January 04, 2024
As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”
The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.
Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.
In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can.
The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.
Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.
The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.
The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.
Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.
Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.
With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
The Dam is starting to crack.
Can someone explain to me how CO2 absorption of 14.9 micrometer IR warms the Earths surface?
The Earth’s surface warms by radiation from the sun. The only way the Earth cools is by radiation out to space. If energy from radiation in and radiation out is equal, the earth will maintain a steady temperature. In other words, an equilibrium will be established.
If 14.9µ is blocked from radiating out to space the Earth won’t cool as fast, and the sun will continue to warm the surface until a new equilibrium is established.
The temperature on Venus is about 850°F and on Mars it’s about minus 80°F. Both planets have an atmosphere of about 95% CO2, so there must be other factors at work. Earth has an atmosphere of about 0.04% CO2. Climate science, politicians and the news media are telling us that the CO2’s warming effect described above is the existential problem of our time.
By the way a black body that predominantly radiates at 15µ would be a brick of dry ice.
Steve do you really mean this explanation to include the “surface” per his question or the atmosphere?
Nelson didn’t offer a definition. I mean the temperature reported by standard weather stations. What do you think “Earth’s surface” in the context of Nelson’s question means?
Well the word “surface” was what he said so I take him at his word since he used it.
@Nelson
Just to be clear, it should be understood that virtually all of the 14.9µm radiation detected on Earth is radiated by the Earth. That is because the Sun emits a
neglible amount at that wavelength, as you can see on this ‘black body’ plot of solar and terrestrial radiation:
So the Earth can be viewed as a kind ‘very dim IR star’, with peak radiation around 10µm, whose energy comes mainly from absorbed solar radiation (and neglible geothermal).
So how can the Earth emit radiation that was not contained in the original solar radiation? Ans: translation.
The Earth’s surface is warmed by visble and near visible radiation (up to 4µm). The Earth is a black-body radiator (more or less) whose peak energy is determined by the mean temperature of the radiator which is around 15C, which produces a peak wavelength around 10µm,
A single strong El Niño will heat the atmosphere by about 0.3 C in a few months, as proven by UAH satellite data.
That is about 47 times greater than the alleged heating of ANNUAL human CO2, which allegedly heats the atmosphere by 0.1 C/decade, per UAH data
Plus the Sun’s output varies and the oceans can store that extra heat or lack of heat for many decades if not centuries.
“If 14.9µ is blocked from radiating out to space the Earth”
Scientific evidence, ie measurements, show that any slight increase in the absorption by CO2 is translated to increased radiation through the atmospheric window.
No radiation is actually blocked. !
I disagree Steve. The atmosphere retaining energy does require the Earths surface to warm.
The peak temp by Wein’s law is T= 2890/wavelength. so 14.9 microns is about -79 C
1) The sun heats the Earth.
2) The Earth radiates the heat away from a warm temperature to a cold temperature proportional to (Thot^4-Tcold ^4). The “Tcold” relative to the warm surface is the temperature of “the Sky”
3) -79C is a lot warmer than outer space at -273 C so the more CO2 in the sky at -79 reduces the rate at which heat can escape to outer space, thereby causing the sun to heat the surface a bit more to achieve out=in balance.
I see Steve has a similar explanation. You can trust the consensus on this one….
That is the conjecture anyway. Meanwhile, back in the real world…
That’s not even close to conjecture. It can be shown to be true with a very basic IR detection apparatus, even $250 iPhone IR cam, and a couple of equations from undergrad physics textbooks.
Look at the frequency range of your iPhone or any other IR detection apparatus.
You are detection H2O bands. not CO2.
No it can’t.
Yep it is purely conjecture.
Again, not considering what actually happens after CO2 absorption.
As shown above, no actual radiation is blocked and retained by increases in CO2,..
… it just ends up being translated to the atmospheric window.
Radiation is just one of the energy transfer mechanisms in the atmosphere, and anyone that think can use “radiation only” calculations, is not getting the full picture or the correct answer.
Exactly!!!! 100%
It’s like fixating on the energy source of a turn signal while ignoring the engine and the rest of the car.
Yes, CO2 absorbs and re-emits at a few IR wavelengths – and it doesn’t really matter.
The scientific consensus is the CO2 molecule gets saturated, because it can absorb only a little IR energy at about 15 microns
Hmmm….and 45% more saturated CO2 molecules should absorb and emit 45% more IR at 15 microns….
