Here we go again! A re-run of last week’s debate about windmills. So one last time: the presently available green energy is wind, solar and hydro, which all require equivalent fossil fuel back-up or back-up from nuclear power stations. Why? Because the wind doesn’t blow all the time, solar doesn’t work at night, and hydro is limited geographically. So even if we could build 30,000 to 50,000 wind turbines by 2030 (unlikely), we’ll have to keep our present fossil fuel online or build new gas or nuclear power stations and have these on standby.

As for ‘public concern’, the public is concerned about fuel poverty and their energy bills being padded to make rich people richer.

Climate change is yesterday’s news. Ed Milliband really doesn’t have to associate himself with such stuff to get elected in 2015 or sooner. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are doing the grunt work for him by being incompetent out-of-touch toffs. All Ed has to do is sit quietly and he’ll be PM.

What are the low carbon and environmental jobs ?

#Northern Worker #1:

Climate change is yesterday’s news.

No, it’s your and my children’s future.

You clearly dislike the mitigation methods adopted by the UK, and take the view that they are rendered futile by what the Chinese are doing; a view with which I disagree, but which is at least legitimate. Your views on those issues, however, are irrelevant to the question of whether and how much climate change is happening.

Did I not read Miliband telling people up north he was interested in getting the coal mining back up and going or was that just Miliband being a politician oh yes of course it’s carbon capture mining.

This is very welcome news and really puts some distance between Labour and the increasingly mad Tories.

Odd timing given that this is Lib Dem week – so he’s unlikely to get any real attention for what is quite a bold proposal. Some one in his comms team should have stressed that before going out with the article.

Though as Northern Worker said – much of the issue was covered in the last wind-farm comments – although Northern Worker doesn’t seem to have read anything of the comments explaining why intermitency is not a reason not to invest. It is just a lazy pub-level message for arguing against a technology that some people dislike for other reasons.

Cherub, M4E and the other people welcoming this – you guys know more about this than me. Is this actually an achievable goal?

@7 flatterer!

I’ve read a bit. Stewart Brand, New Scientist every week, online stuff. What I get from these is that it’s not just possible, it’s essential. It just requires real commitment over time.

It would certainly be an economic stimulus and put us ahead of the game, because the world will need sustainable energy generation.

@ Cherub

Cool. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be one of those far-off goals designed to be inspirational rather than doable.

The only low-carbon technology that can (a) securely provide base-load electricity generation, and (b)support our current life-style, is nuclear.

Wind is intermittent; and, as the climate is changing, we could become less windy – we simply don’t know, because the effects of climate-change are very unpredictable.

We need massive investment in nuclear now with some renewables and some gas. Coal is probably over.

As for Ed Millipede, he has plenty of wriggle room. Post-election, he could say that there should only be multi-lateral carbon-reduction. But then, IMO, Ed is unelectable…

CG @ 7:

“Is this actually an achievable goal?”

Almost anything like this is “achievable”. The question is surely: is it prudent? The devil is in the detail. No nuclear base-load? Then almost certainly living standards will fall as we move to a low-carbon lifestyle, because there’ll be few electric cars, for example. And I don’t fancy chipping the ice off my solar panels to get a warm shower when I’m in my 80′s.

@ 11

Agreed on nuclear. It’s a bloody useful thing, even if we ultimately use it as an interim technology, and it’s always annoyed me that a lot of environmentalists lump it in with fossil fuel.

CG @ 12:

Exactly right. And if nuclear is good enough for George ‘Moonbat’ Monbiot, it’s good enough for me. Though I disagree with him about almost everything else, I do admire his integrity and fearlessness on the nuclear issue. If climate change is a threat – and, broadly speaking, I think it is – only nuclear can save us.

TONE @ 11

” … because there’ll be few electric cars, for example”

Good point. This is a further reason why we cannot totally de-carbonise our economy by 2030. Every single mode of transport will have to be electric including cars. There are 35 million cars, trucks, vans, buses and coaches. The average life of a car is 15 years, and commercial vehicles even longer, which means we have 18 years to replace every single one to de-carbonise.

This is simply impossible for quite a few reason the first of which is that the total world production capacity for EVs (electric vehicles) is not even a fraction of the 1.7 million electric cars we would need to put on the road every year from now until 2030 – 30,000,000 cars divided by 18 years. Never mind that we will be asking motorists to scrap perfectly good diesel and petrol cars presumably at their own expense.

And what would we do about all the trucks, vans, buses and coaches? The only EVs so far available in these areas have been small delivery vans and the main firm producing them went bust.

Next we have the problem of recharging all these EVs. If we changed every car right now for the most basic EV, and all motorists put them on charge overnight – all 30 million – it would bring down the National Grid. We simply don’t have the capacity.

And how will people who don’t have off-road parking – only 37% do – charge their cars? Run a cable over the pavement and down the road? Clearly we could install a charging infrastructure (plenty of green jobs) but as the current average cost per charging point is £10,000, we’d have to spend £300 billion. The reason being that to transmit so much power we would need three phase and then substations to produce the required volts and amps in single phase to charge the cars.

Next we have the cost of the cars. Presently they cost £25K each even after the taxpayer has stumped up £5,000 subsidy to the (rich) buyer.

Then there is the range issue. Technology will move on, but at present an EV has a range of 100 miles before recharging. The batteries, a bit like the ones in a laptop, also need replacing every few years at a cost (presently) of £8,000.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Vehicles contribute an awful lot of CO2 (19%?). We have no chance of making what we have now obsolete by 2030. The cost would literally be a trillion pounds with vehicles, scrappage and charging infrastructure.

There is one possibility I’ve seen and that’s miniature Thorium reactors in a vehicle. You never know!

Oh, Robin Levett @3. Before you start on this comment, all this stuff and vehicles is very much my speciality and has been for the last 45 years. Okay so I’m just an engineering pleb, but I really do know about this stuff.

NW @ 14:

Well said and thank you. I agree, though I would say that we could de-carbonise by 2030 – but only at a huge cost in living standards!

Btw, there’s no such thing as an “engineering pleb” in my book.

I think Northern Worker makes some valid points about our electricity generating capacity. Even if we were minded to all switch to electric cars we do not have the generating capacity. I do not see home recharging of EV ever taking off to any great extent. Something like battery switching stations such as in this video from Israel is probably how things will develop.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/electric-cars-in-israel.html

Battery switching stations would overcome some of the range problems inherent in EV. I am quite confident that the market will gradually move away from the internal combustion engine in public passenger transport and in the movement of goods. Having the right infrastructure is obviously key.

