From the Washington Post
The Trump administration is poised to ask Congress for deep budget cuts to the Energy Department’s renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, slashing them by 72 percent overall in fiscal 2019, according to draft budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Many of the sharp cuts would probably be restored by Congress, but President Trump’s budget, due out in February, will mark a starting point for negotiations and offer a statement of intent and policy priorities.
The document underscores the administration’s continued focus on the exploitation of fossil fuel resources — or, as Trump put it in his State of the Union address, “beautiful clean coal” — over newer renewable technologies seen as a central solution to the problem of climate change.
The Energy Department had asked the White House for more modest spending reductions to the renewable and efficiency programs, but people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share unfinished budget information, said the Office of Management and Budget had insisted on the deeper cuts.
…
One person familiar with the negotiating process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe what the person had learned, said that the budget request had been lowered after negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget, and may have been lowered further because of a desire to channel more funding toward nuclear energy, a favored subject for Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
DOE spokesperson Hynes defended the department’s record, saying that last year it “awarded hundreds of millions of dollars to solar and wind energy.”
But the funding requests for next year represent a double whammy for renewable energy after the administration last week imposed tariffs on imported solar panels.
More here
Some group has proposed building a solar farm south of Chicago near the Indiana border. It appears from the proposed placement that it is right on the path of a major migration route for many species of birds, including waterfowl and songbirds.
How many bird carcasses can we count on seeing down the road from this asinine crap? And why is it necessary to build something like that when a better solution is already at work? And whose money is subsidizing this idiocy? It’s idiocy when we don’t have the sunny-day count required to supply a steady load to the power grid. How will this work out in a solar minimum when EMPs appear to be more common during a minimum than not? And no, I have no idea who came up with this, but you can bet it will cost consumers plenty, never mind the toll on wildlife.
…so move it north to the current location of Chicago…
I saw huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes flying over Chicago at about the height of wind turbines. Sometimes Whooping Cranes fly with them.
Sara, while driving from DC to Alaska this past November I was surprised to see a massive solar farm in western Minnesota, on both sides of I-94. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe who would think of putting a huge solar farm in the middle of northwest Minnesota, an area that is as far north as one can be in the lower 48s, across multiple bird flyways, and guaranteed to be covered in snow close to 6 months of the year. I also made note of the deep shadows underneath the tightly packed acres of solar panels, which guaranteed that no greenery would grow under them. No way a project like that, in that location, makes any sense at any time, short of as a way to suck some government funds. Insane.
The remaining 28% of the Budget should be directed to studying nuclear power and fluidized-bed coal, None of it should go to the study of Wind-Turbines powered by Don Quixote or Solar Plants powered by Fried Chickens.
I work at a poultry processing plant. I LIKE the idea of fried chicken power. Send me your proposal.
The nominalist in me thought that you were involved in egg-production.
Whoever is giving “draft budget” documents to the Washington Post needs to be fired.
Prior to the changes in the civil service laws, a new administration would do a clean sweep of most of the civil service positions and put in people who would be loyal to that administration.
Today, the civil service is only loyal to itself and it’s first priority to enhance the power and wealth of those who work in the civil service.
Re: “clean energy”, 1/10/2018:
Once upon a time, clean energy meant complete combustion. That included maximizing CO2, a beneficial greening agent. However, the amount of CO2 a nation emits is a measure of its industrialization, raising emission control to a key anti-Western strategy, especially anti-US, to pave the road to Marxism for the new bourgeoisie.
The left calls the notion that man’s emissions have an effect on climate, science when in fact it is the most pernicious form of pseudoscience, carrying a price tag estimated at $30 trillion. And the left is as anxious to control school curricula as it is the climate vocabulary, e.g., clean energy, to “make sure”, as our leader recently was wont to say for a chronic lack of active verbs, that the voting public doesn’t acquire too much science literacy.
Now science places no requirement on investigators to build models faithful to real world processes, so long as the models are successful, that is, so long as they have predictive power. The GCMs on that scale, however, are in the abyss of failure. They are successful in one sense, shaking down democracies run by elected graduates of our public school system, but those models have zero predictive power, should anyone care.
The GCMs predict two crucial things: (1) an irreversible warming of about 3ºC from the Greenhouse Effect applied to the accumulation of man’s CO2 emissions over the next century, a number which conveniently cannot be validated in anyone’s lifetime, and (2) a rate for that increase in temperature of 3ºC for a doubling of CO2, called (unscientifically) the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (cause nothing in the climate system is ever in thermodynamic equilibrium). Current ECS estimates from data not only show that it has a piddling magnitude of about 0.7ºC per 2xCO2, but analysis shows that the sign is wrong! CO2 lags warming, as physics demands, and does not lead warming as the pseudoscience asserts. Climatologists have yet to bother to estimate whether CO2 leads temperature, per their models, or vice versa, as physics should have informed them, and as verified in the Vostok ice core records.
