Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t M; Wall Street Journal trashing claims the renewable energy transition will bring down prices, or is even possible.
Why the Energy Transition Will Fail
New report highlights the staggering cost of green ‘delusions.’
By James Freeman
Aug. 26, 2022 4:50 pm ET…
In a new report due out next week from the Manhattan Institute, Mark Mills takes on the “dangerous delusion” of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Surveying energy markets and public policy around the world, Mr. Mills asks readers to “consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape.” He notes:
…
Claims that wind, solar, and [electrical vehicles] have reached cost parity with traditional energy sources or modes of transportation are not based on evidence. Even before the latest period of rising energy prices, Germany and Britain—both further down the grid transition path than the U.S.— have seen average electricity rates rise 60%–110% over the past two decades. The same pattern is visible in Australia and Canada. It’s also apparent in U.S. states and regions where mandates have resulted in grids with a higher share of wind/solar energy. In general, overall U.S. residential electricity costs rose over the past 20 years. But those rates should have declined because of the collapse in the cost of natural gas and coal—the two energy sources that, together, supplied nearly 70% of electricity in that period. Instead, rates have been pushed higher thanks to elevated spending on the otherwise unneeded infrastructure required to transmit wind/solar-generated electricity, as well as the increased costs to keep lights on during “droughts” of wind and sun that come from also keeping conventional power plants available (like having an extra, fully fueled car parked and ready to go) in effect by spending on two grids.
…
President Joe Biden is unlikely to listen to such an explanation and who knows if he would even understand it. But reality’s not going anywhere.
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-energy-transition-will-fail-11661547051
The Wall Street Journal also discusses the disparity in cost between battery energy storage vs a bulldozer assembled heap of coal.
Given the numbers so obviously indicate renewable energy is a non-starter, why do green advocates keep claiming that the numbers add up?
The answer appears to be blind faith and optimism. The numbers don’t currently add up, but they expect prices to keep falling, just as prices have fallen over the last decade. From the United Nations;
Falling clean energy costs provide opportunity to boost climate action in COVID-19 recovery packages
10 JUN 2020 PRESS RELEASE ENERGY
…
The all-in, or levelized, cost of electricity continues to fall for wind and solar, thanks to technology improvements, economies of scale and fierce competition in auctions. Costs for electricity from new solar photovoltaic plants in the second half of 2019 were 83 per cent lower than a decade earlier.
…
“If governments take advantage of the ever-falling price tag of renewables to put clean energy at the heart of COVID-19 economic recovery, they can take a big step towards a healthy natural world, which is the best insurance policy against global pandemics,” Andersen said.
…
Read more: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/falling-clean-energy-costs-provide-opportunity-boost-climate-action
These otherwise smart people have drawn a nice curve on their graphs, where they fitted the 83% cost reduction over the last decade. Some of them expect that exponential looking curve to continue indefinitely, giving us the “ever-falling price tag of renewables”.
Moore’s law and renewable energy
by Bill Spindle | Jul 27, 2021
…
To date, renewables have benefited from something akin to Moore’s Law –– as they grew exponentially, and got cheaper, causing faster growth –– a virtuous cycle. As more grid-scale battery storage comes online, providing stability for wind and solar power, the batteries are also becoming cheaper.
The trend has enticed a diverse array of entities to jump in –– from the conservative city of Georgetown, Texas which sources 100% of its power from renewable sources to tech giant Microsoft Corp. aiming for carbon negativity by 2030 using a combination of renewable energy and carbon removal technologies.
But the path may not be as smooth as goals and targets suggest. Recently New York State officials unveiled a new goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, promising a completely decarbonized electricity system. But shortly after, the New York Independent Systems Operator (NYISO), the body responsible for operating the state’s energy grid, issued a statement saying that a 70% renewable power system by 2030 is “very achievable” but that getting to 100% renewable sources will require technology that does not yet exist.
…
Read more (requires registration): https://www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/moores-law-and-renewable-energy/
One of the first things I learned about statistics is extrapolation, extending the trend line beyond the data, is risky. You can fit a naive trend line to rising stock prices, and extrapolation will tell you any time is a good time to buy. The crash, when it occurs, is an unexpected departure from the naive extrapolated trend.
Yet the people pushing renewable energy, instead of waiting for the data to catch up with the trend line, are pushing the entire world to gamble the future of all of us on their faith that the costs of renewable technology will be “ever-falling”, will continue to fall at a rate comparable to the last decade.
And if the costs don’t fall according to the plan – there is always the option of throwing endless government money at developing “technology that does not yet exist”, David Attenborough’s Renewable Apollo Project.
Imagine a hundred years from now. Future historians will surely see this global gamble of trillions of dollars on “technology which does not yet exist”, this blind faith in trend lines, as an outbreak of mass hysteria they will struggle to explain.
Think about the actual Apollo Project. NASA didn’t dive straight into building the moon launcher, they built prototype after prototype, like Project Mercury. Each prototype was a stepping stone, which provided learnings which made the next step possible.
Personally I’d prefer to wait until the “technology that does not yet exist” is developed, at least to prototype stage, before gambling everything on a green transition which likely isn’t possible.
Here’s an area where I think there will be success.
Dow Chemical is pursuing the use of modular nuclear reactors to provide power and heat for chemical plants to displace the use of natural gas. Makes sense.
Dow has a long, effctive history applying science to all sorts of problems. If you ever try to “iron” a shirt you’ll soon understand how they can make gossamer thick food wraps for both home and production. And it’s Cheap.
lemme guess you tried ironing a polyester shirt on the linen setting?
That is the appropriate fate for any and all polyester shirts. I don’t have a strong body odor. However, when in the past I have worn a polyester shirt, the odor was unbearable, even by me.
A contrary position articulated in this article makes more sense than DOW. These corporations are under extreme pressure to conform to the mantra of “the renewables” that they often spend their shareholders’ money on fluff like this.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/does_nuclear_energy_have_a_future_in_the_us.html
Please note that Excelon, the largest electrical producer in the country, recently offloaded all its nuclear projects.
Very few things are certain, but as Philo mentioned above, Dow has a good track record in applying science, and I would rather see shareholder money spent in place of taxpayer money.
Odd, since Exelon is partnering with Rolls Royce on their SMR,
Rolls is already getting orders for their Small Modular Reactors. One order was from the Netherlands. I would expect the UK to be the primary customer. After what the UK have experienced this year, I suspect there will be a lot of pressure to keep as much as possible manufactured on shore. Rolls manufacture the small nuke plants for submarines, so it is not a big shift in their business.
I would HOPE that the manufacturing remains in the UK.
However with past experience of wind and solar manufacturing going East, (viz: the initial promise of well-paid unionised jobs?), I am keeping my fingers crossed.
