Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Al Gore has a problem. He seems to want people to believe that only climate skeptics oppose renewables. The truth is, a small but growing number of prominent greens, openly acknowledge that renewables in their current form are not a scalable replacement for fossil fuels.
In Al Gore’s announcement of a climate witch hunt, titled “AGs United for Clean Power”, Al Gore said the following;
I really believe that years from now, this convening by attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his colleagues today, may well be looked back upon as a real turning point, in the effort to hold to account those commercial interests that have been, according to the best available evidence, deceiving the American people, communicating in a fraudulent way, both about the reality of the climate crisis and the dangers it poses to all of us, and committing fraud in their communications about the viability of renewable energy and efficiency, and energy storage, that together are posing this great competitive challenge to the long reliance on carbon based fuels.
Does Al Gore plan to prosecute James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley for Fraud?
To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not on prejudice. The climate system cares about greenhouse gas emissions – not about whether energy comes from renewable power or abundant nuclear power. Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.
Will the green believers at Google Corporation join James Hansen in the dock, when Al Gore prosecutes people who think renewables are not up to the job?
At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope … Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
Will Al Gore prosecute Rob Parker, president of the Australian Nuclear Association, for claiming renewables aren’t up to the job?
“My concern is that renewables won’t get us across the line in terms of emissions reduction,” said Rob Parker, the president of the ANA. “Nuclear is more reliable and it has a smaller resources footprint than renewables.
How about the British Government, whose relentless pursuit of renewables has utterly messed up the British energy market?
The second phase of modern energy policy began when Tony Blair signed the Renewable Energy Target in 2007.
What has this left us with?
We now have an electricity system where no form of power generation, not even gas-fired power stations, can be built without government intervention.
And a legacy of ageing, often unreliable plant.
Perversely, even with the huge growth in renewables, our dependence on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, hasn’t been reduced.
Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
If Al Gore succeeds in using government bullying, to silence critics of renewables, the same disaster could easily occur in the United States.
Perhaps Al Gore’s real target are the practitioners of the “strange new form of denial”, the growing green schism which opposes the push for 100% renewables, as vigorously as any climate skeptic.
There is no evidence that renewables in their current form are a viable replacement for fossil fuels. But there is plenty of evidence that nuclear power delivers results. Nuclear power, the zero emission alternative to renewables, has been economically supplying 75% of France’s power since the 1970s. Nuclear power works, and works well. France demonstrated by doing, that mass production and economies of scale makes nuclear power affordable.
If the whole world copied what France did in the 1970s, by 2030 the world could cut billions of tons of CO2 emissions, without destroying the global economy.
If you are someone who cares about CO2 reductions, you should listen to scientists like James Hansen, who plausibly claim that nuclear power is the route to decarbonisation, not to scientific illiterates like Al Gore.
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Grid-scale solar and wind power fascilities are monuments to the stupidity and hubris of Leftist ideology.
When feckless leftist political hacks try to circumvent free-market economic dynamics through arbitrary wind and solar subsidies, and implement draconian: rules, regulations, carbon taxes, excessive pollution standards and mandates on conventional energy suppliers, consumers pay the price in: lower standards of living, higher unemployment rates, stagnant economic growth, reduced disposal income, higher prices, higher taxes, currency devaluation, growing trade deficits, etc.,
The government’s misallocation of finite land, labor and capital on these wind/solar boondoggles also has exponential unseen negative consequences as these misallocated funds were never able to be rationally utilized to produce: new potential companies, new technologies, new businesses, new factories, new jobs, new industries, etc.,
When will the world finally realize Socialism doesn’t work…
U.S. solar company SunEdison, whose aggressive acquisition strategy has saddled it with more than $11 billion of debt, is at “substantial risk” of bankruptcy, one of its two publicly listed units warned on Tuesday.
SunEdison’s shares—already reeling from a Wall Street Journal report that the company was being investigated for overstating its cash position—fell more than 40 percent.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/sunedison-at-risk-of-bankruptcy-shares-plummet.html
It has no cash position. Merely government transfer payments and payola that goes back to politicians.
https://youtu.be/shkHeh_NI9E
Nikolas Wölfing of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, says that without its neighbours, the Energiewende would “probably have collapsed already or at least be in much more trouble.” Not only can Germany export excess electricity, it can also import power in times of need. “Basically, being at the heart of Europe means that Germany has a gigantic battery at its disposal, in the form of foreign electricity networks.”
