Most organizations and individuals who are fighting against the expansion of wind turbines, solar power, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) are not addressing the elephant in the room. The truth is that the science driving the climate scare is wrong, and so the energy transition promoted by environmental groups is not required.
For fear of being dismissed as “climate change deniers,” opponents to the “green energy” expansion focus on blocking renewable energy projects in their regions for other reasons such as the infeasibility of the project, high costs, or environmental and health concerns. In so doing, they often unwittingly promote the climate scare. This is because they aren’t addressing the underlying fact that humans are not causing dangerous climate change, so the energy transition is a complete waste of money and threatens to leave us bankrupt, hungry and freezing in the dark for no environmental benefit at all.
Their strategy is analogous to objecting to your doctor that your cancer treatment is costly, uncomfortable, and painful. Your doctor will reply, “Yes, the treatment has serious side effects, but it is needed to save your life.” That argument would make sense if you do indeed have cancer. But what if another, even more qualified doctor doubts that you actually have cancer? Wouldn’t it make sense to thoroughly consider that point of view? If the second doctor is correct, then the anti-cancer treatment is worse than useless, and no amount of expense and discomfort is worthwhile. Similarly, we don’t need any “treatments” for our energy sector: costly renewable energy projects are unneeded, just like cancer treatments for healthy patients.
One organization that falls into this trap is
Citizens for Responsible Solar. They promote using solar power on rooftops and commercial land rather than rural farmland. Of course, it makes sense to prevent solar panels from being built on farmland and cutting down forests to build solar farms, but the organization fails to address the fact that the panels are not required in the first place since there is no climate crisis.
Citizens for Responsible Solar say, “Destroying farmland and cutting down trees will not solve climate change.” They advocate for solar power to be used responsibly, which is indeed important, but their message completely avoids the elephant in the room. They write:
“We believe that true ‘green’ energy solutions do not involve destroying farmlands, forests, wildlife habitat, families, and homes.”
That is true: but we don’t need “green energy” solutions at all. We need clean, conventional energy that will power our cities and industries, something that solar power is not yet capable of.
There are also many groups opposing wind turbines, for instance, Wind Concerns Ontario. This group has many excellent resources on the detrimental effects of turbines, however, they also say that “the global challenge of climate change is to choose smart, effective solutions.” Unfortunately, this is furthering the climate scare, because there is no “global challenge of climate change” that should concern us, apart from hardening our societies to adapt to natural environmental changes. Many other local groups throughout North America have voiced similar concerns about wind turbines but totally fail to address the climate change propaganda that is driving the push for so-called renewable energy.
Fossil fuel companies, however, are the worst of all. Many are capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) and pumping it underground with costly “carbon” capture and storage (CCS) technologies. They are on the right track promoting conventional power, but CCS is entirely unnecessary and greatly increases the cost of energy for no benefit.
For instance, ExxonMobil has detailed plans on how they will reduce emissions, promoting “Low Carbon Solutions” in their Advancing Climate Solutions report. Directly stating that “Climate change is real and stands as one of the major challenges facing the world today” does nothing to help their goal of providing reliable energy to the world. They want to expand their power but are also crippling themselves with investments to lower CO2 emissions.
Shell too promotes the climate scare with their target to become a “net-zero emissions energy business by 2050,” citing the Paris Agreement on climate change that aims to limit the rise in the so-called “global average temperature” this century to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Not only is this unnecessary, but it will significantly increase the cost of electricity and make heating and cooling our homes especially difficult for those living in poorer communities. Instead, fossil fuel companies should champion CO2 as a life-giving molecule that is greening the planet rather than try to “decarbonise” their industry.
Groups opposing “green energy” should look into the science that is driving the climate scare to see if it actually holds up. A good place to start would be the fully-referenced 88-page book Energy & Climate at a Glance: Canadian Edition (click here to order for $14 Canadian plus tax, shipping and handling) published by Canadians for Sensible Climate Policy and The Heartland Institute. The book is a timely counter to the “Net Zero” push and outlines how that goal is unachievable by 2050, scientifically unnecessary, and will ensure lower standards of living with no appreciable environmental benefit.
Furthermore, groups that oppose a massive expansion of renewables, including BESS, should also oppose events such as Climate Week NYC, which took place at the end of September. Large public events like these are one of the primary drivers of the climate scare and so must be tackled head-on. Rather than just protesting against wind turbines, solar panels, and BESS, we should speak up against the propaganda promulgated at these events. Our message should be clear: the climate scare is not based on sound science. If Climate Week and other enterprises are discredited, it will be harder for companies to build the wind, solar and BESS facilities that have been harming communities around the world.
Another activist group promoting solar and wind energy to be opposed is SunDay, with its inaugural event last month. They say they “celebrate the progress we’ve made [on renewables] and push for more.” Although their messaging is wrong on many fronts (e.g., solar power cannot sustain our society), their primary reasoning is that they need to introduce these new energy sources to “stop climate change.” They write, “If we can keep building solar power, we’ll have a shot to stop climate change” and reference carbon dioxide as “carbon pollution.” This is the principal message that we must oppose.
By staying true to their base and the facts about climate change, organizations opposing BESS and renewable energies will be in a better position to sway public opinion. We need strong leaders who aren’t afraid to call out the unscientific anthropogenic climate change narrative as simply wrong. Instead, they need to promote sensible policies to adapt to climate change rather than trying to stop it with damaging, expensive and inadequate technologies.
Note: Mary-Jean Harris, BSc, MSc (physics), contributed to this article.
It was back in 2021 that I started to ask which country or U.S. state would be the first to hit the “Green Energy Wall.” It has long been obvious to anyone who looks at the situation that the fantasy of a fully de-carbonized energy system, with everything run on electricity generated by intermittent wind and sun, could never happen.
But what would be the limiting condition that would put a stop to the madness? Would it be confronting the absurd costs of grid-scale battery storage? Or perhaps a string of blackouts caused by insufficient backup of the wind and solar generation?
Here in New York, we are starting to see some push back from politicians on the fantasy green energy transition, but the source may be the last thing you would have predicted. The immediate issue is the cost of upgrading local delivery infrastructure to transmit sufficient electricity for the imagined future of electrified buildings and vehicles.
Supposedly, under a statute known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, we are faced with a 2030 deadline to get some 70% of our electricity from “renewables.” Currently the percent of our electricity that we get from these “renewables” is around 44%, and almost half of that comes from the gigantic waterfall known as Niagara Falls. Without another Niagara Falls on the horizon, theoretically we should be building vast fields of wind turbines and solar panels to meet the statutory mandates; but that effort has stalled out, and the costs of wind and solar generation, and of backup to make the grid run all the time, have barely started to show up in consumer bills. Nor have various big new long-distance transmission projects yet come into consumer bills.
