Harvard Asks 31 FakeNews Papers be Retracted from Journals

[_Themis]

No, but that's what you're doing right now. It's not "anti" to merely point out the truth, that your results have a low confidence.

Sorry but own your straw-man. You made the claim people thought scientists never lie and that academic journals were thought to be holy. You never showed any evidence of low confidence of anything. Why not open your mind to wanting the truth more then wanting your beliefs to be true?

by the way, remember my nuclear power arguments, that you all ridiculed? Seems more than a few people agree with me.

I don't believe I was part of those discussions, but interesting your extreme bias lumps everyone into the same group.

[_Gunnar]

Urrrrr so anti, water dog

The report emphasizes “fast deployment of renewables like solar and wind” and largely ignores the essential role nuclear energy must play in any decarbonization effort.

two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land. How cartoonish? Consider: meeting America’s current demand for electricity alone—not including gasoline or jet fuel, or the natural gas required for things like space heating and fertilizer production—would require covering a territory twice the size of California with wind turbines.

https://www.city-journal.org/wind-power ... the-answer

I must be a prophet. I mean I say it, days later people write articles about it. Turns out I was right, I don't need to read RI's thousand page report to tell you how dumb and politicized it is. But power engineering isn't economics, or something.

Your argument is a strawman argument because no one is claiming that wind power is the only renewable energy source available to us. You seem to be trying to argue that because no single renewable energy strategy can provide 100% of our energy needs, we are justified in rejecting any and all efforts to supply our needs from renewable or carbon neutral sources. It will take a combination of renewable energy strategies to successfully wean us from heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

12 Countries Leading the Way in Renewable Energy

You’ll be glad to know there’s hope for the planet yet. Despite a lack of political will in some countries, the move to renewable energy is pretty much inevitable and some scientists think it’s going to come sooner rather than later.

A recent study by Stanford University researchers predicted that the world could be powered entirely by renewable energy in just 20 to 40 years from now. And given that we already have the technology, it’s not that hard to imagine.

Almost 50 countries that would be adversely affected by climate change have agreed to make their energy production 100% renewable by the year 2050 and countries all over the world are actively embracing solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

Here we look at 12 countries in particular who are leading the way in the switch to renewable energy.

Iceland

Iceland generates the most clean electricity per person on earth, with almost 100% of its energy coming from renewable sources that make the most of its unique landscape. It now derives all of its energy for electricity and home heating from geothermal and hydroelectric power plants. Its renewable power plants like the geothermal plant at Blue Lagoon even draw significant amounts of tourists every year!

Sweden

Sweden has always had pretty good environmental credentials and in 2015, they threw down the gauntlet with an ambitious goal: eliminating fossil fuel usage within its borders. They also challenged the rest of the world to a race to become 100% renewable. They’ve increased their own investment in solar power, wind power, energy storage, smart grids, and clean transport.

Costa Rica

Because of its small size (just 4.9 million people) and unique geography (67 volcanoes), Costa Rica is able to meet a large part of its energy needs from hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, and wind sources. The country aims to be completely carbon-neutral by the year 2021 and has already achieved some impressive results, running on 100% renewable energy for more than two months twice in the last two years.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is another Central American country where renewable energy is growing in importance. Like Costa Rica, they have a number of volcanoes, making geothermal energy production viable and thanks to government investment in wind, solar, and geothermal energy, their aim of being 90% renewables-powered by the year 2020 appears to be an achievable goal.

United Kingdom

The UK is a windy place and wind power is growing in importance. Using a combination of grid-connected wind farms and standalone turbines, the United Kingdom now generates more electricity from wind farms than from coal power plants. Some days, Scotland is able to produce enough wind power to supply over 100% of Scottish households. Neighbouring Ireland also continues to set new records, with enough energy to power more than 1.26 million homes being created on just one windy day in 2015.