It seems pretty obvious that if all you need is process heat and electrical power then a small nuclear reactor is a machine for the job, but can they be made to produce heat and power at the cost of the cheapest fossil fuel? And how long will it take the NERC to approve designs? And can public fears and superstitions be vanquished?
It will be a long time before they get regulatory approval.
https://www.nuscalepower.com/newsletter/nucleus-fall-2020/program-development-update#:~:text=On%20August%2028%2C%202020%20NuScale,Approval%20and%20the%20Final%20Safety
“It will be a long time before they get regulatory approval”
As in, most likely not in your lifetime. NEPA alone will add 20 years to the process. To be followed by NIMBY, and the Sierra Club, etc.
In addition to what you ask, how many of these small nuclear reactors are going to be needed to replace each gas or coal plant? How do the costs compare?
I’m all for nuclear and it has to be better than windmills or solar arrays but will they be cheaper when installed to replace so much current generation? I presume we are talking about replacing coal, oil and gas plants.
A Rolls Royce 470 Mwe SMR is only slightly smaller than the 600MWe reactors it is intended to replace. A main grid scale power station might house up to ten.
Everybody aks how long it will take to transition to nuclear and clear regulatory hurdles.
That is a function of what level of disaster is engendered by renewable energy.
If say Germany totally blacks out, that might induce a little streamlining,
“Everybody aks how long it will take…”
Taking up Ebonics, are we? 🙂
It’s absolutely no problem to replace fossils with nuclear for electricity generation. Sweden had 50%+ of it’s electricity made with nuclear already in the 80s. It was cheap and reliable. Problems arise when you introduce intermittent power in the system. Nuclear is not made to throttle up and down depending on if the wind is blowing or it’s sunny or not.
Nuclear can throttle up and down and the addition of molten salt heatbanks makes it able to do it very rapidly.
But if you remove the renewable energy, the need to do so is massively reduced.
Yes, it can and is done but it’s a bad idea for efficiency and pollution which is what I thought CAGW was about stopping.
See my post above about the experience of Duke Energy.
“Nuclear is not made to throttle up and down depending on if the wind is blowing or it’s sunny or not.”
Yes, I 100% agree. But I was talking about what I presume to be numerous small nuclear reactors, not the large ones we have today in the places sane enough to not have shut them down, like Germany and California.
As for throttling them up and down for wind and solar, yes, it is already a major problem.
Duke Energy application points finger at solar for increased pollution
http://bit.ly/2qU0grH
8/14/19
Pictured is the H.F. Lee power plant in Goldsboro, N.C. According to records obtained by NSJ, Duke Energy requested modifications to the air quality permit at the station due to the increasing amounts of solar energy cycling on the grid. (Photo: Duke Energy)
RALEIGH — A seven-month investigation and numerous public information requests have revealed the move to increase solar power might be leading to an increase in the very emissions alternative energy sources aim to reduce.
Duke spokeswoman Kim Crawford confirmed that increased solar power on the state’s electric grid is increasing emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx), a dangerous air pollutant. She said that reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could also reverse if current solar growth continues without policy changes.
Climate advocates blame increases in manmade gases like CO2 for global warming and have promoted solar power as environmentally clean.
An increase in emissions triggers the need to rethink national energy policy, experts say.
…Crawford provided measurements showing that even on sunny days — when solar power is at its maximum output — more NOx pollution is released into the air than would occur if no solar electricity were used and natural gas were used instead.
That’s because traditional power plants — including cleaner burning natural gas plants — must scale back electric generation to accommodate solar energy surging onto the system when the sun rises, and power back up when the sun sets and solar energy dissipates. That starting and stopping reduces efficiency and incapacitates emission control devices, increasing pollutant levels.
On other days solar energy is erratic and can result in more frequent cycling of reserve sources, further decreasing power plant efficiency. This increased cycling can result in increased emissions and undue wear and tear on the expensive equipment…
Going after SMR’s as the silver bullet is just as reckless as tilting at windmills (mangled metaphor, I know).
What we need more than anything is a stable, reliable grid and that can only come from coal and gas. Then we can start progressing to SMR’s in the way we always should have, experimentally.
We get the theory but we need to understand which type works better where, build cost’s, grid adaption etc. The list is endless.
If we don’t we’ll end up with another project governments chucks money at as yet another political opportunity.
No, it is massively less reckless, because we know that unlike renewables, grid scale nuclear will actually work.
It is however not a short term fix.
Today gas,
Tomorrow frackling
Next year nuclear.
It’s not just a matter of “working”. I shudder to think of the costs associated with thousands of these reaching their end-of-life and needing to be de-commissioned. What do you do with them? Will we have the technology to send all the waste into the sun? They may generate less radioactive waste than current nuke plants but they will still generate *some*.
The ‘waste’ is NOT waste. It still has much ‘unburned’ fuel (at least 90%) that can be reprocessed and used in following cycles. Your comment reveals how little you know. I worked with Nuclear power for more than 30 years.
At some point that fuel will have *also* reached its useful life in a specific design of reactor. At that point it will still be radioactive and will *still* need to be taken care of.
First off, the amount of material that is radioactive at the end of life of a nuclear reactor is pretty small compared to the number of decades of service life.
Beyond that, the materials involved have relatively short half lives. They aren’t a problem.
“Beyond that, the materials involved have relatively short half lives. They aren’t a problem.”
Where have I heard this one before?
It can be and is taken care of unlike the radioactive waste produced in the making of windmills, solar panels and batteries which is most definitely not. In addition, unlike nuclear, there are few ways to safely make or dispose of solar panels, windmills and batteries and it’s expensive, so they are being dumped on many third world countries are pollutting their soils, waters and people on a massive scale.
See my comment above for sources. “Clean, Green Renewables” are polluting earth on an unimaginable scale. Nuclear is very, very clean compared to them and nuclear provides decades of clean energy and its waste is safely disposed of.
But, thanks to President Carter, the US cannot legally recycle the remaining fuel.
Why not actually do the research?
All new nuclear restors have to have a fully funded decommissioning program(unlike windmills).
It is a non issue – a total straw man.
Fully funded? There are only four locations that I know of that handle low-level nuke waste. They are *NOT* funded to handle the amount of low-level nuke waste that would be involved in replacing coal/nat gas electric plants. It doesn’t matter what the “plans” say – it’s the federal funding that never matches the “plans” that is always the problem!
A slew of sensible comments. Take this clarity and apply it to your world of alt.statistics
Al Franken did not predict Rush’s death. Rather, he predicted that, after Mr. Limbaughs 4th try at rehab took, they would be BFF’s. Is this what is going on here? Hope so. I have lots of friends, but am always looking for more…
A slew of nonsensical, inaccurate comments.
