Steve Milloy,
The year 2021 may go down in history as the year that foretold the end of the climate idiocy movement — although the movement is unlikely to take the hint. This year witnessed the follies, failures and lies of climate idiocy laid bare for all to see — that is, if the media had actually reported them.
So here are the 10 biggest failures of the climate movement in 2021. The only reason the climate movement survives past these flops is because the mainstream media keeps it afloat by failing to honestly report the news.
1. European wind failure causes disastrous global energy crisis. As Europe has closed its coal plants in a rush to embrace wind turbines over the past 20 years, 2021 witnessed a decrease in wind and the ensuing failure of European wind turbines. With fewer coal plants to fall back on, Europe was forced to rely on natural gas plants, causing natural gas prices to skyrocket and a global energy crisis. Some of the outcomes: energy company failures, manufacturing and fertilizer plant shutdowns, projected increase from 50 million to 80 million in the number of Europeans living in energy poverty and a greater reliance on Vladimir Putin’s goodwill for supplies of natural gas. Plus, emissions have increased. The media has been largely silent on the ongoing energy crisis and emissions backfire, especially with respect to its origins in green policies.
2. Frozen Texas windmills causes blackouts that kill dozens. As bitterly cold weather approached Texas before Valentine’s Day weekend, Texas regulators opted to rely on wind turbines to provide 30% of the state’s electricity. But when the weather hit, the wind turbines froze. Because of the faith that the wind turbines would work in the approaching cold weather, back-up natural gas facilities were not prepared to step in to fill the gap. Much of Texas went dark and the state came within just a few minutes of a total grid failure that could have last weeks. More than 200 died as a result of the power failure. The media response has been to try and shift blame from the wind turbines to the fossil fuel plants. But the bottom line is: The wind failed first and worst in Texas.
3. COP26 fails to ‘consign coal to history.’ The president of this year’s annual UN climate meeting (COP-26) set as a conference goal the “consigning of coal to history.” But ahead of the conference, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin exercised his own veto of sorts to effectively block President Biden from zeroing out the U.S. coal industry by 2030. Neither the coal-loving Chinese nor Russian presidents (both putting off “net zero” until 2060) even bothered to attend the conference. The leader of coal-dependent India showed up but delayed his country’s elusive net-zero goal until an unimaginable 2070. High natural-gas prices (See No. 1, above) will cause U.S. utilities to burn about 20% more coal this year. The cheerleading media tried to spin the climate movement out of this failure with headlines such as “World leaders reach climate agreement at U.N. summit following two weeks of negotiations.”
4. Biden’s war on fracking backfires — raises energy prices and emissions — and makes the US dependent on OPEC again. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on banning fracking and his first year in office has not disappointed. Biden has taken a number of actions to depress US oil production as oil demand ramped up from the lows during the COVID pandemic. Throw in the global energy crisis (See No. 1) and Americans are paying the highest prices for gasoline in more than a decade. Biden has “tried ” to alleviate this crisis by asking the OPEC cartel to increase oil production, signaling the transfer of energy dominance from the US (under President Trump) back to the cartel. OPEC then rebuffed Biden. High natural gas prices have also caused US electric utilities to burn 20% more coal which will result in an increase in US emissions.
5. Fraud Trifecta: Nature Conservancy sells phony carbon offsets to publicly traded companies. The Nature Conservancy, the largest green group in the US, was caught selling phony carbon offsets, which are fake in the first place. The carbon offsets were sold for trees that were never in any danger of being cutdown. The purchasers of the offsets included large corporations like Blackrock, Disney and JPMorgan Chase, which then touted their green credentials to the public. The fraudulent sales of fake offsets that were then used to fool investors (which is against securities law) makes this a story of a green fraud trifecta.
6. Sen Manchin vetoes President Biden’s Clean Electricity Performance Program. The original version of President Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better spending orgy included a provision that would have effectively federalized the US electricity grid with the goal of essentially eliminating fossil fuel power plants from the grid by 2030. But in a 50-50 U.S. Senate, it was West Virgina Sen. Joe Manchin who had the ironic opportunity to exercise the veto pen to remove the provision from the BBB bill. Although the bill remains chock-full of bad climate provisions, the most dangerous provision was nixed by Sen. Manchin.
7. Western wildfires burn up Microsft’s carbon offsets. In 2013, software giant Microsoft pledged to become carbon neutral in part through the purchase of carbon offsets. In 2021, much of these offsets went up in smoke in wildfires in Oregon. Ironically, Microsoft had touted carbon offsets as a way to manage forests. Guess not. In reality, the best way to manage forests is to cut trees down. US media has yet to report this story.
8.Ex-Blackrock sustainability investing chief says ESG investing is nonsense. Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing is all the rage these days with both publically-traded companies and investment firms touting their ESG credentials. The Biden Securities and Exchange Commission is even considering expansion of its current ESG rules to create more (versus more accurate) ESG reporting. But only the Telegraph’s Simon Foy thought it was worthwhile to report these comments by Blackrock’s former top ESG executive: “The vast majority of these products that they’re selling have little to no demonstrable impact on the environmental and social issues that they involve in their marketing.”
