Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; There is no even theoretically feasible engineering path to affordable renewable energy, but Biden’s new White House Council of Environmental Quality hire Jane Flegal thinks she can make climate action affordable and politically acceptable through innovation and clever politics.
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“I am personally a little bit tired of both academic work and practical policy development that takes us at this point of entry, like how to design the optimal mix,” Flegal responded. “Because we just have enough empirical experience now to suggest that that often is not actually relevant to the political world.”
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“And I’m not just dumping on carbon pricing here, by the way. I actually think this is true across a bunch of domains. And you said something really critical, which is, there’s a tendency, and this is definitely true in climate advocacy, to pit technology and politics against one another.
“You either are a techno optimist about the climate problem, or you think we have to shift politics,” she continued. “And I just think that whole framing is insane because they’re so deeply interrelated.”
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Traditionally, policymakers approach climate challenges by asking for the optimal technological and economic solution, Parthasarathy said. STS scholars, by contrast, ask what type of technological solutions are needed to meet societal goals while being supported by the public.
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Read more: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063726737
It is easy to identify what breakthroughs are needed. Solar panels which work at night or when covered with snow. Wind turbines which don’t wear out or ice up. Batteries which cost a lot less than the current storage cost of $30,000 / barrel of oil equivalent. A working, affordable nuclear fusion solution.
What is more difficult is identifying viable engineering solutions to these intractable needs.
The following was written in 2016 by Ross Koningstein and David Fork. David and Ross are experienced hard science Stanford PHDs and renewable energy enthusiasts, top scientists who were assigned by Google to solve the climate crisis. They dived into the problem full of unfounded optimism, only to have their hopes dashed on the harsh rocks of engineering reality.
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Unfortunately, not every Google moon shot leaves Earth orbit. In 2011, the company decided that RE<C was not on track to meet its target and shut down the initiative. The two of us, who worked as engineers on the internal RE<C projects, were then forced to reexamine our assumptions.
At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope—but that doesn’t mean the planet is doomed.
As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. So we’re issuing a call to action. There’s hope to avert disaster if our society takes a hard look at the true scale of the problem and uses that reckoning to shape its priorities.
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Read more: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
It all seems so easy, until you personally delve into the details.
There is a continuous stream of people like Ross Koningstein, David Fork, or now Jane Flegal entering the field, people who, for all their undoubted skills, have heads full of the mush they teach in today’s schools, lessons learned from professors who never pause to question their own wild opinions about renewables. People who seem to have no genuinely new ideas, but who are eager to dive into the problem, utterly convinced that a bit of innovation and direction and their personal genius can finesse society over the last remaining hurdle into embracing a broadly consensual solution to the climate crisis.
Good luck Jane. You are not the first, and you certainly will not be the last.
I am old enough to remember the gas crisis under Nixon and Carter, and their flailing attempts to “solve” the problem. Both were very energetic at doing the wrong thing, as much of what they did was counterproductive.
As it turned out, removing price controls on oil solved the issue. With the efforts to do something effectively impossible with current technology, recognizing that fact is the first step in doing the right thing.
Recognition of a problem is always the first step to solution. Most addicts don’t realize they have a problem. which is why they die before attempting to get clean. Politicians and Bureaucrats are addicted to power. In this case, CAGW, we have a solution chasing a manufactured perception of a problem (What Mencken labeled a Hobgoblin).
First we need to recognize as a collective that Man Made Catastrophic Global Warming is a global political (UN) manufactured non problem, created to justify the Central Authoritarian Control over energy resources in industrialized countries. Additionally to a more immediate purpose of preventing the industrialization of 3rd world countries placing a worrisome burden on future fossil fuel resources..
Once that is understood we can approach the second problem i.e alternative sources of renewable/sustainable energy as it should be viewed, an economic opportunity for providing energy cheaper than coal/oil/gas. The French have already taken the 1st next step with Nuclear Energy.
This might leave one to wonder if the dirty little secret here, is that the Central Authoritarians back room plan is to force wind and solar, knowing it will fail, so that in our misery the majority of those environmentalist opponents to nuclear will cry uncle and the only problem remaining will be this: After flushing trillions on this renewable wind/solar ruse, which served only to enrich politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers and campaign contributors (aka the corporatocracy), will there be any money left to build the nuclear power plants needed.
I do not understand your
Renewable is a manufactured property.
Sustainable/sustainability is also a manufactured non-problem.
Irrespective of the price, it should be recognized that wind and solar have much more environmental consequences which are not discussed, like the elephant in the room.
