Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Unreliable renewables, woke ESG, and claims climate concern is a left wing issue are all “lies” according to USA Today.
These lies about climate change just wouldn’t die in 2022
Elizabeth Weise
USA TODAY
Published 5:00 a.m. E.T. Dec. 29, 2022Key Points:
- Climate change hasn’t always been so polarizing and even today relatively few Americans deny global warming is real.
- Experts say easily disprovable narratives about the climate keeps circulating.
- These lies and distortions target renewable energy, economics and political polarization.
There was a time – a recent time – when concern about the environment was relatively bipartisan, not a cultural flashpoint.
…
Wrong: Summer heat waves show renewables can’t work
Power grids in Texas, California and the Pacific Northwest all faced extreme heat events this summer. Each power system was pushed to the brink by the draw on electricity for air conditioning. And yet none broke.
Nonetheless, a false narrative circulated saying that solar and wind energy had made those power grids – and especially California’s – fragile and unable to cope with high demands.
…
In Texas in July, a heat wave caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to take emergency measures, including urging residents to restrict their use and paying power operators as much as $5,000 per megawatt hour to keep generators running. ERCOT said two factors affected its ability to meet soaring demand: low wind power generation and outages at coal- and natural gas-fed power plants.
Blaming renewable energy as the cause of power crunches is unfair, said David Doniger, senior strategic director in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program.
…
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/29/global-warming-myths-disinformation-and-lies-circulated-2022/10802959002/
The article goes on to discuss whether ESG is “woke capitalism”, whether climate concern is only for the far left, and whether there is any hope for fixing climate change. USA Today lists “… the American Conservation Coalition, Conservatives for Clean Energy, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions and Congress’ Conservative Climate Caucus.” as evidence that Conservatives want renewable energy.
But let’s focus on whether it is “fair” to blame renewables for failing during extreme weather conditions.
The answer is obviously YES.
Is it possible for fossil fuel and nuclear plants to fail in hot or cold weather? Absolutely. But nuclear and fossil fuel plants can be hardened against weather extremes.
The same can’t be said for renewables. When the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine, renewable energy output drops to near zero.
The full article mentioned California surviving a near blackout because of their batteries, but batteries run out.
Consider the Texas Ice Storm of 2021. If no fossil fuel generators were available, battery backup would have been required for the better part of a week. And that would not have been a week of ordinary power demand, everyone had their heaters turned up to ward off the bitter cold.
How much would it cost in batteries to keep the entire state of Texas powered up and warm during the next ice storm? How much would have to be spent every year maintaining those batteries?
Calling this self evident truth a “lie” won’t change the facts, or fix the problems caused by left wing pursuit of unaffordable, unworkable energy solutions.
Calling this self evident truth a “lie” won’t change the facts….
__________________________________________________
“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?
Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln would be shot today. Some things don’t change.
It’s a sad fact that modern historians heavily favor presidents who either vastly expanded the power and scope of the Federal government and /or led the nation into war. Lincoln was extremely ‘successful’ on both counts.
Only left wing historians, which is most of them.
Yes, they are mainly Leftists and they really do admire Lincoln. But one must admit they are effective, even with this crowd, based on the downvoting of my previous comment.
I’ll probably be downvoted too, but I agree with you, Frank.
Lincoln oversaw the largest consolidation of Federal power in the history of the country.
Correct. American ‘Progressivism’, aka fascism, didn’t just pop out of thin air in the 20th century. The so-called ‘American Plan’ of high tariffs and ‘internal improvements’ was a mainstay of the Whigs, who were absorbed by Lincoln’s Republicans. The agrarian / exporting south wanted out, the rest is history.
So when BLM or some other leftist mob demands the Lincoln Memorial be destroyed, his statues removed and his legacy revised to include him among the growing rank of ‘white’ villains, will you be on their side?
“demands the Lincoln Memorial be destroyed, his statues removed and his legacy revised”
I can’t speak for Frank, but I was against ANY statues being removed from the start. My position would be no different with regard to Lincoln.
