Reliable, cheap, abundant energy is at the heart of industrial process, and it is essential for economic development.

In 1990, 67% of people in China lived in extreme poverty. 

By 2010, this figure had fallen to 11%. And today, it is less than 1%. This rate of progress is unprecedented in human history.

A key factor of this progress has been industrialisation, a vital component of which in turn has been the construction of energy infrastructure. 

In other words, burning coal.

Reliable, cheap, abundant energy is at the heart of industrial process, and it is essential for economic development.

Energy is required to power factories, offices, transport infrastructure, agriculture, schools and hospitals. Without it, the economy shuts down, and people are left again to subsistence. Poverty.

In 2019, a power cut in the UK left a million homes without electricity. It left people on trains stranded on lines and in tunnels. And it caused widespread chaos throughout the transport network. 

The continuous supply of cheap energy is taken for granted in the west. So much so, that a power cut that lasted for most people, just minutes, became headlines. Yet this short episode is daily life for many millions of people. 

The relationship between a continuous supply of energy and all forms of progress is now well understood. 

Yet today more than half a billion people – a population larger than the European Union – most of whom live in Sub Saharan Africa, still exist in extreme poverty and without access to electricity. 

Rather than demanding the rapid deployment of energy infrastructure, to allow people to develop enterprises, many campaigning NGOs have instead demanded ‘sustainable’ alternatives.

They have lobbied for restrictions in private finance for overseas projects, ringfenced aid and development budgets, and to require indebted countries meet environmental goals as part of their debt-relief programmes.

This has robbed people and governments of the means to develop infrastructure according to their own needs, and according to well-understood principles of economic development. 

And it has robbed people of the freedom to exploit their own natural resources for their own benefit. 

This is not a situation that would be tolerated in more developed economies. The loss of power supply and its economic consequences would quickly lead to political change. 

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July 2, 2020 at 02:47AM

The decision by Forbes to erase Michael Shellenberger’s climate apology was not the first time their editors censored a critical voice in the climate debate. Last August, they did the same thing: an interview with Professor Nir Shaviv was removed by Forbes. Here he describes what happened.

A few days ago I was interviewed by Doron Levin, for an article to appear online on forbes.com. After having seen a draft (to make sure that I am quoted correctly), I told him good luck with getting it published, as I doubted it will.

Why? Because a year ago I was interviewed by a reporter working for Bloomberg, while the cities of San Francisco and Oakland were deliberating a climate change lawsuit against Exxon-Mobil (which the latter won!), only to find out that their editorial board decided that it is inappropriate to publish an interview with a heretic like me. Doron’s reply was to assure me that Forbes’ current model of the publication online allows relative freedom with “relatively little interference from editors”. Yeah Sure.

After the article went online yesterday and Doron e-mailed so, I saw how much relative exposure it received. It had already more than 40000 impressions in a matter of a couple of hours. Impressive. All that took place while I was relaxing with my family on a Tel-Aviv beach. But this didn’t last long. Although I continued to relax at the beach, the article was taken down for “failing to meet our editorial standards”, which apparently means conforming to whatever is considered politically correct about climate change.

The piece itself is (or was, or will be?) found here. A copy was posted here.

In any case, the main goal of this post is to provide the scientific backing for the main points I raised in the interview. Here it comes.

First and foremost, I claim that the sun has a large effect on climate and that the IPCC is ignoring this effect. This I showed when I studied the heat going into the oceans using 3 independent datasets – ocean heat content, sea surface temperature, and most impressively, tide gauge records (see reference #1 below), and found the same thing in a subsequent study based on another data set, that of satellite altimetry (see reference #2 below). Note that both are refereed publications in the journal of geophysical research, which is the bread and butter journal of geophysics. So no one can claim it was published in obscure journals, yet, even though the first paper has been published already in 2008, it has been totally ignored by the climate community. In fact, there is no paper (right or wrong) that tried to invalidate it. Clearly then, the community has to take it into consideration. Moreover, when one considers that the sun has a large effect on climate, the 20th century warming is much better explained (with a much smaller residual). See reference #3 below, again refereed).