Small scale solar (like on the roof of your house) make sense in some areas (NOT in the Pacific Northwest), to lower your monthly power bill. On a large scale, makes no sense at all.
The only reason why they save you money is because they are highly subsidized. Both in purchase price and the price you get for the electricity you are generating.
There is a growing DIY community of YouTubers who fabricate large battery arrays to help power their homes, RVs, and vans. Lithium Iron Phosphate is all the rage for its flat State Of Charge (SOC) curve and its ability to withstand a large number of charge/discharge cycles, although one big negative is that you can’t charge them at temperatures below freezing. The fabricators have developed interesting methods of handling rogue cells that electrically short out: a thin “fuse” wire that feeds electrons from a cell to a bus. If the cell were to short, the inrush of current from other cells will blow the fuse. It works most of the time, but sometimes the unexpected happens. Lithium is a light element. It floats on water. A common solution is to extract the burning cell pack from the battery, and immerse it in water. I understand that some cities have dedicated water tanks, the size of an automobile, to submerge an entire EV while it burns itself out. Some YouTubers have resorted to replacing their existing wooden “battery sheds” for one-ton steel shipping containers. I live in an area of the Northeast where wind storms take out the grid a couple times a year. It is not uncommon for power to be out for a week. My home’s previous owner purchased a propane generator. It works well, until the propane company runs out of fuel. Since then I’ve relied on a 2kW gasoline generator. Curiously there is never a shortage of gasoline. Solar power might make sense if it wasn’t so cloudy in these parts. Solar doesn’t make sense for everyone.
Solar ‘at scale’ makes sense for one entity. The Chinese Communist Party.
Where do the ‘price is dropping’ solar panels come from?
Where to the controllers and inverters and cell balancing electronics and copper wire and … and … come from?
Hell… where to the LiFePO4 storage cells come from?
The Green New Deal would be the largest transfer of Western currency into Yuan in the history of the world.
Yes it does make sense .. to some. I think that is the biggest elephant in the Green room.
Thats exactly where the term “watermelon” came from. These people are green on the outside but red on the inside.
The Climate Change alarmists rejection nuclear power is the clearest argument that their claims have nothing to do with climate and everything to do with political change. The change they are demanding shifts political power in Western representative republics and democracies from a largely affluent, independent middle class (able to throw out leaders they don’t like) into the hands of elitists like John Kerry and other EU and UN bureaucrats who cannot be deposed by the people.
Exactly! The main problem here is the acceptance of the term “crisis”. There is an issue but it’s certainly not a crisis, as predictions of future catastrophe are based solely on terribly unreliable models. We must stop manufacturing problems, not solutions.
The main problem is the abandonment of true journalistic principles by mainstream media actors as ‘protectors and seekers of truth’ rather than corrupted instruments of propaganda.
Without their actions, none of this insanity would have come to pass.
Bill Powers states:
Most addicts don’t realize they have a problem. which is why they die before attempting to get clean. Politicians and Bureaucrats are addicted to power. In this case, CAGW, we have a solution chasing a manufactured perception of a problem (What Mencken labeled a Hobgoblin).
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More than an addiction, CAGW and the wind/solar spiels are a cult-like narratives that politicians and bureaucrats are not so much addicted to as they are sold on. Far worse and more dangerous than cults in the private sector are cults that are embraced by government because of the political and military power it wields and the wealth at its disposal.
Governments that embrace cults and their doctrines can use their power to forcibly impose that doctrine on an economy and all members of society and with far more serious consequences than anything Jim Jones or David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite could possibly have done.
Indeed what H.L. Mencken refers to as hobgoblins could easily be a synonym for the CAGW and wind/solar narratives today. That we live in a society and a world that remains largely unenlightened by the problems with the CAGW and wind/solar narratives after all these years (over 30 now) demonstrates the cult that those narratives still are.
Meanwhile…yea, it’s a diesel generator..
Jimmy Carter should have been a clue that it is not about doing the right thing or the informed thing–it is about doing the Party thing and the favored special interest thing mixed with a liberal amount of blame and deflection as needed.
“It is easy to identify what breakthroughs are needed. Solar panels which work at night…”
It’s very late for my first chuckle of the day, but that’s it. (-:
what’s needed is generation that delivers 90-100% nameplate capacity 24/7/365 and isn’t subject to the whims of weather. something like…
Gas CCGT
Nuclear
Pumped Storage Hydro (perhaps a good use for Soar and Wind, to pump the water back uphill)
Clean Coal
Geothermal
Redox flow batteries
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And lasts for 100 years.
