Guest “Fracking-A Bubba” by David Middleton

Jude Clemente is one of my favorite energy analysts. His articles for Forbes are always awesome. Jude hits it out of the park with this one:

FORBES BUSINESS ENERGY

5 Things I Truly Don’t Understand About The “Inevitable Energy Transition”

Jude Clemente

Contributor

This list could be closer to 50 but let’s just stick to a handful of them. I live in this business every day, and I’m just so confused.

1. In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dispatchable (i.e., baseload, almost always available) coal, gas, and nuclear power? In other words, if our weather is becoming less predictable, how is it that a consuming economy like ours can, or should even try, predictably rely on weather-dependent resources? ERCOT exemplifies this: the Texas grid operator has around 31,000 MW of wind capacity but goes into winter expecting only 6,000 MW (just 20%) of wind farms to be available to generate electricity. 

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2. Climate change is a global issue, so how is it that we can claim climate benefits for unilateral climate policy. For example, U.S. gasoline cars constitute just 3% of global CO2 emissions, so how will getting rid of them impact climate change? But this dose of real science doesn’t stop California leaders, a state responsible for just 1% of global CO2 emissions, from telling us that energy policy in the nine-county region of Northern California alone is “responsible for protecting air quality and the global climate in the nine-county Bay Area.” No wonder then that a Biden administration official was incoherent when asked how $50 trillion in climate spending in the U.S. will lower any global temperature rise.

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3. Back to electric vehicles. Green-tinted but surely practical Bloomberg admits that more than 85% of Americans can’t afford an electric car, since they are well more than double the price of oil-based cars. 

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4. How on Earth could anybody expect those in Africa and the other horrifically poor nations to “get off fossil fuels” when the rich countries haven’t come close to doing it. 

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5. But, perhaps I’m most confused about the whole air quality thing. The obsession over it gets attached to all energy policies. But there’s clearly a strawman to the “we need cleaner air now” demand. First, the air quality conversation in the U.S. reminds me of Voltaire’s “the perfect is the enemy of good.” Americans seem completely unaware how drastically our air quality has improved. Check data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our criteria pollutants have been plummeting over the past many decades.

[…]

Jude Clemente

I am Principal at JTC Energy Research Associates, LLC. I hold a B.A. in International Relations from Penn State University, with a minor in Statistical Analysis. I got my M.S. in Homeland Security from San Diego State University, with a focus on Energy Security, and an MBA from St. Francis University, with a focus on Energy Economics. My research specialization includes North American and international trends in liquid fuels, natural gas, coal, renewables, electricity and GHG emissions – and their connection to human development. I have over 400 professional publications in a variety of energy-related media, notably Pipeline & Gas Journal, Carbon Capture Journal, Journal of Energy Security, Power, World Oil, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and the Journal of Energy and Development. I have also been a writer and editor for reports commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Agency, and other major energy research organizations.

Forbes

Point #1

While wind power in Texas works fairly to very well in spring and fall, it doesn’t work that well in winter and summer. Nearly all of ERCOT’s capacity additions since the February 2021 deep freeze have been renewables, about half of which were solar PV installations. On sunny days, solar does a fairly good job of offsetting wind’s mid-day doldrums… However, the Duck Curve isn’t limited to the Peoples Republic of California.

The first week of February 2023 was extremely cold, with much of Texas getting hammered by an ice storm. Wind and particularly solar took the week off.

The mindless renewables unreliables cheerleading went FR in this Texas Monthly article:

Solar Power Is Bailing Texas Out This Summer

Enjoying that AC? Thank the mighty power of the sun and the renewable energy source keeping the grid afloat.

By Dan Solomon
July 12, 2022

On Monday the good people of Texas, many still suffering from lingering trauma as a result of the February 2021 failure of the state’s power grid, braced for bad news. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the much-maligned entity that manages Texas’s famously independent grid, warned that the situation was dire because of “a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available.” If things got worse, rolling blackouts might be needed. Not great! 