1. I should add that there are a few claims that the sun cannot affect the climate because of various reasons, none holds water. Here is why: The first claims is that “the sun cannot have a large effect on climate because changes in the irradiance are too small to do so, and we don’t know of a mechanism that can”. This is irrelevant because given that the oceans prove that the sun has a large effect on climate, we must consider it even if we don’t know how it comes about. Often in science we are forced to accept a theory we don’t fully understand because the empirical evidence suggests so. Mendelian genetics explained reality pretty well (though we now know it is a bit more complicated) a century before Watson and Crick showed what the underlying mechanism is. Does it mean that we should have discarded Mendelian genetics for a century without knowing the mechanism? Pauli postulated the existence of the neutrino a quarter of a century before it was actually detected. Similarly, almost all cosmologists and particle physicists assume that dark matter exists, because an overwhelming amount of evidence suggests so, and because alternatives simply don’t work (mainly MOND, e.g., as a post-doc and I have shown in a paper as well as many others). However, we don’t really know what dark matter really is (there are many suggestions), but its existance has to be considered. Having said that, we actually do see very clear empirical evidence pointing to the link, as I describe below.

2. The second claim is that “solar activity decreased from the 1990’s but the temperature continued to increase. So the sun cannot be the reason for the heating”. It is wrong at several levels. First, one has to realize that the temperature anomaly at a given time is not some fixed factor times the forcing at the time. This is because the system has a finite heat capacity and various interesting feedbacks. Without properly modeling it, erroneous conclusions can be reached. A simple example is ruling out the solar flux as the major source of heat because between noon time and say 2pm, the solar flux is decreasing but the temperature is increasing! (Similarly, the average solar flux is decreasing during the month of July in the northern hemisphere, but the temperature is increasing). Solar activity has been high over the latter half of the 20th century such that even after solar activity started to decreases, the temperature should continue increasing for a decade or so, albeit at a lower pace. Second, the above argument is extremely simplistic. Proper modeling has to consider that human have contributed as well to the net positive forcing. And indeed, when one considers both the large effect that the sun has, and the anthropogenic forcing, one can explain 20th century climate change  if climate sensitivity is on the low side, much better than the IPCC models that exclude the large effect that the sun has, but assume a large climate sensitivity instead. See reference #3 below, as well as Roy Spencer’s short talk showing that climate models generally give a much larger temperature increase than has been observed over the past 2 decades.

3. The third claim is that when 20th temperature changes are compared with solar activity and anthropogenic forcing, one doesn’t see the 11 year solar cycle in the temperature data, which can be used to place an upper limit on the solar effect. This faulty argument is related to the previous one. It too assumes that the temperature should be proportional to the radiative forcing at any instant, and because the temperature variations over the 11 year solar cycle are only of order 0.1°C, the contribution to 20th century warming should be similar since the secular increase in the solar forcing is comparable to the variations over the 11 year solar cycle. However, the large heat capacity of the oceans damps any temperature variations on short time scales. Proper modeling reveals that an 0.1°C variation over the solar cycle should actually correspond to a variation much larger on the centennial time scale, in fact, about half to two thirds of the warming (see reference #3 below and my comments about the BEST analysis from Berkeley who “proved” that the sun cannot have a large climate effect based on the above argument).

As I said above, we now know from significant empirical data where the solar climate link comes from. It is through solar wind modulation of the galactic cosmic ray flux which governs the amount of atmospheric ionization, and which in turn affects the formation of cloud condensation nuclei and therefore cloud properties (e.g., lifetime and reflectivity). How do we know that?

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July 2, 2020 at 02:33AM

No country in the world has ever run itself on wind and solar power alone; no country ever will. Weather-dependent sources are simply no substitute for coal, gas or nuclear power which are available 24 x 7, on demand. And no amount of battery storage or pumped hydro will resolve the equation in favour of the unreliables.

Jay Lehr & Tom Harris pick up on the theme below.

Wind/Solar Electric Grid Needs Fossil Fuel Backup – Here Is Why
America Out Loud
Jay Lehr & Tom Harris
27 May 2020

There is Not a Wind/Solar Electric Grid In The World Without Fossil Fuel Backup!