“Pumped Storage Hydro”
There’s only one of these in Massachusetts. It’s up for re licensing. The enviros are fighting against the renewal. Here, they hate all forms of energy production. They haven’t yet drawn the conclusion that once they shut down all energy production that means they won’t get any.
What is needed the realization that nothing is needed. co2 emission is not a problem.
The locations suitable for pumped hydro to store Solar energy are few. Solar requires flat land and a sunny climate. Pumped hydro requires large elevation differences, areas available to inundare for water impoundment, a cool climate to limit water evaporation or a large water supply, all fairly close to the solar array to limit power losses in electricity transmission. Widespread use of pumped hydro for Solar storage is just a pipe dream.
Pumped Hydro? — In the Pacific Northwest the Sun already naturally does that for us by evaporation off the Pacific Ocean, depositing it as rain or snow as it lifts over our elevated lands and runs down streams and rivers to collect behind our hydroelectric dams which generated over 60% of our electricity in Washington State. (But again, there is now increasing talk of taking out these dams to “save the Salmon.”)
Steve your logic is irrefutable and apparent to any honest person that takes the time to do any king of energy balance, economic analysis, or can do a grade school level energy balance. You cannot get more energy out of a system than is put into it from any and all sources.
A good example comparing vegetation and biomass production in the Sahara Desert in northern Africa and the rain forests of central Africa. Plant growth requires water, sunlight energy, and CO2 for photosynthesis to produce biomass.
1) In the Sahara Desert water is too scares to support significant plant life. You cannot carry a few buckets into that desert and grow corn. It is true it is obvious and can be easily proven. Fly over the Sarah Desert or drive into it or get there any way possible and you can see that there is not enough precipitation to grow crops. A simple water balance of budget can prove this easily.
2) Now how are the jungles in west and central equatorial Africa different that the Sahara Desert?
A simple water balance calculation will show that there is an excess of water available in the jungles (huge river flows and fantastic plant growth) due to very heavy precipitation year around.
Conversely, there is a lack of sufficient precipitation in the Sara Desert for crops to grow.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that solar power fails when it is dark or raining? And that the the sun doesn’t always shine?
Why is it so hard to understand that windmills fail when the wind is not blowing? And the wind doesn’t always blow?
No kind of ignorance can be worse that willful ignorance? Is willful ignorance really lying?
Solar panels which work at night…”
Spain solved that problem. They ran generators at night, and called them solar panels.
Fair point 🙂
See my reply to Mr. Frank above.
Coming soon Mr. Frank: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5089783
It really doesn’t take much to impress you, does it.
and the CO2 released in making this ittsy, bitsy little bit of electricity is ???
Gullibly delusional, you truly are.
That actually solves the problem of requiring renewables to provide their own backup power in order to balance out pricing. Can’t say that solution will be acceptable to the eco crowd though :<)
They are on the horizon: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5089783
Wow, a full 3.9 W per square meter theoretical maximum power!!
Thanks for the laugh, though.
Laugh all you want, how many square meters is the average solar rooftop installation?
1) you never get theoretical maximum.
2) Most roofs only have a few sections that are optimally angled for solar power.
3) Most roofs are shaded.
4) Still laughing.
the average rooftop solar covers approximately 227 sq ft.
227 sq ft = 21.8 sq meters. 22 sq m X3.9w = 87 watts
unicorn farts are also on the horizon, brianless jackass
20 square metres gives 78 watts. About 10 bulbs. Most houses/flats require min 60 amps AC supply or 13,800 watts AC If you want an electric shower you need 100 watt supply.
See, I think we’re looking at this the wrong way round – rather than creating solar panels that work at night, it’d be far better to build ones on a ginormous rail that followed the sun as the planet rotates. Voila – 24/7 solar power! Right, solved that one – what was the next problem? sarc (as if it was really necessary)
I had two mental images after reading your solution. 1) Hitchhikers catching a ride. 2) The rail would be Hot. Or at least warm.
They have solar panels in geosynchronous orbit beaming microwave energy to the surface of the earth. You can see the little round dishes installed on people’s roofs that collect the microwave energy.
And free microwaved meals…just don’t cry Fowl
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poor brianless has been watching too many fiction movies. !
Good one! You might want to add a sarc tag next time – quite a few obviously didn’t see the joke.
Just getting people to understand that adding another power delivery source on top of the existing one won’t ever make things cheaper or better. The other argument is that we’ll benefit from all the new jobs. Jobs that deliver an existing service with lower quality won’t improve anything.
