Joe Biden’s energy plan calls for outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity and mandating unreliable solar and wind electricity. This will not stop CO2 emissions from rising but it will hinder America.
Anthony Watts speaks with Alex Epstein, founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. We talk about Joe Biden’s energy plan, which calls for outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity and mandating unreliable solar and wind electricity. This will not stop CO2 emissions from rising but it will destroy American industry, impoverish American consumers, and jeopardize American security.
1. Energy schemes around the world based on “unreliables”—solar and wind—have been driving up electricity costs, harming economies, destroying domestic industries, and harming consumers. Germans pay 3X US electricity prices to get just 1/3 of their electricity from solar and wind.
2. Instead of learning from the failures of unreliable energy schemes, the Biden Plan seeks to do far worse by outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity and forcing Americans to pay over $4 trillion–$15,000 a household–for a solar and wind-based grid that can’t possibly work.
3. Joe Biden says that forcing Americans to rely on unreliable solar and wind will create jobs. But making electricity unreliable and unaffordable doesn’t create jobs, it destroys them. Just ask the UK aluminum industry, which “green energy” schemes is driving out of business.
4. Joe Biden says that forcing Americans to rely on unreliable solar and wind will help middle-class Americans. But the cost of energy drives the cost of everything. Skyrocketing energy costs will drive skyrocketing food, housing, healthcare, and transportation costs.
5. America is already too reliant on unreliable solar and wind. That’s why utilities are already blacking out many of their industrial customers. And why grids in TX and the Northeast are warning of blackouts for everyone if policies don’t change. Biden’s Plan will guarantee blackouts.
6. Joe Biden’s support of a ban on fracking, which is required to produce over 60% of American oil and 75% of American natural gas, would destroy millions of jobs and once again make us dangerously dependent on the Middle East and Russia. Do we want to be at the mercy of the likes of Vladimir Putin?
7. Joe Biden’s plan to force Americans to use unreliable solar and wind won’t stop global CO2 levels from rising, because China and others won’t be stupid enough to follow suit. The only thing it will bring about is an economic and security crisis in America.
8. If Joe Biden and other Democrats want to lower global CO2 emissions, they should stop demonizing and criminalizing reliable, non-carbon nuclear energy and lower-carbon natural gas. Instead, the Biden Plan continues the overregulation of nuclear and supports banning natural gas.
and once again Old Hairy Legs Biden gives US the Big Green Finger…..
8. If Joe Biden and other Democrats want to lower global CO2 emissions, they should stop demonizing and criminalizing reliable, non-carbon nuclear energy and lower-carbon natural gas. – article
No, no, no, no, no. You got it backwards, Anthony. They have to continue to criminalize and demonize the reliable stuff and force people to use it so that the brighter bulbs in the bin will suddenly realize they’ve been lied to for literally decades. It is only when the bitter cold of winter hits the cities, and all those nitwits are freezing to death in their squatty apartments (because nobody except The Elites will own land, y’know) that the moldering masses will understand that there is no such thing as “climate control” and Hoomans can be wiped out in the blink of an eye.
I do wonder if the reality of bitter cold with no heat available to offset it will do the job of “woking them up’. They have to go without heat, water, and food, never mind electricity if they are ever going to learn that we mere mortals can’t even control our own GI tracts.
What? I can dream, can’t I?
Biden knows full well that the audience he’s appealing to are idiots living in a fantasy world who will lap all this up.
No he doesn’t, he just reads what’s put in fron of him. He’s nothing but a puppet for the watermelons in the Democrat (read “Communist”) party.
Now the watermelons know that their followers are maleducated fools that’ll believe whatever they’re told if the right green spin is put on it.
That’s what I said
Biden is hiden’ because his mind is sliden’
Who cares what he wants?
Congress has to approve the money.
If the dems take both houses of Congress laws and appropriations won’t be a problem. Neither will the Supreme Court with 27 judges on the panel, all 18 new ones picked by dems and appointed by Biden.
The truth is that I detest both candidates, but the Green New Deal is the make-or-break policy which will decide my vote…
Other than being a bully, what actions has Trump performed as president that makes you detest him?
Trump is less of a bully than Obama was.
Trump never told his followers to take a gun to a knife fight.
Well, bullying does sum it up, under the guise of protecting US national security, he put a 30% tariff on steel imports that caused US citizens to pay more for anything containing steel. Same for aluminum, which was then dropped for Mexico and Canada as part of the USMCA trade agreement signed 7 months ago, but this week he put a 10% tariff back on aluminum despite the agreement. And with US unable to supply half of their own aluminum demand. So just a treasury filling plan. Has put 30% tariffs on broad categories of many foreign produced goods such as airplanes, that entire industries outside of the US are going under. Backed out of Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Started a “space force” against international agreements for which the US was a signatory, even an author. Recently backed out of funding WHO…CDC on his list too…Let’s face it, US agreements are now considered worthless internationally if there is a buck to be had by US corporate interests.
I am conservatively minded, but Trump’s “beggar thy neighbor” policies and willingness to tear up previous political agreements negotiated in good faith in favour of cash flow are very troubling.
DMa,
Spoken like a typical America hater. You say “entire industries outside of the US are going under” completely oblivious to the fact that, under previous administrations, entire industries INSIDE the US went under. Most patriots are aware that it was pretty dumb to let critical manufacturing operations leave the country putting the US at the mercy of countries that hate us.
A typical Leftist misconception “buck to be had by US corporate interests” is instead job opportunities for American workers. If the corporation is skillfully managed it can pay dividends to stockholders. Everybody wins.
It would be foolhardy to not abandon treaties that the ‘other side’ is already cheating on. The WHO has demonstrated that it operates in the interest of Communist China, including suppressing information damaging to the world, and therefore is not in the interest of the US to pay the WHO anything let alone more than China.
You claim that you are “conservatively minded”. You hide it well.
In most of Europe, socialists are considered “conservative”.
Think your forgetting, the Green Deal is exactly that! Only the US is the neighbour that the UN is trying to make the beggars! Makes one wonder why the UN’s WHO got so many things wrong at the start of COVID-19?Planned incompetence?
