You are right about the last graphs. But from what I understand it is not so simple to get a model to hind-cast the past as there are a ton of observational constraints (seasonal cycle, ocean currents, etc.). The main reason hindcasts are going to look more accurate is that total forcing is known. Total forcing has been below the mean model estimate, which makes models look somewhat worse. (The first graph I posted above adjusts for this difference.)

That's not to say there isn't some wiggle room, and I'm sure the amount depends on the particular model.

Drove up to Porter Ranch couple days ago and I think the gas is gone. People are looking for lawsuits now. But, on the way back noticed Valley was full of smog, I have not seen smog this thick since the early 1980s.

We use about 150 billion gallons of gas a year. If you add 10c to the price of gas you get $15 billion a year. You could put 750,000 electric cars on the road with a $20,000 credit with 200 mile range. So even a penny a gallon in carbon tax could give a $20,000 credit for 75,000 cars a year. If only 7500 cars are sold, then the credit rises to $200,000. If 150,000 cars are sold the credit drops to $10,000.

Then you should end the 30% credit on solar systems, and give people a $10,000 credit if they install a system larger than 10 KW and another $10,000 over 20 KW. That will promote larger systems and more efficient panels. You get $.10 a kilowatt hour for excess power with it used for paying you connection fee, taxes, and $1000 bank, and all left over donated to the city. Thus, most people would get a zero bill and the utility gets power for free. For example a 20 KW system might generate 3000 kwh a month. You might use 1000 kwh. So you have 2000 kwh or $200. Your connection fees might be $20 a month, taxes $20 a month. Thus $160 goes to your bank or city after your bank is filled. Your bill is zero. You are happy the utility is happy. You can start moving your appliances to all-electric and get an electric car. Someday, Los Angeles might actually produce more power than it consumes.

The costs of finding a client, inverters, wiring, and permitting are similar between a 3 kw system and a 20 kw system. Panels will drop to about $.50 a kwh.

Only a tiny percent of homes in the LA area could fit a 10kw system.

My experience in modelling was never with systems as complex as climate so I don't know how easy it is but it is never going to be hard when there are enough black box elements left. The models and their predictive values is what interests me the most because I considered the question about climate change itself settled a long time ago. We should do more to stop climate change but how much more is a question that needs an good understanding off current models. So far they haven't been great in their longterm predictions partly because they get changed whenever they start to diverge from newly measured data. Which makes sense but it makes most discussions between people that want to do nothing/little and those that want to do more base their arguments on different models/data.

I'm not against "renewables" or for fossil fuel. I think they should end subsidies ( for fossil fuels) and let the best man win so to speak. I think (and history proves) that fossil fuels/ cheap, reliable energy is the most important thing in human evolution.

To ban one or the other is insane. Especially with improvement of human life we've seen over the past decade.

Cheap energy getting us where we are now doesn't mean we should just blindly continue to use coal for our energy just because it is cheap. Australia would love it but burning all the coal that can be mined cheaply is definitely not going to end well.

I smelled the gas today driving through Porter Ranch.

Obama EPA rules for power plant emissions stayed by the Supreme Court pending hearing of the appeals case.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...power-20160211


The solar laws in Florida are insanely corrupt wtf!?

Yeah. Nevada is even more ****ed. They stopped letting homeowners get credit for solar they put back in the grid (net metering) and basically the entire residential solar industry in Nevada pulled out.

There are some places where there is support for solar, but only when the utilities own it.

On a semi-tangent, you know who some of the early players were in solar panels?

ARCO, Shell and BP.

Arizona is pretty bad too.

SolarCity stock tanked bad yesterday and a big reason is because they aren't operating in NV right now. Sun belt obviously the best place for that stuff.

I actually think this will be a somewhat hot topic when the primaries go there.

NV Energy owned by Berkshire too. Buffett same as the rest of em...

Since I'm feeling the Bern, I just want to say that the utilities are often constrained with fiduciary responsibilities the same as any company. That's great, but there need to be checks and balances and only the government is going to really protect the environment and people need to be vigilant of course.

They tried to kill net metering in California. They tried to add exorbitant fees. At one point there was basically no residential work for 6 months because of a rule change. But, the electorate in Cali checked and balanced.

So what are all the ways they have been stopping solar?

Even just a few years ago a problem with rebates would kill solar. In SoCal there are several municipal utilities along with SoCal Edison. They pretty much all had sometime where funding for rebates dried up. Now solar is cheap enough that a rebate (in addition to the tax credit) is unnecessary and most of the utilities, including Edison, don't have one anymore. The tax credit ending probably wouldn't kill solar anymore either.

Net-metering is the biggest issue for residential solar. If you produce more power than you are using at a given moment, like during the day when you are gone, your meter spins backwards. It functions as a credit to your account for that energy and when you use more later it spins forward. You are billed on the net. Essentially (at least the way the utilities see it) this is them buying power from you at retail prices. (note: in general you are supplying power when they need it the most and using it when they have excess, so it's good for them).

