average 1MW of power, with no requirement for fuel at all. This would supply a thousand little vacuum cleaner sized pumps, probably sitting in a manhole and also requiring very little in maintenance effort.

Coal powered electricity may have been better than the original wind powered pumps, and it was sensible to adopt them and abandon the windmills, but these days, windmills in another form are better than coal or gas fuelled power stations and it equally sensible to adopt them.

[excoriator]

I have already mentioned OPEC, exco. Don't you read other people's posts?

Its a pity you didn't mention nPower, E.On, SSE, and all the rest of them.

These operate a very neat cartel, but one which cannot be proved. I defy you to choose which one is the cheapest. They have devised a tariff structure which makes this impossible unless you know exactly how much electricity you are going to use, by employing 'standard day charges' plus variable unit costs, plus 'allowances' and all the rest of it.

The result is that they are all going to work out about the same. A price which allows them to make enormous profits (Which with a little clever accounting, is largely untaxed)

It is a cartel in all but name, and you as well as I am the victims of it.

[marchesarosa]

the right price and of the right quality - ... what the market will stand

these two statements mean the same, aubrey

[marchesarosa]

If the Dutch depended upon wind to pump water from the Polders today they would be quite likely to flood when the wind dropped, exco. Wind power is not reliable, you see, it is not necessarily there when you WANT it or NEED it.

[excoriator]

Jun 3, 2015 9:26:47 GMT marchesarosa said:

If the Dutch depended upon wind to pump water from the Polders today they would be quite likely to flood when the wind dropped, exco. Wind power is not reliable, you see, it is not necessarily there when you WANT it or NEED it.

There again you are wrong. The point is that there is enough reserve capacity designed into the drains to withstand periods where there is no wind without flooding. The pumping demand is extremely tolerant of outages.

This was true in the case of the original picturesque windmills - it had to be, or the country would have been inundated. It is a lot more true now when the modern day machines are far more efficient, and solar power can also be deployed. It is in fact a MORE reliable energy source because each windmill is an independent power station and loss of one from a large number of them is inconsequential. Intermittent does not mean unreliable, and it doesn't mean unpredictable either. Modern forecasting is accurate and manages excellent accurate a day or so ahead.

You have once again confused 'intermittent' with 'unreliable'. Either you are being disingenuous or more likely just plain stupid.

[loop]

Jun 3, 2015 9:42:13 GMT excoriator said:

Jun 3, 2015 9:26:47 GMT marchesarosa said:

You have once again confused 'intermittent' with 'unreliable'. Either you are being disingenuous or more likely just plain stupid.

No, March is (wait for it) disbenefitted.

[marchesarosa]

Europe’s Crazy Climate Policy Is Threatening Forests And Wildlife

Date: 03/06/15 Joby Warrick, The Washington Post
Europe’s appetite for wood pellets may lead to higher CO2 emissions for decades to come, while also putting US forests and wildlife habitats at risk.



Little remains but stumps and puddles in what was once a bottomland hardwood forest on the banks of the Roanoke River in northeastern North Carolina. The trees were turned into wood pellets for burning in power plants in Europe. (Joby Warrick/The Washington Post)

OAK CITY, N.C. —For the sake of a greener Europe, thousands of American trees are falling each month in the forests outside this cotton-country town.

Every morning, logging crews go to work in densely wooded bottomlands along the Roanoke River, clearing out every tree and shrub down to the bare dirt. Each day, dozens of trucks haul freshly cut oaks and poplars to a nearby factory where the wood is converted into small pellets, to be used as fuel in European power plants.

Soaring demand for this woody fuel has led to the construction of more than two dozen pellet factories in the Southeast in the past decade, along with special port facilities in Virginia and Georgia where mountains of pellets are loaded onto Europe-bound freighters. European officials promote the trade as part of the fight against climate change. Burning “biomass” from trees instead of coal, they say, means fewer greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But that claim is increasingly coming under challenge. A number of independent experts and scientific studies — including a new analysis released Tuesday — are casting doubt on a key argument used to justify the cutting of Southern forests to make fuel. In reality, these scientists say, Europe’s appetite for wood pellets could lead to more carbon pollution for decades to come, while also putting some of the East Coast’s most productive wildlife habitats at risk.

“From the point of view of what’s coming out of the smokestack, wood is worse than coal,” said William H. Schlesinger, the former dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and one of nearly 100 scientists to sign a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency last year asking for stricter guidelines on using biomass to generate electric power. “You release a lot of carbon in a short period of time, and it takes decades to pull that carbon back out of the atmosphere.” more

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www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-europes-climate-policies-have-led-to-more-trees-cut-down-in-the-us/2015/06/01/ab1a2d9e-060e-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html