Guest essay by Eric Worrall
For once Bill McKibben is right – if all the towns and cities in the world went 100% renewable, big oil would be crushed, and Washington’s bipartisan infatuation with Fossil Fuels would be defeated. The only problem with this plan: renewables are expensive, and they are not a viable replacement for fossil fuels.
We can battle climate change without Washington DC. Here’s how
Bill McKibben
Global warming is an immediate battle with enormous consequences. We dare not wait for Washington to return to sanity – nor do we have to
The most telling item in Donald Trump’s State of the Union address may have been what wasn’t there: any mention of climate change, the greatest problem the world faces. And just as telling was the fact that official Washington seemed barely to notice.
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Even if Democrats manage to take back the House and Senate in the midterm elections, they wouldn’t be able to get meaningful legislation past Trump – and there’s nothing much to suggest they’d try very hard.
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New York City is not as big as the federal government, but it’s big enough: it’s got lawyers aplenty, and the resources to do real damage. And it won’t be alone. We’ve just launched a huge Fossil Free US campaign, designed to make sure there are a thousand New Yorks working on a thousand fronts.
It has three main components.
The first – joining in work pioneered by groups like the Sierra Club – is to persuade towns, cities, counties, and states to pledge to make the transition to 100% renewable energy. This is now easy and affordable enough that it doesn’t scare politicians – cities from San Diego to Atlanta have joined in, and they will help maintain the momentum towards clean energy that the Trump administration is trying so hard to blunt.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/01/climate-change-action-trump
Activists like Bill McKibben genuinely believe that renewables are an inexpensive replacement for fossil fuels. They believe the reason fossil fuels haven’t been replaced by renewables is that fossil fuel interests are fighting to prevent the rise of renewables, to protect their own interests.
This view is a fantasy.
I’m sure fossil fuel interests do a lot of lobbying, but the truth is there is nothing, not a single thing that fossil fuel companies could do to prevent the rise of a better energy solution.
The problem with renewables is that they are not a better energy solution.
History is littered with rapid shifts to new energy technology. Kerosene replaced whale oil in just a few decades. Natural gas replaced kerosene lighting on a similar timescale. Electric lighting rapidly replaced natural gas.
Famous inventor and business tycoon Thomas Edison once tried really hard to prevent the rise of a superior energy technology. Edison failed. George Westinghouse’s AC electricity grid displaced Thomas Edison’s DC electricity, because at the time AC was easier to transport over long distances.
Nobody has to make pledges or campaign for the adoption of better energy solutions. The evidence from history is that people embrace better energy solutions of their own free will, without any need for government intervention or noisy activist campaigns.
If renewables were any good, the renewable revolution would be rapid and uncontroversial. The strongest evidence that renewables are inferior is the fact that the renewable revolution has been, is and for the foreseeable future will continue to be an utter failure.
Correction (EW): h/t rogercaiazza The gas used for lighting was not natural gas, at least not initially.
If renewables were as superior as the activists claim, it wouldn’t need the subsidies and mandates they demand.
simple answer:
1) big oil conspiracy.
2) THEY know, but common people are so stupid they stick to their old dirty habits, so you need to subsidies and mandates to TEACH them.
If NYC is actually stupid enough to swallow the “climate change” Kool-Aid, fine. Let’s cut off all connections to the grid, including blocking of any cell towers (since the internet they access is fossil fuel powered – can’t allow THAT cheat!), and prohibit any fossil fuel powered vehicles to enter or exit the city. They can build all the windmills and solar panels they like. Then, after they find themselves freezing to death in the dark (winter) or dying of heat stroke in the dark (summer), WALKING up to their high-rise apartments, and have to employ horses to pull the subway trains (if they can find them in the dark), all while having nothing to eat and garbage piling up all around them (unless they can take it to a willing recipient by sailboat!), we’ll see who they are going to “defeat.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us can stand on the Jersey side of the Hudson, pointing and laughing.
You must be thinking of ways to promote Calexit then.
Just a question, and you’ll probably think that the answer is obvious, but I believe it adds to the discussion if I ask it. Okay, more than one question, really, but:
Do these so-called ‘greenies’ like McKibben understand anything at all about biological systems?
Do they even vaguely understand that plants require CO2 to exist?
Do they even have a teensy weensy clue that plants outnumber animals (inlcuding humans) by a huge amount, that they communicate with each other, and that they can wipe us out in a heartbeat if they sense that as a necessity for survival?
Seriously, we’re just plant food, you know. When animals (including us) die, the electromagnetic force that holds us in coherent lumps of matter (insects included) shuts off and we ALL revert to minerals and become mostly fertilizer.
Does McKibben understand any of these basic biological concepts? Do any of those people get that?