Anyone who has lived in a Marxist utopia and has read up on the achievements of the five year plans under Stalin knows that westerners like Biden are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think they can succeed with similar policies where Marx and Stalin and Lenin not even to mention Mao have failed.
Hey, Michael,
Marxism always looks great to the useful idiots; then the sociopaths float to the top like the scum on a stagnant pond and you get North Korea or Venezuela!
or Cambodia, or Cuba, or Zimbabwe, or the Soviet Union, or China …
….and here we are in Oz, if the Oz Labour Part ever wins back power…..Marxism is a scourge but widely followed and taught in Oz Universities cow towing to China….
Cow towing?
Wouldn’t it be easier on the cows if you kept them inside the ship?
Germans pay about twice what I pay in Virginia (30 cents per kWh versus 15 cents). For that they currently get about 40% of the electricity from renewables (in 2019 although wikipedia says 40% 2018 and 45% 2019). It’s important to note that most of the money goes towards expanding renewables,not just paying for the existing 40% of power production. So that 40% share is continuing to rise.
That said there’s no question that power customers do not benefit from renewable power. It’s all about virtue signalling. There’s very little sense in paying lots of extra money for renewable energy when the rest of the world is building 1000+ new coal fired units. Assume all 237 TWh of German renewable electricity came from coal instead and renewable creates zero CO2. That means they prevented 237 Mt of CO2, or 0.6% of total global emissions. In reality a lot less than that percentage since renewable is not CO2-free.
Eric Peterson,
I pay 6.9 cents per kWh in Texas. Why are rates in VA so high?
You don’t have net metering in Texas. In Virginia we are required by law to pay full retail for unreliable rooftop solar. You are unregulated by the Feds. We are regulated. You have relatively cheap wind power and we don’t. Your wholesale market is nimble. Sometimes you pay a ton of money for wholesale power, but those few occasions lead to a cheaper supply in the long run.
Lots of Democrats
I don’t know where you live in Virginia. I live in Lancaster County, VA on the Chesapeake Bay. We pay 11.5 cents/KWh in the winter and about 12 cents in the summer. I’m on Dominion Power.
Now this could all change as our new democrat legislature tests their wings along with Northam, our far left Governor.
From May 11th
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/dominions-nearly-50-monthly-power-bill-hike-in-virginia-is-a-warning-for/577666/
“…Last Friday, Dominion Energy, which holds a monopoly over power generation and distribution in Virginia, offered state regulators a clean energy proposal with a stunning price tag: nearly $50 per month added to each customer’s power bill. Yet the utility’s plan only halves current carbon emissions by 2035…”
IOW, bend over Aaron. here it comes.
I’m in Rappahannock Rural Electric Coop. Be sure to add all taxes to your total bill and divide by the kWh. The comparison to Germany only works if you add taxes.
Yes, I know how to calculate my KW/h costs.
Rural electric coops in Virginia are usually a few cents higher as they have to purchase the power rather than producing it.
I just looked back to some of my electric bills in 2005. In five years, our rates have only gone up about 1/2 cent per KW/h.
BUT, THAT’S ALL GOING TO CHANGE because Dominion Power has kowtowed to our new democratic legislature and governor.
Our line maintenance costs are much higher. Our rural area is huge, with the lowest density of customers in the state of any major utility. When I was handed over from Allegheny Power to RREC, my rates went up almost 30%. I’m not complaining, I live in a very rural area.
As for the leftists in Richmond, we are soon going to dump billions of dollars into the ocean for wind power. It won’t be reliable but it will be very expensive. We’ll all be paying for that for a long long time.
“…It’s all about virtue signalling…”
Not all of it.
Cronies and donors have to get their beaks wet, too.
Eric,
Germany could not have that much variable electricity on its grid, if it were not connected to the grids of about 10 nearby countries; neither could Denmark, Ireland, etc.
The generators in those 10 countries ramp up and down to counteract the variations of unreliable wind and solar. Germany’s remaining generators would not be up to the job.
Of course, at night, it is only wind, because solar is soundly asleep.
“Germany could not have that much variable electricity on its grid, if it were not connected to the grids of about 10 nearby countries; neither could Denmark, Ireland, etc.”
Thanks for that info. I use this graphic: https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources
I have not added the area under the curves, but it looks to me like solar, wind, plus baseload biomass could add up to 40%. If they are importing to meet demand, then hopefully the picture is accurate about the type of energy they are importing.
Watermelons don’t understand empirical evidence, Michael.
The big unknown right now is what percentage of traditional democrats will vote for Trump, won’t vote, or will destroy their ballot. There is a good percentage of traditional sane democrats who don’t have the big bucks out there and are afraid to open their mouths (no wonder!). Polls don’t test these kinds of voters so once again, a “close” result of polling will mean a landslide for Trump.
Hillary got a high proportion of the Dem vote that held their noses to vote for her because they believed Trump was a loose cannon who would destroy America. With the moral and ideological cratering of the Dem Party, their candidate a patient with advancing dementia, and Trump turning out to have been good (brilliant?) for the economy, foreign trade, and fearless standing up to a China proving to be out to destroy America, at worst the same Dems will hold their noses and vote for Trump, and at best will skedaddle from the Democratic party. Trump, afterall is closer to the traditional same Democrat than to the traditional Republicans.
I hope the fake polls continue to show Dementia Joe ahead of Trump so that Democrats don’t replace him with a rational person until it’s into mid-September and too late to replace him.
Democrats are schemers and manipulators. The main stream media has given them license to cheat and lie, and to get away with this Hiden-Biden-in-the-Basement strategy for their dementia-ridden candidate. The NY Times and CNN are in practical terms the PR media arms of the DNC and supporting this charade. As a result, if they think Joe is still going to win, they’ll keep him. But the moment the polls turn against Dementia Joe for his obvious greatly diminished mental capacity, they’ll try to dump him. Hopefully it’ll be too close to the election when that happens for them to switch him out.
Dems will then be “Hoisted by their own petard,” as Anthony likes to put these Green-retard schemes when they backfire.
