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.
Major IT Platforms Want Power from Nuclear Plants, but They Don’t Want to Build Them (Dan Yurman, Neutron Bytes)
Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson are adamantly opposed to nuclear power. Let us also remember that going with nuclear power is strictly a public policy decision done for purposes of maintaining energy reliability and security. For which one is obliged to pay a premium for the electricity being produced. Which also means that new-build nuclear power projects being pushed by government energy policies have elements of the socialist economic philosophy embedded within them.
Large IT firms building large hyperscale data centers say that despite the current and future estimated rapid increases in demand for electric power to run these large data centers which host power-gobbling artificial intelligence semiconductors, all of the risk to build new full-size reactors and/or small modular reactors (SMRs) must be carried by the utilities that want to sell power to these data centers.
These IT firms will not build the reactors themselves nor will they finance them.
Nor will these IT firms build their own wind farms, their own solar farms, or their own gas-fired power plants. These firms want the utilities to carry all the risk of building new generation capacity. Which meaans that in many cases, existing rate payers will be carrying nearly all the risk of the investments needed to supply new capacity for artificial intelligence data centers.
It is readily apparent that as generation capacity becomes constrained through early retirements of fossil-fuel power plants, AI data centers will be competing with residential and industrial customers for access to a limited supply of electric power.
All of which means that the price of electricity for all customers will continue to rise with predictable economic impacts. Such as large IT data centers being built in China or in other parts of Asia where electric power is relatively cheap and relatively plentiful compared to the United States.
When the New York power supply design for the future includes input from an official whose intellectual scope is at the level of the tooth fairy, society has a worry.
There needs to be a filter on the permissíon of officials to be employed in decisions above a certain importance. We see candidate Supreme Court Judges questioned by parliament. Do we need smaller versions of that process?
Gawd, the gummint’s gotta do something.
Geoff S
What? You want a return to meritocracy!?!?! How capitalistic of you!
(/sarc)
Two striking things in Ms May’s comments. This was the first:
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” . . . .
She actually seems to believe that changing lifestyles in NY is going to make a difference to the supposed climate breakdown. This is an almost universal assumption among activists demanding net zero policies in the US and UK. But they never explain how much effect their policies are going have on global emissions or temps. For the very good reason that they will have absolutely none, because these places are emitting such a tiny fraction of the supposedly problematic global emissions that are supposed to be the problem.
The second striking thing was this:
The argument started out, some of us will remember, as the assertion that all we have to do is convert to the electric society, plus convert electricity generation to wind and solar, and life could carry on as normal. Now the argument has progressed. Its no longer asserted that net zero is compatible with life as before. Now the argument is that it will not be, but that is no reason to abandon it. Rather, what we must do is get to net zero and adjust our lives around it.
Basically the proposal is not so much convert to EVs and heat pumps. More, get used to living without reliable electricity and make whatever social and economic changes this requires. In this case she is quite ready to consider abolition of the private car and only high density multi family households.
It cannot be long before it dawns on her that server farms too will have to go. Perhaps the PC and mobile phone also. Certainly no AI… It will be a bit like the Amish.
The Amish have more land and the ability to provide for themselves.
re: irreversible climate breakdown
How do we know that we are headed towards a “climate breakdown”? That assumes that the climate is static in its operation does it not? How does she know that any breakdown would be irreversible?
re: current stakeholder costs vs costs to future generations of life
What are the “costs” to which she is referring? Whom are the current stakeholders? And stakeholders in what, exactly? There isn’t enough information in the OP to understand what is being referenced. Is there a link to the conversation elsewhere perhaps?
re: …real and urgent need to change our lifestyles and “business as usual”
Yes, but that should be to improve upon the economy of electricity generation. We want it to be cheap and plentiful rather than expensive and scarce. I don’t think her vision of the target lifestyle nor the target business models should be considered as valid. If she chooses to eliminate or severely curtail her electricity usage at her expense elsewhere, that’s her business. She shouldn’t be allowed to curtail the usage of others at their expense.
re: the climate crisis is such that there is “no nonradical future”
I agree. But she is the “radical” (and not in a good way) here. The general populous want access to cheap electricity that is available when they need it. That should be protected by force from those that seek to deprive us of that provision.
My overarching question is this, how did we get to the state of affairs that this woman’s assertions are considered as rational? I think that is the underlying problem we must address. Our society has reduced itself to such a point that irrationality is considered the mark of an intellectual life.
Cipher:
Her position #4 [(4) the climate crisis is such that there is “no nonradical future” ] is the basis for all of the others [#1-3]. In this alternate universe of hers — which comes into being big-bang like by believing utterly the doomster climate activists’ RCP8.5 based predictions– all manner of irrational policies seem perfectly rational — to her and her fellow travelers.
So, cost, remaking of society, and even our constitutional rights are small potatoes compared to the existential crisis she foresees.Thus trying to convince the climate alarmists that their policies are unworkable is fruitless.
In the US we need to undercut the entire climate-industrial complex at the root.
To me, that requires reversing the endangerment finding on CO2 in the Supreme Courts’ 2009 ruling.
This would prevent the EPA from regulating CO2 since it would no longer be a pollutant. As it stands now the EPA has some legal basis for regulating most of the being energy used [~80% is FF based].
