RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/the-folly-of-wind.php

The U.S., like much of Europe, has supposedly committed itself to replacing fossil fuels with “green” energy, which mostly means wind. This will never happen, and the effort to make it happen will collapse in ignominy and economic and social chaos. The reason is simple: wind turbines, and even more so solar panels, fail to produce electricity a large majority of the time. Just as bad, their failures are unpredictable and often ill-timed.

Here in the Upper Midwest, we have experienced a couple of hot weeks, which means that air conditioners have been running. MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, has a nominal 28,572 megawatts of wind energy on its grid. Surely the wind turbines were able to keep the air conditioners running. Right?

Just kidding. Isaac Orr explains:

The graph below shows wind capacity factors in MISO during the same period in blue. A capacity factor is a percentage of how much electricity a power plant generates compared to its theoretical maximum output.

The graph also shows the capacity value that MISO gives to wind turbines, which is intended to measure the reliable capacity that the asset is supposed to contribute during peak electricity demand. In 2023, MISO expects wind turbines to operate at an 18.1 percent capacity factor during times of peak demand, shown in red in the chart.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/just-stop-oil-wimbledon-barclays-climate-protest-3dbfd921?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The activist group Just Stop Oil claimed credit Wednesday for disruptions at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, after two protesters ran into a match and began “throwing environmentally friendly orange confetti glitter and jigsaw pieces,” according to a statement the outfit posted on Twitter. This is the same crew that last year tossed tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting.

Just Stop Oil’s complaint on Twitter is that Wimbledon made a sponsorship deal with Barclays, which the group said has “given £30 billion to oil and gas companies” over the past two years. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the world will need oil for decades. Natural gas has been a boon for emissions reductions in the U.S., since it has led to fewer power plants burning coal.

The tennis racketeers were arrested, as they should have been. This is a bad mode of protest, and it’s probably counterproductive to the climate cause. Green groups sometimes block highways at rush hour. What is this supposed to accomplish, other than make commuters furious? Disrupting a tennis match and tossing soup at a painting are examples of protest as theater.

Climate as a cause has become the province of too many fanatics willing to break the law. Will their progressive allies bother to call them out? This kind of nonsense on the left too often gets dismissed as some quirky souls who go too far because they care so much. If antiabortion activists were regularly blocking traffic or defacing art, there’d be no end to the handwringing in the press about extreme tactics on the right.

Climate activists who have a quasi-religious viewpoint aren’t interested in listening to facts, but here’s a line from a March article in NPR, a news source they might trust: “China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years.” Maybe they should try going to Beijing and splashing soup around Tiananmen Square. See how that goes.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/03/this-rush-to-electric-cars-is-a-colossal-mistake/

We may soon regret the radical and absolutist embrace of electric vehicles (EVs). Governments across the world are planning to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars, and to take older, gas-guzzling vehicles off the road. The Biden administration is proposing strict new pollution limits, as well as vast state subsidies, to accelerate the US’s transition to EVs.

Replacing the massive $3 trillion global car industry is an extremely high-risk economic gamble, particularly for the West. It could also threaten the mobility of all but the richest among us. And all this is being risked for environmental benefits that may prove far less robust than is often claimed. This is not to say that EVs won’t help us to reduce CO2 emissions or to clean the air. The problem is that, at least in the immediate future, they should not be the only option available to consumers.

Toyota, for instance, has argued that there are other, more affordable and quicker ways to reduce emissions than transitioning exclusively to EVs. While Toyota is investing in electric batteries, it also hopes to continue offering hybrid and hydrogen-powered cars in the coming decades. For stating this openly, it has come under fire from green lobbyists and politicians. New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, has even decided to restrict the city’s pension fund’s investments in the Japanese car company, due to its unwillingness to faithfully follow the green party line.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/03/heres-another-reason-to-hate-evs/

‘As fuel taxes plummet, states weigh charging by the mile instead of the tank.” That was the headline of a recent AP story, which should scare freedom-loving citizens everywhere. And you can place the blame squarely on government-subsidized EVs for this terrible new development.

The background is that state and federal gasoline taxes aren’t raising “enough” money these days to pay for roadway construction and maintenance. And a big reason for the growing shortfall is the increase in electric vehicles.

EVs get massive tax subsidies to convince people to buy them, but their owners don’t pay gasoline taxes, for the obvious reason that they never have to fill up. The more EVs on the road, the less revenue the gas taxes raise.