By “landslide for Trump” do you mean losing the popular vote by several million like last time?
The popular vote has been and is meaningless in the US Presidential election system for 240 years. It was made meaningless by the US Constitutional drafters for precisely the reasons today’s Democrat’s hate.
In the only vote that matters for US President, in 2016 Trump defeated Crooked Hillary 304:227, or 57.3% to 42.7%.
or do you not understand the word “meaningless” Izaak?
Joel,
Trump would have lost the electoral college if 40000 people had changed their vote. That was not a landslide by any definition. Pretending that Trump won easily or by a landslide in 2016 is damaging to his re-election chances since it paints a false picture of the US electorate.
Remember that against the most unpopular and decisive candidate ever to run, Trump still got several million fewer votes. And Biden is far more popular than Clinton ever was. Plus Trump is unable to hold massive campaign rallies which were the main keys to his success in 2016. So all the signs point to Trump being the current underdog.
Socialists really dump on any candidate of theirs that fails to win.
“Most unpopular and decisive candidate ever”???
Really, there was no Democrat saying anything like that prior to the 2016 election. Instead they were telling each other what an amazing candidate they had. The wife of a popular president who was guaranteed to extend Bill’s legacy.
Demetia Joe is slowly losing track of what he does from one day to the next. The reason why the Democrats don’t want to have any debates and are throwing up one excuse after another is that they know he can’t handle a debate. The same reason why they make sure that he only has friendly interviews. Yet he continues to blow them. First he declares that you aren’t Black if you don’t vote Democrat, then recently he declared that Blacks all think alike, unlike Hispanics. If the Trump had made such statements, it would have been front page news in 3 inch headlines. But for Biden, it’s quietly forgotten.
Again Izaak,
an analogy you might could understand: you want to play football when the game (and rules) is cricket.
So why are you complaining when you lost the test?
Joel,
You are missing the point. The issue if not whether or not Trump won but the manner in which he won. To take your football analogy did he win 1-0 after a lucky deflection deep into injury time or did he win 5-0 after a dominant display that completely overpowered the opposition. I am saying that Trump got lucky, and only won because a handful of voters in swing states voted for him.
Understanding why and how Trump won in 2016 is vital if you him to get re-elected. Pretending that he won in a landslide is likely to damage his re-election chances in 2020
since turnout is likely to be critical and if you tell people that every vote is critical then people are more likely to vote than if you claim he won in a landslide and will do so again in 2020.
the US Constitution’s framers were brilliant men. They were Far away more intelligent than most of or all of todays Congressmen and Senators or thinktank PhDs. They were classically trained minds from enlightenment thinkers to Greek philosophers.
They understood Democracy. They understood Republics. They understood empires and monarchs and Caesars and feudal systems. They understood Machiavelli and Vatican-Italian mob politics.
And then they wrote the US Constitution.
The Electoral College exists intentionally and precisely for the reasons you and the US Democrats hate.
(read the above paragraph multiple times Izaak so that it sinks in)
Izaak, you also fail to consider how horrible a candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are.
US presidential Elections are a choice: A or B.
Not fill in the blank.
Trump has strong support in all states, even if it’s a minority %. Hillary’s and Dementia Joe’s support are largely in urban center and coastal elites. someone like Obama, Clinton, or Biden would never think to campaign in Wyoming to get their votes. Small states would be irrelevant to winning if your ideas were the rule.
Also if you get rid of one state – California, Trump would have won the popular !
– JPP
…popular vote !
Hmmmmmm who put my name bold in all caps?
– JPP
Mr. Walton:
Your statement, to the effect that Trump ‘lost’ the popular vote by several million is essentially correct. As has been pointed out to you, most of that was California.
I took the official 2016 results as posted on the Federal Election Commission website (easily found by anyone) and did a somewhat in-depth analysis of the results.
Let us start with this: in 2016, the FEC reported vote results for 31 candidates; yes, some of these were not on all 50 state and one District ballots, but the FEC reported them. Realistically, there were, at that time, only about five candidates who had any prospect of taking something significant, viz., Clinton, Johnson, McMullin, Stein, and Trump. Of those 31, only McMullin broke one-half of one percent of the total vote results.
Now, in my analysis, I asked the same question, to which we all know the answer: did Trump lose by several million votes in the ‘popular’ vote. Yes, he did, and ‘no’, he likely did not.
Let us do something: We know that those who voted for Jill Stein were of the Democrat/liberal (US sense)/socialist/marxist part of the spectrum. In the same vein, those who tended to vote for Evan McMullin or Gary Johnson, were of the Republican/conservative part of the spectrum. We know, that on both sides, some held their noses while they voted for either Trump or Clinton. For whatever reason, some Clinton voters went for Stein. Some Trump voters went for McMullin or Johnson.
Suppose those who did voted for the three alternative candidates (Stein, McMullin, Johnson) had NOT had that choice. Would they have voted at all, or would they join with others, and chosen one of the two major candidates? Obviously, we’ll never know, however, we can speculate that at least some of them would have voted, nose-holding and all, for either Clinton or Trump.
Officially, here are the results listed on the FEC final report form:
Clinton 65,853,516
Trump 62,984,825
The difference is 2,868,691 (in favor of Clinton)
Here is the official report for California:
Clinton 8,753,788
Trump 4,483,810
A difference of 4,269,978 (in favor of Clinton)
So, as stated, virtually the entire difference was attributable to California alone.
But, recall we had those ‘third party’ candidates, two of whom siphoned off votes from Trump, and one siphoned from Clinton. Here are those results:
Stein 1,457,216
McMullin 731,788
Johnson 4,489,221
For the purposes of this exercise, let us take ALL of the Stein votes and say that they would have voted for Clinton; let us take just three-fourths of the McMullin/Johnson votes, and say that they would have voted for Trump, IN THE ABSENCE OF AN ALTERNATIVE CHOICE. If that would have been the case, Clinton’s margin was just over 410,000 votes, in the popular.