Dementia Joe claimed to have traded $80K/yr pipe welding jobs and experienced heavy equipment operator jobs in the Dakotas to $40K/year solar panel installers in pursuit of meaningless climate virtue.
In reality he just screwed everyone except his Billionaire puppetmasters.
The Big Guy is only allowed to do certain things – some times.
Ah, but now there are twice as many jobs available at $40K. See how that helps the economy? There are now two workers generating about 1% of the energy as one worker in a nuclear plant. Dig a hole, fill it. Repeat.
Correct. Jobs are a cost, not a benefit.
They are nothing but rent seekers. Parasites on the legitimate energy industry.
Has Uncle Joe sniffed her hair yet?
And wasn’t she one of the Banana Splits?
She’s a bit too old for Biden’s hair-sniffing fetish !!
She is 34. And compared to Joe, she is a mere child.
Joe likes them sub-teen !
Hey now, don’t be dissin’ the Splits! Drooper will haunt your dreams!
Fleegle was my favorite as a kid.
They were all cool. Wasn’t Fleegle voiced by Don Messick?
Was that Al Capp’s Evil eye Fleegle?
Great minds…
Actually, the Banana Splits probably make more sense that the current lot.
“Because we just have enough empirical experience now to suggest that that often is not actually relevant to the political world.” I weep.
And winds that blow with an intensity and direction within specification.
That said, politically congruent (“=”), perhaps politically palatable (PP). If not, they have a legacy of overriding the vote, where demos-cracy (pun intended) dies in darkness.
Maff is still hard, Barbie.
Somewhere, too, there is still someone in his basement working to perfect his perpetual motion machine, in defiance of the laws of physics.
John Galt has already done that. See the book Atlas Shrugged….
OMG, this woman is so amazing. She truly deserves the Deepak Chopra Award for Pseudo-Profound Bullshit. I am awestruck at the depth of her intellect.
She is from the school of …if you can’t bamboozle them with your bullshit, dazzle them with your diction.
“I am personally a little bit tired of both academic work and practical policy development that takes us at this point of entry, like how to design the optimal mix,” Flegal responded. “Because we just have enough empirical experience now to suggest that that often is not actually relevant to the political world.”
Yes another perfessor shares your tiredness Jane and wants to get down to the nitty gritty of it all just like you dearie-
One weird trick to fix climate change: Close the offshore wealth loophole (msn.com)
We know all about the tricks behind the climate changers in their cloistered sheltered workshops alright.
Since Eric’s above article makes mention of delving into the details, I thought I’d check out Ms. Flegal’s curriculum vitae, available at the link provided in the article’s first paragraph.
Here the scoop: first and foremost described as “Social Scientist, University of California, Berkeley”. That pretty much says all one needs to know about her qualifications to head the White House Council of Environmental Quality. Knowledge about technology and engineering practical solutions to issues concerning environment quality . . . hey, we don’t need no stinkin’ engineering training or experience for that!
Continuing on, her bio has a lot to say about her working on “policy”, including this gem: “. . . contemporary dilemmas in energy and climate policy through the analytic lenses of STS, political science, and public policy.”
Oh, well.
Finally, if the above doesn’t set off the alarm bells, in the above article she is quoted as saying this: “I am personally a little bit tired of both academic work and practical policy development that takes us at this point of entry, like how to design the optimal mix.”
So, what do you expect from someone with that kind of attitude toward academic work (aka research) and practical policy development (aka something that might actually work)???
UC Berkeley . . . continuing to pump ’em out.
They’re pumping something, that’s for sure.
Well she has mastered Babble-speak, that will take her far in politics….
Given that she is from Berkeley, it may be BarbieSpeak.
There is a reason it is also known as UC Berserkly.
To get an idea of the attitudes at Berkeley in the past try “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Cliff Stoll. From Ann Coulter’s experiences, it’s even worse now.
Just another west coast IYI, this one another Climate Barbie.
The reality is that mankind does not even know what the optimum global climate is let alone how to achieve it. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So reducing CO2 emissions will have no effect on global climate. It would be great if wind and solar energy were cheaper than fossil fuel based energy but so far that is not case. One of the big problems is developing a new battery technology that is a lot cheaper than the current best battery technology and results in batteries that are safer, have a larger capacity, and last a lot longer. Developing such a technology should be of primary concern to making alternate sources of energy practical and more affordable. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them.
“The reality is that mankind does not even know what the optimum global climate is let alone how to achieve it.”
Ah but that’s where you’re wrong because Jane does just like our other Toronto perfessor-
‘She argued that government investments in clean energy do more than reduce emissions and lower technological costs.’
