Hurricane Risk is Real For Offshore Wind thumbnail

Hurricane Risk is Real For Offshore Wind

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

The danger from too much wind.

My regular readers know that I have been fussing about the threat of hurricanes destroying proposed Atlantic coast offshore wind arrays. The issue arises because the offshore wind industry is based in Europe, which does not get hurricanes. My focus has been Dominion’s massive project off Virginia, but the whole East Coast is hurricane alley.

Now I have found some research that actually quantifies the threat and it is very real. It looks like wind generators will have to be redesigned specifically to withstand hurricanes. In fact that work is underway. In the meantime we should not be building conventional offshore wind towers.

The 2017 press release is succinctly titled “Offshore wind turbines vulnerable to Category 5 hurricane gusts.” The PR says this: “The study, which was conducted in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, highlights the limitations of current turbine design and could provide guidance for manufacturers and engineers looking to build more hurricane-resilient turbines in the future.”

We certainly want hurricane-resilient turbines! Actually they also mean towers and blades, not just the turbines. It is the towers and blades that are most likely to collapse in extreme wind, although the turbines can be damaged as well.

The research report itself has a more specific but equally scary title: “Gusts and shear within hurricane eyewalls can exceed offshore wind turbine design standards.”

Mind you what they did is computer modeling. But what they found confirms prior observations that people were having trouble believing.

Simply put they found that hurricane wind gusts can hit an incredible 200 miles per hour (mph), while wind towers are only designed to withstand 160 mph. If those extreme gusts hit an offshore wind farm, catastrophe is pretty much guaranteed.

In addition to extremely damaging gusts, the press release says this: “Furthermore, current standards do not account for veer, a measure of the change in wind direction across a vertical span. In the simulation, wind direction changed by as much as 55 degrees between the tip of the rotor and its hub, creating a potentially dangerous strain on the blade.”

Here is how they make the fundamental point:

“The findings could be used to help wind farm developers improve design standards as well as to help stakeholders make informed decisions about the costs, benefits and risks of placing turbines in hurricane-prone areas.”

I have yet to see any sort of hurricane risk assessment from any of the proposed East Coast wind projects, most of which involve billions of dollars. In the Virginia case, the primary stakeholders are the ratepayers who are on the hook for an estimated ten billion dollars. In their case hurricanes have not even been mentioned by Dominion.

A more recent article comes to similar conclusions—”Hurricane eyewall winds and structural response of wind turbines

The article is technical but here is their plain language summary:

“Offshore wind energy is a burgeoning area of renewable energy that is at an early stage of development in the United States. Exposure of offshore wind turbines to hurricanes must be assessed and mitigated to ensure the security of the renewable energy supply. This research assesses the impact of hurricane wind fields on the structural response of wind turbines. Such wind fields have characteristics that may pose heretofore unforeseen structural challenges to offshore wind turbines.”

I have not done a literature search but there may well be a large literature on this huge problem. If so then the wind developers are carefully ignoring it.

Before we build tens or hundreds of billions of dollars worth of massive offshore wind facilities off the East Coast we need to be sure that they will withstand strong hurricanes. (It may well be that even Category 4 hurricanes will exceed today’s design standards.) Otherwise both the ratepayers and the grid will be at great risk.

This hurricane design case may be something that NERC should Issue a Reliability Standard on. Such a Reliability Standard would lay out the kind of hurricane risk assessment that must be done as part of the facility design process. These risk assessments need to then be made part of the public decision process.

Offshore wind should not fly blindly into the teeth of the storm. Too much is at risk.

Reducing CO2 Hurts the Planet and Humanity: Time to Reconsider Massachusetts v. EPA thumbnail

Reducing CO2 Hurts the Planet and Humanity: Time to Reconsider Massachusetts v. EPA

By Dr. Rich Swier

“This August marks the 15th anniversary of  Massachusetts v. EPA. We believe it is time for the Supreme Court to reconsider their ruling given the vast amount of science now available on CO2 and its impact on climate change.” — Dr. Richard M. Swier


In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA,

[T]he Supreme Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. In section 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, Congress stated that EPA is to issue standards applicable to the emission of

“air pollutants” from new motor vehicles, which in EPA’s “judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare . . . .”

The Massachusetts v. EPA ruling has caused incalculable harm to our planet in general and specifically to mankind.

According to the Department of Justice brief on Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)

In 1999, private organizations filed a petition requesting that EPA issue rules to begin regulating four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, emitted from new motor vehicles. After taking extensive public comment, EPA denied the petition, stating that:

  1. it did not have authority under the Clean Air Act to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change because Congress would have explicitly directed EPA to do so if Congress so intended. As a result, greenhouse gases could not be considered “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act.
  2. even if it did have authority, it would be unwise to set greenhouse gas emission standards at this time because:
  • there was uncertainty regarding the link between greenhouse gases and global warming;
  • mandatory regulation was a piecemeal approach that would interfere with the President’s more comprehensive approach; and
  • it might hamper the President’s ability to persuade developing countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

But this did not stop the Supreme Court under Justice John Paul Stevens which ruled,

The Court then held that under the language of the Clean Air Act, [the] EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as ‘air pollutants’.

From this moment on CO2 became the symbol of climate change fanatics to mandate reductions and regulations infinitum. The power shifted from the people to the EPA and its puppet masters.

Co2 and the Climate

Since this ruling the science has proven green house gasses specifically CO2 has little or no impact on the climate.

On February 26th, 2021 a revised and expanded third edition of scientific look at climate change titled Hot Talk, Cold Science by the distinguished astrophysicist Dr. S. Fred Singer, with the assistance of renowned climate scientists David R. Legates and Anthony R. Lupo, wrote,

As alarmists clamor to impose draconian government restrictions on entire populations in order to combat “climate change,” this book reveals some startling, stubborn contradictory facts, including:

  • CO2 has not caused temperatures or sea levels to rise beyond historical rates.
  • Severe storms have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1970—neither have heat waves nor droughts.
  • Global change is not harming coral reefs.
  • Any increases in CO2 concentrations across huge time spans (there have been a few) haven’t preceded rising global temperatures; they’ve followed them by about six to eight hundred years—just the opposite of alarmist claims.
  • Alarmist climate scientists have hidden their raw temperature data and deleted emails—then undermined the peer-review system to squelch debate.

In sum, despite all the hot talk—and outright duplicity—there is no “climate crisis” resulting from human activities and no such threat on the horizon.

In the below video we learn that 5 million years of climate data shows the Sun is the driving factor not CO2.

The Bottom Line

There are three important findings on what impacts the earth’s climate:

  1. Earths warming and cooling periods over millions of years has been due to activity on the sun.
  2. H2O (water vapor) is driving green house gas models, not CO2. It is H2O that keeps earth at a livable temperature for mankind.
  3. CO2 has little to do with global warming. CO2 actually helps keep the planet green.

Climate change is a myth used for political purposes to punish each and every human being on this planet. The idea that mankind can in anyway control the weather, let alone the climate is preposterous. Yet, this is the mantra of the global elite, from the United Nations, to the World Health Organization, to the Biden administration.

Without a doubt the SCOTUS ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA has done no good and created great harm.

It is time to abort Massachusetts v. EPA in order to save mankind.

As John F. Kennedy said,

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

It is past time to deal with the discomfort of thought that mankind can do nothing to impact the climate, nothing at all!

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES:

Watts Up With That? The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change 

MASSACHUSETTS V. EPA: The Inconvenient Truth About Precedent—Virginia Law Review

Massachusetts v EPA

How and why the Supreme Court made climate-change history—The Harvard Gazette

Germany’s ‘Green’ Energy Disaster Is A Warning To The United States thumbnail

Germany’s ‘Green’ Energy Disaster Is A Warning To The United States

By The Geller Report

“No nation has anything approaching a clean energy economy. And those that have promised to build one are all struggling.”