More interestingly, though, was that under that scenario (above), three states electoral votes would have switched from Clinton to Trump; no states (in my analysis) would have switched from Trump to Clinton (giving all Stein votes to Clinton, and a portion of the McMullin/Johnson votes to Trump).
What does this all mean? Absolutely nothing! It was all just speculation. It was an idle exercise, but it caused me to think how shallow the support for Clinton was, at the time. All of her popular vote margin came from one state. I think it also shows that third-party candidates can have an effect. They may win a precinct, a district, or even a county, but the ‘third parties’ are not in a position to take a State’s electoral votes, as of yet.
Consider this as we move into this year’s election, and let wisdom be your guide.
Regards,
Vlad
As pointed out before, neither team played to win the popular vote. So trying to judge the election by the popular vote is utterly meaningless.
Only those who are so desperate to ignore what actually happened rely on it.
I knew that Trump was going to win my state by at least 10 to 15 points. So I felt free to caste my vote for the Libertarian candidate.
I know of many others who did likewise.
Izaak,
If frogs had wings, they would not bump their asses so hard.
Always deal with the world as it is.
Trump, no political experience, won the race against a pro with a lot of baggage.
It really is sad how trolls constantly focus on whatever cherry picked piece of data that they can find, so long as it supports their position.
As every campaign manager who has ever lived has stated, If the election were a popular vote election, we would have run a vastly different race.
Popular vote is utterly meaningless, except to those who’s butts hurt too much from losing.
In states where one party or the other is going to win by huge margins, how many people stayed home, or voted for third parties? If you can’t answer that question, then you are admitting that citing the popular vote is just a distraction, but it’s the only distraction you’ve got.
Mark,
The original comment from Gary was that Trump won in a landslide. My point is that that is false. Is there any definition of landslide than include a winning margin of less than 70000 votes out of almost 100 million?
“margin of less than 70000 votes”
Trump lost MN by 45,000, NV by 27,000, and NH by 2,700 votes. He could have just as easily won those with those according to your logic.
Eric,
You point appears to be exactly the same as mine. 2016 was an extremely close election. There were a lot of states that went one way or the other by very small margins.
It was close in the sense that he could have barely lost, won by a whisker, wom comfortably 304 to 227, or won by 324 to 207 with a relatively small change in votes. I prefer to look at all possible scenarios not just two scenarios.
Mark,
Izaak can’t help it; his religious beliefs require him to think of DemoKKKrats as saints and angels with only the good of Mankind as their goal! He will never accept that the previous administration is looking to become one of the most criminal and corrupt in US history! Gosh, if we subtract out the illegals and dead people that voted in 2016 Trump probably won the popular vote, too!
DemoKKKrats, the party of Krime, Korruption and Koverups! Now with extra voter fraud added for their totalitarian dreams!
Abolition Man,
Firstly can you present any evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2016? Trump even set up a commission to look into voter fraud and it disbanded before producing any reports or evidence to show voter fraud. And as Obama’s administration being the most corrupt again where is the evidence? More people from the Trump campaign have been found guilty on various counts than people from the Obama administration? Trump has had 4 years to provide evidence of corruption and proscute cases and so far has failed to do so.
None of which is to say that there wasn’t plenty of things wrong with the Obama administration. The revolving door between Goldman Sachs and his administration is an obvious one as is the fact that he authorised drone strikes on US citizens in violation of the civil rights.
The popular vote is heavily skewed by a number of big socialist states like California, where Republicans frequently dont bother because it doesnt matter. California would go for the Hitler/Stalin ticket if they had a “D”. Evencworse in California is the fact of the jungle primary, which typically pits two Democrats against each other in the general election for statewide offices. This means that in 2016, the top of the ticket after the irrelevant presidential race was a Senate race with two Democrats, which gives Republicans even less reason to bother voting. Most of those millions of popular votes were manufactured in California in this way.
Don’t forget ballot harvesting which is legal in California. 250,000 more D votes in Orange County alone.
You have the electoral college
In canada we have First Past the Post, where every riding goes to the candidate with the most votes regardless that vote splitting means that you can win with far less than 50% as there are multiple parties.
In the last canadian election the conservatives got the most votes of any party (right izaak?) but are shut out of power because the liberals had a better vote distribution. Just like the electoral college.
Does izaak agree that the left wing liberals should step down in favor of the centrist conservatives?
It is to laugh.
Clowns have to be clowns
Kemaris,
You seem to be saying that the popular vote is skewed by the large number of people who vote democrat. And the fact that Republicans don’t bother in California is down to the winner takes all voting system. But if you want to change that you would need to get rid of the electoral college and replace it with the simple idea of ‘one person one vote’.
Looks like once again, Izaak specializes in not understanding the posts he is responding to.
Fixing the problems created by the jungle primaries that the Democrats have installed to make it impossible for anyone who doesn’t have a ‘D’ by their name to make it to the general election, requires getting rid of the electoral college?
Without the electoral college, cheating would be even more beneficial, as every stolen vote will matter. Which is why Izaak and the leftists want to go to that system.
C’mon Man!!
Dementia Joe is just the ventriloquist’s dummy running for the most important job in the Free World. His handlers drag him out of the basement and put in front of the camera. Then on cue and unlike the ventriloquist dummy where the handler can form the words, God only knows what incoherent ramblings and laff-gaffes are going to come out of his mouth. Thus this Senile Biden campaign is a tragic-comedy joke being played out on America by the Democratic Party. The real question is whose hand(s) are controlling what Joe’s campaign positions are on important issues. They certainly aren’t coming from the Demented Dummy.
Will his running mate on Fantasy (Is)Land be Hervé Villechaize.shouting “The plane! the plane!”?
Probably the Proven Liar Susan Rice shouting, “The YouTube video! The YouTube video!”
Spontaneously even.
Biden’s energy policy is here:
https://joebiden.com/environmental-justice-2/
And nowhere does it say that he will ban fracking or “outlawing reliable fossil fuel electricity”. Rather what it says is that he will put a massive investment into renewable
energy sources.
To “ban fracking” by an (unconstitutional) executive action, he will have to aggressively take the same “Waters of the US (WOTUS)” fraudulent claims of regulatory authority that Obama’s EPA tried to take.