Just asking. I’m concerned that this basic concept escapes these people, and McKibben comes off as some sort of nutball who needs counseling. He’s rather rabid, in my view.
I’m going to go make soup now. Chicken soup, made with celeray, carrots, onion, chicken, chicken broth, and some fat noodles.
Haha, why is that every time you post, Sara, I find myself craving some sort of food dish or another? We might need to invoke the mods to keep you to just the science…everything else is just too darn distracting! 🙂
rip
My pleasure, ripshin.
Seems like a good idea to me. The folks in New York can adopt renewable energy without inflicting their ideas on the rest of us. While they are shivering in the dark the rest of us will be watching the Superbowl on a big screen TV in the cozy warmth of our living rooms.
You could easily substitute the words LEED-certified buildings for renewables and still get the same 2x cost increase. It just requires turning off the fact-checking genes in the brain and use of the same climate bible revivals and evangelicals like McKibben.
350.org Presents: Great Moments in Renewable Energy: Transportation
So much planet-destroying greenhouse gasses result from our transportation system that many people think we can’t get around without burning fossil fuels. This is simply not true: people used to get around just fine using only renewable energy, but Big Oil doesn’t want you to know that. Want to go from New York to San Francisco without guilt over rising oceans and bleached corals? You can do it!
In 1853 the clipper ship Flying Cloud set the record for the anchor-to-anchor trip from New York to San Francisco: 89 days, 8 hours using only renewable energy. This beat her own previous record from 1851 by 13 hours. That record stood for 136 years until 1989 when the sloop Thursday’s Child did the same run in 80 days, 20 hours. Since then the record has been broken again in 2008 by the racing yacht Gitana 13 with a time of 43 days, 38 minutes.
While all three craft use sail for motive power, only the Flying Cloud was totally renewable (oil lamps, no electricity, no bottled gas for cooking), and made from 100% renewable materials. She was also a commercial ship carrying paying passengers and cargo rather than a rich man’s glory toy.
For perspective, 89 days is roughly half a US baseball season. Or about one quarter of the US presidential election cycle. So think of all the insipid blather you could miss by taking passage on a clipper ship with no WiFi or cell service. Meal service during the voyage uses only 100% organic non-GMO ingredients, and scurvy is generally optional.
What we need is an investment in renewable transportation on the same scale we’re currently putting into roads and refineries, and some leadership. We hope to see Leonardo DiCaprio charter a clipper ship for his next Soccer World Cup party. We’re sure we can make this happen, as soon as we can find a crew of at least 40 who can work the sails while looking good in bikinis. We’re not only supporting fossil-fuel-free transportation; we’re creating green jobs!
Bathing facilities would be limited, but complemented by large stores of Old Spice products, featuring the Flying Cloud image on the bottles (sample here).
This has been another example of Great Moments in Renewable Energy, brought to you by 350.org — “Dedicated to Making You Live The Way We think You Ought to”.
What they don’t mention is that this record is for sailing ships.
They also don’t mention that non-sailing ships usually go through the Panama Canal.
Finally, they seem to think that getting 40 people to do a job that is normally done by half a dozen, is an improvement.
As early as the 1820’s and 1830’s, the British, American, and Canadian shipping firms began replacing their “successful” thousands-of-years experience sailing ships with the unproven and tremendously expensive steam-powered paddlewheel packet boats.
Note ALSO that ALL of these shipping companies and ship builders and ship designers – also began fighting each other and their foreign government competitors – to get subsidies, construction tax breaks and funding, and operations subsidies for the (very expensive to operate!) inefficient steam packet ships!
But the reliability of cross-Atlantic shipping for mail, for passengers, for freight, and for small consumer goods DEMANDED that steam replace sailing ships even then! Without steam, you simply could not schedule cross-Atlantic ships during the 4-5 months of winter. They simply were not reliable. Now, the sailing ships that did attempt winter crossings did not all sink of course, but they could not predict when they were going to arrive in port, when they could leave port, and how long the crossing would take.
As soon as steam was available – even as early as the mid-1830’s – the shipping companies could schedule twice-a-month reliable deliveries. Shortly thereafter, with the Suez Canal, coaling stations around Africa and Asia, and in mid-islands of the Pacific, trans-Pacific routes started.
And, by the way, the need for those coaling stations (and later oil supplies) greatly rewarded and provided the need for the British, French, German, Russian, Japanese, American and Italian colonial efforts from 1840 through 1920.
So, it’s the artificial green blight vs the organic black blob.
Where green implies renewable, sustainable, intermittent drivers, and globally outsourced, environmentally unfriendly, low productivity technologies.
Choice with a lower-case ‘c’, but perhaps with an upper case ‘C’, too.
