Again with the white guilt. It is the responsibility of the USA to help Indonesia go green. Not China or India or Russia. We are only $27T in debt we can support the whole world.
The foolishness continues. Report On The Status Of The U.S. Energy Storage Project April 07, 2022/ Francis Menton As you likely know, on April 22, 2021 the “United States” “set a goal” of reaching “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.” You know that because on that date (Earth Day!) President Biden issued a press release so announcing, although the document does not inform us how Biden was able to commit the “United States” to such an ambitious goal by the device of a mere press release, without any sort of affirmative action from the Congress, let alone any consultation with you. . . . But clearly the people committing us to these goals have to know that a fully wind/solar and fossil-fuel-free electricity future requires lots of energy storage. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that wind and solar produce nothing on a calm night. And indeed, if we look around at what our government is up to, we find considerable activity on the energy storage front. But there is an almost complete disconnect between, on the one hand, current efforts of small research grants and pilot programs to investigate which of various new technologies might work, and, on the other hand, a multi-hundred-trillion dollar total transformation of the entire energy economy that will supposedly be accomplished within the next 13 years using technology not yet invented let alone demonstrated at scale. READ MORE
The Chinese and the Indians have their own views of the situation. Reality Cannot Penetrate Into The Fantasy World Of Climate Campaigners April 05, 2022/ Francis Menton It was only a few weeks ago when the UN’s International Energy Agency issued its Report on “CO2 Emissions in 2021.” (The Report does not bear a precise date, but only “March 2022.”) I covered the IEA’s Report in my previous post a few days ago. The Report gives detail as to the obvious fact that world CO2 emissions, after a downward blip in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, have resumed their rapid increase, mostly attributable to massive deployment of coal-fired electricity generation resources in large-population developing countries like China and India. In any rational world, this Report would have to have dashed any remaining dreams of climate campaigners that overall world CO2 emissions would see anything but large ongoing increases for the foreseeable future. The climate-obsessed jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe already represent only a shrinking minority of world energy consumption, headed for insignificance as the large-population countries of the developing world join the fossil fuel age. For example, why would a small-population jurisdiction like New York — with about 20 million people, compared to about 2.8 billion for the combination of China and India, and with existing fossil-fuel electricity generation capacity of about 25 GW — struggle to reduce its fossil-fueled electricity generation by, say, one GW per year, when China alone is adding 38 GW of coal-fired power plants this year, and another 47 GW next year, with hundreds more gigawatts worth of coal plants already in the pipeline? The answer is that reality just can’t penetrate into the fantasy world of the climate campaigners. READ MORE
Reality bites. China Continues To Laugh At Western "Green Energy" Foolishness April 02, 2022/ Francis Menton With an energy cost crisis now striking Europe and to a lesser extent the U.S., some cracks have begun to appear in the “net zero” utopian dreams being pursued almost universally by Western politicians. Nevertheless, at this writing, the rapid elimination of use of fossil fuels, supposedly to fight “climate change,” remains official government policy throughout Europe, at the federal level in the U.S., in most blue American states, and as well in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Here in the U.S., although President Biden has ordered some temporary measures like release of some oil from the nation’s strategic reserves, the full federal bureaucracy remains under orders from the top to force reduction in production and use of fossil fuels in every way it can devise. Meanwhile, states like New York and California have rapidly approaching legal deadlines for shuttering all fossil fuel power plants, prohibiting all automobiles other than electric ones, banning natural gas for heating and cooking, and otherwise quickly upending the last century of energy progress that has made our lives affordable and enjoyable. We are supposed to believe that the official fossil fuel suppression policies will stop “climate change” and “save the planet” through the mechanism of rapid aggregate reductions of emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases.” The rescue of the planet’s climate will make worthwhile our sacrifices in the form of higher energy prices, increased taxes to support subsidies to renewable energy, and restrictions on lifestyle. But in fact, that narrative is all so much hogwash. READ MORE
Biden supports reducing pollution so much that he took an 85-vehicle motorcade to visit the Pope last year...
