the death of coal?

Quote: rxwine

My position is we should be developing wind power unless or until it can be proven we should not be developing wind power. Period.

I would like to know what your standard of proof is. If you are unable to provide an outline for a standard of proof then your statement is basically meaningless. Even provide a list of all the things about wind power that you think are a net gain to society and be prepared to defend them. I know that is a lot of work and don't expect you will do it.

Quote: AZDuffman

But the people talking about it probably do not even know which color wire in the romex is the "hot" and which is the negative.

Romex doesn't have a negative wire when used as intended to conduct AC. I guess you could connect it to a DC source and make any wire negative.
(I know you meant "neutral". I couldn't resist)

Quote: kenarman

I would like to know what your standard of proof is. If you are unable to provide an outline for a standard of proof then your statement is basically meaningless. Even provide a list of all the things about wind power that you think are a net gain to society and be prepared to defend them. I know that is a lot of work and don't expect you will do it.

Proof will occur when the wind industry pays for itself in the long run, but that includes any and all tax breaks, brokered deals, bribes, price fixing and political shenanigans that the petroleum industry has benefitted from in its entire history.

Quote:

Big names in Houston’s energy world, such as KBR, Shell and SBM Offshore, suddenly were having to explain how they came to win drilling rights and contracts worth billions of dollars in countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Brazil.

Nations — developed and developing alike — are taking a harder line on bribes and self-dealing long swept under the rug. At the same time, digital leaks such as the Panama Papers are making public vast troves of incriminating corporate and government documents that in an earlier age might never have seen the light of day.

Such investigations have touched a multitude of industries — from telecom to technology and health care. But considering its long history operating in the developing world, none is as exposed as the oil and gas industry, which is centred in Houston and drives the Texas economy.

https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/02/02/oil-industry-rocked-by-global-corruption-scandals.html

Quote: rxwine

Proof will occur when the wind industry pays for itself in the long run, but that includes any and all tax breaks, brokered deals, bribes, price fixing and political shenanigans that the petroleum industry has benefitted from in its entire history.





https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/02/02/oil-industry-rocked-by-global-corruption-scandals.html

Pure deflection which you love getting on EB about.

Quote: kenarman

Pure deflection which you love getting on EB about.

If you don't want to spend money on wind power because you think the entire system is a boondoggle with no practical applications and no further innovation or problem solving possible, locally or nationally, then vote. Doesn't it work that way in Canada?

Fine with me

Quote: rxwine

If you don't want to spend money on wind power because you think the entire system is a boondoggle with no practical applications and no further innovation or problem solving possible, locally or nationally, then vote. Doesn't it work that way in Canada?

Fine with me

It works that way in Canada but seems to not work that well in the US. Your legally elected president doesn't get the support he should have for his agenda. As I said a couple of posts ago I didn't really expect any real debate or facts from you. I will take that as your acceptance that I am right.

Quote: kenarman

It works that way in Canada but seems to not work that well in the US. Your legally elected president doesn't get the support he should have for his agenda.

I support Trump about the way Evenbob and Duffman supported Obama's agenda. You sayin' that's not good enough?

Quote:

As I said a couple of posts ago I didn't really expect any real debate or facts from you. I will take that as your acceptance that I am right.

You can take the explanations I give, or take nothing. I don't owe you anything.

And pretty sure posting a reference to a link is not a debate.

Quote: rxwine

I support Trump about the way Evenbob and Duffman supported Obama's agenda. You sayin' that's not good enough?

Don't remember them saying anything when Obama was building border wall.

The trend against using coal to create electricity is due to the global warming scare that some call science, some call pseudoscience, and some even call a scam being used to enrich people such as former vice president Al Gore and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here is a quote from my forthcoming book "The Art Of The Scam."

Detailed investigation reveals that far from there being a universal consensus among scientists that human burning of fossil fuels is causing dangerous global warming, many now agree that while carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has doubled in the past 100 years, it is at 400 parts per million still a minute fraction of the total atmosphere and does not correlate with a rise in temperature. Moreover, NOAA has “adjusted” downward temperature readings from the 1930’s to make it appear that there has been warming when actually the environment has been cooling. A detailed discussion of NOAA’s editing of historical temperature data may be found at Evaluating the Integrity of Official Climate Records by Tony Heller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh-DNNIUjKU
See also https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/uncorrupted-us-temperature-data-showed-cooling-from-1930-to-1999

The current climate hysteria has been caused by former vice president Al Gore. In 2009 Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone by 2016 but today it is thicker than ever.

