The people pushing the “energy transition” in New York and elsewhere claim a foundation in science, but proceed with religious fervor. A key element of the playbook is never to engage with people asking legitimate questions, who are generally dismissed out of hand as “deniers.” But every so often one of the team will break the code of silence, thus giving us some insight into the thought process behind the campaign to transform our energy supply.
In New York, the most important academic guru behind the Climate Act and energy transition is a Cornell professor named Robert Howarth. Howarth is a professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology. Based on that background, he would seem to have nothing to offer on the subject of the engineering of an electrical grid. But Howarth has a burning desire to save the planet, and he has read some work by trendy Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, and has become convinced that putting together a zero-carbon electricity grid is no problem. Despite his total lack of relevant expertise in grid engineering, he has somehow gotten the ear of the New York State legislature and bureaucracies on that subject.
Meanwhile, another guy named Richard Ellenbogen has become a principal gadfly annoying the people like Howarth who are pushing the transition. Ellenbogen has a BA and a degree in electrical engineering, both from Cornell, and runs a manufacturing company in Westchester County that has made some fairly extraordinary efforts to use renewable energy. Unlike Howarth, Ellenbogen actually knows what he is talking about on issue of the engineering of the electrical grid. Ellenbogen has also taken on challenging the New York energy transition mandates as something of a personal passion. He submits formal comments on regulatory dockets every chance he gets, and also tries to engage those pushing the transition in rational discussion. Among those he has tried to engage is Howarth.
A couple of days ago Ellenbogen forwarded to an email list that includes me an exchange that he had just had with Howarth and some of Howarth’s Cornell colleagues. Ellenbogen had basically posed some fundamental questions about how this is all supposed to work. I thought readers might find the responses of Howarth and his acolyte entertaining.
From a June 20 email from Ellenbogen to Howarth:
[T]he facts on the ground are saying that there is a major problem with this process and it is only going to get worse as the utility rates rise and NY residents rebel as the residents of Ontario Canada did, as the residents of the EU are currently doing, and as the downstate NY residents are starting to do. . . . In a college science project where supply chains, funding, labor, land, the state of technology, and public opinion are not issues that have to be considered, the CLCPA will work. However, in the real world those are issues and they are going to sink the CLCPA. . . .
Here is the heart of Howarth’s response, also dated June 20:
I am always very happy to engage with anyone who comes to a discussion with an open mind, and who is truly interested in objective information. Your insulting insinuations, though, hardly invite further discussion. I am not likely to write to you again or further respond. But if you truly are interested in the topic, I suggest you read Mark Jacobson’s excellent books, the 2020 “100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything” and the 2023 “No Miracles Needed.”
So it looks like that is as much of a response as Howarth will ever give. However, Ellenbogen had also sent a copy of his email (and a prior one) to one Bethany Ojalehto Mays, of something called “Cornell on Fire,” which appears to be some kind of consortium of Cornell-associated climate activist groups who take inspiration from Howarth (although Howarth is not formally a part of them). Ms. Mays provided a much longer response. Here are some key excerpts (from two different Mays emails, one of June 18 and the other of June 20):
- I suspect we can all agree that (1) no one can afford the costs of irreversible climate breakdown; (2) any costs to current stakeholders must be weighed against costs to future generations of life; (3) there is a real and urgent need to change our lifestyles and “business as usual”; and (4) the climate crisis is such that there is “no nonradical future” . . . .
- Another set of questions concerns a resiliency analysis, which must not only account for the fact that the grid will struggle to provide peak power during 3 consecutive 90-degree days in Downstate NY (as you point out), but also that our past, present, and future assumptions about unlimited access to energy and peak power supply have created those increasingly frequent and excessive heat waves. Will we respond to present heat waves in a way that only guarantees more cruel heat waves for future beings? Given the challenges you lay out so clearly, Cornell on Fire has emphasized the need to reduce energy use: why is the grid unquestioningly delivering luxury consumption and approving constant expansion, for instance, rather than ensuring that we have clean energy to meet basic needs first . . . .
- Many of these problems come down to a reassessment of business-as-usual: For instance, you point out that electrification of all homes and personal vehicles will strain the grid. So why are we still relying on the personal vehicle model of business-as-usual? Why not take this moment to shift en masse to public transit and dramatically curb the use of personal vehicles? Why not convert existing housing to multi-family housing that makes much better use of existing resources and doesn’t waste energy heating/cooling thousands of square feet per (rich) person?