In short – any group of roped-up mountaineers can probably cope with one drunkard. But only one…
It’s all here, at : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/germanys-energy-transition-european-context
Sorry, first paragraph should have been in quotes, as quoted from linked article.
Wind, solar nuclear…. whatever. All the market needs is COMMON SENSE and a return to using the cheapest and most readily available fuel source unconcerned by fallacy claims of a politically-motivated campaign group.
Of course the ‘impossible-factor’ is the return to common sense………
Renewables are useless. Except of course for the the 26+ GW of installed PV capacity that today generates about 1% of our US power, an incredible achievement. Installations this year are expected to be 16 GW. Installed capacity doubles every 2 years. So, roughly speaking, 2% by 2016, 4% by 2018, 8% by 2020, 16% by 2022, 32% by 2024, 64% by 2026. Wind has a similar story. Hydro should but is being slowly removed.
Renewables do not need to generate all of our power. But what they do generate avoids buying oil from the mideast, probably a good thing.
The grid will adapt, storage mechanisms like pumped storage and Tesla’s battery packs can take care of residential needs. We may learn to sleep more when it is dark to use less power, and run power hungry appliances during the day. Again, most of the issues are just engineering problems.
Industrial is more problematic. There nuclear, coal, and gas will continue to be needed. Even so eventually PV and wind can be expected to cover much f the industrial requirements.
Power consumption is decreasing too. We are all busy changing our 75 watt light bulbs to 26 watt CFLs and now 9 watt LEDs. Big reduction. Appliances are getting more efficient too. Here in CA HVAC technicians are being trained for free by the state and energy suppliers to install HVAC to high efficiency standards. Current systems are very lossy and deliver less than 50% of the input energy.
Greg: Suggest you check out Tesla’s Powerwall operation. He’s withdrawn the 10kWh version.
Because it is not financially viable, furthermore, it is still a laughable situation that Lithium Ion is what we still have to rely on.
Now for Tesla to say something is not viable must mean it was really expensive, Tesla cars are not cheap, so the battery must have cost a LOT to produce.
Of course, without free money there would be no Tesla at all.
Our storage is a joke, we either use a a grid or are faffing about, no effective efficient cost effective storage solutions of a large scale period.
The green energy movement is theft of public money and no return except misery
Efficiency is a same gain when billions of people in the world still have no supply of electricity, many countries populations are increasing also. We have a long way to go with hundreds of power plants being built each year, thousands more are needed. Shutting down the world in the sixties for fear of proliferation made nuclear expensive. Modular design and the right fuel would make them the most cost efficient. The transport of untold millions of tons of coal from Australia to the rest of the world is madness for efficiency. Regardless if you use LED,s.
Listening to Greg’s BS is one the frustrating things about being in the power industry for 40 and now being part of history. Especially, those in California. They are always doubling and conserving. Thirty years ago the reason was to shut down nuke plants. Now it ‘dirty’ coal that has to be replaced.
Wind and solar is a solution looking for a problem. Of course Greg did not take calculus to understand doubling time. The capacity factor in front of 16 GW, is 0.1 not 0.2. So you are only getting 1.6 of new capacity. Solar does work as expected. Then there is dieoff. At some point, PV fails at the same rate that it is built.
The same folks who rejoice every time nuke or coal plant shutdown do not keep track of every time a solar systems dies. Greg does not want to know. If the average life of a PV system is five years and not 25 years, PV will no longer get built.
Again. So what is the halving time for solar.
“… as a real turning point, in the effort to hold to account those commercial interests that have been, according to the best available evidence, deceiving the American people, communicating in a fraudulent way, both about the reality of the climate crisis and the dangers it poses to all of us … ”
Not like Gore has ever done that.
Wasn’t there a US Court ruling about Gore’s alleged CAGW moovee, doing exactly that?
It was a UK court, and the suit was filed and persisted in at Monckton’s insistence.
