By Andy May
More on the environmental group’s plot against your natural gas stove in an exclusive Washington Times article here. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund hosted a meeting between them and dozens of high-ranking state officials at the Rockefeller mansion in Pocantico, New York. (added 1/27/2023)
Robert Bryce has investigated a new far left NGO called the Climate Imperative Foundation and found when combined with the other large anti-fossil-fuel NGOs they have three times the money the top pro-fossil-fuel organizations have. His full post can be found here.
From his post:
Banning natural gas stoves, furnaces, hot water heaters, etc. will cause more CO2 emissions. Natural gas is twice as efficient as electricity in the home.
Climate Imperative makes it clear that electrifying everything is their goal.
Most of the money is coming from Steve Jobs widow, Laurene Jobs, and John Doerr.
The BS about asthma and natural gas is mostly from the Atlantic magazine (owned by Laurene Jobs) and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), founded by Amory Lovins, a renewable energy promoter.
Natural gas has no relationship to asthma, per a large multinational study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet. In children the study:
“… detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”
Wong, Brunekreef, et al., 2013
RMI has since wisely walked back its claims about asthma and natural gas. It seems the Biden administration missed these key points.
Numerous polls around the world have shown that fighting supposed man-made climate change is a very low priority for the public. The United Nations My World poll of 10 million people found that fighting climate change ranked dead last of 16 issues.
Other problems are always considered more important and urgent. In a 2018 Pew Research poll climate change ranked 18th, of 19 issues in importance, just ahead of dealing with global trade. In a similar Gallup 2014 poll, climate change ranked 14th in a list of priorities. A 2022 poll by the Pew Research Center also found climate change ranked 14th. All this “dangerous man-made climate change” nonsense is driven by ignorant billionaires and wacky environmentalists.
The efficiency argument is based on the false belief that they want to allow you to have heat, hot water and food.
In looking at the required development, mining, refining, manufacturing, etc. that would be necessary to provide the required amount of power that is currently used, let alone the amount that would be needed for development of less developed countries.
Based on this, combined with the behavior and admitted plans of the “elites” who suppose that they have some authority to determine how everyone should live lead me to the conclusion that they are not planning on supplying energy to anywhere near the current population of the Earth. Their plans don’t work for the current population, but might be sufficient if you get rid of maybe 5 billion people. Their timeline seems to emphasise 2030 or 2050 at the latest, which would imply “active measures”. People tend to dismiss this possibility because it is just too horrific to contemplate… but, at least to me, it fits with the behavior that we are seeing.
That is certainly not to say that everyone who thinks there is catastrophic man made global warming is “in on it”, or would be on board with such an idea. It only takes a very small minority of people to be actually aware of the greater plan. Even the people carrying it out may well think they are doing good, that their actions are “for the greater good”.
I would love to be wrong, maybe I am, but if I’m not the world is in for some serious trouble.
MarkH, I would also love you to be wrong. But I think the world is already in serious trouble and rapidly running out of time to fix it. No ruling-party or even any major opposition-party politician in any democratic country has AFAIK stood up to the insanity at all. Let’s face it, if even Giorgia Meloni supports ‘net-zero’ it’s difficult to see any flicker of light along the tunnel.
I have the same worry.
For example, we will not know the impact of the jabs on fertility for several more years. Hopefully, reverse transcription does not occur in reproductive organs to any significant degree.
Some simple numbers. When natgas fires CCGT the baseload efficiency is 61%. 39% waste heat. When natgas fires a gas stove or high efficiency hot water heater or furnace, the efficiency is either 100% or 95%. So forcing electric wastes something around 35% thermal efficiency. No amount of renewables can recover this, since they are intermittent and at best have capacity factors of 20% (SW solar) to 30 % ( Midwest on shore wind). The CF numbers are of course worse for the UK and EU. The innumeracy of these organizations is stunning, but telling.
Australian figures are higher than that (around 27% for solar and 40% for wind), but that’s probably the best you can obtain.
And they probably still have periods where they produce *zero* which means they are still worse-than-useless.
Again from Anton’s data, over 900 days of records, the total NEM wind energy has dropped below 10% on average around one in every three days. Additionally, periods of very low wind have been recorded for up to 48 hours.
At a 40% CF, wind + OCGT CO2 emissions are comparable to solar @27% + CCGT.
At a CF of 30%, the wind + OCGT combination would be around 40% higher than solar + CCGT.