But meanwhile, the big utilities have come forward with large demands for rate increases. So why the need for big rate increases if not from new generators or long-distance transmission? The answer is that the rate increases mainly relate to the portion of the consumer bills referred to as the “delivery” charge, as opposed to the charge for generation. The utilities seek funds to add delivery infrastructure like substations, transformers, and cables to deliver vastly increased amounts of electricity for things like vehicle charging stations (for both cars and trucks) and for the electrification of building heat.
In upstate New York, a utility called National Grid has been petitioning the regulator for a large electricity rate increase, mostly to support these kinds of upgrades to the delivery infrastructure. The service territory of National Grid in upstate New York covers the region between about Syracuse and Albany, and from there North to the Canadian border. After prolonged negotiations, the regulator (Public Service Commission) and National Grid entered into a “settlement” a few days ago on August 14. Here is the PSC release describing the settlement. Basically, the PSC congratulates itself on beating back a much larger rate increase originally sought by National Grid. (The headline is “PSC Dramatically Reduces National Grid’s Rate Request.”).But if you read on you find that they still agreed to a very large increase. The release makes clear that most of the increase relates to the delivery infrastructure:
National Grid had sought a base delivery increase of $509.6 million (25.5 percent delivery or 10.4 percent total revenue) and $156.5 million (29.7 percent delivery or 15.7 percent total revenue) for electric and gas, respectively for one year. Instead, the Commission adopted a joint proposal establishing levelized increases, on a percentage basis, to the company's electric revenues of $167.3 million in the first year, $297.4 million in the second year, and $243.4 million in the third year.
Basically, they spread NG’s requested increase out over three years; but it still comes to almost a 30% jump on the delivery side by the time it all kicks in.
While I appreciate that the New York Public Service Commission worked to significantly lower the outrageously high initial rate proposals, it’s still not enough. I have been crystal clear that utilities must make ratepayer affordability the priority.
Well, Governor Hochul, good luck trying to blame the utility, but you are the one with all the electric vehicle mandates and incentives and subsidies, thus calling on the utility to provide all this new infrastructure. In all likelihood few will ever buy the electric vehicles, and nobody will ever generate the extra electricity from wind and sun, and thus this infrastructure will mostly be wasted. But can the utility just refuse to make itself ready to meet your ridiculous mandate?
And meanwhile down here in New York City, our utility Con Edison is requesting almost as large a rate increase, again focused on the delivery portion of the bill, and on local infrastructure upgrades necessary to support increased electricity demand. In the City, the increased demand is anticipated to come both from electric vehicles (per the state mandates) and from building electrification (based on a City building electrification mandate known as Local Law 97). It is likely that the result of the Con Edison rate proceeding will be a settlement agreement comparable to what occurred in the National Grid case a few days ago.
I am an intervenor in this Con Edison rate case, and in recent days I have actually been personally participating — in a minor way — in the settlement negotiations. My co-intervenors and I are objecting to any rate increases based on adding infrastructure to support building and vehicle electrification unless and until the additional electricity generation capacity has been built to support these mandates. (There is no chance that this additional capacity, supposedly wind and solar generators, will actually be built.)
New York’s state Public Service Commission just OK’d big National Grid rate increases that’ll hike many upstate utility bills by $600 a year — fueling outrage Democrats will soon feel. Downstate, Con Edison is seeking an 11.4% hike to electric bills and 13.3% gas hike — largely thanks to green-energy mandates that Gov. Kathy Hochul embraced along with the rest of the party. The “climate agenda” is delivering pain we’ve long warned of, in New York and New Jersey.
If we ever get to the point of building dozens of gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity, and enough backup and storage to make them work to support a grid, that would cause electricity rates to multiply by a factor of five or ten or more. We are a long way from that. But here we are just trying to add enough substations and transformers to support 30-50% vehicle electrification, and a comparable amount of building electrification, and it is causing politicians to start to scream. How much more before of this will it take before we quit?
My post on Saturday noted one big reason for optimism that the green energy fantasy is coming to the end of its run: the first country, Germany, has apparently begun to hit the green energy “wall.” Although Germany has never consistently reached even 50% of its electricity production from wind and solar, its ability to continue its green energy dreams has stalled: its electricity prices have soared, its manufacturing sector has been seriously undermined, its economy is in recession, and recently its green-promoting government has fallen. Its failed example now stands for others to see and avoid.
And as I look around at developments since the election, I see a number of other reasons to reinforce my cautious optimism. Maybe it’s that the political environment has changed, and maybe it’s that some people are starting to recognize that you can’t beat the laws of physics; and maybe it’s some of both. Here are examples:
Banks and investment firms quitting net zero “alliances”
On Saturday’s post, commenter William Bell asked “Who, exactly, is preventing third-world inhabitants from using wood, charcoal, coal, petroleum derivatives, and/or natural gas for fuel and by what means?” Apparently Mr. Bell, and maybe many others, is unaware of the many “alliances” of banks and investors seeking to starve fossil fuels of investment capital, and thus prevent third-world countries (and everybody else) from continuing to use them. Most of these groups are somehow directed and overseen by the UN. Examples of these groups include the Net Zero Banking Alliance (“Bank-led, UN-convened”), the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, and Climate Action 100+. I’m sure that I have not got them all. The members are, or have been, a who’s who of all the biggest banks and investment firms in the world.
Not soon after the general election, and within two weeks of each other, two major financial institutions have left a United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). This is after they joined three years ago, pledging to require environmental social governance standards (ESG) across their platforms, products and systems.
House Judiciary Committee issues report accusing large money managers of running a “climate cartel”
On December 13, the House Judiciary Committee issued a Report titled “Sustainability Shakedown: How a Climate Cartel of Money Managers Colluded to Take Over the Board of America’s Largest Energy Company.” The Report documents the process by which the Climate Action 100+ alliance, “emboldened” by encouragement from the Biden/Harris administration, orchestrated replacement of three board members of Exxon in May 2021. The collusive actions of the largest investment firms and proxy advisors are described as a “cartel” clearly violative of the antitrust laws.
Red state AGs sue investment firms for antitrust violations for colluding on “climate” issues
Maybe it’s coincidence, but shortly before the issuance of the Judiciary Committee Report, an antitrust suit was brought on November 27 by eleven red state AGs, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, accusing participants in the investment industry of collusive conduct in enforcing “climate” and other “ESG” goals. The defendants in the case include the three largest money managers, Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. From Bloomberg Law, November 27:
BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and State Street Corp. were sued by a group of states led by Texas for allegedly breaking antitrust law by boosting electricity prices through their investments, in the highest-profile lawsuit yet against the beleaguered ESG industry. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 10 other states claim the money managers, as part of their green agenda, combined their market clout and membership in climate groups to pressure coal producers to cut output.