So, they want to put you on a program where they sell to you at retail and instead of crediting you for energy, they buy from you at a much lower price if at all.

The other thing is a lot of utilities have added large monthly fees for solar. I think Florida was looking for something like $50/mo just to have solar. For someone with a giant house and a $700/mo electric bill, that might not kill the deal, but for a lot of customers, that's a big part of their electric bill.

Some are just kind of slow. For a while it could take like 6mo+ just to get permission to turn your system on from Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

At one point, a long time ago, LADWP was trying to make it so you had to use their approved union installers.

Some states like Nevada have a ton of utility solar, but are killing customer owned solar. It still works for the environment of course.

Would utilities stop hating net metering so much if they could just credit the customer whatever the price is on the spot market rather than full retail? Or do they just hate it because it enables customers to move to solar in lieu of their product?

Well, they just want to make as much money as they can. I don't mean that negatively. They are in the business of selling electrical energy/power and net-metering just cuts sales.

There are a lot of variations of what utilities even in just my area have proposed and offered at different times, but yes. I think they would be happy to pay wholesale.

Home depot would love it too if when I returned something they only gave me back the wholesale price. But, they don't. They aren't a hardware monopoly located on easements established by the government for a public good though. They have competition making them accept returns at full price and the utilities have government regulation.

They hate it because it forces them to buy electricity at retail prices and forces them to upgrade and maintain the grid to receive power from rooftop solar installations.

NV Energy's proposed eventual price of ~3c per KWh is by the way right about spot market so your instinct is spot on.

Of course exactly what the utilities say and want is correct.

http://www.seia.org/research-resourc...ping-study-two

It's pretty complicated. At some levels residential solar reduces costs for utilities. (that doesn't mean it doesn't lower revenue)

You think the utility pays for all the electrical lines? You think it all comes out of rates?

When you build you pay for the utility lines. The guy two doors down from me built the first house in the neighborhood and he put the poles in himself and ran the wires. They do maintenance, but builders and developers pay for a lot of the construction. There's talk of running power underground in my neighborhood now and for that Edison wants between $20k-$80k per house.

Gas leak in SoCal stopped.

Who said we should blindly burn it? Why is it definitely not going to end well, do you have any evidence of this? Imagine if 100 years ago people just stopped burning coal. Do you think the family in India that now has a refrigerator for the first time shouldn't be able to have one
Because it runs off coal power?

We are not living 100 years ago and you either completely deny climate change or have no idea how much brown coal there is that can be mined really cheaply but is really bad for the environment. So just going for the cheapest energy source is stupid and subsidies on green energy or penalties on polluting energy are needed.

Coal emits less pollution today then 100 years ago thanks to technology, is there a reason you think it won't continue to improve? I'm not going to deny "climate change", I'm naturally skeptic of anything that people say they do or don't believe in especially when there are so many religious like zealouts.

Burning the cheapest most reliable energy source isn't stupid because it improves and extends people lives. Subsidies for 'green" energy sources is stupid and a horrible waste of resouses. I'm fine with penalties on over polluters.

Coal still emits the same amount of carbon dioxide even in the most modern energy plant so from a climate change point of view there is no improvement. On top of that even the best filters have trouble cleaning up the other harmful products that come from burning brown coal and the countries/companies that try to go for the cheapest form of energy no matter the consequences are not going to spend the large amounts of money required to maintain those filters unless they are forced to do so. That is why most countries are not burning the cheapest and most reliable source of energy right now which is brown coal.

There is also no real difference between penalties for polluters and subsidies for green sources either. In the end that is just different terms for the same financial results.

And none of this has anything to do with being skeptic or believing. You are just asserting things based on that something was the right thing to do 100 years ago so it is still the right thing to do today.

I've argued several times itt that there is a significant difference. A tax on polluters may be more ideologically fair than a subsidy for non-polluters, but a subsidy can be many times more effective.

For example, the first years of the federal income tax credit for renewable energy, combined with utility rebates funded by some states drastically cut the price of renewables. But, because it was a relatively small market it was not terribly expensive to do that. This allowed for a market to develop and for prices to come down. Rebates were designed to decrease as adoption increased and most have gone. Over that time, prices have dropped more than enough to compensate.

In order to create that same market by taxing polluters you would have had to quadruple the costs of dirty energy. That would never have happened.

Now, you can combine the two and have a reasonable tax on polluting energy and spend that money on incentives for clean energy.

I can see the fairness issue; that subsidies are undeserved if consumers don't choose something. And that fees for damage caused by pollution are more logically justifiable. But, slavish devotion to ideological purity at the expense of better results and in the face of pressing public need is childish and stupid.

I agree with all of that. Just his argument that he wants the cheapest energy to win and doesn't want subsidies but then also mentions he doesn't mind penalties doesn't make sense. It is definitely easier to subsidize a small market than to penalize a big one.