Fortunately, the worst didn’t happen. There are a few reasons why. To reduce demand, many Texans turned up the thermostat by a few degrees to help save power, and ERCOT’s emergency response program paid some large energy customers to scale back usage during peak times. And significantly, solar power, which has been the star of the Texas grid so far during this interminable summer, continued to set records for energy production. If your air conditioner has been steadily running all summer long, you can thank the mighty power of the sun.

[…]

The two key renewable energy sources contributing to the Texas power grid are solar and wind power; solar accounts for roughly 25 percent of the renewable resources on the grid, while wind represents the other three quarters, according to Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M. 

It’s not all that difficult to understand how and why certain energy sources perform well under various grid conditions. Is the grid struggling to keep up with demand for air conditioning? Odds are it is bright and sunny outside, which explains why solar is performing well and also why wind would be less productive (go outside at noon on a summer day and wish for a breeze!). “The good thing about solar is it really does match AC demand,” Dessler said. “Days that are really hot and sunny are the days you’re making the most power from solar energy.” 

While wind produced a low amount of energy relative to its total potential on Monday (and ERCOT put out a release blaming the energy source for the grid’s struggles), both Dessler and Lewin said that was to be expected, and that the amount of electricity being generated by wind was within state projections for a summer day. (Thermal energy sources—gas, coal, and nuclear—also underperformed on Monday.) While the wind farms of West Texas don’t generate as much power as we might like on stultifying summer days, wind farms along the Gulf Coast tend to do well during those hours. “If you’ve been down to the beach in the summertime, there’s usually a pretty good afternoon breeze,” Lewin said. 

[…]

Dan Solomon

Dan Solomon writes about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business.

Texas Monthly

Unmitigated horst schist! Here’s the EIA Hourly Grid Monitor for ERCOT daily generation output by source for July 2022:

Here’s the hourly plot from Sunday July 10 through Thursday July 13, 2022:

The only evidence cited for thermal energy sources underperforming was a moronic Tweet by… drum roll, please… Andrew Dessler. Had the article been titled, “Solar Power Is Bailing Texas Wind Power Out This Summer on Some Afternoons,” it would have been sort of accurate. The author of the Texas Monthly article evidently derived his energy expertise by writing “about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business.”

Wind and solar can’t respond to demand. They can only respond to supply because they are weather-dependent.

The flip side of the coin is that wind and solar often over-generate when they aren’t needed.

Relying on weather-dependent energy sources for an energy transition, ostensibly needed to fix the weather…

Point #2

Mr. Clemente was referring to Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) in this passage:

No wonder then that a Biden administration official was incoherent when asked how $50 trillion in climate spending in the U.S. will lower any global temperature rise.

Forbes

Point #3

The Bloomberg article is pay-walled… Here’s the Nitwit Pinko Radio version:

The people most interested in electric vehicles can’t afford to buy them

November 10, 2022

Studies show a generational gap in electric vehicle purchases: younger people tend to be more excited about them, but less able to afford them. (Story aired on All Things Considered on Nov. 8, 2022.)

[…]

NPR

Point #4

Mr. Clemente features this graph in point number 4:

Anyone who thinks California is the example to follow, missed this:

Point #5

Point number 5, the incessant demand for cleaner air is truly incomprehensible. Lead (Pb) is one of the deadliest air pollutants So deadly, that the inventor of leaded gasoline suffered from lead poisoning. The EPA’s page for lead as a criteria pollutant only shows a graph going back to 2010.

Five years ago, when I authored Putting the Clean Air Act on Ice, the EPA data went back to 1970 and I tied it into the ACT2 Ice Core, Greenland ice core lead concentration data. I determined a “geological background” (the Earth puts a lot of schist in the air without any human assistance) by calculating the 1772-1850 average ± two standard deviations.  The ice core lead (ng/g) correlated very well with the overlapping EPA lead (ppb) data:

Atmospheric lead in the US is clearly at or near an irreducible level.