TotalEnergies pauses major wind farm in the waters off New York and New Jersey
Also on November 27, French energy giant TotalEnergies announced that it was “pausing” its major Attentive Energy off-shore wind project in the Atlantic Ocean off New York and New Jersey. In his announcement of the “pause,” Total’s Chairman specifically attributed the action to the anticipated policies of the incoming Trump administration. From Offshore, November 27:
TotalEnergies has reportedly paused development of the Attentive Energy wind farm it planned to build off the coast of New York and New Jersey, CEO Patrick Pouyanne said Tuesday at an energy industry conference in London. “I have decided to put the project on pause,” TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanne said at the Energy Intelligence Forum, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters. The decision is one of the first tangible signs of a halt in investment in renewable power sources due to the anticipated policies of the incoming Trump administration. Trump has vowed to stop offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his next term starting in January 2025.
The new Trump administration is still almost a month away from taking office, but already the anticipation of its arrival is having the positive effect of driving some of the parasites into hiding.
There are many more such positive developments out there. I’ll see if I can assemble a few more before year’s end. Meanwhile, I’m as hopeful as I’ve ever been that the green energy mania is fading.
Probably very few readers here are old enough to remember China’s “Great Leap Forward.” You’d have to be my age (73 - born in 1950), or close to it, to remember the GLF from reading about it at the time. The name “Great Leap Forward” refers to Mao Zedong’s second Five Year Plan, launched in 1958, and intended to catapult China’s economy from backwardness into modernity. This was to be not just any old central planning project, but a whole new approach designed by the really smart people to correct the mistakes and failures that the Soviet Union had encountered on the road to communism. This time, they were going to get central planning right.
Yesterday the Biden Administration launched a significant new climate initiative with a design that has some remarkable resemblances to the Great Leap Forward. Since most readers probably don’t know how the Great Leap Forward worked out, I’ll save that for the end of the post.
The new Biden Administrative initiative is called “Community-Driven Solutions to Cut Climate Pollution Across America.” The press release from the EPA is here. Nick Pope covered the new initiative in this post at the Daily Caller, which was then also re-posted at Watts Up With That here.
This new initiative is just one small piece of the vast economic waste of the falsely-named Inflation Reduction Act, with its multi-trillion dollars of subsidies for uneconomic projects. But the “community-driven” tag line here is what brings the memory of the Great Leap Forward. The basic idea is that the new investments and technologies to transform our energy economy are going to come from federal selection and subsidizing of various projects originating out of state and local governments, otherwise known as “communities.” From the EPA release:
Today, July 22, . . . the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced selected recipients of over $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis. . . . The grants will fund projects supporting the deployment of technologies and programs to reduce greenhouse gases and other harmful pollution across the country. . . . Together, these selected projects will implement ambitious climate pollution reduction measures designed by states, Tribes and local governments that will achieve significant cumulative GHG reductions by 2030 and beyond.
Enough of the outmoded idea that the way to an efficient and reliable energy system is through profit-driven businesses competing with each other to find the most cost-effective solutions. The new idea is that local governments, aka “communities,” run the economy, directed and supported by some lavish funding from the feds. Here is the quote from Biden Administration “climate czar” John Podesta:
“President Biden’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants put local governments in the driver’s seat to develop climate solutions that work for their communities.”
Pope gives some examples of the kinds of projects that will be getting the funding:
The projects include electric vehicle (EV) charging station construction, funds to help local governments expedite green energy siting and programs to enhance heat pump adoption.
The unifying aspect of all of these projects is that they are uneconomic and would never be adopted by the people of their own choice with their own money. Thus there must be coercion through the federal funding and mandates from the local governments.
Compare this vision to China’s Great Leap Forward. A decent short history of the GLF can be found at the Association for Asian Studies here. The basic idea was that communes would be formed, of about 5500 households each, to become the main economic units, then taking direction from above as to what businesses to pursue:
The movement bore [Mao’s] characteristic faith in China’s bucolic masses—now unfettered by skeptical intellectuals—to surmount any obstacles and achieve a Communist utopia through unity, physical labor, and sheer willpower. In this final stage of collectivization, communes formed—each with some 5,500 households. . . .
In classic the central planning way, the businesses selected to be pursued were based on an ideological vision of utopia, rather than economic reality. The trendy thinking of the time was that strong and modern economies produced a lot of steel, so therefore making a lot of steel was proof of success. And thus the best-known example of the GLF’s folly in economic development was that every household was to build its own furnace to make steel:
One of the most infamous innovations of the Great Leap involved an industrial revolution in the countryside, where farmers constructed millions of backyard furnaces and then divided their time between tending crops and smelting steel.
This promptly led to myriad unintended consequences. Examples:
Gathering fuel to stoke all these furnaces resulted in the loss of at least 10 percent of China’s forests. . . . Rather than mining the ore to be smelted, everyone contributed iron implements, including tools, utensils, woks, doorknobs, shovels, window frames, and other everyday items, while children scoured the ground for iron nails and other scraps. . . . [T]he campaign essentially converted practical items into useless lumps of pig iron good only for clogging railroad yards. . . .
And as labor got diverted from productive uses to unproductive, the economy collapsed. It only took about a year:
Starvation became a widespread problem with the harvest of 1959. . . . As food reserves in the countryside diminished, peasants began dying in droves by the summer of 1960. They collapsed in fields, on roadsides, and even at home where family members watched their corpses rot, lacking the energy for burial or even to shoo away flies and rats. . . . Estimates of deaths directly related to the famine range from a minimum of twenty-three million to as many as fifty-five million, although the figure most often cited is thirty million.
Well, the good news is that this latest Biden program is a lousy $4.3 billion — big, but still not much more than a rounding error in the federal budget. The Inflation Reduction Act as a whole — touted as $1.5 trillion, but estimated by many to be more like $2-3 trillion — is not a rounding error. Devoting that kind of money to uneconomic and wealth-destroying projects can have disastrous consequences. I expect that we will escape the fate of China in the 1950s, but we can’t be sure until the climate crazies are defeated.
We are fast approaching something I have called the “Green Energy Wall.” The “Wall” consists of some combination of real-world obstacles, partly cost and partly physics, that will inevitably end the quest for emissions-free “net zero” electricity generation well before the goal of zero emissions is reached. I first identified the approaching Wall in this post in December 2021, and remarked that it was “gradually coming into focus” in this follow-up post in November 2023. Everyone who pays attention and is capable of doing basic arithmetic knows that the we are approaching this Wall, some jurisdictions much faster than others. (New York has voluntarily put itself in the front ranks.).