“If you lower the cost of climate action, the marginal amount of political will that’s required to enact more ambitious climate policy decreases; you don’t need as much political will to overcome cost barriers,”
Yes we know where the money is going to come from with the omniscient ones picking winners. Start with the rich and keep on working down with the taxes for all the good works and “keep your eyes on the prize” approach. Oh and don’t forget to slushfund all your mates and willing helpers to build the vision splendid-
“And the second thing that’s really important is that as you subsidize or incentivize clean energy alternatives, you are presumably growing political coalitions that stand to benefit from more ambitious climate policy over time and blunting the power of opposition to climate action, potentially simultaneously.”
It’s the same old same old and in climate change they’ve found their global Utopia to struggle for. The beauty of global climate is there’ll always be a better climate somewhere or other to struggle for with our taxes and the omniscient climastrological ones and their bought and paid for flunkies know best.
So all that we need to solve our energy needs is more powerful social networks. The engineering will take care of itself.
These know-nothing social parasites actually think that they have all the answers, and get upset if anyone asks inconvenient questions. Visual meme: Haughty woman with wide stance, hands on hips, asks, “Well, if you’re so smart, what color would you paint it?”
Wait! Why didn’t someone think of this before!!!
The TWIT mob needs to label Climate Change as racist, and it will be canceled!!
You’re a bit late:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/24/biden-senior-director-for-environmental-justice-blames-systematic-racism-for-climate-change/
Didn’t take, then. Shucks.
They’re not targeting the rich, they’re targeting the middle class. The rich are on the bandwagon already
They have been working on the battery problem since they made the car. It is not working. They need to give up this pipe dream and go back to the drawing board.
I’ve been hearing “peak oil” since the ’60s. When will we reach “peak Lithium” or “peak Cobalt”?
czechlist, it’s a good question to ask but don’t expect any response from the MSM with their current acceptance of the circulating meme “everything claimed to be green is, de facto, good”.
Yes, something like coal or oil!
A nuclear power plant in every city love to see how that goes down
Diablo Canyon NPP has 2-1100MW units that run more than 90% capacity producing 5% of California’s supply. 38 more 1100MW units would produce 100% of California’s needs and produce no CO2 in the process.
20 – 2 unit state power plants (10 – 4 unit)
100% CO2 free
Available 24/7/365
Not affected by weather
They found a geological fault that can affect Diablo Canyon after it was commissioned. The Shoreline fault was found in 2008.
Well, who’s fault was that?
But surely there aren’t any other faults (geological or otherwise) in the great state of California.
Being able to affect something is not the same thing as being able to damage it.
Regardless, they are designed to handle earthquakes.
Great reason for sticking with COAL, hey brianless. !
And has had zero measurable movement since records began
some faults aren’t all their cracked up to be
I don’t find fault with her musings. I don’t get where she said anything about “affordable”.
It is an incredibly difficult challenge. After two decades of concerted effort and literally fortunes spent, weather dependent generators provide 2% of the energy needs.
The fundamental error is making the false claim that WDGs are “renewable”. In some limited cases such as remote locations dependent on fossil fuels with high transport cost or perched storage limited hydropower networks, they have an economic niche. As fossil fuel prices inevitably climb due to demand exceeding supplies, there may be more economic situations arise. One thing for certain is that the intermittent supply forces a dramatic increase in network costs once WDGs are achieving 20% of the total supply for an on-demand network.
Right now, managed forests are the only economic source of renewable energy and they require a lot of land with reliable water supply.
The “climate problem” does not exist. There is no problem, and so there is no solution. Policy development, academic work, technological solutions, and/or shaping priorities with or without public support will all fail at altering the climate, which does not need altering.
Man does not control the climate, there is no adjustment knob, it can’t be done, it’s impossible. Every attempt is painfully ineffective.
The bogeyman of climate change is a charade, imaginary, a crock o’ bull, a hoax, a classic false fear designed to rob and enslave the gullible huddled masses.
The planet not getting warmer. It would be great if it was, because we live in the Ice Age — the coldest Earth has been since the Permian Period 250 million years ago. Warmer Is Better. If only…
The same crazies who are today rioting, burning, and looting, who yearn for the destruction of free society, and are now in charge of the Government are wigged out about altering the climate. They can’t even manage their checkbooks, their leaders are senile, autistic, deranged, perverse, and violent, their authorities are crackpots, their lives are swarming with hypocrisies, and they crumble at the thought of rational debate because they know they would lose it completely.
