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Philippe Chantreau at 01:56 AM on 16 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael,
As you said yourself, you looked at 2 days of nameplate capacity percentage. Perhaps that is not quite enough to form a good perception of how the power mix is managed. I do not share your assessment, which I think is a little too hasty and lacking context.
During the day, solar picks up considerably. Over a 24 hours summer day, it changes from 0% of the mix to over 20%. You looked at the percentage of nameplate capacity, but if flexibility is to be a part of the system, it is inevitable that this percentage be low during some periods. Solar picks up to 23% of the total capacity during the peak demand time of the days I looked at, and that was pretty close to the variation in total demand. It is therefore not surprising that nuclear's share be reduced, especially if waste heat is to be limited.
This site shows generation by source as the data is compiled. I find the graph very interesting and the ability to compare time periods is handy too:
It also shows that coal, gas and oil make up a very small percentage of the mix. Although GHG emissions were not the main concern when this system was developped, it did reach the goal of achieving a very low level of dependence on fossil fuels. That is a good thing, no matter what, under the circumstances that we are now facing.
I do not see the ability to be flexible as a weakness. Flexibility was in the plans for a long time for the nuclear part of electricity in France. The increase in river water temperatures is what was not planned for. Design features can allow to exploit warm/hot water instead of discharging it, as has been done in Olkiluoto (albeit somewhat experimentally or small scale).
These plants exist and generate enormous amounts of electricity without greenhouse gases production. They do have a useful role to play, and they can be succesfully integrated in a cleaner system:
www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system
Flexibility is not a bad thing:
You seem to suggest that no new nuclear produciton should be added anywhere in the world. I think it is debatable and depends on local and grid factors. Of course there are problems that can not be ignored. Waste, safety, waste heat, vulnerabilities from natural factors. Every solution has problems and vulnerabilites. There is no free lunch.
By the same token, the question that is the title of this entire thread is ill posed. There is no single solution to the problem we face. There is no silver bullet, but the fight is on and any ammo that has a chance of reaching a mark should be used. I do not see a massive ramp up of nuclear generation under the form we have it now (gen III reactors at best) as the solution, but it does not mean that there is no merit in the existing plants, or that new ones muct be banned under all circumstances. No way of generating electricity without producing CO2 should be discarded.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:24 AM on 16 August 2023Ice age predicted in the 70s
Reading further into the Wikipedia page on Gordon MacDonald, it seems that he became concerned about the effects of climate change in the 1960s (both natural and anthropogenic), and was warning about the risks of fossil fuel combustion and global warming back in the 1960s.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:05 AM on 16 August 2023It's not bad
Jlsoaz:
Studies of excess heat deaths, etc, run into a common problem in epidemiology: you can't do controlled experiments, and analysis of data requires a rather convoluted mix of causes that need to be isolated through various models. In the end, you get probabilities, not explicit cause-effect relationships.
Even in a "simple" autopsy, the cause of death is often a series of factors that combined to yield a fatal result. Did Covid cause that death? Well, he was elderly, had COPD and diabetes. The death certificate says his heart gave out. But he was living with those diseases and had prospects for many more years of life until Covid came along and hit him.
The tobacco industry used this limitation to great effect: "you can't prove that this person got this cancer from smoking our cigarettes", etc.
That's not to say that you suggestion is without merit. It will be considered, but I"m not sure how we might go about it.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:50 AM on 16 August 2023Ice age predicted in the 70s
Don:
That is a pretty short article by Oreskes, with very few references, and carries no date. It has a ucsd.edu email address (U California at San Diego). For her current Harvard web page, you can find a link to her CV, which tells us she was at UCSD from 1998 to 2013. So it is potentially a rather old article.
In the 1970s, there was indeed speculation that the observed cooling might continue, but the "Further reading" section of this rebuttal shows more detailed analysis of how much of the scientific literature believed it was likely (not much).
Also note that the title of the paper you link to includes "The work of Gordon J.F. MacDonald". Wikipedia has a page on Gordon J.F. MacDonald, and it is likely that Oreskes is summarizing the views of MacDonald rather than presenting her own detailed analysis. After all, she is a science historian. Also note that in her first paragraph, Oreskes states (emphasis added),
...not very long ago most earth scientists held the opposite view. They believed that Earth was cooling. Throughout most of the history of science, geologists and geophysicists believed that Earth history was characterized by progressive, steady, cooling
MacDonald was a geophysist, and according to the Wikipedia page he also was skeptical about continental drift/plate tectonics. The contrarian community is littered with geologists that have limited understanding of climate science.
I don't see this as an expression by Oreskes that she thought the "it's cooling" crowd had a legitimate argument.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:18 AM on 16 August 2023It's not urgent
PollutionMonster:
As Eclectic points out, Judith Curry's shtick is basically a "sow doubt" approach with a lot of maybes and ifs and other qualifiers. If you ignore the maybes and ifs, her statements act as dog whistles to the contrarians. The approach allows her to walk back with an "I never said that" response when her "interesting" or "curious" pronouncements about highly speculative (or sometimes clearly wrong to begin with) ideas are shown to be incorrect.
She presents herself as being open to new ideas (although they are usually the same-old, same-old debunked talking points), while feeding red meat to those that think the mainstream climate science community is close-minded. This approach works well to those who, as the saying goes, are so open-minded that their brains have fallen out.
Curry's favourite method is to beat the Uncertainty drum and call up the Uncertainty Monster at her earliest convenience. Although the following cartoon was prepared for the recent post on Pat Frank's horrible paper on measurement uncertainty, Judith Curry was not far out of sight when the idea for the cartoon (and preamble to the Pat Frank post) was being prepared.