By: David Harsanyi, The Federalist, June 21, 2022:

As gas hit historic highs, leftists keep arguing it’s a perfect time to transition to a “clean energy” economy. “Now is the moment to double-down, triple-down, and quadruple-down on clean energy,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Friday, linking to a CNN piece that contends “wind and solar” have been “bailing out” Texas during its recent heat wave.

In the piece we learn that wind, solar, and nuclear have “powered about 38% of the state’s power in 2021, rivaling natural gas at 42%.” That’s quite the sleight of hand; tantamount to bragging about how Babe Ruth (60), Lou Gehrig (47), and Joe Dugan (2) combined for 109 home runs in 1927. True, but deceptive.

Subsidized solar power generates less than 2 percent of Texas’ energy during the year. Nuclear power generates around 10 percent and wind nearly 20. Coal accounts for nearly 15 percent and natural gas for more than 52 percent of electricity generation. It would be far more accurate to say that coal, nuclear, and gas are bailing out Texas.

No nation has anything approaching a clean energy economy. And those that have promised to build one are all struggling.

More than a decade ago, after a major earthquake caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced her nation would close down all its nuclear power plants, at the same time quadrupling down on the decarbonization of its economy—energiewende. Once there were 17 reactors in Germany. Now there are only three remaining, all of which are scheduled to go offline by the end of the year.

The move to “clean energy”—without nuclear—has accomplished three things:

1. It has prompted Germany, and the rest of the EU, to begin relying more heavily on Russian natural gas as it “transitioned.” Putin, who has begun demanding EU nations pay for their energy in roubles, is now able to undercut the European economy at will.

2. It has created the highest global electricity prices per household in the world. In 2019, German households were paying 34 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to 13 cents in the United States. The price of energy has doubled since 2000, when Germany first mandated decarbonization, an effort that forced energy companies to purchase long-term inefficient renewables at high, fabricated prices.

3. It has meant the burning of coal. Even before Russia began cutting off supply, Germany was more reliant on coal than the United States. This week, Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who earlier this year rejected a European Union label of nuclear energy as “green,” announced that in an effort to avoid future gas shortages—because cars can’t run on wind—the government would incentivize the use of more coal-fired power plants.

The “transition” to green that Germany began 30 years ago has not worked. In 2000, Germany obtained 84 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. By 2019, it was 78 percent. As Vaclav Smil pointed out a couple of years ago, at this rate, Germany would still be deriving 70 percent of its energy from fossil fuels by the year 2050. With a move back to coal in 2022, it will surely be even later, if ever.

Setting aside the high cost of transitioning to renewable energy, and the failure of wind turbines and solar panels to produce energy in the winter, the intermittency problem is not going to be overcome in any season. To pull back on the only reliable “clean energy” source that can mitigate this problem has been suicidal.

Unlike Germany, we don’t even have to worry about pipelines from Russia; we are situated on a continent with abundant energy sources. Germany’s problems are self-inflicted. Ours will be, as well, if we follow its lead.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

An Interesting Take on Electric Cars from a Conversation thumbnail

An Interesting Take on Electric Cars from a Conversation

By Save America Foundation

If electric cars do not use gasoline, they will not be paying a gasoline tax on every gallon sold for automobiles, which was enacted to maintain our roads and bridges. They will use the roads and bridges, but will not pay for their maintenance!


As an engineer I love electric vehicle technology However, I have been troubled by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid, and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited.

In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car.

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it.

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things, yet they’re being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.

If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, you will face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On a small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So, as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This later “investment” will not be revealed until we’re so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an ‘OOPS…!’ and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, “For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.

I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the Canadian Government wants loyal Canadians not to do the math, but simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.

WAKE UP NORTH AMERICA!

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

Why are gas prices so high? It’s the oil refineries stupid! thumbnail

Why are gas prices so high? It’s the oil refineries stupid!

By Dr. Rich Swier

Today American’s are seeing the highest gasoline prices in their lifetimes at over $5.00 a gallon on average.

QUESTION: Why is this happening?

ANSWER: It’s the oil refineries stupid!

In 1982 there were over 250 operating crude oil refineries in the United States; that number declined to 132 by 2019.

As of January 1, 2021, there were 129 operable petroleum refineries in the United States a decline of 3 since 2019.

According to Zehl & Associates five of America’s ten largest oil refineries are located along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

  • #1: Motiva Port Arthur Manufacturing Complex, Texas.
  • #2: Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery, Texas.
  • #3: Marathon Garyville Refinery, Louisiana.
  • #4: ExxonMobil Baytown Complex, Texas.
  • #5: ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Refinery, Louisiana.

NOTE: If a major hurricane hits the Texas and Louisiana coastline then these refineries will shut down.

The remaining six of the top ten are:

  • #6: BP Whiting Refinery, Indiana
  • #7: CITGO Lake Charles Refinery, Louisiana
  • #8: ExxonMobil Beaumont Complex, Texas
  • #9: Marathon Los Angeles (Carson) Refinery, California
  • #10: Chevron Pascagoula Refinery, Mississippi

These 10 refining facilities alone can process 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per calendar day. Texas is home to four of the ten largest refineries in the United States, the entire Texas Gulf Coast Region – including Corpus Christi, Port Arthur, and Beaumont – accounts for more than 87% of total production in the state of Texas and more than a quarter of the nation’s total production.

The U.S. Energy Administration (USEA) has a chart showing the Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries. According to the USEA here are the operable barrels per calendar day (BCD) by year:

  • 2016 – 18,317,036 BCD
  • 2017 – 18,617,027 BCD
  • 2018 – 18,598,497 BCD
  • 2019 – 18,802,435 BCD
  • 2020 – 18,976,085 BCD
  • 2021 – 18,127,700 BCD

Note that under President Donald J. Trump the production of barrels per day increased during his term by 658,049 BCD. Also note that since the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. the BCD has dropped 848,385 BCD in just the first year.

Less production, higher prices.

The Bottom Line

Biden has blamed everyone and everything but himself for the highest average price of gasoline in our history.

What we can say is that our American refineries are handling significantly lower numbers of barrels per calendar day since Biden entered the White House.

Why? Because America is producing fewer barrels per calendar day of oil.

The Epoch Times’ reporter Jack Phillips on Tuesday, June 14, 2022 wrote:

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, saying that government policies are a key reason why, as average gas prices continue to rise as of Tuesday.

One hundred and twenty-one fewer refineries since 1982, dropping production of barrels of oil per day since Biden took office and no more new oil refineries due to government policies are in fact the “key reasons” why we have the highest gas prices ever in the U.S.

It’s the oil refineries stupid!

We report, you decide who is at fault.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

EDITORS NOTE: Add to this the warning that the American electrical grid will almost certainly die… from natural causes. In a Center for Security Policy article titled For the cost of less than 1% of the Biden infrastructure bill we could protect our electric grid from certain collapse Tommy Waller Director of Infrastructure Security wrote:

Most Americans regard the sun as a positive source of energy for the planet – nurturing plant life and powering solar panels to help provide the electricity we need to sustain modern civilization. And while we know that we must be protected from the harmful UV rays the sun produces, which cause injury such as sunburn and skin cancer, most don’t realize that the sun can produce even more powerful effects, damaging infrastructure both in space and on earth.

Unless America takes action to protect against the hazard of solar weather, it is nearly certain that we will suffer a catastrophic loss of our electric grid sometime in the future. The Center for Security Policy’s Director of Infrastructure Security Tommy Waller recently testified before the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) to explain why, and what must be done about it.