According to actual measurements, absorption levels off at about 280ppm.
Ie.. the “logarithm” theoretical absorption is not actually correct, but an IPCC “climate science” estimate…
To be valid you need to assign an emissivity to that Tcold^4. What is the emissivity of CO2 and what pressure is this CO2 at?
Reducing the rate of heat loss doesn’t warm the Earths surface. Right? Blankets slow heat loss, but don’t increase skin temperature.
Be careful with heat transport – temperature differences don’t matter when you are talking about ‘radiation’ of heat, because those photons are still coming out of something regardless of the temperature of other objects around them. The temperature differences matter for ‘conduction’ and ‘convection’ of heat, which happen to be much more effective at moving heat around but can’t move it to outer space directly: radiation is the only way.
So, if CO2 likes 15 micrometres, it will absorb a photon heading from the ground to outer space, and re-emit it in any other random direction, which could mean straight back to Earth.
No big deal: water vapour absorbs and re-emits at a wide range of wavelengths and with much greater effectiveness than CO2 and the world hasn’t ended yet, in fact it makes things more livable like a warm-ish winter day because it’s overcast. And that 15 micrometre photon will probably give up its energy to a molecule of water or CO2 which will then conduct or convect that energy away through the rest of the spectrum and the rest of the atmosphere.
It really is quite silly to panic about the few narrow bands that CO2 might use while ignoring the whole weather system which is a huge, colossal heat transport system.
How do you get from “the more CO2 in the sky” to “reduces the rate at which heat can escape to outer space” ? CO2 is pretty efficient at radiating energy at atmospheric temperatures, isn’t it? Just like water vapour?
It is a case of defying the government and the failed leadership at a low and personal level . Most of us cannot impact this lunacy in a major way. My family has made the small effort of defiance by ignoring Californias ban on wood heat by burning wood for heat . The almond growers all around us replace their trees every 7 to 10 years, making the wood ,if not cheap, very available. We heat our home for under $1000 per year. This alone is not significant in the big picture, but if we all find ways to combat this eco madness ,I believe we can corrode these oppressive dictates. As in many things in life resistance is key to change.
Whereabouts are you? I heat my house in Michigan for under $1000 per year using nat gas. I turn off the furnace every night and on a winter morning it is about 57-61 in the house but I turn on the furnace and in under an hour it is 70.
Your house is well insulated
CA has a ban on wood heat? How good is almond wood for heat? You say it’s not cheap- they charge you to take it away?
“Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club”
Seriously?
Appalling isn’t it?
no wonder there’s a big push to stop all forestry here in New England- The Sierra Club is party of the group pushing this- to “save the planet”
You can bet if you dig deep enough into leftwing environmental groups, you will find they are being financed by Leftwing Billionaires.
None of these environmental groups are “grass-roots” organizations.
“Seriously?”
That’s just a “drop in the bucket” if you consider all the money spent by all the leftwing billionaires promoting the leftwing agenda.
Conservatives are being seriously outspent when it comes to promoting ideology.
The Rich Left is well-organized and focused in their efforts to promote their leftwing ideolgy. The Rich Right is unorganized and unfocused, and are not promoting much of anything with regard to rightwing ideology.
I think this is why the radical Left has taken over all our societal institutions. They have paid lots of money for them.
Leftwing billionaires are going through the backdoor (spending money in secret) as a means of controlling society. They have been very effective so far.
Totally agree. First there was Rockefeller, then Ted Turner and Soros and so many others who purged their capitalist guilt by donating to environmental causes and bought power in the political system. There is no doubt that the left is better organized than the right, but that doesn’t mean they are morally right, especially with the climate scam, its energy implications for the welfare of nations people. The Left are failing the common people, as they always have done in the past, this issue will also mark their decline globally.
“There is no doubt that the left is better organized than the right, but that doesn’t mean they are morally right”
That’s right. The amount of money one spends does not necessarly equate to making the spender more moral than the other guy.
And the clue that leftwing billionaire spending is not moral is the leftwing billionaires try to hide what they are doing with their money.
One would think if the leftwingers thought they had the moral highground, they would be shouting their spending from the rooftops and would not be hiding what they are doing behind front groups.
If you are hiding something like this, you are probably doing something underhanded.
The UK, once a great empire- on the way to becoming just a small island off the coast of Europe, which itself is merely a peninsula on the fringe of Asia. How sad.