SkS has a page on Judith Curry, as does DesmogBlog. The DesmogBlog text includes the sentence
Climate scientists have also criticized Curry’s “uncertainty-focused spiel,” as Sourchwatch [sic] has put it, “for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence.
Desmog links to this SourceWatch page.
If I wanted to stoop to Curry's tactics, I probably should litter this comment with multitudinous use of qualifiers such as "it appears as if", "my initial impression is", "people have said", "if this is the case", "it would certainly be interesting if", "there is a chance that", "maybe we should consider the possibility that", etc. You get the idea.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:00 AM on 16 August 2023Ice age predicted in the 70s
Don... Best I can tell, this looks like an early draft of an abstract for a potential paper or even a draft for a chapter of a book. I wouldn't put much credence in this piece, one way or another, since people are allowed to explore ideas and decide in the process they're wrong and choose not publish.
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Don Williamson at 23:40 PM on 15 August 2023Ice age predicted in the 70s
There was an article by Naomi Oreskes regarding the cooling climate dominant view of the 1950s to 1970s.
I was finally able to locate her work after months of research, I heard rumors about it but it turns out to be real.
It might advance the discussion if this is included in the consensus debate. It needs to be tackled head-on, what does Naomi Oresekes say about her previous paper?
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened and activated link.
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michael sweet at 23:32 PM on 15 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Scaddenp:
My understanding is that it is much more difficult to ramp up/down a nuclear plant than a coal plant. Some of the reaction products poison the chain reaction. If you change the reaction conditions the balance between the chain reaction and poisoness elements in the waste also changes. It is difficult to keep everything under control. You cannot shut the reaction down and then start it up again immediately like a coal plant can. In the USA none of the reactors can load follow. In France some of the reactors can slowly ramp production (maybe 1-2% per minute). It is hard to find references that describe how France lowers their production.
Here David-acct claimed that nuclear plants ran 92% of the time at full power. France currently has installed nuclear nameplate of 61.4 GW. The highest capacity factor in the two days I looked at was 51.5% in the middle of the night. The lowest was was 41.6% during peak power.
The point is that claims that nuclear plants are "always on" are easily demonstrated to be false. Cold weather, hot weather, drought, flooding, nearby fires and other natural changes can all cause reactors to shut down on short or no notice.
In a renewable energy world stored power will be most valuable. Baseload power will not be valuable. Baseload power that shuts down during peak times is very low value. If the reactors in France were not owned by the government they would be bankirupt.
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Eclectic at 20:22 PM on 15 August 2023It's not urgent
PM @42 , please report on anything genuinely valid which these deniers can produce from Mr Stossel or Dr Curry. I'm betting that's Zilch.
You won't change the deniers, but you may influence "onlookers'. Myself in this situation, I'd figure it is reasonably justified to "poison the well". Point out that Stossel once, years ago, was a reputable journalist . . . but now he's an angry propagandist and has received money from the billionaire Charles Koch, whose propaganda "institutes" encourage propaganda half-truths & cherry-picking slanted information.
I would probably also go ad hom [ ad fem ? ] on Curry ~ whose arguments are vague & tenuous & rhetorical . . . and are therefore difficult to get to grips with. Point out that the real climate scientists find her a joke, and laugh at her and her vague position.
Challenge the deniers to come up with anything definite from these two anti-science propagandists.
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PollutionMonster at 19:18 PM on 15 August 2023It's not urgent
Now the denier is linking to the infamous John Strossel and Dr Judith Curry. I am attempting to show the errors of their source, but having trouble.
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Eclectic at 17:56 PM on 15 August 2023There is no consensus
Rkrolph @948 , as far as I have seen, Dr Curry has not changed her expressed views in recent years (she has retired academically, but AFAIK still maintains a commercial interest in weather/hurricane season predictions). # I follow her blog most days ~ the blog is slightly redeemed by one or two of the commenters there. The blog is a somewhat more genteel version of WUWT blog.
Unlike Drs Spencer & Christie, and the definitely-emeritus Prof Lindzen, the good Dr Curry maintains a certain amount of vagueness in her speech and presentations . . . implying that she is not quite opposed to the mainstream climate science. Vagueness & a degree of "uncertainty" are her game ~ enough fuzziness for some Plausible Deniability, when someone tries to pin her down now or at a future date. But it is as obvious as an elephant in your kitchen, about which side of the scientific fence she occupies. And this goes down well with the usual group of denialist U.S. senators.
** Up to as much as two-thirds of modern rapid global warming might possibly be owing to "natural variations" or ocean/atmosphere cycles . . . that's the sort of Plausible Deniability she goes for. So no need to take any climate action.
Mr John Stossel is a reporter that has gone over to the Dark Side, years ago. Basically a propagandist. I haven't followed him closely enough to allow me to make a psychiatric assessment.
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rkrolph at 17:00 PM on 15 August 2023There is no consensus
I have been wondering lately if some of the more famous climate change skeptics, climate scientists like Judith Curry, have modified or adjusted their outlier positions as the global warming crisis grows worse year by year.
But apparently not, based on the article I read in the Torrance Daily Breeze by John Stossel, titled "The fake climate change consensus", that quoted her extensively, Most of the article I recognized as long ago debunked garbage, but it seems surprising to me that experienced climate scientists like Curry would still be promoting this kind of nonsense.
