Wind & solar renewables: pointless

 

Bryan Leyland at The Telegraph UK explains why renewable energy sources (wind and solar) are never going to achieve "net zero".  I missed this column when it appeared a few weeks ago, but it's still current.  And it's still a pipe dream:

Many governments in the Western world have committed to “net zero” emissions of carbon in the near future. The US and UK both say they will deliver by 2050. It's widely believed that wind and solar power can achieve this. This belief has led the US and British governments, among others, to promote and heavily subsidise wind and solar.

These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe-dream that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale.

In the real world a wind farm’s output often drops below 10 per cent of its rated “capacity” for days at a time. Solar power disappears completely every night and drops by 50 per cent or more during cloudy days. “Capacity” being a largely meaningless figure for a wind or solar plant, about 3000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar capacity is needed to replace a 1000 MW conventional power station in terms of energy over time: and in fact, as we shall see, the conventional power station or something very like it will still be needed frequently once the wind and solar are online.

The governments of countries with a considerable amount of wind and solar generation have developed an expectation that they can simply continue to build more until net zero is achieved. The reality is that many of them have kept the lights on only by using existing fossil fired stations as backup for periods of low wind and sun. This brings with it a new operating regime where stations that were designed to operate continuously have to follow unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar power. As a result operating and maintenance costs have increased and many stations have had to be shut down.

In fact it's already common to see efficient combined-cycle gas turbines replaced by open-cycle ones because they can be throttled up and down easily to back up the rapidly changing output of wind and solar farms. But open-cycle gas turbines burn about twice as much gas as combined cycle gas turbines. Switching to high-emissions machinery as part of an effort to reduce emissions is, frankly, madness!

Much more at the link here.  But try sharing any of these facts with a green zealot.  It may be that only after unimaginable damage and suffering resulting from reducing access to energy that the greenies will wake up.  Maybe not even then . . .

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Limits to Growth – or We’re All Gonna Die

 

William R. Forstchen had an excellent piece recently at American Thinker on today’s climate crisis:

Oh my God -- we’re doomed.  The UN’s Panel on Climate Change came out with a frightening report earlier this month that we are sitting on a global time bomb, and according to CNN, “time is running out,” without immediate drastic action.  The UN report states that if global temperatures reach 1.5 C above the pre-industrial temperature norm of 1850-1900, the resulting melting of the polar ice caps, rising oceans, and unprecedented ecological disaster will follow.

I read this a few days back on a dark and stormy night while working on my own tome about disaster, the next book in the One Second After series.  One Second After examines what would happen if we were ever hit by an enemy using an Electro-Magnetic Pulse generated from detonating a nuclear weapon in space.  But ecological disaster, which is all but inevitable according to the highly respected UN report, was far more frightening.  Closing off working on my book, I brewed yet another cup of coffee, sat back and pulled out a well-respected study on this existential threat to all mankind.

I started to thumb through the pages of a work that took a team of international experts years to research and has sold well over 12 million copies since publication.

I turned to the chapter on fossil fuels.  The report states we have only about twenty more years of oil out there, we are already at peak oil, which will then start to go downhill and the wells will run dry no matter how much we scramble to get more.  There will be a final rush to pump one more drop of oil even if at the cost of twenty dollars a gallon, but that in turn will accelerate the depletion into a death spiral.  Natural gas will not save us, as we turn to that source as oil runs out, we’ll deplete that as well.  Again, a death spiral. 

Climate is the big one this report.  Despite our feeble efforts to address the radical changes already taking place, the disaster will explode within ten to fifteen years, due in large part to the depletion of farmlands worldwide from the use of toxic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, soil exhaustion, and encroaching urban population.  The results: famine, disease, and mass starvation then triggering political instability in which hundreds of millions will die.

The list went on and on, a list that would render any sane reader numb with despair.  But me?  I could only smile at it all. . . 

The punchline:

You see, the book that I was reading, Limits to Growth, was published more than fifty years ago in 1972. . . .

And every predicted doomsday catastrophe has failed to materialize.  Read the rest here; Mr. Forstchen’s column includes specific doomsday scenarios with all those missed “deadlines.”

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Neil Oliver: they are coming for your [fill in the blank]

 

Neil Oliver’s latest monologue/meditation was posted over the weekend at Conservative Treehouse.  And as usual, Mr Oliver knocks it out of the park.  His subject is the imposition of the New World Order, following the gala Davos World Economic Forum conference last week.  Here’s his opening:

Nothing less than our way of life is under threat now. A population distracted by propaganda about one existential threat after another – pandemics, nuclear war, climate crisis – is being herded into an unrecognizable future.

What was done in the name of Covid was grotesque – a violation of the rights of billions of people. Having seen what they can get away with, our so-called leaders have moved on, broadening their scope, as greedy for more as kids left unsupervised in a sweetie shop.

What is happening now, all around us, is the relentless erosion not just of our rights and liberties, but of our lives. It is so blatant – what’s happening – it’s hard to see it for what it is, which is bare-faced daylight robbery.

After Covid, the C-word that’s supposed to be on everyone’s lips … drummed into us night and day by the same complicit media that drives everything else … is climate – Climate crisis, in fact. Two c-words for the price of one.

From all sides, we are bombarded with predictions of the end of the world. Predictions, remember? Computer modelling … the crystal-ball-gazing of the scientific world. . . .

