Don't know. My panels have a 30 year warranty on them. They'll have paid for themselves by 2020 at this rate. That gives me 20 years of energy profit before warranty runs out.
I really think you need to look at things more deeply Quark.
Battery systems are already here. They are expensive now. 5 years from now that won't be true. Look at every piece of technology for households,that's ever gone to market. TVs, computers gaming console etc.
They all,start super expensive and then get very cheap very fast as the technology advances and people begin to consume.
My prediction, 5 years till self sufficiency for many homes.
Assuming we don't have a fricken nuclear war in that time.
Agree whole heatedly with the bold part.
Problem for most people is they don't plan on living in the same home for 5 years, let alone 30.
We'll see where the tech is at in 5 years.
I think another limited nuclear war is inevitable and that should be the last one (assuming it doesn't escalate and we as a species survive).
Word from Amnesty International around Mosul is that there are already revenge killings by Shia on Suni locals (excluding members of ISIS). So we push ISIS out of Iraq and the Russians/Assad push them out of Syria, what happens when they take over Pakistan?
I don't know anyone looking to buy a house that is spending less than 5 years in it. If you are, generally the economics say you should rent instead because on resale you wont recoup the closing costs. That is unless you plan on flipping the house, which only works in very limitted housing markets.
I will also point out in a previous post you were looking for solar to be installed in Texas. Last I heard, Texas actually penalizes people for installing solar by requiring them to be connected to the grid but refusing to pay them back for energy produced.
I'm in NY, and one of the biggest things holding solar installation back is lack of trained installers. The companies that do it are booked months in advance.
I will also point out in a previous post you were looking for solar to be installed in Texas. Last I heard, Texas actually penalizes people for installing solar by requiring them to be connected to the grid but refusing to pay them back for energy produced.
Koch brothers sponsored legislation at work. They're also the ones behind states that forbid cities from pursuing their own initiatives.
I don't know anyone looking to buy a house that is spending less than 5 years in it.
Limited sample size. Especially since most people aren't planning on buying a house and retrofitting it with solar immediately. The question isn't whether it would have made sense four years ago to retrofit my current house with solar, unless you've a TARDIS in your garage you're willing to lend me.
If you are, generally the economics say you should rent instead because on resale you wont recoup the closing costs. That is unless you plan on flipping the house, which only works in very limited housing markets.
Or if you're in one of the markets where renting is a lot more expensive than owning, which right now is most of them. Right now, the average breakeven point is 3.3 years for renting vs owning.
If mankind makes it till the end of the century (let alone 1000 years) without another WW I'll be amazed......
The combo of diminishing water supply, increasing demand for food, decreasing land availability, increasing demand for energy and clearing of rain forests...... will be a Street Fighter esque combo from hell!
I don't know anyone looking to buy a house that is spending less than 5 years in it.Limited sample size. Especially since most people aren't planning on buying a house and retrofitting it with solar immediately. The question isn't whether it would have made sense four years ago to retrofit my current house with solar, unless you've a TARDIS in your garage you're willing to lend me.
If you are, generally the economics say you should rent instead because on resale you wont recoup the closing costs. That is unless you plan on flipping the house, which only works in very limited housing markets.Or if you're in one of the markets where renting is a lot more expensive than owning, which right now is most of them. Right now, the average breakeven point is 3.3 years for renting vs owning.
Ok, sure. My friends are admittedly abnormalities because they look at solar potential as a selling point of the house (google now has a convenient calculator).
A quick google search tells me that average time for owning a home is 13 years, and has been growing since the housing collapse. I'm guessing that data has some distinct breakdowns though, and is in no way a bell curve, with a large group of people owning homes for 30+ years and a huge cluster at <3. Age and regional demographics probably play a huge role.
I'm really curious that site's methodology for calculating an average of 3.3 years, since almost no county buying is better in at 3 years and only a handful are better at 3.5. I would buy it if they told me 3.8. Renting is still better on the west coast at 5 years.
And this is ignoring the fact that solar is a capital investment that increases the value of the home. That is of course if you are buying the panels yourself instead of renting them.
Ah, I figured out how they came to 3.3. The calculated the average monthly mortgage and monthly rent, and compared that, rather than using average years broken down by county. That gives a very different result.
In addition, they seem to only be including mortgage and not including taxes, which in many areas could be as much as the mortgage and drastically change this calculation.