Watch the June 2022 Secretary of Energy Advisory Board meeting to understand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

White House shifts from blaming Putin to oil companies for high gas prices, calls on them to ‘be patriots’

Oil Companies Unload On Biden After His Thinly-Veiled Threats

Less than 1% of the Biden infrastructure bill could protect our electric grid from certain collapse

Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in U.S. Again thumbnail

Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in U.S. Again

By The Geller Report

The Democrats are systematically destroying this nation with unimaginable speed.

Oil, in some form, is in almost every product that is made. The government is out of control – run by traitors and scoundrels.

One commenter queried, “Do you think that it is a coincidence that we Americans are being conditioned for accepting food, gas, electricity baby formula and water shortages while restricting public gatherings and worship services? And government moving to confiscate your guns?”

Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in US Again

By Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times, June 14, 2022:

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, saying that government policies are a key reason why, as average gas prices continue to rise as of Tuesday.

“There hasn’t been a refinery built in this country since the 1970s,” Wirth said during Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference on June 1 when asked about more refining being added in the Gulf of Mexico. “I personally don’t believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again.”

Wirth added: “Capacity is added by de-bottlenecking existing units by investing in existing refineries … but what we’ve seen over the last two years are shutdowns. We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce.”

Continuing further, Wirth said that the federal government’s current policy is to reduce the demand for oil, making it “very hard” in a company “where investments have a payout period of a decade or more.”

Wirth also asked rhetorically, “How do you go to your board, how do you go to your shareholders and say ‘we’re going to spend billions of dollars on new capacity in a market that is, the policy is taking you the other direction.’”

Read the rest……

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Texas Gas Plant That Exploded and Caught on Fire Won’t Be Online for Months: Firm

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less thumbnail

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last 50 years.

Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book Fossil Future will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.


CLICK BELOW TO ORDER

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less


New York Times best-selling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy.

For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing—including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.

And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency”, reality has proven Epstein right:

  • Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts.
  • Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low.
  • Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the one degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows, thanks to fossil-fueled development.

What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery”, and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential.

Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last 50 years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.

©CFACT. All rights reserved.

Biden in 2020 Unequivocally Stated He Planned to ‘End’ the Fossil Fuel Industry! He’s wrong to do so! thumbnail

Biden in 2020 Unequivocally Stated He Planned to ‘End’ the Fossil Fuel Industry! He’s wrong to do so!

By Dr. Rich Swier

Watch this segment of the Democrat debate for POTUS and candidate Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.’s statement on fossil fuels.

Joe Biden in 2020: “No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill period. It ends.” pic.twitter.com/90MVJevPmv

— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) March 8, 2022

in an article titled “Fossil Fuels and Fossilized Thinking” wrote,

Eighty-one years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article by Benjamin Lee Worf that initiated one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century.

[ … ]

In the light of this principle, it is interesting to consider the customary use in contemporary discourse of the modifier fossil to describe hydrocarbon-based energy, as instantiated in these phrases gleaned from the international Greenpeace websitefossil fuels, fossil energy, fossil gas, fossil capital, fossil-free politics, fossil-free economy, fossil-free revolution.

[ … ]

Symbolically, the expression fossil fuels associates hydrocarbon energy with a number of underlying notions that present it in a highly unfavourable light. Not only are fossils dug out of the ground, which links them to dirt and mud (viz. the expression dirty energy), but they are also artefacts from a very remote past, which connotes the idea that hydrocarbons are utterly outdated and should be extinct like the species whose skeletons we display in museum exhibits.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has made it his mission to demonize fossil fuels and has now implemented what he promised in 2020.

The result of his policies against fossil fuels is quite apparent at your local gas stations.

QUESTIONS: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.’s goal is replace fossil fuels with what exactly? Wind and solar? Will this help or hurt the planet?

However, our use of fossil fuels, which produce CO2 has been good for the planet. And indeed, the higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in the industrial era are making the earth greener and increasing crop yields: in its forecast of world cereal grain production for 2020/2021, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization foresees a 4.4 percent increase, up 2.6 percent from the record set in 2019/2020.

In 2016 a paper titled “The greening of the Earth and its drivers” was published in the journal Nature Climate Change by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a 14 percent increase in green vegetation over the previous 30 years, attributing 70 percent of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author of the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this was equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

You seen CO2 is plant food. The more CO2 the greener the planet.

The Bottom Line

On Thursday, June 9th 2022 the national average price for gas passed $5 a gallon, shattering previous record prices according to fuel savings company Gasbuddy.

In this video Alex Epstein explains that despite climate change, why the future needs more, not less, fossil fuels.

Today, America needs more fossil fuels to keep warm, get to work, heat their food, keep the supply chain running, keep jet aircraft flying, provide power to hospitals, restaurants, factories and homes. Fossil fuels are the drivers of our economy. Take away fossil fuels and you destroy our power, people and planet.

As Bill Clinton said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Biden’s policies are doing great harm and he doesn’t seem to care about we the people.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip. I spent more time charging it than I did sleeping.

Backup battery cost fantasies abound

Backup Battery Cost Fantasies Abound thumbnail

Backup Battery Cost Fantasies Abound

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

The only technologically feasible way to make renewables reliable at in the foreseeable future is with massive amounts of grid scale batteries. Whether this is even remotely feasible depends on the cost and here things get truly strange.

On the one hand we have real utility reports of the capital cost of these big battery arrays. Battery systems that have actually been built. On the other hand we have projected capital costs, which are being used to defend the growth of unreliable renewables.

The real costs and the projected costs are wildly different. So different that the projected costs have the aspect of fantasy.

Let’s start with the reality. The EIA collected annual utility data on the cost of grid scale battery arrays. Their most recent report is “Battery Storage in the United States: An Update on Market Trends — August 2021”.

From 2013 to 2018 the average reported cost was around $1,500,000 per MWh. The range was pretty large, from under $500,000 to around $3,000,000 per MWh.

It is worth noting that in 2020 EIA excitedly reported a big drop in cost. This was from an average of $2,100,000 in 2015 way down to a low of $600,000 in 2019. I am rather skeptical that this 70% cost drop was real. There was no technological breakthrough to cause it. I suspect it was either a case of price cutting or of utilities manipulating their cost reports. Tesla has been bidding very low, at around $500,000 for some time. These are likely loss leader bids.

It is certainly the case that the cost must be going way up these days, not down, given the huge price spike in lithium and other essential constituent materials, as well as in the energy needed for making these monster battery arrays.

So it seems fair to say that the cost is at least $600,000 a MWh, quite possibly a lot more. A million dollars a MWh is not an unreasonable estimate. Keep in mind that a MWh is what an average American home uses in just a month, so it is not a lot of juice storage for a lot of money.

Now comes the fantasy. There are several recent mainstream estimates of the future capital cost of grid scale battery arrays. These estimates are often used in assessments of the economic feasibility of a transition from coal and gas fired generation to wind and solar. The battery cost estimates are crucial because it will take an enormous amount of batteries to try to make intermittent wind and solar reliable.

For example, DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has published battery cost projections through 2050 in their report “Cost Projections for Utility Scale Battery Storage: 2021 Update”. NREL is gung ho on renewables, so also on the batteries needed to try to make wind and solar reliable.

Each NREL projection is for a narrow range of costs. The low end of that range is a mere $143,000 per MWh in 2030 and $87,000 in 2050. That is right, just $87,000 for something that today costs $600,000 to $1,000,000, with costs going up.

Clearly this protection is extremely rosy, to the point of fantasy.

In a recent report — “The Future of Energy Storage” — MIT goes even lower. Their 2050 battery cost estimate is a tiny $70,000 per MWh! For something that costs upwards of a million dollars today. Surely this is pure fantasy.

Mind you given the Biden goal of zero electric power emissions by 2035, the 2050 fantasy figure may be irrelevant. But even NREL’s 2030 estimate of $143,000 is unbelievable. Given the way prices are rising, $1,000,000 is a better bet. Plus Biden’s goal is itself pure fantasy.