Pathetic children in adult bodies are at war with decency, rationality, history, science, society, and civilization. I am so bored of them. There has to be an end to this nonsense, sooner rather than later.
Quote:””Pathetic children in adult bodies are at war with decency, rationality, history, science, society, and civilization“”
I can not agree more.
There is a VERY simple reason
Rubbish nutrient free food.
Compounded by money grubbing modern medicine attempting to fix the problems caused by the dreck food and actually making the problem worse.
Two tiny examples:
1) After medium to long term use of a very commonly used type of hypertension control drug, human cells produce/grow a protein-spike receptor.
A receptor for Covid_19
2) When middle-aged males ## were tested after having been on a low salt dietary regime, their cognitive abilities had fallen off a cliff
## Ain’t that a beaut – the very guys who created, by accounts, the entire Climate Catastrophe.
Also, The Modern World. As it ‘appens.
Don’t worry, it really does get worse and even crazier. [maniacal laugh]
Remember Atrazine we talked about recently and how it was/is essential to food production?
Essential right?
Atrazine turns everything it touches: Female
If you’ve got ‘moobs‘ – chances are Atrazine did it
CO2 is not the problem. Not in a million years or by a billion miles
What is the commonly used hypertension drug? Your theory has legs.
That might explain Brennan and the Emotional crying general.
Bravo!
OT.
NSIDC is back up,
…. the dip coinciding with the intense cold in the USA is still there, (I suspect wind compaction)
but its now up to 14.78 Wadhams. (same as MASIE.)
darn….. forgot to change the series names.. Blue is NSIDC.
———
ps… Southern sea ice has started re-freezing rapidly. !
Is it correct ?.. hmmmm. !
here is screen cap of my SoPol graph.. Red 2021, Black 2020.. other colours.. not important
horizontal is day of year
There’s a news report in the MSM about Antarctic ice growing at ‘unprecedented’ rates for this time of year.
Just kidding.
Actually, that growth rate does seem odd. I wonder if the minimum extent really did get that low. Maybe the processing issue affected the Antarctic as well?
It was a fairly cool summer down here this year. A bit warmer now. I suspect the PDO change had had a significant impact on temperatures, and will continue to do so.
Title error. Should be:
“Harris’ New CEQ Climate Hire Wants to Make Climate Action Affordable”
You’re right! The only thing Ol’ Joe is picking these days is his nose.
The BIG THING that is needed is to rid of carbon derangement syndrome.
We should be RELISHING the FACT that increased atmospheric CO2 enhances the CARBON CYCLE that ALL LIVING CREATURES DEPEND UPON for their very existence.
All thi anti-carbon nonsense is the cause of all problems which are now starting to occur with once most stable electricity supply system
Once you get above about 10% total wind and solar into a grid..
You get BUILT-IN UNRELIABILITY. !
If these airhead finally realize the wind and solar are fools mission why can’t they realize that oil and gas is what provide light and life for billions. These miracle energies that fuels civilization cannot be replaced, should not be replaced unless there is a new energy technology that is cheap, powerful, portable and universal. The hatred of the oil and gas industry is because they are anti capitalist. This energy fuels the great factories and modern life and capitalism. Taking them away will cause starvation and winter kill. Any new technology will likely be found in the basic forces of attraction and repulsion in the atom. Nothing coming out of Cern says they have turned the attention to anything so useful. Also we should hope and pray the planet warms. Warmth is life, cold is death.
Biden’s New CEQ Climate Hire Wants to Make Climate Action Affordable
That’s easy.
Do nothing, save $$$$$$$$$$$$
You’re welcome
Agree. Basic wisdom; but would add the rider that dismantling the damage already done would save a heap more £££££££££££££ (I’m a Brit 👍)
so am I – i was translating for our Merry Can friends
Climate fanatics are pence wise Pound foolish.
Not everyone can afford to hire a private racing yacht to go protesting at the UN. What does she have in mind? Free tickets on Amtrak?
Quote: “with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work”…
That’s how “Amish Air” was founded to exploit the potential of Pegasus powered enhanced laminar flow winged buggies.
We’ll all be Amish soon
Horses are beautiful. Horses are labor intensive hay burners. And they kick.
making the unnecessary affordable will be a real treat.
The problem is to make the unnecessary affordable they will make the necessaries unaffordable.
‘There is no even theoretically feasible engineering path to affordable renewable energy,’. but of course there is and we see it in many parts of the world.
griff, so easy to say . . . so hard to provide a realistic example of what you claim.