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Tragedy of the Commons ignores humanity's ability to self-regulate - to form traditions, laws, international agreements, etc. to ensure that the commons remain viable for all users. Indigenous people have learned to manage their resources sustainably, probably with trial and error rather than innate ecological awareness, but their ability to regulate grazing, forestry, and even farming over centuries is something we can look to for examples. With today's world-spanning awareness of global warming and international efforts to regulate emissions, we are already forming new agreements and laws to reduce per capita energy usage. Here's a good essay that sums up the fallacies in the Tragedy of the Commons.
Contemporary counter-example to TotC: water use dropping on the Colorado River despite rising populations.
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At 17:40+ they talk about the failure presently of climate models from just a few years ago. I pointed this out up-thread and got excoriated for it. See? I knew I was right.
Nope. All he said was that there are things not in the climate models... which is obvious. That's why they're "models".
36:25+ shows that per capita a USA citizen uses, on average, 10x the electricity of someone in China; 34x that of someone in India; 61x that of someone in Nigeria. How is that going to change? Are Americans going to give up 90% of their electricity use? Are the Chinese going to stay at their current level of using only 1/10th of what an American does or are they going to continue to increase their usage? Do we all want to live like the average Indian? Or like the average Nigerian?
Energy efficiency can help a little, but in reality even the US electricity usage will almost certainly increase as our technology continues to advance. That just means we need to make our future energy production cleaner. Which we are doing.
At 46:00+- Palm oil plantations are devastating the rain forest in Indonesia. All we have to do is stop eating junk food and meat (especially beef). How likely is that to happen? Who here is going to stop eating meat or just beef?
Or... we could simply engage in sustainable agriculture.
1:07:00 Tipping points to Climate Change. Yet another reason why our climate models fail. The secret thing with these "tipping points" is that they can tip off when global warming is on the way back down.
Climate dynamics are not linear, nor necessarily directional. They don't talk about that aspect of climate because there's nothing we can do about it though I think it is important to know.
I split this in to two paragraphs because the second directly contradicts the first. The second is correct... climate changes are not linear... and thus no, you can't simply put things in reverse to 'undo' a tipping point. Once it has tipped it takes a lot more time and energy to put back.
As to "they" not talking about it... climate scientists talk about tipping points all the time. Where have you been?
1:14:08+ President Obama, "This isn't just an environmental problem. This is a national security issue." Other than marshal law, what can the president do? Get a consensus? Talk to people? Are we in the west really going to commit to living, on average, on a fraction of the energy we do today?
You might look at what he HAS done for guidance on what he COULD do. You know... things like pushing more efficient vehicles and infrastructure, cleaning up our power supply, working with world leaders to push forward global treaties.
Also... note the complete absence of martial law, living on a fraction of current energy, and other nonsense that was never on the table.
Here's a good essay that sums up the fallacies in the Tragedy of the Commons.
Well, sure, it's not like fisheries are collapsing or anything...
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No, you're missing the obvious.At 17:40+ they talk about the failure presently of climate models from just a few years ago. I pointed this out up-thread and got excoriated for it. See? I knew I was right.Nope. All he said was that there are things not in the climate models... which is obvious. That's why they're "models".
I don't care what you think is obvious. The video did not say what you claimed it did.
Because of missing data - data they didn't even know they needed - the models turned out to be near worthless.
More nonsense. The video did not say that and the models have been far from 'near worthless'.
You do realize that "sustainable agriculture" means 95%+ vegetarian diet don't you?
No. I live here in the Earth reality where it means this.
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No. I live here in the Earth reality where it means this.Read that again and see what they say about meat consumption.
Nothing.
The page says nothing about meat consumption.
It DOES say, "There are also many ways to practice sustainable animal husbandry" and gives some examples... but nothing about actual meat consumption.
I'm betting 95% of calories from things other than meat is what they are saying.
Both here and in the video you linked, you are clearly seeing and hearing things that do not actually exist.
I also looked into solar in China. It seems they are going crazy with it and half or more is in the form of solar thermal as opposed to solar photo-voltaic. And while I agree China is and will continue to be the global leader in solar implementation (both types), it seems not so much a paragon choice as it is mandated lest they drown in their own industrial swill of air and water pollution.
What you don't seem to get is that is the choice we face as well..
I also looked into solar in China. It seems they are going crazy with it and half or more is in the form of solar thermal as opposed to solar photo-voltaic. And while I agree China is and will continue to be the global leader in solar implementation (both types), it seems not so much a paragon choice as it is mandated lest they drown in their own industrial swill of air and water pollution.What you don't seem to get is that is the choice we face as well..