9. Federal Reserve staff pulls rug out from Fed move into climate. Climate activists have long pressured the Federal Reserve into becoming a tool of the climate agenda. They would like the Fed to pressure US banks to stop lending to the fossil fuel industry under the guise that climate change is some special threat to the financial system. President Biden reappointed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the Fed on the condition that he advance the climate agenda and appointed climate activist banker Lael Brainard to be Fed Vice Chair as a not-so-subtle reminder to Powell of his deal with Biden. Shortly before these announcements were made, though, New York Federal Reserve Bank staff pulled the rug out from the whole enterprise with its report, “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” Unusually cheeky for a government report, the first two words in the abstract answered the question: “Not very.” But you would never know this if you don’t read the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
10. Americans are not interested in paying extra for climate. The Associated Press breathlessly reported in October the results of its own poll, “Majority in US concerned about climate.” But the measure of that “concern” didn’t make any headlines; Only 50% of these polled were willing to pay $1 more a month for electricity. This is consistent with other polls by groups as disparate as the Washington Post and Competitive Enterprise Institute, which also reported that people are not so concerned about climate that they are willing to crack open their wallets for it.
BONUS. NOAA says the quiet part out loud in bid for power. In a bid to become the federal government’s one-stop shop for authoritative information on climate, Biden NOAA chief Richard Spinrad accidentally let the cat out of the bag: NOAA aspires to run the climate con.
Last February, Texas has not only freezing weather, but still air and freezing rain. Any claim the wind turbines were just not winterized properly is pure gaslighting.
I agree. The system that settled on texas spent a week passing over us here in Alberta, typical winter high pressure system with little wind, our wind assets here were at less than 5% for over a week.
Same thing as this week, -30 christmas and almost zero wind for days, today overperforming at 11%, yay us
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
And Pat I now read that they are asking us to cut back on electricity during peak demand periods 4 PM to 7 PM ….. dumb politicians race to turn off coal electric plants and now we are at capacity during a normal for Alberta – 20 to -30 C cold snap. The stupid it burns.
Keep warm Pat 😉
Gaslighting, grifftalking, same thing I guess.
Regardless of the “root cause” of the wind energy failure, it’s simply further proof that wind alone isn’t up to the task, and never will be.
Mother Nature shows wind is a niche power source.
She does give a big thumbs up to solar power, but only because of an effective and pervasive infrastructure for storing it efficiently. And the systems in place for consuming those stores are just as efficient. Humanity is nowhere near ready to emulate nature’s sugar and fat infrastructure.
On what scale are you referring when you speak of storing solar power efficiently? If that system exists why wouldn’t it be able to be used to store electricity generated by wind? I’ll tell you why because there is NO electricity storage in any transmission power grid in the world. If anyone says there is such a system they are full of shit. Energy pumped into any grid at any particular time is used or it is lost. It doesn’t sit in the lines waiting to be used. Solar systems are less than perfect. In the Canadian winter solar can’t produce power at 5:00 to 7:00 pm which happens to be our peak consumption time. Where will we get that power? Oh ya from that non existent solar power storage system.
Biomass – the sugar and fat are the clues. Think plants and bears.
High latitude climates need high density, durable storage of sunlight to store over an annual cycle. Fat has slightly higher specific energy than wood.
Trees in a well managed forrest setting are currently an economic means of energy collection and storage that require less ground area than wind turbines. The latter are no economic unless matched to an existing hydro system that is perched water constrained.
Did the freezing rain and the windmills happen to be in the same part of Texas?
Please provide numbers that show that if the freezing rain did happen to hit the turbines, that there was no drop in power. Instead of Texas just not needing the power at that time.
Otherwise, you are committing pure gaslighting.
According to this Reuters report, the answer is yes:
It’s not just the weatherizing. Heavily subsidized wind power closed down more reliable power producers. When the unprecedented weather arrived, there were not enough reliable reserves.
Exactly! It’s not just that wind sucks as a power source, but it displaces and destroys power sources that were just fine, thank you! Our existing system was the bread, wind power is the mold.
Yes Tom, when the demand increased, generation from gas greatly increased. In comparison, generation from renewables decreased & could not be turned-up enough to cover the large shortfall.
The grid knew that the windmills would not be producing, and they had enough natural gas-powered generation to meet at least most of the demand but they did not have the natural gas supplies assured. The load was not even close to our summertime load. Two issues: most of the gas is coming from local wells. These wellheads and close plumbing were not insulated or heat-traced and the wells were shut down rather than risk icing up (ice or hydrate formation in the equipment). Second, the pumping stations along the natural gas pipelines used to use some gas from the pipeline as the fuel to power the compressors that pushed the gas down the line another 50 miles. The EPA complained about the emissions so they switched to electrical motors. As the grid failed, they no longer could pump gas, which made the grid fail faster. In the end, they diverted the remaining gas to residential customers over the power plants, and had to turn off a lot of the load. we shall see if the changes that have been implemented will improve things. It is only a matter of time before another large polar vortex hits us again.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/02/16/texas-weather-power-outage-rolling-blackouts-leave-millions-dark/6764764002/#:~:text=Why%20is%20Texas%20having%20power%20outages%20and%20rolling,to%20be%20converted%20into%20electricity%2C%20Cohan%20said.%20
Quiet, not Quite.
And “Who’s got the con” is a reference to Star Trek and other movies which refer to the command console as the “con”.
I agree that it is a con, but your criticism is misplaced here.
Never mind the movie world, it’s a standard naval term.
“The conn, also spelled con, cun, conne, cond, conde, and cund, is the status of being in control of a ship’s movements while at sea” (wiki)
Yeah, but still a very embarrassing choice of words…or Freudian slip
I don’t let Freudians under my skirt. [Metaphorically speaking.]
