For-Profit Utility See Renewable Energy as Their Ruin

[slimmouse]

Im thinking that this might be my last post on here for a while. The link Im about to offer has made me understand that there are more important things to worry about.

I offer no claims whatsoever on the science behind most of this. I want to know the real truth about it all as much as anyone else. To me however I feel its more intuitively right where we may be heading climate wise. I recently wrote that in my part of the world its been extremely cold at night this year.

I think what made the case more compelling for me however was the political commentary that they also relate to. It was hard for me to disagree with too much of that.

I would politely request all RI members who are concerned about Climate change, and anyone else for that matter, to find an hour to watch this. Please try and be patient with it. Feel free to disagree or scream liar at any of the claims he makes, but try to hear him out fully.

Some of the scenarios painted here wont exactly leave anyone feeling warm and cosy in any kind of sense.

Its time for me at least to get back to nature more.

I thought about making this a thread of its own, but I felt it appropriate to post this here, as some kind of reply to Rorys latest post.

Especially since the guest has his own major jab at renewable energy Technologies.

quite possibly is worth a thread of its own,so if anyone chooses to do that, then be my guest.

Preamble.....followed by link....

Robert Felix, a former architect, became interested in the ice-age cycle back in 1991. He spent the next eight and a half years, full-time, researching and writing about the coming ice age. Since then he has been dedicated to speaking about this research. Robert is the author of Not by Fire But By Ice and Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps. In the first hour, we discuss solar cycles and how they coordinate with ice ages and collapses of civilizations. Felix explains why he is convinced that the next ice age has already begun. Now even mainstream scientists are warning that the sun has "gone to sleep." We'll discuss the last Maunder Minimum in the 1600's, which was responsible for the Little Ice Age and lasted for 70 years. We are at a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions. Robert explains what an ice age would entail

Link; http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/20 ... 140203.php

[Rory]

That website is a load of bollocks.
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/05/10/junk-science/

Iceagenow.com was constructed by a man called Robert W. Felix to promote his self-published book about “the coming ice age”. It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the “ice age cycle”; and that “underwater volcanic activity – not human activity – is heating the seas”.

Is Felix a climatologist, a vulcanologist, or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a “former architect”.(6) His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there indeed was all the material Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures – or something resembling the figures – he quoted. “Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich.”(7) The source, which Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as “the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology”.

21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon Larouche. Lyndon Larouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations.(8) He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate,(9) that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent,(10) that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers,(11) and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.(12)

Slim, Wtf, dude? This isn't a reply - youve just posted the first conspirabollocks anticlimate change stuff you came across, in reply to a thread about renewable energy.

Where is the rigor? It took me 30 seconds to find out that the weblink you posted is constructed from pure shite. I'm all for intuitive thinking, but that which you posted is just lazy.

[Rory]

I appreciate that you are engaging on this topic but why post such easilly discredited nonsense - it doesnt strengthen your case for intuition.

Just do a forum search for Lyndon Larouche and see what comes up - he's a colorful character!

Also, anecdotal experience is great for building a picture about how you personally feel, but generally awful for describing the world around you. So, that you perceive that it's getting colder near you tells you that, and that alone - it says nothing about climate, whatsoever

[brainpanhandler]

That website is a load of bollocks.
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/05/10/junk-science/

Iceagenow.com was constructed by a man called Robert W. Felix to promote his self-published book about “the coming ice age”. It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the “ice age cycle”; and that “underwater volcanic activity – not human activity – is heating the seas”.

Is Felix a climatologist, a vulcanologist, or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a “former architect”.(6) His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there indeed was all the material Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures – or something resembling the figures – he quoted. “Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich.”(7) The source, which Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as “the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology”.

21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon Larouche. Lyndon Larouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations.(8) He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate,(9) that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent,(10) that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers,(11) and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.(12)

Slim, Wtf, dude? This isn't a reply - youve just posted the first conspirabollocks anticlimate change stuff you came across, in reply to a thread about renewable energy.

Where is the rigor? It took me 30 seconds to find out that the weblink you posted is constructed from pure shite. I'm all for intuitive thinking, but that which you posted is just lazy.

It's amazing isn't it? The guy has been reading here for 9 years and hasn't seemed to advance one iota. He posts this sort of crap all the time. NaturalNews would be another example. You would think that just by chance alone he would at least occasionally post or link to something at least somewhat credible. Almost makes you begin to wonder. No one can be that stupid. I mean for someone incessantly carrying on about the need for the free flow of uncensored information he seems to limit himself to only the most tainted, discredible sources of it. Very open minded of him.

Oh well. He's just one of our crosses to bear.