Germany

For a cloudy country, Germany looks set for a bright future with solar energy. Their renewable energy output including solar has increased more than eightfold since 1990. In 2015, they set a record for meeting up to 78% of the country’s electricity demand with renewables on one highly productive day.

Uruguay

Uruguay is a shining example of how to do it right. Thanks to a supportive regulatory environment and a strong partnership between the public and private sector, the country has invested heavily in wind and solar power, without using subsidies or increasing consumer costs. And as a result, it now boasts a national energy supply that’s 95% renewables-powered, achieved in less than 10 years.

Denmark

Denmark aims to be 100% fossil-fuel-free by 2050 and it plans to use wind power to achieve that goal. They already set a world record in 2014, producing almost 40% of their overall electricity needs from wind power and the latest figures put them firmly on track to meet their first goal of obtaining 50% of their electricity from renewables by the year 2020.

China

They may be the world’s largest polluter, but China is also the world’s biggest investor in renewable energy, with huge investment levels both at home and overseas. China now owns: five of the world’s six largest solar-module manufacturing firms; the largest wind-turbine manufacturer; the world’s largest lithium ion manufacturer; and the world’s largest electricity utility. China is fully committed to reducing fossil fuel consumption and with its heavily polluted cities has every incentive for doing so.

Morocco

Morocco is a country with an abundance of sunshine (up to 350 days a year), so it has wisely decided to invest heavily in solar powered energy production. The first phase of the world’s biggest concentrated solar plant recently opened in Morocco and in combination with their wind and hydro production facilities, is predicted to produce enough energy for more than one million Moroccan households by 2018.

USA

The United States of America has one of the world’s largest installed solar PV capacities and an installed wind energy capacity second only to China. But it is also one of the world’s biggest energy consumers, which tends to cancel out much of its renewable capacity. Nevertheless, if more attention was paid to renewables over fossil fuels, it has been estimated that the U.S. could reduce its emissions by almost 80% in only 15 years, without impacting on consumer electricity costs.

Kenya

In the past, Kenya has been forced to import electricity from neighbouring countries, but they are working hard to reverse this by investing heavily in geothermal energy production, which accounted for more than half their energy mix in 2015. They also have Africa’s largest wind farm, providing another 20% of their installed electricity generating capacity.

The article goes on to describe other possibilities that can be and already are beginning to be exploited, like tidal power and wave power. There is really no excuse for the USA not being in the forefront in developing all of these possibilities. If the moron-in-chief known as Donald J. Trump were not in power, we probably would be!

[Guest]

Be more specific, what academic journals?

Go watch the podcast yourself.

Er, no thanks. I don't have the time to waste. If you can't actually refer us to things we can check from the original publication, citing a podcast is worth no more than saying 'I heard this guy in a bar saying ...'.

When was the last time you read anything in a serious journal dealing with hard science?



[Edited to fix quotes]

[Guest]

Again, the guys pounding on this are fighting a deliberate mischaracterization of science. Science does not claim to be perfect or infallible, it leaves those claims to religion. There are hiccups in the process. But, it has mechanisms for correcting the false starts, and deliberate falsification.

[_Water Dog]

The article goes on to describe other possibilities that can be and already are beginning to be exploited, like tidal power and wave power. There is really no excuse for the USA not being in the forefront in developing all of these possibilities. If the moron-in-chief known as Donald J. Trump were not in power, we probably would be!

The USA is on the forefront of developing these possibilities, and for that very reason it has determined them unworthy in their present state of development.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm watching that joe rogan podcast now. Someone should yank WD's leash.

- Doc

[_Gunnar]

The article goes on to describe other possibilities that can be and already are beginning to be exploited, like tidal power and wave power. There is really no excuse for the USA not being in the forefront in developing all of these possibilities. If the moron-in-chief known as Donald J. Trump were not in power, we probably would be!

The USA is on the forefront of developing these possibilities, and for that very reason it has determined them unworthy in their present state of
development.

