Sometimes I just don’t have time to put together an article about specific posts about the net-zero transition and climate change that I have read that I think are relevant. This is a summary of posts that I think would be of interest to my readers.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) Climate Act since it was first proposed and most of the articles described are related to it. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. . The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Climate Act Background
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan. After a year-long review the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022. In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.
Lomborg Newsletter
Bjorn Lomborg sends out a newsletter on a regular basis that I recommend. The latest newsletter included articles that exemplify the pragmatic approach to environmental issues such as climate change and addressed climate alarmism. One story explained that fear-mongering and the suppression of truly inconvenient truths are pushing us dangerously toward the wrong solutions. There was a plug for his ns new book Best Things First that shows how the world’s 12 most efficient policies, for just $35 billion a year, could save more than four million lives per year, and generate annual economic benefits worth over a trillion dollars. He frequently publishes commentary. In his brand new article for New York Post, he writes that if we want to do better on climate, we must resist the misleading, alarmist climate narrative because panic is a terrible advisor. In another commentary this time in the Wall Street Journal (also in New York Post without paywall) he points out that one of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t.
Climate Bullying
The mainstream media has ignored a story in which a group of prominent scientists bullied a scientific journal into retracting an article they did not like. Anthony Watts describes the incident:
The paper, A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming, said in its abstract, “In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.” This single phrase likely triggered the demands by prominent climate scientists for the paper to be retracted. Yet that claim is true, supported by real world data and numerous conclusions presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report.
This is yet one more in a growing list of shameful episodes in the catalog of climate science calumnies. It features many of the same rogues gallery of climate researchers caught playing fast and loose with data and short-circuiting peer review in the infamous ClimateGate scandal of 2009, such as Dr. Michael E. Mann and Dr. Stefan Rahmsdorf who used their influence to get this paper retracted. Here is the notice from The European Physical Journal Plus, which has officially retracted the paper with this statement:
“Retraction Note: A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming
The Original Article was published on 13 January 2022
Retraction Note: Eur. Phys J. Plus (2022) 137:112
The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article. Concerns were raised regarding the selection of the data, the analysis and the resulting conclusions of the article. The authors were invited to submit an addendum to the article, but post publication review of the concerns with the article and the submitted addendum concluded that the addendum was not suitable for publication and that the conclusions of the article were not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors. In light of these concerns and based on the outcome of the post publication review, the Editors-in-Chief no longer have confidence in the results and conclusions reported in this article.
- The authors disagree with this retraction.”
Mind you the paper had already gone through peer review and the Editors didn’t cite any specific instance of the use of bad data or the drawing of unsupported conclusions, rather, it seems, unwanted attention from large mainstream media organizations and pressure from prominent outside researchers lead to a failure of “confidence” in the results. When they let “the science” through the peer review process decide, the paper was approved and published. When climate alarmism raised its ugly head objecting, the paper was retracted. This cowardly decision was the subject of Team Climate Crisis Resorts to Bullying, Againpublished at WUWT ten days ago. At that date, the paper was simply “under dispute”.
Watts referenced a couple of other accounts: Tony Thomas, How Science is Done These Days and Roger Pielke Jr “Think of the Implications of Publishing”. All three articles document the clear machinations by climate scientists determined to protect their careers and funding streams from anyone daring to suggest that there is no climate crisis.
Global Warming Attribution
Fortunately, the climate scientist cabal cannot cancel every article contradicting their narrative. In my opinion when the question does mankind affect climate is asked the answer is yes. However, the idea that all of the effects are due to GHG emissions is absurd. I have always thought that land use changes must be a major factor and a new study suggests global warming confirms my suspicion. The paper explains global warming could be mostly an urban problem:
A new study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Climate, by 37 researchers from 18 countries suggests that current estimates of global warming are contaminated by urban warming biases.
The study also suggests that the solar activity estimates considered in the most recent reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming since the 19th century.
It is well-known that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. While urban areas only account for less than 4% of the global land surface, many of the weather stations used for calculating global temperatures are located in urban areas. For this reason, some scientists have been concerned that the current global warming estimates may have been contaminated by urban heat island effects. In their latest report, the IPCC estimated that urban warming accounted for less than 10% of global warming. However, this new study suggests that urban warming might account for up to 40% of the warming since 1850.
The German Experience
The Climate Act includes language that the experiences of other jurisdictions should be considered during implementation. I submitted comments a year ago calling attention to the fact that the Climate Action Council. In section 16 of § 75-0103 there is a mandate to consider efforts at other jurisdictions: “The council shall identify existing climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts at the federal, state, and local levels and may make recommendations regarding how such policies may improve the state’s efforts.” To date, however, the only efforts are considered are those that are consistent with what the powers to be want to hear. Pierre Gosselin explains that Germany’s so-called Energiewende promised green energies, primarily from wind and sun, would be cheap, plentiful and clean in the future but the reality is it is bringing economic pain as energy prices are projected to keep rising until 2040. He includes the following chart “Electricity price for private households in Germany with an electricity consumption of 4,000 kWh in the years 2004 to 2022. Source: Statista. Published by n V. Pawlik, August 1, 2023.” New York State has not explained why New York’s transition will be any different.