Mr Oliver’s upbeat conclusion:

The race is on. Our so-called leaders, all pumped up on the adrenaline of lockdowns and mandates, have sprinted out of the blocks for the ultimate round of Supermarket Sweep. Into their trolleys, they plan to heap every last aspect of the lives we have had.

They think they’ve got us scared enough to accept the whole damned lot of it.

Here’s the thing: I am not afraid of them.

I don’t even take them seriously.

For the video or the rest of the transcript, click here.

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The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization

 

The great historian Victor Davis Hanson has another must-read:

. . . Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture. 

So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature. 

But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright. 

As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.  

We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis. 

. . .

He concludes:

As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization. 

When stripped away, we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.

Read the rest here at American Greatness. A Must Read.

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Planet Earth: Down the Drain?

 

Ed Brodow isn’t too optimistic, either; his title is “Running the World into the Ground”.  Here are the first few paragraphs at American Thinker:

The actions of the people who are in charge of governments are supposed to benefit the countries they serve -- in theory, at least. In practice, the opposite is true. In the West, our leaders are destroying everything they can get their hands on.

This is certainly an apt description of the Biden/Harris administration. They inherited a healthy country from President Trump. The economy was taking off, inflation was practically nonexistent, the U.S. was energy independent for the first time in decades, and the border was closed. So what did Biden do? He immediately set out to reverse everything Trump achieved.

Who can claim to be better off under Biden? The economy has tanked, inflation is at a 40-year high, people can’t afford to heat their homes or fill up their cars with gas, crime statistics are off the charts, and confidence in America is at an all-time low. Biden’s open-border policy, which is opposed by a majority of American citizens, is leading to social unrest and economic chaos. A country without a functioning border is not a country, yet that is where Biden has taken us.

America is marching toward totalitarianism as Biden empowers the DoJ and FBI to go after his political opponents, i.e., at least half of the population. His worst offense, however, is following the climate dictates of the World Economic Forum. Biden is torpedoing the robust U.S. economy in service of a totally false assumption -- that human beings are able to change the planet’s climate. He is raising taxes so that billions of your dollars can be wasted on ridiculous anti-fossil fuel projects.

Biden has declared war on the energy industry in the name of global warming. He wants us to believe that oil, gas, and coal are killing the planet. What is the result of his climate policy so far? “Harvesting of fuel was cut back drastically,” explained Bill O’Reilly, “and that caused the price of oil worldwide to rise, and that caused the price of gas at the pump to rise, and that lit inflation, as all other goods went up in price as well because they are trucked in to the stores and businesses. That is all on President Biden.”

First, human beings are incapable of controlling the climate, which operates in cycles and always has since the planet was created. Second, our economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and -- contrary to the lies fed by the administration -- fossil fuel alternatives do not exist, and will not exist in the foreseeable future. . . .

Read the rest here.  Mr Brodow ends on the hopeful note that the next two elections in the U.S. will reflect the wishes of the voters.  Fingers crossed.

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The Destruction is Deliberate

 

At American Thinker, the pseudonymous columnist Ed Sherdlu makes the case that the destruction of America is the goal of the Biden administration.  And he considers the nomination of Saule Omarova as evidence.  He starts off:

The comptroller of the currency is not another one of those do-nothing Washington jobs.  The person filling this critical role controls all federally licensed banks, credit unions, and foreign banks operating in the United States and similar institutions.  Normally, you would think receiving your postgraduate education at the University of Moscow (in the USSR) and writing your doctoral dissertation on the advantages of Marxism over free economy capitalism might be a disqualifier for this all-powerful position.  But not in the Biden administration.

To Biden and his cronies, the fact that their nominee for comptroller is a lifelong Marxist is not disqualifying.  In fact, to the radical Democrats pulling Biden's strings, Russian-born Saule Omarova's dedication to hardcore communism is one of her strongest qualifications.  Ms. Omarova makes no attempt to hide her radical leftist political and economic feelings other than to try to prevent the Senate committee considering her confirmation from accessing her other "academic" works.

As noted yesterday, some conservatives digging into Omarova's recent past may have found the wooden stake to drive through the heart of her nomination.  In a newly unearthed video clip, this woman who Biden wants to control all our nation's finances told her audience, "In order to prevent climate change, we have to bankrupt all the coal, oil, and gas companies."

Under other circumstances, we might consider this utter foolishness to be little more than the drunken utterance of some Ivy League sophomore.   Unfortunately, in this case, the threat and intent to completely bankrupt American energy producers came directly from the mouth of a person who might be given the power to do just that!

And Mr. Sherdlu concludes:

In looking at Omarova's nomination and everything else this administration has done, from the border to Kabul to the supported terrorists, including Iranians, receiving de facto permission to build their atomic bomb, I believe we are forced into one inescapable conclusion: the Biden/Harris administration's actions are not the result of ineptitude.  They are a carefully thought out, well-planned, and almost flawlessly executed plan to ensure the destruction of the United States as we know her.  It is being viciously implemented by Obama acolytes such as Susan Rice and hundreds of others who are the people really running our country under the Biden administration.

. . . Omarova's nomination leaves little doubt as to their intentions.

The full column is here.  I would like to think that Mr. Sherdlu is wrong, but it's hard to argue with his points. 

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