Energy and Environmental Newsletter

John Droz, Jr., Physicist & Environmental Edvocate

Sorry for the one day delay for our latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter, which is now online. There is some very worthwhile material there, so please set aside some time to peruse this information.   The delay is due to the fact that the Master Resource website has had a major new facelift — so check it out!

Thank you for your continued support! As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know.

This is a sample of the very good energy articles in the current Newsletter —

In 2013, Coal reached a 40 year high in global energy consumption market share - India's coal consumption recorded the second largest volumetric increase—accounting for 21 percent of global growth here’s good news and bad from BP’s statistical review of world energy for 2013. The review, in its 63rd year now, annually documents changing patterns in the way we produce and consume energy.  The bad news: Coal is the fuel of choice in many parts of the world. In 2013, it reached its highest market share of global energy consumption in over 40 years. Even as fears grow that its high carbon emissions make it the biggest cause of climate change, use of coal for power generation and other purposes grew by 3 percent in 2013, faster than any other fossil fuel. Its share of the world energy basket went above 30 percent for the first time since 1970.

The true cost of renewable energy is being masked by government subsidies and bailouts - The true cost of renewable energy is being masked by government subsidies and bailouts. America is about as likely to become reliant on green energy to meet its baseload power requirements as a unicorn is to stroll down the middle of Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue during rush hour followed by a pink elephant. It’s just not happening – but that’s hasn’t deterred the modern day snake oil salesmen and their allies inside the Obama administration from continuing to make a push for wind and solar power as an eventual replacement for energy generated from traditional sources like coal, oil and natural gas. Renewable technology has improved, no doubt, but it’s a long way away from being ready to make a substantial contribution to the heating of our homes and the powering of our businesses unless the generous tax subsidies that create the illusion of cost

competitiveness continue.

 

The Crazy World of Renewable Energy Targets - Nothing makes sense about Renewable Energy Targets, except at a “Bumper-Sticker” level. Today the AFR front page suggests* the federal government is shifting to remove the scheme (by closing it to new entrants) rather than just scaling it back. It can’t come a day too soon. Right now, the Greens who care about CO2 emissions should be cheering too. The scheme was designed to promote an industry, not to cut CO2……We’ve been sold the idea that if we subsidize “renewable” energy (which produces less CO2) we’d get a world with lower CO2 emissions. But it ain’t so. The fake “free” market in renewables does not remotely achieve what it was advertised to do — the perverse incentives make the RET good for increasing “renewables” but bad for reducing CO2, and, worse, the more wind power you have, the less CO2 you save. Coal fired electricity is so cheap that doing anything other than making it more efficient is a wildly expensive and inefficient way to reduce CO2. But the Greens hate coal more than they want to reduce carbon dioxide. The dilemma!.......

The Catch-22 of Energy Storage  - Pick up a research paper on battery technology, fuel cells, energy storage technologies or any of the advanced materials science used in these fields, and you will likely find somewhere in the introductory paragraphs a throwaway line about its application to the storage of renewable energy. Energy storage makes sense for enabling a transition away from fossil fuels to more intermittent sources like wind and solar, and the storage problem presents a meaningful challenge for chemists and materials scientists… Or does it?  Several recent analyses of the inputs to our energy systems indicate that, against expectations, energy storage cannot solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar power. Not for reasons of technical performance, cost, or storage capacity, but for something more intractable: there is not enough surplus energy left over after construction of the generators and the storage system to power our present civilization.

Bye, Bye Birdie - Two former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigators tell National Review Online that the federal government acted with a bias, giving renewable-energy companies a pass on unlawful bird deaths while rigorously prosecuting traditional energy companies for the same infractions. “If birds were electrocuted or in oil pits, we prosecuted those companies,” says Tim Eicher, a special agent who handled cases involving migratory birds, eagles, and endangered species until his retirement three years ago. But the Fish and Wildlife Service “has drunk the Kool-Aid on global warming,” Eicher tells NRO. When it comes to wind- and solar-energy companies, “the end, to them, justifies the means: They’re saving the planet, and if eagles die in the process, so be it.” Dominic Domenici, a former Fish and Wildlife Service investigator who worked with Eicher in Wyoming, says the bias is obvious because, when unlawful bird deaths occur, the federal government “prosecutes everything except for wind and solar — and they give [those renewable companies] permits” for bird-killing. That bias, Domenici says, is “top-down” within the Fish and Wildlife Service. “They have chosen to do everything they can to make wind energy look perfect,” ……