No! Trump and his pathologically dishonest, self-serving corporate donors have determined that, despite all evidence to the contrary! The nations referred to in the linked to article (and numerous and more recent other articles documenting the same thing) are already demonstrating conclusively that converting to renewable and/or carbon neutral energy sources is eminently doable, and already progressing at a much faster pace in the listed countries than even some of the most optimistic predictions of just a few years ago. Denying that, at this point, is as ignorant as denying that the world is round and every bit as stupid as insisting that it is midnight while staring directly at the sun at high noon on a cloudless, midsummer day!

[_Water Dog]

No! Trump and his pathologically dishonest, self-serving corporate donors have determined that, despite all evidence to the contrary! The nations referred to in the linked to article (and numerous and more recent other articles documenting the same thing) are already demonstrating conclusively that converting to renewable and/or carbon neutral energy sources is eminently doable, and already progressing at a much faster pace in the listed countries than even some of the most optimistic predictions of just a few years ago. Denying that, at this point, is as ignorant as denying that the world is round and every bit as stupid as insisting that it is midnight while staring directly at the sun at high noon on a cloudless, midsummer day!

Gunnar, I don't know how to help you. All I can say is that my living crosses heavily into this space. My opinions are not informed by anything I read online but by my first hand knowledge. I have several times now delved into the specifics of this debate. Nobody has responded to that material. I can only assume the reason being that people sense maybe I actually know what I'm talking about, so better to avoid getting their asses handed to them. Quite literally, nobody who is a professional in the actual energy industry agrees with any of the crap you're parroting. You can dredge up whatever lefty internet article you like, it won't change the fact. Renewables can't sustain our economy. They are physically incapable of it in their present form. Period. If carbon is the enemy, there is only one way to reduce it without inciting armageddon, and that's nuclear. You can continue to kick against the pricks, and year after damned year, the CO2 levels will go up and up and up. This is totally separate from whether global warming is a thing or not. Howl at the moon, do whatever you gotta do. If you actually care about carbon, if it's not just a political scam, you have to embrace nuclear. Inability to embrace it proves you're emotional and ignorant. And if you're emotional, or ignorant, your opinions about global warming are most likely similarly based on emotion and ignorance, which is justification to ignore them.

[Guest]

Developing countries and the renewable energy revolution

By Prof. John A. Mathews
Professor of Strategy at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, Australia and author of Greening of Capitalism


There was a time when arguments about development and energy were seen as different discourses. They came together in the familiar call for poor people in developing countries to have access to electricity. As for energy needed for industrialisation, fossil fuels – with all their burdens on the balance of payments and geopolitical entanglements – were tapped to fill the need.

To be sure, the Western world as it industrialised over the past 200 years enjoyed enormous benefits from fossil fuels. The transition to a carbon-based economy liberated economies from age-old Malthusian constraints. For a group of select countries representing a small slice of the global population, burning fossil fuels enabled an era of explosive growth, ushering in dramatic improvements in productivity, income, wealth and living standards.

As the rest of the world now claims the right to share in those same benefits, they confront severe barriers as they seek to industrialise using fossil fuels. China, however, shows an alternative way forward. India is following fast – and the way is open to other industrialising countries to emulate them.

These countries are approaching renewables as part of the industrialisation process itself because they are products of manufacturing. Renewables are clean. They free a country from balance of payments burdens. They generate employment. They enhance energy security. And they respond to the economic imperative facing industrialising giants like China, India and others.

By taking this approach, China, for one, has grown in just the past decade to become a renewables superpower – dwarfing all industrialised countries in its levels of renewables. China had installed 378 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2014 to tap water, wind and sun to generate power. Under China’s 13th Five Year Plan, the country aims to have no less than 750 GW of renewables capacity available – more than all the countries of the OECD combined.

This offers a new way of framing industrial development strategies. Countries with abundant renewable resources can use renewables technologies as a means of accelerating their industrial development. They can pursue late-comer strategies, like the East Asian countries before them, and apply them to technologies, like wind turbines and solar panels, to build renewable energy systems that generate clean power, clear the skies, strengthen energy security and resolve balance of payments problems.