In short, energy policy needs to be based on sound engineering estimates, not wishful fantasies.

Author

David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/. Available for confidential research and consulting.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tips on Pumping Gas that Will Save You $$$! thumbnail

Tips on Pumping Gas that Will Save You $$$!

By Scott Adams

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are paying up to $5.75 to $7 per gallon. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon:

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

1️⃣ Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

2️⃣ A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

3️⃣ When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

4️⃣ One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

5️⃣ Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

6️⃣ Note: If the pump repeatedly shuts off early, it could be a sign of a problem with the vapor recovery system, such as a clogged carbon canister.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

Russia and Iran Conclude Major 20-Year Energy Deal thumbnail

Russia and Iran Conclude Major 20-Year Energy Deal

By Jihad Watch

Both Russia and Iran are running rings around Old Joe on the global stage. Meanwhile, this will help finance a good bit of Iran’s global jihad adventurism.

Biden humiliated as Russia and Iran strikes major 20-year energy deal

by Antony Ashkenaz, Express, June 3, 2022:

Amid the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has expanded its energy ties with Iran, another country that has butted heads with the US in the past. Diplomats from the two countries discussed the second and third phases of the expansion of the Bushehr nuclear plant with Iran, which was built by Russia. Meanwhile, energy companies from Moscow are also set to play a larger role in Iran’s petrochemical industry, posing another hurdle for Western countries that are desperately trying to end their reliance on Russian fossil fuel exports.

The European Union is heavily dependent on Russian gas, having imported 40 percent of its supply from Moscow in 2021.

Last week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Novak, headed a high-level delegation to Iran to discuss their alliance.

According to Iran’s Petroleum Minister, Javad Owji, Russia has already allocated part of its $5billion (almost £4billion) funds promised for Iranian energy, agricultural, and transport projects.

Russia and Iran plan to expand their annual trade to at least $40billion within the next three years.

According to Mr Owji, Tehran and Moscow will significantly increase their cooperation in the financial and banking sector, oil, gas, petrochemicals, and nuclear energy.

He also noted that the two countries have agreed to conduct their bilateral trade in their own currency.

This deal could be a huge boost for rubles, which took a major hit after Western countries sanctioned nearly all aspects of the Russian economy following the invasion of Ukraine….

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

RELATED ARTICLES:

10 months after Biden proclaimed al-Qaeda ‘severely degraded’ in Afghanistan, UN warns it has ‘safe haven’ there

Iranian dissident: ‘The Iranian resistance have lost all hope in the Biden administration’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Questions the Climate Police Won’t Answer thumbnail

Questions the Climate Police Won’t Answer

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

A number of articles have appeared recently raising really good questions the climate police can’t or won’t answer.  Here are just some of them:

How much battery storage will be required to handle a worst-case scenario of a solid week when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine after we ‘transition’ to green energy and everybody is supposed heat their homes and run their cars with electric power?  Who has made that calculation and what does it show about how realistic Biden’s green energy ‘transition’ is?

How realistic is it to expect people to eat bugs and seaweed, as the climate police would have us do, just to save the planet?  ‘In the future, you will eat bugs and be happy’ isn’t going to cut it.  By the way, the climate police weren’t kidding.  They’re already feeding bugs to schoolkids in Britain.

How can we trust computer climate models when they all assume different temperature inputs, are wrong about stratospheric cooling, are bad at predicting rainfall, and can’t even model regional climate accurately?  And you’re telling me these models know with certainty what the climate will be a hundred years from now for the entire planet?  Who are you kidding?

Why is Arctic ice at 30-year high when the planet is supposedly burning up and Al Gore repeated scientists’ claims there wouldn’t be any Arctic ice at all by 2013?

How can scientists say sea level rise is getting worse when tide gauges show no rise in rates where the land is not sinking, and sinking land accounts for the supposed rise in in the Tidewater area of Virginia and the Mississippi Delta region?  I will make a prediction.  The climate industry will soon fake the data from tide gauges like they did with satellite surface temperature data.  Satellite data weren’t showing a warming earth, so they were changed to fit the narrative, changed from actual temperatures to what they should have been as predicted by bogus computer models.  You can expect these same dishonest liars to attempt to pass off modeled tide gauge data as actual data in the near future.

While we’re talking about data, why has global warming paused for the last 20 years when carbon emissions are ‘worse than ever’?  Why can’t the climate police explain the pause?

How come nobody talks about how electric cars can explode, cause fires that can’t be put out, and can electrocute you?  Isn’t this the same Left that sued the tobacco industry for hiding all the bad news about smoking causing lung cancer not so long ago?  I guess hiding the bad news is OK when ‘we do it, because we’re good people’.  The ends justify the greens.

Why do the greenies keep pushing plastics recycling when making new plastic is cheaper, and recycling plastic produces 55 times more carbon emissions than sticking it in a landfill?

Why isn’t anybody talking about the World Bank study which concluded one hundred percent solar, wind, and electric battery energy would be “just as destructive to the planet as fossil fuels”?  Such a transition would require unfathomable amounts of copper, lead, zinc, aluminum and iron – not to mention unsustainable quantities of rare earth minerals – all of which would end up as toxic landfill.   This transition would also require impossible amounts of land for wind and solar power – the size of five South Dakotas, by one estimate.  How is any of this green?  The only green I see are the dollars bills the climate swindlers are counting while laughing all the way to the bank.

Last question: why is anybody still falling for any of this malarkey?  I hope you’re not.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

NYT praises inflation as way ‘to drive welcome change for the planet’ + Prince Charles backs face masks for cows! thumbnail

NYT praises inflation as way ‘to drive welcome change for the planet’ + Prince Charles backs face masks for cows!

By Marc Morano

Economic chaos is GOOD for climate?! NYT column praises inflation for its ability ‘to drive welcome change for the planet’

‘Adjust what we eat to save both our pocketbooks & our planet’

Culture & lifestyle journalist Annaliese Griffin writing on June 2, 2022, in the New York Times: “Inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat…We could adjust what we eat to save both our pocketbooks and our planet.”

“Climate change has motivated some to eat less resource-intensive meat and more vegetables, grains and legumes, but this movement has not reached the scale necessary to bring needed change — yet… A 2021 study in Nature found that animal products produce greenhouse gases at twice the rate of foods from plants. We should be paying attention to every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere — the same way shoppers are watching the cost of every addition to their grocery carts.” …

“Inflation resulting from the cost of fuel and feed, coupled with supply chain slowdowns, may make meat substitutes more affordable relative to traditional, factory-farmed meats.

… Historically, cost has been a powerful force that has changed Americans’ diets.”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “The New York Times seems bent on updating Gordon Gekko’s phrase from the 1987 film Wall Street: Chaos, for lack of a better word, is GOOD. Climate activists in academia, the Biden admin. and the media seem to think the more humans suffer, the more the planet will benefit. This is more evidence that economic calamity, debt, inflation, supply chain issues, and skyrocketing meat and energy costs are not the unintended consequences of the climate agenda, but the INTENDED consequences. Chaos conditions the public to accept more centralized control of their lives. Vladimir Lenin reportedly once said, ‘worse is better’ or ‘the worse, the better’ to cheer on chaos and the destruction of the existing order to impose his ideology.”

Culture & lifestyle journalist Annaliese Griffin writing in the New York Times:

Annaliese Griffin NYT June 2, 2022 Excerpt:

If the current rate of food inflation holds and Americans don’t change their meat consumption habits, they will spend roughly $20 billion more on meat, poultry, fish and eggs over the next year than they did in 2020. … Inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat. While hunger and food insecurity are a very real problem in the United States and globally, middle- and upper-class Americans still have more choices at the grocery store than perhaps any food shoppers in history. Climate change has motivated some to eat less resource-intensive meat and more vegetables, grains and legumes, but this movement has not reached the scale necessary to bring needed change — yet.

