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.
…
“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.”
…
“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.”
…
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.
…
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.
…
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.
…
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.
“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.