No, but I would infer from your hypothetical that BLM and other Leftist groups are not only evil, but also stupid.
As for your most beloved memorial, here’s a short article by the National Park Service explaining the significance thereof:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-memorial.htm
Your inference is mostly correct. BLM and many leftist organizations are stupid and sometimes evil. So are many organizations on the right. Ideology tends to make people stupid and even evil. As for your link, I put no stock in how the National Parks Service chooses to interpret symbols. I let Lincoln’s words speak for themselves.
I prefer to let Lincoln’s actions speak for themselves, e.g., suspending habeas corpus, shutting down opposition newspapers, dispatching Federal troops to polling places, killing well north of 600k Americans, implementing the first example of total war in Western history, etc. All done so that he could implement a high tariff to fund his crony supporters.
Also, I’m curious as to how you define the term ‘right’, as well as what you mean by ‘organizations on the right’.
When a source drops to 3% of rated power, or less, it is not of much use. Contradicting the green narrative is hardly a lie.
This is a case of faith based power supplies..
A nice example of why the MSM was branded fake news by Trump.
Because it almost always is.
They promote the AGW dogma with religious fervor.
Which is exactly what the AGW ideology is – a cult religion.
“Consider the Texas Ice Storm of 2021“
The Texas energy infrastructure was unable to supply natural gas to power plants in extremely cold weather with enough fuel to keep the power on.
THAT was the problem in February 2021.
Bird and bat shredders also had very low output for a few hours before the blackout. THAT was NOT the problem. That happens frequently with shredders. Very low wind power output happens for at least an hour in almost every week of the year. But no blackouts from that cause alone.
The 2021 blackout in Texas was caused by the same problem that caused the 2011 blackout in Texas — unusually cold weather.
It is not a coincidence that Texas had no blackouts between February 2011 and February 2021 — the weather was not cold enough in those ten years.
The Texas cold weather problem was first discovered in the 1980s and has not been solved. Buying more bird shredders, especially without optional blade deicers, did not solve the extreme cold weather problem in Texas.
The Texas Ice Storm had long periods during which renewable output dropped through the floor.
Irrelevant
Very low output happens frequently with bird shredders
It is part of their expected performance
That’s why so much natural gas backup is required
That natural gas backup malfunctions in Texas ONLY during extremely cold weather.
You are blaming bird shredders for operating as designed.
You are failing to blame the Texas natural gas infrastructure for its OBVIOUS failures in very cold weather. Both in February 2011 and February 2021. Thise two blackouts are not extremely cold weather coincidences.
2011 had few bird shredders.
2021 had many bird shredders.
That made no difference.
Very cold weather was the common cause of both February blackouts
Natural gas power was the primary cause BOTH times.
You are antibird and bat shredder biased
I am too.
But I never blame them for doing what bird shredders do (they rely on unpredictable, highly variable weather). They should never be attached to an electric grid where reliability is the top priority. Windmills should be in museums.
If you lay up your steam turbine cargo ship and rely on sailing clippers then when the wind doesn’t blow your steam turbine vessel may not work either, unless you’ve taken precautions to ensure it will.
It’s obviously not cost effective to harden the Texas grid against cold windless periods which only happen once or twice a decade.
The UK, particularly rhe South has a similar issue with snow, heavy falls once every dozen years, more often snow free. No Nedd to waste council tax on snow clearing equipment for a week at most of snow every 600 weeks
Wind didn’t fail because we should have known it was unreliable?
I also notice how cavalierly you declare that they should have bought de-icing equipment for their windmills.
Deicing equipment adds to construction cost, maintenance cost, and it consumes electricity at a time when the wind mills aren’t producing any.
(You either have to run the deicers all the time while icing is possible, or you stop the blades while you deice them because you can’t run deicers while the blades are turning because of the risk of throwing large chunks of ice.)