Dementia Joe in his June 2019 campaign video on the Climate Scam says he will start signing Executive Orders on Day One to start bringing the US back on a track to zero net emissions by 2050. That can’t happen while fracked natural gas remains so abundant and cheap in most of the US.
Also, Greentard AOC is co-chairing the Biden Climate Change policy panel that is forming the platform for his campaign and the DNC overall to announce at their virtual DNC convention later this month. AOC has frequently said fracking *must* to be banned. Again, the Greentards understand the economics are such that as long as natural gas remains competitively cheap as a generation power source, utilities will use it over wind and solar that causes them massive headaches in reliability and control of the grid.
Hint: We don’t want, nor does anyone need expensive, unreliable energy.
Biden changes his tune because of his audience and poor cognitive function. He’s even gone so far to say he was going to ban not only fracking but new oil and gas pipelines.
But enjoy this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/19/fact-checking-biden-fracking-fracas/
Biden said no new fracking in a nationally-televised debate. Sounds like a ban to me.
What the liberal WaPo further explains is that since Biden has to worry about voters in swing states like OH and PA, he has to walk a fine-line. So his energy policy refers to banning new gas and oil permitting on public lands and waters…which would include fracking. So he dodges having to use the word…and it fools people like you.
He obviously can’t “outlaw reliable fossil fuel electricity” from the start, but he does propose legislating that to happen over the next 30 yrs.
Are you one of those people who thinks the Antifa organization must be good because the word stands for “anti-fascists?”
One advantage to being a socialist, you can change your position from one day to the next, and the media will pretend that whatever you said today is what you’ve always been saying.
(We’ve always been at war with East Asia)
Who cares what Dementia Joe says, we need to only pay attention to what others write on his behalf.
Yesterday Ed Zuiderwijk posted a story on WUWT about the history of draining a lake in Holland.
The story started with the problem that using windmills would not be feasible because you couldn’t put enough of them on the dike around the lake to be effective. Steam power was a new thing and they installed these newfangled steam powered pumps and drained the lake in a timely manner. It was still necessary to pump water from the area on an ongoing basis and some time around 1900 the large boiler and steam engine were replaced by a smaller and more efficient diesel pump. Later, that was in turn replaced by electric pumps, even smaller and more efficient.
So, we have an evolution from a situation where the energy density of wind power was insufficient to ever smaller and more efficient technologies.
Smaller and more efficient means that less material and energy are consumed. It’s a huge benefit for the environment.
Ed’s story is compelling. Everyone should be familiar with stories like that. There should be more of them and they should be circulated far and wide.
I can’t find a good link but the story goes something like this: When Ontario (Canadian province) was being electrified, the deal for farmers was that they had to retire their windmills in order to get electricity from the grid. So, they were getting ‘free’ electricity from the wind but they were willing to pay to get electricity from the grid. What could possibly have been wrong with the ‘free’ electricity they were already getting? As far as I can tell, there were hardly any holdouts.
Wind power used to be ubiquitous. It was replaced. Why is that? The greenies need to give a serious answer not just their usual bafflegab and invocation of unicorns.
The generated electricity may be from “free wind power,” but the towers, the blades, the generators and the control equipment certainly wasn’t free. It had to be repaired and replaced when storms and ice damaged it.
And then there is the blizzards of snow and ice every winter and sub-zero temps that make any mechanical rotating machine exposed to it unreliable. Reliable beats free any day. But when grid was unavailable, then the wind towers were the only viable option to supplement the diesel generators, which a diary farm still has to have in case the power goes out in the middle of the milking.
Biden’s declining mental acuity is once again demonstrated by his adopting a version of AOC’s demented green new deal fantasy. Pandering to the progressive extreme left will only help cement a Trump 2020 Electoral college land slide. Lets hope the coattails are long enough to win the House and improve the slim Senate majority. Then long delayed important stuff like fundamental immigration reform can get done in the second term.
A lot depends on whether people ever find out about Sleepy Joe’s extreme positions.
Facebook and other social media platforms are already taking down pro-Trump commercials and messages as fast as they can be put up.
How much longer till the rest of the broadcast media starts to do the same?
I don’t know nothin’ but I’m halfways sure that Joe Biden will lose the election to Donald Trump. What Biden’s candidacy looks like is a sneaky, back door way for the Democratic Party to force the election of a female president, which for many Democrats would be the fulfillment of a political dream. Bet you big bucks that a lot of Americans, including a lot of women, will resent that kind of social justice flim-flammery, and refuse to support it.
I’m also pretty sure that Joe Biden will find an excuse to avoid debating Trump. Because yeah, I think that Mr. Biden is suffering the confusions and memory lapses that accompany old age, and this would be made obvious in a debate.
Let me just say that Donald Trump is an appalling choice for American president. That the American political system has produced two candidates who are not up to the job is disheartening. Read up on the presidential campaigns when Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were running against each other, and you have two honourable, competent men campaigning like honest adults. Where did that style of electoral politics go?
“Where did that go?”
Ian, I can answer that for you.
The Democrats destroyed it with schemes and machinations to control the Media so that Republicans could never again win the White House. This transformation started after both Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004) got defeated and along with it their climate scam and universal health care dreams and lust for power.
What they did to the exceedingly competent and ‘honest-BoyScout-to-a-fault’ Mitt Romney is 2012 was the culmination of that transformation. Romney, a Mormon Church elder, and how they portrayed him as some heartless robber Baron corporate raider is ample evidence of what the Democratic Party became under The Chicago Political Machine brought to control the Democratic Party under Obama
The Chicago “Dirty Tricks” Machine took over the Democrats with Obama’s ascendancy and what they did to then eliminate Hillary in the 2008 primaries is what Obama brought to their tool kit for power. The Democrats vowed to never again allow a nice guy Republican, a person who traditionally played by the rules of the game like a Bush Jr, or McCain, or a Romney to ever again win.
But Donald Trump was an anomaly they didn’t anticipate.