When the Snowy Hydro 2 pumped hydro is in place, it should be possible to use hydro to cover for wind’s unpredictability, so wind + hydro + CCGT would bring wind (+hydro + CCGT) into line with solar (+hydro + CCGT)
It then becomes a matter of optimising the technology mix. It’s possible that SH2 would significantly reduce the amount of time that CCGT is required – that’s beyond my very rudimentary mental arithmetic exercises thus far.
Please note that this has been purely an exercise in what is possible, totally ignoring all other aspects.
CF figures are useless if power is generated at the wrong time and cannot be utilised.
Does anyone have a figure for ‘dispatchable capacity factor’?
In Oz we already have governments turning off rooftop solar when there is too much being generated and talk of charging rooftop solar generators to pay for the poles and wires we are supplying power to. This imposition after being encouraged by the same government to install solar on as many houses as possible.
Australia is close to the best case CF for solar and better than the US Great Plains for wind.
Make of that what you will.
No, Australian wind CF is around 30%, not 40%. Anton has been doing a lot of work on tracking the Australian NEM wind output for many years, and has a lot of very useful info.
I was basing the 40% for wind on https://www.energymagazine.com.au/australias-top-performing-solar-pv-asset-in-2021/.
Anton’s figures will be correct – he does good work.
30% is more in line with the US Great Plains.
The main point, which I must have expressed poorly, is that Australia’s 30-odd percent for solar is the best you’re going to get anywhere.
With electric cooktops, there is also the added transmission losses, so a percentage of that 61% is also lost before it gets to the end user.
For gas, the transmission losses are usually pretty low, as gas leaks tend to attract attention by maintenance personnel fairly quickly, and non-reticulated gas (gas cylinders) don’t need to be concerned with leakage in the infrastructure.
Indeed. And you can add energy loss during transmission from the source (solar, wind, gas turbine, …) to the kitchen to the list as well.
A gas stove does not come anywhere near 100% efficiency for heating food or a saucepan. Most of the energy is lost since it goes to heating the surroundings. The most efficient way to heat a saucepan is an induction stove that achieves efficiencies of greater than 88%. Have a look at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X22004452
or
https://cao-94612.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/Induction-Range-Final-Report-July-2019.pdf
In the WWII years my father started a patent application for electric stove top cookers that used a heating element shaped like a well around the saucepan.
He claimed it to be more efficient than sitting the saucepan on a flat heater. Ran out of time, money and interest.
Geoff S
In the winter, a gas stove (or any stove, for that matter) IS 100% efficient in terms of energy in, useful energy out.
In terms of efficiency there is little diference between a gas hob and electric element , an induction cook top may have a slight edge .
So the flame is in relative terms 100% or close to it
Try cooking on an induction hob – they’re rubbish. They don’t respond quickly enough when you turn the heat down or up, unlike gas stoves. Induction hobs would be useless in the restaurant business. Could you imagine a chinese cook using a wok successfully on an induction hob? Um, no.
My brother bought the Bosch version. After replacing the control computer once, he went to the cheapest version which has run for years.
In one particular 24hr period near you:
9am – gas efficiency 61%, solar 5%, wind 18%.
12 noon – gas efficiency 61%, solar 35%, wind 38%.
3pm – gas efficiency 61%, solar 30%, wind 15%.
6pm – gas efficiency 61%, solar 5%, wind 25%.
9pm – gas efficiency 61%, solar 0%, wind 0%.
12 midnight – gas efficiency 61%, solar 0%, wind 12%.
3am – gas efficiency 61%, solar 0%, wind 6%.
6am – gas efficiency 61%, solar 0%, wind 15%.
There must be a strong pattern in there somewhere, if only one could see it.
UK wind’s nameplate capacity has the potential to match nearly all of UK demand.
What is it managing right now? Just 10%
The UK could not run without fossil fuel backup. The enviro idiots seem blissfully unaware of this reality
https://grid.iamkate.com/
Careful, Rud! You are giving the impression that you understand numbers, and that would never be acceptable to a politician. Can you think of a single politician who is an engineer, or even a scientist, with a vague understanding of what renewable energy means??? Remember Margaret Thatcher had a chemistry degree and was the first major politician to support concern about climate change. What is much less known is that later in life she realised it was a scam promoted by the far left, and renounced her support for the “climate crisis”. Would that more politicians around the world would have the courage to do the same…
“”The truth is known. And it is sobering: The climate is in crisis.””
https://climateimperative.org/mission-values/
Retard central
I’d say you’re insulting retards…
I noticed one of the numpties has this job:
Good luck getting the Chinese to stop using fossil fuels! The Chinese must be laughing in the poor poppet’s face.
