99% of Costa Rica's electricity came from renewable energy in 2015

> Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type.

Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Wind, solar and tidal energy all fluctuate wildly during the day. In case there's no backup/storage (e.g. with pump-hydro systems, cheap-ish and effective, but a crime on nature!) you have to either import power from outside the country or resort to conventional power generation. Oh, and even hydro sucks for nature, because hydro plants interrupt natural pathways for fishes and like pump-hydro plants, there's a HUGE additional negative impact if you use a dam (in contrast to natural state, animals can't pass over the waterway, and as seen in China, important areas of biodiversity simply get flooded).

The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy. Batteries need vast amounts of (rare) metals which have to be mined, refined and manufactured, molten-salt high power solar towers are a safety risk (as anything operating at three-digits-celsius temperature is)...

Oh, I would say there's negative environmental effects of hydroelectricity, including the destruction of habitat.

Dams also have a life span, which is measured in decades (or less). Once the silt has built up, the dam doesn't really work in generating power any more.

Let me guess: your income is more than US$6,000 per year, the median per capita income for Costa Rica. For the United States, the median per capita income is about US$27,000.

It looks like electricity costs around US$0.30/kWh in Costa Rica. In the United States, it's about US$0.13.

So, the electricity in Costa Rica costs 2.3 times as much, and the income is about 20% of that in the United States, meaning that electric bills are effectively over 10 times higher.

Would you be willing to pay an electric bill that was ten times what you pay now? Even if you would, I assure you that many others would not.

Costa Rica does not maintain a standing army (minor policing, border patrol, and a commando unit - company of 70 men); they informally rely on the U.S.'s army due to the U.S. - Costa Rica relationship. Also the U.S. forgave Costa Rican debt for forest conservation. These and other factors leave some of the GDP for investment in infrastructure like renewables. Other than building or damming another waterway, upgrading or increasing the number of generators, the ability to simply add capacity is limited with hydro.

Not sure how you concluded "We should not do that." from the original authors post.

He was just adding more information to the original article.

The countries you mention have neighbours with large and stable base power generation capacity, and a well-connected international power grid. In Denmark, for instance, a single one of the power lines goin up to Norway has 1700 MW capacity. Costa Rica isn't as fortunate; even though they are connected to their neighbours, the network is limited to just 300 MW total and the neighbours don't have the most stable grids either. From what I can see, Denmark net imports up to 15% of their annual electricity consumption, while Costa Rica gross imports around 2%.

> The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy".

Wrong. E.g., one of the statements in the article is, and I saw and responded to, was:

> The country has recently made headlines by operating 100% on renewable energy for 285 days.

So it's the "country", presumably the whole "country", including electricity, cars, trucks, home heating, airplanes, etc.

And that statement said "energy" and not just "electricity".

Sure, in the article, the pictures I saw were for solar panels and wind turbines. I saw mention of their hydroelectric facility but no picture. So, tough not to guess: The article is propaganda for electric energy via wind and solar and, then, wants to jump to say "energy" for the whole "country".

I responded very calmly to the misleading propaganda.

It it crystal clear that this article is solidly in the center of the community of global warming and climate change alarmists. Okay, let's look at that subject. Surprisingly, we now have some quite good ways to do that.

We look in two parts, (1) the predictions of warming and (2) the real science.

(1) THE PREDICTIONS

So, the claims of human caused global warming claimed to be science and made some predictions. Good: The predictions were for a lot of global warming.

At

http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg

is a comparison of actual temperatures and temperatures predicted from the global warming community. Immediately from the graph, the predictions are way too high.

Then, net, according to science, we regard the candidate science as failed, as junk.

Really, right there is the end of the global warming science. Done.

But, maybe that devastating refutation is too succinct. So, for more, below I include three chunks of evidence, (A) -- (C):

(A) A WSJ DISCUSSION AND GRAPH

There is a lot of expert overview discussion, at

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020430140457717...

with

"Commentary

No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy. January 27, 2012

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:"

See also the graph there that compares actual temperatures with measured temperatures.

(B) THE US NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE REPORT

There is the report:

Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006,

available at

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

From that report, if only from just the graph on page 2, as far as we can tell, the temperature in 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000 well before any human industrialization.

(C) THE VOSTOK DATA USED BY AL GORE

In his movie, Al Gore showed a graph of data from the ice core samples from the Vostok station in the Antarctic. The graph covered several hundred thousand years and showed both temperature and CO2 concentrations rising and falling together. That graph was Gore's main evidence that more CO2 causes global warming.

But, just looking at the graph shows that the CO2 levels rose about 800 years after the temperature rose. So, clearly the higher CO2 levels did not cause the higher temperatures. The higher temperatures were caused by something but not CO2 levels. That situation was clear right in Gore's movie for anyone who just looked at it. Net, Gore's evidence was really solid evidence that CO2 did not cause global warming -- just read the graph.

SUMMARY OF PART (1)

For the science, pictures of arctic sea ice in the summer, polar bears, glaciers falling into the ocean, stories about the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, other anecdotal evidence, etc. are just irrelevant and not at all convincing otherwise.

Instead, we need just a simple comparison of real temperatures and predicted ones. Since the predictions of the candidate science were badly wrong, we reject the candidate science. In science, it really is just that simple.

(2) THE REAL SCIENCE

But we do have some real science that explains temperatures quite accurately back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years.

Here in just a few lines I take the entire, global, IPCC, Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, etc., EPA, NOAA, Obama, carbon footprint movement and totally destroy it. It's, to use a word, "settled".

Sure, can strike a match and, thus, warm the planet, but that warming is not significant.

For anything significant, for anything reasonable, CO2 and methane have nothing to do with the climate. Even a factor of 10 times the present concentration of CO2 will do essentially nothing to the climate. Same for CFC's. Same for men not shaving and drinking Coke instead of Pepsi.

Yes, CO2 and methane have to be counted as greenhouse gasses, but their effects are just insignificant for earth in the past, the present, and any reasonable future, no matter what is going on on Venus (has a lot of CO2 and is really hot).

And, so far human activity has had nothing to do with the climate.

Instead, here is what the heck has been driving climate change so far, back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years and right to the present as in year 2015:

More clouds have a cooling effect. The rate of cloud formation varies with the rate of water droplet formation, which varies with the rate of cosmic rays (a significant cause of water droplet formation) hitting the atmosphere which varies with the amount of solar wind blocking the cosmic rays which varies with the rate of sun spots which varies with the activity level of the sun which has absolutely nothing at all to do with anything on earth, not CO2, not methane, not humans or human activity.

Reference:

A very nicely done BBC video:

"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg

As in the BBC piece, in the last 100 years, temperature has varied with the solar wind and not with CO2.

Net the climate science arguing about the effects of CO2 on the climate no longer has even a square nanometer to stand on. That candidate science is done, "settled", forget about it.

Here, for asking a very appropriate question challenging some outrageous propaganda, I've been attacked and am due sincere, public apologies.