As everyone now recognizes he is an unconventional candidate who wouldn’t/won’t play by their censorship rules since they controlled the media, and thus the message they wanted voters to hear.
So your yearning for a “two honourable, competent men campaigning like honest adults” scenario was given the Chicago dirty tricks treatment by Democrats between 2008-2012 to ensure 0bama wouldn’t be defeated and another traditional Republican would never again be elected President after him.
Trump broke them and has sent them into continual fits of TDS and pushed the Leftist radical elements out into the open so America can see the Democrats’ true agenda for Socialism and power now.
That Pandora’s Box of dirty tricks and lies the Dems opened cannot be closed until until the Democratic Party dissolves itself as a major political party in the US.
Game. Set. Match!
Well done, Joel.
Yes
Even Bill Maher admitted his place in bringing trump to power by demonizing nicer guys like McCAin and Romney
Then a week before the election he gave a shout out to the Mormons in Utah as polls showed them against Trump, but in the end he couldn’t resist attacking them as stupid people anyway
Next week they voted trump and Maher still probably doesn’t understand the part he played
Dunces everywhere
Yes. The unconventional bombastic, bellicose, Trump is the direct result of the Democrats’ using their control of a complicit sheep media to portray honest, good men like war-hero McCain and Mormon Choirboy Romney as corporate shills and tax-cheats.
Trump saw what the Democrats were doing by 2015. It was literally a brilliant insight no one else had. He jumped into the GOP nomination race and decimated the Republican field. A field held flat-footed with attacks by a Democrat-loving media who thought Trump was helping them.
Little did they realize how bad Hillary Clinton was, or at least it allowed them to ignore how Bad a candidate Hillary was. They are doing those same mistakes again with Dementia Joe Biden.
MAGA.
Ian,
Tell me which of Trump’s policies you have a problem with. I don’t personally care for his style but he has been far more effective at restoring the US economy and manufacturing jobs than ANY president I can recall over the last fifty years.
Yes, he’s a bit of a blowhard and self promoter, but he has done more for working class Americans like myself than I thought possible! I’m even beginning to enjoy his attacks on the left and their media sycophants because he gets inside their heads and gets them to say things they never normally admit to the public!
And if the Durham investigation starts issuing criminal charges against the Russian Collusion Hoax cabal you will see heads start exploding all over DC! It couldn’t happen to a more corrupt and venal crowd
Where is the evidence for that claim about the economy? US GDP has been growing between 2 and 3 percent under Trump which is exactly the same rate as under Obama. Similarly manufacturing jobs have been growing at a steady rate since the end of the 2008 recession. It you look at the data there almost no change between 2009 and 2019. It has been slow steady progress under both the last two presidents. Trump has not done a bad job with the economy nor has he done a great job. He has been just average.
Not quite. There have been very few US Presidents who have accomplished as much as Trump, even with one hand tied behind his back.
See http://www.magapill.com/
mods, I’ve tried to get a reply posted to Ian Coleman and the system is shadow banning the comment (tried multiple times). It is not going to moderation. Something else is filtering it out to shadow ban it.
Why?
Had to break it up and eliminate certain phrases that seemed to be triggering a shadow ban filters.
Point #7 is improperly phrased. The forced use of wind and solar will reduce US emissions but total emissions will increase due to China, India and others. But atmospheric CO2 will increase because it is increasing naturally and all human emissions hardly change that increase. Less than 5% of the increase in the atmosphere is from fossil fuel emissions. This fact needs to be stressed much more. Anyone who is wondering about this whole CAGW hype can understand this with a little study and it destroys the activists argument. If we are not changing the CO2 in the atmosphere nothing we do or don’t do will change it.
Since fossil fuel plants have to remain on hot back up ready to take over on an instants notice if the wind stops blowing or a cloud passes over the solar panels, the notion that renewable power reduces CO2 emissions is doubtful at best.
IF CO2 emissions are 100% natural, where does all the CO2 emissions that man is making go?
Human emissions enter the atmosphere and flow through it just as the natural emissions that are over 30 times as large do.
( https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/preprint3/ )
The rate of change of the emissions has no response on the rate of change of atmospheric concentration. (https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/ ) This can only happen if the human emissions are much much smaller than the natural ones. Human emissions are small enough that they are lost in the noise of the myriad of natural sources. We are not causing the CO2 rise. It is more likely due to the medieval warm period. We cannot change the CO2 concentration appreciably by stopping our emissions.
“We are not causing the CO2 rise. It is more likely due to the medieval warm period.”
Did the MWP warm the oceans by 10-12C? If not, then your theory fails.
From what I have read, the total man caused emissions are large enough to account for about 50% more increase than we have actually been seeing.
The difference being absorbed by various sinks that we are still learning about.
“From what I have read, the total man caused emissions are large enough to account for about 50% more increase than we have actually been seeing.”
True, but that’s meshes nicely with the observed drop in ocean pH.
The year to year variations in man made emissions are so small that they are swamped by natural variation.
If the increases are 100% natural, …
I’m contemplating your question MarkW as I drink a nice chilled IPA on my patio right now with my 2 big Malinois retrieving their ball from my pool filled of blue water. The
Evil Gas bubbles up to the top in a foam in my 16oz glass, the beverage itself made from water and hops and barely, themselves made from sunlight water and more Evil Gas.
Hmmm, yes. Where does that CO2 go?
Biden has a serious problem with his exposed racism. He exposed it himself. Will America vote for a racist ?
Will the mainstream media ever cover Biden’s racist comments?
Hello, Abolition Man. I will concede immediately that most of my dismay with the election and subsequent presidency of Donald Trump is based on a personal dislike of the man himself. Donald Trump does not even pretend to be a decent man. He lies most of the time, and doesn’t seem to care that the lies are immediately discovered. An excellent indicator that he is a bad man personally is that so many of his cabinet secretaries have resigned. I’ve lost track of how many press secretaries he’s had. There are giveaways that he is, as I say, a bad man.