Did Freud actually wear a slip?
only in the closet, as those were the times
This is a kind of Freudian Slip
Don’t know why John’s perfectly correct comment is getting downvotes.
Probably because of this ambiguous comment below. He criticizes the author but offers no detail.
“I agree that it is a con, but your criticism is misplaced here.”
And some people have a problem with spellchecking critics.
I thought the “WhosGottheCon” was hilarious. It’s funny to think NOAA climate change con artists used this particular wording.
Btw, “quiet” was spelled correctly in his tweet, so I guess he does know how to spell it..
RE: 7. Western wildfires burn up Microsft’s (sic) carbon offsets.
Does this require a Securities Exchange Commission filing to disclose their losses? And should it be listed as a ‘loss due to fire’ or ‘loss due to fraud’?
Perhaps a loess due to Freud
They probably got a tax deduction for this? They should be forced to repay based on total failure
Steve Milroy says, “Because of the faith that the wind turbines would work in the approaching cold weather, back-up natural gas facilities were not prepared to step in to fill the gap.” This video says that natural gas failed as much as wind.
What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage? – YouTube
Wind dropped to just above zero
Gas increased ~450% but couldn’t get to the point of preventing blackout.
Is this equal?
At least you can ramp up natural gas. You can’t ramp up windmills if the wind doesn’t blow.
Texas hit the Windmill Wall in February.
And? They still had plenty of deliverability that SHOULD have been available. More than enough to save most of the 100+ lives and $130B lost.
Pat asked a fair question Alba.
Do you care to answer it?
Except gas plants all across the north rarely fail to produce power. Wind and solar…all the time
The obvious corollary of that is …. then don’t rely on it (especially in winter).
I don’t believe that they did.
Also, the NH is full of turbines in cold winter climates. Guess what – they winterise them with heating elements.
where dose the electricity for these heating elements come from?
Are the heating elements powered by CO2 back radiation? If not, where does the heating element power come from?
In fairness, you are talking about winterized innards (which Texas failed to do). They would have feathered in NH, from the freezing sleet. But NH has good interconnection, with or without the more than adequate natural gas to electric infrastructure that Texas allowed to freeze.
And address the idiotic decision to replace the gas powered engines that kept the gas pipelines working with electric engines that failed to pump the gas when the gas was needed because the electricity failed.
Open to correction, but I think Obama had something with requiring the compressors to be run by electric motors rather than gas.
The base failure was the failure of Texas to avoid using wind power. If Texas had simply built coal or nuclear for power, there would have been no problem.
Now, once Texas decided to install a significant amount of wind power (32,000 MW when peak summer loads approach 72,000MW) it created a problem because when the wind doesn’t blow it needs back up. So for back up power Texas installed lots of gas turbines. Those gas turbines require that gas flow through gas supply lines. Until Obama, those gas supply lines were generally powered by gas powered compressors. Obama adopted rules forcing the companies to switch to electric powered compressors to reduce CO2 emissions.
So we get to February 14/15, 2021 with record breaking cold. Demand peaks at 65,000MW. But the wind peaked at 9,000 MW and was falling before the demand peak, eventually to less than 5,000MW before the system comes apart under rolling blackouts. Gas also fails as the electricity to the compressors fail. Remember, the reason we had so much reliance on gas, was because we needed flexible backup for wind. Otherwise there would have been more coal and nukes. https://www.ercot.com/misapp/GetReports.do?reportTypeId=13105&reportTitle=Wind%20Integration%20Reports%20&showHTMLView=&mimicKey
So when we really needed that 32,000 MW of wind, we ended up with 5,000MW or less.
Would you pay for any device that would give you only 15% performance at a critical time? And that forced you to buy 100% backup?
Politicians have caused much mayhem around the world as so many are driven by ideology .
It seems to becoming worse as they try to address a non existent problem of ” climate change “.
“ Obama adopted rules forcing the companies to switch to electric powered compressors to reduce CO2 emissions.”
And NOX and SOX
It’s not a bad decision switching to electric motors, far less maintenance than a gas turbine driving the same gas compressor.
But if at the same time you compromise the grid as Texas did with renewables, you get a collapse
In all this CO2 saving electric switchover, no one thought to install a natural gas powered backup generator to power the compressors? It’s not like you would have to look very far for fuel. 🤦♂️🙄😞
Here is a question the companies should have asked the EPA but didn’t because they didn’t want the inevitable attacks: how does using an electric motor over a gas-powered turbine reduce CO2 emissions? The gas-powered turbine is very efficient when compared to any other form of power generation that burns fuel of fissions atoms. Electricity coming from unreliable sources (solar and wind) doesn’t get to play here, because absolute reliability is the first requirement. No hydro – we are in Texas, there aren’t any big rivers and it’s pretty flat. So you have coal or NG power or fission. Generating electricity to turn a motor is less efficient than just burning the gas to turn the shaft. This is bogus science to claim otherwise.
“The base failure was the failure of Texas to avoid using wind power.”
That’s the heart of it.
Texas needs to learn from this mistake. No more subsidized windmills, and any windmills added to the grid should have fossil fuel or nuclear backup adequate to cover for windmills when they stop working.
The best way forward is to never build another windmill in Texas.
In any and all circumstances wind needs gas, gas doesn’t need wind.
Unless the gas is from flatulence. Then gas needs a lot of wind.
