Climate science doesn't belong in the basement of "woke" belief systems that you cover in the universe of CRT polemics and grievance studies. Despite the noise created by environmentalists and activists who pursue misguided agendas to prevent fossil fuels consumption, climate science is grounded in hard science from research universities internationally, including those unaffected by woke discourse. Similarly, clean energy expansion has been driven by the cold hand of capitalism and economic decision-making. A few key points:
- Contrary to remarks above, California has phased out nuclear power for many decades because of general public anxiety. CA recently extended the life of Diablo Canyon in response to the newly appreciated value of nuclear as a clean energy source.
- Solar and wind aren't unknown or unproven. In the clean tech and renewables industries, there's widespread understanding of their current limitations and the amount of innovation required to bridge current gaps. Silicon valley, once again, is driving exciting change and building solutions.
- Solar simply costs less that fossil fuel energy production, esp. in developing nations where no grid infrastructure exists. Just as wireless phone service made the build out of land line infrastructure obsolete, the same will occur w/ energy systems in many developing nations. Grid systems of the future won't be centralized and monolithic.
I’m going to regret asking this I think. What do you mean by storage? Battery storage? You do realize there is no battery storage technology in existence today that can realistically store energy long enough to be useful.
No offence, but you can’t look at your arrangement at home and project this across the globe.
Ice core samples reveal that atmospheric CO2 was many times higher than now when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and clearly the result was nothing like what "environmental" doomsayers today keep parroting. I think it would be reasonable to set a goal of returning to about double what we have now, around one part per thousand. This is still less than for most of earth's history.
The people that are anti-nuclear haven’t done the research. It is viable and less dangerous overall than fossil fuels. Solar is vastly underfunded and underutilized, as is geothermal. Fossil fuels are too expensive, the only reason we use them is giant capital costs already invested in them.
Sooo, the author gets the main argument completely wrong, so I suspect that all of the rest of his comments are based on bad information as well. Getting to net zero by 2050 will not limit the global temperature by 1.5 degrees. That ant even close to the case. It takes the earth and the ocean some 20+ years to reach equilibrium once additional heat is introduced. We are already above the 1.5 degeee target. To get to 1.5 degrees only we would need to go negative in carbon, which isn’t going to happen.
Getting to net zero by 2050 is impossible without trillions of wasted dollars and billions starving to death, and as you said it won’t limit warming to 1.5 degrees so it’s meaningless anyway.
I’ll have to research the accusation that Exxon knew about global warming in 1977. It’s a new allegation and I haven’t checked it out. I’m skeptical, however, because global warming didn’t become an issue until Hanson testified in Congress in 1989.
No offence, I just find a lot of this big oil rhetoric tedious and disingenuous. I’ve yet to see any evidence of a massive Exxon ad campaign and big donations to climate deniers, think tanks or NGOs. A $50,000 grant here, another $75,000 grant there. It’s literally pocket change when it comes climate.
Yet no one seems to complain about the Associated Press, a supposedly unbiased media institution, getting $8 mill two years ago from alarmist NGOs to promote climate news. I can literally cite dozens of examples like this.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
“ Oh, absolutely. It's even worse in some ways as we were working our way through Covid. There were a lot of scientific uncertainties particularly early on, and we started to understand more and more. But you couldn't say that one thing was more right than another at the beginning. It's just that you should have given credence to some of these alternative views, which was not done, as you point out.”
When we ignore history we can make statements like this. Fauci and company did the COVID scare with AIDS/HIV. If you knew that you would have known COVID was like The Spectrum ad, “nonsense.”
How this relates to Climate hysteria history again shows the fear the activists are spreading have been around for years.
From what I have read, there is no way we can satisfy the global desire for energy with solar and wind power, at least not with existing technology. So why aren't people talking about nuclear power?
"...we can power the United States with renewables."
It is you who need to do some reading; that is a fantasy. Where are you going to store the massive energy needed when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn't shining? In select areas it's possible to pump water uphill then later drain it back down through turbines. Do you fantasize that batteries will do the trick everywhere else? If you'd crunched the numbers you know that would be absolutely prohibitively expensive.
Reminds me of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. I think it was about 20 years ago when they announced with great confidence their intention to go 100% renewables.
It’s a mountainous island with lots of sunlight and wind. Ideal conditions for wind and solar. Because of the mountains, they even built a massive pumped water storage unit that could produce power when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining.