You might be shocked to learn that no where on planet Earth does there exist a single community electric power grid that operates with only wind turbines and or solar cells. Without an equal or greater amount of fossil fuel power, usually natural gas or coal operating on standby 100% of the time, ready for the wind to slow or get too fast and the sun to stop shining⏤brownouts and or blackouts would be everyday occurrences.

The grid is the electrical industry’s term for all of the hardware and software needed to convert fuel into electricity. The system must ensure our safety from malfunctions, security to customers, and safety for the community. It must not dip below its advertised electric capacity or brownouts and blackouts will occur crippling the companies depending on that electricity being constantly available.

For a simple example, let’s assume we are a local electric utility in Yourtown, USA. It’s a town with a population of 40,000 and another 15,000 people in the surrounding farms, along with small factories, professional offices, shops, a hospital, bakeries, etc. Everyone in the area needs reliable and affordable electricity. Your town does have a modern grid with 99.98 percent reliability.

In order to guarantee that availability, the grid must have a 75 percent excess capability above the everyday norm. Twenty five percent of the excess must be in the “spinning reserve mode,” another 25 percent must be in the “peaking mode,” and 25 percent in the “back-up mode.” Let’s examine each of these portions of the necessary reserves.

Spinning Reserve: If some malfunction happens at any time and shuts down a generating plant, a back-up plant needs to kick-in and pick up 100 percent of the lost power in seconds. If it’s a few seconds too late, the electrical demand will overwhelm the grid. It will be a disaster.

The only way to ensure that a blackout doesn’t happen is to have a back-up fossil fuel power plant already running at about 90-95 percent of rated power. If the state or local officials require the grid to obtain some power from wind turbines and solar panels, we know for sure they will not operate some of the time and there must be back up fossil fuel power equal to or greater than that provided regularly by wind and solar.

The backup plant burns fuel but creates no electricity. They will burn almost the same amount of fuel as they would if there was no solar or wind plants connected to the grid because solar and wind can not serve as backup power. So what is the point of having wind and solar power on the system. It eliminates virtually no use of fossil fuel. Yet in this election year you are hearing non stop that many folks want to eliminate the use of fossil fuel, drill no more wells, mine no more coal and switch to wind turbines and solar panels. It can’t be done and the thought that they could be backed up with batteries of any kind economically is a pipe dream today and will always be for reasons of the basic physics we will explain in a future article.

As a result, electric utilities are wasting capital, fuel, and operating costs thinking wind and solar can contribute a significant portion of their available energy. It just increases the cost of community power.

Peak mode: This is the extra electrical power that’s needed twice a day, typically for two to three hours each. First is the morning peak demand, from six to nine AM to cook breakfast, get ready to go to school and work.

The other high demand period is usually from about five to seven PM. That’s when the extra power is needed to cook dinner, fire up the AC or central heat, etc. But solar plants can’t fill these peak demands either. That’s because solar produces electricity near mid-day when it’s needed the least. Wind turbines might be put to work a few hours in the morning or evenings.

In all cases, however they still need the spinning reserve fossil-fuel back-up plant running at about 90 percent of rated power, 100 percent of the time.

Back-up Reserve: These power plants are like a spare tire in the trunk of a car; they sit there until called to duty. But unlike the spinning reserve, these reserves don’t need to be up and on-line in seconds. So, they only operate when they are started up, typically for scheduled maintenance on other plants.

Depending on the type of plant, it may take several hours or more for them to come online, and then they may run for days, weeks, or a year non-stop. Having a power plant just sitting there, doing nothing most of the time is very expensive, but is a valuable insurance policy against failure. Wind, nor solar can fill this insurance bill either because they can never be reliable 24 hours a day for any large number of days

Let’s examine the real-life experience of Germany that made the bold decision to go all-in on being green. It is now the number one producer of wind and solar electrical power in the world on a per capita basis.

In 2004 Germany launched an aggressive plan to replace many of their coal and nuclear plants with wind and solar.