Not really. There is a world of difference between "our grandchildren are all pretty badly screwed if we don't blow large sums of money now" and "oh my god the toxic industrial smog is EATING MY LUNGS AAAAHHHH AHHHHHHH ***gurgle***"*.
Not really. There is a world of difference between "our grandchildren are all pretty badly screwed if we don't blow large sums of money now" and "oh my god the toxic industrial smog is EATING MY LUNGS AAAAHHHH AHHHHHHH ***gurgle***"*.I also looked into solar in China. It seems they are going crazy with it and half or more is in the form of solar thermal as opposed to solar photo-voltaic. And while I agree China is and will continue to be the global leader in solar implementation (both types), it seems not so much a paragon choice as it is mandated lest they drown in their own industrial swill of air and water pollution.What you don't seem to get is that is the choice we face as well..
As I remarked many many posts ago, I think that a lot of climate progress in China (and India, more slowly) will be driven by pressing, immediate public health concerns, with climate as a beneficial side effect.
What I don't understand is how China's environmental policies have had so much support. According to their own numbers, until China started to open up, they HAD no pollution, more or less. This was seriously thrown up as an argument for communism. Just like how Cuba has been perfectly environmentally friendly, and the Soviet Union in its day. All you have to do is look at their own data, right?
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There was a time when US cities were heading towards the same kind of killer smog that China has, but then we passed the Clean Air Act and there was a rapid improvement... yet we have still been slowly polluting the planet with less fast acting and/or obvious poisons.
China industrialized more rapidly and thus got to extreme conditions before they finally realized that environmentalism isn't just hippy dippy liberal american talk, but the very basic concept of not making your home poisonous. They are now going all out on clean power and largely skipping the 'Clean Air Act stage' of trying to manage the problem.
However, ultimately yes we ARE faced with the same choice... the 'managed pollution' in the US is merely poisoning the environment more slowly than the un-managed pollution in China was.
I also looked into solar in China. It seems they are going crazy with it and half or more is in the form of solar thermal as opposed to solar photo-voltaic. And while I agree China is and will continue to be the global leader in solar implementation (both types), it seems not so much a paragon choice as it is mandated lest they drown in their own industrial swill of air and water pollution.What you don't seem to get is that is the choice we face as well..First experiment.
Go for a 1 hour jog in Atlanta.
Then go for a 1 hour jog in Beijing.
If you survive the 2nd one, tell me which you prefer.
Next experiment.
Get a drink from a public fountain in Chicago.
Get a drink from a public fountain in Shouguang.
If you survive the 2nd one, tell me which you prefer.
We used to have cities in California that were in the same state. If President Trump guts the Clean Air Act, you'll be able to revisit that question on the domestic level.
So, is the US government (elect) still in the pocket of "big science"?
So, is the US government (elect) still in the pocket of "big science"?
About that... We may be headed back to China smog.
Note that when they say "skeptic" they mean denier.
Well, interesting situation on my monthly recordings.
Earlier this year it was much COLDER...but over the past few months, it has been far warmer. This month thus far has been excessively warmer than average. In fact, uncommonly so.
We'll see what the end of the year holds.
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You're still missing the point of global warming there GreyWolf.
Local temperatures may actually drop as a consequence of warming climate. It actually comes down to how ocean currents are affected by density changes and ice melts.
There are still some models whic state Europe and parts of North America may go into ice age style weather patterns. In other words. Longer and colder winters. All of this due to arctic water currents not being redirected around the northern ice like it us do to be.
Here in Aus, our storms are starting earlier in the year, they are getting more severe and the temperatures aren't dropping as much as previously. Brisbane is becoming more full tropical than subtropical.
Well, interesting situation on my monthly recordings.
Earlier this year it was much COLDER...but over the past few months, it has been far warmer. This month thus far has been excessively warmer than average. In fact, uncommonly so.
We'll see what the end of the year holds.
In Minnesota, we're about 6 weeks behind schedule for how cold it should be right now. Typically 50% of first frosts in Minneapolis occur by Oct 5th, with 90% of them by Oct 28th. It's now Nov 14th and we still haven't had freezing temperatures. In fact, they probably aren't coming until Nov 20th.
I'm still sleeping with my windows open, something that usually ends in late September.
You're still missing the point of global warming there GreyWolf.
Local temperatures may actually drop as a consequence of warming climate. It actually comes down to how ocean currents are affected by density changes and ice melts.
There are still some models whic state Europe and parts of North America may go into ice age style weather patterns. In other words. Longer and colder winters. All of this due to arctic water currents not being redirected around the northern ice like it us do to be.