Failure of the models opens them to legitimate criticism.
AGW pseudoscience fails for two major scientific omissions. First, the GCMs parameterize cloud cover as constant when instead it is dynamic and effecting the largest feedbacks in all of climatology, negative with respect to Total Solar Irradiance, and positive with respect to Sea Surface Temperature. Those two missing feedbacks mitigate both warming and cooling from any cause, manmade (should there ever be any) or natural.
Secondly, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is regulated by Henry’s Law, which causes the ocean to emit CO2 to the atmosphere when thousand-year-old deep waters upwell to be heated by the Sun, and to absorb CO2 immediately as the surface waters recharge by cooling as they slowly return to the poles. See the Takahashi diagram, AR4, Figure 7.8, p. 523, which is also a proxy for surface temperature, even though the fluxes are low by a factor of about 1/40.
IPCC puts the primary reservoirs for CO2 flux at 762 (atmosphere) and 918 GtC (surface ocean), the natural flux at about 90 GtC/year, and man’s emissions at 6.4 GtC/year. AR4, Figure 7.3, p. 515. Man’s estimated emissions are exceedingly small relative to the uncertainty in estimating reservoir size or flux. They amount to no more than 7% of the natural flux and 0.3%/year of the reservoirs, numbers lost in estimation noise. Secondly on climate scales, man’s emissions are absorbed in the ocean immediately as the surface cools, to be carried to the bottom. Man’s energy exhaust, whether dirty or clean, since 1750, nominally over the Industrial Era, about three centuries ago, still has about 2 to 7 centuries to go before the part that hasn’t been absorbed into the intermediate ocean layers or sequestered in rock or sediment is returned to the surface.
“Clean Energy” is a double whammy, a figment of AGW, the pseudoscience.
PS: Omiited from above is that cloud cover amplifies solar variability, another bit of physics omitted by IPCC climatologist.
That’s lot’s of impressive figures there. But tell me this: how come Earth hasn’t seen anywhere near CO2 levels this high in at least the last 800,000 years?
What is the significance of that? We know CO2 at ~5000 ppm/v did nothing in terms of temperature of any significance.
Jeff Glassman Well said.
There is nothing clean about wind, solar, biomass, geothermal or hydro when one considers all of their life cycle costs and impacts.
Earth is a dirty place. It takes energy to make clean.
Read this again, Kristi:
“IPCC puts the primary reservoirs for CO2 flux at 762 (atmosphere) and 918 GtC (surface ocean), the natural flux at about 90 GtC/year, and man’s emissions at 6.4 GtC/year. AR4, Figure 7.3, p. 515. Man’s estimated emissions are exceedingly small relative to the uncertainty in estimating reservoir size or flux. They amount to no more than 7% of the natural flux and 0.3%/year of the reservoirs, numbers lost in estimation noise.”
Why don’t starving people just eat more?
Kristi,
Q: Why do plants grow more robustly and use other nutrients more efficiently with CO2 levels approximating 1500 ppm, yet current atmospheric CO2 levels are only 400ppm?
A: Plants are adapted to and need higher CO2 levels than have been available in our atmosphere for the last 800,000 years.
Why do you insist on withholding essential nutrients from all flora on Planet Earth?
If we really want a ‘greener planet’, we must feed the green plants more CO2.
Primarily the result of India colliding into Asia, raising the Himalayas. CO2 levels started to plummet at those times and haven’t recovered yet.
Kristi, dont be fed your education. This lie has become a mindless catechism. Records before 1958 of CO2 in the atmoshpere are from proxies that are averages of rough estimates over several centuries. If you took an average of the most recent several centuries, our data point would be ~280ppm. The point? the medieval warm period may have had similar spikes in CO2 that are lost in averaging.
Finally, we had a pause in earth temperatures that coincided with a 30 % increase in CO2. Weve also had long periods of millions of years with CO2 at 5000ppm. There is so much more but I’ll wait until I see if you are actually interested.
@ur momisugly Kristi Silber February 10, 2018 at 10:38 pm
That’s lot’s of impressive figures there. But tell me this: how come Earth hasn’t seen anywhere near CO2 levels this high in at least the last 800,000 years?
—
Easy. Because the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old and the talking point you regurgitated is cherry-picked to incite emotion from scientifically ignorant and illiterate people like you.
Is it really not that hard for you to figure out? Seriously?