What started this concern? It can be traced to a paper by Roger Revelle, director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Hans Suess of the University of Chicago, published in 1957, claiming that the carbon dioxide caused by the human burning of fossil fuels could change the environment by the end of the century. Dr. Revelle moved to Harvard and Gore, one of his students, was greatly impressed by this theory. He made it a campaign issue in a run for the U.S. senate, was elected, and began a series of hearings on the matter that resulted in a large flow of government funds into atmospheric research. He wrote a book titled An Inconvenient Truth and made a documentary of the same name which earned an academy award and a Nobel Peace Prize and nearly propelled him into the White House.

Later in life Dr. Revelle became uncertain about his previous conclusions and declared that more research should be done before accepting that man was causing deterioration of the environment. Al Gore rejected this about face and called Dr. Revelle “senile.”
This is the history of the movement as related by John Coleman, broadcast meteorologist for KUSI in San Diego, California, and founder of the weather channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUDGfCNC-k

The most widely held view is that Al Gore is right. The Petition Project, however, claims 31,487 American scientists have signed its petition, including 9,029 with Ph.D.s. The petition reads, in part:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Rather than rely on opinions or opinions as to scientists’ opinions, let us look at some facts:

1. In the past 100 years, average world temperature has risen just 0.8 degree Celsius.

2. Carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is considered a trace gas at 0.04% compared with 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon, and 0.4% water vapor, making water vapor by far the most abundant greenhouse gas.

3. Ice core samples show that the earth’s temperature has had cyclical swings not attributable to human activity. There were warm periods during the middle ages and at the height of the Roman Empire and a cold period from the fourteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

4. The same samples show that while over millennia there is a correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide, the temperature leads the carbon dioxide concentration and therefore may be the cause rather than the result of it. Al Gore tell his audiences that the rise in temperature is due to the rise in concentration of carbon dioxide.

That is because of the effect of the oceans in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing it. When the oceans cool they absorb and when they warm again they release. Because of the great thermal inertia of the oceans the lag between temperature change and change in atmospheric carbon dioxide is several hundred years. What causes the cyclical change in the Earth’s temperature? It has been found to correlate with sunspot activity.

Those who are reluctant to believe that man-made climate change exists are called environmental skeptics. President Trump is one of these and he calls it a hoax. Whether or not it is a hoax depends on intent. Al Gore has profited greatly from it in his political career. He charges a very large speaker’s fee for his presentations and has made a great deal of money. In his presentation he has shown before and after pictures of melting mountain snow caps. It is hard to believe that 0.8 degree average temperature change in 100 years could be responsible for this, and I suspect that they show only seasonal rather than long term changes.

Some highly qualified professionals have recorded presentations in rebuttal to that of Al Gore and at-tempting to debunk man-made global warming, and their qualifications surpass those of a politician who took only one science course. These include Ivar Giaever, a Nobel prizewinner in physics, and Prof. Don Easterbrook.

Global warming alarmists say that we must abandon the burning of coal, petroleum, and natural gas as sources of energy and look to wind, solar, and atomic energy. Eventually we shall have to do so, but there is no emergency. We should work on making atomic energy safer. Three reactor meltdowns have had disastrous long-term effects. The one in Chernobyl, Ukraine, has left the town uninhabitable for an estimated 20,000 years.

One of the more knowledgeable alarmists was British physicist Stephen Hawking, who warned that if nothing is done the surface of the Earth in a few hundred years will be as hot as that of Venus and uninhabitable.

Dr. Hawkings’s field of expertise was black holes, not planets. Venus is 25% closer to the Sun than the Earth is, and there is an inverse square law of the intensity of radiation, but there also is a greenhouse effect that is partly responsible for the 462 degrees Celsius surface temperature. It is easy to blame car-bon dioxide for this, for the Venusian atmosphere is 96% this gas and the pressure is comparable to that several thousand feet below our ocean surface. There are also thick clouds of sulphuric acid. Compare this with 0.04% carbon dioxide in our atmosphere at normal atmospheric pressure and rising at only 0.0003% per year; however some consider this rate alarming.

Quote: Nared

The trend against using coal to create electricity is due to the global warming scare that some call science, some call pseudoscience, and some even call a scam being used to enrich people such as former vice president Al Gore and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here is a quote from my forthcoming book "The Art Of The Scam."

<snipped to save space>

Very balanced reply, a nice thing to see. I think, though, that the rise of natural gas due to fracking (disclosure: You are new here, I am in the natural gas industry) is an even bigger part in the USA. Gas has many other advantages over coal. Cheaper to ship and easier to throttle the supply would be just two.

It is amazing how many people just believe in GW without question. Don Draper was probably right.