Here in Aus, our storms are starting earlier in the year, they are getting more severe and the temperatures aren't dropping as much as previously. Brisbane is becoming more full tropical than subtropical.
I'm just listing our local reports here from our monitoring stations. It's the monthly gathering of information that I help volunteer to do.
Nothing else. I'm not applying it to the global scale.
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You're still missing the point of global warming there GreyWolf.
Local temperatures may actually drop as a consequence of warming climate. It actually comes down to how ocean currents are affected by density changes and ice melts.
There are still some models whic state Europe and parts of North America may go into ice age style weather patterns. In other words. Longer and colder winters. All of this due to arctic water currents not being redirected around the northern ice like it us do to be.
Here in Aus, our storms are starting earlier in the year, they are getting more severe and the temperatures aren't dropping as much as previously. Brisbane is becoming more full tropical than subtropical.
I'm just listing our local reports here from our monitoring stations. It's the monthly gathering of information that I help volunteer to do.
Nothing else. I'm not applying it to the global scale.
My apologies then. I should know better than to jump straight on a post.
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Petrochemical growth globally through 2040? Not good.
The IEA has consistently over-estimated fossil fuel availability and under-estimated renewable energy growth.
In any case, the article you linked states that this estimate was based on the assumption of no further action (beyond current plans) being taken to address climate change or energy independence... in short, fairy-tale land. Every year we see more renewable energy deployment, but this IEA estimate assumes that will now immediately stop.
This is bad because modeling methane is key to understanding long term global climate change
No. While methane has very high global warming potential it quickly breaks down in the atmosphere... and thus has a significant short term impact. Long term it is largely irrelevant.
Modeling the effects of AGW decades out is, and always will be this side of true AI, largely a waste of time.
Observed results thus far have consistently fallen within the range projected by climate models decades ago. In short, your argument that climate models will never be accurate is more than odd in the face of the fact that they already have been.
And a lot of companies watched Google and decided that if a company that devoted to Green Energy says it's not worth the effort, they're not even going to try.
From the article you linked;
"We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise."We passed 350 ppm decades ago. We could stop all industrial CO2 emissions tomorrow and not get back to 350 ppm. In short... that is literally an impossible standard.
However, that doesn't mean renewable energy is not worthwhile. Global Warming isn't a binary issue with only two possible outcomes (e.g. less than 350 ppm or not). The more CO2 we put into the atmosphere the worse it will get. James Hansen feels that anything above 350 ppm is too damaging to be acceptable, and Google apparently said 'welp we cannot prevent that so we give up'... but there are whole realms of badness beyond 350 ppm. The more commonly accepted target is 450 ppm... but if we go over THAT it doesn't mean 'time to give up' either. It can always get WORSE.
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I can't argue the science of it. But I do know the Kyoto Protocol is dedicated to that impossible goal.
Um... no, it isn't.
The Kyoto Protocol established emission reduction targets for various countries (e.g. 8% reduction by 2012, 20% by 2020), but no overall maximum atmospheric concentration target.
That's why Google used it as their reference point for their work.
Actually, in the article you linked the Google engineers cited Hansen as the basis for their 350 ppm target.
I don't think they intended to do it, but a lot of the proponents for doing something about climate change created an unintended viewpoint among many making policy that it's an all-or-nothing scenario.
I'm more cynical. I suspect people looked for a pretense to not do anything and found one in the false narrative of, 'well global warming cannot be prevented so we might as well not do anything'.
Global warming is an easily solved problem. Indeed, so easy that we are now resolving it despite ourselves... because financial self-interest is driving ever greater deployment of wind and solar power. We could have fixed it before it got even as bad as it is now, but humans rarely show that kind of foresight en masse.
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Did Google not got Solar because it would make negligible difference to their own personal energy bill, or because it would make no difference for the world to go solar?
One is a very different conclusion to the other.
If you are a company with a very huge energy demand (eg Google) and you have a very small surface area to volume ratio (eg Google building), then putting solar panels up will actually cost you more money than you will save.
They could invest money on to a solar farm that supplied them with all the energy they needed, but again, cost benefit ratio will probably upset investors, who expect profit.
Google can sprout green alternatives all day, sadly as an individual company they have investors. Investment law and the litigation rate in America means even if they wanted to do what I suggested above, there's a chance they would lose out big time in some law case because an investor didn't make their annual expected returns.
Sad truth of the world is still big business doesn't care about environment enough to risk losing profit.
That will stay true until going green is profitable.
