From: Climate Etc.

By: Judith Curry

Date: August 9, 2022

Apocalyptic versus post-apocalyptic climate politics

The Inflation Reduction Act that has passed in the US Senate contains a healthy dose of funding for energy and climate initiatives.  There is much discussion as to why this bill looks like it will pass, when previous climate bills (carbon tax, carbon cap and trade) failed.

The Senate bill includes billions of dollars in tax credits and subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles. In addition to renewable-energy funding, there is also commitment to federal oil and gas expansion, albeit with fines for excessive methane leakage. The bill includes climate resiliency funding for tribal governments and Native Hawaiians and other disadvantaged areas disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate warming. Funds are also allocated to tackle drought remediation in the West.

I’ve received requests to write on this topic, here are some bits and pieces that I’ve pulled together.  My main points:

• Post-apocalyptic climate politics have a much better chance of succeeding than fear-driven apocalyptic climate politics
• Energy policy should be detached from climate policy to make a robust transition to a 21st century energy system that emphasizes abundant, cheap, reliable and secure power with minimal impact on the environment (including land use). (continue reading)

Apocalyptic versus post-apocalyptic climate politics

There are fundamentally two approaches to the adoption of new technology. The more common approach has been to introduce and market the product, process, or service embodying the new technology and allow the market to adopt the new technology based on its functional and/or economic advantages. The speed of the adoption process is a function of the relative importance and cost of the equipment or process and/or its relative desirability. The rise of air travel and the decline of rail travel is an example of this approach, as is the growth of air freight relative to rail freight. The rapid growth of package delivery services at the expense of the US. Postal Service is another example, as is the transition from snail-mail to e-mail.

The second approach combines law and/or regulation, government incentives, building codes and other non-market drivers. This approach is used by government to drive the adoption of new technology which is not perceived by the intended customers to offer sufficient functional and/or economic advantages to achieve market acceptance. DOE Appliance Efficiency Standards, DOT Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, vehicle emission standards are examples of this approach. In some cases this approach has been used to remove existing technology from the market before the replacement technology is “ready for prime time”, frequently referred to as technology-forcing requirements or standards.

A more aggressive version of the second approach is being pursued to transition the US energy economy from reliance on oil for transportation, natural gas and coal for power generation, natural gas and electricity for residential, commercial space heating, water heating, food preparation and coal, natural gas and electricity for industrial process heating. The federal government has established timelines for the elimination of coal and later natural gas use for electric power generation, and for the elimination of fossil fuel for all other uses.

The government is pursuing a goal of “all-electric everything” by 2050 to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions. In the process, government is forcing the installation of redundant intermittent renewable generation, which displaces a portion of the output of the remaining fossil-fueled generation without replacing that generation capacity, since it is needed to support the grid when the intermittent generation is not functioning or is operating below rated capacity. This addition of redundant capacity increases overall generation investment and thus increases electricity cost, as does the management of the intermittent redundant capacity.

The ”all-electric everything” energy economy would require an electric grid with 3-4 times the capacity of the current grid, and with storage capacity sufficient to replace the conventional generation which currently supports the renewable portion of the generation fleet as well as to provide support for the additional renewable generation serving the greatly expanded “all-electric everything” grid. This approach is technology-forcing, in that the storage technology necessary to replace conventional generation as support for renewable generation is not currently commercially available. It is also technology-forcing since a reliable renewable plus storage grid without conventional generation support has not been demonstrated.

From: Climate Realism

By: Heartland Institute

Date: July 27, 2022

STUDY: 96% OF U.S. CLIMATE DATA IS CORRUPTED

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Official NOAA temperature stations produce corrupted data due to purposeful placement in man-made hot spots

Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and  uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.” (continue reading)

STUDY: 96% OF U.S. CLIMATE DATA IS CORRUPTED

President Biden spoke about his approach to destroying the US oil industry during a primary campaign debate in 2020. The approach focused on depriving the industry of supply through a combination of banning new exploration and drilling on federal lands and the application of new laws and regulations making industry operations more difficult and more expensive.

The Biden Administration has aggressively pursued this approach over the past 18 months, as documented here. The actions taken by the Administration have had a predictable effect on both gasoline and Diesel prices and availability. It is ludicrous to assume that a commitment by the federal government to destroy an industry would not create turmoil within the industry and among its customers.