Correct. It seems some people are determined to try to re-hash all the debates that were had nearly two years ago, when it was shown that de-icing would have not been an economic proposition for Texas, and in any case would not have solved their problem of the wind dying away.
I always find it fascinating how people can convince themselves that the source of power that increased output by a factor of 3 was at fault for not being able to increase by a factor of 4.
While the source of power that lost 90% of output bears no blame.
Because we are objective, and you are biased.
Bird and bat shredders need 100% natural gas backup
They had that backup in Texas
The backup malfunctioned in extremely cold weather
The problem was the natural gas infrastructure not just the gas power plants. They were starved for fuel.
Natural ha gas plants function in other states where the weather is much colder than Texas
If you can’t understand those facts, I can’t help you.
Other States were experiencing rolling blackouts during the February 2021 arctic cold snap, and they were not all having natural gas problems.
Windmills across the western U.S. and into Canada were becalmed and providing very little electricity under the arctic high pressure system that covered the whole area.
Texas wasn’t the only one having problems.
If they aren’t available when needed, they have failed. By definition.
You aren’t being objective, you are inventing excuses.
You are only focusing on the “facts” that support your argument, and ignoring everything else. If you insist on being deceptive, I can’t help you.
“…Bird and bat shredders need 100% natural gas backup…”
You should have stopped right there. That’s all we need to know. “100% backup” — that’s why wind power failed and why “reliance” on wind power is too blame.
Nope. That was not the problem. That was the result of having inadequate dispatchable capacity which meant that ERCOT ran out of reserve capacity as wind production eased due to falling wind speeds. All it took was one trip in those conditions to result in a cascading trip and heavy loss of generation. That in turn led to automated load shedding when the frequency fell to 59.3Hz. The load shedding included critical gas compressors supplying a number of CCGT plants ex storage. That made it impossible to recover lost CCGT capacity. It was not the cold that caused the cascading losses or the inability to recover afterwards. A number of plants were being run beyond nameplate capacity, leaving them vulnerable to upset. A nuclear plant suffered an instrumentation problem due to freezing of a guage pipe that led to automated shutdown of half the capacity which could be said to be cold weather related. But the key was the capacity shortage and lack of reserve.
The wind actually fell further after the big trip which was at 1:52 a.m., and demand was projected to go much higher in daylight with almost no wind. The capacity problem would have been manifest then if it hadn’t been triggered overnight. At a minimum ERCOT should have already been operating rolling blackouts to maintain reserve. Trouble was they weren’t able to guarantee power to gas compressors if they went ahead wth their standard blocks, as was proved by the automated load shed.
ERCOT doesnt have a single generator or wind turbine of its own. Nor do they pull a switch of their own to run blackouts
They are relying on private companies to meet the ‘demand price signals’ and they couldnt and same goes for local lines networks, they are in control of the off switch
Wind cant meet demand signals at all – except in times of strong wind when they may brake a fair % of the turbines and they can then be released when demand picks ups- but thats not ‘reliable’.
lets not even get into the chronic frequency instability when relying on wind, compared to the big rotating thermal units which are synchronised at 60hz.
Your description of the base load thermal generators falling short when they are being made to act as peak demand and on call ( reserve) generators doesnt really stack up. Only the smaller ‘peaker’ aero gas turbine based generators can do that
The pricing mechanism needs a reliability factor as well as the price point.
‘The pricing mechanism needs a reliability factor as well as the price point.’
And/or penalties for non-performing suppliers to keep customers whole. IOW, a level playing field for energy dispatch.
The cure is to stop attacking bird and bat shredders to electric grids.
Texas has far too many.
They are unreliable weather dependent sources of energy., when reliability is the primary goal. Who does that? Texas does that. And no electric grid needs that.
The financial incentives to build solar and wind farms is counterproductive. Utility regulation gone wrong.
Everybody has too many windmills. One is too many.
Taxpayer subsidies for these monstrosities should stop.