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Quark, the Australian government gave up on climate stuff for political and financial reasons.
Know what our greatest export is profit wise?
That's right.....fossil fuels!!
Know where large amounts of money that goes into the political party currently running the contry?
That's right.....fossil fuel companies!
Know who finances the majority of published nvironmentwl studies in Australia?
That's right.....fossil fuel companies.
In fact, it's so bad that our current government recently sacked a large amount of government employed scientists working on environmental change...apparently they were superfluous to need.
We have an inquest into government corruption going on right now into both major political parties. It's been shown to be amazingly wide spread and mostly due to party funding heavily influencing policy and research.
It started as a state inquest, but threatened to go federal....until the federal government stepped in a quashed it!?
I wonder why that happened?
I live in Queensland, where the previous state government ( who used to be directly aligned with the current federal government) where so dedicated to making sure fossil fuels stayed on the agenda, they gave permission to start dredging shipping lanes through the Great Barrier Reef. A world Heritage Listed habitat. Dredged so Adani mines could ship coal and oil more cost efficiently over seas to China and other countries.
That was despite two,major shipping incidents in the last ten years involving oil tankers and bulk transports that had major and long lasting impact on the already overfished and fragile marine ecosystem we have here.
Please do not use the Austrlian government as proof that alternate energy is not any good.
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In fact, their ultimate conclusion is that none of the current green technologies impact the world's growing CO2 levels no matter what we do with them
Again, that's not what the source you linked said.
Rather, they concluded that no current technology could get us back down to 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 levels. Which is true.
Not being able to stop CO2 levels from growing is a completely different thing, which they apparently weren't looking to attempt.
Basically, they concluded (correctly) that we cannot prevent global warming from being 'unacceptably bad' as defined by James Hansen (i.e. > 350 ppm CO2)... NOT that we cannot prevent it from continuing to get worse indefinitely.
There have been many studies showing that we CAN stop the "the world's growing CO2 levels" with existing green technologies.
Basically, Google's position as given in that link was the equivalent of saying that we can't prevent a new strain of influenza from killing at least 100 people (which <Noted Expert> says is unacceptable)... so we shouldn't bother developing an easily manufactured vaccine which will prevent it from killing millions.
Did Google not got Solar because it would make negligible difference to their own personal energy bill, or because it would make no difference for the world to go solar?
One is a very different conclusion to the other.
If you are a company with a very huge energy demand (eg Google) and you have a very small surface area to volume ratio (eg Google building), then putting solar panels up will actually cost you more money than you will save.
They could invest money on to a solar farm that supplied them with all the energy they needed, but again, cost benefit ratio will probably upset investors, who expect profit.
Google can sprout green alternatives all day, sadly as an individual company they have investors. Investment law and the litigation rate in America means even if they wanted to do what I suggested above, there's a chance they would lose out big time in some law case because an investor didn't make their annual expected returns.
Sad truth of the world is still big business doesn't care about environment enough to risk losing profit.
That will stay true until going green is profitable.
Fiduciary responcibility isn't an absolute, and individual investors don't get to challenge it. Charitable gifts, for example, extend good-will and increase the value of a brand and also grease wheels depending on the charity. Much the dames reasons can be justified to make any decision. As long as you can claim to get <something, even marginal and intangible> then there is no real concern over a fiduciary responcibility lawsuit.
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Fiduciary responcibility isn't an absolute, and individual investors don't get to challenge it. Charitable gifts, for example, extend good-will and increase the value of a brand and also grease wheels depending on the charity. Much the dames reasons can be justified to make any decision. As long as you can claim to get <something, even marginal and intangible> then there is no real concern over a fiduciary responcibility lawsuit.Did Google not got Solar because it would make negligible difference to their own personal energy bill, or because it would make no difference for the world to go solar?
One is a very different conclusion to the other.
If you are a company with a very huge energy demand (eg Google) and you have a very small surface area to volume ratio (eg Google building), then putting solar panels up will actually cost you more money than you will save.
They could invest money on to a solar farm that supplied them with all the energy they needed, but again, cost benefit ratio will probably upset investors, who expect profit.
Google can sprout green alternatives all day, sadly as an individual company they have investors. Investment law and the litigation rate in America means even if they wanted to do what I suggested above, there's a chance they would lose out big time in some law case because an investor didn't make their annual expected returns.
Sad truth of the world is still big business doesn't care about environment enough to risk losing profit.
That will stay true until going green is profitable.
Thanks BigD, I wasn't completely sure of the mechanisms behind those forms of law.