The Administration has reacted to the resulting price increases and supply shortages by blaming the US oil industry and accusing it of price gouging; and, seeking production increases from OPEC. The Administration has even approached Venezuela and Iran about supplying additional oil. Only after these approaches to foreign suppliers has the Administration begun encouraging the US industry to increase production, while still maintaining the intent to put the industry out of business.

The US oil industry has modestly increased production from existing fields, but has been reluctant to invest in new E&P activity in the face of the Administration’s actions and threats of future actions. The Wall Street Journal recently described the industry’s approach as an “orderly liquidation” of current assets, including using increased revenues resulting from higher demand and prices to fund share buybacks and distributions to stockholders. This approach by the industry appears to be a reasonable exercise of fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

It seems likely that this “orderly liquidation” approach will spread to other energy industry participants under similar Administration threats to their futures. The owners and operators of coal mines and coal-fired power plants are faced with termination of their operation by 2030 and are unlikely to make any significant investments in their facilities in the interim. They would also likely terminate operations if faced with the necessity of major facility repairs or deteriorating market conditions. It is also unlikely that state utility commissions would approve incremental investments in coal facilities owned by utilities under their jurisdiction.

It also seems unlikely that either utility or non-utility generators would invest in new natural gas combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generators, since their operations would be required to cease by 2035 to comply with the Administration’s goals. New CCGT generator facilities would have to be fully depreciated over 10 – 12 years, or 25-30% of their useful lives. Such rapid depreciation would further increase the cost of the electricity they generated.

There is no indication that such orderly liquidations would be offset by orderly installation of replacement facilities, particularly since the long-duration electricity storage technology necessary to render renewable generation facilities dispatchable is not currently commercially available, nor is there any schedule for its commercial availability of any indication of its likely cost and performance.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Paul MacRae

Date: July 18, 2022

A ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Coming Up? Crunching the Numbers

In a popular textbook on writing creative non-fiction, the authors echo a familiar claim of global-warming alarmists: that thanks to our carbon emissions, we are creating a “sixth mass extinction” that will wipe out most of the planet’s animals and possibly humanity itself. The authors write:

Your [the reader’s] life has witnessed the eclipse of hundreds of thousands of species, even if they passed out of this world without your awareness. (The current rate of species extinction is matched only by that of the age of the dinosaurs’ demise.)[emphasis added][1]

This belief in a “current” mass extinction (usually blamed on climate change but also, much more plausibly, on habitat encroachment) is widely held and often cited by the environmental and anti-global-warming movements.

For example, eco-crusader and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, contended that we are losing 100 species a day, or almost 40,000 species a year.[2] Gore took this figure from a book by biologist Norman Myers; where Myers got his numbers is discussed below.

In his 2006 film and accompanying book, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore makes a similar although slightly vaguer claim:

Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc; it is us. (continue reading)

A ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Coming Up? Crunching the Numbers

The United Nations and several national governments have begun referring to climate change as an existential threat, meaning a threat to the future existence of life on earth. This is a political position intended to draw attention to the issue and incite fear in the population. Several national polls suggest that the effort has not been particularly successful, as the general population rates climate change as a relatively low-level concern, despite a coordinated government and media campaign.

You would think that, if global governments actually believed that climate change driven by CO2 emissions represented an existential threat, they would be united in aggressive efforts to eliminate CO2 emissions. However, numerous nations, led by China and India, are embarked on concerted efforts to build new coal-fired generating stations, which would increase their CO2 emissions and global CO2 emissions as well. Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are also pursuing new coal power plant construction, as are Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Clearly, these countries believe that failure to develop their economies is a greater threat than climate change.

The EU and the UK, which have been at the forefront of the “global” CO2 emissions reduction efforts, are reviewing their plans to close coal-fired generators and are considering reopening some closed coal-fired generators. Several of these nations are also reconsidering their plans to close nuclear generating facilities in the face of growing energy shortages and rapidly rising energy prices.

The US is still pursuing an effort to eliminate coal-fired generation by 2030 and to eliminate all fossil-fueled generation by 2035. However, there is growing concern in the US that fossil-fueled generating capacity is being eliminated far faster than it is being replaced with renewable generation and storage. This issue is projected to result in increased rolling blackouts in the US this summer, as cooling demand increases. This issue will only become of greater concern as electricity demand increases as a result of the effort to electrify the entire economy and completely eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for any purpose.