If radioactive waste is your concern about nuclear, you will find that windmills and solar panels produce orders of magnitude more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants.
There are multiple sources for this information but here are a few.
In China, the true cost of Britain’s [and everyone else’s] clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
https://dailym.ai/2kX87Sm
…In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.
For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.
Twenty-Five Industrial Wind Energy Deceptions
https://bit.ly/2SX49Ke
“If radioactive waste is your concern about nuclear, you will find that windmills and solar panels produce orders of magnitude more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants.”
Backup. Not in your links. Yes, “rare earths” coproduce NORM, but if you want to go there, the biggest NORM producers are oil and gas. And that waste needs nothing like the stewardship of nuclear plant waste. Of course the oil and gas producers also let their NORM sit in scaled up tubulars and frac fluid filter warehouses with no long term plans for it, but that’s another story.
And sorry/not sorry. Even if the observational data from your Daily Mail editorial were true, you (predictably) present no comparative cradle to grave analyses for various sources. You know, the dull, boring tables that show much less of both pollution and emissions from wind and solar.
“You know, the dull, boring tables that show much less of both pollution and emissions from wind and solar.”
The latter of which produce zero reliable power.
As the number of reactors increases, so will the funding for those sites. That’s how the system works. The reactors pay fees based on how much electricity they produce.
Like Leo said, do some research.
That problem has been blown way out of proportion. The spent fuel rods take up very little space. Have you considered that multiple countries have nuclear submarine fleets, but you don’t hear a peep about that problem wrt them.
If radioactive waste is your concern about nuclear, you will find that windmills and solar panels produce orders of magnitude more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants.
There are multiple sources for this information but here are a few.
In China, the true cost of Britain’s [and everyone else’s] clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
https://dailym.ai/2kX87Sm
…In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.
For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.
Twenty-Five Industrial Wind Energy Deceptions
https://bit.ly/2SX49Ke
9/4/18
50 Reasons why wind power can not replace fossil fuels
http://energyskeptic.com/2019/wind/
February 14, 2019
This series is excellent. If radioactive waste is you issue, this will terrify you.
First instalment in this series, where Tim Maughan and the Unknown Fields group visits the Chinese city of Yiwu, the real home of Christmas.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141218-the-hidden-home-of-christmas
Spot on!
Nuclear is the future over the long term
Hopefully fusion at some point.
Every nuclear powered sub has a small nuclear reactor. The technology and knowledge already exists, and Rolls Royce has already determined how to modularize an appropriate size plant, and are readying the production facilities. They have arrived at the costs. The rest of the issues are far less of a problem than integrating a new wind or solar farm into the grid.
Roll-outs will begin soon, but it still takes the better part of a year to build and install one (and it sounds like they build one at a time). Just catching up to our present needs will take a long time.
“And can public fears and superstitions be vanquished?”
If we’re waiting for that, we’re completely boned.
Refineries and Chemical plants use natural gas as their primary fuel. If they convert all those reboilers and reactors to nuclear heat, it will allow them to sell what used to be their fuel as additional sales product like fertilizer and plastic. And it’s especially beneficial if you can get taxpayer funds to pay for the nuclear reactor….
“And it’s especially beneficial if you can get taxpayer funds to pay for the nuclear reactor….”
The consumers get hosed whether we pay, or pay through our taxes. I fail to see why the utilities providing these and charging for the electricity should not pay. That would, no doubt, make it cheaper, too, as there is nothing more expensive than government/taxpayer-funded enterprises.
If you were being sarcastic, my apologies.
I don’t think the folks pushing the CAGW agenda really care about the climate and I’m quite certain they do not want natural gas to be used in anything and especially, not in fertilizer. Just read some of what they have said, out loud, no less.
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.“
– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s Earth Summit, 1992.
“Action must be powerful and wide-ranging.
After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment.
It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will.
Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it.
We need to dismantle them all.”
–– GretaThunberg™️
And my favorite,
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be
the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University / Royal Society fellow
***
What vicious, hateful monsters these Green Elites are!
And the Rolls Royce small modular reactors (SMRs)
Based on naval nuclear power plants…
Quick and relatively inexpensive (compared to the usual nuclear mega-projects)
….far too small to power a city…no containment dome….no cooling water towers….no 12 years of court battles….failures, of which there have been several just drop to the bottom of the sea instead of requiring separation from urban centres and sufficient evacuation routes in the locality…..that’s why navy reactors are cheaper….
Why tell lies? SMRs have conatinment, are big enough to pwer a city, singlt ie in multiples, may or may not have cooling towers. Your incoherent rant about land based failures dropping to the bottom of the seas suggests you seek urgent medocal attention
What? The comment was about when there is a failure of NAVY power plants, they drop to the bottom of the sea, clearly not about “land based failures”. I don’t think you need “medocal attention”, just ordinary 5th grade reading tutoring.
South Africa had a large team working on developing a pebble bed reactor some 15 years ago and had a successful prototype. There was a change of president and the new guy, who had had no formal schooling, decided to shut it down. The electricity supply is in a shambles but a number of government ministers believe renewables will solve the problem.
A competent man was recently appointed as CEO of the electricity supply commission. He disagrees with these ministers. However, there is a far bigger problem because of rampant crime. He said that the electricity utility is being stolen blind (literally stripped bare) because crime pays so handsomely.
The major problem with “renewables following something like Moore’s Law” is that batteries, solar panels, and windmills are all already at a large percentage of their theoretic maximum performance.
The Greens really think something out of science fiction, like Heinlein’s Shipstones, are about to be introduced. Those expectations are in the Unicorn Farts territory.
Unicorn farts are packed full of fruity berry goodness, I bet.
Unicorn fart would make a better breakfast cereal than something that will keep my car running.
WIND POWER:
The Betz limit is the theoretical maximum efficiency for a wind turbine, conjectured by German physicist Albert Betz in 1919. Betz concluded that this value is 59.3%, meaning that at most only 59.3% of the kinetic energy from wind can be used to spin the turbine and generate electricity.
SOLAR POWER:
The Shockley-Queisser limit is the maximum efficiency of solar cells based on the principle of detailed balance. It places the maximum solar conversion efficiency at 33.7% for a single-junction solar cell with a band gap of 1.4 eV and AM1. 5 spectrum.
Yet another useless series of facts from you.
The general public has no idea what that means particularly when you include no context like a direct comparison to something like gas or coal.
Coal about 37% efficiency same as nuclear. Gas about 67%. hydro up in the 80%+.
