Climate and Weather

Smart meters help consumers avoid wasting money on energy efficiency
Posted on August 12, 2016 by Michael Giberson


Analysis of a randomised-controlled trial on a sample of almost 2500 Irish households revealed one surprising result: compared to the control group, households provided with a smart meter, detailed feedback on usage, and time-of-use pricing reduced investment in energy efficiency projects.

While this unexpected development appears treated by the researchers as an embarrassment to be overcome, the result should be celebrated. Despite spending less on energy efficiency projects like insulating blankets on water heaters or extra attic insulation, treatment-group households still reduced power consumption both at peak and overall as compared to control-group households. Or, to put it the other way, control-group households spent more on energy efficiency projects and still consumed relatively more power than consumers provided with smart meters, feedback, and time-of-use pricing.

Or, to sum it up more pointedly, giving consumers better information and better incentives helps consumers avoid wasting money on feel-good energy efficiency projects.

Citation: McCoy, Daire, and Sean Lyons. “Unintended outcomes of electricity smart-metering: trading-off consumption and investment behaviour.” Energy Efficiency (2016): 1-20. http://doi.org/bmtr.
 
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/c...-with-q&a-climate-claims-20160815-gqt9a4.html

"Malcolm Roberts leaves NASA 'flummoxed' with Q&A climate claims"

"Former coal miner and now One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says NASA data on climate change is 'corrupted'."

"We've based our views on empirical science, and there's nothing in the Muller study to undercut that," Roberts told Cubby at the time. Climate change science had been captured by "some of the major banking families in the world" who form a "tight-knit cabal", he insisted."

"That sense of capture - if not the sinister anti-semitic hints that prompted even fellow denier commentator Andrew Bolt to distance himself from Roberts - remains four years on.

Anyway, when Cox pulled out some charts on Q&A from US space agency NASA showing a clear upward trend in global temperatures, Roberts readily dismissed the data as "corrupted" and "manipulated"."
 
All you AGW deniers will love this one:

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change

"There's also a moral duty to future generations that will live amid the climate devastation being created now.

"Here's a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them," Rieder says."

Yes folks, some of the AGW crowd have officially gone off the deep end. The best way to save the human race from AGW destruction is to stop making humans...
 
Wez said:
All you AGW deniers will love this one:

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change

"There's also a moral duty to future generations that will live amid the climate devastation being created now.

"Here's a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them," Rieder says."

Yes folks, some of the AGW crowd have officially gone off the deep end. The best way to save the human race from AGW destruction is to stop making humans...
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They went off the deep end a long time ago.
Im sitting on the bottom with my scuba gear, waving them in.
 
In almost every way human beings today lead more prosperous, safer and longer lives — and we have all the data we need to prove it. So why does everybody remain convinced that the world is going to the dogs? Because that is what we pay attention to, as the thoroughbred fretters we are. The psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have shown that people do not base their assumptions on how frequently something happens, but on how easy it is to recall examples. This ‘availability heuristic’ means that the more memorable an incident is, the more probable we think it is. And what is more memorable than horror? What do you remember best — your neighbour’s story about a decent restaurant which serves excellent lamb stew, or his warning about the place where he was poisoned and threw up all over his boss’s wife?--J. Norbert
 
Fearing increases in the price of hotel rooms as a result of the Blue Cut fire, officials in San Bernardino County have declared a state of emergency whereby restrictions on “price gouging” are now in effect. According to District Attorney Mike Ramos, the law is designed to protect innocent consumers from being victimized by “unconscionable” increases in the prices of hotel rooms for Blue Cut fire evacuees.
 
It never fails. No sooner does some calamity trigger an urgent need for basic resources than self-righteous voices are raised to denounce the amazingly efficient system that stimulates suppliers to speed those resources to the people who need them. That system is the free market’s price mechanism — the fluctuation of prices because of changes in supply and demand.

When the demand for bottled water goes through the roof — which is another way of saying that bottled water has become (relatively) scarce — the price of water quickly rises in response. That price spike may be annoying, but it’s not nearly as annoying as being unable to find water for sale at any price. Rising prices help keep limited quantities from vanishing today, while increasing the odds of fresh supplies arriving tomorrow.

It is easy to demonize vendors who charge what the market will bear following a catastrophe. “After storm come the vultures’’ USA Today memorably headlined a story about the price hikes that followed Hurricane Charley in Florida in 2004. Coakley hasn’t called anybody a vulture, at least not yet, but her office has dedicated a telephone hotline and is encouraging the public to drop a dime on “price gougers.’’

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglo...es/2010/05/04/whats_wrong_with_price_gouging/
 
Bruddah IZ said:
Nothing like hitchhiking on the summer months to make your case. Nothing new though.
Click to expand...

The GISS temperature records are global, so when it is summer here it is winter in, for example, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina. July 2016 was not the hottest month in the record, just the hottest July. Not only that, the absolutely highest month in the record was last February, which I suppose you think is a "winter" month.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
 
Bruddah IZ said:
Fearing increases in the price of hotel rooms as a result of the Blue Cut fire, officials in San Bernardino County have declared a state of emergency whereby restrictions on “price gouging” are now in effect. According to District Attorney Mike Ramos, the law is designed to protect innocent consumers from being victimized by “unconscionable” increases in the prices of hotel rooms for Blue Cut fire evacuees.
Click to expand...

Jerk.
 
It is essentially the same story when stores are selling ice, plywood, gasoline, or other things for prices that reflect today’s supply and demand, rather than yesterday’s supply and demand. Price controls will not cause new supplies to be rushed in nearly as fast as higher prices will. None of this is rocket science. But Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.”
 
espola said:
The GISS temperature records are global, so when it is summer here it is winter in, for example, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina. July 2016 was not the hottest month in the record, just the hottest July. Not only that, the absolutely highest month in the record was last February, which I suppose you think is a "winter" month.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the climate Scientist that got trapped in the ice of Antartica a few summers ago.
 
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