The video is nauseating. Al Gore is nauseating. Those people are delusional. I think the only cure is to send them to the poles and leave them there.
Guy is well known for Science denial-a crackpot with no scientific (or journalistic for that matter)credibility-and you’ve let yourself down by publishing his article without checking him out.
Fail, what is said is up for examination, not your genetic fallacy. Bog standard troll fail
Some recommended viewing for Gore and his ilk since we seem to be having an “outbreak” of these things recently: “Volcanic smog, or what we call vog, is a naturally occurring process from Hawaiian volcanoes….in the case of Kilauea, which has been erupting for over 20 years now, if you were able to classify this as a man-made polluting source in America, Kilauea would be number one on that list”
~ Frank Trusdell, USGS Volcanologist @22:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOV0AQHeE7Q
(and if you want to use that quote on Twitter, I posted a little something so you don’t have to worry about it fitting)
There is little evidence that Einstein made that quote. He also said nothing about bees. His name is attached to a lot of stuff to give the quote credence. Using an all or nothing headline like the title of this thread is also highly inaccurate and not supported by the content.
Please explain. gareth
Stating that renewables are completely useless is just silly. In some situations they are a godsend, in others they are unsuitable. I have PV generation as well as hot water generators installed and they are great, saving me money over the long term. There are many other similar situations. The idea that something is totally bad or totally good plagues debates on climate change. How often do we see the idea mentioned that people are either deniers or warmists? It’s just foolish. The world is not like that, and using made up quotes from Einstein does not make such black and white thinking any more valid.
Our current socialist government, in france, have pledged to shut down 50%of our nuclear output and build more solar and wind farms.
The future of the UK if they don’t leave the EU. No nuclear, no coal, no gas, no oil, no diesel, no money no old folk, no pensions to pay, no industry. France and Germany will destroy Europe and the EU
I am sure there are at least 2 nuclear plants being built in the UK supported by China and France.
Planned in principal but no firm contracts to build, and France threatening to pull out anyway.
They are told they are “committed” to build them but there are big problems with building them. Not enough finance. Government promised to pay 200% of standard rate for all future electricity from them and still business is struggling with securing funds for build.
Look at financial and organizational disaster of building nuclear plant in Finland – all involved companies try to avoid any big commitments until Olkiluoto is finished.
And Scottish gov is more and more mad and pushes for closing the last two nuclear plants…
And I am sure they are not.
It is increasingly unlikely that they will ever get the go ahead from a supplier nervous about the design and it’s competence and a reality dawning government.
Without doubt the lights will go out.
That’s not correct, They did not pledged to shut down 50% of the nuclear output. They did pledge to reduce the production part of nuclear from the current 75% to 50%. Definitively not a cut of 50%, considering that the total production will also increase.
François Hollande also pledged to only have full time ministers. Yet, the defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian is also president of the région Bretagne.
The pledges done today by the President will have no value tomorrow. Or even in two hours.
The pledge made for the next 10 years … LOL
@simple-touriste
Maybe this can convince you about what he said: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/ta/ta0519.asp In particular: Article 1er, III, 5° (For non french speaker, that the law which passed in the french “Assemblée Nationale”, for a reduction of the nuclear part to 50% (from the current 75%) by 2025, for the electricity production)
C’est publié au JO, et alors?
It’s the “law”, so what?
Why do you believe it matters?
As the plural of Attorney General is Attorneys General, shouldn’t the lectern that AG is speaking from say AsG – or did someone mean something completely different and forget the apostrophe?
Tell me again how much Al Gore has made on the back of the Scam of Scam’s?
But that would defeat the whole point of the exercise. It seems many of the zealots are out to destroy the world economy. That is why it is so full of lies and contradictions. They are not stating what they really want but trying to get there by pretending CO2 will destroy the world.
Now if we could find a way to run the economy without the totally pointless waste of consumerism that has us all endlessly running around like hamsters in a giant wheel, forever chasing our own butts to make it to the end of the month, that may get some traction.
Wailing about CO2 will just mean more obsolescence as perfectly usable cars and other equipment becomes outlawed and pointlessly replaced at greater expense , more personal credit ( debt ) and more of our lives wasted.