Bad Energy Planning Dangerous, Irresponsible
Dennis Higgins wrote this commentary for All Otsego.
Under the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, a group of political appointees—the Climate Action Council—was charged with developing a scoping plan to achieve major decarbonization goals in the law. Their plan, as implemented by the state energy and research development authority, NYSERDA, would require 55 gigawatts of solar, 10 GW of onshore wind, and 17 GW of offshore wind. NYSERDA believes we’ll need storage 50 to 100 times the size of the largest lithium-ion battery complex on earth, as well as backup generation equal to or greater than the state’s entire fossil-fuel power-plant fleet. Solar and wind resources will also need new transmission lines to connect them to the existing grid.
The North American Energy Reliability Corporation just came out with a report identifying major risks to the bulk power system. The top two risks NERC identified are energy policy and grid transformation made in pursuit of that policy. In other words, it is precisely state policies arising from the CAC’s energy scoping plan, and the grid transformation currently underway, that are the top risks to our power system.
If an engineer had at their disposal a source of carbon-free baseload electricity which needed little land, could employ thousands of workers in high-paying jobs, required fewer materials than other resources, was as safe as solar or wind, and could last a hundred years, wouldn’t they make it the backbone of the grid? Or would they ignore rural opposition in order to bulldoze a million acres of farmland and forest for resources requiring new transmission, back-up generation, and storage infrastructure? Would they choose resources generating little energy and almost no permanent jobs; requiring the sacrifice of home rule, environmental review, and fair tax levies?
With pressure from big greens like Riverkeeper and support from NRDC, Sierra, AGREE, Food and Water Watch, and others, New York unplugged 2,100 MW of emission-free electricity when it shut down Indian Point. In all its safe years of operation, IP never prompted a “shelter in place” order from the governor, as recent fires at battery energy storage systems did. IP, which had supplied a quarter of metro NY’s power, was partially replaced with two big new gas power plants, increasing state emissions by tens of millions of tons annually. The grid operator NYISO notes that due to IP’s closure, energy prices have increased downstate. We see those price hikes are now percolating through upstate. Also related, NYISO’s recent second quarter reliability report indicates insufficient capacity margins for the metro region over the next decade. Even with normal weather, NYISO has predicted that New York City could experience a capacity shortfall of about 450 megawatts—meaning blackouts in the summer heat that could last many hours.
The Champlain-Hudson Power Express will bring hydro-generated electricity to the metro region. But Quebec is not obliged to send power during a polar vortex. With building electrification, New York will experience winter demand peaks.
Bad energy planning is not just irresponsible. It is dangerous. Roll-out of the state’s policy—in land-hungry panels and turbines, fiery BESS units, transmission cables, and back-up peaker plants—may ultimately be embarrassing for the governor, for NYSERDA, and for the CAC. But summer or winter power failures could prove fatal for the most vulnerable urban and rural populations: the elderly and poor.
New “environmental justice” communities are being created across rural New York. The land is being plastered with solar panels and gigantic turbines without full environmental review, over the rule of local law, robbing communities of fair revenue. And opposition is growing.
Ontario abandoned a “green energy” plan like New York’s in the face of fierce backlash from the rural north which was required to host the renewables resources expected to power the wealthier, more populous, south. Acknowledging the program’s failure, Ontario’s Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault issued a mea culpa. As reported, Economist Brady Youch at the Canadian Consumer Policy Institute said that “[the government] appears to have overridden concerns of experts” and “now you have a political electricity system, as opposed to one that’s based on economics or cost-effectiveness,” he said. Liberals ignored advice that could have saved Ontarians billions. Ontario will instead add a third generating station to the Bruce Power nuclear facility near Kincardine.
Here in New York, too, a more efficient and economical grid could be achieved by relicensing existing upstate nuclear plants and integrating new nuclear power into the grid. Nuclear does not require new transmission or new storage. Each nuclear reactor can last 80 years and support a thousand good jobs. It requires a fraction of the land needed for solar or wind. Pursuing New York’s slogan-driven policy, the first 80,000 acres of farmland bulldozed for Chinese panels will represent New York’s flawed effort to replace Indian Point’s reliable baseload generation with under-performing solar.
As gas and electricity prices continue to spike, as grid reliability declines, as rural New York becomes more resolute in its opposition to state-sponsored energy sprawl, perhaps we will hear similar mea culpa coming out of the CAC, NYSERDA, and the governor’s office in the next few years.
Dennis Higgins is a retired math/computer science professor. He and wife Katie run a farm in Otego and, as a family, they are committed to addressing climate change any way they can, including 20KW of solar panels, geothermal heat, all electric appliances, and driving an EV. Dennis has been engaged in regional energy issues for approximately 15 years.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 