I’ll also admit that I was kind of delighted when he won, simply because it was so much fun to see so many all-knowing press mavens surprised and appalled by his election. On policy, of course I applauded his contempt for the Paris Climate Accords, and he has now extricated the American forces from Afghanistan. (Although the media didn’t cover that development much, as they couldn’t get up the nerve to admit that the War in Afghanistan had been lost, and had been a futile and tragic misadventure in hubris.) Certainly Donald Trump’s tenure has been nowhere as ruinous as that of George W. Bush, but of course that is a very low threshold of competence to clear.
I also think that there is a better than 50-50 chance that he will win re-election. When he does, the howling and screaming from many, many Americans is going to be very loud.
If renewables are so cost effective, why are subsidies required for them to exist?
Simple arithmetic demonstrates windmills are a loser.
5 mW wind turbine, avg output 1/3 nameplate, 20 yr life, electricity @ wholesale 3 cents per kwh https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34552 produces $8.8E6.
Installed cost @ $1.61E6/mW = $8.05E6. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/08/f54/2017_wind_technologies_market_report_8.15.18.v2.pdf
Operation & maintenance @ $210,000/yr = $4.2E6 http://www.newenergyupdate.com/wind-energy-update/us-wind-om-costs-estimated-48000mw-falling-costs-create-new-industrial-uses-iea
Total cost = $12.2E6
Add the cost of energy storage facility and energy availability loss during storage/retrieval, or initial and maintenance cost of standby CCGT for low wind periods.
Solar voltaic and solar thermal are even worse with special concern for disposal and/or recycling at end-of-life (about 15 yr for PV).
Combined cycle gas turbine $614/kw ($0.6E6/mW) installed cost. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31912
The dollar relation is a proxy for energy relation (the earth does not charge). Bottom line, the energy consumed to design, manufacture, install, maintain and administer renewables exceeds the energy they produce in their lifetime.
Without the energy provided by other sources renewables could not exist.
“about 15 yr for PV”
I don’t have a full rooftop, nor grid-tie with the net metering subsidy. But I have 18 year old panels still producing electricity. I agree there would be no rooftop here in Virginia without the net metering subsidy. But they last a lot longer than 15 years.
Dan,
Rooftop solar panels pay for themselves in about 6 years. Have a look at:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-pay-easily/
More interestingly in countries like NZ you can now rent solar panels and save money
compared to conventional power bills. And that is without any subsidy.
In Australia they are imposing an export tax on rooftop solar because its destabilizing the grid
A big blast at midday then nothing
That I’m afraid is a completely inaccurate account of how solar produces power and how it impacts/could impact the Australian grid.
gri,
It is accurate enough to reveal the issues.
https://tinyurl.com/y2quz5m9
Iza,
Who pays for the storage battery and/or backup power for when the sun doesn’t shine?
Not the consumers:
https://www.inverse.com/article/51515-tesla-s-battery-has-already-saved-south-australia-a-huge-amount-of-money
Don’t be naive, Griff
That’s only because of the installation subsidies and the mandates requiring the power companies to buy power from the panels at many times what it is worth to the untilies.
One of the first things that President Biden will do is sign the US back up with the Paris Climate Accord and pledge billions of dollars……..to be spent to help rebalance global wealth.
No affect on climate however. This is not what the Climate Accord is about other than a front/facade……pretending to be saving the planet from a (fake) climate crisis…….since we are actually experiencing a climate optimum for life on this greening planet by all authentic scientific standards.
All science tells us that CO2 is a beneficial gas…….biology, agronomy/plant science, zoology, climate….etc. the optimal level for life is double the current 417 parts/million………up from less than 300 ppm that represented CO2 starvation.
If we went back to the OLD climate, with cooler temps and less than 300 ppm CO2, it’s likely that 1 billion people would starve to death within 3 years from plunging crop production/yields.
Massive food stocks currently……from the climate optimum, would quickly be drawn down and rationed, causing food prices to at least triple…..if we went back to the OLD climate and CO2 level.
The last 40 years, featurng the best weather/climate for life since the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago is powerful evidence of the current climate optimum.
Adversity from cold kills more life than heat by at least an order of magnitude.
The 1 degree C warming the last century has been mostly beneficial to life, with the coldest places, during the coldest time of year warming the most.
In those high latitudes, polar bears are NOT being threatened as we were told. Their numbers have been INCReASING.
The only place where a climate crisis exists is in computer simulations of the atmosphere going out 100 years based on worst case, very unlikely scenarios, using mathematical equations which, so far give us projections that have been warmer than observations…..but don’t get adjusted lower to the observations because those are not scary enough to use as propaganda to convince people of the fake climate crisis.
It’s all about scaring people to impose the political belief system which the gatekeepers have decided (for us) must define our future.
We must ratchet down our over consumption of natural resources with sustainable development and consumption and the only way to accomplish this, is to kill the economies of developed countries, which use fossil fuels to be mega productive.
In turn, the quality and costs in our lives will suffer greatly…..but that is entirely part of the REAL plant.
The false narrative of saving the planet is a being sold as a marketing scheme to fool people into thinking this is all for a cause which nobody could possibly be against”…..except for the evil climate deniers, who don’t embrace the ‘science is settled’ message with out asking questions or applying the scientific method.
The climate crisis, we are led to believe is up there with the law of gravity. Or the earth is round.
Deniers are called ‘flat earthers’ by guys like Obama and in fact the term denier is used to get people to connect with its use for decades, describing those that are Holocaust deniers.
This is the complete opposite of science.
It’s politics using diabolical schemes to vilify and crush anybody that disagrees with you.
The most serious shortcoming of so-called renewable energies is that they cannot be produced on demand. It is therefore impossible to do without complementary means of generation that must be built, maintained in operational conditions, fuelled and operated. As these complementary means are not used optimally, they have to charge very high prices for their production.
But the use of energy in the form of electricity is ultimately a minor problem. More than 80% of energy is produced in another form and therefore more than 80% of the primary energy produced is of fossil origin. Reducing this share to zero will also reduce GDP per capita by 80% (or more). If such a stupid policy were to be implemented, the economic problems due to the covid would look like a pleasant joke.
“Germans pay 3X US electricity prices to get just 1/3 of their electricity from solar and wind.”