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scaddenp at 14:26 PM on 15 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I know next to nothing about nuclear reactors but I know coal-fired power stations well. When less power is needed then less coal is fed into furnace (making a mile of other adjustments especially to air flow and feedwater as well), so steam output is reduced. I would assume nuclear similarly slows output by slowing the nuclear reaction. To me, a partial shutdown is stopped one or more generation units not reducing steam output.
All steam plants have to reject heat back into the environment to convert steam back to water, usually by cooling towers. High summer temperatures play havoc with this especially if there are restrictions on temperature of cooling water going back into rivers. This usually means easier (and more efficient) to generate at night. If close to limit, then you have to reduce power as the day warms up.
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michael sweet at 09:24 AM on 15 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Phillippe Chantreau,
My understanding is that many reactors stop generating electricity on weekends for economic purposes. Since France often has cooling issues on hot summer days, and they are reported to be in drought, a lack of cooling water could also contribute to less generation. If a reactor was off line both days for cooling issues it would not have registered in the data I copied (a good reason not to do your own analysis).
Here are my personal definations:
If a reactor is taken off line so that it no longer generates electricity it has been shut down. It does not matter what the reason is or if they keep the reactor hot so that it can be more rapidly started up again. I do not know the Wikipedia defination.
If a reactors power output has to be reduced for any reason that is a partial shut down and is an indication that the reactor is an unreliable power supplier. I note that nuclear supporters frequently claim that reactors are "always on".
What is your defination of shut down? If they insert all the control rods the chain reaction stops. The decay of radioactive fission products continues to produce a very large amount of heat. Enough heat to keep the boilers hot and requiring a large amount of water to prevent disasters. For me that is completely shut down but a nuclear technician might have a different defination.
Do you have a link that describes what the French do on weekends to lower nuclear power output by 20%? I would also like to know why they generate less power during the peak periods than during the low at night. I suspect waste heat is causing at least some of the decline (as you mention).
My understanding is that some reactors are taken below the critical level. The control of reactors is extremely complex so I could be incorrect.
The dates are from August 2023.
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Doug Bostrom at 05:22 AM on 15 August 2023Do phrases like ‘global boiling’ help or hinder climate action?
Less guesswork may be needed than we may imagine. There's extensive literature on this topic. Try and then tweak "emotional language climate change communication" w/Google Scholar to get a foothold.
Susan Moser's work is especially helpful for getting the big picture of climate communications to the public. This slightly old synthesis by Moser is still quite useful: Communicating climate change: history, challenges, process and future directions.
More germane to the immediate topic of this article, see “Be Worried, be VERY Worried:” Preferences for and Impacts of Negative Emotional Climate Change Communication.
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ubrew12 at 05:11 AM on 15 August 2023Do phrases like ‘global boiling’ help or hinder climate action?
"Man, its freezing outside" Lawyers and ChatGPT's may complain. Everybody who is human knows what I'm saying.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:01 AM on 15 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I would like participants here to clarify one thing: "shut down."
Growing up in France, I got to do school field trips to nuclear power plants. On these occasions, engineers would instruct us on basic elements of these plants' operation. A reactor is rarely "shut down" except for major maintenance or emergency/abnormal procedures. The reaction can be slowed, the reactor isolated from the rest of the system and/or generators taken offline, is that what we're talking about here? Otherwise it would imply taking the reactor below critical level and that is not practical if it is to be used again, especially on short notice.
Slowing down the reactor can be necessary when cooling is an issue, when the weaather is already hot and they want to avoid spilling too much warm water in the environment. This has become more of a concern as river water temperatures have been increasing. It could be why power output is higher at night in August. Unless of course, these dates are under European format, which would place them in October and May.
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michael sweet at 23:38 PM on 14 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I posted this on another thread where questions were raised about nuclear.
David-acct at 12:
I went back and looked at your link to French electricity generation where you claim: :
"This link from France's gov shows no such shutting down of nuclear on weekends.
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#"
My emphasis. The days are not cherry picked, they are the only days I looked at. 8/10 is a Thursday and 8/5 is a Saturday.
date time Power MW
8/10 2:45 31645
8/10 13:45 30424
8/5 4:15 28489
8/5 16:15 25548Several question about this raw data occured to me.
1) You state clearly that the data shows no nuclear power stations were shut down. Please explain why the power generated on the weekend is so much less than the power generated on Thursday. How does this show that no power stations were shut down over the weekend? It appears to me that about 6 of 31 power stations (20%) were turned off.
2) On both days they are generating more power at night when power is generated at a loss than they are generating during the day when the price of electricity is much higher. Can you explain why the "always on" nuclear plants generate less power during the most expensive part of the day than they do when electricity is cheapest?
This example proves beyond doubt that examining cherry picked factoids without any analysis is a complete waste of time. Please do not cite raw data any more. You need to cite analysis of data that filter out gross errors.
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michael sweet at 23:33 PM on 14 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
David-acct at 12:
I went back and looked at your link to French electricity generation where you claim: :
"This link from France's gov shows no such shutting down of nuclear on weekends.
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#"
My emphasis. The days are not cherry picked, they are the only days I looked at. 8/10 is a Thursday and 8/5 is a Saturday.
date time Power MW 8/10 2:45 31645 8/10 13:45 30424 8/5 4:15 28489 8/5 16:15 25548 Several question about this raw data occured to me.
1) You state clearly that the data shows no nuclear power stations were shut down. Please explain why the power generated on the weekend is so much less than the power generated on Thursday. How does this show that no power stations were shut down over the weekend? It appears to me that about 6 of 31 power stations (20%) were turned off.