Both nuclear and coal plants show a range of efficiencies. Nuclear plants currently being built have about 34-36% thermal efficiency, while one of the new reactor designs boasts 39%. In comparison, new coal-fired plants approach 40% and CCGT plants reach 60%.
The general public does not read the comments here, except for you. If they did, they could figure out what limits of 59.3% and 33.7% meant. They would know what “limit” meant.
RG:
Agree. The limits to wind & solar mean that there will not be any game-changing
improvements to either since the our current wind & solar technologies are already close to those limits.Sadly, this means the Alarmists will just want to build more of these nearly useless [from a grid standpoint] things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency
But don’t try to show them the error of their ways. They will gleefully use Moore’s law to predict that solar cells will soon produce more energy than is in the sunlight it receives.
The anicient idea of cheap or cost free electricity from renewables is not hard to explain. Most of the people involvd in the discussion are anything but engineers and electrical science people. Actors, beauticians, literature profs, landlords, real estate agents, etc. etc. etc.
There are MANY science knowers who were educated from 1960 until about 1992. That is about when the “college” milieu changed to feelings and emotions, not how hot the weather is.That group or actors won’t make much useable progress on anything harder than the freshman introductory science class.
Fortunately for the world, China is still educating engineers and they have customer focus. If you want a wind turbine or solar panel China will make you the lowest cost version at the level of quality assurance you are prepared to pay for. 90% of global solar cell production comes from China.
Humans mostly learn by doing and the Chinese make a lot of stuff and that means a lot of learning.
Chinese will soon usurp German car makers. How much of the 2,440kg in a BMW iX comes from China either as basic commodity or value added? Sometimes absolutely critical high value components.
Chinese produces 60% of LED lights. I think Chinese steel production is now approaching 70% of global production. They consume more than half of the global coal production.
All NetZero targets in the developed countries rely entirely on Chinese manufacture.
Europe’s industry will be cut off at the kneecaps this winter as survival needs, literally, dominates gas consumption.
China is in the middle of a big crash and burn, much like Japan did in the 1980. Building on sand does have a cost. Ask Dubai’s how that working out!
China’s rise is NOT fortunate for the world. China is an aggressive, imperialist and totalitarian state.
So, just like all the other “world powers”.
“Fortunately for the world, China is still educating engineers and they have customer focus. “
And with enough sense to know Nut Zero is the impossible dream
Nothing like Woke Science to make your brain sleep…
You left out the telephone sanitizers and middle marketing-managers.
There was an upgrading of US educational standards as a response to the 1957 launch of Sputnik I. However, by the 1970s, there was rampant grade inflation, in part a response to academics trying to help male college students from being drafted for the Vietnam War. It has been all down hill since then.
“Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?”
But the “Renewable Energy Transition” will succeed – in enriching the multitudes of parasites, both academic and entrepreneurial who will extract billions of bucks from the taxpayer.
MARK MILLS IS BRILLIANT
The Reason Nut Zero is not going according to plan,
is there never was a plan
Nut Zero implementation is causing an increasing number of subjects
that leftists in charge know nothing about
Nut Zero is falling behind schedule because a dog ate the blueprints
Unfortunately Nut Zero falling behind schedule
will be spun as yet another crisis that requires
government mandates to fix it = more government power
Nut Zero is designed to fail — so it can become another fake crisis
Infeasible
Unaffordable
Impossible to complete on time
That’s Nut Zero folks !
I hear that another pedo, I mean John Podesta, is coming to town to replace Gina McCarthy to administer $370 billion in “climate spending.”
Another member of Biden’s Gang of Incompetents.
President potato…
He’s not a vegetable yet
Biden is transitioning.
No, but he’s definitely starchy.
The incompetents in the Biden Administration are legion. They are everywhere.
HANSON: Joe Biden’s Cabinet of Dunces
by: Victor Davis Hanson
5/26/22
https://bit.ly/3vmNwYK
They (the nut zero advocates as you refer to them) always strike me as people like those in the cartoon where two people are standing in front of a board with a complex formula and one says to the other, I think you should be more specific here in step two and that is where the formula has “and then a miracle occurs”.
But be reassured, if their progress is stifled, they will just blame it on ultra MAGA republicans and Donald Trump. (if I knew how to paste the cartoon here I’d paste it.)
Or blame Putin, or blame climate change worse than expected,
or even worse, blame unvaxxed MAGA supporters
Leftists will blame everyone but themselves.
They will also want to be in charge of the Fix the Grid Project that immediately follows Nut Zero
Is this it? Search: “cartoon be more specific step two miracle occurs”
Far right-hand icon on the bottom of the comment block lets
you add a picture. Another option- post the URL of the page it’s
on or of the graphic itself. (My knowledge of commenting is
limited- anyone with better ideas, please post them)
I can no longer get that to work. First it was in Firefox and, now, it won’t work in Safari, either. I keep getting a message about something being too short.
I did that in Firefox, which had a problem earlier this
week with showing all the icons in this block as being
very big. That problem cleared up on its own.
I can’t type anything on here in Firefox all of a sudden in that it won’t allow me to put a space between words. It’s fine in Safari still but not Firefox. I can’t post pictures anymore on WUWT on either of them. I have no idea what’s going on. Does anyone have a guess as to what the problems are?
One version
Excellent info, thank you all. I’ll note the instructions hoping that I can use them in the future, but I have safari and firefox as a backup, but I’ll give it a try anyway.
But I stand by my point, ever since these climate nazis gained power it has been apparent that that is their belief. I think on another post I noted it once before, one of the best, and worst things done was the moon shot. I believe the progressives now believe all we need to do is orient the government toward that goal and it will happen, regardless of physical or scientific constraints. Hence the “then a miracle occurs” part of their magical thinking.
It looks like there are plenty of people waking up. I saw this article on whatfinger.com and believe it is important and relevant.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/03/scientists-flock-to-sign-world-climate-declaration-and-declare-there-is-no-climate-emergency/
“Wall Street Journal trashing claims… “
It’s actually marked as an opinion article, by a Fox News host writing about a report from a conservative think tank.
Was it published in the WSJ or not? I believe it was.
Newspapers publish a variety of opinion articles, marked as such. Here, for example, is a recent Wash Post opinion article by Marc Thiessen, titled
“Biden is disgracing the institution of the prime-time presidential address“
It would be silly to attribute that opinion to the Wash Post.
Except Mark Mills is a true expert on Nut Zero minerals requirements and you’re an expert on nothing
In his mind Stokesy is an expert on everything it’s just when he starts posting he runs into problems.
The Stroker wants to learn a little about every subject, so he eventually knows nothing about everything. Joe Biden and Kamala HARRIS HAVE REACHED THAT GOAL, SO WHY NOT The Stroker?
He is not writing about minerals requirements.