- As you point out, delivering existing demand would entail formidable technical challenges, like “a solar [array] that would have to be at least 20 times the size of our roof.” To us, this suggests that current demand is unsustainable. Why aren’t we asking the more fundamental question: how can our society radically simplify and reduce energy demand, in order to have a hope of transitioning to renewables in time?
- “A vast majority of the residents of NY State are just trying to get by and pay their day to day bills.” We think that this points to fundamental problems with our capitalist system. We also note that the carbon footprint of the most affluent sectors of society is enormous, and could be dramatically reduced without risking those who are living day to day.
And then, of course, there is this post-script at the end of Ms. Mays’s email:
Ithaca and Cornell lie on the traditional and contemporary homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ People (the Cayuga Nation). Land acknowledgements are only the first step toward reparations, restorative justice, and recognition.
Bottom line: other than a direction to go read Jacobson’s (discredited) work, there is no particular concern about whether the grid will or will not work after the elimination of fossil fuels. Instead, the main idea is to punish the people for their sins of luxury and overuse of energy. Somehow I don’t think that many New Yorkers understood that this is what they were voting for.
You peasant scum don’t need electricity?
We must bring back serfdom (for the non billionaires)- to save the planet! /s
A true Green’s idea of transportation are sedan chairs.
Actually it’s genuine Ho Chi Min Sandals.
Sandals!
Luxury….
We combat soldiers called them “Ho Chi Min Cheaters.” There were a surprising number of them scattered around the battlefields.
Electricity? Electricity? We don’t need no stinkin’ electricity.
We will have nothing and be happy.
Which is indeed horrible and will simply result in complete social collapse, but also in National collapse, as in collapse of manufacturing and any ability to have a national defense. The ROW will not play there “save the planet” dreams, so the end result is no reduction in the essential trace gas of CO2, but broken nations and poverty, and a subject population of different rulers, the only gave lip service to their “save the planet” nonsense.
Let her live by her own lights. They won’t be on very often.
On the contrary, lights are on but nobody’s home.
__________________________________________________________
The Climate Crisis is the Big Lie of our time.
There are too many Big Lies of our time to keep count.
And yes, fake climate crisis is one of the biggest.
Exactly!
Seems to be the weapon of choice.
I’m sure Stokes will be along to say “Yeah, but she’s not a scientist.” Never minding the fact that these people are destroying western civilization because they’re in power.
yep, Nick is one of the clueless clots supporting an agenda that wants to bring down western society…
… a society which he is part of….. D’Oh !!!
The big question is… WHY ???????
We can name a few more that troll this forum….
That must really hate themselves, and the society that has supported them all their pathetic lives. !
Biggest ever. What lie has even come close?
What lie has even come close?
__________________________
Marxism. Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot killed millions. Castro was a piker only because he was on an island and could only kill 75,000.
And of course “The Climate Crisis” is being pushed by Marxists.
Her other 3 points were complete bollocks as well.
Just a clarification about the use of the words “energy transition”
The switch to wind and solar renewables is ONLY for occasional ELECTRICITY generation !
Most politicians and policymakers are oblivious to the reality that wind and solar can ONLY generate “electricity”, as they CANNOT make any products for society.
Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society.
Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world.
All the parts for wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity from favorable weather conditions but manufacture NOTHING for society.
What politicians and policymakers really mean when they refer to “energy transition” is ONLY a transition to occasional electricity generated from wind and solar !
Good points, Ron. However, neither wind turbines nor solar panels generate electricity – they merely collect it.
Not exactly correct, but this explicitly depends on which definition of generate is used.
In common usage, these are examples of electricity generation.
Solar panels transform/convert electromagnetic energy into electricity. Some will debate whether or not solar voltaic is a generator.
Wind turbines transform/convert kinetic energy into electricity. The electro-magnetics are classified as generators in engineering parlance.
Steam turbine power plants transform heat (kinetic energy) into electricity. The electro-magnetics are classified as generators in engineering parlance.
To Engineer_Jim:
Batteries and capacitors collect electricity (storing electrons). Systems that output electricity and not the same as systems that collect it.
Include all forms of static electricity, such as clouds, wool, etc.
Once collected, they can discharge, but that technically is not the same as generate.
Language is important. If we do not have consistent definitions, how can we communicate?
And not very well at that. !
Inconsistent, unreliable, erratic, parasitic.
It is Communism, pure and simple.
Never has worked and never will.
If adopted the deaths caused will be way beyond those of the 20th century.