Chaise
Thanks for that. And yes it can be done. 2030 would require huge political will and a major ramping up of our capacity to install year by year. Given labour are unlikely to rule unbroken from 2015 to 2030 it is nigh on impossible as Tories just have weird and childish views on energy. But technically it is feasible.

Intermittency is overstated as a problem. A pan European grid significantly reduces peaks and troughs in both demand and generation, reducing the need (proportionately)for quick fire or constantly running base load.

Also, energy storage is massively overlooked despite decades of proven experience in the hydro power sector.

Solar power in Germany exceeded nuclear capacity in march. UK is no less sunny. We have scarcely scratched the surface of our wind generating capacity. Tidal us also starting to tip the scales on industrial scale viability. And UK engineering companies have a huge role in this sector around the world that a major decarbonisation drive would secure and enhance.

M4E @ 6 and 17

In 18 years, or 15 really as you point out, it is not “feasible”, it’s totally impossible. It will take at least 50 years if not 100 years to de-carbonise. See my post at 14, which explains why CO2 from transport cannot be de-carbonised that easily, or cheaply or quickly.

Robin @ 3

I do think about the children – I have four and soon four grandchildren. But I also think about how de-carbonising will impoverish our children if no-one else in the world de-carbonises. As I wrote last week, China and India have no intention of following us. Even the US has just rejected the EU climate levy on flying. There is no point in the UK going it alone or we are heading for real problems.

@16. Richard W: “Battery switching stations would overcome some of the range problems inherent in EV.”

20 years ago, there were discussions about swappable hydrogen storage cells in vehicles. Take the cell out and plug a refreshed one in, like a Calor gas bottle. Today, discussion is about hydrogen refuelling, which scares the shit out of me. We have to work out how to switch and swap batteries/H2 cells at remote filling stations and how to make them safe in towns. Cleaning up the consequences of a fire in a battery powered vehicle scares the shit out of me.

@16. Richard W: “Even if we were minded to all switch to electric cars we do not have the generating capacity. I do not see home recharging of EV ever taking off to any great extent.”

We can charge cars at night when the UK working population goes home (no factories operate at night), of course. (Nobody will ever need to charge a car during daytime hours.) UK homes are incredibly energy efficient and home appliances are considerably better than those we use at work.

Thus we are able to use surplus solar energy at night to power homes. We can also use the same energy to pump water up hydro streams (cf Trawsfynydd) to maintain supply continuity. We can use the energy at least two times before anyone spots the fallacy.

—
Ed Milliband: “The countries that make the leap first will be the successful economies of this century, exporting technology around the world to cities seeking cleaner air and lower emissions.”

Bollocks. The countries that actually make it work — delivering energy as cheaply as a carbon source — will be winners. It is not necessary to be the first adopter to be the first that makes it work economically.

@17. margin4error: “Solar power in Germany exceeded nuclear capacity in march. UK is no less sunny.”

At what cost per watt? Germany has made a choice to invest highly in solar power. The latest investments may work. I am quite happy for the UK to adopt any tech break throughs that they discover. Cost per watt?

“We have scarcely scratched the surface of our wind generating capacity. Tidal us also starting to tip the scales on industrial scale viability. And UK engineering companies have a huge role in this sector around the world that a major decarbonisation drive would secure and enhance.”

UK companies have the capacity to earn lots of money from discoveries and patents on the tech that they have worked out. And then there are intellectual property purists that deny profit from an original idea.

Solar power in Germany exceeded nuclear capacity in march.

That doesn’t tell us much.

AFAIK they are shutting down nuclear and building coal.

Renewables are not running smoothly.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/problems-prompt-germany-to-rethink-energy-revolution-a-852815.html

Charlieman.

Don’t know cost per watt in Germany I’m afraid. Probably less than nuclear because everything is. Though that’s not useful either as no one ever works out cost of nuclear power in a way anyone else agrees with. Agree though the financial opportunity for companies able to innovate is crucial to our potential economic gain.

@ 13 TONE

“And if nuclear is good enough for George ‘Moonbat’ Monbiot, it’s good enough for me. Though I disagree with him about almost everything else, I do admire his integrity and fearlessness on the nuclear issue.”

I used to like Monbiot. Then I read his ideas for fixing capitalism by having money “go off”* rather than gain interest and I realised I was in the presence of a cloud-cookoolander. “We’ll turn savings into loans and loans into savings accounts! That’ll sort everything out, right gang?”

*I hesitate to use the word “depreciate” because I suspect it would give the policy a false sheen of non-mentalness.

NW

The transport aspect is about the toughest because it is the one most impacted on by consumer choice. Electric generation can be regulated into change, and given government incentives. There’s only a few hundred companies involved. That’s different to swaying the minds and habits of millions of people’s that have already committed to a decision. (Bought a car)

That said, public transport and fleet vehicles can be all electric by 2010. Would only take a seven year changeover period after bringing in a new law in 2022. Especially with the rate of change already underway with fleet vehicles. (The UPS’s of this world are already committing).

In terms of tech, plug in recharge is happening now. More and more ports are being installed in parking spaces in London. And london, being relatively wealthy, is a likely early adopter.

And if all else does shift, family cars would shift eventually. Cars don’t last 20 year’s.

So in most regards 2030 is possible. Politically it won’t happen. Tories will win an election again some time. And the scale of investment needed will make a 2030 target a plausible 2040 success.

@ 14 Northern Worker

“Good point. This is a further reason why we cannot totally de-carbonise our economy by 2030. Every single mode of transport will have to be electric including cars. There are 35 million cars, trucks, vans, buses and coaches. The average life of a car is 15 years, and commercial vehicles even longer, which means we have 18 years to replace every single one to de-carbonise.”

You’re absolutely right on this one, but I reckon “decarbonising the economy” would include making up the difference by planting a fuckload of trees.

German solar

capacity – 29gigw
Cost per w – 2euro (down from around 5euros five years ago)
5% of total energy capacity. Up from 3% in 2011.

@24. margin4error: “That said, public transport and fleet vehicles can be all electric by 2010. Would only take a seven year changeover period after bringing in a new law in 2022.”

Working life of a bus is 20 years. If you change its power plant, it’s going to have to work for 25+ years.

17. margin4error

Intermittency is overstated as a problem. A pan European grid significantly reduces peaks and troughs in both demand and generation, reducing the need (proportionately)for quick fire or constantly running base load.