WRONG
Texas natural gas supplies could not get to Texas natural gas power plants when a lot of gas needed,
ONLY during extremely cold weather.
And ONLY in Texas.
Not in other states or other nations with lots of iurd and bat shredders.
Funny the natural gas generation drop off you claim ( probably some minor restrictions) doesnt really show in the Ercot graphs of generation by source above
The only drop off occurs in phase with the wind drop off.
As far as Im aware major natural gas pipelines are powered by natural gas fuelled compressors ( they are just like generators but have a compressor unit attached instead
https://sites.google.com/site/metropolitanenvironmental/natural-gas-pipeline-compressor-stations-and-major-natural-gas-transportation-corridors
And doesnt natural gas supplies mostly come from storage facilities ( salt ‘caverns’) in winter rather than from the wells ?
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2015/10/19/124674/on-edge-of-houston-underground-caverns-store-huge-quantities-of-natural-gas-liquids/
Not correct. The use of electricity to drive gas compressors has been mandatory in Texas for quite some years. Also the decline in wind generation was gradual. It had peaked around 9GW in the evening, and eroded to 5GW at the time of the big trip, and eroded further from there to almost nothing the following evening. By the time of the trip the remaining wind generation was mostly in the South around Corpus Christi.
Gas from storage is normally used to supplement demand peaks, but normally there is plenty of production to provide the base load. During the big freeze week some 156bcf was withdrawn, which is substantially more than usual. Despite the heavy draw, more could have been used if compressors could deliver it.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t that an Obama era regulation?
Here’s a more detailed view of hourly generation. There was no cliff in wind output. There was in CCGT, and a coal plant also figured in the big trip.
WRONG. Gas was getting through to the plants right up to the point of the cascading trip. All available plant was dispatched. There was a big drawdown of dry gas from cavern storage, replacing the lost onshore production. Texas has long had the resilience of storage to cope with hurricane interruptions. LNG liquefaction was halted with plants reselling their availabilities to the lucrative inland market.
It was only after the cascading trip knocked out key compressors that gas supply became a problem.
In other words, had the bird shredders not failed first, there never would have been a natural gas problem.
Your belief that Texas is the only state that was having problems is not one of those facts that you keep telling us about.
Your attempt to rewrite what happened doesn’t stack up. ERCOT knew they had a capacity shortage looming days before, which was why they applied to the EPA (and got) for derogations on maximum pollution levels so plants could be turned up to 11. You can see clearly that all dispatchable plant had been ramped up over the evening. If you look at the detail you will find the last reserve added was a small amount of hydro. As fast ramping generation there was sense in keeping it until desperation, but 150MW was never going to hold the system.
The ERCOT Austin control room issues instructions based on its monitoring of grid demand and supply. In fact they claim to have issued disconnect instructions during the big trip, but it was too little too late. Sure, they take account of the merit order of bids subject to congestion constraints. But dispatch is entirely up to them. They goofed.
Grid stability was not affected by having a large amount of wind generation. There was relatively little wind, with gas, nuclear and coal providing lots of inertia until the point where capacity limitation meant there was nothing to spare and no reserve to take over. That led to the cascading trip.
BS unsupported by data
ERCOT frequently has hours with very little total wind energy
Probably happens temporarily in almost every week of the year.
Thats true of wind energy almost everywhere
So why is it that Texas natural gas backup DOES NOT FAIL EXCEPT when the weather is extremely cold?
And natural gas backup in other states, and in other nations, DOES NOT FAIL during extremely cold weather?
If yo can’t answer those two questions, the wheels fall off your argument. … I’ll send a tow truck.
Didn’t a lot of the compressors on the natural gas lines have to be powered by electric motors, rather than the natural gas itself. If they weren’t on a priority distribution grid system, then you can get a cascading failure of the gas system if one compressor goes down.
The other problem with natural gas in cold weather is methyl hydrates forming line plugs. How dry was the gas, or does Texas allow wetter gas because it is supposed to be warmer?.