[seemslikeadream]

@bph

have you ever read anything Jeff wrote?

you'd probably lobby for Jeff to be banned from his own board


crosses are in the eye of the beholder


this ain't your...AD and solace's private blog...get over yourself

what do you think of UFOs?

can we low lifes discuss UFOs here?

demonic possession ...can we talk about that here? Please tell us all your list of approved topics so we stay within your guidelines

elfs posts Alex Jones videos...do you want him banned too?

can't post Red Ice?

what else can't we post

[brainpanhandler]

@bph

have you ever read anything Jeff wrote?

you'd probably lobby for Jeff to be banned from his own board

You're comparing Jeff to Slim?

crosses are in the eye of the beholder

1 JUDGE not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam cross that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam cross is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam cross out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
—Matthew 7:1-5 KJV

this ain't your...AD and solace's private blog...

Especially since it's a message board.

---------------------

[seemslikeadream]

couldn't tell you guys think the place belongs to you


you're the one doing the judging here


no I was not comparing Jeff to slim

I was reminding you of the openness of Jeff to bring many things to the table

[Rory]

It's amazing isn't it? The guy has been reading here for 9 years and hasn't seemed to advance one iota. He posts this sort of crap all the time. NaturalNews would be another example. You would think that just by chance alone he would at least occasionally post or link to something at least somewhat credible. Almost makes you begin to wonder. No one can be that stupid. I mean for someone incessantly carrying on about the need for the free flow of uncensored information he seems to limit himself to only the most tainted, discredible sources of it. Very open minded of him.

Oh well. He's just one of our crosses to bear.

I'm intrigued at how the likes of Heartlands, who IceageBlog has sponsored their disinfo convention, get a by ball from left leaning 'Intuitive' researchers. Organized, rightwing fucks like them and Larouche should be questioned as reliable sources but instead, they become reliable so long as they hit the right note in the confirmation bias vibrationary field of the researcher. Intuition tells me that there is a conspiracy and it isn't coming from the people (environmentalists/climate scientists) they are trying to discredit

http://www.desmogblog.com/iceagenow

[seemslikeadream]

is there anything that I posted in this thread that pisses you off?

or are you two just using it to slam someone else?

Start your own fucking thread if that's what you want to do

[seemslikeadream]

@bph

have you ever read anything Jeff wrote?

you'd probably lobby for Jeff to be banned from his own board

You're comparing Jeff to Slim?

crosses are in the eye of the beholder

1 JUDGE not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam cross that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam cross is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam cross out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
—Matthew 7:1-5 KJV

this ain't your...AD and solace's private blog...

Especially since it's a message board.

---------------------

Your'e the fucking one judging people here all the time QUIT BEING A HYPOCRITE ...maybe you should take your own advice

yea this is a message board YOU apparently need reminding of that....cause you treat it like your own personal space

you don't get to tell people what they can post about

you AD and solace are NOT going to run me off of here

[brainpanhandler]

is there anything that I posted in this thread that pisses you off?

Not that I'm aware of. I thought the op was worthwhile.

You might be interested in:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... ies-rights

[Luther Blissett]

So a friend of mine, who runs a renewable energy company, were forced to close their doors last Thursday. He had to lay his entire staff off on Friday.

The cost of wholesale renewable energy had gone up 500% during the arctic vortex in the Northeast. They were basically activist-run and did not have very deep pockets. A few other renewable energy dealers also had to close within the last week or so. For-profit utilities needn't see renewable energy as their ruin.

I was involved in a mentorship program to deblight some vacant lots last summer, both as an organizer and mentor, and this wind company partnered with us and were going to give two large stipends to implement the winning students' work. However, bureaucratic pressure kept delaying the implementation and now those lots will probably never get fixed up.

He stresses that this does not say anything about the economic or practical feasibility of renewable energy, but I don't know what to believe. It would seem to me that attempting to play a very dirty game in a clean way leaves one excessively exposed to danger.

Cold and unhedged: How the polar vortex drove Clean Currents out of business:
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/ne ... h&page=all

Bitter cold sends retail electric suppliers into default on payments:
http://www.snl.com/InteractiveX/Article ... 2782-11309

PJM to Bill Members for $2 Million in Retailers’ Defaults:
http://www.rtoinsider.com/pjm-pony-up-1 ... 0-40981641

[Rory]

In a similar theme, water utilities may need to charge more to offset losses in revenue due to increased water conservation. It's an interesting one - I think that municipal water supply is generally under-priced and people are wasteful as a consequence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/te ... earth&_r=0

The drought-stricken city of Wichita Falls could soon give its residents more bad news.

Even though the 100,000 residents of this northwest Texas city have substantially cut their water use, their dry lawns may no longer continue to save them money on their water bills. Instead, they will be asked to pay more; the city lost $4.5 million in water sales last year because of the conservation efforts.