No, intermittency is not overstated. It remains a killer. A pan-European grid is a dream and there is no reason to think it would help much. We would have to continue to spin up thermal power stations to no good purpose.

Also, energy storage is massively overlooked despite decades of proven experience in the hydro power sector.

And where are you going to build these new hydro power stations? Hydro provides about 1% of Britain’s energy generation as it is. With all the best sites used. How are you going to get enough third-rate sites covered in concrete in order to back up enough power?

Solar power in Germany exceeded nuclear capacity in march.

Is that installed capacity or actually generating capacity? Solar is useless. Nuclear actually delivers the power rating on the can.

UK is no less sunny.

Which is to say, not very.

We have scarcely scratched the surface of our wind generating capacity.

Nor are we ever likely to.

Tidal us also starting to tip the scales on industrial scale viability.

Not without vastly greater ecological problems than coal ever caused.

And UK engineering companies have a huge role in this sector around the world that a major decarbonisation drive would secure and enhance.

IT is always better to be a later adopter than an early one. Why should we pay to work out whether VHS or Beta is better? We may find ourselves committed to COBOL when the rest of the world adopts C+. No thanks.

@26. margin4error: “German solar…”

…isn’t very efficient.

Some Germans don’t like it:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-solar-subsidies-to-remain-high-with-consumers-paying-the-price-a-842595.html

From that most reliable source, wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

“As of 2012, the FiT costs about 14 billion euros (US$18 billion) per year for wind and solar installations. The cost is spread across all rate-payers in a surcharge of 3.6 €ct (4.6 ¢) per kWh[9] (approximately 15% of the total domestic cost of electricity).[10]”

Every German consumer — home or industrial — pays more for electricity in order to fund this mass experiment in solar/other power.

“On the other hand, as expensive peak power plants are displaced, the price at the power exchange is reduced due to the so called merit order effect.[11]”

This is a bizarre argument. It acknowledges the requirement for peak power plants; essentially it argues that energy costs are reduced when solar/wind/alternative are active but that something else is required to keep everything running.

Mr Subtlety is right about hydroelectric. The share of UK installed capacity is a rather modest 1.8% of our total generating capacity. We actually get 1.3% of our electricity from hydroelectric. The government agencies estimate that at best we could add an additional 1-2% of our current generating capacity through new hydro. Nearly all of the new hydro capacity will be small-scale because all the best sites are already used.

The technology itself is very good with energy conversion efficiencies of above 90%. Unfortunately in the UK, hydro can only make a marginal difference because we are near our capacity frontier for this source of energy.

people are talking about ‘A pan European grid’

But it looks like the UK’s historic, political decision that expanding the grid to islands is not subsidised – could kill, before it even takes off, the potential for big wind power from off-shore of Scottish Islands:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/24/marine_energy_connection_costs/

Regarding transport, I can’t take battery powered cars seriously. Lithium cells are nasty things and there ain’t enough lithium to make enough of them without damaging the environment further (the unknown consequence of depleting ocean minerals).

I reckon fuel cells based on liquid fuels derived from hydrogen would be the best replacement for gasoline.

As Charleman has suggested, hydrogen has the potential to make some very big bangs! I’m waiting for some clever chemist to find a route to making it safer, then we’ll be off!

Bolivia one of the poorest countries in South America has the biggest lithium deposits in the world. The deposits are almost entirely unexploited. Unfortunately their boneheaded government are trying to develop their extraction industry without any outside expertise and assistance, with predictable dismal results.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/dec/29/bolivia-green-energy-superpower-lithium

Charliman

sorry about the mis-type there – that should have been fleet vehicles can all be changed by 2030. Not sure why you think a bus would have to operate for 25 years though, up from 20. As I say, it’s a big investment of resource to scrap a lot of old busses for new electric ones – but it would be do-able with the right political will. Of course I’ve also noted this is more likely by 2040 if we aim for 2030.

On peak power and German solar – I supsect you have mis-understood something there. Peak power generation is the capacity we can effectively switch on and off to meet peaks in demand (around breakfast time, for example). This is utterly different to base-load power, which your last para in #29 suggests you think is what they mean.

Ironically wind power eases the peak power cost as peaks in demand tend to come as the sun goes up and down, and that’s also when you tend to see greatest generation from wind in Britain, as you get wind-currents running from land to sea (morning) and sea to land (dusk). Plus, a European grid (larger land area and more diversity of lives led – with the sun rising and falling at different times in different places) levels out a lot of the peaks and troughs of demand, much as it does with peaks and troughs in renewable generation. So you effectively would see falling cost of peak generating capacity as you’d need proportionally less of it compared to general wider generating capacity.

oh – but yep – some germand dislike solar. Some Americans dislike Apple Pie. Some Brits dislike tea. What is liked is pretty much tough luck though, as this is about Germany having the political will to act and force through change for the sake of long term prosperity. Something the UK has been terrible at doing when it comes to building or developing just about any new technology for the last 100 years. (we invent, we oppose, we let some one else get rich from it, then we catch up – or at least that’s the cliche description of our approach).

Just Visiting

The North Sea grid is already under agreement and being tentatively built. Two years after first being drawn up by the political leaders of the region, that’s pretty good going. (Of course it benefits from having Norway – the only country to manager oil wealth well in regards to a lasting legacy – pushing it all through).

Richard W

Fortunately we are not only the UK. Hydro capacity of this sort is available in larger capacities across Scandanavia. I can’t stress enough that cross border inter-connectors are a big part of the plan.

So Much For Subtlety

Wow – that’ll be that wonderful pub-level symplistic and unthinking rubbish that I have highlighted on here before that is likely to hold the UK back. Ignore all discussions of why something may work, declare things that solve problems “a dream” and pretend that your own bias is the same as information – and how can you be wrong? Am I right?

Now to try to help you catch up…

where to build hydro? Norway has immense capacity for it.

European grid “a dream”? No, it is being built today, has been under development for decades now, and works very well.

European grid makes no difference? Nonsense. Combining diverse peaks and troughs in supply and demand onto one grid across time zones and a large north-south and East-West area massively reduces the peaks and troughs as a proportion of capacity. (both supply and demand).

UK and Germany aren’t sunny? Of for god’s sake you five year old. We are in fact really quite sunny. Sunny enough that arable land spreads across our island and that solar power this year is providing about 5% of total energy in Germany. (up from 3% last year).

“solar is Useless” Well thanks for that well set out insight. Twit.

