Frequent readers of this blog know that many of my posts are long because I get document all my statements. This is because of my background in industry where it is necessary to prove my arguments to have credibility. This is an update of articles that I have read that I want to mention but do not require a detailed post. Previous commentaries are available here.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described below are related to the net-zero transition. 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 organizatin I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Reasons to Oppose Renewable Energy
Brenda Hansen at Go Constitutional responded to the question why she opposed renewable energy in a post republished at Energy Security and Freedom Substack. She explained that she opposes large-scale solar and wind projects on moral grounds:
The political movement to pivot away from high-density energy sources (such as fossil fuels, natural gas, and nuclear) and attempt to transition to solar and wind is unethical because it will diminish human flourishing and will harm my fellow human beings – starting first with the most vulnerable.
Hansen does a good job explaining that when it comes to human flourishing, energy matters. If energy is not abundant and affordable, then “people need to spend an inordinate amount of time seeking and obtaining it”. The problem with renewables is that “Power from solar and wind is inherently unreliable, and this built-in characteristic of these energy sources will never change.”
She goes on to make an elegant point about affordability:
Turning our attention to affordability, energy that is unreliable cannot be considered abundant. Abundant energy, after all, always is there, always available, always ready to use. Such is not the case with solar and wind. When a product or commodity is not abundant, it becomes expensive.
I also endorse her moral accountability argument:
Considering these scientific realities (the unpredictable, unreliable, intermittent, low-density, low-efficient nature of solar and wind), ought to cause a pause. Do officials and bureaucrats who make energy decisions for us ever ponder the science and consider the consequences of the policies they are promoting?
As much as the developers and attorneys who represent them may annoy me, I understand they are doing what they were designed to do – maximize profit – and so I point my finger squarely at leaders in high office of government and academia and ask:
“Do you care about human flourishing? Do you care about the vulnerable in the world – such as the children who are laboring in mines in the Congo or Angola to collect the rare earth metals and nickel and cobalt needed for your solar arrays, wind turbines, and battery systems? In your pride and arrogance – patting yourself on the back for your concern toward a carbon-free future – have you no shame for the green colonialism you are forcing on the most vulnerable nations and peoples of the world? Why don’t you care about the science that reveals that what you are trying to accomplish – net zero – will only come at a devastating cost to humanity?”
The entire article is well worth reading.
Farming, Mining, and Energy Development
Tom Shepstone provided a link to an op-ed about farming and mining that epitomizes pragmatic environmentalism. The question raised is “Why does it seem we are comfortable demanding a supply when we are uncomfortable supplying the materials to meet the demand?”
As the child of a farmer that also ran a locker plant that “served for decades as the meat-processing and freezer storage facility for local beef and hog farmers” Julie C. Lucas learned about tradeoffs early:
I was forced to look my dinners in the eye from the moment I first bottle-fed a calf or chased a piglet around the barn to the moment we loaded the animals onto a trailer to make the short drive to the locker plant. We were taught that our choices have consequences, that sustaining our lives sometimes meant taking the lives of animals, and we had to accept responsibility for that and demonstrate compassion and gratitude for those resources.
Or we had to choose not to eat meat.
As the executive director of Mining Minnesota Lucas now is working to advance responsible development of natural resources. She points out:
While we all have the option of giving up meat or animal products if we are uncomfortable with the sourcing, we do not have the option of living in a world without minerals and mining. Even living off the grid requires mining the Earth’s resources for the necessary tools to build and maintain life. Saying “no mining here” while continuing to consume electricity, heat our homes, and live our 21st-century lives should make us all uncomfortable. We need to look our consumerism in the eye and demonstrate understanding and gratitude for the miners and resources that sustain us.
The op-ed closes with a plea to have an honest conversation about the tradeoffs between the mining necessary for society and local impacts. Responsible mining can minimize impacts while providing the necessities for society only if pragmatic tradeoffs are accepted.
Alex Epstein – Sound Bites on Fossil Fuels
Epstein describes easy-to-remember points on the advantages of fossil fuels with three articles describing core truths about fossil fuels:
1. We must think about fossil fuels in a balanced way.
2. Only by using fossil fuels can 8 billion people have the energy they need to survive and flourish.
3. The climate positives of fossil fuels far outweigh the climate negatives.
Fossil fuels have positives as well as negatives. Detractors only consider the negatives. Fossil fuels are essential to the infrastructure necessary to master climate danger – too hot and too cold weather.
Activists who want to stop using fossil fuels ignore the benefits of fertilizer and modern agricultural practices essential to feeding 8 billion people. Epstein points out that fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective due to being naturally stored, concentrated, and abundant, they are uniquely cost-effective due to 100+ years of innovation, and only nuclear rivals fossil fuels’ natural attributes—but it has been crippled by irrational policy.
The use of fossil fuels has led to climate mastery that has made society better able to cope with extreme weather. This is proven by the massive reduction in extreme weather and drought death rates. Epstein includes other examples that are well worth checking out.
Weather Trend Confounding Factors
Adirondack Explorer reports: Meteorologists this week confirmed, through the help of satellite data, that two more tornadoes hit upstate New York during the severe weather event of July 16 — meaning a total of seven twisters hit the Adirondacks that day.
The recent additions were in remote, wooded areas without roads — necessitating a damage analysis through satellite and radar, said Christina Speciale, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany. An EF-1 tornado was confirmed in Limekiln on the Herkimer and Hamilton County border. That twister reached a high speed of 100 mph, and caused 4 miles’ worth of damage. Another EF-1 tornado was confirmed in Wilcox Lake Forest on the border of Hamilton and Warren counties; the damage was similar to the one recorded in Limekiln.
The point is that these tornadoes would not have been counted before the advent of satellite and radar damage analysis. Claiming that climate change is here and happening now because there are more tornadoes is a weak argument because sampling differences affect trends.
Net-Zero Test
Francis Menton, Rich Ellenbogen, and I have argued that a fully functioning demonstration project to prove that the a net-zero jurisdiction can work should be a prerequisite before proceeding with the Climate Act implementation. Irina Slav points out that the Paris Olympics attempted to do exactly that.
Since I don’t really follow the Olympics, it was belatedly that I learned this year’s edition was supposed to be the greenest in the history of the games but when I did learn it eventually, it was more than I could have ever asked for.
Predominantly vegetarian food, no air conditioning in athletes’ rooms and on the buses that transport the athletes to the venues, eco-friendly mattresses, swimming in the Seine instead of pools (I’m not sure how exactly this falls under the net-zero label but whatever) — the French had really taken their net-zero mission seriously. And they promptly turned into a laughing stock.
She explains:
The Paris Olympics have turned into a summary of the energy transition in a nutshell: a complete disregard of physical realities in favour of a fantastical goal that has about the same chance of succeeding as a vegan hockey team beating a meat-eating team.
Time of Use Tariffs
Smart meters are coming to New York State. The utilities claim that they will not be involuntarily used to set a time of use price but I believe that once they are installed in sufficient numbers that consumers will be forced into such a rate structure. David Turver describes issues with this approach in Great Britain.
In theory incentivizing consumers to use less power when load traditionally peaks will make markets more efficient. Turver explains how this is supposed to work. He points out that this demand side approach could eventually be coupled with solar variability to encourage consumers to use more when solar generation peaks to reduce the impact of surplus power. He concludes that consumers will be on the losing end of this approach.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 