What we don’t know is how the hitting of the Wall will manifest itself: Widespread and frequent blackouts? Regular, enforced load-shedding brown-outs? Tripling or quadrupling of electricity prices? A political uprising as people realize that they have been duped by scammers claiming that an energy transition would be easy and cheap? Or perhaps it will be all of the above.
Meanwhile, the years pass slowly. The impossibility of the situation we are digging into becomes more and more obvious, but so far there is no obvious crisis. Will it arrive in another year, or two? Or maybe five?
Consider New York. Multiple statutes and regulations commit us to energy-transition mandates that simply will not be met. Among the fantasies are two major statutes passed in 2019, one for New York State (Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act), and the other for the City (Local Law 97); and vehicle emissions standards adopted in 2022 by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
Start with those vehicle emissions standards. In 2022 the DEC adopted for New York the standards and requirements set forth in the California Air Resources Board’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulation. California’s regulations call for minimum percentages of vehicles sold to be “zero emissions” starting with the 2026 model year, and then rapidly scaling up to 100% “zero emissions” by the 2035 model year. Here is a chart from CARB of the percentages of vehicles sold, by model year, that are supposed to be “zero emissions.”:
Equally ridiculous is the mandate in the CLCPA for 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030. The people in charge of implementing this mandate are completely incompetent and have no idea what they are doing. After passage of the Act in 2019, the first significant step, in 2020 and 2021, was to close the two zero-emissions nuclear reactors at Indian Point that provided about 25% of New York City’s electricity, and replace them with two brand new natural gas plants, thus substantially increasing emissions. So to date, the progress toward the so-called 70 x 30 goal has been negative.
The signature initiative to achieve the 70 x 30 goal is a plan for 9000 MW of offshore wind off the coast of Long Island. In this post on March 5 I did the simple arithmetic to calculate that, if all of that capacity actually gets built, it would at best provide about 16% of New York’s current electricity consumption — before the addition of new loads from the electrification of the vehicle fleet and of home heating. Granted, we have the large hydro plant at Niagara Falls that they count as “renewable,” plus some other hydro resources that, together with Niagara Falls, might come to 20% of consumption. So with those plus the offshore wind, perhaps we can get to 35% of consumption. (Meanwhile, the offshore wind projects keep getting canceled and delayed as the developers maneuver to get themselves increased prices.)
How are we going to get to 70% from renewables in under 6 years? They literally have no clue. Something called a “Scoping Plan” has been generated pursuant to the CLCPA. It foresees a need for something they call the “Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource.” This is something that does not currently exist, and likely will not exist during any relevant time frame.
Yet the lack of any viable replacement has not prevented New York from pledging to close its well-functioning natural gas plants. Several were scheduled for closure this year. But then, back in November, somebody noticed that there was nothing to replace the plants, so the forced retirement of four of these plants got postponed for two years. News flash: two years from now, we’re still not going to have anything to replace these plants. The same will be true four years from now, and six and eight and ten. Will they simply keep postponing the mandated closure? Perhaps this is how we avoid smashing into the Green Energy Wall.
And then we have Local Law 97, supposedly mandating all large (25,000 square feet and up) residential buildings to convert to electric heat, mostly by 2030. This will represent an increase in the demand on the grid by something in the range of 30%. This at the same time as the natural gas plants are mandated to close, to be only partially replaced by some highly irregular offshore wind that will not fully replace the gas generation, let alone begin to supply the increased demand.
Something has to give here, and it will give. It will be much for the best if this happens quickly, rather than dragging on for years and years.
Hospital Will Let Parents Kill Black Babies to Fight Racism- Hospital won’t notify police if newborn babies test positive for drugs. Has DEI even been as literally DIE as this? The Mass General Brigham Hospital system is making a major change and it will impact their youngest patients. The hospital will no longer report suspected abuse or neglect to the
state solely if a newborn baby tests positive for drugs after birth. Instead, hospitals will now require written consent before conducting
a drug test on the expectant mother or infant, in most cases. Mass General Brigham said the move is to address the “racial and
ethnic inequities” present in healthcare, adding that substance abuse
disorder in the context of pregnancy more “disproportionately affects
black individuals.” Every business needs a strategy and Mass General Brigham Hospital
settled on, “come to us if you’re using heroin while pregnant. We won’t
snitch to the cops because that would lead to racial inequities.”.........
Lawfare
Are Judges Off Limits? Depends on Their Position on Trump - Judges are off-limits only as long as they’re trying to send Republicans to prison. The media has become so inured to its own hypocrisy that it has spent
months simultaneously claiming that Trump’s attacks on his judges are a
grave threat that must be met with gag orders while attacking Judge
Aileen Cannon who stands accused of actually considering evidence before
rushing to railroad Trump. The obsession with Judge Cannon is so extreme that you now see bizarre headlines like this in the media…Jack Smith Destroys Judge Aileen Cannon’s Jury Instructions – MSNBC. Apart from Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Cannon has been the judge
most consistently in the media’s sights, facing a campaign of non-stop
harassment, demonization, and pressure campaigns to remove her from the
case......
My Take - We've reached the point some form of action must be taken against these corrupt prosecutors and judges. What's happening now is very little different than what went on in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, China, and every communist/socialist ruled country in the world, through out all of history, and it need to stopped. RK
Environmentalism is a farce.
Save the Planet, Kill the Gorillas- “You can’t make green energy without killing gorillas.” Sometimes you have to destroy the village to save the village and sometimes you have to kill the gorillas to make it possible for dot com execs to drive luxury electric cars… to save the planet. Mining for EVs, batteries could wipe out 1/3 of African great apes A third of Africa’s gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees are at risk
because they live in areas that overlap with mining operations for
metals critical to the global clean energy transition. Nearly 180,000 great apes in Africa are under threat as mining
activities drive deforestation, according to a study published on
Wednesday in Science Advances. It’s okay. I’m sure the apes will understand.......
All the People Who Care About the Planet Already Bought Electric Cars- In
the first quarter of 2024, GM sold 16,425 EVs. In the first quarter of
2025, GM will need to sell 250,000. The “$60,000 Electric Junkers to
Save the Planet” industry is running into trouble. Tesla sales are down
and GM isrunning into trouble
with its lineup of electric junkers. Especially since with the Bolt
gone, it has no more remotely affordable EVs. And the people who can
drop a year’s salary to save the planet are buying luxury brands......