Kristi Silber, 2/10/18 @ur momisugly 10:38 asked, how come Earth hasn’t seen anywhere near CO2 levels this high in at least the last 800,000 years?
The 800,000 data she cites is from ice cores. At Dome-C and Vostok, CO2 oscillates between about 170 ppmv and 300 ppmv. The data span almost 800 Kyrs at Dome-C and 414 Kyrs at Vostok. These records constitute samples of atmospheric CO2 accumulated over the firn closure time:
The difference (closure time) between the age of the gas and the age of the ice can be as much as 7,000 years, as is the case in ice cores from Vostok, or as little as 30 years at Law Dome. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Historical_Geology/Ice_cores
The closure time for CO2 measurements at MLO is about 1 minute. This aperture effect constitutes a low pass filter with a time constant proportional to collection period. That windowing delays the response time while attenuating the magnitude of the thing collected, each in proportion to the duration of collection window. At MLO, that time is about one minute, and is the standard used by IPCC not only to estimate CO2 concentration but to calibrate all its measuring stations into artificial and unscientific agreement.
IPCC routinely glues nearly instantaneous modern readings on top of the heavily low pass filtered proxy data. See AR4 Figure 6.4, p. 448. This is scientific incompetence, yet IPCC is so proud of its handiwork that it features this misrepresentation as the very first figure in its Summary for Policymakers. AR4 SPM Figure SPM.1, p. 3. It’s also a major cause behind Mann’s Hockey Stick.
The loss of information in low pass filtering is unrecoverable, but a comparison with the modern record can be made at least as a thought experiment. Just imagine how the modern record would look if it were averaged over hundreds or thousands of years to correspond in gain to the ice core data! An event like the entire instrument record at MLO would be all but undetectable.
Lastly, the modern record is heavily biased high because MLO sits in the plume of roughly 60% of the 90 GtC outgassed annually from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. There, Earth’s rotation draws bottom water, saturated in CO2 at near freezing temperatures, to the surface to be continuously heated by the Sun, releasing CO2 per Henry’s Law.
Charles Keeling warned, only a limited number of sampling locations are required, however, provided that they are remote from large local sources and sinks of CO2. Bold added, Keeling, C.D., et al., Exchanges of Atmospheric CO2 and 13CO2 with the Terrestrial Biosphere and Oceans from 1978 to 2000, I. Global Aspects, SIO Reference Series, No. 01-06, June 2001. Instead, IPCC hitched all its sampling to MLO, distorting the entire CO2 record.
At any time, the concentration of CO2 outgassed from the Pacific is much greater than atmospheric CO2 averaged over many decades to a half dozen millennia.
You base that assertion on an apples vs. oranges comparison of PROXY records to atmospheric measurements. IOW, the usual nonsense.
If green heads actually do explode, what is not to like?
How to defeat man-made global warming, in a cartoon picture….
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DDw6eHINwnM/UC10rWCJLdI/AAAAAAAAFA0/U5if8PStZxU/s400/MARS+ATTACKS+HERITAGE+SET+DELETED+SCENES.jpg
I wonder if Trump (or most of you) has taken into account the huge and expanding global market for renewable energy products and technology and expertise as the energy needs in the developing world rise. Those countries with accessible FF reserves will probably go that route, but in some cases renewables may be more economical. China’s production of solar panels has gotten so efficient and cheap that in some areas and circumstance solar is cheaper than FF.
The U.S. has long been among the world’s leaders in R&D across a wide range of fields, but I guess that’s not where we want to be with renewables. We could miss out on a big opportunity.
This is just a cross-section of projects from one energy company in Spain:
“One of its biggest research initiatives is the SIGMA project, which is a joint scheme with the University of Salamanca to develop revolutionary lasers that will ionise pollutant gases for later use as raw materials.
“It is also developing, alongside the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the SEDAR Project. This will see new software created that will help advance studies in onshore and offshore wind production.
“The company has also launched its own technology centre in Qatar, which is dedicated towards developing smart grids. This has been done in conjunction with local electricity company Kahramaa, and will lead to both a feasibility study and a pilot project in the country.
“Last year it announced that it was joining forces with Swedish wave energy convertor specialist firm CorPower Ocean and Portuguese marine research centre WavEC to produce high efficiency wave power technology. The €15m HiWave project will look to harness wave power using advanced compact devices which will efficiently generate offshore power. It is hoped that the project will be completed by 2016, which could transform the marine energy industry.”
http://reports.worldfinance.com/technological-advances-in-renewable-energy/
There seems to be a systematic, multi-pronged effort by this administration to crush the renewable energy industry, presumably in order to help the FF industry.