NVDA Report: Big Wind Is Wrong Strategy To Curb Emissions - There are better ways to reduce Vermont’s production of green house gases than industrial-sized wind turbines on ridgelines that cause controversy and overburden the Northeast Kingdom’s transmission lines. That’s one of the recommendations out of a wind study done for the Northeastern Vermont Development Association that took three years of research. The wind study report issued Thursday also said that reducing reliance on transportation and heating fuels would clearly reduce green house gas emissions. It’s not clear that wind projects in Vermont would at all. The NVDA committee that produced the report wants the state’s utility regulators to examine the impact of industrial ridgeline wind projects on property values and they want the health department to study impacts on neighbors’ health

Cooking stove use, housing associations, white males, and the 97% - The Cook et al. (2013) 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change.  Let's walk through that sentence again. The Cook et al 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. This study was multiply fraudulent and multiply invalid already – e.g their false claim that the raters were blind to the identities of the authors of the papers they were rating, absolutely crucial for a subjective rating study. (They maliciously and gleefully revealed "skeptic" climate science authors to each other in an online forum, as well as other authors. Since they were random people working at home, they could simply google the titles of papers and see the authors, making blindness impossible to enforce or claim to begin with. This all invalidates a subjective rater study.) But I was blindsided by the inclusion of non-climate papers. I found several of these in ten minutes with their database – there will be more such papers for those who search longer. I'm not willing to spend a lot of time with their data – invalid or fraudulent studies should simply be retracted, because they have no standing. Sifting through all the data is superfluous when the methods are invalid and structurally biased, which is the case here for several different reasons, as I discuss further down.

The Drake Equation and the Fraud of Climate Modeling - Oh no, not another global warming article? Yep! It's true, but this one takes a little different tack to make a point about the folly of climate modeling. Hopefully, the reader will forgive this author's brief foray into the world of simple mathematics and logic. Back in the early 60's when scientists started "dreaming" of how they could determine if there was life elsewhere in the universe, a radio astronomer by the name of Frank Drake came up with an equation (the infamous Drake Equation) to estimate the possibility of intelligent life on other extra solar planets in the Milky Way galaxy. He came up with the equation to help stimulate scientific dialogue at the upcoming, first ever, Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) conference in Green Bank, West Virginia.

Parsing the IPCC’s Piffle - Warmist politicians and professional alarmists who tell us man-made global warming is an increasing problem are forever repeating the mantra that "the science is settled". Given the acknowledged flaws and discordant findings of their cited models, that confidence reflects either ignorance or deceit. There is no other explanation.  Politicians and various activist organisations are fond of telling us that there is no doubt that man-made global warming is an ever-increasing problem. If you ask them for the source of their information they will almost certainly direct you to the assessment reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Maybe you should ask them if they have read the latest IPCC report, because it tells a very different story.

A real scientist, kicking goals - Keeping You in the Loop - I'm hoping that with two articles in the Weekend Australian detailing how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology changes the temperature series, information on global warming will never be reported in the same way, ever again. I'm hoping that in future journalists will feel compelled to ask Tim Flannery, and other luminaries, which temperature series they are relying on… the real data or the homogenised data... Cooling turns to warming

Review Of Sea Level Rise Shows TOPEX/POSEIDON/JASON Results Are Inflated, Faulty - One of the last remaining bastions of the global warming scare is sea level rise. Unsurprisingly, a handful of alarmists are still desperately clinging to accelerating sea level rise, insisting that it is just around the corner. However a new analysis on the subject by veteran meteorologist Klaus -Eckard Puls of the European Institute of Climate and Energy (EIKE) shows that sea level rise is not accelerating, and that there are signs showing a deceleration. That bastion is on the verge of collapse.

The EIKE review first starts by focusing on German coastal sea level rise, sections 1-4, before shifting on global sea level rise, section 5-10. The focus here is on the latter.

Concerning global sea level data, Puls starts by looking at a peer-reviewed tide gauge analysis conducted by distinguished Swedish scientist Nils-Axel Mörner who evaluated 182 tide gauges scattered around the world, some going back more than 200 years.

Whatever Happened to Global Warming? - Now come climate scientists' implausible explanations for why the 'hiatus' has passed the 15-year mark.  On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won't attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer? In effect, this is all that's left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its...