John

"Disagreeing with you isn’t “rude.” Calling me an “Albo cult member” while dodging data is, however."

Repeatedly lying to the forum is your mo. It is rude and disrespectful, and you deserve to be called out for it.

"No contradiction exists unless you can quote where either of us said something mutually exclusive."

Um, wtf said the link showed prices falling. You repeated your "correlation is not causation" lie, acknowledging the data showed a rising price, so yes, you do contradict one another.

"That’s why causal analysis is needed"

The information can be obtained. It is an accounting exercise, not statistical inference.

"“It got good use by the smoking lobby” doesn’t make the phrase false. It’s a basic principle in economics, epidemiology, and physics because it’s valid logic, not PR."

Correlation is used to determine a relation between apparently unrelated things. For smoking and tobacco use, the challenge is to show what caused someone's disease. Determining this by medical testing is often impossible, especially with cancer, so statistical methods are needed. In contrast, determining the cost of wind and solar is a matter or doing the sums, so it is not a correlation.

You're an absolute shonk, John. It is no surprise to see you beating the drum for the wind and solar scammers.

It appears you’re getting a little too emotional now, Fester.

//Repeatedly lying to the forum is your mo. It is rude and disrespectful, and you deserve to be called out for it.//

Accusations without specifics are just noise. Quote an actual “lie” or retract it.

//Um, wtf said the link showed prices falling. You repeated your "correlation is not causation" lie, acknowledging the data showed a rising price, so yes, you do contradict one another.//

Misrepresentation.

WTF referred to prices falling in the most recent period, which is correct. I referred to your earlier claim blaming renewables for rising prices over the long term. Those are separate timeframes, not contradictory statements.

//The information can be obtained. It is an accounting exercise, not statistical inference.//

Accounting can tell you what prices were. It cannot isolate how much of that change was due to renewables versus gas spikes, network upgrades, retail margins, or other factors without further analysis. That’s the point you keep skipping.

//Correlation is used to determine a relation between apparently unrelated things… In contrast, determining the cost of wind and solar is a matter or doing the sums, so it is not a correlation.//

You’re moving the goalposts.

The dispute wasn’t about the cost of building a wind farm. It was about your claim that historical retail price movements were caused by renewables. That’s exactly where correlation without causal analysis fails.

//You're an absolute shonk, John…//

More invective.

If you’ve got credible, sourced evidence showing renewables - not global fuel prices or other factors - directly drove retail prices up in Australia, post it.

Otherwise you’re just repeating the same assertion and hoping no one notices the gap.

Yawn. Time for a new subject. Nothing has changed. The same couple of darkened bedroom dwellers saying the same things, despite the fact that whatever posters said in their first reaction to this tedious topic, will be the same in their final post, with a bit of personal abuse thrown in because nobody agrees with them.

Meanwhile, the people responsible for the sky-rocketing electricity prices and telling lies about them don't give a FF about what anonymous key-board clowns think about anything.

It's notable that high energy carbon is also high in information due to the high number of bonds per atom and for relatively low weight compared for example to silicon. DNA is the way that information is passed between generations and is based on carbon chains. Lithium batteries have a much lower energy density than carbon chains as seen by the energy density table. If diamonds were used in cars, the fuel tank could be much smaller, and cars could have less wind resistance, and less metal. Solar panels have to have extremely large surface areas and don't have storage capability. Simplicity over complexity is a well founded engineering principle.

Its the same old playbook. Pick a subset of the data that tells you the story you want to hear and then pretend that that is the whole story. We saw it also with the discussion on the relative cost of renewables where the establishment costs and the decommissioning costs are ignored and then the claim is made that renewables are cheaper even as its easily shown that the countries with the highest levels of renewables have the highest levels of electricity costs.

And so here. The whole aim (at least the stated claim) of this kabuki theatre is to reduce emissions which it is claimed renewables do. Yet here's the data.... (million tonnes of CO2 equivalent)

China emissions 2015 13118.90 .... 2023 15943.99.... 21.5% INcrease
USA emissions 2015 6329.00 ..... 2023 5960.80 .... 5.8% DEcrease

It seems that the Chinese (swoon, genuflect, all praise St XI) are claiming to be climate saviours while merrily pumping out CO2e with abandon while the US (boo, hiss) who we all know are climate vandals are reducing their emissions without the need to trumpet their renewables efforts.

Now all of this assumes that any of these numbers are valid and I find it passingly amusing that so many people treat figures from Peking as reliable. Still it all we've got.

So how to account for this divergent outcomes. Well we could start by recognising that China manufactures these renewables using coal and oil which, of coarse, we are supposed to not notice. And we could also recognise that while China claims to care about the environment, their only concern is to use western green naivety to China's benefit.

When we see all these claimed Chinese renewables actually start to reduce their CO2e emissions, then we'll have something to discuss.

This is mere projection, mhaze.

//Its the same old playbook… renewables are cheaper even as its easily shown that the countries with the highest levels of renewables have the highest levels of electricity costs.//

You’re the one jumping between power-sector and economy-wide outcomes as it suits. Proper cost studies include capital, integration, transmission, and end-of-life. And “most renewables = highest prices” is cherry-picking - retail prices also reflect taxes, fuel import dependence, and network choices. It’s not causation.

//…here’s the data: ...//

Raw totals don’t tell the story.

China’s economy and industry grew massively in that span, so absolute emissions rose while its power sector carbon intensity fell and its clean share soared. The right comparisons are per-capita, per-GDP, or per-kWh. Using totals between such different economies is misleading.

//It seems the Chinese… claim to be climate saviours while the US reduces emissions without trumpeting renewables.//

Strawman.

No one here crowned China “saviour.” The point is simply the scale and speed of its clean build-out - wind and solar capacity rising by tens of percent annually, coal utilisation falling. That’s evidence of transition, not perfection.

//…numbers from Peking… amusing that people treat them as reliable.//

You can’t both cite Chinese figures to make your case and dismiss them as unreliable when inconvenient. Pick a standard and stick to it.

//China manufactures these renewables using coal and oil which, of course, we are supposed not to notice.//

Everyone notices it - that’s why cleaning the grid matters. Building a clean system with today’s fossil grid is temporary; once built, renewables run with negligible emissions. Transitional emissions don’t invalidate the long-term shift.

//When we see these renewables actually reduce China’s CO2e, then we’ll have something to discuss.//

They already do in the power sector.

Every MWh of wind or solar displaces fossil generation. National totals still rise because energy demand and exports are expanding, but that’s why analysts track intensity, not just raw tonnes. Judge electricity by electricity metrics - not whole-economy numbers that bundle steel, cement, transport and exports.

Ten points for effort, though.