2) On both days they are generating more power at night when power is generated at a loss than they are generating during the day when the price of electricity is much higher. Can you explain why the "always on" nuclear plants generate less power during the most expensive part of the day than they do when electricity is cheapest?
This example proves beyond doubt that examining cherry picked factoids without any analysis is a complete waste of time. Please do not cite raw data any more. You need to cite analysis of data that filter out gross errors.
moderator: I thought this was appropriate posted here because it addresses the topic of examining data without analysis. I plan to also post it in the nuclear thread because it addresses common nuclear issues.
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Eclectic at 09:16 AM on 14 August 2023It's not bad
Sorry, Jlsoaz @420 , but you would be on a Fool's Quest if you try to make the definitive Debunk of temperature-related deaths and suchlike measuring-sticks of what is (or isn't) an emergency or catastrophe. The idea you put forward is quite fundamentally flawed.
" Catastrophic" is a rubbery weaselword. Too much room for semantic sophistries & lawyerly one-sided advocacy & "Gotcha" public debating of incomplete truths. # Also there is the question of when to use catastrophe ~ is it only for right now today, or is it including major problems which are approaching us in the near- or mid-term future? ( Or the approaching Heat Death of the universe? )
Is it a catastrophe or calamity when you run your car off the road at high speed? . . . or only when your car overturns or strikes a large boulder, etc? Or is it like the old joke about the optimist who experienced the catastrophe of falling off the top of the Empire State Building ~ yet reassured himself by counting the number of floors he had fallen past without encountering a catastrophic outcome?
A fool's game there, Jlsoaz.
[ On side-note : It is not only "premature deaths" but also many other adverse effects that now (or in the future) can be consequences of AGW. In particular the "temperature-related deaths" that show up in studies of heat-related vs. cold-related deaths are rather poorly-documented for comparison purposes. Cold-deaths are usually well-documented, while heat-related deaths are rather poorly documented because they tend to occur more in a Third-World country, where the deaths are poorly recorded in cities & slums . . . and in the remoter regions, may not be recorded at all (in any medical/official assessment). ]
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jlsoaz at 06:23 AM on 14 August 2023It's not bad
Hi -
As has been remarked by others, arguably this "It's not bad" response is good, but may be trying to cover too much ground. In particular, I'm here to request that the team consider writing a response to the related or subordinate myth(s), which are in my opinion arguably the most important myths not yet debunked on this site, that
- nobody has died from climate change,
- any claim of increased deaths can't be attributed to climate change.
- and, therefore, calling this a "climate emergency" is exaggerating, alarmist and hysterical.
I believe the science here would fall in the area of social science or biological sciences (i.e.: discussing increased mortality above what is expected per time period, and whether it is attributable, under established scientific practices, to climate change). There are peer reviewed publications out there which may give some idea and basis for a proper rebuttal, though admittedly we could use more of such publications to lean on in the face of such arguments. A couple of examples:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01058-x
Article
Published: 31 May 2021
The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change1. I think these two links relate to the same study published in Nature in 2021:
LINK
Global Study Evaluates Heat-Related Deaths Associated with Climate Change
By David Richards
2.
Also in 2021, this may be a completely different study (I can't tell for sure at a glance. It seems to have been published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
LINK
World’s largest study of global climate related mortality links 5 million deaths a year to abnormal temperatures
08 July 2021https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling studyProf Qi Zhao, PhD
Prof Yuming Guo, PhD
Tingting Ye, MSc
Prof Antonio Gasparrini, PhD
Prof Shilu Tong, PhD
Ala Overcenco, PhD
et al.
Show all authorsOpen AccessPublished:July, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00081-4
---------
These above are just one or two recent examples. There are probably other credible-seeming ones if the team is able to look, in preparing a rebuttal, and they may vary as to which climate change impacts (heat, drought, rise in sea level, increased storms, etc.) have what mortality increase (or decrease, in some isolated cases, I suppose is possible) figures associated with them. As to "associated", I think it's to the scientific papers to clarify what the correct approach is.
Anyway, to simplify, please take a look at what I believe to be arguably the most important myth not yet addressed on this site.Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened and activated links. You can do this yourself in the future. Just look in the tabs above the text box.
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michael sweet at 23:31 PM on 13 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
David-acct:
You have still not linked the Jacobson et al report you claim to be citing. Perhaps it is this one.
In the paper you appear to be citing the analysis by Jacobson et al show that renewable energy can provide all needed energy for the entire world 24/7/365 with a monetary savings of approximately US$62 trillion per year (mostly health savings from reduced pollution). The system will be at least as reliable as the current fossil system. The supposed problems you claim to expose have been dealt with completely. Linking to cherry picked factoids with no analysis does not support your argument (and you provide no links).
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michael sweet at 23:17 PM on 13 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
David-acct at 10:
You continue to insist that the industry standard terminology is misleading. If you do your homework you will be able to understand commonly used technology terms without confusion. Industry terms are intended for use by people who have read the backiground information and understand the meaning of the vocabulary used.
Your nuclear comments are off topic. World wide nuclear capacity factors are much lower than your cherry picked high years in the USA. 80% capacity factors is more the mark. France, the country that generates the highest fraction of their electricity using nuclear power, had a capacity factor of 51% in 2022. I addressed this in the post linked above.
"
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michael sweet at 23:07 PM on 13 August 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
David-acct:
It is not my problem that you have not done your homework and do not know that France nuclear reactors shut down on weekends. From Wikipedia:
"France's nuclear reactors comprise 90 per cent of EDFs capacity and so they are used in load-following mode and some reactors close at weekends because there is no market for the electricity.[59][10] This means that the capacity factor is low by world standards, usually in the high seventies as a percentage, which is not an ideal economic situation for nuclear plants."