The problem is; there was never a good argument for replacing coal, gas or nuclear with wind or solar. It was always a fool’s errand.
The gas pipelines had been forced in to using electrical powered compressors to move the gas instead of the conventional gas turbines. When the blackouts started the compressors shut down leaving no transmission in the lines. Thank you Enron.
It’s beyond funny, isn’t it?
Has your electricity supply failed? No problem, just fire it up again with electricity!
Oh, hang on….
Thanks Alba. But the hysterical blindness beat you by a few months.
I am still waiting for any one any one to tell us that ERCOT actually believed that wind power would work in these parts/ten thousand (so far) extremes. Even the northern states that freeze resist wind turbine innards, they would have feathered them in this freezing sleet.
Too bad. It would have been so relatively easy and cheap to follow the 2011 blueprint that was spoon fed to Texas, and harden up the natural gas to electricity infrastructure instead. Then, they could have saved most of the 100+ dead and $130B lost. Now, we can only hope for a non repete, since the powers that be are even now going full faith based “solutions”. As in, “Please, power plant operators and natural gas suppliers, kindly do whatever you can ” Smooch, smooch, smooch…..
The climate juggernaut rolls on regardless.
It will take a lot more, and a lot bigger disasters to cure this mass delusion. The cultists are too deeply embedded in the system. And our “leaders” are too dumb to realise that they have been duped.
Trouble is, no matter how big, they just blame the disasters on climate change and double down.
Yes, where this whole delusion got waaay out of hand was when the ELECTED politicians didn’t ask the same climate academics who promoted the “climate catastrophe” what their engineering qualifications were in electric power generation / storage / distribution were.
Bingo … we have a winner right here. As with so many other screw-ups, someone failed to ask the right questions.
The Greta face is a must see. Trump may be the most full of himself person in history but he had us energy independent. That seems a million days ago. I live in southern Arizona and if it is 103 or 104.50 i don’t give a rats butt as both temps are a little warm for most. Happy new year to all
Trump may be the most full of himself person in history but he had us energy independent.
That is funny when remembering Obama speaking in front of a makeshift Parthenon in Denver.
Yes – at most second most full of himself – “This is the day the seas cease to rise….”
Yeah and Obama had terrible policies. A turd for a politician was he.
The difference is; Obama has little to be arrogant about (all hat no cattle). The reverse is true of Trump.
“All hat no cattle” is a brilliant phrase I’ve not heard before (forgive me, I’m a limey).
I’ll be using it in my classroom when one of my pupils is chatting shit (as they say around here)
Wail, that’s the dad gum, corn-fed truth … bless his heart.
I believe Texans used “big hat, no cattle”, quite frequently, referring to Obama’s predecessor.
My son is Texan. I can impress him with my newly acquired Texan lingo when we next chat online. No doubt he’ll be suitably embarrassed by his daft dad.
🙂 … cheers and Happy New year.
You too squire.
They say that all the time in Texas, Andrew.
Trump might be guilty of excess immodesty … but then he has quite a bit to be immodest about. He also understands how social media works, so his public persona is at odds with his private persona. He’s very good at trolling the Left.
Ah, but isn’t it a dry 103 or 104.5?
In southern Az – not necessarily
“5. Fraud Trifecta: Nature Conservancy sells phony carbon offsets to publicly traded companies.”
I check the Bloomberg site and there I see, regarding ridge top forests in PA, “Aggressive timber harvesting could feasibly occur, the documents say, wiping out about 89% of the living trees in only five years.”
Absurd. A mighty big “could”. And, the Earth could be invaded by aliens this year. Ridge top forests are hardly cut anymore- the quality of the trees is very poor. All across the Appalachians into New England, the timber industry has been dying for decades. What does get cut are the very best stands and most of that under long term management- mostly in the valleys and lower slopes. The whole idea of locking up forests is nuts. Where do these idiots think wood products come from? The more that gets locked up – the higher the price for wood products at the hardware store. It is a good thing however to protect the forests from actual deforestation- that is, from urban sprawl and McMansions spread over the landscape. Merely cutting trees, especially if under a long term mgt. program is NOT deforestation. Well managed forests have more carbon in them than poorly MISMANAGED forests- if in fact retaining carbon is even a valid goal, which I doubt.
This same scam has been perpetrated by Massachusetts Audubon. I quote the following in https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/10/1024751/carbon-credits-massachusetts-audubon-california-logging-co2-emissions-increase/
But, the article points out- there never was any intention of MA Audubon to cut those trees. I know that for a fact because as a forester in MA for 50 years I tried to encourage MA Audubon to get involved with some forestry practices- with no luck. Ironically, MA Audubon is doing some harvesting on some of its land- clear cutting- because they listened to the state wildlife agency which told them that such cutting will increase habitat for bird species that need early succesion forest. Not sure how they jive this with their promise to the state of CA. But, this clear cutting for wildlife earned them a nice chunk of cash from the federal NRCS office. These enviro groups are realizing how to monetize their vast land holdings- with whatever scam they can find. It’s great for the careerists in these outfits.
And even if the trees were to be cut down, they would be replanted.
And in many places they don’t need to be planted- it’s called “natural regeneration”.
Sorry, you’re mistaken. There are no natural processes. Humans cause everything.
See Barry Clausen’s Walking on the Edge on the NFN conference 1994 Missoula Montana where unabomber Kaczynski turned up.
“Absurd. A mighty big “could”. And, the Earth could be invaded by aliens this year.”