Mills is also very knowledgeable on the costs of various types of energy, although it is impossible to be an expert on the cost of Nut Zero because there is no feasible master plan with assumptions.in enough detail for a cost estimate.
The primary feasibility gap is battery capacity requirements for 99.9% grid reliaibility, and the cost of minerals for those batterie, with mining already a decade behind schedule.
And the NYT is a bastion of journalistic integrity.
Sherry wants to know if you’ve posted her cheque yet Nick-
Rich nations owe reparations to countries facing climate disaster, says Pakistan minister (msn.com)
What climate disaster? A little rain?
No money for you!
Washington post is as hard left as the NY times.
Neither have posted the truth for years
Editors make a conscious decision to re-publish Op-Eds, thus making a judgement that it is worthy of re-publishing. That implies that they are either just being objective and allowing both sides to be read, or that they support the view point.
It is a correct opinion, though.
My dad used to say that truth is like gold–it’s wherever you find it. Ad hominems do not falsify a valid opinion, which will stand on its own merit.
Care to actually refute any of the claims being made?
Or are you just going to argue over irrelevancies again?
His “Quibbling Low Level” light came on- it was time to
feed his addiction!
You mean nick-picking?
nick-picking- (cranked up to) +11
ROFLMAO AND HOWLING @ THE MOON!!!
There’s a reason why he’s known as nit-pick Nick.
Can’t think of any way to discredit the information in the article, so you make a picayune attack on the source, Nick?
I simply ask that the source be correctly identified, and not claim the authority of the WSJ.
Your point is correct on the specifics – it is labelled opinion, and its not a WSJ editorial. But to leave it at that misses the important thing.
Which is that the decision for papers of record, like the WSJ, to feature opinion pieces of a certain bent is a decision carefully made and one that it reflects the view of the editorial team.
There are many opinions on important political and social issues which you will never find anywhere in the WSJ. Rightly so.
The thing to note is that the WSJ isn’t publishing opinion pieces which are skeptical about global warming. But they are publishing pieces, and more than one, which point out that current policies, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act and the attempt to move power generation to wind and solar, are misguided, being either impossible of achievement or not delivering their alleged objectives.
It would be a mistake to underestimate this development. It has a good chance of being the start of the end of global warming hysteria. Not because people stop believing in or claiming to believe in global warming. But because they abandon the idea that its possible or desirable to attempt to convert power generation to wind and solar at the same time as trying to convert heating and transport to electricity.
Like the Cheshire Cat’s smile, the editorial posture of the liberal press will continue for many years to invoke climate crisis and disaster after the policies have faded from view. But once the mania for wind and solar have been dropped its only a matter of time before the climate crisis, emergency, whatever narrative also fades away.
Its very striking that the WSJ is featuring skeptical pieces not on the underlying scientific theories about the climate, but ones which point out that the policies advocated are stupid in themselves, stupid energy policies, regardless of what you think of climate.
By the way – you mention the Washington Post on Biden. A similar point can be made. Its a sign of ice breaking. It may not be significant, its early days. We shall see. But it may be a sign that Biden is in more trouble with the opinion forming clique of the Democratic Party than is usually admitted. It could be the first sign that they are getting ready to ditch him as candidate at the next election. And not replace him with Kamala Harris, either.
“It may not be significant, its early days.”
It is not early days. Marc Thiessen has been a WP columnist for at least ten years, and writing very similar opinions, not at all in line with what might be considered WP views. Before that, he was a speechwriter for George Bush.
You may be right about the WP – I don’t read it except occasional pieces. But I still think you are wrong about the WSJ. It has published two recent pieces about policies and implementation, both along the lines I summarize, and I think that is very significant.
The WSJ is not expressing doubt about global warming. But it has made a decision to feature columnists expressing their evidenced opinions that the current measures being proposed are partly impossible and where possible are totally useless in their purported aim of affecting global emissions and the global climate.
This is a change. i have no doubt its a deliberate decision, and its a marker. I also think that if it continues and spreads more widely it will eventually be the end of the global warming movement. Its going for the weakest point, namely that whatever you think about climate, trying to move to wind and solar and passing the Inflation Reduction Act are simply stupid in themselves because in their own terms they are useless.
People are urging the US to do lots of expensive things to affect the global climate, which actually have no conceivable effect on it. And the WSJ is featuring opinion pieces by columnists which point this out. This is a change and its significant.
You act like opinion is the same thing as lie.
It’s data. it is either true or false. The source of the data doesn’t matter, except to those who seek to distract rather than debate.
Nick is right. Everything in the above post is factually correct. What he wrote does not diminish Freeman’s column. But we should not assume a piece on the editorial page reflects the opinion of the paper.
The editorial page of a paper, as the word “editorial” itself defines, IS the opinion of the editor of the paper.
And I’m not nick-picking.
Sorry, you’re not correct. You’re thinking of papers that only publish one point of view. The WSJ is not the NYT. If you read the editorial page you would know you’re not correct.
Just because Nick is factually correct in this instance doesn’t mean I agree with his other opinions.
Well Jeffery, as someone who started his working life as a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, I was schooled in the convention that ALL content & contributions to the editorials were the exclusive province of the paper’s editor.
What appeared there were reflections of his position on matters of public interest.
No ifs, ands or buts.
When the WSJ published a column by Elizabeth Warren, was that the paper’s official position? No, it wasn’t.
Mr.
I respect your opinion and experience in journalism but as one who was a very long-time subscriber to the WSJ and a daily reader of its Editorial page, I must disagree.
As an example, the WSJ editorial page was, by and large, a supporter of Trump. However, one columnist on the Editorial page was a rabid anti-Trumper, Bret Stephens. He finally got tired of all the negative comments to his columns and left for the NY Times. One of his first columns was an extremely mild critique of AGW and its associated policies.
He got so trashed in the comments that he even opined the commenters at the NYTs were way worse than those at the WSJ. A significant portion of the commenters wanted him fired and said they were going to cancel their subscriptions if he wasn’t.
He is still there but it seems he quickly learned what hateful commenters really are. No one commenting at the WSJ ever called for him to be fired or threatened to cancel their subscription if he wasn’t over his dislike of Trump.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, but the WSJ editorial page always had different points of view and was never monolithic in its opinion.
On this issue, Nick, you might as well ignore it.
I’ve explained how newspapers do things. No one pays attention.
The same thing happens regarding college folks — a Professor (CAP ‘P’) and a (one class) Adjunct instructor appear to be equated. A couple of years ago, a dismissed adjunct was elevated to “a University Professor” did something!
One might think that folks claiming to be skeptics would be more careful.
Trending toward contrarian curmudgeon, am I.