Well, they still rely on large diesel engines to produce power because even in ideal conditions, wind and solar are not reliable.
20 years is many technical generations from today. Then it would not make sense to put the relatively-crude and inefficient technologies into a system which now powers my household and both electric cars. And now we have much better storage.
Yet after all these years there is not a single grid in the world run completely from renewables. Meanwhile, grids with the most expensive energy costs have the highest penetration of wind and solar. Hmm
I’m not sure how to respond to this. Far be it from me to question what you are paying for electricity, but the 26.0 cents per kWh Los Angeles households paid for electricity in December, 2022 was 57.6 percent more than the nationwide average of 16.5 cents per kWh.
Here are the top five most expensive power prices in the world.
Germany 39 cents
Bermuda 37 cents
Denmark 34 cents
Portugal 32 cents
Belgium 32 cents
What do these countries all have in common, excluding maybe Bermuda? You might have some unique circumstance that make rooftop solar workable for you, but that would be the rare exception.
By the way, Australia is 16 on the list at 26 cents and they’ve been throwing rooftop solar at home owners for more than a decade. And this is a country that had some of the lowest power prices in the industrialized world 20 years ago.
The costs for our power are high, which is how we got an 18% payback on power without counting the EV gasoline part. Any power we buy from the power company to offset poor PV production is from renewable sources by contract.
Here is how it works: They put us on a time-of-use rate, which means we produce high-cost power in the daytime, and take the same kWh out at night when it is cheaper, trading our good stuff for the cheapest. The utility loves it and we get to use the grid as a battery.
The PV system on our roof is the primary source of power for the household and both electric cars. We do not have to go out to gas up, or need oil changes, or emissions checks or any engine maintenance at all! The PV system paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
Why don't you shed your political biases and try it?
What was your return on investment? No electric car pays for itself through elimination of oil changes. For all the money you spent the temperature reduction you enabled has already been used up by the coal powered factories building the solar panels in Xianjang
It was the PV system which paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone. Without the cars, the system paid back in six years, for an 18% ROI. And I love the cars!!
What's the longest trip you take in your electric car? EV's are ok for hopping around town, but trying to drive cross-country in one is a sure way to go Postal as you pointlessly waste hours of time, and that's IF you can find a charger when you need one. Plus I couldn't stand other drivers thinking I'm one of those snooty stuck-up virtue-signalers, but that's just me.
I have taken trips of several thousand miles. What is wrong with folk who are so ignorant of reality? Tesla has over 20,000 superchargers and they are every 130 miles on main highways.
And you probably do not have many EVs where you live but they are ubiquitous here.
Glenn If the goal were to destroy young black people: 1- Withhold the truth from them eg lie about the facts of life a] Crime statistics broken down by demographics If black, and I truly believed that police killed Blacks more than others, I would be very angry and I am sure deranged as well b] If not trusted to deal with the truth, would I pursue it?
I would incentivize the parents to Grow Up already and give the kids the childhood they deserve. THANKS FOR YOUR FIGHT FOR TRUTH, BEAUTY AND THE AMERICAN WAY FOR "YOUR PEOPLE" GOD CHOSE YOU TO LEAD WITH LOVE
I earned a Master of Science in his field, and want to debate the issues. We can start with Ocean Acidification. Are you concerned or are you uninformed?
"We can start with Ocean Acidification. Are you concerned or are you uninformed?"
Interesting how you exclude the possibility that one could be informed yet unconcerned. Conditions on the globe are changing all the time (and did before humans entered the picture). Species either cope or they die out.
I earned a Master of Science in Environmental Management in 1982, and was a senior engineer for PG&E in the 1980s. This is nothing more than a right-wing hit job, to be swallowed by those without decent educations.
It is true what the real scientists say, but we can help by taking our own actions which result in significant savings. My household and both electric cars are primarily powered by the PV system on our roof. We do not have to go out to gas up We need no oil changes, transmission work, in fact no engine maintenance at all! We get free power now, with the PV system having paid back in three years. Do any of you do this? Why not?
It's hard not to chuckle at your so-obvious sense of moral superiority. I'm afraid that I'm guilty of not having solar panels on my roof, or pretty much any of the other things you're so proud of. Yet somehow I don't feel one bit ashamed.
I'm curious, have you looked into the environmental cost of manufacturing, not to mention eventually disposing of, that thousand pounds of batteries in your car? How about the solar panels on your roof?