“Kristi Silber February 10, 2018 at 10:30 pm
There seems to be a systematic, multi-pronged effort by this administration to crush the renewable energy industry, presumably in order to help the FF industry.”
That’s good news for humanity!
Fascinating how not supporting something is the equivalent to crushing it.
Leftists certainly do have interesting takes on reality.
“The €15m HiWave project will look to harness wave power using advanced compact devices which will efficiently generate offshore power. It is hoped that the project will be completed by 2016…”
OK. It is 2018. How did that work out? Appears to have disappeared, like Solyndra.
You forgot to mention this part for 2013-2016:
“Total Funding (Requested EU contribution): € 2 328 484”
http://www.wavec.org/en/projects/hiwave#.Wn_yqExFyM9
Of course this consortium or whatever it is exactly will also chip in “WavEC Funding: € 249 530” which they get from some other taxpayer generated Green slush fund.
“WavEC – Offshore Renewables is involved in several projects with European and national funding.”
So this is just another poster child for the way Green parasites waste money that could be used for much, much better purposes.
“There seems to be a systematic, multi-pronged effort by this administration to crush the renewable energy industry, presumably in order to help the FF industry.”
That is hilarious, coming from the side that for eight long years tried to kill coal in particular, and to harm fossil fuels in general, in favor of “clean” “green” “renewables”.
And now that we have an administration that is simply trying to re-level the playing field, the cries from the Warmunists is “that’s no fair”! Waaaaah! LOL.
http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2013/10/22/rare-earth-miner.jpg?itok=btduGrqr
Cutting and pasting is no substitute for actually understanding what you’re claiming.
Green energy investment is money down the drain.
We wish.
Government creates a phoney market, then uses the existence of that phoney market to justify investments in that phoney market.
Kristi:
Your entire argument seems to fall prey to the “begging the question” logical fallacy. It would appear you presuppose that renewable energy is the way to go without really having any evidence for that assumption.
You yourself substantiate my claim:
“Those countries with accessible FF reserves will probably go that route, but in some cases renewables may be more economical.”
So far, which developing countries do you know with FF reserves have gone with renewable solutions instead and at what percentage? Who is funding the effort if the effort is renewable? If, as you say, “in some cases renewables may be more economical”, wouldn’t it be prudent to understand the truth of that claim before effort is placed in the solution? After all, we have to assume that developing countries are cash strapped do we not?
And then you also seem to presuppose that any of the cited research projects will produce viable solutions. How do you know this will happen? Given they are research projects at present, it’s entirely unknown how viable the final product will be. And if the final product is an unknown at present, does this not pretty much destroy your argument in toto?
If not, why not?
On the bright side:
“But since 2011, investment in renewables has stalled. From 2011 to 2017, global green energy investment grew at only 0.7 percent per year—essentially flat. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 2017 investment in renewables grew only 1 percent in the US, but was down 16 percent in Japan, down 20 percent in India, down 26 percent in Germany, and down 56 percent in the United Kingdom. Investment in China was up 26 percent, supporting a meagre 3 percent global renewable investment growth in 2017…
So why is renewable investment faltering? One answer is that renewable projects are heavily dependent upon subsidies, and subsidies are being cut. The combination of rising electricity prices and budget-busting subsidy bills is forcing nations to cut back.”
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/06/stop-the-stall-its-time-to-get-energetic-about-energy/
When is a budget cut not a cut in spending? Government Accounting: Example: This year Spending $1000.00 for XYZ Next year Purposed spending for XYZ: $2000.00. Government say no you can only spend $1500.00. Reported in the news evil politicians is cutting spending.
According to leftists, the only people who can properly judge how much an agency needs, are those who work in that agency.
Anyone who fails to give the agency everything it asks for is guilty of preventing that agency from performing it’s holy work.
On a more serious note, what are the environmental impacts of all these heads exploding? We seem to be approaching a tipping point. Runaway Green head popping appears imminent and all that angry gas could threaten penguins or something.
But it could feed those starving polar bears.
When you can’t make any progress in refuting the science, all you have left is to celebrate temporary political victories achieved by alignment with demented egomaniacs who will hitch their wagon to any cause to satisfy their narcisssitic need for affirmation wherever they can find it.
==>Donald
It’s obvious that you are speaking from personal experience and therefore, are at some considerable risk of Projection!*
*The unconscious transfer of ones own disposition to another!
The scientific knowledge on this website dwarfs whatever leftist site that gave you your one talking point.
What science?
When you warmists produce some actual science (output from models isn’t science), let me know.
Ad Hominem Donnie?
Isn’t that typical of the ilks of thee?