I’d rather take my chances with the boiling oceans.
‘Never has worked and never will.’
Agreed, but that argument will never convince the true believers, or more importantly, young people currently undergoing indoctrination in our schools.
Here’s a better argument:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
Thx for the link. A nice read.
It is noted that neither of the respondents from this university are in fact engineers, let alone engineers that have worked on grad electrics. They are, in fact, theorists who rely on information from a source that has been questioned by many electrical, mechanical and industrial engineers, including, apparently, the individual that contacted them.
Yes we pushed back on the Green Energy Act in Ontario, including the inaccurate expressions of science and manufacturing that underpinned it, but not without ridicule and abuse (I was abusively told by many lawyers that the Act would result in far more jobs that the auto industry, but I am still waiting to see that happen anywhere). Irrespective, we still have Justin Trudeau and his environmental warriors and true believers to deal with (along with their fantasies).
While devising new methods to produce energy are welcomed, the imposition of these systems and technologies upon the people is uncalled for. If you want an EV buy one, but don’t lord it over the rest of us or force us to pay your way because you truly believe that CO2 is somehow the magic control knob of temperature.
Sorry…grid systems and electrics. I did a bit when I worked at Toronto Hydro but would never hold myself out as any expert.
Oh, the grid? That’s just a bit of engineering. (Said with a sneer.)
While twirling your mustache?
And, of course, to give the land back to the people who were here first. New York might be a cleaner state if all the emigrants and their children and grand children and great grand children vacated the area and went back to Europe and southern lands
Ever notice the people that want to give land back never seem to give their land back or leave the country?
The “people who were here first,” were not here first,
And they weren’t peaceful, “noble savages”. They constantly waged horrific wars against each other for centuries before the white man arrived. All of their land was stolen from other tribes that are now long gone. They are hypocrites of the highest order.
Whence the Noble Savage pdf on ResearchGate
“Warfare, cannibalism, and species extinctions carried out by ancient tribal peoples worldwide.“
Indeed. Ms. May should try communing with the spirits of the Algonquins who were ‘supplanted’ by her beloved Cayugans.
Will they get back the beads?
Excellent article exposing the core ideology of the CLCPA.
“Somehow I don’t think that many New Yorkers understood that this is what they were voting for.”
I really do hope that folks here in NY wake up to the inevitable scarcity -> high cost -> rationing -> overt tyranny chain of thinking. They are NOT HIDING IT!
Vote them all out, who have believed the Jacobson-Howarth illusions.
I hope they continue on that path. A good lesson for the rest of us.
“Why not take this moment to shift en masse to public transit and dramatically curb the use of personal vehicles? Why not convert existing housing to multi-family housing”
Are the rich and famous going to take busses and live in multi-family housing? If they don’t – they sure the hell shouldn’t try to force others to do so.
Their 50 room mansions could easily house 50 other families
They’d be the Mansion Family
As happened after the Russian Revolution- as portrayed in the movie “Doctor Zhivago”. When the young doctor returned to his family mansion- a commy overlord explained to him why there were so many families living in the mansion and said to the doctor something like “that’s fine with you, right?”. Of course the doc said yes or he would have been eliminated.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mq__Z-Z_Ofs
I saw that in a theater when it first came out- around ’60? I didn’t understand it of course- but I was impressed with the battle scene and the hot blond babe. Later, in college, I took a course in the history of the Russian Revolution.
I wonder how many ‘Strelnikov’ wannabes have been inspired by the climate movement?
NYC should build a wind farm in Central Park. And drain those nice ponds and install solar farms on that acreage. I think Central Park is something like 900 acres. If it was all used for “green” energy- that might produce a hundredth of a percent of the future net zero needs of the city. I’m sure the folks living in the city won’t mind to help save the planet! Also, cover all the roofs in the city with solar panels. After they’ve done all that- we’ll see what other land can be wasted for net zero.
There was a time when NYC faced a genuine crisis – horse shit was going to clog up all the streets and make travel around the city nigh on impossible.
They didn’t dispense with horses and replace them with hamster teams though.
Instead they employed more shit kickers to remove the excess horse shit.
Of course, that solved the crisis.
But those were also times when rationality and practicality prevailed.
NYC faced peril in 1975 when it faced default on its debt. The state and federal governments had to step in and save it. I think that is the plan again. Get into it up to your neck yell help and hope someone with brains saves you from yourself. At least picking up horse droppings was confined to local labor.