And are you by any chance aware of the fact that ice core samples reveal that CO2 was many times higher than now throughout most of earth's history? In that perspective, the current hysteria about every new molecule of CO2 entering the air is nonsensical. As for the Dungeness Crabs (from another of your many comments), how did they cope 100 million years ago, when way more CO2 was in the air? You must surely be aware that species come and go, and sobbing about each one is pointless.
Is there any discussion in the book that global warming may not be related to CO2 but just natural? I have read in several places that even if there is a correlation between global warming and CO2, that the global warming comes first. The conclusion is, that a natural rise in global temperature CAUSES a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, not the other way around. If this is true, there is no point in trying to dramatically reduce CO2, since it is natural.
I have a progressive friend who is always telling me the future is electric. If that ever comes to pass, the control that government will have on mobility, heating, cooling , manufacturing, etc. will be staggering. Whole segments could be cut off or cut back from electricity for environmental or perhaps political reasons. The smart meters could, and probably will be used to do this. I can see a scenario where those in power say your home is too warm or too cold, you've driven more than your allotment, your business makes things which are not environmentally friendly or they are dangerous and your electricity will be cut back
Net Zero is a scam.
It is a Hollywood Accounting Scheme and nothing gets done.
Absolute Zero Emissions in Transportation however is a technological possibility based on my and other Inventions.
Around the World in 4 Hours
With absolute Zero Emissions
Replace all Aviation with Hypersonic Zero Emission Trains.
Around the World in under 4h.
Coast to coast say New York LA SF 1h
https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/around-the-world-in-4-hours
Climate science doesn't belong in the basement of "woke" belief systems that you cover in the universe of CRT polemics and grievance studies. Despite the noise created by environmentalists and activists who pursue misguided agendas to prevent fossil fuels consumption, climate science is grounded in hard science from research universities internationally, including those unaffected by woke discourse. Similarly, clean energy expansion has been driven by the cold hand of capitalism and economic decision-making. A few key points:
- Contrary to remarks above, California has phased out nuclear power for many decades because of general public anxiety. CA recently extended the life of Diablo Canyon in response to the newly appreciated value of nuclear as a clean energy source.
- Solar and wind aren't unknown or unproven. In the clean tech and renewables industries, there's widespread understanding of their current limitations and the amount of innovation required to bridge current gaps. Silicon valley, once again, is driving exciting change and building solutions.
- Solar simply costs less that fossil fuel energy production, esp. in developing nations where no grid infrastructure exists. Just as wireless phone service made the build out of land line infrastructure obsolete, the same will occur w/ energy systems in many developing nations. Grid systems of the future won't be centralized and monolithic.
- Future of energy is abundance at prices approaching zero, enabling innovation that has been out of reach for the last century. A great summary: https://ryanavent.substack.com/p/was-coal-the-low-hanging-fruit
I’m going to regret asking this I think. What do you mean by storage? Battery storage? You do realize there is no battery storage technology in existence today that can realistically store energy long enough to be useful.
No offence, but you can’t look at your arrangement at home and project this across the globe.
Jim: I am trying to find a way to contact you. I would like to interview you on my Ennyman's Territory blog. Contact me at ennyman3@gmail.com
I resonate with your insights and perspectives.
Ice core samples reveal that atmospheric CO2 was many times higher than now when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and clearly the result was nothing like what "environmental" doomsayers today keep parroting. I think it would be reasonable to set a goal of returning to about double what we have now, around one part per thousand. This is still less than for most of earth's history.
Those darn dinosaur farts!
The people that are anti-nuclear haven’t done the research. It is viable and less dangerous overall than fossil fuels. Solar is vastly underfunded and underutilized, as is geothermal. Fossil fuels are too expensive, the only reason we use them is giant capital costs already invested in them.
Sooo, the author gets the main argument completely wrong, so I suspect that all of the rest of his comments are based on bad information as well. Getting to net zero by 2050 will not limit the global temperature by 1.5 degrees. That ant even close to the case. It takes the earth and the ocean some 20+ years to reach equilibrium once additional heat is introduced. We are already above the 1.5 degeee target. To get to 1.5 degrees only we would need to go negative in carbon, which isn’t going to happen.
Getting to net zero by 2050 is impossible without trillions of wasted dollars and billions starving to death, and as you said it won’t limit warming to 1.5 degrees so it’s meaningless anyway.