It is common knowledge among those who have done their homework that France generates too much nuclear power at night. They sell some at a loss to their neighbors (presumably those who use cheaper solar during the day). They shut down some reactors on the weekends since no-one wants the power.
In 2022 France generated approximately 279 TWh of nuclear electricity. Their installed capacity was 61.4 GW. I calculate their capacity factor at 51.8%. They forecast generating about 330 TWh in 2023 which gives a capacity factor of 61% in the unlikely event that they make their forecast. They have to shut down many reactors on hot days. Will that work with record hot summers?
Since nuclear reactors can't really load follow (in France they just shut them down on weekends), they generate too much power when load is low and not enough when load is high. They average out the daily usage in the data youo show so that it appears that they generate more usable power than they really do. They sell at night at a loss and buy during peak power at the highest prices. France uses their reactors differently than other nuclear countries because they were stupid and over built their reactor fleet.
They have limited storage so they turn off the reactors. In the USA the biggest pumped hydro storage plants were built to store nuclear power at night for use during the day peak. Nuclear supporters ignore the immense cost of storage for nuclear reactors while exaggerating the cost of storage for renewable energy.
No current scientific groups studying future energy systems recommend building any nuclear plants.
I recommend you read more background information (this thread would be a good start) so that you don't keep repeating long debunked nuclear myths.
Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.
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michael sweet at 22:40 PM on 13 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
David-acct:
Your posts supportuing nuclear power are off topic on this thread.
I have replied to you on topic here.
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BaerbelW at 19:38 PM on 13 August 2023CO2 is just a trace gas
Please note: this rebuttal has been updated on August 13, 2023 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @ https://sks.to/at-a-glance
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John Mason at 10:58 AM on 13 August 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32
One issue we all have here is just what constitutes 'doomerism'? It's a term that is currently thrown around too loosely.
One man's doom is another's bad weather day, after all. The ultimate picture is that Earth and biodiversity will survive the human age. We know that through the fossil record. Evolution will once again fill any gaps it can over a few million years. That has happened time and again through the deep past.
So putting that aside, it's about - as Katharine Hayhoe's book title clearly states - saving us! In that case, 'doomerism' needs a very clear definition, for I do not think there is such a thing at present. -
nigelj at 08:11 AM on 13 August 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32
Regarding "With Temperature and Other Climate Extremes Shattering Records, Should We Call it 'Global Boiling'? 'Weirding'? Or...? by Tom Yulsman"
The idea discussed is that too much doomy rhetoric demotivates people. This is correct. It can have a deadening effect on people where they give up on contemplating solutions and habituate to the doom and just choose to live with the problem as best they can, like people in a war zone frequently do.
If there is any doomy rhetoric, its important to at least offer people solutions.
Another idea discussed is that creating too much climate fear is not a good thing.This is different from doomy rhetoric. However fear is a natural human motivator. We are hardwired genetically to feel fear when threatened and this generally motivates action. We communicate threats to each other that will cause fear and motivate action. This is all psychology 101. So its absurd to suggest we should somehow soften rhetoric to not make people fearful. This would be a dangerous manipulation that could backfire. It would not even be accurate.
However if the climate threat is innacurately described or exaggerated to try to cause fear this could backfire horribly because its likely the innacuracies or exaggerations will be exposed. We also cant solve problems effectively If we dont state them as accurately as possible neither understating or overstating a problem.
The reasons for the slow pace of climate action are probably not so much the way the threat is communicated anyway. Most people must know the basic problem by now and the scientists consider it serious, unless they have been living under a rock for the last 25 years. The reasons for slow progress are many and varied but one issue is we are psychologically hardwired to respond most urgently to immediate threats (like a wild animal attacking us) rather than slowly unfolding future threats like climate change even if they are very serious. Given climate change is now being more present and dramatic this might start motivate more change. Reference:
Other reasons are raised by people like OPOF to do with many leaders in society being reluctant to make lifestyle changes or support carbon taxes, because they are very addicted to materialistic displays of wealth as status signals.
However these problems do suggest to me we should try to motivate people to make changes by putting a lot of focus on the wider benefits of climate solutions, like EV's being more reliable cars, less reliance on imported petrol, cleaner electricity generation, etcetera.This is actually probably why renewables are gaining some traction.
Daniel Glick says " In communicating about that threat, we’ve tried terms like global warming, global weirding, climate emergency, and now global boiling." And he asks if any of this gets through to people and motivates people to make changes.
I can only give my gut reaction. Global warming - accurate. Climate emergency - a bit too colourful for me and people easily dismiss it as an exaggeration by giving examples of obvious dramatic and very present emergencies like Ukraine war. Global boiling - quite good. Nobody with any sense takes it literally, but this sort of satirical hyperbole might resonate with people. It does with me. Global weirding - accurate.
Just call anthropogenic climate change what it is: a huge problem for reasons xyz but that we have viable solutions.
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link.
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nigelj at 06:23 AM on 13 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
I meant Eclectic @18. Doh!
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nigelj at 06:21 AM on 13 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
Eclectic @11.
I agree the cranks are a small subset of denilaists and that many of the denialists are fundamentally driven by selfish and economic motives. However you should add political motives to the list, being an ideologically motivated dislike of government rules and regulations. Of course these things are interrelated.
I have a bit of trouble identifying one single underlying cause of the climate denialism issue. It seems to be different denialists have different motives to an extent, randging from vested interests, to political and ideological axes to grind, to selfishness, to just a dislike of change to plain old contrariness. Or some combination. But if anyone thinks there is one key underling motive for the denialim I would be interested in your reasoning.