Betamax scaremongeering – You may not be smart enough to understand the difference between markets where two techs are incompatable with eachother, and markets where two techs work fine alongside eachother – but to illustrate your stupidity in this regard, do you have a Samsung or an I-Phone, and are you worried about which is betamax? (that’s even before getting into the fact that in your fable from the 80s, PV seems to have established a VHS of cassettes already).

“tidal worse for environment than coal”

go on – give it a shot. Give a shot to explaining how such an obviously stupid and ill-founded accusation is true. Please.

Oh – and SMFS

I hope you don’t take offense at my lack of subtlety.

You cannot talk your way into de-carbonising. It’s not just a near impossible engineering challenge, it’s going to cost a fortune.

Above I mentioned it would cost a trillion pounds to change transport over to electric vehicles – 70 billion a year over 15 years, or around 5% of GDP per annum. That only accounts for changing the entire car stock and laying in tens of millions of charging points. It doesn’t include building lots of extra power stations to supply the electricity and grid transmission, which could easily add another trillion (given the public sector’s ability to spend money like £8,000 each for laptops on Panorama last night).

Note I said ‘power stations’, because the energy requirements of 30 million electric cars are massive and cannot be supplied by renewables.

Commercial vehicles are a very different matter and right now none lend themselves to electric propulsion. You simply can’t store enough electricity at the moment to drive the 44 tonnes trucks, which haul our food and other necessities about. As Charlieman says @27, buses (and coaches) have a very long life. So do trucks, and the simple reason is these things cost a fortune, often hundreds of thousands.

Hydrogen is a possibility for commercials and this morning Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Toyota and Honda announced a joint initiative. But Hydrogen has its problems not the least it’s highly inflammable and difficult to store. More than that, you have to use an awful lot of Carbon to produce Hydrogen in the first place.

Northern Worker

Your first line is actually quite insightful though oddly rather wrong.

It is not a near impossible engineering challenge at all. The technology largely exists, and is progressing all the time.

But then you mention cost, and of course that’s the trouble. Political will to invest resource into making something happen is very very low. That’s partly because tory governments don’t like spending – but also it is because the public will to build a better world is relatively weak in this instance. The nimby and conservatism (small c) of the UK is now well entrenched.

Take your focus on vehicles – as discussed, this is the only area where 2030 is actually a technological challenge as electrification or hydrogenisation of vehicles is still very new and very dependent on individuals making choices rather than government regulating and stumping up cash.

Now, you are utterly wrong about commercial vehicles. Not all commercial vehicles are 44 tonne lorries travelling hundreds of miles from point to point. Most are delivery vans and such like that operate out of local depots and travel short routes around their location before returning to their local depot. Hence UPS has been able to install plenty of electric vehciles into its fleet. Busses are also particularly ripe for such change, since they too do short point to point runs and are regularly back at depot. The more this happens the more the tech proves itself and progresses and becomes cheaper and so on – and the more plausible it becomes, in the end, to have a 44 tonne truck powered by electricity.

And yes, adding road transport to the electricity grid would mean, at present rates, would increase electricity demand by about 33%.

But think about when charging would happen. Charging would happen while the car is parked up at work, or at home in the garage or on the driveway over-night while people sleep. This is great news because we have spare capacity then. Getting this right means easing further those peaks and troughs that are so expensive and troublesome in delivering energy. Indeed given the peaks and troughs we experience at present, the relative increase in energy generation needed is much smaller than you’d think.

Of course that becomes particularly relevent once we all have smart meters in our homes, and so see our tarrifs through the day properly, and become much more aware about the option of charging things over-night because it is cheaper.

@Northern Worker passim:

I’m not suggesting that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to the engineering challenges; that wasn’t the point I was making.

In previous comments and threads however you have come across (to me at least) as denying the existence of AGW; as moving from arguing the political and engineering impracticalities to a deniaal that there is eeven a problem to solve. Your initial post suggesting that climate change isn’t an issue for today’s politicians, to which I reacted, also comes across that way.

As a more general comment; we have to decarbonise our economies this century anyway – unless you can find a way of magicking up more petroleum from somewhere, there won’t be enough to go around, and/or it will be too expensive to use as a transport fuel.

Robin

worth pointing out – and I don’t know about NW being a climate change denyer – running out of oil is far less a concern than the simple massive massive price rises that is now an established trend in oil markets.

Countries that continue to source their energy from oil – be it to power cars or factories or homes or whatever (and gas prices, it is worth noting, tend to follow oil prices, so the UK definately counts) are going to become very unproductive very quickly over the next 20 years, compared to those countries investing in “expensive” energy like solar or wind or tidal now. (Nuclear is also an option, btw – though I don’t know if Ed M intended to include nuclear in his 2030 target).

Which, while Ed Miliband is putting a positive “we can profit from decarbonisation” message is true, is probably a more important message to get across. If we don’t do this soon, we are going to get poorer and poorer and poorer while the rest of the world leaves us behind.

@42:

Hence my reference to the expense of oil as a transport fuel.

NW is right that replacing oil for transport is the real tough nut to crack – or at least one of the two tough nuts (the other being oil as a chemical industry feedstock); but we are going to have to do so because of the rise in price that will inevitably occur as oil becomes scarce. It will be the rise in price that will kill large scale oil usage.

M4E @ 40

The cost is very real and extremely large, and for the technologies discussed beyond the pocket of the UK. We’re talking trillions.

Apart from the money, and considering my profession, I do get excited about the possibilities of technological advance. We have made real advances in CO2 emissions from cars and improved fuel consumption considerably in only a decade. My present car emits 119 g/Km of CO2 and does 44 mpg. My previous car was 210 and 28 mpg. Both the same make and a similar model separated by 8 years. Some of today’s diesels are amazing.

On trucks, there are 470,000 goods vehicles of which 191,000 are over 18 tonnes – 82,000 are over 41 tonnes. As it stands, diesel engines are the only means of propelling these trucks and we would be in serious trouble if we didn’t have them. There are 171,000 buses and coaches with most exceeding 18 tonnes. As I wrote, Hydrogen is a possibility, but we’re a long way off.

Interesting figure 33% more load on the grid for all-electric cars. I haven’t seen a definitive figure, but I know a Nissan Leaf has a 48 KwH battery, which I believe charges at 230 volts and 32 amps (7.36 Kw) for 7 hours. If we had 30,000,000 Nissan Leafs, and they were all on charge overnight, we’d need 30,000,000 times 7360 watts, which is 221 Gw (giga watts which is one billion watts). The total output of our power stations is 94 Gw. You can see the possible problem if I’ve got my sums right. The other charging problem, which I mentioned above or last week, is that only 37% of households have off-road parking – hence the need for an extensive charging network.