[ … ]

A 2021 study in Nature found that animal products produce greenhouse gases at twice the rate of foods from plants. We should be paying attention to every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere — the same way shoppers are watching the cost of every addition to their grocery carts. …

One recent survey of 3,500 consumers found that while environmental concerns and animal rights would not persuade many shoppers to purchase meat substitutes more often, lower prices could.

Related Links: 

Mask up — the cows?! Climate madness: Prince Charles backs face masks for cows in bid to tackle climate change

John Kerry falsely claims the UN’s temperature target ‘was not something somebody pulled out of the sky’ – Reality Check: UN scientist admitted target was ‘pulled out of thin air’

Biden grants Earth ‘climate stability’ through higher gas prices according to 2012 New York Times OpEd – NYT claimed massive increase in gas prices would ‘result in climate stability’

Obama Energy Sec. Chu said he favored gas prices at level of Europeans…Holdren once said the greatest ‘hazard’ in U.S. faced was cheap energy

Former Obama U.S. Treasury official Mark Mazur says quiet part out loud: ‘We don’t want lower prices for fossil-fuel buyers, we prefer higher prices’ to achieve ‘climate change goals’ – Former Obama U.S. Treasury official Mark Mazur rejects the call for a gas-tax holiday because it “undercuts the administration’s climate change goals — where really to care about fossil-fuel consumption, we don’t want lower prices for fossil-fuel buyers, we prefer higher prices.”

‘We gotta leave you in the ground’: Biden Energy Sec Granholm appeared in 2018 video singing about end of gasoline, fossil fuels – ‘Gasoline, gasoline, the world’s aflame’

Norwegian finance CEO Kjerstin Braathen: Energy transition will create energy shortages & inflation, but ‘that pain is actually worth it’  – Norwegian finance CEO Kjerstin Braathen: “We need to accept there will be some pain in the process. The pace that we need will open up for missteps. It will open up for shortages of energy, it will create inflationary pressures. And maybe we need to start talking about that, that pain is actually worth it because if we don’t there is no business case, there is no economy, there is no welfare.”

Biden praises high gas prices as part of ‘incredible transition’ away from fossil fuels

Biden admin admits goal is higher gas prices!? Jen Psaki: ‘The rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment & focus on clean energy options’

Video of Obama seeking to bankrupt coal industry in 2008: – Flashback 2008: President Barack Obama in interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board: “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama said, responding to a question about his cap-and-trade plan. He later added, “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Triple price of gas to save planet, UN climate expert Thomas Stocker argues – Meet the man who wants to impose his warmist religious beliefs on you! – Canadians may abhor the rising price of gasoline, but Thomas Stocker suggests the planet might be better off if it soared to “three to four” times its current level. “This is scandalous, I know,” said Stocker, adding sky-high gasoline could help slow the climate change which world leaders have declared one of the greatest challenges of our time.

2012 NYT OpEd claimed a carbon tax with higher gas prices would result in not only “climate stability” but it would also prevent an “end [to] life as we know it.”

Inflation divide: The wealthy splurge, the poorest pull back – (AP) — Americans at the low end of the income rung are once again struggling to make ends meet. A confluence of factors — the expiration of federal stimulus checks and surging inflation on staples like gas and food — are driving an even bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots. While wealthier shoppers continue to splurge, low-income shoppers have pulled back faster than expected in the past two months. They’re focusing on necessities while turning to cheaper items or less expensive stores. And they’re buying only a little at a time. It’s a reversal from a year or so ago when low-income shoppers, flush with money from the government and buoyed by wage increases, were able to spend more freely.

©Marc Morano. All rights reserved.

AWED MEDIA BALANCED NEWLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections. thumbnail

AWED MEDIA BALANCED NEWLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

By John Droz, Jr.

Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Particularly note the *** asterisked *** items below…


— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

Ukraine and Energy Policies:

Watch Western Sanctions On Russia Boomerang: A Global Energy And Food Crisis In The Making

Report: India is Buying Up Cheap Sanctioned Russian Oil and Selling it to the U.S. and E.U. at Huge Profits

Ukraine — What You Can Do:

*** Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

*** A well-rated source to make a Ukraine donation

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

*** Comparing Early Treatment of COVID-19 Pharmaceuticals

*** World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

*** COVID-19: What You Need To Know (Physicians for Informed Consent)

*** If you have received a COVID-19 injection, here’s how to Detox

*** Place Your US Order for Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests

COVID-19 — Therapies:

*** Doctors Sue FDA Over Unlawful Attempts to Prohibit Ivermectin Use

*** CDC now admit officially problems with PAXLOVID

COVID-19 — Masks:

Fauci Openly Admits Biden Mask Mandate Is About Preserving “Authority”

COVID-19 — Injections:

*** FLCCC to launch Post-Vaccine Syndrome Protocol

*** Vaccine or natural immunity? Dr. Steven Pelech on the true efficacy of the COVID shot

*** The FDA’s proposed “Future Framework” is the worst idea in the history of public health

*** Report: Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good

COVID-19 — Injection Mandates:

*** In rebuke to Pentagon, Navy board finds 3-0 for vax objector amid questions of mandate’s lawfulness

*** New study links COVID vaccines to 25% increase in cardiac arrest for both males & females

*** Pilots move to sue major airlines, US government over COVID vaccine mandates

*** Special Olympics drops COVID-19 vaccine mandate after Florida threatens $27 million in fines

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** Neurosurgeon dismantles ‘official lies’ and deadly abuses of officials directing COVID response

*** CDC study purporting to find substantial protective effects for school mask mandates fails to replicate

*** Dogs can detect COVID-19 with high accuracy, even asymptomatic cases

A Million American Deaths and 400,000 Rumble Views

They’ve officially forbidden the practice of medicine in Ontario, Canada

PNAS: A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Monkeypox:

*** Short video: Dr. Robert Malone — Monkeypox: ‘The K is Silent…’

*** The Prophetic Monkeypox Simulation

*** Monkeypox: Technocracy’s Next Wave Of Crimes Against Humanity

*** Dr. Peter McCullough Exposes The Truth About Monkeypox

Study finds latest Monkeypox Outbreak is result of Biolab manipulated Virus possibly released intentionally

Greed Energy Economics:

*** The green agenda’s role in global inflation

*** Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post

*** The great renewables ripoff

Ohio County Veto of Wind Project Shows It’s Time to End Federal Wind Subsidies

NY Governor Blames Utilities for Costs of State Climate Policies

Renewables (General):

*** Report: Deadly Summer Blackouts Inevitable As Renewables Struggle To Replace Reliable Energy

*** Beware: 100% green energy could destroy the planet

*** Short video: How Solar Cells And Wind Turbines Are Made

Wind and Solar Face Increasing Opposition Everywhere They Go!

‘An Incredible Transition’: Biden Suggests Soaring Gas Prices Are Part Of Green Agenda

Wind Energy:

*** Windfall profits for offshore wind

NY Community Blocks Plan for Wind Turbines

Massachusetts Offshore Ocean Wind Cables — Another Boondoggle

Solar Energy:

An Alarmed Solar Industry Says a U.S. Trade Probe of China Will Totally Fry It. Then Why Is the Business Sunny Side Up?

