‘Green Energy’ Madness : $3.8 Trillion Spent on UNreliables to Reduce Global Fossil Fuel Consumption by One Percent

“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work;
we need a fundamentally different approach.”

– Top Google engineers

Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels
in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole
is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.

– James Hansen
(Former NASA-climate chief)

It is so easy to be wrong
—and to persist in being wrong—
when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

– Thomas Sowell

If there was ever a better (scientific) advertisement for the uselessness of UNreliables (wind and solar) then it is this.

According to economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs, over the past decade, nearly four-thousand-billion-dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on windmills and mirrors to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption by 1 percent from 82 to 81 percent of overall global energy consumption.

How many more pristine landscapes, wildlife, and taxpayer bank accounts need to be decimated to realise the fanciful “NetZero2050” target, or even a 10% “transition” toward industrial wind and solar?

The mind boggles.

CNBC Squawk Box:

TRANSCRIPT

Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division):

“Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”

Logical commentary from CBDAKOTA:

It is hard to get your head around the fact that $3.8 trillion has been spent with so little results.  A lot of that money has been going to Crony Capitalists through subsidies and tax forgiveness.

That they have not made any progress replacing fossil fuels is understandable and that it is unlikely that wind and solar ever will.  Their lack of dispatchability will forever prevent wind and solar from being the main source of power.  Long term, nuclear power will have to be the main source of power with wind and solar playing second fiddle.

$3.8 Trillion spent on renewables has not made a precipitable change in fossil fuels use | Climate Change Sanity

Nuclear is The Future of Mankind : Small Modular Reactors Advance in the Nuclear World

An HTMR-100 cannot melt down. If the worst possible event were to occur, the reactor will just shut itself down. If all cooling stops, the reactor will heat up a bit for 24 hours and then over the next 4 to 5 days will just cool down with no incident. That is ‘walk away safe’.

Nuclear power is the future of mankind. The world’s electricity insecurity experienced since 2020 has shown the way forward with great clarity.

Furthermore, nuclear is the only known efficient, reliable, safe, continuous and truly ‘green’ energy technology:

  • Zero CO2 emissions (if you believe that invisible, odourless trace gas, and plant food CO₂ is destroying the planet).
  • Zero particulate (smog) pollution.
  • The least land-intensive energy technology for both plant exposure and the mining required for key resource uranium.
  • ~60 year lifespan compared with an average lifespan of 15-25 years for windmills and mirrors.

A win, win for both the environment and for humanity.

There’s no such thing as a free green lunch

Wind farm cuts off eagle’s wing – Fieldsports News, 5 May 2021 – Fieldsports Channel

•••

See also :

Green-Energy-Fail related :

Climate Crisis’ related :


UK fracking moratorium reinstated

Another example of why Truss had to go.

Tallbloke's Talkshop

Fracking: note the deep shaft
The people doing the banning conveniently forget they can’t enough gas at the moment, including from the US obtained by the method they profess not to like. But importing fracked gas is no problem, essential even.
– – –
The ban on fracking in England will be reinstated, new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.

It reverses a decision by his predecessor Liz Truss, says BBC News.

Fracking was first halted in England in 2019, amid opposition from green groups and concerns about earth tremors.

What is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Wells can be drilled vertically or horizontally in order to release the gas.
. . .

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Ocean Cooling September 2022

Background:

* The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
* SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
* A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

Forecast:

Here’s Where a Rare “Triple Dip La Niña” Might Drop the Most Snow This Winter
— Ski Mag

The unusual weather phenomenon might result in the snowiest season in years for some parts of the country.

Science Matters


The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated.  HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3.  The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies…

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Expensive Energy is not a Bug, but Biden Agenda’s Core Feature

During Orwellian (energy) times, it may be prudent to look to wiser heads for clarity.

“If a private enterprise is a failure, it closes down—unless it can get a government subsidy to keep it going; if a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. I challenge you to find exceptions.”
— Milton Friedman

“When the government makes loans or subsides to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.”
— Henry Hazlitt

Science Matters

Marlo Thomas explains in his Real Clear Energy article Expensive Energy Is a Core Feature, Not a Bug, of Biden’s Climate Agenda.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was being generous by describing interventionism’s nasty side-effects as “unintended.” Some younger interventionists are naïve, and know not what they do, but the older, street-smart captains of progressive politics understand the harms their policies entail. For them, the adverse consequences are features, not bugs.