By 2018 Germany had an installed electrical base of about 210 gigawatts. Of that, 28 percent was wind power, 26 percent solar, and the remaining 46 percent was their remaining fossil fuel and nuclear power plants along with a little hydro. At least that is the nameplate rating of the power capability of these solar and wind installations when operating under the best conditions. However, the real production is startlingly different.

While these solar and wind plants could theoretically produce 46 percent of Germany’s needs, in actuality, they only produce about 12 percent of Germany’s total electrical output.

Who knew that one of the world’s most prosperous and industrialized nations could not figure out how to produce enough electricity to meet the needs of its own people and industry from wind and solar power? But we now know theirs was an insurmountable task. How did they not realize this. Those in the US who are trying to do the same do not realize it either.

To relieve this national shortage, Germany has been importing vast amounts of electrical power, mostly from France, and are paying exorbitant rates for it. The average cost of electricity in Germany is now almost three times the cost in the United States.

Germany is now launching a major program to rebuild dozens of fossil-fueled power plants. They have also signed a contract with Russia to build a natural gas pipeline from Siberia to fuel their electrical demand and to back up its unreliable wind and solar plants. If the Democrat Party wins in November it would appear the United States will follow the unfortunate path that Germany took.

Note: Portions of this article were excerpted from the 2020 book A Hitchhikers Journey Through Climate Change with permission of the author Terigi Ciccone. The book is the best possible source for parents and grandparents to explain reality to their children.
America Out Loud

Why should any of this come as a surprise??

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July 2, 2020 at 02:32AM

Some like Shellenberger have the courage and profile to stand up to this ill-educated, ill-bred mob and prevail. But for the average person, including academics, it’s flat-out terrifying. So they stand mute and trembling as the tumbril passes by.

It’s big news when somebody prominent apologizes for being badly wrong on a major public matter, promises to do better going forward and urges others to do the same, right? Unless the person commits heresy like, say, Michael Shellenberger.

In case you missed it, and they did their best to make sure you did, Shellenberger is an excruciatingly woke environmentalist and progressive. By his own account “At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.”

His environmentalist credentials are equally solid beginning with raising money for Rainforest Action Network at 16. But in cancel culture, all that is solid melts into air … with a little help from a match. Including Shellenberger’s remarkable cri de coeur in Forbes starting “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.”

Sorry. Did I say “in Forbes?” Alas, if you go there now you get a terse “This page is no longer active. We regret any inconvenience.” In the fast-vanishing spirit of fair play, I contacted Forbes to see if it was just a technical glitch. Nyet, tovarisch.

Their initial wary response asked “the angle of your column” and suggested “a brief call for us to connect.” I retorted that “the ‘angle’ of my column has no bearing on the reasons for your decision” and asked bluntly “Was it because you discovered a factual error? Because of protests from subscribers? Because of protests from within the organization? Because something in it struck you as legally problematic? It’s a pretty major decision. I assume someone fairly senior in the organization took it, and that this person knows why. Please ask them, and tell me what they said.”

Their reply, which would make a seasoned politician or bureaucrat blush, read, in its entirety, “You can attribute the below statement to a Forbes spokesperson. Forbes requires its contributors to adhere to strict editorial guidelines. This story did not follow those guidelines, and was removed.”

I responded tartly: “Thanks. But obviously this statement raises fresh questions, particularly: 1. Which guidelines did it not follow? 2. In what way did it not follow them? 3. How often do you remove a story for violating those guidelines?”

As you may imagine, that inquiry went down the memory hole. I won’t say I became a non-person because I think I was one already. But Shellenberger sure did.

Except he didn’t, because for all its faults the internet is a really lousy place to hide things. People archived the piece (here for instance). And Shellenberger’s new book, Apocalypse Never, is Amazon’s “#1 Best Seller in Climatology.”

Since you can read it for yourself despite Forbes’ craven hypocrisy, I won’t spend much time on the column’s contents, including statements like “Climate change is not making natural disasters worse.” But let me quote one highly pertinent part.

“Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an ‘existential’ threat to human civilization, and called it a ‘crisis.’ But mostly I was scared.”

Yes. Scared. “I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.”

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July 2, 2020 at 02:11AM