I’ll have to research the accusation that Exxon knew about global warming in 1977. It’s a new allegation and I haven’t checked it out. I’m skeptical, however, because global warming didn’t become an issue until Hanson testified in Congress in 1989.
No offence, I just find a lot of this big oil rhetoric tedious and disingenuous. I’ve yet to see any evidence of a massive Exxon ad campaign and big donations to climate deniers, think tanks or NGOs. A $50,000 grant here, another $75,000 grant there. It’s literally pocket change when it comes climate.
Yet no one seems to complain about the Associated Press, a supposedly unbiased media institution, getting $8 mill two years ago from alarmist NGOs to promote climate news. I can literally cite dozens of examples like this.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
“ Oh, absolutely. It's even worse in some ways as we were working our way through Covid. There were a lot of scientific uncertainties particularly early on, and we started to understand more and more. But you couldn't say that one thing was more right than another at the beginning. It's just that you should have given credence to some of these alternative views, which was not done, as you point out.”
When we ignore history we can make statements like this. Fauci and company did the COVID scare with AIDS/HIV. If you knew that you would have known COVID was like The Spectrum ad, “nonsense.”
How this relates to Climate hysteria history again shows the fear the activists are spreading have been around for years.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/delingpole-environment-canada-airbrushes-100-years-of-inconvenient-climate-data-out-of-history/
https://www.netzerowatch.com/content/uploads/2021/03/A-Short-History-Of-Climate-Alarm.pdf
From what I have read, there is no way we can satisfy the global desire for energy with solar and wind power, at least not with existing technology. So why aren't people talking about nuclear power?
Start reading science and find out we can power the United States with renewables.
"Start reading science ..."
You sound just like "Doctor" Fauci.
"...we can power the United States with renewables."
It is you who need to do some reading; that is a fantasy. Where are you going to store the massive energy needed when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn't shining? In select areas it's possible to pump water uphill then later drain it back down through turbines. Do you fantasize that batteries will do the trick everywhere else? If you'd crunched the numbers you know that would be absolutely prohibitively expensive.
Reminds me of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. I think it was about 20 years ago when they announced with great confidence their intention to go 100% renewables.
It’s a mountainous island with lots of sunlight and wind. Ideal conditions for wind and solar. Because of the mountains, they even built a massive pumped water storage unit that could produce power when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining.
Well, they still rely on large diesel engines to produce power because even in ideal conditions, wind and solar are not reliable.
20 years is many technical generations from today. Then it would not make sense to put the relatively-crude and inefficient technologies into a system which now powers my household and both electric cars. And now we have much better storage.
It is already happening. I guess they did not "crunch the numbers".
Power companies do not have to do it all: my own home is protected by Tesla batteries.
Yet after all these years there is not a single grid in the world run completely from renewables. Meanwhile, grids with the most expensive energy costs have the highest penetration of wind and solar. Hmm
Try beating the contract price of 3 cents/kWh for PV plus storage from 8 Minute Energy to LAPWD. No fossil or nuke plant can do that.
I’m not sure how to respond to this. Far be it from me to question what you are paying for electricity, but the 26.0 cents per kWh Los Angeles households paid for electricity in December, 2022 was 57.6 percent more than the nationwide average of 16.5 cents per kWh.
Here are the top five most expensive power prices in the world.
Germany 39 cents
Bermuda 37 cents
Denmark 34 cents
Portugal 32 cents
Belgium 32 cents
What do these countries all have in common, excluding maybe Bermuda? You might have some unique circumstance that make rooftop solar workable for you, but that would be the rare exception.
By the way, Australia is 16 on the list at 26 cents and they’ve been throwing rooftop solar at home owners for more than a decade. And this is a country that had some of the lowest power prices in the industrialized world 20 years ago.
Thank you for the cogent and intelligent questions.
The costs for our power are high, which is how we got an 18% payback on power without counting the EV gasoline part. Any power we buy from the power company to offset poor PV production is from renewable sources by contract.
Here is how it works: They put us on a time-of-use rate, which means we produce high-cost power in the daytime, and take the same kWh out at night when it is cheaper, trading our good stuff for the cheapest. The utility loves it and we get to use the grid as a battery.
The PV system on our roof is the primary source of power for the household and both electric cars. We do not have to go out to gas up, or need oil changes, or emissions checks or any engine maintenance at all! The PV system paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
Why don't you shed your political biases and try it?