Robin Levett @ 41

I don’t doubt for a moment that the climate is changing. But I would say that dealing with the consequences (hot or cold) is far easier and cheaper than trying to change the climate assuming it’s our fault. As for politicians, they have used CAGW as a stick to beat us, raise taxes and generally scare us. I don’t do name calling, as you might have guessed, however I am often severely tested when the best argument politicians can come up with is to call people who disagree with them names. ‘Pleb’ is one that springs to mind!

When the oil runs out

Electricity shouldn’t be a problem far into the future. We have nuclear; we have Thorium; and we have shale gas. Transport could be a problem long before the oil runs out. However, we can make the oil last a lot longer if we keep pursuing ever more economical internal combustion engines. I don’t know what future technology will solve the problem of transport. If I did I would make a fortune. But I’m confident we will solve it and miniature Thorium reactors in cars aren’t as daft as they sound. Thorium is plentiful, and the dangers of radioactivity are miniscule.

NW

No one said it wouldn’t be expensive – but the alternative appears far more expensive.

Oil prices are already back to pre-recession levels and have basically resumed their rising trend.

The 33% figure was from an engineering chief exec. He probably wouldn’t give a monkeys about any of this so long as his company keeps winning contracts for nuclear, coal, wind or burning-baby plants – but he had an estimate of about a third.

I would assume that was a better thought out estimate than your one as the presumption of every car charging fully every night, with no presumption of improving technology over time – seems a little bizarre.

That said, it is interesting that the case for investing in solar and wind and wave is all pretty well un-challenged on here in any meaningful sense.

Which as everyone acknowledges, just leaves the issue of vehicles to be dealt with. rising miles per gallon is a good thing. But that is likely to go only so far before the benefits of it are no longer enough to counter the rising price of petrol due to oil prices shooting upwards.

Hence the interest in finding alternative solutions like electricity now.

Robin

It already is. Political support for renewables and so on is being countered right now by the “it pushes up energy prices”

If oil matches its trend over the last ten years for the next ten years – even factoring in the price drops that came from a massive global recession – that “renewables are too expensive” stuff will seem ludicrously shortsighted.

@NW #44:

But I would say that dealing with the consequences (hot or cold) is far easier and cheaper than trying to change the climate assuming it’s our fault

Those consequences include making the current breadbaskets of the world non-viable for cereal crops, and moving the viable areas north into much smaller areas (the geometry of a sphere being what it is) with much poorer soils. can you even imagine the impact of that effect on food production? The cost in reconfiguring the world’s transport systems alone will be astronomical, and that’s before you get into the additional cost of defence equipment .

Robin @ 47

I guess we’ve now come full circle back to last week’s thread.

My point, if you remember, is that the UK shutting up shop and collapsing into abject poverty will make no difference if India and China keep increasing CO2 rates. We emit 2% of CO2 so closing down and leaving will improve things by 2%, which will make a few millionths difference in global temperatures.

I can assure you, despite your view to the contrary, that India and China do not intend to do anything, and I speak from personal visits and first-hand talks with industrial figures in those countries. Come to that, the USA isn’t exactly keen. Our efforts will only impoverish us, our children and grandchildren.

36. margin4error

Hydro capacity of this sort is available in larger capacities across Scandanavia. I can’t stress enough that cross border inter-connectors are a big part of the plan.

Where? Or to put this another way, over the last decade Norway has had to import some 10% of their electricity. Why haven’t they built more power stations if so many excellent sites are available? Britain’s consumption is some 400 TWhs. Norway’s hydro capacity is some 140 TWhs. Explain to me how they are going to be able to double their capacity – and some more – just for us? That is, not counting the Germans et al.

37. margin4error

Ignore all discussions of why something may work, declare things that solve problems “a dream” and pretend that your own bias is the same as information – and how can you be wrong? Am I right?

Because if your plan depends on every single little bit of it working, then knocking one support out means the whole plan fails. I could explain why a pan-European net is a dream but I doubt you would understand. For now I will concentrate on the simpler blunders on your part.

where to build hydro? Norway has immense capacity for it.

And why haven’t the Norwegians thought of that and done it for themselves? They are net electricity importers.

European grid “a dream”? No, it is being built today, has been under development for decades now, and works very well.

Ha. Amusing. It is being built today. We get French nuclear power. Germans get Norwegian hydroelectricity. The Danes get German coal-fired power. But that is dealing with relatively predictable base load power. Not the minute by minute variation you can expect with wind. The technology for that is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely.

European grid makes no difference? Nonsense. Combining diverse peaks and troughs in supply and demand onto one grid across time zones and a large north-south and East-West area massively reduces the peaks and troughs as a proportion of capacity. (both supply and demand).

We do not have diverse peaks and troughs. Germany is behind us, but not by that much. It makes no difference. And the technical issues are not trivial.

UK and Germany aren’t sunny? Of for god’s sake you five year old. We are in fact really quite sunny. Sunny enough that arable land spreads across our island and that solar power this year is providing about 5% of total energy in Germany. (up from 3% last year).

No we are not. Britain is arable because of the ocean currents providing warm air. Not because of large amounts of sunshine. The German government makes users pay extortionate sums so that people with solar cells can break even. That is not proof Germany is sunny.

“solar is Useless” Well thanks for that well set out insight. Twit.

My pleasure.

Betamax scaremongeering – You may not be smart enough to understand the difference between markets where two techs are incompatable with eachother, and markets where two techs work fine alongside eachother – but to illustrate your stupidity in this regard, do you have a Samsung or an I-Phone, and are you worried about which is betamax? (that’s even before getting into the fact that in your fable from the 80s, PV seems to have established a VHS of cassettes already).

You clearly do not understand the issues then. It is not a case of technologies that can work side to side. As your claims make clear – the idea is that if we piss enough money away now, we can get a head start in these technologies that others will pay us for later on. Which relies on the technology being mutually incompatible or they would not have to buy it. Either we will have no export advantage or we will. Which is it? If we will, then you cannot claim they can be operated side by side with other technologies.

go on – give it a shot. Give a shot to explaining how such an obviously stupid and ill-founded accusation is true. Please.

Because tidal plains tend to be used for other things. They are environmentally sensitive and important. As we see with the stupid plans to use the most important bird habitat in the UK. By all means, deny the problem. But the stupidity is not coming from my side.