The efforts in the developed nations to eliminate fossil fuel use in favor of renewables plus storage is an existential threat to industries in those nations, which are already faced with rising energy prices and reduced energy availability. Many industrial plants in the UK and the EU have closed or significantly reduced production as the result of increased energy costs and restricted energy availability. This issue is likely to expand to the US, Canada and Australia if current national policies remain unchanged.

Meanwhile, China is investing heavily in the metals and cement industries, which are major fossil fuel users and CO2 emitters. The increased availability of low-cost coal-generated electricity to power the metals industries in China and the availability of coal for cement production would render those industries in nations reducing CO2 emissions uncompetitive in global markets with lower-cost Chinese metals and cement.

These developments would leave the US, the UK, the EU, Canada and Australia heavily dependent on China for metals and cement, as well as for the rare earth minerals necessary for wind generators and solar cells. Arguably, this growing dependence on China is a greater existential threat than climate change.

From: Watts Up With That

By: edmhdotme

Date: July 10, 2022

Global Man-Made CO2 emissions 1965 – 2021: BP Data

Introduction

Every summer BP publish their statistical review of world energy.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/co2-emissions.html

One element of their comprehensive set of spreadsheets is a table of CO2 emissions country by country since 1965.  For the purposes of this post, the CO2 emissions data provided by BP here is assumed to be valid.  This post reviews the 2022 update to the BP data.

The 2022 dataset accounts for the 2020 effect of the Covid-19 epidemic, the CO2 emissions resulting in the aftermath of the epidemic, its impact on Global economic activity and the outcome for the recovery of Man-made CO2 emissions in 2021.

The progress of the proportions of CO2 emissions since 1965 is shown above, with the  Developed world now being responsible for about 37% of Man-made CO2 emissions as opposed to as much as 86% back in 1965. (continue reading)

Global Man-Made CO2 emissions 1965 – 2021: BP Data

Definition of information

1a(1) : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
    (2) : intelligence, news
    (3) : facts, data

Definition of misinformation

: incorrect or misleading information

Definition of disinformation

: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth

Source: Merriam-Webster

Society is awash in information, but not all of that information is factual, even when it has been asserted as such. The desire to separate the factual from the non-factual and the counter-factual has led to the establishment of fact-checking organizations and fact-checking functions within media organizations. However, recent revelations regarding dossiers and laptops, among others, have demonstrated that several of the fact-checkers were not actually checking facts, but rather reinforcing narratives and commenting on failure of narrative compliance by those whom they were checking.

The US federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, has now established a Disinformation Governance Board (“Ministry of Truth”) to function as the “official” fact-checker. DHS has stated that the Disinformation Governance Board would be focused on foreign disinformation which threatens national security. The Board got off to a rocky start when the individual appointed as its director was identified as a hyper-partisan liberal who had propounded narrative affirming disinformation regarding dossiers and laptops; and, when the Administration had to admit to being the source of two instances of disinformation  Reportedly, two hyper-partisan liberals have now been selected to review the mission of the Board.

While the Board’s mission is supposed to be foreign-focused, it seems highly likely that the Board will rapidly experience “mission creep” (mission leap?) to two high profile issues which have been the focus of the self-appointed fact-checkers: Covid and climate. Ironically, the federal government has been a primary source of information, misinformation and disinformation on each of these issues.

Perhaps the most obvious and egregious examples of government climate disinformation are the repeated assertions that climate change has produced a “crisis”, or that there is a climate “emergency”, or that climate change is an “existential threat”. These assertions are not scientifically factual, but rather are political posturing to influence public opinion. These government assertions are based on the outputs of unverified and unvalidated climate models which project a variety of potential future climate scenarios, no more than one of which could possibly be accurate, if any. Simply put, there is no such thing as a future fact, though something might become a fact in the future. While climate change might become a “crisis”, or an “emergency”, or an “existential threat” at some undefined point in the future, it certainly is none of those things now.

The production of scary scenarios based on totally unrealistic projections of future GHG concentrations is also disinformation, intended to influence public opinion.

Asserting that sea level is rising at the rate measured by the various satellite instruments when those measurements are inconsistent with the far longer tide gauge history and the reasons for the inconsistency are not understood is, at the very least, misinformation.