What was your return on investment? No electric car pays for itself through elimination of oil changes. For all the money you spent the temperature reduction you enabled has already been used up by the coal powered factories building the solar panels in Xianjang
It was the PV system which paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone. Without the cars, the system paid back in six years, for an 18% ROI. And I love the cars!!
You will love your first one. Name it after me.
"You will love your first [electric car]."
What's the longest trip you take in your electric car? EV's are ok for hopping around town, but trying to drive cross-country in one is a sure way to go Postal as you pointlessly waste hours of time, and that's IF you can find a charger when you need one. Plus I couldn't stand other drivers thinking I'm one of those snooty stuck-up virtue-signalers, but that's just me.
I have taken trips of several thousand miles. What is wrong with folk who are so ignorant of reality? Tesla has over 20,000 superchargers and they are every 130 miles on main highways.
And you probably do not have many EVs where you live but they are ubiquitous here.
Glenn If the goal were to destroy young black people: 1- Withhold the truth from them eg lie about the facts of life a] Crime statistics broken down by demographics If black, and I truly believed that police killed Blacks more than others, I would be very angry and I am sure deranged as well b] If not trusted to deal with the truth, would I pursue it?
I would incentivize the parents to Grow Up already and give the kids the childhood they deserve. THANKS FOR YOUR FIGHT FOR TRUTH, BEAUTY AND THE AMERICAN WAY FOR "YOUR PEOPLE" GOD CHOSE YOU TO LEAD WITH LOVE
I earned a Master of Science in his field, and want to debate the issues. We can start with Ocean Acidification. Are you concerned or are you uninformed?
"We can start with Ocean Acidification. Are you concerned or are you uninformed?"
Interesting how you exclude the possibility that one could be informed yet unconcerned. Conditions on the globe are changing all the time (and did before humans entered the picture). Species either cope or they die out.
LOOK UP Ocean Acidification! Thousands are dying out right now, and we need them.
pH 8.07 is not acidic
Tell that to the Dungeness Crabs which are already having trouble forming shells.
You have a masters in science and spend time arguing basic (pun intended) facts and recommend conversing with crabs instead of eating them.
Can't discuss Ocean Acidification?
Look it up. It is real.
I earned a Master of Science in Environmental Management in 1982, and was a senior engineer for PG&E in the 1980s. This is nothing more than a right-wing hit job, to be swallowed by those without decent educations.
It is true what the real scientists say, but we can help by taking our own actions which result in significant savings. My household and both electric cars are primarily powered by the PV system on our roof. We do not have to go out to gas up We need no oil changes, transmission work, in fact no engine maintenance at all! We get free power now, with the PV system having paid back in three years. Do any of you do this? Why not?
"Do any of you do this? Why not?"
It's hard not to chuckle at your so-obvious sense of moral superiority. I'm afraid that I'm guilty of not having solar panels on my roof, or pretty much any of the other things you're so proud of. Yet somehow I don't feel one bit ashamed.
I'm curious, have you looked into the environmental cost of manufacturing, not to mention eventually disposing of, that thousand pounds of batteries in your car? How about the solar panels on your roof?
And are you by any chance aware of the fact that ice core samples reveal that CO2 was many times higher than now throughout most of earth's history? In that perspective, the current hysteria about every new molecule of CO2 entering the air is nonsensical. As for the Dungeness Crabs (from another of your many comments), how did they cope 100 million years ago, when way more CO2 was in the air? You must surely be aware that species come and go, and sobbing about each one is pointless.
When CO2 levels were high there were NO HUMANS.
species are dying off and they are not being replaced, which takes tens of millions of years. READ THE SCIENCE!
Is there any discussion in the book that global warming may not be related to CO2 but just natural? I have read in several places that even if there is a correlation between global warming and CO2, that the global warming comes first. The conclusion is, that a natural rise in global temperature CAUSES a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, not the other way around. If this is true, there is no point in trying to dramatically reduce CO2, since it is natural.
I have a progressive friend who is always telling me the future is electric. If that ever comes to pass, the control that government will have on mobility, heating, cooling , manufacturing, etc. will be staggering. Whole segments could be cut off or cut back from electricity for environmental or perhaps political reasons. The smart meters could, and probably will be used to do this. I can see a scenario where those in power say your home is too warm or too cold, you've driven more than your allotment, your business makes things which are not environmentally friendly or they are dangerous and your electricity will be cut back
I produce our own electric power with a PV system which paid back in three years.
You can do it, too.