38. margin4error

I hope you don’t take offense at my lack of subtlety.

Not at all. You’re flailing, not connecting.

47. Robin Levett

Those consequences include making the current breadbaskets of the world non-viable for cereal crops, and moving the viable areas north into much smaller areas (the geometry of a sphere being what it is) with much poorer soils. can you even imagine the impact of that effect on food production? The cost in reconfiguring the world’s transport systems alone will be astronomical, and that’s before you get into the additional cost of defence equipment .

Explain to me how it is even possible to think that we face any imminent risk to the current breadbaskets of the world from global warming? I mean, Canada. It is quite far to the North. Further to the north than, say, Mexico. Are you asserting that wheat does not grow in Mexico? By what possible set of circumstances could Canada’s climate ever become like Mexico’s?

Smaller areas? You may notice that while the world is a sphere, the breadbaskets of the world are limited to a few small places. Sure, Australia would be screwed by even quite limited warming. But Canada and the former Soviet Union would be vastly better off. And the land mass of the world is heavily weighted to the north – in other words, total surface area might be smaller, but total land mass would probably be bigger. Everything we know tells us some mild warming would be good for us and especially good for agriculture. Look at the MWP.

There wouldn’t even be any need to reconfigure the world’s transport systems. And even if there was, it would be cheaper than scrapping fossil fuels.

The latitude of Canada where most people live and grow crops in the plains are not actually that far North. The U.S Canada border being the 49th parallel and that passes 15k south of Paris in Europe. Hardly anyone lives in northern Canada. It is the UK that is really mild for its latitude warmed by the Gulf Stream. Canada is one of the places that would probably benefit from some warming climate change if they can avoid droughts. The North West passage opening to shipping for an Asia to Europe route is a big game changer and is why Canada are currently setting up military bases in the North.

SMFS

Norway doesn’t need to double hydro capacity. It just needs to utilise it as stored energy, freeing it up for that by expanding other energy sources as part of their mix, and using spare UK and other neighbour energy through the interconnectors in place and being built.

On dreaming, of course you won’t explain why interconnectors don’t work. Because they are already in operations and working well. But hey, just keep pretending it is rubbish. Ignorance is for some a better option than actually knowing stuff.

Norway again – what on earth makes you think it is market efficient for Norway to be a net electricity exporter? Jumping to bizarre and worthless conclusions like this to make some useless point is a strong sign of a weak mind.

Interconnectors transfer caseload not intermittent power? Are you really that dumb? For a start it isn’t true. Germany sends its peak power south (when it’s solar power peaks especially) and electricity isn’t different stuff needing different cables when it comes from base or other loads. Twit.

We do have diverse peaks and troughs. Just saying we don’t because you are a twit who doesn’t bother looking up evidence or reading reports on such things doesn’t mean we don’t. From North to south and from east to west, Sun rise and set varies by several hours. Likewise the south raises demand when hot, while the North does while cold. These are just two significant examples. Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t actually support you moronic stance.

German solar power has halved in generating cost in four years, and it gets 5% of its energy from solar. We are no less sunny, and for all the warm currents, try growing tomatoes in a warm cupboard and see what happens if you think warm air is an alternative house of ultraviolet light.

Betamax. Put bluntly, there will be more than one winning tech as there is no comparability issue. Pv cells and wind turbines, a bit like cars and trains, will be part of many a mix and come in a range of specifications to suit preferences and local conditions. And oddly enough, Japan, the USA and Germany all manage an export advantage in cars despite their comparability with roads all over the place. Dipstick.

On tides. So one example of a project that might be bad for the environment is proof positive all tidal will be horrendous for the environment. How dumb are you? Should have left such a stupid opinion unexplained rather than expose your idiocy so.

@Richard W #54 (and SMFS at #53):

The latitude of Canada where most people live and grow crops in the plains are not actually that far North. The U.S Canada border being the 49th parallel and that passes 15k south of Paris in Europe. Hardly anyone lives in northern Canada. It is the UK that is really mild for its latitude warmed by the Gulf Stream. Canada is one of the places that would probably benefit from some warming climate change if they can avoid droughts

Canada may get warm enough to grow wheat; but there are two problems.

Firstly, the area of land that wheat production can move north into is less than the area of land that is lost to wheat production at the souther edge of the grain belt in North America.

Secondly, that area of land is known as the Canadian Shield for a reason; a good part of the reason the Great Plains are so fertile is the depth of the soils, scraped off the Shield and deposited on the Plains. The Shield has thin, poor soils. The grain belt in Saskatchewan, Canada’s largest wheat producer by a distance, is defined by the edge of the Shield.

The effect of this is that in North America, which is the world’s third largest wheat grower (after the EU and China), moving the growing belt north doesn’t quite work; the southern edge of the belt (which lies north of the Mexican border) moves, while the north doesn’t.

@SMFS:

Are you asserting that wheat does not grow in Mexico? By what possible set of circumstances could Canada’s climate ever become like Mexico’s?

Some wheat does grow in Mexico; of the order of 4.5m tonnes per annum, compared with 85-90m tonnes for the US/Canadian grain belt. But it’s not the climate that stops wheat growing on the Shield; it’s the soil, or lack of it.

<blockquote.the breadbaskets of the world are limited to a few small places. Sure, Australia would be screwed by even quite limited warming. But Canada and the former Soviet Union would be vastly better off.

The EU produces more wheat even than China. Production is largely concentrated north of the Alps, going north as far as Denmark and the UK. If the growing belt moves north, there is nowhere for it to go; neither the Highlands nor Scandinavia could support large-scale wheat production.

Most of China’s wheat production is winter wheat, mostly grown on the North China Plain. North of that Plain is a mountain range; again, nowhere for the wheat production to move north to.

Canada/USA I’ve dealt with; as a whole, they will lose out. Australia, as you point out, will lose production with warming.

Two-thirds of India’s wheat production is in the states that border Nepal (and, while we’re at it, Pakistan’s production is contiguous with those states). Fancy cultivating wheat on a large scale in the Himalayas?

Russia? It’s already using the best soils, the black earth. Moving the growing belt north takes it into forest and much poorer soils.

In general – the problem is that if warming moves the growing belt north, it is moving agriculture off the favourable soils and plains and onto unfavourable soils, mountains etc.

52. margin4error

Norway doesn’t need to double hydro capacity. It just needs to utilise it as stored energy, freeing it up for that by expanding other energy sources as part of their mix, and using spare UK and other neighbour energy through the interconnectors in place and being built.