NY County IDA votes 6-month solar moratorium

Nuclear Energy — California and Michigan:

*** We Saved Diablo Canyon!

California, long leery of nuclear power, joins bid to save it

Another nuclear plant closes: Get ready for electricity shortages

In blow to Biden climate goals, Entergy shuts nuclear power plant

Nuclear Energy — Other:

*** The Case for Nuclear Power

*** Climate worries galvanize a new pro-nuclear movement in the U.S.

*** Electricity markets with high shares of Wind and Solar will need Nuclear

*** The Real Three Mile Island Story

Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

Rolls-Royce’s SMR Needs 10,000 Times Less Land Than Wind Energy — Proving ‘Iron Law Of Power Density’

Fossil Fuel Energy:

*** Oklahoma enacts law to counter ESG policies targeting fossil fuels

*** JP Morgan Report: 2022 Annual Energy Paper

Life Without Oil is Not as Simple as you may Think

India to reopen coal mines as demand for energy soars

Energy — Electric Vehicles:

*** The Big EV Lie. Why They Won’t Save the Planet & All About Dirty Electricity

*** Short video: If You’re Worried About Rising Gas Prices, Don’t Buy an EV

IEA: Current Energy Crisis Is “Much Bigger” Than 1970s Oil Crunch

Environmental Justice Policy Needs to Be Turned On Its Head!

Misc Energy:

*** 41 Inconvenient Truths on the “New Energy Economy”

*** Full Cost of Electricity ‘FCOE’ and Energy Returns ‘eROI’

Ethanol: a dumb idea or a crime — or both?

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** How the big banks fell to climate panic

*** Report: Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Climate Models

*** Woke Health: Biden Admin establishes Office of Environmental Justice

*** The “Net Zero” Agenda Has Devastating Consequences… Here’s What You Need To Know

*** Sea Level Acceleration – That Other Big Lie

The NYS Climate Action Council’s $260 Billion Mistake

Climate sceptic thinktank reported to charity commission over fossil fuel interest funding

Inconvenient truth for alarmists: Arctic ice at 30-year high

Democrats Don’t Want You To Know What’s Really Happening With Arctic Sea Ice

Worthwhile climate site and video

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

*** Short video: Looking At The Sun

*** A Financier Tells Some Climate Truths

ESG’s power grows as banker is canceled for talking sense on climate change

A climate change class action lawsuit: is it viable?

Net-Zero Looking like a No-Go by 2050

Report: Sea-level change in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor

Denali’s Snowiest Winter in 99 Years of Record Keeping

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** Remember this when you vote…

Rasmussen Survey re 2000 Mules movie

Trump-Endorsed Candidates 81-3 in Primaries Ahead of Races in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia

CISA Report: Vulnerabilities Affecting Dominion Voting Systems ImageCast X

Three Laws That Biden’s Voter Registration Order Could Break

US Election — State Issues:

*** Arizona Mule Pleads Guilty

*** Maricopa County (Arizona) counted 19,000 late, invalid ballots in 2020 election

*** Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

US Politics and Socialism:

*** Breaking Free from Mass Formation

*** The Mass Shooting and Liberal Utopian Society

*** Imagine the Unimaginable

*** Americans Will Never Forget The Historic Economic Collapse During Joe Biden’s Presidency

Short video: Who Wants to Follow California?

Why Western Civilization Is Going South

Globalism:

*** The WHO Treaty Is Tied to a Global Digital Passport and ID System

*** Global elites are creating an agricultural crisis to control the world population

*** Individual Carbon Footprint Tracker’ Pushed by China’s Alibaba At World Economic Forum

*** The Making of a Global Dictator

The Globalists’ Race Against Time

The Elitists who want to rule the world

Bill Gates Lays Out Plan for Global Takeover

On the Drive to a Skewed Distribution of Wealth: Trend & Consequences

Globalists Have Entered the Kill Phase of the Great Reset

The True Evil of the World Economic Forum

Biden Attempts to Cripple US Sovereignty, Foiled at WHO Conference

What Happened in Ottawa? | Freedom Convoy 2022 Documentary

Religion Related:

*** Texas school shooting highlights need for faith, higher purpose in kids’ lives

*** We live in times of moral crisis

*** The Price America Is Paying For Rejecting God

Was Locke Religious Enough?

From Worms to Woke

Education Related:

*** Graduation Week With Common Sense

*** Thinking Has Become a Lost Art

To Restore American Liberty, We Need Colleges that Actually Teach the Liberal Arts

The College Rankings Game: How Students and Parents Are Being Played

The Debate Over Canceling Student Loan Debt

Science and Misc Matters:

*** Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy

*** UK’s General Medical Council to restrict what doctors can say online

The Tyranny of Modern Scientism


Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…If at any time you’d like to be added to (or taken off) the distribution of our popular,  free, worldwide Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.


Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.

Note 2: For recent past Newsletter issues see 2020 Archives & 2021 Archives & 2022 Archives. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over the twelve plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put together   since the beginning of the Newsletter — where you can search by year. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.

Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or any of my websites) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.

Copyright © 2022; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

Men are Women and California Judges Rule Bees are Fish thumbnail

Men are Women and California Judges Rule Bees are Fish

By Jihad Watch

We live in a wondrous new age in which men can be women. So why can’t bees also be fish? What if they identify, or their lawyers rather, identify them as fish?

They say that the law is an ass, but in this case it may also be a fish. Or a bee. Or whatever the Big Green lobby and the Dems who control the state say it is.

In the latest installment of a years long legal debate over whether bees are fish, a California appeals court has ruled that, for the purposes of the state’s Endangered Species Act, they are.

Environmentalists petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to add four bumblebee species to the list of at-risk plants and animals governed by the California Endangered Species Act (CESA). Roughly 250 plant and animal species are protected by the CESA, which prohibits the import, export, possession, purchase, or sale of listed species. The Commission provided notice in 2019 that the four bumblebee species were candidates for CESA protection, prompting lawsuits from agricultural groups that were concerned about the costs of adherence to the new requirements.

They also questioned the Commission’s legal authority to designate bumblebees for protection. Insects aren’t a protected category under the CESA. Candidate species may include “a native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant,” according to the state’s fish and game code. And while California does protect some species of insect, these are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. That left state officials without an intuitive avenue.

Rather than let pesky biological standards get in the way, they had concluded that designating bumblebees as fish was the most fitting way to get them protected under the CESA. Legally, a fish refers to “a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” Because bumblebees are invertebrates—a protected subset of fish—the Fish and Game Commission argued that they could reasonably be designated as fish per the CESA’s terms.

What do words mean anyway? Isn’t the entire concept of fish something invented by dead white men who were probably racists?

The arguments heard by an appeals court last week primarily focused on one question: What does it mean to be a “fish”?

Apparently, we need to consult a biologist.

“​​We acknowledge the scope of the definition is ambiguous but also recognize that we are not interpreting the definition on a blank slate. The legislative history supports the liberal interpretation of the Act (the lens through which we are required to construe the Act) that the commission may list any invertebrate as an endangered or threatened species,” the 35-page ruling states.

Including California leftists. While they are invertebrates, sadly they are not threatened. Instead, as this case shows us, they do most of the threatening.

But you don’t have to know anything when you’re fighting for social justice.

Bumblebees and honeybees are in the same family (Apidae) but they are in different genera (Bombus and Apis, respectively).  The honeybee species name, mellifera, is Latin for “honey bearer”.   Perhaps the legislature is just confused about bees.  In Section 29414 of the California Food & Agriculture Code incorrectly defines “honeybees” as insects of the genus Apis Mellifica (rather than mellifera).  In fact, Apis Mellifica is a homeopathic remedy that is variously bee venom or an entire bee crushed and diluted in alcohol.  Because there is no species named “apis mellifica”, it seems that in California there are no honeybees and bumblebees are fish.

While all of this is easy to mock, the practical implication of this means that almonds (and almond-based products) and citrus products will once again become more expensive, more family farms will go under, and more environmental consultants in Marin County will get richer.

And so the verdict is unanimous, that the law doesn’t apply to environmentalists and that California farmers have no rights. And that words mean nothing.