All empires crumble in the end. But civilisation doesn’t have to
That’s the prize they are after
National debt ended the 2nd Reich
Soon to return to a Heptarchy, plus a Tetrarcchy(?) and whatever Wales and Ireland (never been a single nation in history) were in the past.
As well as, obviously, the 3 Crown dependencies and 14 British Overseas territories.
Yes and sadly cannot even afford to man it’s dwindling navy at a time when maritime control of critical sea lanes is of increasing importance.
that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.
Hummm? Wonder what else was going on say between 1776 and 1812?
“”The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: “”
Not to mention petrol and diesel
Hey bud, can ou spare a dime?!
I received a Christmas card from a British friend – regular sized envelope less than 1/2 ounce…. it cost him 2.20 pounds or $2.80 to send the card…. just an anecdotal example of Britain’s economic woes.
The Post Office has to recoup all the money they had to pay out to compensate the subpostmasters they fraudulently convicted.
OMG – falsely convicted because of faulty software!!!
https://www.google.ca/search?q=subpostmasters%20they%20fraudulently%20convicted.
Costs $1.50 to send a letter from the U.S. to the UK.
A few notes about electricity and “products”:
As a refresher for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil.
We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for planes, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s. Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a back-up plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products of our materialistic society.
You’re missing the point, Ron. The plan is to make society un-materialistic.
The plan is to decimate the population and ruin the standard of living for the remainder
“The plan is to make society un-materialistic.”
Except the “climate elite” of course. !
You missed “people”
You mentioned oil, but what about coal?
Every solar panel required about twice as much coal as quartz!
They are really made out of coal!
Here is a final report from beyond coal that blames one half million deaths on coal plants. Statistical deaths, of course, no actual names associated with any of this harm.
The environmental organizations have been galvanized or mesmerized as the case may be by the idea of climate change; so much so that they cannot see any harm done by tens of thousands of square miles of wind turbines, solar panels, solar furnaces, transmission lines and so forth across the west when they at one time would fight like cats to prevent a single coal mine or transmission line obscuring a western landscape. Completely blinkered busy fools financed by ignoramuses.
Millions of lives are saved just by people being able to heat their homes in northern climates…..The statistical deaths thing is just so much bu11sh1t….
This study says 4.6 million die yearly from the cold compared to 500,000 deaths due to heat in the warmer months. When it is cold the body constricts its blood vessels to conserve heat causing increased blood pressure causing increased heart attacks and strokes during the cooler months.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
This is the sort of stuff WUWT should be pouring out there. Plus historical facts, news items from the past, natural history items like medieval forests sticking out from toes of glaciers high up above present treelines, the thousand kilometer swings on Arctic treelines demarked by ancient tree stumps in N.A. and Asia during the Holocene (real dendroclimatology and not the Goebbels Green Big Lies), settlement and abandonment of Greenland farmers… Hippos in the Thames and metre- thick ice in the Thames, the Bosphorus froozen over …to counter the climate propaganda. Spare me another calculation of ho-hum ECS.
Yes l fully agree, getting real data from the real world and putting it out there for the whole world to see.
Am currently studying the impact that the switch over from recording temps with glass thermometers to electonic thermometers has had on the claimed warming of the UK winters since the mid 1980’s.
Am starting to build up evidence that the sudden jump in the warming trend between mid 1980’s and 2000 of UK winters was in a lage part due to the switch over of recording temps from glass to electonic thermometers..
The more people we have on the “ case” the better. I think WUWT contributors have done some great work on that subject. The entire temperature record used by the scare mongers looks to me to be unfit for purpose. Not to mention how one would decide to sectionalize the time frame and geography.
Yes there has been some great work that l was not aware of.
l have doubt’s about the claimed warming of UK winters for a while now.
As l could not understand how this large shift in warming was having no effect on the timing of the first snows. That was just not making any sense to me knowing just how marginal snowfall is here in England.
l started my current study due to the claims about near record warmth on Christmas eve that did not look right to me. My current study is starting to show l was right to have doubts about their claims on warming, and am currently building up evidence to give me the confidence to call them out on it.
“marginal snowfall” – don’t forget that the Met Office regards just one snowflake falling anywhere in the UK on Christmas Day qualifies as a ‘White Christmas’
“Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.”
In other words, ”take the money and run”.