Eric, I would like to suggest a theme song for 350.org.
It’s by another rather eccentric fellow from CA.
When I think of McKibben, I think this song is more appropriate:
Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks: “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?.”
frame link messed up. 2nd try:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA&w=854&h=480%5D
“…Global warming is an immediate battle…”
It’s not a “battle.” Freaking zealots with their war imagery.
“… We dare not wait for Washington to return to sanity…”
When has Washington ever been sane? When has McKibben?
“…The first – joining in work pioneered by groups like the Sierra Club – is to persuade towns, cities, counties, and states to pledge to make the transition to 100% renewable energy. This is now easy and affordable enough that it doesn’t scare politicians…”
Of course it Is “easy and affordable.” Politicians pledge stuff all of the time easily and with no financial consequences. As usual, the bill (if ever paid) would be footed by a future generation and administration.
The vast majority of “so called” renewable energy comes from burning wood and dung. Wind and solar combined constitue less than 1% of global energy production from what I read in one of the last IEA reports. Has Bill done a gap analysis yet?
This article provides lots of wake-up-call insight for those who would take but a moment to ponder it.
To my knowledge, there was never a mass social movement to get rid of horses as primary means of transportation. The transition to fossil-fuel-powered transportation happened because of OBVIOUS, REAL advantages over horses, I think.
Hey, don’t knock horses. I grew up on the back of a horse. Ask the Amish! I think they still use draft horses for threshing grain – not sure about that, but they do give demos at farm shows.
Horses only require water, grain, bedding, a decent stable where the Greebean grooms can sleep in the loft, and a Greenbean or CAGWer to muck out the stalls. They tend to be emotional creatures, however, and demanding, too. If you’re eating an apple or carrots, they will snatch that right out of your hands. And beer. They like beer. Don’t let the horses smell the beer!
As an aside, if you remember the Teamsters Union and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the teamsters started as the people who drove draft horses bringing cargo into cities or delivering from the docks to merchants. The last remnants of teamsters in the true sense are the people who take their draft horses to stone boat pulling contests at county fairs and the drivers in the Budweiser commercials.
McKibben is suffering from delusions, not illusions.
He is profoundly evil, projecting his self loathing onto the world.
The assault on our lives by the faux green NGOs needs to be vigorously pushed back.
Are you alluding to his delusions brought upon by the illusion of reason.
Great Greenie Delusional Dreams:
In Greenie World, both CO2 and “fossil fuels” are evil/bad/the enemy of man, when the opposite is true.
In Greenie World, “Renewables” are not only “good for the planet”, but they are “affordable”, when the opposite is true.
In Greenie World, they are “winning” the Climate Wars, when the truth is that they’ve already lost.
The more they lose, the more they double-down on the lies, the virtue-signaling, and the delusional thinking.
I wonder why you waste space on daft schemes like this, but can’t bring yourself to post an article on LENR – that actually woks and will replace most fossil fuel See:
http://www.delcotimes.com/opinion/20171206/letter-to-the-editor-major-advance-in-cold-fusion-touted-as-energy-solution
LENR fails my “why hasn’t it happened already” test. If I’m wrong I’ll publish an apology, but think about it – what is preventing people in the know from pirating openly available lab results and building LENR systems to power their houses?
The only thing I can think of which could prevent this from happening is LENR doesn’t work.
MarkW, Allan. Et al
“Kit, since you are so knowledgeable, perhaps you can detail what has changed since then.”
Experience!
For example before 2005 there was less 100 MWe of wind capacity in the Pacific Northwest but that experience indicated that the PNW could add wind because of existing hydro, nuclear and fossil steam plants. BPA had concerns about integration of wind. Here are the results:
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
No problem!
Allan premise is that a problem one place is a problem everyplace and a problem at one point of time is a problem forever.
I suspect Allan is not very good at physics. I have a huge amount of experience with modern physics (E=MC^2) and Newtonian physics using wind to power our sailboat against the current of the the Columbia River.
Allan is an example of someone with an agenda who does research to support his agenda. He is guilty of confirmation bias.
Aside from watching wind go from zero to several thousand MWe, I have the same interest in wind as other power sources since I have worked at power plants. I do not need to make up stuff to be against something.
I sure enjoy using the power.
I see nothing in here that refutes what Allan wrote.
I just see you pontificating and proclaiming that since a little bit of wind power could be handled by throttling other plants, more could easily be handled.
Heck with economics.
Cities gong 100% rebewable will certainly create climate refugees as people leave to seek air conditoning, hating, transport and jobs.
I look forward to hearing on the grape vine that Bill McK has gone off grid, off the internet, off fossil cars, planes, trains and buses, and grows his own food.