Please provide an example—just one will suffice—where “affordable renewable energy” has been implemented on a practical large scale (say, supplying the only electrical energy to a population of 100,000 or more people continuously for over the span of at least one year), thus eliminating the need for any electrical energy provided by fossil fuels.
I assume your use of the word “affordable” means that the LCOE ($USD-equivalent/kWh) at the user endpoint is equal to or less than the current LCOE at the user endpoint from coal- or natural gas-derived electrical energy.
Are you up to the challenge?
WRONG
All those regions that have tried, have the most expensive electricity
UNAFFORDABLE…. even after massive government subsidies.
Name it. Any change in the energy paradigm will require technology or energy source that is powerful, portable, universal and cheap. Seventeenth century technology of wind mills doesn’t cut it, solar panels provide dim energy, (check your solar lawn lights) and battery storage problem has been worked on for more than one hundred years, not happening. Both are beyond expensive rent seeker parasites on the legitimate energy industry. People in California with their electrical cars are going to end up walking out of California with a backpack.
Not really Griff. After decades and trillions of dollars, coal is still king. Places with high renewable penetration have very expensive electricity, and struggle to rise above about 30% renewables.
ROFLMAO
Poor deluded griff,
REALITY can never be allowed to enter you tiny little mind, can it
‘There is no even theoretically feasible engineering path to affordable renewable energy,’. but of course there is and we see it in many parts of the world.
Yes, in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Bangladesh.
like a snap of her about 12mths into her job;-)
bet shes not so smiley then
Oh, she will be smiling all the way to the bank.
Lobbyists for the parasite rent seekers will figure out a way to enrich her under the table.
“There’s hope to avert disaster” what disaster? Co2 and a bit of warming are beneficial to the planet.
I bet she smells nice.
Biden’s New CEQ Climate Hire Wants to Make Climate Action Affordable
How about this. Don’t piss away good money to solve a problem that does not exist.
You’re welcome, Joe.
“You either are a techno optimist about the climate problem, or you think we have to shift politics,” she continued. “And I just think that whole framing is insane because they’re so deeply interrelated.”
The framing of climate as a problem is insane, but the bad news sells the technology.
The concept of attempting to control all the various climates of the planet is insanity. Adaptation is the only rational thing to do, IF something needs doing. Right now, there is no evidence that we need to adapt to anything we haven’t adapted to already.
Where I live was under lake Bonneville ten thousand years ago. Apparently humans and all life adapted.
…thinks she can make climate action (enforce-able) and politically acceptable through (fabrication of evidence) and clever (deception).
The convincing will be to tax and regulate people out of conventional energy by making it rare.
And starvation and winter kill.
It’s relativity applied to markets and consumers….by those who think they are policy gods.
“Jane, you ignorant slut”.
The Left declares war on gas
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2021/03/06/the-left-declares-war-on-gas/
The beginning:
The so-called CLEAN Future Act just introduced by the Democrat leaders of the house energy Committee calls for the elimination of gas-fired electric power generation, some immediately, some by 2023 and all by 2035. That is just 14 years from now. Coal-fired power will also be gone, the war on coal finally over with the ultimate solution: complete extermination.
The fifty year history of electric power in America goes like this:
First they came for the nukes in the 70’s. Coal and gas smiled, saying we can do the job, so we built 350,000 MW of coal-fired baseload and gas-fired peakers.
Then they came for coal in the 90’s. Gas smiled, saying we can do the job, so we built 220,000 MW of gas-fired baseload.
Now they have come for gas. Wind and solar are smiling; their trade associations love this law.
But there is a big difference this time. WIND AND SOLAR CAN’T DO THE JOB.”
End of excerpt
There is a lot more in the article, including $120 trillion or more for batteries.
Please share this article.
David
If the West has lost it’s Tarzan for ever more Jane then it’s simply a matter of more cookies in the cookie jar-
America is going to need to spend massive amounts of money to rebuild its tarnished global reputation (msn.com)
That’s the one downside of the productivity of fossil fuels and the Industrial Revolution. It spawned an ever growing sector of stinkers in residence and navel gazing useless idiots that would inevitably bite the hand the feeds them. Welcome to the socialist sciences but none of them can see what very expensive energy will mean for the navel gazing industry and their cushy number. They keep it up and sooner or later there’ll be another POL Pot with their answer.
What do they plan to do when the money tree runs out?
Print more is my hunch but notice how the media are singing from the same hymn sheet now their saviour is in the White House-
Leak reveals the ‘grotesque betrayal’ of Tory foreign aid cuts (msn.com)
I’m going to need something better than Google Translate to get anything out of this foreign language scramble. Spock, we’re going to need to translate this quickly before the next massive bolt of policy energy hits us. Captain, we’re dealing with a child here.