If the companies had been correctly named in the first place, as subsidy farmers not energy projects, their bankruptcy once all the subsidies ended would have been easier for everyone* to understand.
* – everyone except the media
“subsidy farmers”
I like that phrase. 👍
I think it was Warren Buffet who said the only reason to buy stock in windmill and solar companies was for the government subsidy.
The whole climate-energy decarbonization process is morally bankrupt, because it is based on pseudoscience and political lies emanating from the UN, a corrupt globalist institution. It’s time we told them to shove their climate scam where the sun does not shine!
Totally agree
Article says:”…bully pulpits…”
I am very sure that bullies are bad. Bulling is wrong. And bullies are to be condemned.
…… as are pulpits!
They simply haven’t gotten the prices of fossil fuels high enough yet!
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/01/07/electric-vehicle-sales-slump-to-just-a-quarter-of-new-purchases/
Things are not looking good for Net Zero.
The CO2-phobes must be having serious difficulties accepting this reality. I fear for their mental health.
What the Climate Cartel has done in the U.S. has already done a great deal of damage, to the electric grid, to energy security, and to the economy. So the question is, how much more damage to the country are they going to be allowed to get away with? Did someone say “Cap and Trade”? We already have that, albeit in a somewhat limited form (but hey, they had to start somewhere), with RGGI. Even if it isn’t in your neighborhood yet, have no fear, it will be.
Very nice Rick. People with lots of money are a powerful thing but not the most powerful thing. Reaching the common guy with the truth is far more powerful. A lie told with lots of money is still a lie. The truth told without a dime is still the truth and very powerful.
80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero”
As usual with the green blob, definitions are fluid and words can have changeable meanings.
“Net zero” should mean equal emission/absorption which does not require eliminating 100% of emissions.
This is why it is impossible to have a serious conversation with greenies, they are too fluid in their aims/words/actions to be able to pin them down
Confusing the language serves the purposes of the greenies.
According to a BloombergNEF analysis, the German energy transition will cost
will cost 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) EURO. The German power grid, currently 1.8 million kilometers, will have to double to 3.6 million kilometers (equivalent to nine times the distance from the earth to the moon, or ninety times around the earth).
Source: https://finanzmarktwelt.de/energiewende-1-bio-euro-kosten-262474/
And for Robert Habeck, German Vice-Chancellor and trained children’s book author, none of this is a problem. He plays the economics minister. He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. And when he talks about it, he mainly tells himself something. Habeck is a storyteller. And he likes to listen to himself tell them. Because the nicer his words sound to him, the more convincing his tone of voice sounds to his own ears, the more he believes in what he is saying.
He is overwhelmed by his office. He has taken on too much, he probably knows it himself, and yet he still clings to his fairytale of a happy green future for Germany as an industrial location.
What he tells us is so unrealistic and contradictory that one frightening conclusion remains: We are dealing with an impostor. Habeck is playing economics minister. He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. And when he talks about it, he is mainly talking himself into something.
There is no reason for a “German Angst”, he says at the beginning of the interview. As the leading politician of a party that thrives on fear: fear of radiation, genetic engineering and heat. The only thing we shouldn’t be afraid of is a serious loss of prosperity due to a self-inflicted decline.
It continues even more clearly: “These are funds that we are borrowing, so they are debt-financed funds. That’s why I understand that the finance minister is taking a critical look at this. But the question is: not borrowing money or no longer having an industry? And I am campaigning for us to opt for industry.”
Source: https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/meistgelesene-artikel-2023-juli-habeck-ist-ein-hochstapler
Habeck knows as much about economics as a banana bender from the supermarket.
In a DIHK survey of more than 2,200 companies over the course of the year, they gave economic policy a score of 4.8 (on a school grading scale of 1 to 6, 1 being the best and 6 the worst) – the worst score ever in the survey, which is conducted every three years.
Source: https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/umfrage-unter-unternehmen-habeck-bekommt-eine-5-schlechtere-note-gab-es-fuer-keinen-wirtschaftsminister_id_259536883.html
Habeck is a pathological narcissist, a grandiose overestimator and a green eco-dictator. It’s time for new elections so that this moron becomes history as quickly as possible.
The environmental zealots seem to have woken up from a drug-induced dream with the idea their mission is to prevent anyone from feeding the plants. They don’t just want to remove most of the human population from Earth, they seem to want to starve the biosphere of life-giving CO2 so that the chances of another intelligent civilization rising again are net zero.