That statement is inaccurate.
Germans got 46.3 % of their electricity from renewables in 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-power-outputmix-idUSKBN1Z21K1
and Germans were only paying twice as much per kilowatt hour – however because they use less electricity than American households, their monthly bills are less:
“Germans easily pay twice as much as many Americans for a kilowatt-hour of electricity. But, German households actually pay less per month on their power bills according to analysis published this week by Craig Morris at the German Energy Transition (Energiewende).”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/report-their-rates-might-be-higher-but-germans-pay-less-than-americans-for-electricity/#:~:text=Briefly%20stated%2C%20this%20outcome%20was%20due%20to%20the,rates%20do%20not%20mean%20higher%20household%20power%20bills.
Germany still has the world’s most reliable energy grid, despite all that renewable electricity. It now has no coal plant building or planned and has set 2038 for the end of all coal powered electricity…
Only twice as much – ok, that’s fine then, let’s not worry about the poor people who are unable to afford to heat or cool their homes
But read it again: they have lower bills because they use less. They don’t have a problem!
and a large proportion of German power bills are tax: not fuel or renewable related.
“and a large proportion of German power bills are tax: not fuel or renewable related.”
The 16% VAT is not energy related. The rest of the bill is energy-related.
So the poor have to ration their use of heating, cooling, refrigeration, cooking, hot water, boiling a kettle for coffee, etc etc etc.
Do you think this is fair?
Are you talking for all German people or just the rich, virtue signalling elite?
I haven’t seen anyone in Germany rationing power…
Mind you with beautifully insulated houses they don’t need aircon in the current heatwave.
You need to get out more, Griff.
But, hey, that’s just poor people
#poorlivesdontmatter
https://www.energypoverty.eu/news/energy-poverty-germany-highlights-beginning-debate
Thanks Redge for that informative article. It has been difficult to find any disconnection data for Germany hitherto. I suspect it is much lower than comparable US figures and that energy poverty is not the same as actual poverty… I will do some further research
We have seen what democrats will do with power from the democratic controlled states using dictatorial power to control and impose their will on a law abiding people.
They have picked and chosen to their liking, without regard to common sense, what is allowed. Riots in the streets with guns and destroying public and private property is allowed while attending church is not.
Then there is money, who will profit from the green energy mandate Biden and fellow socialists would impose on the entire nation?
The following although an Arizona experience represents the national possibility. One of our AZ utilities “SRP pledges to reduce carbon emissions by 60% in 2035 and by 90% in 2050, based on 2005 levels.” They will accomplish this by building solar power plants. Apparently they don’t know that they can’t achieve their goal because the amount of carbon dioxide that can be reduced is limited by the solar backup power system. Solar power systems are intermittent when faced with variable cloudy days and of course don’t work in the dark of night. Further their output doesn’t match demand. Solar power starts low in the morning, demand starts the day high; solar peaks at midday: demand is lower because the workers are at their destination; Solar power decreases in the afternoon as demand increases. The solution for all this is a backup natural gas turbine which can provide 0 to 100% of the required power and match the demand and weather effects. This means that SRP can’t achieve their goal because the amount of carbon dioxide that can be reduced is limited by the solar backup power system which is constantly changing output power. As a sole source, the natural gas power plant varies its output power much less and therefore emits less carbon dioxide.As an example ASU Professor Peter Rez calculated the solar power limits of Phoenix,AZ to be 5% of grid power in the winter and 16% in the summer or the carbon dioxide emitted will increase. [ASU Professor Peter Rez: Rez’s new book, The Simple Physics of Energy Use. His book can be used to calculate the maximum solar power that can be on the grid before carbon dioxide is increased. See the purchase details at the end of this comment.] In addition the Obama EPA and others have calculated the result of the reducing the entire US to zero carbon dioxide as hundreds of a degree reduction in temperature. This was revealed to the US congress by the Obama EPA. That’s because the US emits an insignificant amount of the global carbon dioxide. Then there is no correlation of temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide. The temperatures were higher in the 1930’s when the approximate carbon dioxide level was 300ppm vs 400ppm now. Also the studies of ice cores indicates that temperature increased first, then carbon dioxide levels increased because as the oceans warmed they expelled carbon dioxide liked a wqrmed soda bottle. Another factor: Mankind’s contribution of carbon dioxide from tailpipes, exhaling, power plants and everything else comprises 0.12 percent of all carbon dioxide. Total CO2, in turn, comprises four ten thousandths (0.04%) of all atmospheric gases. How would “eliminating” this infinitesimal man-made amount, assuming it were feasible, alter the planet’s average global temperature? Thus even if you believe carbon dioxide is the source of global warming it makes no sense to waste money on the reduction of carbon dioxide which is actually a benefit not a problem.
Here is a ASU professor and his important book. ASU Professor Peter Rez: Rez’s new book, The Simple Physics of Energy Use. His book can be used to calculate the maximum solar power that can be on the grid before carbon dioxide is increased.
The Simple Physics of Energy Useby Peter Rez, OUP. 2017Paperback: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-simple-physics-of-energy-use-9780198802303?cc=us&lang=en&
Hardcover: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-simple-physics-of-energy-use-9780198802297?lang=en&cc=us
UK aluminium smelting. The UK has just one smelter left as all of the rest closed due to energy issues such as ever increasing costs or reliability of supply. The Alcan plant on Anglesey closed in 2009 following the shutdown of the neighbouring nuclear powerstation at Wylfa as it made security of supply too risky. A TV programme on scrapmen showed part of the plant being demolished. The last plant in Scotland has 2 hydro-electric plants plus lots of diesel fuelled back-up generation so controls its own supply or would have followed the rest into oblivion.
The irony is that the small amount of warming attributed to humans since 1970 (about 0.4 K, the rest is natural) has not resulted from increased CO2. It results from the 1.47% per decade increase in water vapor.
I’m not the only person who has recognized the effect of water vapor increase which exceeds that possible from just feedback. This shows some calculations for the U.S. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/watervaporole.htm . Calculations for the world are included in Section 6 of https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com