“Big Green” is just “Big Oil” in another guise. But “Big Green” is worse in many ways. At least Big Oil can earn it’s profits, pay for it’s operations, and it’s people with it’s own revenue. Big Green, however, relies on the state to compel the people to provide it’s revenue, via subsidies, or regulations removing Big Oil as a competitor. The ironic thing is that Big Green and it’s energy systems are no less disruptive or destructive to the environment than conventional energy. If people could open their eyes and look over or around man-made political and ideological dogma, and see things in simple economic terms (known as “follow the money”), we would all be better off.
I do not see any evidence to support the claim that fossil fuels are disruptive to the environment.
As to your conspiracy theory, put a sock in it.
Weepy Bill, make sure you’re not pulling a Danny Trevathan and celebrating a touchdown before you’re actually in the end zone.
Does he mean that he and all the “climate science” fossils are going to retire or that their “green” has been retired by the US voters?
Not a town but a large solar array to be built in Sydney. Look at what it will power and note the individual use meters.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-development-the-orchards-to-have-one-of-worlds-biggest-rooftop-solar-panel-systems-20180129-h0pvct/
“..New York City is not as big as the federal government, but it’s big enough: it’s got lawyers aplenty, and the resources to do real damage….” Now there’s a real bipartisan statement. Let’s let all the states that want to commit climate suicide go right ahead. The only consolation I would demand is those people that don’t want to join the madness don’t have to. Purely voluntary participation.
Bill McKibben
Global warming is an immediate battle with enormous consequences. We dare not wait for Washington to return to sanity – nor do we have to…
YOU, SIR….are an idiot.
The whole “transition” thing is a nonsense. The only transition I can see is going independently off grid if you are either wealthy enough or willing to live a more minimal lifestyle. For the average consumer, forget it, a working grid is required.
A town in my State claims to be going totally renewable by 2022, four years away. When you ask them what the plan is to get there, they instantly attack and accuse you of being negative. When simply asking about reality is negative, you really have to wonder.
I do not think the average person has the skill to go off grid.
We spend a certain amount of time off grid. In the summer it is the Pacific ocean and the winter in might be in Texas along the Gulf of Mexico.
Our motor homes have had $10K Onan generators. Push a button and presto you have 120 vac to charge the batteries and run two A/C. In theory that is. The generator on a first motor home was gasoline and not properly maintained. Let me count the ways I hate carburetors.
Our second motor home uses propane for the generator. Our 20 year old generator has three electronic black boxes. A control board, an electronic governor, and an electronic voltage regulator.
Onan will charge you $1000 to trouble shoot, $600 for the new piece of electrons, and $400 to install.
Some of you will see the problem here.
There is a after market for either rebuilding or new electronic parts. If you are handy with a DVM to figure out what you need than you cam fix it yourself.
Our generator is again running fine after replacing the voltage regulator for under $300.
Off course propane is not renewable. Gasifiers were used during WWII. Another example of a practical renewable energy source that is way harder than fossil fuel.
That is if you like way harder.
You don’t have to be wealthy or have much skill with batteries and solar it seems. Just hang about for election time and Labor will reward its base with what ordinary taxpayers and power users can’t afford-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-04/elon-musk-tesla-to-give-solar-panels-batteries-to-sa-homes/9394352
You can see how Mr Musk and Mr Weatherill are made for each other.
It takes more skill when idiots like Musk and the government are paying for things.
First off you have to fix the cheap junk they provide. My system is top drawer. Aside from the voltage regulator, I had to troubleshoot the inverter. Sending back to the factory is another $1000 to take the cover off. Cheap compared the cost of a new one.
Also replaced a solenoid to connect the batteries. Surprised it lasted so long since it was 6v rather than 12v. The scorecard so far is two relays and three pieces of electronics, a bunch of fuses, and a lot my time.
You have to have skill to manage your loads. Just bought a higher rated power meter because when I load tested the generator, it stalled when both A/Cs tried to start at the same time. Off course I was intentionally not managing loads by putting as much as load as I could.
So what can you do with batteries and the inverter. Not very much. My system will not even try to run A/C or the hot water heater on 120 vac. The fridge suck the batteries down in a few hours if you forget to switch it to propane.
In the morning, you can not make coffee, toast, or use the microwave because 1000+ watt loads trip the inverter on low battery voltage.
This how I manage off grid (boat or motorhome) and still enjoy the convenience of 120 vac. Two battery banks that each can start an ICE off propane or diesel to generate electricity. A third gasoline generator with a pull rope to start. That is three sources of fossil fuel.
I do have solar panels to maintain batteries when not inuse. Inverters must be isolated even when they are not inverting. It is 50 watts on the motorhome.
You are not really ‘offgrid’ until you need a shortwave radio to call for help.