Who’s in the Mood for Another Environmental Movie Lecture from Hollywood? - Coppola travels in a Falcon 7X business jet. A fortune was burned on “Don’t Look Up” (not to mention multiple efforts
to retool the story of Noah’s Ark for pushing a global warming message
that baffled Hollywood executives when religious viewers didn’t seem
interested), but much like the industry pushed out an assembly line of
anti-war movies during the Iraq War that no one wanted to see, followed
by racism movies more recently than no one wanted to see, it’s time for
more Warmunist preaching.............
My Take - It wasn't that long ago when the world was bemoaning the loss of gorillas, and Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall were lauded as a leftist icon for trying to same them. But that was before the left decided "green energy" was far more important than endangering these apes, or for that matter birds or bats. All of which they screamed about, and the Endangered Species Act was passed. A fraudulent mess used by the left when convenient, and ignored when it may work against their narrative of the moment. We need to grasp this and act accordingly. Everything the left promotes is predicated on lies of commission and lie of omission. Start from that foundational premise and you'll soon have the correct understanding on any issue they're taking a stand on. RK
Israel, Islam, Hamas, America, and Joe Biden
‘Sockophobia’ Leads Muslims to Firebomb 3 Stores 5 pairs of socks. 3 firebombings. We all know that Islam is a Religion of Peace and is wholly peaceful
unless it’s offended by unacceptable behavior like Jews, Christians, and
Hindus existing or socks. The Malaysian sock crisis I wrote about last week
is now worse than ever leading to a wave of firebombings in the
majority Muslim country by unknown person or persons who are probably
suspected to be the Amish. It started when 5 pairs of socks from China arrived at a chain of
local convenience stores that Muslims believe said, “Allah.” (Despite
being the only ones to worship this ‘Allah’, they’re not especially
reliable at recognizing his name, having previously gone after Burger King
for what they believed were Allah-shaped ice cream swirls and Nike over
treads that looked like Allah, so I’m hedging on whether the socks
actually said, “Allah” or “Olly olly oxen free.”...........
Why Israel Keeps Losing the Debate (VIDEO) - Debate,
like war, is won on the offense, not the defense. While the video is
about Israel, but overall the situation applies to
most of the Western world. It’s just most clearly and most sharply
defined when it comes to Israel. The Islamic and leftist side plays the
same game. It denies any
guilt, projects all of it on us, screams as loudly as possible, lies
constantly, exploits every misstep and invents plenty of its own. The
enemy and its collaborators are in full attack mode 24/7, crying
victimhood and simultaneously celebrating their own atrocities. Their
goal is to always be on the offense. Faced with this, the side of
civilization all too often defaults to
the defense. It explains, it clarifies and it tries to prove. And all of
this is moot...................
Biden Admin Blasts Israel for Shutting Down Al Jazeera - Al Jazeera isn’t the press. It’s a terrorist operation. Al Jazeera, an arm of the Islamic terror state of Qatar, originally
the video dump for Osama bin Laden’s greatest hits, bought up much of
Washington D.C. and corrupted the media so that everyone pretends it’s a
news organization. The United States not only knew that Al Jazeera was a terrorist outlet, but actually used to bomb it........
CAIR Complains 98.3% on No-Fly List are Muslim- Who exactly has been trying to hijack, bomb or blow up planes since 9/11? CAIR, a hate group whose co-founder openly stated that he supports Hamas and who celebrated the Oct 7 attacks
on Israel, spends a lot of its time complaining that Muslims are
wrongly suspected of supporting Islamic terrorism. In its latest
“Islamophobia report”, busily being promoted by the
media, CAIR complains that there are too many Muslims on the ‘No-Fly’
list. “CAIR was given access to copies of the No-Fly List and Selectee
List, subsets of what is colloquially known as the “terror watchlist.”
An expert statistical analysis estimates that at least 98.3% of the
names on the watchlist are identifiably Muslim. More than 350,000
entries alone in the portion of the watchlist acquired by CAIR include
some transliteration of Mohamed or Ali or Mahmoud, and the top 50 most
frequently occurring names are all Muslim names.”........
FACT CHECK: CAIR Report Claims Mercy Mosque Fire by Crazy Serial Arsonist in Minnesota as “Islamophobic” - Little
has been civilly committed for bipolar disorder with psychotic
features. CAIR has released its annual Islamophobia civil rights
report. That
means that, as usual, the Islamist group falsely describes various
events as anti-Muslim or “Islamophobic”. And that the media, without a
single fact check, uncritically repeats
whatever the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims
despite its history of support for terrorism including the Hamas attacks
of Oct 7. In this year’s report, CAIR starts its list of “Anti-Mosque
Incidents” in Minnesota. According to the CAIR report, “In April, two
mosques in Minneapolis
were reportedly targeted by arson attacks in the span of two days by the
same individual. The man reportedly started a fire on the evening of
April 23 at the Masjid Omar Islamic Center. The following day, the same
individual was seen in
surveillance footage going into Masjid Al Rahma, or Mercy Mosque, after
which another fire damaged the third floor of the mosque. Several
people,including about 40 children, were reportedly evacuated. The
individual was arrested and charged with arson in May.” Sounds awful.
Right?...............
Why an Oct 7 Memorial Needs Warning Signs and Guards - This
is what it takes to keep leftists and Islamists from trashing it. One
thing that struck me when looking at the rows of Israeli,
American, and the flags of 29 other countries whose citizens fell victim
to the Hamas attacks were the warning signs. And the guards. In the
middle of a public park in a wealthy area of Los Angeles
County, the rows of flags wouldn’t be safe unless there were warning
signs about video surveillance and legal prohibitions against vandalism
and a number of armed guards (whom I did not film) to back them up......
Palestinian Authority “Police Officer” Opens Fire on Israeli School BusThese
are the terrorists backed by the Biden administration and subsidized by
our tax dollars. The Biden administration wants the PLO terrorist of
the ‘Palestinian
Authority’ to be in charge of Gaza. Meanwhile the terrorist members of
their “police force” keep carrying out terrorist attacks. Earlier this month,
Muhammad Manasra, who is affiliated with Fatah, the ruling PLO group
behind the Palestinian Authority, and had graduated from the Egyptian
Police College, who had served as a Palestinian police officer, at a
rank equivalent to major, opened fire at an Israeli gas station, killing
a medic, before being taken out by the owner of a Humus restaurant......
2024 Election
Wisconsin Bans Zuckerbucks - Leftists struggled to explain why letting special interests fund elections is a good thing. While the votes haven’t been fully counted, enough of the votes have
come in to say that Wisconsin’s Question 1 ending the private funding of
elections, also known as ‘Zuckerbucks’ for the massive injection of
cash by the Facebook boss that some say may have swung the 2020
election, has passed and will become the law. The majority of people across Wisconsin voted to end the practice
except in Milwaukee, Madison’s Dane and Iowa counties, and a few of the
other predictable places. The Zuckerbucks faction seemingly wasn’t hopeful and made sure the money got in before the votes came in...........