“It’s tough to tell the consumer that ‘Yeah, well, you guys did a great job out there conserving water, but lo and behold, we got hurt financially, so we’ve got to raise your rates,’ ” the assistant city manager, Jim Dockery, said.

Wichita Falls, whose total rainfall over the last three years was 33 inches below normal, is not alone in its water conservation conundrum. Several Texas cities have collectively lost tens of millions of dollars by restricting outdoor water use, which has been a main source of revenue. At the same time, most of their expenses, like paying off debt and infrastructure maintenance, have increased, forcing utilities to raise rates for everyone, regardless of their water use.

The losses have prompted credit ratings agencies to look closer at the finances of public utilities in Texas. One agency, Fitch, downgraded some of Fort Worth’s water and sewer debt last year, and last week the firm downgraded the debt of the city’s wholesale water supplier. Fort Worth lost $11 million last year because of water conservation.

“This business is extremely weather-dependent,” said Mary Gugliuzza, the Fort Worth water utility’s spokeswoman. Rainy summers can also hurt a city’s bottom line because residents do not need to water their lawns as much.

Fort Worth’s goal, like that of many other cities in Texas, is to change its rate structure to avoid such ups and downs. Today, about 17 percent of the utility’s revenue comes from fixed monthly charges that all water customers pay regardless of how much they use; by 2018, Ms. Gugliuzza said, 25 percent of its revenue will come from such charges. Mr. Dockery said Wichita Falls is considering a similar transition.

Still, the changes will be hard to swallow politically. Consumers have underpaid for water for decades, said Sharlene Leurig, a program director at Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy group with which many Texas cities have consulted on water rate structures.

“People truly don’t understand that the cost of having reliable water is not the cost of the water itself,” Ms. Leurig said. “It’s the cost of all the infrastructure you have to put in place to provide that water reliably and safely.”

Wichita Falls is spending about a million dollars on a pipeline that will deliver treated wastewater to a large manufacturing company, and the city will lose an additional $100,000 a year by selling the reused water at a discount.

“We’re paying to save water, is what we’re doing,” Mr. Dockery said. He added that the city has had to defer important maintenance projects because of the lost revenue.

Cities across Texas hope that utility revenues will bounce back once the rain returns. But even if the drought lifts, officials know that water users’ habits have changed. They will never be the water-guzzlers they might have once been.

While that is good news for conservationists, the phenomenon that credit ratings agencies call a “drought shadow” will result in higher costs for all users, even the most water-conscious.

The US has infrastructure crisis looming on the horizon. People think cheap electricity and water are an american right without understanding the externalities that go into balancing out that low consumer cost equation. Distribution systems for both need national and local overhaul and prices have to go up to just keep the machines breathing.

[Ben D]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304703804579379230641329484?

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project

At California's Ivanpah Plant, Mirrors Produce Heat and Electricity—And Kill Wildlife


Temperatures around the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System's towers can hit 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Zuma Press

A giant solar-power project officially opening this week in the California desert is the first of its kind, and may be among the last, in part because of growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is scheduled to speak Thursday at an opening ceremony for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, which received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee.

The $2.2 billion solar farm, which spans over five square miles of federal land southwest of Las Vegas, includes three towers as tall as 40-story buildings. Nearly 350,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect sunlight onto boilers atop the towers, creating steam that drives power generators.

The owners of the project— NRG Energy Inc., NRG +2.91% Google Inc. GOOG +1.11% and BrightSource Energy Inc., the company that developed the "tower power" solar technology—call the plant a major feat of engineering that can light up about 140,000 homes a year.

Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require.

That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.

New utility-scale projects began operating at a record rate in the fourth quarter of 2013, adding 1,141 megawatts of capacity, according to research firm SNL Energy. But only a handful of new projects were announced, totaling 13 megawatts.

BrightSource wants to build a second tower-based solar farm in California's Riverside County, east of Palm Springs. But the state Energy Commission in December proposed that the company instead use more conventional technologies, such as solar panels or mirrored troughs.

One reason: the BrightSource system appears to be scorching birds that fly through the intense heat surrounding the towers, which can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The company, which is based in Oakland, Calif., reported finding dozens of dead birds at the Ivanpah plant over the past several months, while workers were testing the plant before it started operating in December. Some of the dead birds appeared to have singed or burned feathers, according to federal biologists and documents filed with the state Energy Commission.

[Rory]

Solar kills birds? That's a shame. better keep to known, environmentally safe energy production then

Like your friends in the oil industry - they just love birds



And your coal miner chums - they help the bird habitats



And the Frakking helps those cute, feathered friends get clean tasty water



Maybe nuclear is the answer when these all eventually stop working their healthy magic



Anything but that nasty, bird killing Solar, eh?