There has never been an energy transition

Nor will there ever be an energy “transition” before we harness nuclear fusion power… And that’s a good thing.

On a per capita basis, we consume as much “traditional biomass” for energy as we did when we started burning coal. We have just piled new forms of energy on top of older ones. Now, we have changed the way we consume energy sources. In the 1800’s the biomass came from whale oil and clear-cutting forests. Today’s biomass is less harmful to whales and forests.

From 1800 to 1900, per capita energy consumption, primarily from biomass, remained relatively flat; as did the average life expectancy. From 1900 to 1978, per capita energy consumption roughly tripled with the rapid growth in fossil fuel production (coal, oil & gas). This was accompanied by a doubling of average life expectancy. While I can’t say that fossil fuels caused the increase in life expectancy, I can unequivocally state that everything that enabled the increase in life expectancy wouldn’t have existed or happened without fossil fuels, particularly petroleum.

References

McConnell, J.R. and R. Edwards. 2008.  “Coal burning leaves toxic heavy metal legacy in the Arctic.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. August 18, 2008. doi:10.1073/pnas.0803564105.

McConnell, Joseph R., Andrew I. Wilson, Andreas Stohl, Monica M. Arienzo, Nathan J. Chellman, Sabine Eckhardt, Elisabeth M. Thompson, A. Mark Pollard, Jørgen Peder Steffensen.  “Lead pollution recorded in Greenland ice indicates European emissions tracked plagues, wars, and imperial expansion during antiquity.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2018, 201721818; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1721818115

 

By Jo Nova

Only two men were central to the Green policy stranglehold that cripples Germany today, and one has just been sacked. But look at how easy it was for foreign interests and activists to influence bizarrely suicidal national policies.

Eugyppius

A vast foreign-funded climate cabal with a death grip on policy is currently fighting hard to crash the Federal Republic of Germany with no survivors

The international press has maintained near-total silence on the escalating insanity of what is happening in Germany. Media outlets that routinely celebrate German progress towards energy transition don’t want you to know that Europe’s dominant industrial power has entered a deeply destructive political and administrative spiral from which it may never recover. The fault lies with the self-defeating and unworkable energy policies that have a death grip not merely on the Scholz government, but on the entire administrative state.

Germany leads the way in the big green experiment

At one point last winter 12% of the entire Germany GDP was being consumed in the energy crisis. Factories are leaving Germany because energy prices are unbearable, but defying all reason, Germany has just closed its last nuclear power plants and is trying to ban gas and oil heating at home too which will only drive up demand for electricity at a time when electricity is hard to find. Germans burned so much wood last winter at times they ran out, and now their government wants to ban wood stoves too.

Eugyppius explained a couple of weeks ago how a Der Speigel article (surprisingly) revealed that two key political players installed their Green friends in positions of power. And just this week comes the news that one of those men has just been forced to resign due to the same nepotism that was a core part of the climate-cabal plan.

Today, Der Spiegel (of all magazines) published a lengthy piece on the origins, funding and rise to power of the “Eco Network” currently controlling German energy policy, and I want to discuss it in detail, because it is so revealing about so many things.

Patrick Graichen was a top state secretary in charge of energy and climate issues until news broke out that he picked his best man to head up the German energy agency. But the trouble in Germany began ten years ago with the Green politician Ranier Baake — who became known as Mr Energiewende himself (the man who created the “Energy Transformation”.) He’s the one who first appointed green technocrats in every corner of the German deep state. By the time German voters picked a centre right party in 2018, the Green momentum wrapped around them and just kept moving.

Baake also founded the most powerful green thinktank in Germany — and appointed his protege Patrick Graichen to head it. See how this works? The thinktank was his springboard into the highest levels of German government, and this thinktank was funded in part by American philanthropists.