Here you go, Joseph:
https://nypost.com/2021/12/27/nasa-hired-24-theologians-to-study-reaction-to-aliens-book/
That raises a few questions.
I doubt theologians have much to add to this fascinating issue. I’ve spent much of my time in the past year following recent developments including the Pentagon Report from last June, admitting that Navy pilots have been seeing what they now call UAPs- and they are recorded on radar and thermal imagery. The best perspective on all this is from Dr. Avi Loeb who has proposed The Galileo Project- whereby a vast array of sensors/cameras will be set up across the planet to get new data- because we’ll never get the full truth from the government- which will have nothing to do with the project. Though most astronomers dismiss this issue, Loeb, who ran the astronomy dept. at Harvard thinks it’s perfectly valid subject for astronomy. He thinks its odd that astronomers will look for life millions of light years away with fabulously expensive scopes like the new James Webb space telescope now heading to its new home way out there- but they won’t look “straight up” (pun intended for you movie fans) in our atmosphere.
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home
Everything I saw, was, instrument error reads, or, inability to read their avionics sensors correctly — save one film that was either bugs inside the lens, or, a drone swarm.
35 years advanced avionics experience here.
how about the fact that the pilots saw something? 4 pilots
We can’t dismiss the eyewitness accounts of military pilots out of hand.
What we need are some really good, close-up pictures of these vehicles.
We always seem to get fuzzy pictures. So fuzzy one can’t come to a conclusion as to what they are.
Mars might have some answers for us. If we find some kind of life existed on Mars, unrelated to Earth life, then it’s a very good possiblity that the universe is teaming with life in every place where the environment is suitable.
Some of that life may develop space travel. We will, if given enough of a chance.
Military pilots are well trained at great cost- to able to distinguish anything in the air- as friendly or enemy or something to be ignored. Dismissing military pilots’ eyewitness accounts is crazy. Good photos/videos will be awesome- and supposedly they exist but the military doesn’t want to show them. It’s difficult to photograph something not parked in front of you. If it’s flying at a distance or a night- it’s going to be difficult to get a good photo. But, radar, thermal detectors and other modern sensors are almost as good as a close up photo. Be sure to watch the 60 minutes story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY
One of the sightings was by David Fravor, a Top Gun pilot- what he saw was recorded on radar and thermal sensors- and his copilot and the 2 pilots in another jet saw it too. The 60 minutes story also interviews a pilot who said many pilots saw similar things along the east coast- every day for years.
Despite the Pentagon Report from last June, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-dx9yOuM24&t=179s, most UFOologists think we should give up on the government telling us what they really know.
I’ve taken a deep dive into this issue in the past year. The wisest person on this issue, IMHO, is Avi Loeb, astronomer at Harvard, who has proposed The Galileo Project- which will establish high powered sensors and cameras across the globe- to be run by scientists and others- but not by governments- to generate new data- which can then begin a truly scientific investigation of the subject: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home
“I doubt theologians have much to add to this fascinating issue”
I’m just wondering why NASA is involving them in the first place. What is NASA’s reason for consulting theologians on this subject?
that article says, “in a recent effort to understand how humans will react to news that intelligent life exists on other planets.”
The question should have been- how will humans react to news that aliens are here and have been for a long time.
From #7
“In reality, the best way to manage forests is to cut trees down.”
Right on that- but to refine that a bit- the best way to manage forests is to practice long term silviculture based on long term economics and ecology- under the direction of people with degrees in forest management- to benefit the forest owner so they’ll keep the forest as forest, to enhance the local economy given the proven fact that there is a multiplier effect of 50 to 1, that is, for every dollar a tree is worth on the stump, once it’s cut, the total value to the economy will be 50 times that (based on the research of the late Dr. Dave Kittredge at U. Mass. in Amherst), while retaining excellent ecological values to provide habitat for wildlife, protection of the watershed, hunting, and aesthetic values for the enjoyment of the owners and anyone they allow on their property.
Locking up the forest to sequester carbon without consideration of other values is simple minded. Especially, since with excellent forest mgt., there will be as much carbon held on the land, in the long term, than by doing nothing- because, trees die all the time and that carbon is lost, and with good mgt., that wood will be used for the needs of a very large human population- whose needs had better be addressed if you want to avoid social disturbance or revolution.
I have yet to see an analysis of the amount of “carbon” “sequestered” in wood frame home and business construction. MUCH outside my area of expertise. I would think if it were not much, we would have seen some “peer reviewed” presentation showing how bad growth was due to new home construction.
The US and other countries with GROWING populations are, in general, sequestering a lot of carbon. In the US, newer homes in suburban areas are MUCH larger than the standard 1950s to 1970s homes.
Europe and other areas with stagnant populations, not so much.
There’s reality, and then there’s the Climate rules. Under the Carbon Accounting rules set up for the Kyoto Protocol, and as far as am aware, still in force, any carbon captured in any tree is deemed to be emitted at the point of harvest – no consideration at all of the short, medium or long term fate of the wood fibre. According to Kyoto, you build your house with gaseous CO2.
The big push on now in the wood products industries is cross laminated beams: https://www.thinkwood.com/mass-timber/clt
With this- you can build multi story buildings with the beams substituting for steel beams. Such buildings will sequester carbon for a long time.
With the use of modern adhesives and wood stabilization methods there is almost total utilization of raw product. Wood technology is so much more advanced than most people realize. Levels of efficiency, almost unheard of in the past, are now being achieved.