And don’t you mock yourself by using such here rather than the science you claim to understand?
“and energy efficiency programs, slashing them by 72 percent overall in fiscal 2019”
Energy efficiency? Slashing research by 72%?
Why are we even spending anything on efficiency? Stoopid greenies. Do you know how hard it is for fossil fuel companies to make an honest buck without sandal-wearing basket weavers poking there “efficient” noses in.
You have to understand their motive. If nobody uses any energy, everyone will have all they need.
You’re livin’ in the past big fella.
“Energy efficiency”, what a joke. It sounds so good too – who could possibly be against it? Until you realize they really do only care about using less energy, no matter what the cost is.
Companies have been investing in energy efficiency since companies started using energy. (Somewhere between 10K and 20K years ago.)
The reason for this is simple, energy costs money and companies that spend more than they need to for a resource quickly go out of business.
“who could possibly be against it?”
Only you it appears Bruce . No-one loses from improving energy efficient, sooo, who are you saying doesn’t care about the cost?
“…without sandal-wearing basket weavers poking there [sic] “efficient” noses in.”
“…without sandal-wearing basket weavers poking THEIR “efficient” noses in.”
There, partially fixed for you. No you do the math on ending the sentence with a preposition…such horrific grammar from the ilks of the thee, i.e., the best and the brightest by your own admission?
“No-one loses from improving energy efficient [sic}, sooo…”
“No-one loses from improving energy efficiency, sooo…”
There, fixed it for you.
You’re welcome…glad to help those in need.
Much obliged.
Rudi.
My pleasure, sir.
Ack!-Ack!
Cuts down on yodeling … always a good thing
Subsidy seakers have become the new Captains of Industry, so let’s see the actual economics of this tech’s asserted market maturity, laid bare, as trading insolvent, into bankrupcy.
“Dey took our jabs!”
Then we can ignore greenie economic and technical ‘thought’, politics and hand-waving, as proven a failure.
Let the real-world testing commence, swindlers.
Gang Green’s exploding heads are pollution and messy to boot.
Surely these “protectors of the environment” could have the decency to allow their craniums to implode.
Which would be so much tidier and more fitting for the vacuum of knowledge that exists inside those heads.
If it were not for the ever expanding amount of bovine faeces causing their confusion and anger, they would not be such walking threats to civilization and our shared environment.
The environmental activist is willing to do ANYTHING to Save The Environment.
Absolutely Anything.
Except gain an education in the relevant sciences and become informed themselves.
Talking Points,must feel so good.
Or there would not be so many activists spewing them.
My heart felt wish,if one chooses to remain ignorant of science, especially the scientific method,while engaging in “educating” other persons as an activist from Gang Green International;
Please contain your own waste.
FIrst off, greenie heads implode, they don’t explode.
Regardless, most of the results are biodegradable.
Here’s some low hanging fruit!
Grab a banana!
$20 Billion Hidden in the Swamp: Feds Redact 255,000 Salaries
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/02/08/20_billion_hidden_in_the_swamp_feds_redact_255000_salaries.html
==>Hocus Locus
Amazing!
$340million – $20 Billion in one year, is a very bad sign of something terrible to come, unfortunately! ;-(
Here are the BBC again barking orders at the Indians of Tamil Nadu, on how to respond to the seasonality of wind power by increasing the generation from renewables from 50 to 100 percent, phasing out coal in the process:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42971504
Half your energy is from a seasonal source (wind).
The other half is from a reliably continuous source, 24/7/365 – coal.
So how to solve the seasonality problem?
Simple – change to 100% of the seasonal source (wind, solar).
Wow – the logic would have impressed Aristotle himself.
Still barking orders at the natives?
Do the BBC journalists realise India is no longer in the British Empire?
Chris, 2/13/18 @ur momisugly 10:00 pm, said, They have looked at the science regarding AGW and decided it is real. You can criticize them all you want, but it doesn’t matter.
AGW, once a scientific conjecture (Callendar), is off the scale of scientific models, thanks in large part to climatologists’ models (GCMs) using radiative forcing with a handful of unwarranted assumptions (equilibrium, manmade CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere, Henry’s Law missing, feedbacks ignored), models invalidated by facts (sensitivity below 3% confidence, two-plus decades of absent warming, surface temperature following the Sun). AGW and the science supporting are real just in the sense of political movements and belief systems. But the assumption that AGW exists in the real world reduces the entire narrative to scripture.
Academic science is coming unglued in the on-going, 50-year-old Replication Crisis, which is just a way of observing that the validity of scientific models is proportional not to a consensus, neither to peer review nor to publication, but to their predictive power.