Gas from storage was processed dry gas. Gas from some onshore production was indeed shut in due to hydrates, but the storage is there to handle outagescand hurricanes. It was successfully meetingbdemand right up to the big trip.
Here is the evidence that the cascading trip led to frequency falling to 59.3Hz, where automated load shedding takes place.
http://web.archive.org/web/20210215075245/http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html
Such a catastrophic frequency drop only comes about because of a lack of spinning reserve. Inertia is only a first line defence of a grid imbalance. Next in line is droop control. You can see that was straining to provide cover from the fact that frequency was a cumulated 24 seconds behind true time.
Why is it we need natural gas backup, again? That’s the failure right there, an expensive “investment” in wind power that requires 100% backup from conventional power sources.
You acknowledge wind power is known to be unreliable then you shift blame away from wind power by blaming the backup system. You discount the failure of the primary system as irrelevant. The backup system was inadequate but it’s the real source of the problem, according to you.
Yes, everyone should have known better. The ERCOT fails at an engineering and economics equally. We don’t require 100% backup when conventional power is the primary source.
But the bird choppers were used to destroy the economic returns of the coal and gas powered plants, which were therefore decommissioned, leaving Texas with insufficient reserves for the inevitable conditions which caused the blackout. The same thing happened in South Australia in 2016 – the coal fired power stations were dynamited with glee by the green wreckers.
Leftists ruin everything they touch
It is sad that they are being allowed to ruin electric grids
Texas has a growing population
And reliable power reserves of about half the national average despite so many windmills (Texas should have much more spare power capacity than the national average).
But more Texas gas power plants are irrelevant if there was not enough natural gas \for the existing number of Texas power plants in February 2021 (ONLY happened in extremely cold weather)
More coal and/or nuclear power plants in Texas would have prevented the problem. But there’s no financial incentive to build those in Texas. The incentives favor bird shredders. Almost every decision ERCOT makes is wrong. That’s the core problem.
How is it the backup system is the problem? Have you ever noticed we don’t need backups when the primary power sources are fossil fuels?
Any system that isn’t available when needed, is a failed system.
Any system needs backups. The question is how much backup is needed. A small island might have 50% backup – a spare diesel generator so the main diesel generator can be overhauled, or so they can switch between them. A slightly larger one may have half a dozen generators, with four or five of them needed to meet peak demand, dialled back down to three for baseload. There is a spare to cover unexpected outage or standard maintenance, and that is sufficient, particularly if maintenance is normally scheduled for a low demand season so there will also be a spare on standby. But as soon as you incorporate intermittent renewables you are going to need close on 100% backup for their capacity: i.e. you have to assume that they will produce nothing at some point when most needed.
We have spare capacity yes. But not duplicative backup systems.
I just want to make a general ‘shout-out’ for WUWT… I really enjoy the articles that are posted here and along with many other resources I’ve been using recently – I believe I’m getting a great education on this wide ranging topic of this so-called “climate crisis”. I even like the presentation on the website and the photo/artwork graphics are well done… Especially the dystopian type artwork. Anyways, just wanted to mention this!
Thanks Stuart and welcome, appreciate the compliment. I’m glad you mentioned the education front, that is one of our areas of focus. If you find anything which is confusing or which could use more coverage be sure to lets us know.
There are great writers here, from E. Worrall to Willis E.
No one here will here tell you climate changes cause all problems in the world or predict climate change doom.
No one will claim climate change will kill your dog
No one will claim the greenhouse effect does not exist
No one will claim CO2 can’t cause some amount of global warming
Well, some commenters might make such claims..
The Big Cheese Charles Rotten selects the articles published here and every four hours another good article shows up. With few exception (which I assume happen only when Charles is drunk … again).
And
The rag that thinks the US symbol eagle (on flags, emblems, even US Senate symbol) is nazi:
https://twitter.com/usatoday/status/1282259909032189952
The “clarification” is hilarious.
https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1282281837159751680
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣They should have stopped digging the hole.