When looking at the CESA, Justice Ronald Robie and two other members of the Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District ruled the CESA’s language does, in fact, cover bumblebees and that the California state legislature had taken action to ensure this result.

“We generally give words their usual and ordinary meaning,” the analysis begins. “Where, however, the Legislature has provided a technical definition of a word, we construe the term of art in accordance with the technical meaning. In performing this function, we are tasked with liberally construing the Act to effectuate its remedial purpose.”

In other words, anything goes.

Robie is an environmentalist and Jerry Brown’s former director of the California Department of Water Resources. Which means that maybe he shouldn’t have been hearing this case.

I would love if this case could somehow move to the federal level with California’s Democrat machine and the entire media focused to defend “bees are fish”.

But if they can do it with men are women, bees and fish are easy. Just don’t ask them about the birds and the bees.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED VIDEO: Biden and his wealthy allies ‘killing’ America via green agenda

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Silence of the power engineers? NERC does nothing!

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC for short (rhymes with jerk), recently released a report warning of likely blackouts across much of America this summer.

The report got lots of publicity, including this piece flagged by our own Climate Depot, titled “Report: Deadly Summer Blackouts Inevitable As Renewables Struggle To Replace Reliable Energy”, see here.

My question is, instead of reporting this pending calamity, why is NERC not preventing it? What is not reported, and seems to be little known, is that NERC is a quasi-regulatory federal agency whose mission is to maintain reliability.

NERC issues standards which the electric power industry is supposed to follow. These federal standards are supposed to be enforced by NERC’s regional subsidiaries. Clearly this process has not worked or we would not be facing widespread blackouts. Why not?

By way of background, NERC was originally a Council, not a Corporation. It was formed in 1968 as a voluntary industry body after the massive 1960’s Eastern blackout. It became a corporation when it was “federalized” in 2006. It appears to answer to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the US, but also includes Canada. NERC creates and files Reliability Standards with both countries.

Here is NERC’s mission statement: “The vision for the Electric Reliability Organization Enterprise, which is comprised of NERC and the six Regional Entities, is a highly reliable and secure North American bulk power system. Our mission is to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of the grid.​

This vision is clearly inconsistent with NERC’s warning that widespread blackouts loom large for America.

Here is what NERC says about its Reliability Standards: “NERC’s Standards program ensures the reliability of the bulk power system by developing quality reliability standards in a timely manner that are effective, clear, consistent and technically sound.”

If the NERC standard program supposedly “ensures the reliability” of the grid then either the standards are wrong or they are not being followed. The NERC report simply does not address this massive issue.

Unreliability is reported to already be getting pretty bad. Sustained outages in the US went from less than 12 in 2000 to over 180 in 2020. The average utility customer went from 8 hours of power failure per year in 2013 to 16 in 2020.

Looking ahead it gets much worse. The Biden Administrations’ stated goal is for the electric power system to produce zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2035, a mere 13 years away. That means shutting down all fossil fueled generation, which presently provides more than half of America’s electricity.

Meeting the incredible Biden target is clearly a great threat to reliability. Given that this goal was announced over a year ago, NERC should already have developed standards to protect reliability during this called for transition. Either that or NERC should say that eliminating fossil fuels in 13 years simply cannot be done reliably.

I find no indication that NERC or any of its Regional Entities is even looking at this staggering scenario. The studies I have seen are limited to around 50% renewables and even these are not leading to standards. They do a huge amount of modeling but apparently nothing on the specific Federal Plan.

Moreover, many utilities are posting generation plans that are clearly unreliable, swapping fossil fueled and nuclear plants for wind and solar with very little of the required storage. For an example see my report: “Dominion’s VCEA Compliance Plan is Disastrously Unreliable.”

NERC should be blowing the whistle on these massively unreliable plans.

Biden himself tasked every Federal Agency with focusing on the Federal Climate Plan. NERC’s role in this is to issue those Reliability Standards needed to protect reliability. NERC is simply ducking this vital responsibility.

NERC is clearly failing to meet its mission. It should be investigated.

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Biden’s Rollback of NEPA Reforms May Haunt Green Energy Projects

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Author

Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elon Musk: Tesla to ‘Pause All Hiring Worldwide’ and Cut Staff by 10%  has ‘Super Bad Feeling’ About The Economy thumbnail

Elon Musk: Tesla to ‘Pause All Hiring Worldwide’ and Cut Staff by 10% has ‘Super Bad Feeling’ About The Economy

By The Geller Report

Look what the Democrats have done to us. And you don’t have to be a clairvoyant to see how much worse it’s going to get as the Democrats continue to spend, spend, spend and vow to tax, tax, tax.

Elon Musk now tells execs Tesla needs to ‘pause all hiring worldwide’ and cut staff by 10% because he has a ‘super bad feeling’ about the economy in latest internal email

  • Elon Musk told top managers he had a ‘super bad feeling’ about the economy
  • The Tesla electric carmaker said he needed to cut staff by about 10 per cent
  • An email with the news about was sent to company executives on Thursday

By Chris Matthews For Mailonline, 3 June 2022

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk told top managers he had a ‘super bad feeling’ about the economy and that the electric carmaker needed to cut staff by about 10 per cent, according to an internal email.

The email, titled ‘pause all hiring worldwide’, was sent to Tesla executives Thursday, and underscored an increasingly gloomy economic outlook for the globe, as prices soar and war in Ukraine passes its 100th day.

Musk earlier this week asked Tesla employees to return to the office or leave the company.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk told top managers he had a ‘super bad feeling’ about the economy and that the electric carmaker needed to cut staff by about 10 per cent, according to an internal email

‘Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,’ Musk wrote in another email sent to employees on Tuesday night.

‘If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.’

The message from Musk came shortly after Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive of JPMorgan Chase, described the challenges facing the US economy as akin to a ‘hurricane’.

However, although financial experts acknowledged a ‘bad feeling’, many were unsure a global recession is on the cards.

Carsten Brzeski, global head of macroeconomic research at ING, said: ‘Musk’s bad feeling is shared by many people.

‘We’re talking about stagnation and a global economy which has to go through significant structural change, such as decarbonisation, deglobalisation and adjusting to older societies.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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High Gas Prices are Caused by Governments, Not Companies

By Jihad Watch

When Governor Newsom and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met to announce a deal between the tiny country and the broken state, it was another example of California illegally enacting its own foreign policy. And a reminder of why California gas prices are so high.

The memorandum had California promising to be “carbon neutral” by 2045 and to promote the “environmental integrity of carbon pricing instruments”. California’s crooked carbon pricing schemes have become notorious for both their worthlessness and their corruption.

And California drivers are paying the price.

report from Stillwater Associates last year found that California consumers were paying an extra $1.19 a gallon. This year the added costs include a 51 cent state excise tax, an 18 cent sales tax, 20 cents for Fuels Under the Cap, part of the state’s corrupt environmental cap and trade program and 17 cents for the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Californians are paying a $1.41 federal and state tax markup on $3 bucks of crude.

Or almost half.

Biden and other Democrats have blamed corporate profits, but the gas stations and suppliers are making a mere 33 cents a gallon or less than a third of the state’s added $1.08 in various taxes. Even the refiners are only making 72 cents. The biggest piece of the pie is coming from the taxes, many of them hidden, imposed by Democrats in the name of saving the planet.

While Newsom and Big Green describe some of these taxes as “allowances” and “credits” as part of a “marketplace”, they are really a corrupt scheme to force consumers to pay money to special interests and politically connected companies under the guise of “saving the planet”.

The Left now attacks Elon Musk, but California’s environmental regulations kept Tesla profitable. For example, in 2020, Tesla reported $428 million in sales from “regulatory credits” amounting to “four times Tesla’s $104 million of net profit for the quarter”. In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla sold $518 million in “credits” and Autoweek noted that it was making “more money selling credits and bitcoin than cars.” Credits are like bitcoins the government forces you to buy.