Fei is trying to influence China? Odd that I read it the other way around— that China is using this person to influence the organization. Huh.
Money may, or may not “buy you love.”
But it is absolutely clear that any amount of money can’t buy you even rudimentary intelligence.
As proved by these gormless, malevolent twerps.
I think it was WC Fields that said
That idea works best with highly educated people, since they are used to being baffled with BS, and to some extent, are insulated from common sense. More education, more insulation. We see it all the time, who is more easily conned? The wealthy and well educated, they confuse themselves trying to unravel the BS, then just give up. Education up, common sense down.
Personally I think it is not about intelligence (just its application). I know any number of people who are thick but easily convinced by the propaganda.
You would think accomplished people would know something of history. Push the peasants too far and they show up with pitchforks and torches.
I was thinking guillotines and horses to draw and quarter but yes, push the peasants too far and activist billionaires will become an endangered species.
Personally, I’m not in favor of the death penalty. In the case of activist billionaires, however, I might make an exception as long as it is slow and painful!
Given how overworked and underpaid most pharmaceutical lab rats are, perhaps they could be replaced by the active billies; strictly on humanitarian grounds
How did that work out for the Jan 6 people.
Hundreds of millions of US dollars prosecuting misdemeanors, people held for YEARS before trial on felony charges then “allowed” to plead “guilty” to a misdemeanor after already serving MORE time than they could be sentenced to, all under the DC district courts.
With today’s surveillance state, go ahead and pick up a pitch fork, and if you are ANTIFA or BM, no worries, but as a conservative, you better leave your phone behind, be totally covered up with heat blocking body covering, and don’t bring your vehicle anywhere near where you get on public transportation to get to the demonstration because the deep state WILL find you.
The deep state was created in its massive power under Hillary during the Clinton years, think Ruby Ridge and Waco as examples where the FBI/DOJ went full on anti=American.
Then Harry Reid loaded the DC district court under Obama by eliminating the filibuster for judicial appointments and Obama appointed the most radical judges possible, many of whom still got some RINO votes.
Very scary to be conservative about anywhere in the world right now.
Eighty bucks Aussie at rego time and you can drive your Hilux/Ranger/Triton/Cruiser or Walkinshaw modded Yank tank with a clear planet saving conscience –
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/carbon-offsets-now-at-car-rego-checkout/ar-AA16MD7g
A couple of bucks or a fiver at most you’d reckon for the gas stove guilts and you get a bragging bumper sticker for the truck.
“ignorant billionaires“. I think that this is an appallingly naive error. The billionaires know perfectly well what they are doing. They are creaming vast amounts of government money into their own pockets from one of the largest gravy trains ever built. Probably the largest gravy train ever built. And they built it themselves exactly the way they wanted it. They don’t give a toss about how much everyone else suffers.
As Warren Buffett said about wind farms “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 Buffett is, I think, just taking advantage of the gravy train and reckoning that if he doesn’t wreck people’s lives this way then someone else will because the gravy train already exists and is simply there for the taking. Unethical, immoral, but just business. Billionaires other than Warren Buffett have created the gravy train, and they are the real despicables. Or, as Hillary Clinton should have said, deplorables.
and look who owns the media…those same billionaires…so the talking heads one sees/hears on TV or radio are reading the script that was put in front of their face by those same billionaires…Money and POWER is the goal
Buffet has a fiduciary duty to maximise returns for his investors. We complain about ESG investing but I’m not convinced Buffet and Monger give a monkeys about the subject. I have watched some long video interviews with them and I find both refreshingly straightforward and honest.
The Chinese are the same. Whilst they are presented as the face of the demonic far east all they have ever done is take advantage of the Western politicians stupidity. They didn’t force us to transfer all our factories to China, we were stupid enough to believe we were exploiting them, but they were smart enough to turn the tables and few ever noticed.
It is hard to understand why many people idolise the very wealthy, when their main demonstrated ability is either to be born of rich parents, or to be skilled in taking your money and mine from our wallets and putting it in theirs. What is there to ideolise?