Except that it does not have enough stored capacity. They would have to build more dams. And as you say, they would have to turn to coal or gas to generate their power some other way. They need sufficient storage to provide power for everybody connected to the system for some weeks. And they do not have it.

On dreaming, of course you won’t explain why interconnectors don’t work. Because they are already in operations and working well. But hey, just keep pretending it is rubbish. Ignorance is for some a better option than actually knowing stuff.

I do not pretend interconnectors don’t work. I point out that the sort of grid you have in mind – dealing with most of our power, not isolated top ups and responding to massive fluctuations at short notice – is not really viable. An interconnector is simple. Although when they go down, the whole of Italy can be blacked out. But that is not what you want.

Norway again – what on earth makes you think it is market efficient for Norway to be a net electricity exporter? Jumping to bizarre and worthless conclusions like this to make some useless point is a strong sign of a weak mind.

Why you make this sh!t up? I made no comment on the market efficiency of Norway exporting power. I simply pointed out they do not. They import it. Even though hydro is the best form of power there is and if they could expand it, they almost certainly would have. Thus they have no spare capacity to act as the sort of back up you would like.

Interconnectors transfer caseload not intermittent power? Are you really that dumb? For a start it isn’t true. Germany sends its peak power south (when it’s solar power peaks especially) and electricity isn’t different stuff needing different cables when it comes from base or other loads. Twit.

Germany sends a tiny fraction of its solar power south. It does not produce much solar anyway. Most of it gets used in Germany. So what you have is basically noise compared to the large base load power stations that do most of the generating. The problem with renewables is that you have a semi-predictable power demand with an utterly unpredictable renewable supply. The more market share renewables take over, the bigger this problem becomes. I cannot see how anyone can adjust a European-wide net fast enough to deal with the problem. Nor can you – or you would if you knew what you were talking about. You cannot claim that coping with the trivial amount of renewable power now means we can cope when they make up 50+% of the market. As you want.

We do have diverse peaks and troughs. Just saying we don’t because you are a twit who doesn’t bother looking up evidence or reading reports on such things doesn’t mean we don’t. From North to south and from east to west, Sun rise and set varies by several hours. Likewise the south raises demand when hot, while the North does while cold. These are just two significant examples. Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t actually support you moronic stance.

Several hours? That means an interconnector is nice for a few hours a day when Germans are hard at work and Brits are not. Great. It also means there is a vast overlap in the middle of the day when both countries, and everyone in between, shares a peak demand. It is great that the South demands power in summer. But the South is large and so you would expect a peak across three months of the year. The North is an even bigger power consumer and again that peak is likely to affect Germany as well as Britain at the same time. We are just not diverse enough for this to be a big deal. At least not the big deal you need it to be.

German solar power has halved in generating cost in four years, and it gets 5% of its energy from solar. We are no less sunny, and for all the warm currents, try growing tomatoes in a warm cupboard and see what happens if you think warm air is an alternative house of ultraviolet light.

Germany has pissed a lot of money away that could have been better spent. A shame but good to see they are reducing the cost of solar. We are no less sunny. Which is to say not very sunny at all. If you do not understand a difficult scientific concept like that one, ask and I will explain. A better approach that displaying your lack of reading comprehension to all. I did not confuse sunlight and warm air.

Betamax. Put bluntly, there will be more than one winning tech as there is no comparability issue. Pv cells and wind turbines, a bit like cars and trains, will be part of many a mix and come in a range of specifications to suit preferences and local conditions.

Excellent. So there is no need to be an early adopter. Because there will be no export advantage. There will be lots of different technologies and so we ought to sit back and wait for the Germans to pay for the research for us. Then we can pick up what we need cheap.

And oddly enough, Japan, the USA and Germany all manage an export advantage in cars despite their comparability with roads all over the place. Dipstick.

Comparability? Do you even listen to yourself? Japan was not a pioneer in car technology. It came late. It did not have to pay for dead ends like steam power. We should do the same.

On tides. So one example of a project that might be bad for the environment is proof positive all tidal will be horrendous for the environment. How dumb are you? Should have left such a stupid opinion unexplained rather than expose your idiocy so.

Pretty much. After all, tidal estuaries are not unused or sterile. They all tend to be important ecologically. You can’t flood them at irregular times and not totally disrupt the local environment. But if you back away from the biggest single project, you are left with smaller ones. And less efficient ones. And less productive ones. Which means your dreams of generation begin to fade away into irrelevance. That you do not understand it, as you understand so little, does not mean it is stupid. But by all means, please try to find any area of the UK where we could build significant tidal power without a massive environmental footprint worse than anything coal is likely to do.

53. Robin Levett

Canada may get warm enough to grow wheat; but there are two problems. Firstly, the area of land that wheat production can move north into is less than the area of land that is lost to wheat production at the souther edge of the grain belt in North America.

Sorry, try again. Once more, that is not the issue. There are two issues here. One is that this claim is not true. There is more land to the North. The second is that it is irrelevant as it is based on the irrational assumption that wheat will not grow right where it is now. We are predicted to have something like 1.4 C warming by the end of the century. Wheat grows in London. Average June temperature is something like 18C. Wheat also grows in Ibiza. Average June temperature is something like 25C. A 7 C difference. No matter how much foreseeable warming Canada gets, wheat is going to do well. Better in fact that it does now. As wheat does not like cold weather.

Secondly, that area of land is known as the Canadian Shield for a reason; a good part of the reason the Great Plains are so fertile is the depth of the soils, scraped off the Shield and deposited on the Plains. The Shield has thin, poor soils. The grain belt in Saskatchewan, Canada’s largest wheat producer by a distance, is defined by the edge of the Shield.

Given what we add to soils these days, it is nice to have rich fertile soil, but it is not necessary. And I say that as someone who has worked where farms get by nicely on irrigated desert sands. But it is irrelevant. Winnipeg has a June average of about 13C. If that leaps to 15C, which is a worst case scenario, wheat is not going to become unviable.

The effect of this is that in North America, which is the world’s third largest wheat grower (after the EU and China), moving the growing belt north doesn’t quite work; the southern edge of the belt (which lies north of the Mexican border) moves, while the north doesn’t.

Except the northern limit would. Assuming some disaster of Biblical proportions that could shift the world’s temperature by a significant amount – north of which Mexican border by the way?