And note her use of the term “luxury consumption”! Translate that into “We will decide when, & how much, & for what you will be allowed to use electricity/energy. Say goodbye to air travel, cars, air conditioning etc!
The Road to Serfdom is paved by the “Good Intentions Paving Co.”.All the climate alarmists think they are saving the planet, thus their intentions [and policies] are beyond reproach.
“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”
No. No. No. No. Your suspicions are not supported by facts in evidence.
Oh, and my wife and I, rich folk, manage to get by on less than 1000 square feet each in a newish, energy efficient home with new energy efficient appliances, almost all LED lighting, and we drive small Hondas.
A bunch of drivel from a snot-nosed student activist with all the right sensitivities but no real-world experience – well-educated but ignorant.
The students are not “well educated”. If they were, they would know that water is ca. 90-99% of
the GHE. They would also know that a cubic meter of air contains only 0.839 grams of CO2, which
is too little of an amount to cause any heating of air.
Jacobson should undertake a feasibility project if he chooses to offer his consulting through a “nothing to it'” book that informs persons running a real project who are not engineers. I’m appalled at Mays’s and Howarth’s full confidence in success of the NY grid project on the basis of the book.. I’m sure US Associations of Engineers do not like a situation like this. I believe it could result in a big law suit by NY State when it fails!
Richard Ellenbogen should engage Mark Jacobson directly. And then share the email exchange with Robert Howarth and Francis Menton.
Maybe Howarth will be shocked into sanity, maybe not. But we here at WUWT would certainly enjoy the report.
He told you what they will do. It is not a debate.
Britannica: “At the beginning of the American Revolution a large part of the Cayuga tribe, which favoured the British, moved to Canada. After the Revolution, the Cayuga remaining in the United States sold their New York lands and scattered among other Iroquois peoples in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Ontario. Cayuga descendants numbered more than 3,500 in the early 21st century. (my bold)”
It appears Cornell is not located on “traditional Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ (Cayuga Nation) homelands“. after all, and has nothing for which to apologize. Ms. Bethany Ojalehto Mays is likely to be unhappy when vacating her righteousness.
The elites, in the large mansions, with swimming pools and multiple cars in the garage. Who frequently fly in their private jets for “important” meetings, both official and personal, love to go on and on about how the little people are just going to have to learn how to do with less.
It is as I have been saying, these CAGW clowns have no science to justify what they want. Climate and science don’t have a thing to do with their program. Rather it is purely politics, power and control. They can go to hell.
Yes, they can, and sadly they are trying to drag the world with them.
A little bit of investigation on the Internet returns this information about Bethany Ojalehto Mays :
From the Cornell University Website:
Bethany Ojalehto Mays, Assistant Professor:
From the ResearchGate website:
Bethany L Ojalehto’s Lab:
Here is one example of a research paper as posted on ReasearchGate:
Grounding principles for inferring agency: Two cultural perspectives
Bethany L Ojalehto, Cornell University | CU · Department of Human Development. PhD
Doug L Medin, Northwestern University | NU · Department of Psychology, PhD, Psychology
Here is a suggestion. We should think about authoring our own psychology analysis paper concerning the hows and the whys of the energy and social policies Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, and Bethany Ojalehto Mays are currently advocating: ‘The Epistemology of Intersectional Interactions among Marxist and Net Zero Fantasy Ideations.’
Bingo!
We’ve all been waiting years for someone to conduct this kind of research, cultural variation in grounding principles for inferring agency. And now thanks to Bethany Ojalehto May, et al, it’s finally here in all it’s gloriously convoluted detail.
So our esteemed energy advisor believes life would be better if we devolved to a socio-economic environment equivalent to the Indigenous Ngöbe Panama.
Has anyone asked the Indigenous Ngöbe adults in Panama which lifestyle they prefer?
We must all go net zero except for some pragmatic transitioning when fickles get a bit too fickle-
Government approves Senex Energy’s Surat Basin gas expansion plans (msn.com)
I’m always amazed at the number of supposed brainiacs, with the myriad of useless degrees, are involved in pushing the “green” crap on the rest of the planet.
There was a book I read a long time ago, in my youth, entitled “If you see the buddha on the road, kill him”, or something to that affect. Change the title a little bit and it becomes a useful instruction manual for present day doom prophets. Just sayin’.
I read this and after a moment of thought I decided the question should be reposed to 1) the costs of irreversible climate breakdown in human lives is no different than; 2) the costs in lives of preventing irreversible climate breakdown.
The assumption here is that “irreversible climate breakdown” will result in the loss of human life and additional suffering, that is, a smaller population. The conundrum is that to move backward from mobility and less energy use will also result in a loss of human life and additional suffering.
Huge multi-family dwelling to supply workers for cities and factories will require additional farm workers using animal power to produce crops. There will be no more foodstuffs from all over the world, only what can be locally grown and supplied in season.
These folks must worship Paul Erlich!
I sometimes think that the climate pushers are setting themselves up as the czars of the future or so they hope. When we the people do not have power at night to cook our dinner, and or re-charge our electric car, and the neighbour does, or the person living in the big flash mac mansion on the top of the hill with lights blazing. Setting themselves up for a revolution aka the czars of russia 1900’s. The serfs turned on them. Remember we are the serfs.
You need to think this more than merely sometimes.