Asserting that global average near-surface temperature or global average sea surface temperature anomalies are known to two decimal place accuracy is also at least misinformation. The measurements on which those assertions are based have been “adjusted”, and are therefore no longer data, but merely estimates and thus not factual.

Assertions that the science is settled are at least misinformation, since science is never settled. The assertion of a consensus of 97% of climate scientists in the absence of a clear description of the subject of the consensus is disinformation.

Arguably, the reporting of these issues in the media constitutes misinformation, since the media did not create the information but is merely reporting the disinformation provided to them.

From: Climate Change Dispatch

By: Ron Barmby

Date: June 23, 2022

Code Red For Sanity – The Credibility Crisis At The IPCC

When speaking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Sciences Basis, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared it a “code red for humanity.”

He further stressed, “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.” [bold, links added]

But a person who reads the report dispassionately and thoroughly will recognize that there is no code red for humanity and that the evidence is indeed refutable. It would be more accurate to say the report is a code red for sanity.

Classical science observes what is; that’s the evidence. A political agenda persuades what should be done; that’s the alarm bells.

Let’s turn off the alarm the IPCC pulled by examining Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (referred to from this point as “the report”).

You’ll discover that while the report contains some scientific evidence, much of it is hidden, manipulated, or contradicted. (continue reading)

Code Red For Sanity – The Credibility Crisis At The IPCC

Replacement of conventional intermediate load generators with renewable generation plus storage is similar to, but not identical to, replacement of baseload generation. Intermediate load generators must be able to deliver their full capacity to the grid during periods of high demand, at or near the system peak. Therefore, they require sufficient storage capacity to deliver full capacity in the absence of active wind or solar generation. However, the full capacity requirement exists for only a portion of the day, so the storage capacity required is less than that required when replacing a baseload generator.

However, like the baseload generators, the intermediate load generators must be able to perform their function over the maximum number of days for which wind and solar generation might not be available. The long duration storage capacity required would be a function of the expected load duration for that intermediate load generator on a day when demand was at or near the system peak. For wind generation, this situation might occur near the summer peak, during a period of hot, still days. For solar generation, the situation might occur near the winter peak, during a period of overcast skies, or during and after a snowstorm.

Like baseload generators, intermediate load generators must have sufficient capacity to recharge storage used during a period of low/no wind or solar generation while still meeting the contemporaneous demand of the grid. The required capacity would be determined by the number of low/no wind and solar days and the likelihood of these days occurring at or near grid system peak demand.

It has been common for electric utilities to maintain a capacity reserve margin of approximately 20% relative to peak demand to allow for the possible unavailability of one or more conventional generators. Conventional intermediate load power plants are capable of operating at design capacity for extended periods in the event of a generator failure, though they typically operate in load-following mode. Some portion of the intermediate load renewable plus storage generation would likely also be designed to be capable of baseload operation. However, the percentage of intermediate load renewable generation designed for this purpose might be reduced significantly, since the generating capacity of renewable plus storage generators is typically far lower than the capacity of a single conventional generator, so the loss of a single generator would have less effect on system capacity.

Short “needle peak” demand events would likely be served primarily from additional storage capacity at some portion of the intermediate load renewable generators, since storage would likely be capable of very rapid response to changes in grid demand. This storage capacity would likely not be kept fully charged for most of the year, but would be charged in anticipation of high demand on the grid.

The uncontrolled variability of the output of wind and solar generators will present growing grid management challenges as the renewable fraction of grid generation increases and the dispatchable fraction of grid generating capacity decreases.

By: PragerU

Baseload powerplants operate continuously at, or close to, their rated capacity to meet the continuous demand on the electric grid. Nuclear power plants are typically operated as baseload plants. Some coal power plants are also operated as baseload plants, as are geothermal plants and hydroelectric plants, depending on local availability.

The transition to a renewable plus storage grid would require replacement of baseload coal generation and perhaps nuclear generation as well. Replacing reliable, continuous generation resources with discontinuous generation sources is a complex challenge. US EIA uses 40% as the capacity factor for new onshore wind generation and 30% for solar photovoltaic generation. The IEA uses 50% as the capacity factor for offshore wind generation. Clearly, these discontinuous generation sources are unsuitable for application as baseload generation without support.

