The single biggest problem with the Left’s “climate” agenda is that the proposed response to the alleged crisis — replacement of fossil fuels in the energy system with intermittent wind-and-sun-based electricity generation — is not going to work. This is obvious to anyone who considers the subject seriously for any amount of time. Yet any mention of this issue has been almost completely banished from the mainstream media, from academia, from government, and from social media. It remains to a few lonely voices (such as, here in New York, myself, Roger Caiazza, and Ken Girardin of the Empire Center) to keep the subject in the public consciousness.
As small and lonely as our voices may be, somehow we must be getting under their skin. We know that because increasingly officialdom feels a need to respond publicly to our criticisms. But how can they give a plausible response, given that we are absolutely right and a wind-and-sun-based electricity system is never going to work? Easy! — Just treat the public like morons. Give answers that don’t make any sense while appealing to apparent authority, and expect the public to accept the answers without asking probing questions.
On March 17, Ken Girardin of the Empire Center think tank picked up on a press release just issued from an agency called NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Agency — the people in charge of the transition to “renewable” energy in New York) requesting proposals for what are described as “Public Relations Services” to assist “in developing a narrative around New York State’s clean energy and climate priorities.” In the next breath, NYSERDA discloses that a focus of the public relations effort will be “being able to rapidly respond to negative viewpoints and perceptions about the State’s climate and clean energy goals under the Climate Act, the costs associated with the Climate Act, and challenges to particular policies and programs.” Funny how these negative “viewpoints and perceptions” keep popping up. NYSERDA indicates that it is initially putting up $500,000 of taxpayer money to fund this effort, although it “reserves the right to extend and/or add funding to the Solicitation should other program funding sources become available.” Responses are due April 8.
While we await the hiring of these pricey professionals, NYSERDA is doing some of its own in-house PR to respond to the pesky critics. Caiazza has a post on March 23 reporting on the issuance on March 21 of an email blast by NYSERDA announcing something they call their “Solar Quiz.” Here is the excited introduction:
You may already know that solar panels convert the sun’s free and abundant light into electricity. Pretty great, right? So, we thought we’d give you a quick quiz to test your solar smarts.
The Solar Quiz consists of six questions, of which only the first two go to substantive issues of whether this is a viable source of electricity to power the grid. Here is question number one, with the full answer:
Q: Do solar panels work on cloudy days?
A: Yes! Because the panels collect light, they still function on cloudy days even though efficiency is somewhat reduced.
I like the exclamation point after the “Yes.” But is the reduction in electricity output from solar panels on a cloudy day a little or a lot? And does it make any difference to whether you can match supply to demand to make the grid function? Don’t expect answers to those kinds of questions here. This quiz is for dummies.
Caiazza helpfully supplies a photograph of a weather station in Buffalo on March 23 at 10:15 AM, plus a graph of weather data from the same site for the seven days leading up to noon on the same date. The weather station is situated in the midst of a large array of solar panels, so you can get an idea what the conditions were like for the generation of electricity on that day (the third day of spring!):
The red and green lines are temperature and dew point, while the harder-to-see yellow line, showing “insolation,” is the one we are interested in. Although it is faint, it looks like the yellow line didn’t even make it up to 200 at noon on March 23, compared to maxing out at over 800 on the sunny days of the 17th, 20th and 21st. So the “somewhat reduced efficiency” alluded to by NYSERDA can easily be a reduction of 75% or more. And note that reduced “insolation” is not the only thing degrading the performance of these particular solar panels. How about the fact that they are covered in snow? From the photograph, it looks highly doubtful that these panels were producing any meaningful amount of electricity after that snowstorm.
Question number two in NYSERDA’s Solar Quiz is even more insulting to the intelligence of the reader:
Q: If I have solar panels, will my house still have energy at night?
A: Yes. Solar-powered homes collect excess energy and pass it to the grid for future use, and if you don’t have excess energy stored you pull energy from the grid at any time, like when it’s dark. Another option for night-time energy use is on-site battery storage, which collects excess energy and saves it for when it’s needed.
This is George Kamburoff-level critical thinking. Caiazza comments:
This is egregious misinformation. . . . In my opinion the worst subsidy for residential solar is the unacknowledged cost to provide grid energy when the sun does not shine. Somebody else is paying for the infrastructure (storage or alternative sources) necessary so that solar-equipped residences can “pull energy from the grid at any time”. Inevitably the “net-metering” rules will have to be changed so this subsidy is reduced or eliminated. The mention of on-site battery storage is a start, but the reality is that the largest reliability cost is associated with extreme conditions and providing enough solar panels and energy storage to start to address that problem is uneconomic for an individual.
Nothing complicated there. But NYSERDA either is treating the public like morons, or alternatively they are morons themselves and don’t understand why what they are proposing can’t work. (Of course, it could be both.)
While we wait to see how our new professional spin-meisters are going to up the game of the New York energy propaganda machine, let’s check in with similar efforts from the other side of the globe. In Australia, the state-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation has an official “fact-checking” service called CheckMate. From the information on their web page, they seem to have two mottos: “Your inoculation against misinformation,” and “Fearlessly follow the facts no matter where they lead.”
In their fact check of March 22, CheckMate addresses the question “Can a country run entirely on renewable energy?” It seems that an Australian businessman named Dick Smith appeared on a Sydney radio station called 2GB earlier this week, and was quoted as saying "Look, I can tell you, this claim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simply a lie. . . . It is not true. They are telling lies. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables — that's impossible." (CSIRO is the official government-supported scientific groupthink agency. The acronym stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.). So, ABC, is there anything to Mr. Smith’s assertion?
Here’s their answer:
[E]xperts consulted by RMIT ABC Fact Check suggested Mr Smith's statement doesn't hold up.
Oh, really? What experts, exactly? And how do they back that up?
Mark Diesendorf, an expert on sustainable energy and energy policy from the University of New South Wales, labelled Mr Smith's assertions as "incorrect". "Several countries (and Tasmania) already run their electricity systems on 100 per cent renewables," he said in an email, noting that such places relied heavily on hydro power.
Sure, a handful of tiny-population countries, like Albania, Bhutan and Iceland, that happen to have lots of hydro or geothermal power can run on that. But Smith said the thing that was impossible was running on “solar and wind.” What’s the response to that? ABC goes to its next “expert”:
Andrew Blakers, a professor of engineering at the Australian National University's Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster solutions, told Fact Check: "Several detailed studies show that [getting to] 100 per cent renewables based mostly on solar and wind is quite straightforward, provided that enough transmission and storage is built."
“Detailed studies” show that it can work. So you say. But what is the country that has been able to run 100% on solar and wind, thus refuting Smith? He can’t name it. It doesn’t exist.
And then ABC resorts to the ultimate charlatan, Professor Mark Jacobson of Stanford:
When it came to regions with a comparable or greater population size to that of Australia, Professor Jacobson pointed to the US state of California, which has a population of around 39 million. As of Tuesday this week, he said, the state, which is aiming for 100 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2045, had "been running on more than 100 per cent WWS for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day".
Aha! So it counts as “running a whole country on wind and solar” if you can accomplish the feat for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day on 10 of 11 cherry-picked days? This is how they refute Mr. Smith.
I know that neither the American nor Australian public pays much close attention to the details of how the electricity grid works. But I also don’t think the respective publics are at nearly the level of idiocy that officialdom would place them. It is truly shocking that they have no better answers than these, even as they press forward to transform the energy systems without any indication that the transformation will work. Show us the working demonstration project!
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