ROFL :-). Set your Google translate for Washington Morlock speak…
There is one, and only one, good thing about the stolen Biden administration. It is so bad in so many ways there will be a strong repudiation in 2022, just like 2010. The more airhead appointees like this babble, the stronger the revulsion will be.
Yeah, but you’ll be able to run out on your lunch hour and buy a climate!!
Assuming the 2022 elections are not rigged. After November one would of thought they can’t just turn around and blatantly do it again. But they did in Georgia.
“Assuming the 2022 elections are not rigged.”
Rigged elections are a distinct possibility because we now have back in the White House many of the same criminals from the former Obama-Biden administration, who used the power of the federal government to undermine Trump’s campaigns and his presidency.
There is no reason to expect these criminals to change their ways. We should expect them to do whatever it takes for them to retain political power.
Biden suggested using the Logan Act against National Security advisor, General Flynn, in their efforts to destroy the Trump administration.
Now we find out that John Kerry is actually guilty of violating the Logan Act by colluding with the Mad Mullahs of Iran during the Trump administration. Of course, Biden won’t suggest prosecuting Kerry for doing Obama’s bidding.
Criminals and Traitors in the current White House pose the greatest danger to the United States.
The States better do all they can to secure their elections. Our freedoms are at stake in the next election.
Don’t hope that the airheads are so inept that they can’t even rig elections. That’s one thing – the only one thing – they are good at, whether they call themselves Marxists, Communists, or (National) Socialists.
AGW activists and advocates constantly bombard us with theories and policies about better/more renewables, carbon pricing reducing consumption of meat, etc which is just part of their smokescreen. People have become so enmeshed in debates about these issues that the underlying premise is being forgotten. We would only need to expensively subsidise solar and wind farms, close coal mines and change our whole society if there was a genuine problem. If human energy production and use was actually adversely changing the world’s climate we would have the proof clearly laid out to us by scientists and honest politicians (who are they?) so the need for drastic action was seen to be valid. We do not have this evidence in front of us because it does not exist so we get non-stop media and activist propaganda, doctored data and scare predictions instead. Its a cult so well past time to ignore it.
Meat consumption! They’re into fish welfare now-
Welfare group backed by Carrie Symonds claims fish are ‘suffering’ (msn.com)
Do keep up as you’re expected to eat bugs and worms in their new Utopia. So bye bye fishing and the pesticide/insecticide industry is next for the chop and you won’t have to worry about bug miles with eating your dinner. You have to think locally people but there’ll be an amnesty to turn in your fly swatters before the goons come knocking.
Is Carrie Symonds Boris’ tickle thing?
You forgot wind turbines that produce 100% power when wind is at 0%
Solar Panels which work at night and/or when covered with snow? She lacks quite a bit of fantasy.
She should propose to invent coal or fuel or even biomass which can be burned multiple times…
Or for the military: gun powder that explodes twice… (/sarc)
From the article: “Traditionally, policymakers approach climate challenges by asking for the optimal technological and economic solution, Parthasarathy said. STS scholars, by contrast, ask what type of technological solutions are needed to meet societal goals while being supported by the public.”
What they should really start doing is questioning the whole premise of Human-caused Climate Change. They are working from an unsubstantiated assertion that CO2 is the control knob of the Earth’s atmospheric temperature.
They never question the basic premise. And that’s where they go wrong.
If someone told me CO2 was going to destroy the world, the first thing I would want to know is how this is going to happen. But obviously, there are many people who don’t question authority. And it pays for many of them not to do any questioning. Questioning is intellectually difficult for just about anyone in a subject as complicated as climate science, and questioning can be harmful to one’s social and professional life in today’s political atmosphere. So a lot of people don’t do much questioning.
Questioning is easy for a collective like WUWT. There are enough experts here in enough subjects that all subject matter can be thoroughly discussed. WUWT is a treasure. it’s the go-to place for understanding all the nuances of science. If you see an outrageous claim about climate in the news, you come to WUWT to find out the real story.
The manager of the enviro nonprofit armies has arrived. That is all.
The leftist way: You can always get it done with another law, regulation or executive order.
Leftist believe what I considerne of the most absurd and dangerous clasims ever made. The last half of the qute often attributed to Bobby Kennedy, “I look at what could be and say ‘why not’.” Well maybe because it goes against physics, economic reality or just plain old human nature.
Magical thinking works great until implementation is attempted. Given the Democrat’s record, it will not come to that. They’ll just spend the money on cronyism.