At a minimum, replacing 1 GW of baseload generation would require installation of 2 GW of offshore wind capacity, 2.5 GW of onshore wind capacity or 3.3 GW of solar photovoltaic capacity, assuming each type of renewable generator operated at its average capacity every day throughout the year. However, that is not the case, as hourly, daily and seasonal variations in wind and solar conditions affect generator output.
 
Assuming that the renewable generators which constitute the 1 GW (24 GWh/day)of baseload generation are colocated and thus experience the same wind or solar conditions, 50% of the output of the offshore wind generators (12 GWh), 60% of the output of the onshore wind generators (14 GWh) and 67% of the output of the solar collectors (16 GWh) would need to be stored for use when the wind and sun are unavailable, on average.

As baseload generation, the renewable generators must reliably generate 24 GWh of power each day. Therefore, a day with no wind or no sun would require an additional 24 GWh of energy storage, or 27 GWh of storage capacity assuming a 90% round trip storage efficiency. Each additional possible day of no wind or no sun would require an additional 27GWh of storage capacity. This storage capacity would have to be charged before it was available for use.

Of course, once the stored energy is used to replace non-functioning generation, storage must be recharged. This could be accomplished by diverting a portion of the baseload generator output and increasing the output of intermediate load generators to replace the diverted baseload capacity. Diverting 25% of the baseload generator capacity for recharging would require 4 days to recharge storage for each day (24 GWh) of storage capacity used, assuming average renewable generation.

While some storage has been installed to smooth out brief fluctuations in renewable generator output and grid demand, the four-hour storage required to carry solar generation through the evening peak is only beginning to be installed, and the twelve to sixteen-hour storage required to time shift renewable output to provide baseload operation and the multi-day storage required to operate through low/no wind and solar days are not commercially available, nor is there any schedule for their availability.

Therefore, it is essential that conventional generation be retained to support renewable generation until these storage technologies are available and installed.

By: Clear Energy Alliance

It appears that the White House and at least two of the Executive Branch Agencies are not on the same page of the climate change “playbook”. The Administration has clearly enunciated goals of eliminating coal use by 2030, achieving fossil-free electric generation by 2035 and achieving Net Zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook 2022 projects that petroleum and natural gas will remain the most-used fuels in the United States through 2050, based on consumer preferences, as shown in the graph below.

This projection is inconsistent with the Administration’s Net Zero goal. EIA projects total energy consumption of approximately 108 Quads, of which approximately 75 Quads is petroleum, other liquids and natural gas in 2050. Other renewable energy (predominantly wind and solar) increases from approximately 3 Quads to approximately 18 Quads, far short of the intended transition to a renewable plus storage goal with limited nuclear, hydro and liquid biofuels. Coal decreases from approximately 10 Quads currently to approximately 8 Quads by 2030 and to 6 Quads by 2050, rather than to zero by 2030 as proclaimed by climate czar John Kerry.

Similarly, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)projects that even what is described as “widespread electrification”, the high growth scenario projects electric consumption growth of 67%, mostly in increased consumption in the transportation sector (EVs). Note that this study is now 4 years old and was conducted during the previous Administration, prior to the goals set by the current Administration. The projected growth of electric consumption is far short of that which would result from the implementation of an “all-electric everything” goal to be achieved by 2050.

In its June 2018 Electrification Futures Study, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projects that even with “limited impacts” from electrification, U.S. electricity consumption could increase 21% over the 2016–2050 period (using moderate assumptions about technology changes), resulting in a compound growth rate of 0.65% per year. In the medium and high scenarios, which assume “widespread electrification,” electric consumption growth is 45% and 67%, respectively (compound annual growth rates of 1.2% and 1.6%, respectively). Source: NREL

This is not to suggest that these projections could not be changed if consumer preference is superseded by government fiat, as now appears likely to occur. However, replacement of three-quarters of projected future energy consumption with renewables plus storage would be a massive and extremely expensive undertaking. It would include abandonment in place of more than $50 trillion of fossil fuels, abandonment of large numbers of coal and natural gas generators before the ends of their useful lives and the installation of more than 1,000 GW of new wind and solar generating capacity (actual, not nameplate) plus storage capacity sufficient to carry the grid through the longest anticipated wind or solar “drought”. The storage technology required by this transition is not currently available.

By: Cleaning up with Michael Liebreich