Migrants in Border Riot Invasion Freed by Judge - “Released
on their own recognizance” is slang for “they can go anywhere they
want.” The migrant border riot in which the invading illegals attacked
anyone standing in their way and tore down a border fence was as clear an example of an invasion as you can get.......So the presiding magistrate in the case decided to set them loose........
Baltimore Bridge May Take 15 Years and $2 Billion to Rebuild- And
then the real stealing will begin. If you thought that the collapse
of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was the real disaster, you aren’t
familiar with the government. Stephen Green at VodkaPundit notes that,
“Could it really take twice as long and four times as much money to
replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge than it did to build it
in the first place? The Key Bridge was built at a cost (adjusted for
inflation) of about $200 million. Replacing it could take a decade and
cost $400 million to $800 million dollars, according to experts in what
has become a dismal field.”.....
Leftist Corruption, Academia
1 in 4 California Community College Applicants are Fake- “We’re at such a level where we’re just trying to survive.” What do you get when you make community college access easier? This hellscape of massive endless fraud. California’s community colleges are reporting a rise in
financial aid fraud. In January, suspected bots represented 1 in 4
college applicants. Schools have given away millions to these scams, and
college officials say fraudsters are getting smarter with the help of
AI. 1 in 4. The sheer scope of this is massive.............
Joe Biden is a Heretic
Biden Not Aware of Own Proclamation Making Easter Sunday “Transgender” Day- “I didn’t do that.” After the backlash over the coordinated campaign by the Biden
administration and most Democrat public officials to commemorate Easter
Sunday as the “Transgender Day of Visibility”, no one bothered to tell Biden........Is Biden lying or clueless? Congressional offices routinely sign the
names of their bosses to things they’re not aware of. It wouldn’t
surprise me in the least if the White House were doing that. The media is already deploying its “fact checks” to argue that there
was nothing wrong with proclaiming Easter Sunday as the “Transgender Day
of Visibility” because Easter doesn’t always come out on March 31st.........
Crime-Ridden ‘Ghost Town’ Celebrates ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ - 1 of every 30 Oakland residents had a car stolen last year. Mayor Sheng Tao tweeted that “today is #TransDayOfVisibility and a
reminder of the amazing contributions our trans community have made to
Oakland and our world.” Set aside this nonsense, what is invisible during the “Transgender Day of Visibility”? Rising crime risks turning Oakland into a ‘ghost town.’ Newsom is sending in reinforcements – CNN. “Robberies grew 38% last year in Oakland, according to police data.
Burglaries increased 23%. Motor vehicle theft jumped 44%. Roughly one of
every 30 Oakland residents had a car stolen last year, according to a
San Francisco Chronicle analysis.” 1 out of every 30. Mindblowing number. But why talk about that when we can instead talk about the
“Transgender Day of Visibility”? And that way the horrendous crime rates
will be invisible........
In 10 years before the proverbial 2035
date when many mandated transitions to “green electricity” occur to
reduce or eliminate the usage of fossil fuels, most of today’s elected
officials, policy advisers, and policymakers are:
NOT trained in engineering.
Reside in wealthy countries.
Unaware of the engineering reality that without the
petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, those 6,000 products that
entered society after the 1800s start to disappear, the same products
that have been the basis of the world populating over the last 200
years, after the discovery of crude oil, from 1 to 8 billion.
Unwilling to engage in conversations about where and
how the world will replace the fossil fuels that are now providing the
basis of all the “PRODUCTS” in society that did not exist before the
1800s.
Those policymakers only focus on “just weather” dependent
electricity generated from wind turbines and solar panels, i.e., “green
electricity” that only exists because of government subsidies. They fail
to understand that it’s the PRODUCTS that run this world, not just
electricity. They also fail to comprehend that wind turbines and solar
panels CANNOT make any products needed to support humanity.
Not being able to comprehend simple engineering
principles, they fail to understand that all the components needed to
make wind turbines and solar panels are made from petrochemicals
manufactured from crude oil, the same crude oil that they want to rid
the world of!
By 2035, most of today’s elected government officials and
policymakers will be termed out of office and either be retired or
deceased, leaving their policies for today’s teenagers and grade school
kids to pay for the implementation of those dictates from today’s
“leaders” in wealthy country dictates!
The other 90+ percent of the world’s developing countries continue with unabated emissions for their dismal economies!
Today’s policy advisers, policymakers, and the news media,
also primarily NOT trained in engineering, constantly refer to all
climate changes being caused by humanity, but they never identify where
most of that emission-generating humanity is located!
The healthy and wealthy countries of Germany, Australia,
Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, all the EU, and the USA,
representing about one of the eight billion of the world’s population,
could literally shut down and cease to exist, and the opposite of what
the media tells us and believes will take place.
Emissions will be exploding from those poorer developing
countries, i.e., the other seven billion on this planet. Unlike the
wealthy countries that have huge economies that can subsidize any
delusionally obsessed idea, these poorer countries’ dismal economies
cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag!
Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every
person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise
could vanish off the face of the earth or even die off. Global emissions
will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the
population and economic growth of India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and
Tanzania.
When Thomas Edison and his researchers
at Menlo Park came onto the lighting scene, they focused on improving
the filament — first testing carbon, then platinum, before finally
returning to a carbon filament. By October 1879, Edison’s team had
produced a light bulb with a carbonized filament of uncoated cotton
thread that could last for 14.5 hours. They continued to experiment with
the filament until settling on one made from bamboo that gave Edison’s lamps a lifetime of up to 1,200 hours.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) is widely credited as the
inventor of the incandescent light bulb, but the more accurate telling
is that he improved on a technology that
already existed. Many of Edison’s 1,093 patents were the product of
teamwork, with a large team of researchers working out of his laboratory
in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Their research also played a key role in the
development of sound recording and motion picture technology.
One of his most significant achievements was opening the
first power plant in New York City in 1882, the Pearl Street Station. He
also installed the first electric streetlights in Roselle, New Jersey,
marking the beginning of the end of gas lighting in American cities.
Eventually, Edison’s companies evolved into the General
Electric brand, which is known for its washing machines, refrigerators,
and electric light bulbs, which all utilize parts and components made from crude oil.
Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. More than 6,000 productsbased
on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity, and
the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.
For aircraft and ships, just like that for the diverse
options for the generation of electricity, they all utilize parts and
components, i.e., the “PRODUCTS” made from the oil derivatives
manufactured from raw crude oil.