Why not tailor the ply orientation much the same way we do with fibers in composite materials. Manufactured fibers give more uniformity, but wood will suffice at lower loads. A longitudinal grain direction laminated with grain plies aligned at 45° would yield a much stiffer alignment in the I-bar’s shear web as well as torsional stiffness.
They do all sorts of things now, things we never saw when I was building … like combining OSB with dimensional, all sorts. I’ve been out of the business for many years, now, but Joseph Zorzin is the real authority. We had massive ‘glue-lam’ beams when I was a kid (75 years ago), but today’s technology is off the charts … lots of chemistry involved, too.
Modvion is a Swedish company that has built a 100 foot high prototype wind turbine using cross laminated wood and plans to build a commercial version next year.
They say laminated wood is stronger than steel at the same weight and by building in modules the turbines can be taller and moved to construction sites more easily.
Same 20 year expected life but heck they can be taller and create even more extensive wind farm blots on the landscape. What’s not to like?
their videos at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch98uan4x5t1l6i/AAC2tp3-xe-DmrHx1Rn4ohwka?dl=0 are very interesting
the wood products people will certainly like this- many have already been corrupted by the green thing– here in MA, some of the biggest forestry outfits, with thousands of acres of land- are rushing to cash in by clear cutting some of their forests and installing solar “farms”- I don’t approve but they don’t care what I say
New Zealand exports a large tonnage of Radiata pine logs to Asia and a lot of sawn timber and timber moldings to Australia ,the pacific islands and to the west coast of the US.
We are harvesting our plantation forests between 28 to 30 years so that is three and a third rotations per century.
Treated pine will last indefinably protected from the weather and I know that treated fence posts last over 50 years as I have a lot still standing after 50 years .
If we have claimed carbon credits we have to give back 75% at harvest and the logs are all counted as New Zealands emissions even although 70% are exported to be used in other countries .
A great deal of timber will last well over 100 years in buildings , so in that time three more forest harvests will have occurred .
Our plantation forestry is a carbon sink but you try and tell that to the Greens .
See what I have written about Carbon Farming further down this blog
Very well said, Joseph. It’s always good to have real facts about forestry. There’s far too much misinformation offered as fact.
You are right on the money Joseph Z.
Our government in New Zealand rely on the Greens to govern so they come up with really dumb ideas and then pass them into law .
The most stupid idea is carbon farming.How do you farm carbon?
The government encourage investors from around the world to purchase sheep and cattle farms in our hilly areas and plant them in pine trees which will never be harvested.
The theory is that our native bush will take over and sequester carbon .
The theory is fatally flawed for three reasons,the first being that as the pine trees age they become a fire hazard and they will get burnt .
The second flaw is that the money that is now being generated from sheep ,cattle and wool sates is gone and overseas funds will dwindle .
A lot of work is generated off the farms at the meat works, the transport and loading the ships , without taking into account farm maintenance and management and staff and contractors employed on the farms .
The third flaw is that a lot of the carbon credits will flow overseas .
The initial purchase and the planting of the pines will be the only expense and then money from New Zealand will flow overseas instead of earning money for New Zealand which happens now even when farms are owned by people from overseas .
Carbon farming is a great way to bankrupt a country .
Maybe that is the aim of the Greens .
This article is hot off the Fox Business website. Greta says Biden is not a climate leader….
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Biden not a ‘leader’ on climate change, Greta Thunberg suggests | Fox Business
“Thunberg responded: “If you call him a leader — I mean, it’s strange that people think of Joe Biden as a leader for the climate when you see what his administration is doing.”
“The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” she added. “Why is the U.S. doing that? It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform people that we are actually facing an emergency.””
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More and more, it seems like Biden luster as a leader in climate action is becoming tarnished. Senator Manchin’s rejection of the BBB legislation certainly didn’t help matters any.
Who is going to pick up the tab for the decades of psychotherapy that child (Greta) is going to need ?
She really is a mess. Her parents should be prosecuted for child abuse.
As leading economist Abba Lerner admitted in 1971 – if Germany had accepted Schacht austerity, Hit*ler would not have been necessary .
If voters had accepted Marc Carney’s Davos NetZero race to the bottom, Greta would not have been necessary.
She might consider touring Kabul.
she’s undoubtedly a climate millionaire by now . at least she lives like one
“ It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school”
No one is stopping you from going to school Greta, it’s your nihilistic religion that is doing this to you.
Sorry, that YOU are allowing to do this to you
From the above article’s second paragraph:
Well, more that just failing to honestly report . . . the mainstream media now resorts to keeping the “climate movement” afloat by actively censoring scientific articles and related publications/statements that are contrary to the meme of AGW/CAGW.
“and related publications/statements”
Such as this blog and YouTube sites by the likes of Tony Heller and Dr. Jon Robson, and many others. You will never hear of such sites in the MSM.
These two go together:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/12/27/president-biden-announces-21-billion-office-of-clean-energy-demonstrations/
Billions to demonstrate failure.
Ministry of Truth?
Test your climate knowledge, take the CO2 Coalition quiz https://co2coalition.org/climate-quiz/
I got them all correct — because I’ve been following this debate for years; since fall of 2008 when DSL arrived at my location, and I found – –
Ohio State Presentation « Climate Audit
Also, many questions were written with the intended answer clear to a bright person.
The explanations provide a nice summary of the issues.
carbon offsets are really “Climate Indulgences” from the church of all good green things.