As the old-guard industry-friendly civil servants in the German bureaucracy began to retire, Baake filled their posts with Green technocrats wherever possible, such that when control of the Ministry passed to the centre-right CDU in 2018, the damage was done. The institutional momentum had already shifted towards climate change and begun to gather strength under its own power

During his five-year tenure as state secretary, Baake appointed Graichen to head the Agora think-tank, which began churning out policy papers, sponsoring Green scientific research, and gathering an ever-growing crowd of loyal advocates and technocrats. This paid off: [As Der Speigel says, Graichen’s name was used all through the German parliament].

Three easy steps to create climate fixation in Parliament

It’s a three-step process. 1) Activists and regime-approved scientists identify and make noise about looming problems, and then 2) think tanks write pages and pages of legislative and regulatory solutions for them. All of this happens largely out of sight, until 3) politicians respond to the demand stirred up the activist arm, and having no real expertise or understanding of anything themselves, they have no choice but to enact the proposals that people like Graichen feed them.

Here, then, is the explanation for Robert Habeck’s stubborn idiocy since last Fall. As soon as the Greens entered government, he made Graichen his state secretary for energy, and it is Graichen and the army of technocrats he commands who have been behind every political disaster since.

The farcical response to the energy crisis, where these people were actually forced to work contrary to their principles and buy enormous quantities of coal (from Russia no less); the botched but nevertheless completed nuclear phase-out; and, finally, the catastrophic changes to the Building Energy Act, which will immiserate millions of Germans and do absolutely nothing to change the temperature of Earth.

The influence of American millionaires:

Their work was financed in the background by two men: Bernhard Lorentz, who as head of the Mercator Foundation helped to bring the Agora think-tank to life. And Hal Harvey, an American lobbyist who has funded environmentalist and climate organisations around the world for almost three decades, helped among other things by the philanthropic billions of families like the Hewletts.

This is not the first time we’ve found unlikely American activists and philanthropists behind European – and specifically German – climate activism. Spiegel explains, ominously, that “Harvey sees Europe as the key to preparing a climate-neutral future” and that this reason “he directs millions … to support the likes of Baake and Graichen.” This man, who hardly appears in Anglophone media and doesn’t even have an English-language Wikipedia page, has been christened by Die Zeit as “the most powerful Green politician in the world.”

I would have thought it would be depressing to read the details, but it’s useful to know thine enemy.

Though, of course, in this case, even though both key players may be out of their official major roles, the team they established are still there.

The latest polls show that 40% of Greens voters have abandoned the party.

h/t Climate Depot, David E.

 

Essay by Eric Worrall

If they break enough stuff, we have to listen, right?

Climate activists dump charcoal in Rome’s Trevi Fountain

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN

Updated 11:59 AM EDT, Mon May 22, 2023

RomeCNN — 

Climate change activists turned the blue water of the Trevi Fountain in central Rome black with diluted charcoal on Sunday. 

Around 10 activists from the climate group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) entered the 18th century late-Baroque fountain holding a banner that said, “Let’s not pay for fossil campaigns considering what is happening in Emilia Romagna,” referring to the deadly flooding in northern Italy, which some experts have linked to the climate crisis.

“Our country is dying,” other banners stated. 

All activists were arrested and face vandalism charges, Rome police said.

…

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/charcoal-trevi-fountain-rome-climate-intl/index.html

What should we do about these outrages?

Obviously punishing the miscreants would be a good step, but courts frequently go soft on eco-vandals.

The obvious retaliation is to wreck all their solar panels and wind turbines.

Not the way they do it – not by physical vandalism. WUWT does not advocate breaking the law. Direct action over an issue as ridiculous as the fake climate crisis is for losers.

The wrecking ball we’re looking for is the election of fiscally conservative federal politicians who shut down all the green subsidies and market distorting renewable quotas, and punish states which defy the subsidy shutdown by penalising their federal grants.

Without subsidies and market distortions, the renewable energy industry will die.

I’m looking forward to the day when the only visible renewable installations when driving through the countryside are the rotting corpses of broken turbines and abandoned solar farms.