“Think about the actual Apollo Project. NASA didn’t dive straight into building the moon launcher, they built prototype after prototype, like Project Mercury. Each prototype was a stepping stone, which provided learnings which made the next step possible.”
*************
Exactly. Demonstration and pilot projects first (along with feasibility studies), before diving in full throttle into something as massive as an electricity grid transition.
The fact that this was never done with the grid only serves to show why scientifically and technically illiterate politicians can be a huge burden on a society. And the most tragic part of it is that most people in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia don’t even realize or understand this.
Carl Sagan warned us about this back in 1996 during a T.V. interview. The video has been on Tom Nelson’s Twitter page for a while now.
Who needs to test prototypes or build and operate pilot and demonstration plants?
Warp speed, that’s the way.
All Aboard!
Yes. The numbers on renewables don’t have to add up because they are not offered as replacements, but as displacements.
Absolutely, Scissor, at least, people using Other People’s Money don’t need no stinking prototypes, etc.
Even when they did get around to building the Saturn V they first built test rocket motors and tested the heck out of them before ever putting them into a rocket.
They also launched several unmanned rockets before ever putting a human in the command module.
I noticed the Artemis 1 moon rocket launch has been delayed again until later this month. Hope they finally get it launched this month.
NASA could again try to launch Artemis moon mission as soon as late September : NPR
Expect more problems
“Nelson left off the last part of the sentence: “…. cheating the process over the space of months, on purpose, and not having the entire vehicle blow up in their face by making the one final cheat that might have caused exactly that.”
You see, before you take something with this many parts and sequences that all have to work in order to have success and light the candle you first check everything you possibly can in that sequence without lighting it. This means going through the entire process, including loading fuel, chilling the engines, checking the bleeds and making darn sure the plumbing and such, along with the sensors and electronics all work.
Except: NASA cheated; zero of the four preparatory tests which were intended to go all the way to the “push the button” point but not pushing it succeeded. They all failed at some stage and rather than keep coming back at it when they ran into that they “masked” the failure from the computer that would have otherwise scrubbed the test.”
More at
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=246790
That seems a quite reasonable approach if the systems are independent of each other. It allows testing as much of the system as possible in one round of testing.
I imagine that NASA has been under some pressure to provide a ‘success’ that Biden can wave around, before the mid-term elections.
If they are not careful, it will literally explode in their faces and demonstrate that the ‘woke’ priorities are the wrong ones for a complex technological program.
According to an article I read the other day, the Artemis heavy-lift vehicle can put three more tons of cargo in orbit than the Saturn V heavy-lift vehicle, and about 20 more tons than the Space Shuttle launch system.
It also said the uprated solid rocket boosters attached to Artemis provide 75 percent of the lift.
They could have upgraded the tried-and-true, Shuttle Launch System to provide the same lift capacity for a lot less money than developing Artemis.
Or they could just hire private firms to do the launching for them.
But that’s not how NASA bureaucrats, or bureaucrats in general, operate. The object for them is to increase the bureaucracy and the money coming into the bureaucracy. New programs are the ticket.
It took three or four tries before they were finally able to launch the first Shuttle mission.
That was’t my point.
….and the new delay is due to a hydrogen leak from the fuel tank. Green hydrogen advocates please take note.
NASA delays Artemis I moon rocket launch several weeks after hydrogen leak | Fox News
Yep, here from NASA blogs.
NASA Artemis second launch attempt scrubbed
Artemis
Liquid Hydrogen Leak Detected Once Again
After the third troubleshooting attempt, the liquid hydrogen leak has occurred again. Teams are discussing next steps.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/09/03/liquid-hydrogen-leak-detected-once-again/
The hydrogen fuel leak happened more than once? And greenie advocates want hydrogen to be a replacement for fossil fuels? Really?
Right, and disregard that hydrogen leaks are VERY dangerous, given hydrogen’s wide combustibility range of air/fuel mixtures and low Flashpoint.
And, a virtually invisible flame except to IR cameras.
Yep. That is the other scary part that no one mentions.
There is a need for a rigorous, transparent, well-documented, successful demonstration of a renewable plus storage grid, though it will probably never happen because it can’t happen.
https://www.therightinsight.org/Renewable-Demonstration
https://www.therightinsight.org/Transparency
https://www.therightinsight.org/Demonstration-Reporting
There is no need to test anything when the project is intended to fail.
The torpodo to end all torpedoes.
Finally someone has had a serious go at figuring out what is needed to get rid of fossil fuels.
When his numbers were much much larger than the ones used by policy advisors and he asked them where they got the numbers from, it will surprise no-one that they were rectally derived.
Net Zero is as likely to succeed as using a 3 foot ladder to get onto a bridge 100 feet above the ground.
Everyone here, with known exceptions, agrees with the WSJ. However, much damage comes from attempting one that is not possible. Case in point: The Darien Colony.
About 20% of Scotland’s available cash sunk into that one. It impoverished the nation and was in part the reason the country had to do a deal with England to bail them out.
Last summer I visted this dam in the Austrian Alps. It is quite an impressive sight, at almost 2.000m altitude. The dam itself is about 200m tall and 600m wide. It also can pump up water if there is eccess electricity.
If full, this thing stores almost 600 GWh of electricity. One may want to compare this to batteries. It is not quite clear how much batteries cost, as “power walls” or large “battery farms” cost almost 1.000 Dollar per KWh. Batteries for electric cars are much cheaper, only about 200 Dollar. I suspect car batteries get subsidized, but who knows.
Anyway, let us assume 500 Dollar per KWh as compromise. Then the capacity of this dam alone would cost 300 billion Dollar. And yet, those batteries would like not last for too many years.
AFAIK, the Kölnbrein Dam is almost exclusively used for electric
generation & doesn’t have the obligations & restrictions of
multi-purpose dams- water supply, irrigation, flood control &
transportion- like so many other dams. So it has much more
flexibility & is perfect for pumped hydro storage, as Austria
gets much of its power from hydro. Its major advantage over
solar & wind (SAW) is that it’s already reliable & dispatchable
& doesn’t need all the extra generation just to keep its
intraday output even & to recharge/refill storage immediately
after being depleted by a generation drought.
David Wojick put the cost of grid-scale battery backup @ $250/kWh,
half of what you used, but still very expensive. If batteries last only
10 yrs, that’s an additional 10%/yr for replacement costs. Once
people realize the huge total cost of renewables, I’m sure every
nation in the world would like to have several of these dams
providing them with reliable & cheaper electricity & storage.
BTW, I have “travel” envy as the dam site & the trip up there must
have been quite scenic!