One of the solutions was to replace horse motive power with coal fired steam – first transmitted by steel cables placed in slots in the streets (San Francisco was not the only city with cable cars) then by electricity (streetcars, subways, etc). This was described in the 1965 book The Time of the Trolley by William Middleton. Horse drawn carts were often replaced by electric trucks, and later ICE powered trucks.
Horse manure was most certainly a serious health problem.
That’s not Horse Shite it’s fertilizer to foster growth and new ideas 😎
The one who solved that crisis was Henry Ford
“We also note that the carbon footprint of the most affluent sectors of society is enormous, and could be dramatically reduced without risking those who are living day to day.”
Could be? How, by getting out the guillotine?
We need Robin Hood to come in and balance the economics between the haves and have nots.
Oh, wait, we have Democratic politicians doing that, but only after they get their percentages and make sure they are exempt.
They are not Democratic, they are merely Democrats.
I accept your edit.
It really, really pisses the “elites” off that we commoners have access to virtually the same level of luxury and technology that they do.
The obvious questions to Ms. Mays include:
What is your daily, weekly, monthly and annual energy consumption?
What is the square footage of your home?
Do you use air conditioning in the summer?
How often do you travel via private vehicle vs public transportation?
How many air miles do you log each year?
Why should you be treated any differently than the people you would force into high density housing, public transportation and force to only use enough energy for “basic needs”?
Sub-question: Do you accept a salary above basic subsistence level? If so, why do you support the capitalist system you so despise?
Sub-sub-question: Your university self-admittedly lies on “traditional and contemporary homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ People”; when can we expect to see the announcement that Cornell is vacating the property and giving it back to the indigenous people? I assume that effort is in the works. Virtue signaling is not virtuous.
You left out one big question: What will you do when your office (how big is it?) loses power and you have no lights and your computer and cell phone do not work?
I wonder if she wears sack cloth….
…and what will you do when a nation that refused your folly, takes over your land and dictates how you are to live, or die, and there is nothing your broken down non existent manufacturing vacuous culture can do to stop them.
Pssst…you wouldn’t have 14 hundred million dollar syncons handy would you?
The race to protect “heartbeat” of the grid as wind and solar replace coal and gas | RenewEconomy
while we’re working on the totally unforeseen solar duck curve problem-
Google and CSIRO team up to solve solar duck dilemma with tougher, smarter inverters | RenewEconomy
Do current inverters have any relationship what-so-ever to the solar duck curve problem?
Well, yes, in that they convert the DC output of that PV cell into A/C power so it can be dumped onto the grid to bedevil those in charge of keeping the lights on, but serving no real purpose otherwise.
Typical Progressive responses to pointed questions. Deflect or ignore when they don’t have an answer (which is usual) then accuse the questioner of some moral shortcoming while telling the populace how to live when they don’t follow their own advice.
“I suspect we can all agree that (1) no one can afford the costs of irreversible climate breakdown; (2) any costs to current stakeholders must be weighed against costs to future generations of life;”
If you respond by suggesting that we should immediately start building more nuclear power plants, they will say that is too expensive.
There is no such thing as irreversible anything when it comes to climate.
The world has been much warmer than it is today.
The world has seen CO2 levels as much as 20 times as high as today.
Did the climate breakdown? No. Life thrived during these periods.
In lithium they trust!
(69) Lithium battery fires cause MULTIPLE deaths and property damage | MGUY Australia – YouTube
To be fair, I haven’t heard of a fatal fire in a large scale lithium battery plant as they probably take a lot more care in preventing fires.
Having said that, outside of what was the Soviet Union, more people have been killed by lithium battery fires than by nuclear power plants.
what was this?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/06/24/exploding-batteries-spark-deadly-s-korea-factory-fire/
Chickened out of car charging….
That’s informative .You won’t beat the Brits to rock bottom
Despite witnessing similar examples almost every day, it still staggers me that anyone could be so staggeringly wrong about basic reality, yet utterly unaware of it.
I have said for years that hard core Greens really don’t like their fellow humans very much. This is Exhibit A.
There is no reasoning with zealots.
“Why not convert existing housing to multi-family housing that makes much better use of existing resources and doesn’t waste energy heating/cooling thousands of square feet per (rich) person?”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
My guess is that this person has NEVER bothered to read the source document for the above sentence.
“So why are we still relying on the personal vehicle model of business-as-usual? Why not take this moment to shift en masse to public transit and dramatically curb the use of personal vehicles?”