The cranks are not all deniers as such. Some believe burning fossil fuels is causing warming but some of them think other factors play a very large part like the water cycle or deforestation. A larger part than the IPCC have documented. They unwittingly serve the hard core denialists cause. They are like Lenin and Stalins "useful idiots."
I do visit WUWT sometimes, and I know what you are saying.
"To very broadly paraphrase Voltaire : It is horrifying to see how even intelligent minds can believe absurdities."
Voltaire is right. Its presumably a lot to do with cognitive dissonance. Intelligent minds are not immunue from strong emotively or ideologically driven beliefs and resolving conflicts between those and reality might lead to deliberate ignorance. Reference on cognitive dissonance:
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738#signs
This does suggests cranks might be driven by underlying belief systems not just craziness.
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nigelj at 05:55 AM on 13 August 2023At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
John Mason @10. Thanks for listening. Your revisions look really good to me. I know it wouldn't be easy writing this sort of thing.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:15 AM on 13 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
"Davz not here, man."
(Extra points for whoever gets the cultural reference.)
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John Mason at 23:25 PM on 12 August 2023At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
@nigelj, we'e taken your suggestion on board and edited the start. Thanks!
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John Mason at 11:10 AM on 12 August 2023At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
And 'catastrophic' is a very loose term, is it not? One man's catastrophe may be another's bad day. Getting your car swept away in a flash flood if you are well-off and well-insured is a bad day but if a skint subsistence farmer and that flood destroys the year's crops it gets a bit trickier.
The very wording of the petition is weaseliferous! -
Eclectic at 11:06 AM on 12 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
Nigelj @17 :
Cranks or crackpots do inhabit the Denier spectrum, But IMO they are outliers of the main body. Dr Frank's wondrous "Uncertainty" simply produces absurd results ~ see his chart showing the envelope of uncertainty which "explodes" from the observation starting point, rendering all data nearly meaningless. Yet he cannot see the absurdity. He falls back on the bizarre argument of uncertainty being separate from error. (But in practical terms, there is a large Venn Diagram overlap of the two concepts.)
WUWT blog is an enjoyable stamping ground where I observe the denialists' shenanigans. Most of the commenters at WUWT are angry selfish characters, who do not wish to see any socio-economic changes in this world ~ and hence their motivated reasoning against AGW.
Certainly, WUWT has its share of cranks & crackpots. Also a large slice of "CO2-deniers" who continually assert "the trace gas CO2 simply cannot do any global warming". (WUWT blog's founder & patron, Anthony Watts initially tried to oust the CO2-deniers . . . but in the past decade he seems to have abandoned that attempt.)
Dr Frank's comments in a WUWT thread are worth reading, but sadly they rarely rise above the common ruck there. Much more interesting to read, is a Mr Rud Istvan ~ though he does blow his own trumpet a lot (and publicizes his own book "Blowing Smoke" which I gather does in all ways Smite The Heathen warmists & alarmists. Istvan, like Frank, is very intelligent, yet does come out with some nonsenses. For instance, Istvan often states mainstream AGW must be wrong because of reasons A , B , C & D . And unfortunately, 3 of his 4 facts/reasons are quite erroneous. He is so widely informed, that he must know his facts/reasons are erroneous . . . yet he keeps repeating them blindly (in a way that resembles the blindness in Dr Frank).
To very broadly paraphrase Voltaire : It is horrifying to see how even intelligent minds can believe absurdities.
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David-acct at 09:29 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Oops - forgot to link to the EIA electric generation by source. Always best to provide links to the raw source data to back up any statement
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David-acct at 09:26 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Michael @ #9 in response Davz
Your statement that France's nuclear shuts down over the weekends appears to be completely unsupported. Do you have link to any source data to shows that statement to be correct.
This link from France's gov shows no such shutting down of nuclear on weekends.
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#
It would also be contrary to every other country that uses nuclear. I have attached a link to the EIA.gov for electric generation by source (which I have frequently linked to). Electric generation from Nuclear is just about as constant as constant can be. Same story for Germany, prior to the closing
Can you provide any citations for your other statements in your response to Davz
Thanks
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David-acct at 09:25 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Michael
n response to your reply, My comment is fully supported by the source data which I linked to
See Jacobson appendix / table S11 which I cited. Those values I cited are directly from his study
The german electric generation data is directly from the source data I cited. I am reposting the link for your benefit.
I alwasy cross check against the source data so that I can evaluate the statements based on factual evidence
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David-acct at 09:23 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Michael
A few points to clarify context - Using gross capacity factor is misleading since it greatly overstates the projected electric generation as noted by the except below from the US energy department.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
Capacity factors allow energy buffs to examine the reliability of various power plants. It basically measures how often a plant is running at maximum power. A plant with a capacity factor of 100% means it’s producing power all of the time.
Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source—producing reliable, carbon-free power more than 92% of the time in 2021. That’s nearly twice as reliable as a coal (49.3%) or natural gas (54.4%) plant and almost 3 times more often than wind (34.6%) and solar (24.6%) plants.
When comparing capacity factors, its important to fully understand the different reasons why each type operates below their capacity ratings. Fossil fuel generation has greatly reduced generation below capacity during the spring and fall when demand is the lowest, while achieving much higher rates of capacity when needed in the winter and summer. Whereas, Wind and solar produce at or near capacity when weather conditions are optimal. You have to compare apples with apples
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nigelj at 07:51 AM on 12 August 2023At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
I agree with NP.