I heard Jumpin’ Joe Biden wants to change the 50 stars on the US flag to 50 bananas.
And he wants a 10% cut of the profits for every banana flag sold.
Don’t give the Trafficker-in-Chief any more bad ideas.
I wonder if Joe is getting 10 percent of the human/child/sex/drug/slavery trafficking the Mexican Cartels are doing? Or is it more? Most of the Cartel’s profits wouldn’t be possible without Joe’s considerable assistance at the border, so Joe should get more than 10 percent. More like 50 percent.
A Republican should ask this question when the investigation of Joe Biden begins.
😎 And since the eagle been a USA symbol long before there were NAZIs or even the nation of Germany, I’d say they they were using a US symbol.
yes. They are confused with the particular 1930s stylised eagle known as the parteiadler used by the nazi party and later for their government
They are not confused. They are deliberate distorters of the truth. Propagandists.
Very true.
I remember during the Kavanaugh’s nomination to SCOTUS the MSM made a big deal out of one of his staff resting her hand on her thigh.
It happened to look like the “OK” sign.
Some fools claimed the “OK” sign was a “White Supremist” symbol!
The MSM gave those fools a megaphone.
(They never bothered to explain the bogus connection.)
Yeah, I’m still wondering how an “ok sign” is racist.
Tom, the logic is quite simple(-minded)
It’s racist because racists use it, and you know they’re racists because they’re using a racist sign.
The Eagle, as a symbol of the USA was done in the 1780s.
How Did the Bald Eagle Become America’s National Bird? – HISTORY
58172_great_seal_lg.gif (1024×1022) (usf.edu)
Didn’t Ben Franklin want the turkey to be the US symbol? He may have had the right idea.
lies and distortions target renewable energy, economics and political polarization.
Well the omniscient ones might explain it to the poor pissed petals who feel they’ve been had-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/solar-panel-owners-slam-energy-companies-for-reducing-feed-in-tariff-credits/ar-AA15Ok8A
Not only are they reducing feed-in tariffs, some retailers ‘pay’ $0.00, the governments in their wisdom are requiring that solar feed-in to be able to be turned off when there is too much rooftop energy being generated.
There is also talk of charging roof-top generators for supplying power when too much is available as this makes control much more difficult (read more expensive).
All this while we are bombarded with both government and retailers touting the benefits of rooftop solar.
Mixed messages creating confusion
(I have rooftop solar)
Lies. Seems to be more blatant these days especially with the Big Guy and the MSM.
You will see a lot more lies and distortions in the future as the Democrats and their mouthpiece, the Leftwing Media go on the attack against Republicans who are investigating the Trafficker-in-Chief, Joe Biden and his personal, and family corruption.
The American people need to know if their president has been compromised by the payments he and his family have recieved from such nefarious characters as the Chicoms, and the Russians, and Ukrainians, and corrupt officials in numerous other nations.
Why does Joe Biden go easy on the Chicoms? The Chicoms gave Joe Biden’s family at least $30 million. That’s a lot of reasons to go easy on the Chicoms.
I think Joe Biden is the most corrupt president in U.S. history. The Clinton’s and the Obama’s got a few million from overseas, but they are Pikers compared to Joe Biden.
January 3, is almost here. Then we can start uncovering the utter corruption that is our current federal government. From the president on down, it’s corrupt. Corrupted with radical Democrats who have an agenda destructive to the personal freedoms of the American people.
Let’s open this Can of Worms.
The radical Left will do everything in their power to keep this Can of Worms from being opened. Count on it. They are determined. They are in power. And they are very well financed. They, our oppressors, are very powerful. We will find out how powerful soon.
Do we have the ability to escape these radical Democrat scoundrels plans? Time will tell.
“The full article mentioned California surviving a near blackout because of their batteries, but batteries run out.”
And just read that if the temperature drops to 5 degrees, Tesla car batteries drop to about half the range. How would these batteries fare if they were needed and it was cold outside?