David Wojick-
https://www.cfact.org/2022/01/19/unreliability-makes-solar-power-impossibly-expensive/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/12/the-cost-of-net-zero-electrification-of-the-u-s-a-blog-post/
The reality is that Batteries on the grid are not storage for anything more than a few seconds.
They are there to replace the spinning mass of the generators that are missing in renewable energy, they have no longer storage possibility whatsoever.
In short, we are being lied to again.
But environmentalists oppose building more reservoirs, do they not?
The fact is, assuming fossil fuels are a danger to the future of human civilization, environmentalists oppose anything that would actually work to reduce the imagined threat.
Beautiful dam. Here in OZ we need more dams, but you know, in the 21st Century building a dam is in the too hard basket. Remember back when governments and people actually made sensible, evidence based decisions–then actually went ahead and did something…
Ya reckon the unreliables could power a new dam construction like that? Every gram of material used to make that dam, all transport, roads, tech everything and its associated infrastructure manufactured using 100% “green” energy….ha!
I visited this dam as a child, and was struck by the memorial to the 60 or more workers who lost their lives during its construction.
The media can carry a false narrative only for so long and then reality takes over. Lies and more lies only works until the truth catches up.
Problem is, a lot of damage can happen before it does.
So, the question is, why did WSJ wait until after Wall Street put Biden and his Green New Deal into office & into effect before deciding to announce it can’t work?
People who read the WSJ editorial pages know differently. In others, you don’t kn9w what you’re talking about.
“These otherwise smart people have drawn a nice curve on their graphs, where they fitted the 83% cost reduction over the last decade. Some of them expect that exponential looking curve to continue indefinitely, giving us the “ever-falling price tag of renewables”.”
I don’t give a damn how smart these people are otherwise. They are liars and cheats and it is past time to hold these monsters to account.
Most of the cost reductions have come from growing subsidies and getting better at forcing costs onto other producers.
Yet another thing that isn’t as often mentioned that will prevent net zero is that the uptake of “green” tech like EVs and heatpumps is never going to get to the point that the powers that be are hoping.
Here’s what I don’t get. I’m not in marketing but I do know that often times before a company launches a product (whether it be food or various consumer goods and gadgets) they often test the product in a limited way to see how it is received. That way they don’t waste a huge amount of time and money creating and manufacturing things that few people will want to buy.
Probably most people remember Coke’s “New Coke” which was an epic flop and the company quickly reverted back to selling “Classic Coke”.
Has anyone (meaning manufacturers and polling/research firms hired by them) ever actually took a good look at how many buyers there might be for electric vehicles? How many people would willingly convert their gas or oil heat to a heat pump? Or would buy a new home with the latter instead of one of the former?
Yes, there are some people interested in EVs, including the cult phenomenon of Tesla (IMO this is more about tech heads and geeks than it is about EVs – for some reason Tesla has a “cool” factor but there is no reason that would extend to other EVs). But not everyone is. And no, not even the arm-twisting of certain state govt’s will convince everyone who is in the market for a car to purchase an EV.
I can easily see many automakers confronting dealer lots with EVs gathering dust, especially in CA and VA. In areas where they aren’t mandatory, dealers will order the vehicles that are selling, regardless of what type. But I think dealerships in states with ICE bans will be stuck with unsold inventory.
As the old saying goes “You can lead the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink”.
Re-running the “Edsel Experiment”?
The Edsel was a great car, I owned two back in the day (used ones). But they were just too darn expensive for the average buyer back then.
“As the old saying goes “You can lead the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink”.”
Not with a horse but you can with people if you’re the Government and you order people to drink the water, er, buy EVs, or else they can walk. I do fear this is where we are heading, or where powerful people are trying to get us to head.
We are still in this experiment with the COVID vaccines. Get the jab or else–you lose your job, or your freedom to travel, or your right to visit your mom in a nursing home or attend a wedding, your right to play in a tournament–the list seems to go on. Many people have done things they didn’t think were in their own best interest so they could do things they needed to do.
They will try alright. And there will be those who will “convert’ to this new religion. But, many others will go the Cuba route and keep their ICE vehicles running for ages. I suppose they could ban the sale of gas and diesel (or natural gas/bottle gas for those who might convert a car to run on that), but if it comes to that, industrialized countries will have collapsed completely already. Then we’d all be living in failed states like certain African and Asian countries with tin pot dictators and warlords running around….
You can lead a progressive to water, but you can’t make her think.
So true, Clyde!
Has anyone (meaning manufacturers and polling/research firms hired by them) ever actually took a good look at how many buyers there might be for electric vehicles?
Why bother when their purchase can be commanded by ukase?
Does Bill Spindle know that Georgetown, TX commitment to 100% renewable energy has ended up costing its citizens millions?
These otherwise smart people have drawn a nice curve on their graphs, where they fitted the 83% cost reduction over the last decade. Some of them expect that exponential looking curve to continue indefinitely, giving us the “ever-falling price tag of renewables”.
1. I would like to know if they are including the subsidies, tax credits and rebates for installation, etc. in this “ever-falling price of renewables. This assumes that Gov. assistance is continuing.
“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Warren Buffet
2. Are they factoring in the rising prices of oil and natural gas which are often used for 24/7 fossil fuel backup into their calculations of the costs, not to mention nuclear and coal? As far as that goes, are they adding the cost of those running 24/7 to any of the costs of renewables?
If they aren’t, they are being dishonest.
3. Are they factoring in the fact that windmills and solar arrays compared to coal, gas and nuclear plants have a very, very short lifetime and are subject to being destroyed by weather events?
4 With the rare earth markets increasingly being controlled by the likes of China and, now Afghanistan, do they really think the nations currently supplying them won’t raise their prices at will as they monopolize the market?
5. Have they factored in the costs of adding miles of transmission lines to the grid to get renewables to the population centers, or do they ignore those costs?
I’m sure there are other costs I haven’t thought about, or am unaware of.
This word: “renewables”. It is used repeatedly in the article.
Please, anyone, define in exactly what way wind, solar PV, and battery systems are renewable. I’ll wait.
“Renewables” because the leftists named them
An accurate name would be unreliables.
And other name changes would be:
Climate models would be called climate computer games
Net Zero would be called Nut Zero
IPCC would be International Propaganda on Climate Change
They renew themselves every time the sun shines and the wind blows silly. As for reliable dispatchable power for adults batteries will never cut it-
Brian Burke, Kerry Stokes, Kevin Reynolds among major players in race to unlock WA’s green power future (msn.com)
“The cost of pumped hydro – even mediocre pumped hydro sites – is a quarter or even a tenth of the cost of a battery for overnight storage,” Professor Blakers said.
“End of story – you just need it. And to do that with batteries is just laughable.”