When will our policymakers engage in conversations to
identify the new source that will replace crude oil, which is the basis
of all the “Products” for today’s humanity of the 8 billion on this
planet?
At any given moment in the course of human events, not everyone can be the leader. And thus can the world only have a small number of “climate leaders” to light us the way to the Great Green Energy Nirvana of the future.
Among that select group of “climate leaders,” New York is definitely one. We know that because New York enacted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2018, announcing its “climate leadership” to the world for all to envy.
We know from my last post how things are going with this “climate leadership” thing in New York: five years into the competition, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased substantially, as two large new natural gas power plants have replaced electricity generation from two prematurely-closed emissions-free nuclear facilities, while generation of electricity from wind and solar has barely budged.
The short summary of Darwall’s Report is that there is nothing but bad news for Britain. By contrast to New York, the UK has actually moved forward with massive construction of “renewable” facilities to generate electricity, mostly in the form of wind turbines. What it has gotten for its efforts is far more nameplate capacity of facilities for generation, but far less electricity actually generated. Costs that were predicted by advocates to decrease substantially have instead increased steadily. The percent of electricity generated from the “renewables” has gotten to around 35%, but has stalled out at that level, and the latest round of offers of acreage for offshore wind development attracted no bidders even at prices a multiple of what additional natural gas facilities would cost. In short, the UK appears stuck, with its consumers paying higher costs for power indefinitely, but with no path forward from here to the promised net zero utopia.
Darwall compares trends in electricity prices charged to commercial and industrial business in the UK and U.S. over the period from 2004 to 2022. The UK prices have steadily pulled away as the percent of electricity generation from “renewables” has increased. Here is Darwall’s chart from page 51 of his Report:
Darwall attributes the growing divergence in prices mostly to divergence in fossil fuel production. In the UK, fracking for natural gas has been completely blocked by environmental regulations. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Darwall writes:
By 2009, natural gas output had increased by 14.3 percent from its trough, reaching its highest level since 1974. In the next 10 years, US natural gas output surged a staggering 64.4 percent, to 33,899 billion cubic feet (bcf), 56.0 percent higher than its previous peak of 21,731 bcf in 1973.
In return for greatly increased electricity generation from wind and solar, the UK has dug itself into the perverse situation of ever-increasing nameplate generation capacity, but simultaneously falling output of electricity. Darwall:
Between 2009 and 2020, . . . a 15.5 percent increase in nameplate generating capacity produced 21.6 percent less electricity. In 2009, 1 MW of capacity produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent.
Has the UK at least made some progress in “saving the planet”? Here is my favorite chart from the Report, found on page 28:
The UK has gone a long way toward destroying its industrial base, but its emissions reductions are so small as to be barely noticeable in the overall world picture, and totally swamped by increases elsewhere, mostly from China. The rest of the world is getting a good laugh at Britain’s expense. As Darwall states, “The metric of leadership success is fellowship.” By that metric, as well as every other, Britain’s “climate leadership” is a total disaster.
The cries of climate alarm get ever louder and more urgent. (E.g., New York Times, January 9, “It’s confirmed: 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record and perhaps in the last 100,000 years. By far.”). We’re all about to boil! Something must be done!
OK, but then there is the proposed solution: Order up by government fiat that our current fully working and inexpensive energy system must be replaced with a never-demonstrated pipe dream conjured up by political science and gender studies majors who know nothing about how an energy system works. We’re far enough into this by now that some of the pieces are starting to blow up in dramatic fashion. Are we allowed to notice?
Here in New York, we got into this game mainly with two pieces of legislation, both enacted in 2018 — at the state level, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act; and in the City, Local Law 97. With both laws the pols set the deadlines for compliance at dates seemingly far in the future, expecting that they would no longer be around to be held accountable. The first of those two laws ordered up state-wide mandates for “decarbonizing” the economy, starting with a requirement for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030; and the second set limits for carbon emissions for buildings in New York City, some of which have just kicked in effective January 1, 2024. Sure enough, the Mayor at the time of enactment is gone, almost the entire City Council is gone (term limits), and the Governor at the time is also gone.
So where are we?
The Manhattan Contrarian Energy Storage Report of December 1, 2022, led off by sounding a clear alarm: getting electricity from intermittent wind and solar well past 50% of total generation would require enormous quantities of energy to be stored, with technical requirements, including duration of storage, well beyond the capability of any battery currently existing or likely to be invented any time soon. Essentially, if fossil fuels are to be eliminated, there is only one realistic possibility for meeting the storage requirements: hydrogen.
In mid-2023, the New York Independent System Operator, to its credit, recognized the problem — although it buried that recognition deep in a report when it should be shouting about the problem from the rooftops. From NYISO’s Power Trends 2023 Report, revised August 2023, page 7, starting in the middle of a paragraph and without any emphasis:
[T]o achieve the mandates of the CLCPA, new emission-free generating technologies with the necessary reliability service attributes will be needed to replace the flexible, dispatchable capabilities of fossil fuel generation and sustain production for extended periods of time. Such emission-free technologies, either individually or in aggregate, are not yet available on a commercial scale.
With hydrogen as the only possible such “emissions-free generating technology,” how much would hydrogen cost as the solution to this problem, particularly if one follows the hypothesis that it must be created without any use of fossil fuels? My Report, page 14, noted that existing commercial production of this so-called “green” hydrogen was “negligible,” leaving no good benchmark for understanding what the costs might be. As a substitute, I ran some rough numbers based on cost of wind and solar generators to make the electricity and efficiency of the electrolysis process. The result was a very rough estimate that this “green” hydrogen would cost “somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 times more” than natural gas (page 17).
Well, now some new precision has come into view. In July 2022 the UK government launched what it calls its First Hydrogen Allocation Round (HAR 1), to obtain bids and award contracts to produce this so-called “green” hydrogen using wind power. The process took a while, but here from December 14, 2023 is the announcement of the first round of contract awards. Excerpt:
Following the launch of the first hydrogen allocation round (HAR1) in July 2022, we have selected the successful projects to be offered contracts. We are pleased to announce 11 successful projects, totalling 125MW capacity.HAR1 puts the UK in a leading position internationally: this represents the largest number of commercial scale green hydrogen production projects announced at once anywhere in Europe. . . . The 11 projects have been agreed at a weighted average strike price of £241/MWh.