Consumerism on steroids.
That’s the upshot of the disingenuous enviro zealots campaigning.
I can’t wait to see NATO using solar powered ships and tanks, planes and missiles.
I guess they will have to replace drones with kites.
How come none of these loons are even mentioning America’s massive military and 3000 installations world wide? What’s NATO’s carbon footprint?
Selective, you see, it is about us, the average man, we are the problem, not a vast perpetual never still military machine. Your standby light on the TV is the issue, not what is literally a standing world army, shooting depleted uranium all over the place.
You can’t fix stupid (those who believe this nonsense) but Gore and co, they know they are not telling the truth.
It may amuse you to read that Dep’t of Energy describes the minuscule growth in renewables’ output as follows:
Between 2005 and 2015, electricity generation from solar increased 48 fold, from 550 GWh to 26,473 GWh.
Biomass increased 18.3% from 54,277 to 64,191 GWh, and geothermal increased 14.1% from 14,692 to 16,767 GWh.
True, but how much is 14 % of very little? And 48 times more of nothing may not be all that much either. But it sounds good. The drop in hydro in that decade better be not mentioned.
Viewing the trends confirms my 40-years old conviction that If mankind were to rely mainly on renewable sources for energy, as it did 2-1/2 centuries ago, starvation and social unrest would result due to skyrocketed energy cost, unreliable delivery and population growth. Being involved in the clean energy since the ’70s, I remember that effort sparked by proclamations such as these two examples:
In 1973, Walter Morrow, Associate Director of Lincoln Laboratories at MIT predicted that the US would generate between 750 to 1500 GW from direct solar by year 2010.
In 1978, Ralph Nader predicted “Everything will be solar in 30 years.”
Gee, you mean the energy gap created by a faux concern about CO2? The one that demonizes cheap, reliable energy from fossil fuels in favor of expensive, unreliable, and pretty much useless “green” energy?
That energy gap?
Sure, nuclear energy is great, and we could use more of it, but not for the wrong reasons.
“… renewables in their current form are not a scalable replacement for fossil fuels”
If the source of energy is a function of surface area then it’s not scalable. Solar and wind power are clearly functions of surface area, neither is scalable.
Recall when President Obama declared that we should explore all sources of energy? He specifically said that there’s potential with turning pond scum (algae) into fuel and we should explore that option. He should have spent ten minutes pondering that idea. I did, since we have a small pond. I quickly learned that pond scum is a function of surface area since it only grows on the surface. Algae growth is also constrained by the density of atmospheric CO2, i.e. algae consumes CO2. It’s not viable as an energy source because it’s a function of surface area and there is not enough CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to produce enough growth. Ironic?
First time making a comment here. I have a question: what is the solution for countries that are prone to big earthquakes, like Japan or Chile? I’m Chilean and in here almost no-one is pushing for nuclear, because we’ve seen what can happen to nuclear plants after an earthquake (Fukushima). We have earthquakes every couple of years, the last big one in 2010, 8.8 in the Richter scale. Has there been any advancements in making nuclear plants more resistant to earthquakes? Because otherwise there will be countries where nuclear will never take off, that will have to rely in other sources, like we do (we have hydro, natural gas, coal and some renewables).
I can’t answer your question about earthquake-proofing nuclear power plants, but coal-fired power is a pretty safe bet. Since the idiots here in America are trying to shut down the coal industry, I’ll bet we can sell you as much coal as you’d need at very good prices.
/Mr Lynn
It wasn’t so much the earthquake itself, but the resulting tsunami that was the problem in Japan. That, plus poor planning on their part. The backup generators were at risk, and that could easily have been remedied. The reaction against nuclear, in the aftermath of Fukushima was irrational and fear-based.
Most places that have quake risks have no tsunami risk. Japan with the progressively rising sea floor has great tsunami risk on the South. This was known.
But then, the tsunami killed thousands and destroyed entire towns and industrial complexes, so why should we worry so much about its effect on nuclear power plants?
The increase in radionuclides presents in ocean caused by the “continually leaking” Fukushima Daiichi plant will be trivial compared to the amount of naturally occurring radiation in the ocean. (Also, small amounts of radio-cesium is a biological tracer useful for people studying sea life.)