The economic arguments against renewable energy sources – that they are expensive, intermittent or insufficiently concentrated – are rebutted easily. While opponents to renewables are large in number, what often motivates their interest is preserving the status quo of fossil fuels and nuclear energy rather than worries of wind turbines or solar farms blotting the landscape.

Those wishing to halt the expansion of renewables are unlikely to triumph over simple economics. A tax on carbon emissions or subsidies for clean energy are not driving the renewable energy revolution. That revolution results from reductions in the cost of manufacturing that will soon make it more cost-effective to generate power from water, wind and the sun than coal.

Unlike mining, drilling or extraction, manufacturers benefit from learning curves that make production increasingly efficient and cheaper. Investments in renewable energy drive down the cost of their production, expanding the market for their adoption and making further investment more attractive. These mechanisms drove down the cost of solar photovoltaic energy by 80% and reduced the cost of land-based wind power by 60% from 2009 to 2014, according to Lazard’s Power, Energy & Infrastructure Group.

Countries can build their way to energy security by investing in the industrial capacity needed to manufacture wind turbines, solar cells and other sources of renewable energy at scale. As China and India throw their economic weight into the renewables industrial revolution, they are triggering a global chain reaction that could benefit – and be a role model for – many more developing countries.

[Guest]

No! Trump and his pathologically dishonest, self-serving corporate donors have determined that, despite all evidence to the contrary! The nations referred to in the linked to article (and numerous and more recent other articles documenting the same thing) are already demonstrating conclusively that converting to renewable and/or carbon neutral energy sources is eminently doable, and already progressing at a much faster pace in the listed countries than even some of the most optimistic predictions of just a few years ago. Denying that, at this point, is as ignorant as denying that the world is round and every bit as stupid as insisting that it is midnight while staring directly at the sun at high noon on a cloudless, midsummer day!

Gunnar, I don't know how to help you. All I can say is that my living crosses heavily into this space. My opinions are not informed by anything I read online but by my first hand knowledge. I have several times now delved into the specifics of this debate. Nobody has responded to that material. I can only assume the reason being that people sense maybe I actually know what I'm talking about, so better to avoid getting their asses handed to them. Quite literally, nobody who is a professional in the actual energy industry agrees with any of the crap you're parroting. You can dredge up whatever lefty internet article you like, it won't change the fact. Renewables can't sustain our economy. They are physically incapable of it in their present form. Period. If carbon is the enemy, there is only one way to reduce it without inciting armageddon, and that's nuclear. You can continue to kick against the pricks, and year after damned year, the CO2 levels will go up and up and up. This is totally separate from whether global warming is a thing or not. Howl at the moon, do whatever you gotta do. If you actually care about carbon, if it's not just a political scam, you have to embrace nuclear. Inability to embrace it proves you're emotional and ignorant. And if you're emotional, or ignorant, your opinions about global warming are most likely similarly based on emotion and ignorance, which is justification to ignore them.

I am not adamantly opposed to nuclear power--especially if produced by next generation thorium 233 based power plants that are much more efficient, safer to operate and potentially less expensive to build and operate than the vast majority of currently extant, conventional nuclear power plants. I also recognize that even the worst of today's existing nuclear power plants introduce no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and that a single, large coal fired power plant emits more environmental pollution than all the world's existing nuclear power plants combined. I don't reject the possibility that newer, better designed nuclear powerplants can and perhaps ought to play at least an interim role in creating a carbon neutral economy. I am not convinced, however, that achieving a carbon neutral economy is impossible without nuclear power. Like it or not, some nations are already close to achieving that, and a few seem to have already achieved it.

I strongly suspect that what will eventually limit the popularity of nuclear power is not so much its inherent (and often exaggerated) safety concerns, but that as costs of renewable energy continue to be driven downward, it will eventually be found that nuclear power may no longer be economically competitive.