£241/MWh? At today’s exchange rate of 1.27 $/£, that would be $306/MWh. Prices of natural gas are generally quoted in $/MMBTU rather than per MWh, but here is EIA’s latest Electricity Monthly Update, dated December 21 and covering the month of October 2023. It gives natural gas prices in the per MWh units. The “price of natural gas at New York City” is given as $11.32/MWh. That would make the price that the UK has just agreed to pay to buy this “green” hydrogen stuff approximately 27 times what we can buy natural gas for here in New York to obtain the same energy content.
And that $306/MWh is just for the hydrogen. It includes nothing for the massive new facilities (underground salt caverns?) to store the stuff, for a new pipeline network to transport it, and for a new collection of power plants to burn it.
To be at least a little fair, natural gas prices do vary considerably by location. Even within the U.S., some prices per the EIA Report are about double the New York City price, and in Europe maybe four times the New York City price. But those prices are affected by European demand for LNG from the U.S., due to their own stupid decision to ban fracking for natural gas combined with the unpleasantness in Russia.
And even if you figure that green hydrogen can be produced for “only” 7 - 10 times what it costs to buy natural gas, rather than 25 - 30 times, is anybody really going to go forward with such a project to replace all natural gas in an entire modern economy? It would be completely nuts.
Out of 152.3 TWh of electricity produced or imported in 2023, fossil fuels continued to provide 63.3 TWh (41.5%). Most of the imports (14.5%) are undoubtedly from fossil fuels as well. Wind/solar/other provided just 12.1 TWh, or 7.9% of the total, barely up from about 6% in 2019. And that’s now suddenly going to go to 70% by 2030? Ridiculous. Meanwhile, the big story leaps off the page, as the Nuclear New York guys emphasize in the headline. The State forced the premature closure of two nuclear plants in 2020 and 2021, which caused the (carbon free) nuclear share of the total to drop from about 29% to only 18%; and almost all of that was taken up by two new natural gas plants, causing the fossil fuel share of the total to soar from only 34% to 41.5%. No person looking at this chart would ever conclude that New York has spent the past five years embarked on a crash program to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. That process is going absolutely nowhere.
The truth is that the march to the Great Green Energy Future is over, but no one is yet willing to admit that.
In December 2016 Donald Trump had just been elected President. He had been widely accused of calling the climate scare a “hoax.” In a post titled “The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare,” I went out on a limb predicting that the change of administration could bring about a the rapid demise of the climate scare. The post reported the then-increasing focus of the environmental movement on the climate issue, and ended with this prediction:
The environmental movement has climbed itself way out onto the global warming limb. Now the Trump administration is about to start sawing off the limb behind them.
Well, that didn’t happen. In the event, the Trump Administration was mostly a disappointment to us climate skeptics. Yes, they did take on a few significant regulatory matters, like rescinding the so-called Clean Power Plan (forced closure of fossil fuel power plants). But they never tackled the Endangerment Finding (labeling CO2 a “danger” to human health and welfare); nor did they make any meaningful pushback against the activist bureaucracies or scientific societies; nor did they cut funding for the climate alarm movement to any significant degree.
So we have been left to wait for the climate scare and the energy transition to collapse under the weight of the combination of their own scientific absurdity, physical impossibility, and crushing costs. It has been a long wait.
But you have likely seen over the course of just the past few months that the supposed green energy transition — widely hyped and massively subsidized for two decades — has suddenly started to crumble on multiple fronts. We are rapidly approaching the green energy wall. And yet at the same time, the promoters of the climate scare are not backing down. Not in the least. To the contrary, the New York Times reports just today that the major environmental NGOs are in a process of cutting their funding for their most basic programs, like dealing with toxic chemicals, in order to double down and focus even more on the one big issue — climate change.
More on that in a minute. But first, a small update on the approach of the green energy wall. Here are just a few of the latest data points on the supposed green energy transition not happening due to issues of cost and physical impossibility:
From the New York Times, November 2: “Wind Power, Key to Democrats’ Climate-Change Goals, Faces a Crisis.” The article recounts the developers backing out of four big offshore wind projects off New York a couple of months ago, followed by an overlapping group of developers backing out of two big wind projects of the coast of New Jersey just a few days ago (November 1). (See also my post of October 5 as to other cancelations of offshore wind projects off the mid-Atlantic and New England.). For New York, where offshore wind is supposed to be the magic elixir that will enable us to close all our natural gas plants and at the same time electrify all buildings and cars, we are left with exactly one offshore project currently moving forward, with all of 12 turbines. Excerpt from the Times piece: “Instead of gathering momentum as the long-promised benefits of offshore wind farms are about to be realized, the industry is now mired in an existential crisis. An assortment of recent obstacles to projects in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are almost certain to delay — and possibly derail — Northeastern states’ grand ambitions to harness the winds blowing over the Atlantic Ocean.”
The darned fossil fuels just won’t go away. From the New York Times today: “Nations That Vowed to Halt Warming Are Expanding Fossil Fuels, Report Finds.”Excerpt: “In 2030, if current projections hold, the United States will drill for more oil and gas than at any point in its history. Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to do the same. They’re among the world’s fossil fuel giants that, together, are on course this decade to produce twice the amount of fossil fuels than a critical global warming threshold allows, according to a United Nations-backed report issued on Wednesday.”
Values of stocks of wind and solar developers have been crashing. Jo Nova reports today that the Invesco Solar ETF is down 40% year-to-date. She previously produced this chart of the stock price of Siemens Energy, with two dramatic drops in the past few months tied to announcements of losses in the wind energy business:
Which brings us to the other New York Times article from today, headline: “Environmental Groups Cut Programs as Funding Shifts to Climate Change.”Even as everyone can see that this whole green energy thing is just not going to work, the Times reports that the entire environmental movement is doubling down, cutting other programs and focusing their funding on climate change to the exclusion of everything else:
A significant shift in donor contributions to nonprofits fighting climate change in recent years has left some of the nation’s biggest environmental organizations facing critical shortfalls in programs on toxic chemicals, radioactive contamination and wildlife protection. The Natural Resources Defense Council is shutting down its nuclear mission and has laid off its top lawyer in the field.......
The NRDC is not alone. The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Working Group, which have been at the forefront of efforts to clean up waste water, regulate pesticides and adopt tougher standards for atomic power plants, are facing similar financial problems.
All the funders and the activists care about any more is climate change:
Meanwhile, global spending to fight climate change by environmental groups and other nonprofits reached $8 billion in 2021, most of it in the United States and Canada, according to a survey released in September by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. . . . “Funders that had a nuclear program or a toxics program have left those fields entirely and have gone to climate change,” said Marylia Kelley, senior adviser and former executive director of a citizens oversight group. . . .
I’d be surprised if the total annual funding of all climate skeptic organizations is as much as $25 million. Well, they have religious fervor and fanaticism on their side, but we have reality.