Do we even know how many toxic products have been disseminated, in non trivial quantities, by the tsunami? Does anyone really care?
I think the comments here come from people that don’t live in an earthquake-prone country, thus don’t know how that fact permeates all of the public policies and even the habits of everyday people. Yes, the tsunami might have broke Fukushima, but…we also have tsunamis here, the last one in 2015! Some officials have proposed to build nuclear plants in the Atacama dessert, far from the sea (and from people), but in the event of a 8.9 or even 9 Richter scale quake -which we have had in 1960- no-one is sure a nuclear plant would make it in 100% safe conditions. It is a fear-based decision, sure, but is understandable. Until a nuclear plant is quake-proof (like other industries/buildings are, here in Chile our building standars are incredibly high because of this), I don’t think we’ll have one, sadly.
Are you saying Chileans have magnitude 9 quake safe houses?
Fran Ugalde, here is a letter from Dr. William Parker at University of California Irvine in response to a query about potential earthquake damage to the San Onofre plant. He is saying that the 9.0 quake in Japan caused no structural damage to any of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors or any of the Onagawa reactors which were actually closer to the epicenter of the quake and felt even more acceleration than the Fukushima reactors. Additionally the Fukushima reactors were generation two design that had no passive safety cooling systems. It was the failure of the cooling systems that led to the meltdown of the reactors. The newest generation of commercial reactors (named Generation 3+) all contain passive safety cooling features to help keep the reactors cool for some amount of time until active cooling can be brought back on line.
“Additionally the Fukushima reactors were generation two design that had no passive safety cooling systems.”
Says who?
Fran, I forgot to post the link to the letter. https://www.songscommunity.com/docs/cep_seismic.pdf
This may be a dumb question Fran, but if your hydro dams survive all the major earthquakes you have, why would a nuclear power plant be more risky than the potential for thousands of cubic metres of water crashing down a valley full of towns and farms? If that isn’t happening with hydro, it likely won’t happen with the small footprint of nuclear (or coal or natural gas). The reason has to be a culture of nuclear fear.
Fran
The safest place to be in a natural disaster is a nuke plant. It is just a matter of engineering. Every nuke plant designed to US standards have survived earthquakes Been there!
However, nuclear power may not be a good choice for Chile. Nuclear power is perfect for countries with large concentrated power demand that must depend on fossil fuel transported over long distances. Since Chile has significant hydro, Chile may not need nukes.
Poor little Algore. Wrong every time he opens his mouth. Still trying to get noticed and be relevant.
Here in Ontario, Canada, we’ve been overcharged $37 billion over 6 years, to pay for this:
http://reports.ieso.ca/public/GenOutputCapability/PUB_GenOutputCapability.xml
So, go nukes, go.
I think that when the rolling brown-outs start, the first to be shut down and the last to be restored should be those individuals and businesses that have pushed the CAGW and renewables BS. In fact, they ought to volunteer to be in such a position as their sacrifice will keep fossil back-up generation from coming on.
Well, I asked for this here in Ontario, Canada: a bunch of NIMBYs protested a gas plant and had it moved due to political interference during an election (i.e. the engineers said it was in an ok spot, so much for “science”). I wanted any brown-outs to hit the NIMBYs first, but unfortunately, its beyond our current capacity.
Attorney General Torquemada???
My father once explained the difference between Liberals and Conservatives to me. He said that Liberals will get rid of something that they think is bad and then look around for something that might be better with which to replace it; Conservatives won’t get rid of something bad until they *know* they have something better to replace it with.
Dad, you were SO RIGHT!
Meanwhile … in the real world Tata Steel has announced it will quit the UK leading to thousands of direct and indirect job losses. A key reason : the high cost of UK energy. And predictably the Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn wants to recall parliament to discuss the crisis. Doesn’t he remember voting for the 2008 Climate Act with the express (and legally required) intention of reducing CO2 by 80% by 2050. With the obvious implications for heavy industry ! What did he think was going to happen ? Does he imagine we are going to run a steelworks on windmills ?
Maybe Benben should tell them that 30% doesn’t hurt anything.