Its an interesting question. I’ve always assumed because the grid batteries are so large (favourable surface area to volume), during cold periods they could probably just turn down the ventilation a little and retain more heat generated by operation of the batteries. But they might need heaters during periods of extreme cold.
They could also house them in heated and cooled weatherproof buildings [Ahem – Gas]
THEY DO
A Tesla Megapack is just 3MWh. About the maximum that can be safely cooled under load. If you want more capacity, add more containers each with their own aircon.
Just look at the design of the Hornsdale Power Reserve.
This spec sheet offers some insight.
https://www.scribd.com/document/508824099/Tesla-Mega-Pack-Datasheet
Individual modules inside the container are quite small, and individually heated and cooled. I imagine the heating and cooling are a little different between Alaska and South Australia. They claim a weather envelope of -30C to 50C.
Anyone who thought thought about trying out an electric vehicle but went straight to a battery-only EV without first seeing if a Hybrid would go most of the way to satisfying their criteria is a virtue-signalling, vanity- satisfying idiot.
That’s a really really dumb question.
They would use the free electricity from wind turbines. [Ahem! – Gas]
Which can charge up the batteries for the next time there’s no wind. [Ahem! – Gas]
Instead of providing power to the grid to heat homes. [Ahem! – Gas]
Which they can’t do anyway because there’s no wind. [Ahem! – Gas]
I know, let’s use gas! [Thank you]
“But my EV doesn’t need Gas to run, it uses electricity” [Sigh…..]
Because they are leftists and ruin everything they touch
It’s a leftist tradition.
A rational approach would have been to start building nuclear plants to replace coal as well as research into advanced nuclear plant designs. Wind and solar could be added while this was going on (cost is no object, right?). Eventually you’d wind up with a mix of reliable and renewable power that would work. Some NG could be retained in the mix for added reliability. And don’t forget to add additional capacity for all those EV’s (cost is no object, right?). You could also throw in some utility scale batteries (cost is no object, right?).
I watch a “report” today on CNBC claiming that climate change might wipe out Champaign grapes. Some things never change.
Damn! Have to drink Prosecco instead, from Italy I believe, somewhere south of France, where it’s hotter……..
Try the New Zealand and/or Australian .products HotScot.
Had a large glass of McGuigan Merlot with dinner last night. Very nice.
Phylloxera almost did for them all 150 years ago. Not much to do with climate. Much to do with importing the bugs from North America. The vineyards that survived unscathed did so because of the nature of their soils.
It seems to me invasive species would have a more deleterious impact than computer-modeled future weather events.
Pest control on wine crops is an extremely charged political issue in France, because the gov mandates pesticides for all producers, and some refuse to use them and prefer to use traps.
California only survived the heatwaves because they got everyone to turn things off, burned a lot of gas and they could import power.
All three of these need further discussion. Demand response (official name for turning thing off) is somewhat the antithesis of the capitalist society. We have a quota and you will not exceed it stuff. What happens when they can no longer burn gas, especially when they have banned drilling for it? Importing power just makes you a freeloading sponge. What if the other states had the same mentality as you and wanted all renewables?
California is one of the regions that functions as a crash test dummy for rest of society, and an object lesson for those progressives who believe basic engineering and the laws of physics can be over-ruled by legislative fiat The modern day equivalent of King Knut’s courtiers perhaps?
Freeloading sponge ?
Doesnt come into it as California are part of a larger grid WECC where the power supply and demand ( and frequency) is supposed to be synchronized. 250GW of generating capacity
Theres interconnectors which are switchable with other grids
Texas is the only state ( apart from Alaska) that for historical reasons has a single state grid. While most of California is run by a state based ‘system operator’ CASIO
Often larger power generators are placed to supply a higher demand across state lines.
Whats mostly state based are the power retailers who buy their energy from the cheapest or most reliable source
They are a freeloading sponge because they know of the problem with lack of power yet won’t do anything about it. They virtue signal about decarbonisation or the like though they import thermal power from other states. And with the ban on natural gas heaters, where is the generation being built to supply reliable power for electric appliances and vehicles? They aren’t even building interstate transmission lines.
