The Trump EPA is planning to reconsider the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding (EF) that labeled greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to public health. Here is the first effort [Web | PDF] by a leftist group against that. Let’s take a look at it, line-by line with my comments [bracketed in bold]. In a … Continue reading Reversing the Endangerment Finding: Burying the Union of Concerned Scientists Case Against It
via JunkScience.com
April 10, 2025 at 02:05AM
This complex subject is explained in this excellent video. These cycles operate over tens of thousands of years. Far beyond the comprehension of human timescales.
Study Uncovers How Milankovitch Cycles Work Predicting Next Ice Age
via climate science
April 10, 2025 at 01:31AM
Black & Veatch executive Phil Fischer wrote this piece late last year making a case for natural gas for power generation, whether for the entire data center or for backup. In a free market, natural gas combined cycle, cogeneration, and peaking turbines have proven to be technologies of choice. With wind, solar, and battery subsidies on the chopping block, a new era for gas-fired electrical generation could be ahead.
“Companies developing data centers are in a new era in which the scope of project planning must expand far beyond the data center itself and into the supporting physical infrastructure – power generation, water delivery and water treatment,” Phil Fisher begins. “Delays in this physical infrastructure have led to new ideas that open the window for options that previously had not been on the table.”
He provides “five important rationales” for natural gas (reproduced verbatim):
He concludes:
Compared to other fossil fuels, natural gas offers superior efficiency rates, lower emissions and an abundant, reliable supply. Its lower carbon dioxide per unit of electricity is a huge plus for reaching green, sustainable goals.
As data center managers grapple with utilities being challenged to meet their power needs for new projects, they are having to think outside the box and look at self-generation of power or constructing their own substations. Whether used for power generation or backup, natural gas can be the perfect technology to ensure grid reliability.
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Phil Fischer handles new business for Black & Veatch in power generation. He has more than 25 years of experience in the distributed generation and data center industry working at a number of companies. Black & Veatch is a 100-percent employee-owned global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company was founded in 1915.
The post Gas-fired Electricity for New Data Centers: Fischer Makes A Case appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
April 10, 2025 at 01:06AM
European energy expert Samuel Furfari sums up green hydrogen (GH) perfectly; “It’s like burning Louis Vuitton handbags for heat.” He says this because it is so very expensive. Federal law allocated $9.5 billion for GH hubs, and the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Causing Act) expanded tax subsidies. Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, GH is a money loser.
Leftists claim GH is a way to replace batteries for transportation. It is at least five times more expensive, which doesn’t include all the extra costs associated with the production of natural gas, such as purifying massive amounts of water, which takes about 13 times more water than the hydrogen it produces. Desalination is an additional cost. Putting these processes anywhere they’ll need to compete for water resources is just plain stupid.
Infrastructure costs are astounding because we currently have none, and hydrogen is not suitable for pipelines because it escapes easily, embrittles metal, and is prone to explode. It only takes a few massive hydrogen car or truck explosions to end hydrogen use for transportation, just like the Hindenburg disaster that ended hydrogen ballon travel.
GH is an excessive waste of money, and it hasn’t ever been made at scale—even after tens of billions spent by Europeans, Australians, and the United States.
All it takes is a little critical thinking to realize that something is amiss once one understands how GH is produced. First of all, we don’t have enough wind and solar to power the hydrogen plants. Second, wind and solar are part-time and weather dependent. The GH process is required to run at all times, not just the 30 percent of the time the wind blows and the 20 percent of the time the sun shines bright enough.
Making GH requires pure water to be heated to 2,000° F and is then electrocuted. This cracks the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is then chilled to 420° F below zero, turning it into a liquid, and then it is finally compressed to 10,000 psi, comparable to three times the average scuba tank or compressed natural gas (CNG). Without this chilling and compression, hydrogen has one-tenth the energy per volume as natural gas. Under normal compressed circumstances, hydrogen has less energy than CNG. A kilogram of this liquid hydrogen has the energy of a gallon of gas.
When working with the liquid near zero, compressed hydrogen is tricky, as it is the smallest molecule, escaping normal pipelines and embrittling metals, causing them to crack sooner than later.
“Every time you involve hydrogen, you get not small losses, but large, substantial losses,” an energy specialist tells us. “The main cause of the issue is that hydrogen is a molecule that is too small and volatile to be used, transported effectively using the gas pipelines, turbines, boilers, cooktops, or burner jets that are now in place.” Deep pocket oil companies are getting out of this boondoggle. BP cancelled 18 hydrogen projects because they were unprofitable, all in an effort to save $200 million a year. Shell cancelled a Norway hydrogen project and others for lack of demand, while a $750 million GH plant in Australia was cancelled because it was a money loser.
The first argument raised by climate hawks is the production of GH, which costs 40 percent more in energy than it produces. Some of the GH will leak, as it is stored in salt caverns.
When there isn’t any wind or solar power, which is usually the case, they then say we can use this stored hydrogen to create second-generation GH. Using second-generation hydrogen alone will bear 80 percent of the cost of the energy that is actually produced—not including losses—which doesn’t even factor in all the other costs associated with the process.
And what about water needs?
It’s just stupid to put hydrogen hubs in areas without enough water. Houston, Utah, and Southern California, to name a few, are recognized as government sponsored GH hotspots.
Particularly in Utah, on the edge of the desert, where solar and wind power barely account for 2 percent of total electricity generated. Or California, which suffers from droughts, and often sees water shortages.
Trump and Congressional Republicans must stop wasting billions on GH. Any money spent on GH adds to our $36.5 trillion national debt, driving up inflation. While it was reported that Trump is considering killing hydrogen hubs in blue states, Trump should kill all of them.
Green hydrogen is an expensive pipedream we simply cannot afford.
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via Watts Up With That?
April 10, 2025 at 12:01AM