Carbon sinks to the rescue! “… the CO2 airborne fraction has decreased by 0.014 ± 0.010 decade−1 since 1959. This suggests that the combined land–ocean sink has been able to grow at least as fast as anthropogenic emissions” [link] Week in review – climate edition Posted on April 9, 2022 by curryja | 35 comments by Judith Curry
Take a stand against this idiocy. New UN IPCC report claims ‘Now or Never’ to flight climate – That’s an easy choice – NEVER! – More tipping points – Point-by-point rebuttal Guest Blogger “Absolutely nothing in this IPCC report is true. It is all fake and threatens the existence of civilization, especially the West because the East and the South don’t buy it.…
Alarmist fantasies, deconstructed. The Future Of Energy In The U.S.: Which Projection Do You Believe? April 10, 2022/ Francis Menton What will the production and consumption of energy look like in the United States in 2050? There are two very different answers to that question. On Side One are those who assert that we face a “climate crisis” that can only be addressed by the rapid forced suppression of the production and use of fossil fuels. Therefore, some combination of government coercion, investor pressure and voluntary institutional action will shortly drive coal, oil and natural gas from the energy marketplace, to be replaced by carbon-free “renewables.” And thus by 2050 we will have achieved the utopia of “net zero” carbon emissions. Those on Side Two think that the Side One vision is completely unrealistic fantasy. Simple arithmetic shows that without massive energy storage no amount of building of wind and solar generators can make much difference in fossil fuel use for electricity production; and adequate energy storage devices to fill the gap do not even exist as a technical matter, let alone at remotely reasonable cost. Result: no matter what the grandees say, fossil fuel production and use in 2050 will be as high or higher than they are now. Which Side do you think is right? READ MORE
"The dumbest experiment on Earth" - amen. I also like the point that scientists do not all agree on anything. Thus, being informed by science is not simply a matter of finding a scientists somewhere who agrees with one's own position. Finding confirmations is not what it means to be informed by science.
Which is a worthless chart. Which is completely artificial, primarily because of the cost of the Government. Most of the sources lowballed is simply because of government subsidies, and few of those have had to be replaced yet. Where as the highest ones are insanely expensive not because of the cost of producing power, but the insane costs when one is finally decommissioned. And I also notice one major source of power completely missing from that graph. No, sorry but I reject that chart and the idea of "levelized cost of energy" because I recognize it for what it is. An attempt to reward and direct production to what they want, and penalizing any other sources.
Elron is the biggest snake oil salesman on the planet. Why people continue to suck up to him is beyond me.
More on renewable subsidies. Renewable Subsidies Have Cost £78 Billion In Last 10 Years Guest Blogger From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT By Paul Homewood According to Boris Johnson: “Overall, if you look at what we have done with renewables it has helped to reduce…
News about carbon capture. Carbon Collect Unveils Mechanicaltree™ In Partnership With Arizona State University Charles Rotter Carbon Collect’s MechanicalTree™ is up to a thousand times more efficient at removing CO2 from the air than a natural tree. . . .
Killing birds. New Study: Wind, Solar Energy Now Killing 48% Of Priority Bird Species With ‘Population-Level Effects’ Guest Blogger Scientists have found 11 are now experiencing at least a 20% decline in their population growth rates because wind turbines and solar panels are killing them and/or destroying their limited-range…
Why is it that so many thing they can improve on nature? Trees do a lot more than just remove carbon. They actually inject it into the ground, improving the ecology of the soil. They also through evaporation add humidity to the atmosphere. And this is in addition to nourishing countless animals including insects and birds. Sorry, almost any time I hear that somebody has "improved nature" through machines, I get a bad feeling. Especially as they have likely not thought of all the implications.
I'd look at it a little differently. We don't (and won't) have enough trees to mitigate the damage we humans are doing. So, if someone can figure out how to efficiently/cost effectively reduce the carbon in our atmosphere, it shouldn't just be ignored. Of course, so far plans to remove carbon haven't actually worked, so there is that ...
This article brags about not using blowers or fans. However, I don't believe that is the way most of the carbon capture technologies actually use electrical power. The text says that once "full", the disks collapse into the unit below where the carbon is removed. But, nothing is said about what that entails. I really hope this works! But, I don't believe we have the full story on this technology yet. It'll be great to watch this! I know one place where there is plenty of carbon that comes under pressure - no fans or blowers required! >> The top of fossil fuel smoke stacks!
I can guarantee it still uses electricity. But then you have other issues. How much electricity? What is the MTBF? What components are needed to make them? Best to just plant more trees and other plants.
Well, it sounds like we're roughly in agreement concerning this technology - it has a ways to go to prove itself. I'm sure planting trees is a good thing, and I'd support doing that. It seems clear that there is no single solution. I don't have data on how planting trees compares to other methods, but we're probably going to need to do some of everything.
Change in policy coming in Australia? Aussie Election Ruling Coalition Carbon Net Zero Split? Eric Worrall As Australia approaches a tight May 21 federal election, the countryside based junior ruling coalition partners, the Nationals, appear on the verge of walking away from their net zero 2050…
Yep the date keeps moving in every country. Brazil is going to stop deforestation by 2030! Australia eh, despite their obsession with this issue carbon emissions are higher than the USA. So are Canada's. Amazing how these countries buy in to the bull but never seem to want to do anything. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/