It may also be about the term catastrophic which I believe is a strawman. Because climate science never claimed at that time that heating would be catastrophic, which is a colourful, imprecise, loaded term that many may associate with billions dying very fast. Science claimed anthropogenic warming will cause very serious problems xyz, and cause a significantly increased mortality rate in the tropics.
So its understandable that a petition saying there is no convincing evidence of catastrophic heating of the atmosphere would get plenty of signatures. If the petition had just said there is no convincing evidence of serious problems it probably wouldn't have got nearly as many signatures.
But by using a strawman the denislists got plety of people to sign and thats what people notice more than the significance of the word catastrophic. Dont be fooled by the denialists tactics.
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nigelj at 07:01 AM on 12 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
MAR @14. Good points.
Franks "wondrous theory" does indeed sound crazy. What mystifies me is how a guy with a Phd in chemistry, thus very highly scientifically literate could get relatively basic things like that wrong. Because its fairly well doumented that the up and down variation in year to year temperatures is due in large part to a component of natural variability cycles. And he does not seem like a person that would dispute the existence of natural climate cycles.
It makes me wonder if he hasnt actually read much background information like this on the actual climate issue - and perhaps feels he is such a genius that he doesn't need to. Yet this would be astounding really that he is unaware of short term climate cycles and cant see their relevance. I do not have his level of scientific training by a long way, but its obvious to me.
It seems more likely he is he just being crazy about things for whatever reasons and this craziness seems to be the main underling characteristics of a crank. But their frequent narcissim means no matter how much you point out the obvious flaws they just go on repeating the same theories, thus their nonsense certainly compounds over time.
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michael sweet at 04:25 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Davez
Your unsupported claims also have no merit.
Renewable energy is the cheapest electricity in the world. While the turbines and solar farms cost billions to build, they saved more billions when gas prices went up. Carbon Brief has several articles where they analyze the enormous amounts of money saved by renewable energy and document that "cutting out the green crap" in the UK ended up costing consumers billions more when gas prices went up. Simply stating how much it costs to build renewaable installations without considering how much low cost electricity is generated is deceptive.
Battery storage currently competes on cost with gas peaker plants. Battery costs are rapidly decreasing. Batteries will replace all peaker plants due to economics in the near future.
You argue that wind energy at night is wasted (without any citations to support this wild claim) and then say that nuclear, which cannot be turned off at night, is the way to go. That is a direct contradiction that negates your argument. In France nuclear generation is only 70% of nameplate because they have to close up on weekends. They sell nuclear electricity at a loss at night.
Nuclear supporters like you ignore the fact that nuclear requires at least as much storage as renewable energy does. The largest pumped hydro storage facilities in the USA were all built to store nuclear electricity generated at night. This is a second contradiction in your arguments that negates your claims.
In any case, nuclear is too expensive and there is not enough uranium to build a significant amount of nuclear.
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michael sweet at 04:03 AM on 12 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Dav8id-acct:
Everyone knows that new build power supplies are rated by maximum capacity to generate. You are simply arguing semantics when you object to the industry standard.
I note that you have no citations to support your claims.
The Jacobson et al paper you cite with no link concludes that a fully renewable system using batteries at the current cost would be the cheapest way to generate future energy. He finds that there will be no problems supplying electyricity 24/7/365. Renewable energy that produces 20% of rated capacity is the cheapest electricity in the world. Your unsupported claims have no merit.
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Nick Palmer at 01:26 AM on 12 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
nigelj @13 wrote " I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind"
That's true - but don't forget 'And then there's physics'... and Climate Adam and Dr Gilbz (both phd'd climate scientists) on Youtube quite often debunk stuff. Here's them collaborating - it's fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSYeI9OQcE -
Nick Palmer at 22:24 PM on 11 August 2023At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
I've always thought that the exact wording of the Oregon Petition
"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"
was grammatically constructed to actually have been technically signable AT THE TIME OF FIRST LAUNCH even by such climate luminaries as James Hansen.
It comes down to the artful use of "is causing" and "will cause" - instead of 'may cause' - catastrophic heating and disruption etc. The petition does not state that its wording assumes that mainstream climate science was asserting that emissions will continue to rise sharply and that climate sensitivity to CO2e was at the top end of published expectations back then (somewhere around 6°C per doubling if I remember, although 10°C was mentioned https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm ) but it is the underlying insinuation (of the text) that climate science was saying these things that enables the rhetorical deceit inherent in that exact wording. It allows any scientist who was fairly familiar with the science back then to jump to the conclusions that, because such emissions rises weren't certain to take place, and that ensemble figures for climate sensitivity were showing a 'most likely' figure of ~3°C per doubling, then it was definitely not certain that 'catastrophic heating' would occur. -
Nick Palmer at 21:36 PM on 11 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
Bob Loblaw @11
I was interested in what the two reviewers listed actually said. I couldn't find it. Wunsch is highly unlikely to have given it a 5* review and I don't think Zanchettini, who is much less well known, would either.
The reason it would be helpful to know is that Frank's recent '23 paper and its past incarnations, such as '19, are currently being promulgated across the denialosphere as examples of published peer reviewed literature that completely undermines all of climate science. If one knew that Wunsch and Zanchettini had both said seomthing like 'the overall construction of the paper was interesting but has some major logical and statistical flaws in it', and Frontiers in Science had decided to publsih it anyway, that would be very useful anti-denialist 'ammo'. -
MA Rodger at 18:52 PM on 11 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
Nigelj @13,
The paper Frank (2019) did take six months from submission to gain acceptance and Frontiers does say "Frontiers only applies the most rigorous and unbiased reviews, established in the high standards of the Frontiers Review System."