It can be beneficial to divide wealthy people into two main groups, those that get rich by shuffling existing wealth and taking a percentage, versus those who create original wealth. Examples of the first group abound and need no exaplanation. The second main group are domantly primary producers, like miners who find bits of land with much higher values than the surrounds, or farmers who grow crops with more nutrition than the plants that grew there before.
Society is in a strange phase of demonising the second class. You need to ask yourself about their motives.
Geoff S
Starting a business and taking it public while retaining much of the new stock for yourself creates money. This is not taking money from anyone else. It is more like the “big bang.” The Company gets money to grow. The entrepreneur gets an immediate balloon payment. That is how Jeff and MacKenzie got rich.
Geoff,
While many billionaires are just highly successful sociopaths, there are many that acquire their wealth from lots of creativity and hard work! The children of wealth, not so much!
Something I haven’t heard mentioned (maybe it has) is that natural gas used to the norm for indoor lighting along with oil lamps and candles before electric lights came along.
Why are gas stoves suddenly a health threat?
I had older relatives with a gas well on their property. There were little gas lights along the interior walls. Over many years, after the husband died, my aunt could not do the “spring cleaning” that, along with other things included using wall-paper cleaner. See:
http://www.absorene.com/aboutabsorene/
Millionaires, billionaires they don’t mean a damn thing to me and I don’t care what they think or say. Say something well thought out and approached from many points of view and I will consider what you say. Your wealth means nothing to me.
“Numerous polls around the world have shown that fighting supposed man-made climate change is a very low priority for the public.”
_____________________________________________
How about the negative effects of Climate Change policies? Where does that resonate as an issue with the public?
Rolling blackouts, travel restrictions and rationing of a variety of goods just might make people begin to take notice of what’s going on. With any luck, that will occur sooner rather than later.
Steve,
I don’t know. When it comes to governments spending a lot of money on nonsense, it seems the public doesn’t get upset. Although when their taxes get raised, they do. They don’t see that wasting government money and raising taxes is the same thing. Very odd.
Proof that you don’t need to be sensible, logical, or educated to become wealthy. Maybe just marry a sickly billionaire?
They are all for burning hydrogen, unless 1 carbon atom is attached to 4 hydrogen atoms. Go figure.
What is it about billionaires that makes them think we want their opinion on every subject? We might be interested in how they made their first billion, but what makes them spend their money and pontificate on causes they know nothing about? Is it virtue signaling combined with a big ego? When I hear a billionaire pontificating about unrelated subjects, I can only wonder how those blowhards managed to accumulate one billion dollars.
Even worse are very rich actors and actresses who virtue signal about climate change. Perhaps doing that after a long trip on their private jet (all of them) or a long trip on their huge yacht, staffed with beautiful girls in bikinis ((like Leonardo Di Craprio ). Or those who are just nasty, like Bette Midler.
My daily list of recommended climate science and energy articles, which includes this one:
Honest Climate Science and Energy
Eventually, “they” will just come for electricity….
(The Love of) Money is……….
I would almost bet my life that not a single one of the 5 star restaurants those “elites” patronize, nor their private chefs, cook using electric stove tops or ovens.
I just want to know why you need to heat hot water.
” Billionaires and your natural gas stove ”
No gas for making food. Electricity blackouts to prevent making food.
Better start eating your caterpillars and crickets raw.
It’s amazing how quickly the Corporate Media and the “experts” have walked back the idea THEY were proposing on banning cooking with gas and using gas to heat. They were caught and are now lying about the fact that they WERE proposing exactly what they were proposing. “IT’S ALL A RIGHT WING OVER REACTION AND CONSPIRACY THEORY”. Amazing how the vast number of “conspiracy theories” have become fact.
Not all media accepted the original hype of the study. The UK i newspaper has a new science correspondent called Stuart Richie. He wrote a two page article in the paper on 20th Jan debunking the study, entitled ‘Gas cookers:turning down the heat on a health risk scare’
The following day he had a similar length article entitled ‘Red meat bad for you? What a carve-up! Scientific attacks on carnivorous diets may not stack up’
Let’s hope he is allowed to carry on in similar vein. A breath of fresh air!
always nice to see steve jobs’ diesel powered yacht back in saint martin every winter .haven’t had the chance to see if they’ve ditched their gas stoves yet . and while we’re on the subject of food could somebody ask john kerry about the billion plus pounds of co2 created each year from manufacturing heinz ketchup? maybe he doesn’t know ?