Regulatory credits are a corrupt environmental scam in which car makers who sell regular cars to ordinary people have to buy “credits” from electric car makers like Tesla, who sell to the rich, and then pass on the high costs on to working class and middle class car buyers.

The dirty truth about California’s electric car market is that it’s subsidized by people who can’t afford them. And the same situation applies to gas prices with their burden of green taxes.

Democrats sold the fuel taxes as penalties on polluters. They claimed that imposing them would “make the polluters pay”. Few Californians seemed to understand that by “polluters”, the Sacramento political establishment meant the single mother picking up her son from school, the supermarket cashier commuting to work, and everyone else who can’t afford a Tesla.

The California average gas price is now over $6 a gallon, compared to $4.60 for the rest of the country, because Democrats are making ordinary drivers, whom they call “polluters”, pay.

Gov. Newsom is touting his new deal with New Zealand, even though most California environmentalists have turned on the corrupt green scam that’s killing the state.

ProPublica, a leftist group, noted that, “California’s oil and gas industry actually rose 3.5% since cap and trade began.” While the idea that there’s anything wrong with carbon is an environmentalist hoax that props up corrupt green special interests, the Brown-Newsom green tax isn’t even coming close to accomplishing the stated goals that is the basis for those taxes.

Bloomberg article last month began by arguing that, “California’s carbon market was supposed to be a model for the US, harnessing the power of capitalism to fight climate change in the world’s fifth-biggest economy. But nearly 10 years after ‘cap and trade’ began, there’s little proof the system has had much direct impact on curbing planet-warming pollutants.”

Before bitcoin, environmentalists created an imaginary “carbon currency” and a marketplace around it that forced ordinary consumers to fund corporate bribery of top Democrats. Some of the biggest companies in the country boast of going “carbon neutral” by 2030, 2045 or 2980, when what that actually means is that they’re buying “carbon offsets” and changing nothing.

The carbon scam has made the right sorts of people rich and everyone else much poorer.

California began trading “emissions” in the 90s with the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM).A decade later, Anne Sholtz, an environmental law academic and emissions broker who helped set up the program, had been arrested by the EPA on wire fraud charges.

Sholtz had all but invented the modern electronic pollution marketplace. She met with Al Gore and gave plenty of interviews until she was arrested for trying to trade credits she didn’t have.

But can there be fraud when the whole thing is a scam?

Big Green created a massive industry based on trading indulgences from government environmental mandates. An industry now worth billions, is being touted to investors as having the potential to hit $100 billion or $200 billion or infinity by 2030. It’s an industry that, unlike those it’s using the government and leftist activists to shake down, is worth nothing, produces nothing, and exists purely as a rent-seeking parasite destroying American living standards.

Each company and investor joining the regulatory Ponzi scheme is now motivated to pressure governments, local and national, to impose more taxes and push more companies into the market so that those who got in earlier will steal more from those who come in later. This perverse socialist mockery of capitalism is depicted as “saving the planet” even though it has failed to do anything to move the dial even on the environmental hoax that justifies its existence.

And that is one reason why California’s gas prices are some of the highest in the nation.

But like vegans, legal shoplifting, and shopping bag bans, what starts in California, doesn’t stay there. Biden and Senate Democrats have tried to impose a national carbon tax on Americans.

Had Senator Manchin not rejected last year’s proposed carbon tax, the whole country would have been hit with a tax of at least another 18 cents per gallon. Senator Whitehouse’s proposal would have added about 14 cents a gallon, but would have increased “5 percent above inflation annually.” That kicker, also a part of California’s gas taxes, is what’s really making them rise.

And that’s just for starters.

The Obama administration was proposing a carbon tax that would have added over 40 cents per gallon. The EU’s $75 per ton carbon tax applied here would mean over 60 cents more per gallon. A former Carter adviser has proposed a tax that would be closer to 90 cents.

And it would only go up from there.

California is a cautionary tale that when environmentalists, leftists, and other Democrats claim that they want to “make polluters pay”, they mean you.

Driving by a Los Angeles gas station last week, I saw that the price was approaching 7 bucks.

They’re making us pay. Every single day.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

RELATED ARTICLE: White House disarray: Low approval ratings rattle Biden, ‘frighten’ Democrats

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Two-Thirds of the Country Face the Prospect of Blackouts this Summer

By Dr. Rich Swier

We have written about the disasters of the green energy vs fossil fuels policies of the Biden administration and Democrat Party. We have written that green energy alone cannot power America’s current needs let alone its future needs. We have written that Biden’s policies are have a major impact on gasoline and diesel prices. We have written that Biden’s efforts to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations will put an even greater strain on our energy industry and give government complete control of your car. We have written that all electric vehicles are not green and have their own issues in polluting the environment and cost more to refuel than gasoline driven cars. We have written how green energy benefits the rich. We have written that green energy is not clean energy.

QUESTION: Why is this happening?

ANSWER: Because Biden and the Democrats simply don’t care!

Now we are learning that if Biden and his administration do not do a 180° turn around we will be facing massive brown and black outs across our nation.

A brownout is:

An intentional or unintentional drop in voltage in an electrical power supply system.

A blackout is:

A power outage is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user.

In a June 2nd, 2022 article titled “These States are Most Likely to Get Blackouts This Summer. Here’s How to Prepare” CNET’s Andrew Blok reported:

Much of the US and Canada faces a higher than normal risk of blackouts this year. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warns that above-average temperatures (which drive up demand for electricity) and an ongoing drought (which decreases supply of hydroelectric power) could cause problems for chunks of the grid from June to September 2022. When supply and demand aren’t in balance, blackouts can occur.

[ … ]

The potential for blackouts isn’t evenly spread, NERC reported. In a May report, the nonprofit identified two risk levels for blackouts — elevated and high — for the regional organizations responsible for operating the grid. An elevated risk means there’s a chance that demand could exceed supply during periods of higher-than-normal demand. NERC identified an elevated risk of blackouts for the western North America, from Washington south to northern Baja California, east to Texas and north to include most of North and South Dakota. Saskatchewan has an elevated risk, too.

Read more.

On June 1, 2022 Power The Future wrote:

The tough news keeps coming for Americans struggling with high energy prices. Not only have gas prices broken records for the past several weeks, now a good portion of the country is being told they should expect rolling blackouts, as we enter the hot summer months. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) officially released its summer report last week and almost two-thirds of the country should prepare for a possible blackout.

The report from NERC includes a harrowing map that shows most of the nation should stand ready for possible blackouts this summer.

The reason for these coming blackouts is clear: a mandated transition to clean energy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes:

“Welcome to the “green energy transition.” We’ve been warning for years that climate policies would make the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. And here we are. Some of the mainstream press are belatedly catching on that blackouts are coming, but they still don’t grasp the real problem: The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid.”

One of the chief proponents of forcing a transition to clean energy has been Richard Glick, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In February, he and the other Democrat commissioners at FERC tried to force through a policy that would have made building new natural gas pipelines and infrastructure almost impossible. Thankfully, the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee blasted the move. Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso made clear they wouldn’t stand for it. FERC pulled back the rule, for now.

Glick has been renominated as the chair of FERC. The Journal editorial board continues: “His renomination is a clear and present danger to the U.S. electricity supply. The war in Ukraine and surging energy prices haven’t deterred Democrats from their anti-fossil fuels campaign. Will widespread power outages?”

The Biden administration’s policies are resulting in a hot, dark summer for millions of Americans. With the summer heat just getting started, there is no relief in sight.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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U.S. Faces Electricity Shortages Heading Into Summer, as Grid Operators Warn of Limits of Green Energy

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Does Biden’s $5B Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Plan Put Government Totally in Control of Charging Your Car?