If they consistently use more electricity than they produce, they are free-loading sponges.
Whether it’s a state grid or a national grid makes no difference.
In case you don’t remember USA Today is accepting money (bribes?) to write whatever the Rockefeller and other foundations want to have said about the climate. They are getting their moneys worth.
I learned it in WUWT.
Or was it the AP? Or maybe both?
“Blaming renewable energy as the cause of power crunches is unfair, said David Doniger, senior strategic director in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program.”
*************
The USA Today and the NRDC are among those who need desperately to be taken off the grid so that they can replace all that electricity with solar panels installed on their roofs.
It’s the least they can do for climate change.
Somehow related, even if facially (and farcically) unrelated:
https://twitter.com/secupp/status/1608826534155927552
MSM almost realizing MSM doesn’t care, doesn’t check and doesn’t even read (nor respect) local news – as if MSM never worked on anything factual.
(Had someone pretended George Santos name was on Trump taxes they would have checked everything in his life.)
What did Santos do that Joey Biden did not also do?,,,,,Joey lied that he received an appointment to the Naval Academy…lied about finishing in top part of Law School class….lied about multiple degrees….OK Joey lies every day.
It would thus appear that telling whoppers is a prerequisite for holding office, at least if you are a left winger. Were Santos a DemoRat, they would be celebrating him. Unfortunately for him, he is not, so he’ll be the subject of scorn and feigned moral outrage, for Republicans are expected to be honest and have ethical standards. In battle, this is termed “Asymmetric warfare”.
A number of Democrat voters when informed that Biden would have lost had the MSM not suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, expressed their gratitude towards the MSM.
This is a sterling example of why USA Today’s circulation is down 75% over the last five years and continuing to fall. If it weren’t for sales to hotels and public venues as complimentary papers, they’d be much lower. The paper was never much better than the National Enquirer or other gossip rags, but even those are probably more believable now.
McPaper.
USA Today and the AP provide all nonlocal news to a great many small and medium sized localities. My own observation in Cincinnati and the Florida panhandle. If they’re losing money it’s bacause people are dropping those papers because they are so bad.
And today I read in the paper that increased electrification, particularly with heating systems, in SE states together with little increase in reliable supply resulted in rolling blackouts when temperatures got down in the low teens. Cold kills!
Within five days, the polar vortex blockage over the Bering Sea will strengthen and air from Siberia will flow into the US.
From the article: “Experts say easily disprovable narratives about the climate keeps circulating.”
Another unsubstantiated assertion by the climate alarmists.
If the alarmists had any proof, of human-caused climate change, or disprovable narratives, there wouldn’t be any skeptics.
The alarmists don’t have any evidence. That’s what skeptics say. Disprove that. They can’t, because they don’t have any evidence, they just pretend they do.
Key Points:
Climate change..
Well, I think you fell for a red herring here..
You and many others went after the sausage alarmists dangling in front of your nose!
As long as McKitrick´s critique on attribution is still unchallanged climate change and especially local extreme weather is outside the skill of global climate models!
Just image, one main difference between CMIP5 and CMIP6 models is a change of about 25% for the the CO2-feedback, that tells you how little they know and how bad their models are!
You should not fall for that discussion at all, as at least my point of view is explained by those two sentences above.
One big and ever remaining question is not climate change, but the anthropogenic contribution by CO2 to the global warming over the last 150 years. Once that is solved, we might talk about climate change, but not before.
Mind you that there was no significant improvement for accuracy of this particular parameter over the last 30 years, which gives little hope for the next 30 years, beside all the money wasted on it.
If I were an alarmist I would also desperately try to shift the topic, because it seems highly embarrassing. Why are you following them so easily?
Story tip
Everyone seems to be reading my latest article. But very few comments…why is that?
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/