Some wheat does grow in Mexico; of the order of 4.5m tonnes per annum, compared with 85-90m tonnes for the US/Canadian grain belt. But it’s not the climate that stops wheat growing on the Shield; it’s the soil, or lack of it.

Actually I tend to think it is economics. So wheat will grow in Mexico. Which means that even if Saskatchewan’s average temperature doubles, putting them on par with, say, Tijuana, they will continue to grow wheat right where they are.

The EU produces more wheat even than China. Production is largely concentrated north of the Alps, going north as far as Denmark and the UK. If the growing belt moves north, there is nowhere for it to go; neither the Highlands nor Scandinavia could support large-scale wheat production.

If. And I disagree about Scandinavia. If Scotland and Finland became more like, say, Bavaria, they would grow more wheat. If they became more like Morocco they would too. But there is no way that we are going to see that much temperature change. The average temperature in Munich this September has been 14C. While London has been 18C. That is over twice the difference we can expect to see by the end of the century. If the IPCC is correct. Wheat production in France is not going to be threatened any time soon.

Most of China’s wheat production is winter wheat, mostly grown on the North China Plain. North of that Plain is a mountain range; again, nowhere for the wheat production to move north to.

Except it is winter wheat. Meaning if the winters get milder, they will thrive. The North of China is actually really cold. Nor is there a mountain chain right across the north of China. There is the steppe – ideal farm land in fact. If only the Mongols and Russians weren’t grazing sheep on it.

Canada/USA I’ve dealt with; as a whole, they will lose out. Australia, as you point out, will lose production with warming.

I do not point that out about Australia and you have not shown that Canada and the US will lose out.

Russia? It’s already using the best soils, the black earth. Moving the growing belt north takes it into forest and much poorer soils.

It is using the best soils poorly. Bringing them up to best Western practice would end world hunger. Not a problem.

In general – the problem is that if warming moves the growing belt north, it is moving agriculture off the favourable soils and plains and onto unfavourable soils, mountains etc.

If. And no it is not. It is moving from soils of varying quality that we have used for a long time to soils that are mostly too frigid to be of much use. But there is still no rational reason to think that anyone is going to have to move – or that in fact a few degrees warming in places like Russia or Saskatchewan won’t do a great deal to lift average production. Wheat is a warm, dry climate plant. It does not like the cold or the wet. The more we make the rest of the world like its home in Turkey, the better it will do.

@SMFS #55:

You’ve missed the point; to repeat, Canada’s problems with wheat production will not be temperature but soil dependent. And the gren revolutionw as built on finding out how to turn cheap oil into increased food production through mechanisation. With oil becoming scarcer and more expensive, and with burning it being a cause of the problem in the first place, there’s not a lot of scope for doing that on the Shield, even if you can find some scrapes of soil there.

As for wheat liking the warmth?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/may/crops-global-warming-050511.html

I’ve only skimmed this, but you might find it instructive:

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/480.full

You’ll note the reference there to CIMMYT’s estimate of a move northward of the grain belt by 1,000km. The map of that is at the foot of this BBC story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6200114.stm

56. Robin Levett

You’ve missed the point; to repeat, Canada’s problems with wheat production will not be temperature but soil dependent.

No I haven’t. We can grow pretty much anything on any soil. It is a matter of adding enough. And we do. Hell, half the pot growers of Britain grow stuff with no soil at all.

And the gren revolutionw as built on finding out how to turn cheap oil into increased food production through mechanisation. With oil becoming scarcer and more expensive, and with burning it being a cause of the problem in the first place, there’s not a lot of scope for doing that on the Shield, even if you can find some scrapes of soil there.

You are now changing the subject to something else. You may be right that peak oil will pose a problem, well no you are not, but even if you were, that would be a totally different problem to MMGW.

As for wheat liking the warmth?

That won’t load for me. Wheat remains a Mediterranean crop that does not take kindly to the cold or the wet. It is one crop that global warming will benefit.

I’ve only skimmed this, but you might find it instructive:

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/480.full

I might, but then I might not. But good news – it seems on the Great Plains, warming means more rain.

As summary measures, the median annual precipitation norm of the 2007 distribution of North American wheat production was one-half that of the 1839 distribution, and the median annual temperature norm was 3.7 °C lower.

But what do they say?

Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) anticipate that North American wheat farmers may extend the margin of wheat production roughly 1,000 km north into northern Canada and Alaska, whereas heat and drought will make cultivation untenable in many areas of the southern Great Plains (9).

Many areas of the southern Great Plains? So the US keeps most of the Great Plains but also grows wheat in Canada and Alaska? How is that not a plus? In fact they say:

The currently predicted changes during the next century will, in a sense, reverse the predominant historical path of the past two centuries by creating a warmer and wetter environment in the Plains and Prairies that will partially approach the conditions that existed in the Middle Atlantic region when it constituted the North American wheat belt.

So the cold frigid Dakotas will become more like Kentucky or even New York? How is that a bad thing?

You’ll note the reference there to CIMMYT’s estimate of a move northward of the grain belt by 1,000km.

They are predicting the northern border of the grain belt will move forward 1000 km. Good news. Not that the entire grain belt will move 1000 km northwards.

The map of that is at the foot of this BBC story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6200114.stm

As if the BBC knows sh!t about the topic – and indeed they made precisely your mistake. They also make some other stupid errors:

The most significant impact of climate change on agriculture is probably changes in rainfall. Some regions are forecast to receive more rain, others to receive less; above all, it will become more variable.

We don’t know this but let’s assume there will be some shift in rainfall. Much of the Great Plains is already irrigated. Which do you think is more likely – the on going Zombie apocalypse you all seem to want, or we will pay for a bit more irrigation?

But increasing temperatures can also affect crops. Photosynthesis slows down as the thermometer rises, which also slows the plants’ growth and capacity to reproduce.

Photosynthesis slows down as temperatures rise does it? As anyone who has spent ten minutes watching plants grow in the tropics will no doubt agree. Claims this stupid show how worthless the source is.

Notice even this worthless source talks about problems in India – but not in the US or Canada. Which suggests they do not foresee a decline in North American wheat production.

@SMFS #57:

Many areas of the southern Great Plains? So the US keeps most of the Great Plains but also grows wheat in Canada and Alaska? How is that not a plus?

Because you can’t grow wheat on rock? Even now, the northern limit of the Canadian wheat belt is defined not by climate but by soil (or the lack of). The Southern Great Plains are more productive than the Shield will ever be; so losing good soil and replacing it with rock cannot be a plus.