The only downside is the risk of political retribution at the polls.

That’s the predicament in which the Biden administration now finds itself. It is also the theme of “Energy Inflation Was by Design,” a new report by supply-chain consultant Joseph Toomey.
[Synopsis is in previous post Energy Inflation Playbook]

President Biden and congressional Democrats want to replace fossil fuels with a “zero-carbon” energy system. Their

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Next Big Energy Fraud – Replacing Coal With Hydrogen To Make Steel

“Hydrogen fuel cells WILL NEVER BE COMMERCIALLY COMPETITIVE with other ways to fuel a car, electric or otherwise. They create electricity by combining Hydrogen and Oxygen to get water and electricity. They require large quantities of platinum to make this happen whose cost will always make commercialization impossible. Separating hydrogen from water or natural gas will always be difficult and handling a pressurized flammable gas will never be comfortable.”

Another pie-in-the-sky ‘green’ fantasy destined for the waste bin, but not before rich donors and corporates have raided the real ‘green’ from the biggest bank on the planet — the bank of the taxpayer.

PA Pundits International

By Dr. Jay Lehr~

One of Australia’s richest men, Andrew Forrest, chairman of Fortescue Metals is challenging his nation to make steel without emitting carbon dioxide. Today virtually all steel is made by heating iron oxides with coal. Forrest plans a demo project to virtue signal his desire to stay a steel magnate while protecting his nation and the world from life threatening emissions of carbon dioxide. WARNING: Hold onto your wallets Mr. and Mrs. investor who lack adequate knowledge of how mineralogy and chemistry work to make our products at reasonable costs. Were I an investment con-man I might also find this new idea an attractive way to raise money for my company with little concern that it will ever need to be paid back.

As the con proceeds, the International Energy Agency says that by 2050 steel produced with hydrogen in place of coal will not equal…

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Climate Bombshell: Greenland Ice Sheet Recovers as Scientists Say Earlier Loss was Due to Natural Warming Not CO2 Emissions

We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.

– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world
.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment

H/t @RoelofBoer

Another inconvenient scientific study contesting “settled science” theology that carbon dioxide is the ‘climate control knob’.

Japanese climate scientists arguing that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt…

Slow-down in summer warming over Greenland in the past decade linked to central Pacific El Niño | Communications Earth & Environment

Via : The Daily Sceptic

Climate Bombshell: Greenland Ice Sheet Recovers as Scientists Say Earlier Loss was Due to Natural Warming Not CO2 Emissions

BY CHRIS MORRISON

2 OCTOBER 2022 4:57 PM

A popular scare story running in the media is that the Greenland ice sheet is about to slip its moorings under ferocious and unprecedented Arctic heat and arrive in the reader’s front room any day now (I exaggerate, but not much). Meanwhile back in the scientific world, scientists are scrambling to understand what natural causes lie behind the sudden slow-down in Greenland’s summer warming and ice loss dating back to 2010. The recovery of Arctic summer sea ice has been spectacular of late, with the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reporting that this year’s September minimum was 1.28 million square kilometres  higher than the 2012 low point of 3.39 million square kilometres.

Three Japanese climatologists have recently published a paper noting that “frequent occurrence of central Pacific El Niño events has played a key role in the [abrupt] slow-down of Greenland warming and possibly Arctic sea ice loss”. Of course such findings play havoc with the simplistic ‘settled’ science notion that carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuel is the main, if not only, driver of global temperature warming or cooling – a notion that leads many green activists to claim that the climate will stop changing if society signs on to a ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions agenda.

For instance, a bizarre ‘fact check’ on a recently published Daily Sceptic article by Facebook partner Climate Feedback claimed there had been no natural climate change for almost 200 years. It quoted Professor Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia, who said: “The warming from the late 1800s to the present is all due to human-caused climate change, because natural factors have changed little since then, and even would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years rather than the warming we have observed.”