Yet the total nonsense of Frank (2019) is still published, not just a crazy approach but quite simple mathematical error as well.But do note that a peer-reviewed publication does not have to be correct. A novel approach to a subject can be accepted even when that approach is easily show to be wrong and even when the implications of the conclusions (which are wrong) are set out as being real.
I suppose it is worth making plain that peer-review can allow certain 'wrong' research to be published as this will prevent later researchers making the same mistakes. Yet what is so often lost today is the idea that any researcher wanting publishing must be familiar with the entirety of the literature and takes account of it within their work.
And for a denialist, any publication means it is entirely true, if they want it to be.In regard to the crazy Frank (2019), it is quite simple to expose the nonsense.
This wondrous theory (first appearing in 2016) suggests that, at a 1sd limit, a year's global average SAT could be anything between +0.35ºC to -0.30ºC the previous year's temperature, this variation due alone to the additional AGW forcing enacted since that previous year. The actual SAT records do show an inter-year variation but something a little smaller (+/-0.12ºC at 1sd in the recent BEST SAT record) but this is from all causes not just from a single cause that is ever accumulating. And these 'all causes' of the +/-0.12ºC are not cumulative through the years but just wobbly noise. Thus the variation seen do not increase with variation measured over a longer period. After 8 years in the BEST SAT record is pretty-much the same as the 1-year variation and not much greater at 60 years (+/-0.22ºC). But in the crazy wonderland of Pat Frank, these variations are apparently potentially cumulative (that would be the logic) so Frank's 8-year variation is twice the 1-year variation. And after 60 years of these AGW forcings (which is the present period with roughly constant AGW forcing) according to Frank we should be seeing SAT changes anything from +17.0ºC to -12.0ºC solely due to AGW forcing. And because Frank's normal distributions provides the probability of these variations, we can say there was an 80% chance of us seeing global SAT increases accumulating over that 60 years in excess of +4.25ºC and/or decreases acumulating in excess of -3.0ºC. According to Frank's madness, we should have been seeing such 60-year variation. But we haven't. So as a predictive analysis, the nonsense of Frank doesn't begin to pass muster.
And another test for garbage is the level of interest shown by the rest of science. In the case of Frank (2019), that interest amounts to 19 citations according to Google Scholar, these comprising 6 citations by Frank himself, 2 mistaken citation (only one by a climatological paper which examines marine heat extremes and uses the Frank paper to support the contention "Substantial uncertainties and biases can arise due to the stochastic nature of global climate systems." which Frank 2019 only says are absent), a climatology working-paper that lists Frank with a whole bunch of denialists, three citations by one Norbert Schwarzer who appears more philosopher than scientist, and six by a fairly standard AGW denier called Pascal Richet. That leaves a PhD thesis citing Frank (2019)'s to say "... general circulation models generally do not have an error associated with predictions"
So science really has no interest in Frank's nonsense (other than demonstrating that it is nonsense). -
nigelj at 09:56 AM on 11 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Davz
"In 2020 wind generation of uk output was 25%, remember though that includes night time generation that went to waste. "
I wonder if thats accurate. Because when demand for power is very low, I recall reading somewhere that wind farms get turned off. So I would think the 25% of generation would only include when the turbines are actually generating power. I stand to be corrected if anyone can post a link saying otherwise.
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David-acct at 08:09 AM on 11 August 2023Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
Davz - do you have a good link to the electric generation by source data for the UK similar to the eia for the USA or the germany version https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/09.08.2022/09.08.2023/today/.
I alway like to be able to cross check against the source data. The 25% generation of capacity in the UK from solar seems slightly high given UK's latitude.
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nigelj at 07:37 AM on 11 August 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
I enjoyed Bob Loblows article because it did a thorough debunking and I learned some things about statistics.
Some of the errors look like almost basic arithmetic and I thought a key purpose of peer review was to identify those things? They did an awful job. It looks like they didnt even bother to try.
Regarding whether such papers should be debunked or not. I've often wondered about this. Given the purpose of this website is to debunk the climate myths it seems appropriate to debunk bad papers like this, or some of them. It would not be possible to address all of them because its too time consuming.
There is a school of thought that says ignore the denialists because "repeating a lie spreads the lie" and engaging with them gives them oxygen. There is some research on this as well. There has to be some truth in the claim that responding to them will spread the lies. It's virtually self evident.
Now the climate science community seems to have taken this advice, and has by my observation mostly ignored the denialists. For example there is nothing in the IPCC reports listing the main sceptical arguments and why they are wrong, like is done on this website (unless Ive missed it). I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind.
And how has this strategy of (mostly) giving denialists the silent treatment worked out? Many people are still sceptical about climate change, and progress has been slow dealing with it which suggests that giving the denialists the silent treatment may have been a flawed strategy. I suspect debunking the nonsense, and educating people on the climate myths is more important than being afraid that it would cause lies to spread. Lies will spread anyway.
A clever denialist paper probably potentially has some influence on governments and if its not rebutted this creates a suspicion it might be valid.
However I think that actually debating with denialists can be risky, and getting into actual formal televised debates with denialists would be naieve and best avoided. And fortunately it seems to have been avoided. Denialists frequently resort to misleading but powerful rhetorical techniques (Donald Trump is a master of this) that is hard to counter without getting down into the rhetorical gutter and then this risks making climate scientists look bad and dishonest. All their credibility could be blown with the decision makers.