What do you do when public transportation doesn’t go where you need to be? I would have to walk at least 5 miles to get to the nearest bus stop and the buses only run till 6pm. What do you do if your shift starts at 11pm? The nearest emergency room is about 15 miles away. What happens if I can’t walk to the bus stop? What happens if the buses aren’t running? What happens if I can’t afford a paid transportation provider like an ambulance service? Am I just supposed to do the best I can on my own?
This person wants to restrict my Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness based on *her* opinions. What happened to “unalienable rights”?
They became alienable…
No, they get transferred to illegal aliens.
But you will be saving the planet 🙂
Saving the planet…. so we will have nothing and be happy?
What kind of life is that? I sooner roast today than live for decades in abject poverty for decades.
When skyscrapers ‘black out’ for a few hours at a time, and ‘nothing’ works… it may be getting too late, but it sure will wake people up.
Especially those stuck in elevators. We will get yet another new definition of woke.
Just another example of how Progressivism has been an abject social and economic failure. So they need a crisis as a distraction and to justify inevitable economic decline.
Howarth has an exceptionally diverse resume starting with his 1979 Ph.D. thesis–“The role of sulfur in salt marsh metabolism,” which would suggest as a “biogeochemist” he would have some training in thermodynamics. Not the only one to always look at the negative, but he also has a paper in Science on the ‘Not so’ Dead Zone. Agrees with NOAA apparently. https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/deadzonegulf-2021/
It is real but is another example of single element attribution, black Nitrogen, no doubt. Mostly limited to near the bottom hypoxia/anoxia has changed the system some with good evidence that it has also increased pelagic populations. It does kill fish when a rare summer norther produces upwelling, long known to run the fish to shore where long ago they were harvested.
I just got this reference from Odum School of Ecology authors, Athens, Georgia. Eugene Odum had the original ecology text and was not against applied science while understanding that ecology covered everything. Probably not so much sociology.
Beauvais, J., Byers, J. E. Racial Composition and Homeownership Influence the Distribution of Coastal Armoring in South Carolina, USA. Estuaries and Coasts 47, 1151–1165 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-024-01373-4
Your communism is showing, you might want to look to that.
The problem with these people is that they lack the power of thinking. On paper Ukraine had to perfect counter offensive but reality told otherwise.
To replace private vehicles with public transportation in our 24/7 economy you would need such a big puiblic enterprise that it will be unaffordable like everything in the green fantasy. It’s not just work or school, also visiting friends and family, day trips, hobby’s, sports, leisure,.. all the movements individuals make. Fewer movements means a smaller economy.
It also goes against human nature that wants to make life better. There was a time working class could not afford private cars, when we could buy a car we did because it made life better. Take away our car and you have to go back to an economy of that size.
All these ideas come from people who never had a real job. Take a look at their 15 minute city. You are 20 and want to buid your life. First find a job, then wife, move together, have children to send to school. Now think how this would work in reality within a 15 minute boundary? Not every 15 minute can have own university does it? But you can move, yes but my sportsclub is here. How is a factory that needs 4000 workers going to find them within 15 minute range? When you think about how it have to work in real life you see it’s nonsens. Life got a lot better when humans were no longer bound by their neighberhood after having access to a car.
A long time ago factories had shanty cities. I owe my soul to the company store. Those people were economic slaves (I shall not mince words). That situation led to unions.
Those that forget history or refuse to learn its lessons are doomed to repeat them.
If socialism and communism are so wonderful, then why have most failed. We still have a couple, true, but they would fail were it not for the world around them.
I don’t think either of us would enjoy working in an early factory, but conditions therein were much better than the agrarian existence experienced by most at that time. Or are you suggesting that the evil capitalists were roaming the countryside kidnapping people to staff their mills?
Frank,
In point I was agreeing with Rahx360. I also agree with you.
The nuance of my post is the 15 minute city will revert us back to those “good old days” of economic slavery.
In point of history, those “evil capitalists” had no need to roam the country side. Willing to work people were coming by the boatloads and took whatever jobs they could.
In 2000, New Yorker’s voted to elect the carpetbagger Hillary Clinton who produced nothing for them at all, save naming some post offices and highways after some people. Then they voted to re-elect her again, which she promptly resigned when appointed secretary of state by Obama.
Add that to their total enjoyment of nepotism with the Cuomo family dynasty and it is crystal clear that New Yorker’s never understand what they are voting for. But there are really no surprises there.