The Japanese scientists argue that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt. Changes around Greenland can be attributed to “natural variability, rather than anthropogenic forcing”, note the scientists, “although most climate models were unable to reasonably simulate the unforced natural variability over Greenland”.

What the scientists are talking about of course are the huge heat exchanges that regularly change the climate of the Earth. As the Daily Sceptic recently reported, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the Earth had many climate regimes, and there have been “profound” changes in temperature between the tropics and the polar regions over millennia. Meteorologist William Kininmonth recently argued that the heat exchanges were little understood, but they are one of the great drivers of climate changes. It might be suggested that these gaps in climate knowledge have allowed a view to take hold, now enforced by rigid Net Zero political control, that CO2 is the only driver of climate change.

The Daily Sceptic recently reported on a series of media scare stories about the Greenland ice sheet that followed publication of a paper in Nature Climate Change. Cherry-picking the one-off record melt year of 2012, and assuming it will be a regular occurrence, delivered a “staggering” 78cm of sea level rise between now and 2100. According to the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, the claims were “false and easily disproved”. In his view they were “just modelled hokum”.

Ice amounts around the Arctic have always been highly cyclical, with periods of substantial melt and freezing common across just a few decades. As we have seen, evidence is starting to build that a recent Arctic low point is in a period of recovery, with a significant trend towards higher surface sea ice becoming apparent from the recent data.

To preserve the fiction that humans are responsible for all recent changes in the climate, it is often argued that the current temperature is the highest for 12,000 years, since the last major ice age started to lift. This is political nonsense-on-stilts, not least because geologists have a phrase for the period when temperatures were much higher than today – the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The latest science paper to show significant higher temperatures comes from a group of geoscientists led by Dr. Katrine Elnegaard Hansen of Aarhus University. According to a précis published by the No Tricks Zone climate site, the Arctic and northern Greenland were 2-4°C warmer than now between 11,700 to 4,500 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels were in the mid 200 parts per million (ppm), compared to today’s 419 ppm, ice-free open waters prevailed, and Greenland warmed 10°C in just 60 years.

Numerous other scientists have discovered equally dramatic temperature changes in the recent past. The graph below was presented by a German broadcaster in 2013 and was compiled from a number of science sources. It shows the overall long-term trend, ending in the current small rebound from the so-called little ice age,

But cyclical changes have also occurred over very short periods. A number of scientists have pointed to an abrupt global multiple degree cooling and warming period that occurred about 8,200 years ago over 150 years. Dr. Takuro Kobashi examined the paleoclimatic records from this time and found a drop of 3°C within two decades, followed by a similar rise over 70 years. Dr. Seren Griffiths of Manchester Met University reported that the event was first identified in Greenland ice cores, but subsequently noted in multiple proxies across Europe. Another abrupt cooling period is said to have occurred about 4,000 years ago.

It is legitimate to conclude from all this under-reported science that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask us to believe that CO2, and more specifically human-caused CO2, is the only or main climate control thermostat. The evidence suggests that the gas played no such starring role in the previous 11,000 years and more of the paleoclimatic record.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Via : Climate Bombshell: Greenland Ice Sheet Recovers as Scientists Say Earlier Loss was Due to Natural Warming Not CO2 Emissions – The Daily Sceptic

•••

Greenland related :


16 yr. Plateau September Arctic Ice 2022

‘Inconvenient’, Arctic sea-ice news that you won’t be hearing about via MainstreamMedia™️ anytime soon…

Science Matters

September daily extents are now fully reported and the 2022 September monthly results can be compared with those of the previous 15 years.  MASIE showed 2022 at 5.1M km2  and SII was close behind, reaching 4.9M for the month.  Analysis below shows that the 2022 Minimum was ~ 300k km2 higher than the 15 year average, and 1.2 Wadhams (1 M km2) more than 2007.  The 16 yr. trendlines are virtually flat and matching the averages for the period.

In June, 4.6M km2 was the median estimate for the September monthly average extent from the SIPN (Sea Ice Prediction Network) who use the reports from SII (Sea Ice Index), the NASA team satellite product from passive microwave sensors. The SII actual ice extent was 300k km2 higher than estimated.

The graph below shows September comparisons through day 273 (Sept. 30).

Note that MASIE was higher than average throughout September, with…

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