The second to last picture is of Emerald Bay, at Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, between California and Nevada. Just a little further north, where I-80 crosses, another Climate flop is underway. From the grandkids won’t know what snow is department: The U. of Berkeley reports that a new December all-time snow mark has just been set. The old December record-170 inches, set in 1970, is now surpassed by 193 inches! Wait a minute, 1970 was when the concern was descent into an Ice Age was the topic…….
Tuesday Dec 28th — comments and photos along I-80
District 3 | Caltrans
Thanks, John, I especially like the “Donner Summit” sign.
I completed the Covid survey.
It didn’t like my [UK] postcode; oh well!
Auto
as a side bar, one of the networks, don’t remember which is saying that there are more record highs being broken than record lows
Philosophically speaking:
Run that horse by us again?
That’s funny! 🙂
There is a paradigm here – the ENC , The Emperor’s new Clothes.
As Dr. Lerner of LPPFusion wittingly shows, one can publish, contradicting specific details of the Big Bang, but he has in writing, no way saying the BB itself has no clothes.
That means one can say ¨Mama – I see his elbow, I see his knee, even his tail¨, but say he has no clothes means put a sock in it.
Same with Climate, any amount of detailed ¨research¨ is allowed, just do not print Climate has no clothes.
In other words, if the Climate circus folds, so does the Big Bang. Who would have thought?
Clothes?
On day it will be said that the climate science’s big flop was to ignore what some bloke tried to plug in for years, but no one that matters took a blind bit of notice. So before giving up let’s give it one more go. (1/2 sarc).
Happy New Year to you all.
An excellent article!
Re the green-energy debacle:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/12/01/deep-freeze-in-arctic-europe-sends-power-prices-soaring/#comment-3401138
Told you so in 2002 and more specifically in 2013 – 8+ years ago.
We are governed by scoundrels and imbeciles.
______________________
More from the “I blame global warming” department.
RECORD COLD AND SNOW GRIP WESTERN U.S., CANADA SUFFERS FIRST -50C (-58F) IN DECEMBER SINCE 1998, + HISTORIC SNOWFALL HITS WESTERN JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA
DECEMBER 28, 2021 CAP ALLON
As much as 7 feet has fallen in Japan, breaking all-time records in books dating back to 1893.
Its still just weather, Allan; don’t crow yet.
Hi Dave.
It was minus 30c in Calgary, minus 35 in Edmonton (thermometers, not the wind chill that reached minus 50C). Too damned cold to crow!
The killer global cold will come in January and especially February 2022 – locked in by the cold Nino34 SST in October 2021. Nino34SST leads UAHLTglobal by ~4 months.
The difficult-to-predict southward descents of the Polar Vortex will decide who lives and who dies. I am particularly concerned about the UK and Germany, two old enemies joined in their struggle for winter survival, their vital energy systems sabotaged by toxic green-energy false propaganda. Lenin and Goebbels would be proud – their lessons of false propaganda have been well-learned by their modern pseudo-green acolytes.
I accurately predicted the current British energy crisis in 2002 and in greater detail in 2013. January and February 2022 will be worse.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1130954
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA
British Undersecretary for Energy and Climate Change, 31Oct2013
By Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng.
[excerpt]
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
DECLARE AN ENERGY EMERGENCY OR RISK ECONOMIC DISASTER, BORIS JOHNSON WARNED
https://mailchi.mp/c65f20c55714/declare-an-energy-emergency-or-risk-economic-disaster-boris-johnson-warned-185978?e=da89067c4f
[excerpt]
London, 29 December 2021 – Net Zero Watch has called on Boris Johnson to declare an energy emergency and introduce radical policy reforms in order to prevent the energy cost crisis turning into an economic and social disaster.
The call comes as fears grow over a devastating energy cost and energy security crisis, with spiralling prices hitting households and businesses hard, and warnings that energy bills could double or even treble next year.
It is reported that Boris Johnson is considering to hand out £20 billion of taxpayers’ money to energy suppliers who are threatening to double or treble energy costs.
Despite the fact that Britain will need natural gas for decades to come, the ban on fracking and the curtailing of conventional gas exploration has led to serious shortages of domestic natural gas production. The result is super-charged energy prices and rising inflation, a painful cost burden already struggling households are now facing.
The government should suspend costly Net Zero plans as a matter of urgency and put energy costs and security of supply at the centre of national security.
The government has only one way to avoid political oblivion, and that’s for Britain to introduce radical policy reforms and to start using the UK’s massive natural gas resources, which would bring down energy costs and enhance energy security significantly.
In fact, natural gas prices in the UK are nearly ten times higher ($35/MMBtu) than they are in the US ($4/MMBtu) where fracking is widely used and shale gas is cheap and abundant.
I agree 100% Allan with what you have written above.
Britain is not the only country in a race to the bottom .
Expensive energy effects every thing you purchase and every service you require .
Politicians around the world do not want to see this fact and all countries chasing the rabbit of climate change will end up down the rabbit hole .
Destroying their countries economy with expensive energy which can only lead to hyper inflation and unemployment
Graham – it is deliberate – the Road to Venezuela.
A few kings at the top, looking down at all the poor peasants.
They must have taken their cues from Clueless Joe Biden’s approach to…everything: “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again!”
Where is Griff?
Why would you ask that? You don’t really care what he/she/it has to say. I don’t get the obsession.
Asking it once is an obsession?
A lot of people do it, and yes, it’s an obsession.