And naturally we’ve already plucked the low hanging fruit with dams and hydroelectric power leaving very slim pickings as well as still being weather dependant as Europe is finding at present. Quick move the hydro generators to Pakistan!
“The Romans built amazing aqueducts, why can’t we? Even bigger! Across oceans!”
You have to periodically renew the windmills and solar panels.
We’ve got to get these green loonies away from the levers of power.
Anyone with a lick of sense knows you don’t transition to something that doesn’t exist.
All this to take care of a problem that, for all available data, doesn’t exist.
The coming masses of broke, cold, and hungry masses that will suffer from this stupidity will wake up to the fact that the leaders have been lying to them. Let’s hope the “transition” doesn’t end up destroying our world for generations to come.
There will be no “transition” with the current technology set, it is not fit for purpose and just adds cost and lowers availability. The whole idea is a joke , as has been amply demonstrated multiple times now but still the green numpties persist. Its like socialism, those other people just didnt do it right.
My compose window appears to be full of strange huge symbols.Has the site been hacked?
I.had.them.Thurs.and.Fri.ok.Sat.back.again.today.(using.Firefox)Hope.it.will.be.sorted.soon
Alien commands — do not click on them
Twenty years ago we published:
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil
fuels.”
I would not change a word.
Nice to see the WSJ catching up.
Even nicer if the wokerati followed, but unlikely – the Climate and Green Energy scam was never about the climate – it was always about destroying the economy to bring about the Brave New World of Global Fascism – “You will own nothing and you’ll be happy”. -WEF
References:
For the record, we published in 2002:
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
I published on September 1, 2002:
3. “If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I updated my global cooling prediction in 2013:
3a. “I suggest global cooling starts by 2020 or sooner. Bundle up.”
For the record, I published in 2013:
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.
See CorrectPredictions.ca for references.
Now you know why Cassandra was so sad;-(
Beginning now, if you have not done so already, pls point out: The cost of wind turbines & solar panels installed between about 2015 to 2025 will heavily influence electricity prices through 2035. Those costs are driving up the real price (i.e., inflation adjusted price) of electricity.
Also driving up electricity’s price is investment in additional ancillary equipment NEEDED to support wind turbines & solar panels. Transmission line capacity, for example, needs to be a large multiple (4x, perhaps) that required by a grid built around thermal generators.
A “sustainable” based grid also NEEDS to invest in additional equipment to compensate for the inherently unreliable nature of wind & solar. That equipment ranges from industrial-scale storage batteries to back-up thermal generators. Batteries are already very costly, and a rush to increase the quantity installed threatens to drive up prices for their component materials. Higher prices for components will dilute the benefits of economies of scale and tech progress. MORE importantly, for the next 10 years or so, the investment needed to make a “sustainable” based grid RELIABLE is HUGE, and that investment MUST be paid for by Jane & James Mainstreet.
D M – good comments, thank you. I’ve written about the failures of grid-connected green energy since 2002 and the problems and costs are just getting worse and worse. The reason our 2002 statement is still true, despite trillions of dollars of squandered subsidies and decades of costly green energy failures is that these problems are fundamental and extremely difficult, if not completely impossible, to solve.
The fatal flaws are intermittency and diffusivity – the wind and Sun don’t deliver 24/7 and green energy schemes take up far too much land – then there is the excessive tie-in costs, the strain on rare earth resources, the impossibility of providing sufficient battery storage, etc. etc.
The greens start all their energy arguments with “If frogs could fly…”
to which the knowledgeable reply “…they wouldn’t have to bump around on their asses.” 🙂
Again, this was a column published in the WSJ. Don’t misrepresent it. The WSJ has published similar pieces for years. It regularly features a column by Bjorn Lomborg.
Hi Jeffery,
I have written Bjorn Lomborg on a few occasions.
Lomborg is an economist. I think he is not comfortable with the science and probably has no confidence in opining on it. So he takes the easy route – he goes along with the warmist BS, and then points out that even if they are technically correct (and they are NOT), their solutions are grossly uneconomic. Slam dunk!
The fact that they slander him as a denier etc just shows how corrupt the radical greens are – for them, it was never really about the climate.
I like Lomborg’s economic analysis, but he is still dead wrong on the science. I have quoted his good points and as I said above, he is better than the rest. I do find it difficult to tolerate studied indifference to scientific fact – there is NO real global warming crisis.
Years ago, I tried to get Lomborg to meet Henrik Svensmark – don’t think it happened. They are both in Denmark. a country the size of a football field – I mean, how hard is that? 🙂
“Given the numbers so obviously indicate renewable energy is a non-starter, why do green advocates keep claiming that the numbers add up?
The answer appears to be blind faith and optimism.”
No. The answer is a quest for (more) power.
Absolutely.
Auto
and more money
If the price of renewables is falling so drastically, why are energy prices so high on grids with heavy renewable investment?
The answer should be obvious. The price of renewables ISN’T dropping. They’re just lying.
Earlier.this.year.Wind.Europe.reported.that.all.five.major.producers.of.wind.turbines.in.Europe.were.operating.at.a.loss
The title of this post is misleading. The article in question is a column published in the Wall Street Journal. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the WSJ or its management or staff. A column is the opinion of the writer, in this case, James Freeman.
This column reflects no great awakening by the WSJ. They regularly criticize Net Zero and other green initiatives and have done so for years. Unlike many other papers, the WSJ frequently prints columns and editorials which directly contradict the opinions of the editorial board.
Outside the editorial page, the WSJ staff is as woke as they come. On more than one occasion the staff unsuccessfully petitioned the editorial board to not publish works they disagree with.
Where would one find non-woke staff these days? Certainly not among college graduates, I’ll tell you that much for free.
You misspelled “Ruinable”.
Why even discuss Renewable Energy Cost Trends??
The HUGE COSTS of Energy Storage + the Costs of tripling Grid Tramsmission Capacity (good luck getting permits) aren’t even on the table currently?
Energy Storage will require nearly doubling the Generating Capacity (can’t store what you can’t generate). And, so far every large scale Storage System will carry costs that far outweigh the Generating System costs.
Renewables already cost more now…and will cost way more than double later. And Aviation and Heavy Road Transport can’t run on batteries.
Then add LOTS OF EXTERNALITIES… like household Heating System Conversion Costs of $15k to $20k for Mandated Natural Gas-to-Heat Pump conversions (~ $3Trillion)…after which monthly heating bills will be triple to quadruple current monthly Natural Gas bills. Not going to happen.
If renewable electricity is so cheap compared to fossil fuel, why is the price of electricity sky rocketing? And why aren’t all our farmlands converted to renewable generation?
As was posted on this site, when looking at the cost of unreliables, you need to look at the whole picture. https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/