Anyone who still believes in an ‘inevitable’ transition to wind and solar, clearly hasn’t been paying attention.

The same crowd tells us that ‘coal is dead’, ignoring the fact that coal demand continues to rise and the record prices paid for the black stuff is through the roof.

The Russian advance on Ukraine has only added to the demand for coal, along with the demand for oil and gas; nuclear power is back in vogue, too. What Vlad’s attack hasn’t done is, create any additional demand for wind turbines and solar panels.

It seems like only yesterday that Elon Musk was telling us that, by adding a few trillion-terawatt hours’ worth of his lithium-ion batteries, the wind and solar transition was a shoe-in.

Now Musk and his rent-seeking buddies seem to be running a mile from their wilder claims about our wind and solar-powered future.

Paul Murray picks up the thread with an interview involving Mark Latham and Cory Bernardi.

Europe’s green policies were a ‘historic mistake’
Sky News
Paul Murray
8 March 2022

In the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war’s impact on the European energy market, the continent can’t open previously closed coal mines “fast enough,” according to NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham.

Mr Latham said the European Union’s green policies were a “historic mistake”.

“The whole European strategy was to go 100 per cent renewable, and when you couldn’t get to 100 per cent, rely on Russian oil and gas to fill the gap.”

Transcript

Paul Murray: Now Elon Musk put out an interesting tweet. Which brings us to the conversation of energy security, and what’s happening right now with Russia, Ukraine, and oil and gas. Elon Musk, a man who is a billionaire because of electric cars says, “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”

Boris Johnson, who of course hosted the COP 26 event last year in Glasgow, demanding everyone up their ante, including down on fossil fuels. Guess what he’s now saying after there is an absolute need to cut off Russia from the global oil supply, as a way of funding its war in Ukraine?

Boris Johnson: We have to consider how we can all move away as fast as possible from dependence reliance on Russian hydrocarbons, Russian oil and gas. And everybody’s doing that. Everybody’s on the same journey. Some countries will find it faster and easier than others. That’s all, but we’re going to do it… We’re going to do it together. But…

Paul Murray: So Mark, how can Australia play a role in this? What can Australia do to make sure that we match what Russia is about to be denied to sell the rest of the world?

Mark Latham: Well, maybe those characters there, Boris Johnson, every European leader, Elon Musk, all in there cheering on renewables in the United States, maybe they need to be like Perrottet and say, “Sorry.” Because this is an historic mistake. The whole European strategy was to go a hundred percent renewable. And when you couldn’t get to a hundred percent, rely on Russian oil and gas to fill the gap. And they were closing down coal fired power stations, they were closing down nuclear power station in Germany. And now of course, they can’t reopen them fast enough in recognition of two realities. They’ve just had a wind drought and other problems in Europe so that the renewables haven’t been effective. And of course with Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, they can’t rely on his resources anymore.

There’s some footage around, Paul, of Donald Trump berating the head of NATO saying, “Listen, what’s going on here? The United States, we fund NATO to the hilt and you guys have just set up a gas deal and a gas pipeline with Putin. This is just a really stupid thing to do.” And Trump, of course, was right in that remonstration with NATO, but all the European leaders should hang their heads in shame, because they’ve got this historically wrong.

And the lesson for Australia, of course, is now is the worst possible time in history to go a hundred percent renewable, there’s international instability on the security front, the issues about Russia, China, and on it goes. Australia’s got to build up its own energy self-reliance and stop leaving our most valuable resources, our gas, coal, and uranium, in the ground. Or worst of all, giving them to other nations to power up their systems and their manufacturing and denying our own country that opportunity.

Paul Murray: Absolutely. Well, let’s go to Cory. As Andrew Bolt pointed out in the last hour, as Matt Canavan talked about on this programme before, a couple of nights ago, we’ve got a scenario where the world needs to be heated. One of the ways they’re going to do that is with coal. Yet Queensland government refuses to give Adani 2.0, refuses to give approval to a coal mine in New South Wales. Of course, the courts turned around and say, “No, no, you can’t have new coal mines because it’s not about the emissions here, it’s about the emissions somewhere else.”

When will somebody break through Pollyanna land and go, “Oy, here’s how it works. Unless there is what we abundantly have, guess what’s going to happen. They go cold in… they go cold in Europe and they get rich in Russia.”

Cory Bernardi: Paul, people will wake up to this when there is a shortage of electricity and when prices go much, much higher than they are. And that’s the breakthrough we need, quite frankly. The whole renewables, the net zero pursuit, the abandonment of fossil fuels has been an indulgence of a truly soggy society. A society that has had nothing serious to worry about. And so it’s pursued these green dreams, that even if you got to net zero by 2050, it would cost $150 trillion. And would include, this is the Bank of America who says this, and would necessitate massive mining operations for rare earths, which would create more pollution than they would likely save.

This is a folly. It is insane. And people have been calling it out for ages, but so many have been captured by the zeitgeist. It is literally we’re pushing against the piece of string, but they will wake up when they can’t turn the lights on. When electricity is too much, when fuel which is… I filled up with petrol today Paul, it was $150 to fill my car with fuel today. And that’s at a $1.96 a litre for diesel, you wait till it gets to 2.20 or 2.30 or 2.40 and people will be whingeing and complaining as they should because our governments right around the world have bowed to this green dream and it is destroying us.
Sky News

From Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.

by Dan Hughes

I recently ran across the paper by Isenko et al. [2005] listed below. The second paragraph of the introduction states:

“According to the conservation of energy, the loss of potential energy for a volume of water is sufficient to warm it by 0.2 C for each 100 m of lowering.”

The described process corresponds to isentropic compression of liquid water by increasing the pressure by about 1 MPa, through a change in elevation of 100.0 m. Note that the temperature change is given independent of any other information relating to flow velocity, kinetic energy, viscosity, dissipation, or any details of the flow channel that might affect conversion to thermal energy by viscous dissipation of kinetic energy. Especially note that for the case of flows in horizontal channels, for which the potential energy change is zero, apparently there would not be any temperature changes. The same can be said relative to flows upward against gravity.

The calculation by the authors is related the same concept that is the subject of this previous post. That is, the total potential energy at the top of a column of water is converted to thermal energy content by the action of viscous dissipation. As in the subject papers of the previous post, the temperature increase is too high.

When the process is considered to be compression of subcooled liquid water isolated from interactions with its surroundings, the temperature increase is estimated to be about 0.01 K per 100 m.

In general, textbooks recommend that temperature increase due to viscous dissipation can be neglected for all but a few special situations. The recommendation is particularly valid whenever thermal interactions between the fluid and channel walls, i.e. heat transfer, is the focus of the application.

The temperature increase for compression of subcooled liquid water is estimated in the attached PDF FILE. [WorkPost03]

Reference

Evgeni Isenko, Renji Naruse, and Bulat Mavlyudov, “Water temperature in englacial and supraglacial channels: Change along the flow and contribution to ice melting on the channel wall,” Cold Regions Science and Technology, Vol. 42, pp. 53– 62, 2005.

Herbert B. Callen, Thermodynamics: An Introduction to the Physical Theories of Equilibrium Thermostatistics and Irreversible Thermodynamics, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, New York, (1960).

W. Bridgman, “A Complete Collection of Thermodynamic Formulas,” Physical Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 273–281, (1914). doi:10.1103/PhysRev.3.273.

W. Bridgman, The Thermodynamics of Electrical Phenomena in Metals and a Condensed Collection of Thermodynamic Formulas, Dover Publications, Inc. New York. (1961).