“Who’s got the CONN?” means Who is steering the ship?
As for CON, well, that’s a different kind of job.
I suggest that another flop is the push to have natural gas listed as a green fuel, if only for the transition.
Funny, I never noticed that it had any color, except when it was lit – –
Number 2 on the list describing the Texas freeze needs some visibility!!!!! ?Understanding that most commenters are supported by good technical reasoning, I do believe this is a political failure rather than a technical. ERCOT has the corporate responsibility for the very complex operation, distribution and financial settlements of the power system. Since last February they have issued a plan to fix the freeze problem, that has 60 areas of improvement. Nowhere in that document is spinning reserve directly addressed, with the impact of wind and solar. Spinning reserve is a lot like the global warming base concept in that it is so complex that modeling is not possible.
ERCOT’S active level of engagement seems to be associated with minutia technical interfaces, and the credits and debits billing concepts. This is based on scanning selected work group reports. Planning for technology is a lower priority.
ERCOT is a poster child for government run organizations. They pretty much run without an improvement objective directed at the customer.
Go to their webpage. Its interesting see how they manage.
This is how a one in a hundred year weather issue pops up frequenter.
Spinning reserve is relatively simple. To avoid a blackout you need enough reliable energy sources running at low load to make up for reasonably expected dropoffs in the system.
Honestly addressing it without showing the glaringly high cost of having enough spinning reserve to account for the historically proven intermittent nature of wind and solar is complex. Accounting for the increased expenses per kWhr that get shoved on to traditional power providers to run at low loads simply because wind and solar exist on the grid isn’t completely cut and dry, but it would be significant. In order to hide it, they minimize expense and customer bills by splitting the difference between raising prices and having as much spinning reserve as they should.
I solved the wind-power-intermittency problem in 2018. This is the practical solution.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/16/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/#comment-2520849
Here’s an even better solution:
1. Build your wind power system.
2. Build your back-up system consisting of 100% equivalent capacity in gas turbine generators.
3. Using high explosives, blow your wind power system all to hell.
4. Run your back-up gas turbine generators 24/7.
5. To save even more money, skip steps 1 and 3.
Greg, all of the directors were retired after the giant mess. Most were not even in the system, remnants of the Enron days.
Number 2 is not even wrong. There have been plenty of independent analyses of the Texas Blackout, including by CIGRE at its Large Disturbance Workshop in 2021. There were multiple plant outages, not just a reduction in wind output, and shortages of gas, including gas freezing in pipelines.
The reduction in wind turbine output was not the material issue.
That said, I am with the author for the other nine items.
Low wind in Europe is only a contributing factor to high gas prices – not even a main factor.
Texas had a power out in a time of exceptional demand because its natural gas generation failed. you can’t tell me a power grid didn’t have the capacity to run on days with no/low wind power or contingency to cover loss of generation. If its fossil fuel plant had not failed due to lack of winterisation it would not have had a problem.
Meanwhile we see a new December record temp in Alaska and exceptional rain/snowfall on US west coat, to add to the litany of climate caused exceptional weather in 2021. You should be looking at that, not misrepresenting issues as in this piece.
If extreme weather were spread evenly over time, each year would have 370 different once-per-century extreme events that affect over a million people. You should be expressing the standard of what you consider to be extreme instead of misrepresenting normal occurrences as something exceptional.
It was p**s-pour engineering all around. If the pumps moving gas were driven solely by electricity from renewables then that is a single point of failure and any good engineer should have recognized that.
I suspect the Obama admin’s requirements promoted this type of system failure knowing how government works.
You also ignore how much gas did expand the provision of electricity during the renewable failure. The fact that some plants were off line for maintenance should have been anticipated and provided for. Again p**s-pour engineering.
It says to me that ERCOT was more interested in politics of green renewables rather than the engineering of a reliable provision of electricity to electrical customers. That beats anything I have been involved with in the past. The customer comes last, what heresy!
No. 6 raises the question of what political game is going on in the U.S. Senate besides and behind Sen. Manchin of WV.
Hint: There is coal mining in Montana. Running cover for and manipulating Senate votes is a longstanding game of Democrat Senate leaders that does not get press coverage, but local voters do catch on eventually. In this case it’s a smaller version being used against Schumer in reverse. Serves him right.
All who propose an all-electric future without nuclear has an agenda that has nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. It was tried in the 50’s in certain suburban sub-division developments…sold like hotcakes till the housewives had to make it work. And when you moan your house will need electric baseboards on every inch of exterior-facing walls, they will paternalistically tell you, “Insulate!”. Meanwhile all the automakers have condemned us to EV’s by 2035. The next 50-70 years are going to be epic.
I thought BlackRock owned Disney and JPMorgan.
The average yearly contribution by human activity to atmospheric CO2 was less than one tenth of one PPM from 1960 through 2020. CO2 mapping based on OCO-2 data has shown a correlation between the location of dense broadleaf vegetation and elevated CO2 levels. These two facts are an indication that human CO2 generation is too small to have any noticeable effect upon global air temperature and the increase of global vegetation may well be the major cause for the increase in global CO2 level.
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive’ Walter Scott
I think that about sums up all this. As we told our children when they were small if you first lie then you need another and another lie and then you have to remember them all and which order they come in but if you tell the truth that’s all you have to remember and it’s easy to remember because that’s what happened. These folks in the climate scam have to remember all the ever changing story and what’s today’s relevance to the theme.
James Bull