So the policy geniuses in Washington have a solution: Impose a per-mile tax.

Some states are already experimenting with “vehicle miles traveled” taxes, and the $1 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill includes $125 million for state and local pilot programs to test a national VMT fee.

A VMT sounds reasonable, right? After all, every driver imposes costs on roadways. And a mileage tax would capture all drivers, no matter what fuels their cars.

But look more closely, and the VMT tax is perhaps one of the most insidious tax ideas ever devised.

To start, a VMT tax would be incredibly complicated and costly to impose.

The gas tax is simple. A relatively small number of large fuel suppliers pay the tax, the costs of which are then passed on to retailers. But by definition, a VMT means collecting money directly from hundreds of millions of owners of hundreds of million cars. How?

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/27/when-do-we-reach-peak-climate-insanity-it-needs-to-be-soon/

The global warming gasbags and climate catastrophics seem to have an endless amount of energy. Like the posse chasing Butch and Sundance, they don’t get tired, or hungry, or slow down, or even break formation. But unlike that posse, they’ll never catch what they’re chasing.

To listen to the climate alarmists, the casual observer would be convinced that the incineration of Earth due to combustion that produces carbon dioxide is imminent. As in next year … or maybe next week.

Here’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Democrat from Michigan:

“We have to be much more aggressive in regard to fossil fuel expansions,” she recently said. The Daily Mail characterized her rant as a “pep talk” for activists who are laying the groundwork for “a campaign of blocking highways and chaotic protests later this summer.”

According to the Mail, “Europe’s top climate activists are planning a ‘large-scale civil disobedience campaign‘ of highway blockages, hunger strikes and disruption at ‘federal properties’ in the U.S. in August.”

One who has already obstructed the free movement of others is of course Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist who is famous for, well, being a sniveling brat feted by the world’s most superficial people even though she’s achieved nothing that would be of benefit to her fellow man. Last week she and others were arrested for spending five days blocking ​​oil tankers in the Malmo, Sweden, harbor. Anyone who thinks this is sane behavior should themselves immediately rush to their local mental health clinic.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/06/21/sorry_greta_humanity_is_still_here_and_stronger_than_ever_942196.html

Hope you don’t have any exciting weekend plans. By the time you read this, humanity has already been wiped out.

Hasn’t it?

On June 21, 2018, Greta Thunberg tweeted that “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” Five years have come and almost gone, and the tweet has been suspiciously deleted.

Thunberg is claiming her point was misinterpreted, but any way you look at it, the climate cartel is dead wrong — again — about the fate of humanity. In fact, there’s almost nothing about the climate change movement that stands up to science.

Since Thunberg’s fatalist tweet, climate rhetoric has risen to a fever pitch, but fossil fuel usage hasn’t dipped at all. Nationwide oil, natural gas, and coal consumption last year was about equal to annual averages from the 2010s.

It’s not for lack of trying. Even after decades of multibillion-dollar subsidies and seemingly unanimous public support, renewables still only represent 4% of our energy. As nice as wind and solar energy sound, renewable technology just isn’t capable of serving as a primary energy source. It may not be for generations, if ever. If “whole of government” support from Washington, mind-boggling corporate investment, and rabid virtue-signaling from the media and pop culture isn’t enough to move the needle, what will?

No matter how shrill the climate cartel cries that the end is near, the American public just isn’t willing to sacrifice the benefits of affordable, reliable energy — which only fossil fuels can provide.

They see through the disinformation the climate cartel is spreading. Not only is the human race nowhere near the brink of extinction, but our lives and our environment are better than ever before.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/why-our-electric-grid-is-threatened.php

America used to have stable, cheap electricity. This is really the definition of a first-world country; or it used to be, anyway. Now, for the first time in many years, we can’t safely rely on the electric grid, while at the same time the price of electricity is spiraling upward.

This video by Kite & Key Media provides a good, if simple, explanation of why our grid is now under threat and soon will be wholly unreliable. The culprit, of course, is intermittent “green” energy:

I think that over the rest of this century, the world will divide into rich and poor nations. Rich nations will be those that use fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power their economies and their lives. Poor nations will be those that go “green.”

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/democrat-donor-arrested-for-starting-massive-fire-democrats-blamed-on-climate-change/

What happened: Authorities busted a Democratic donor for allegedly starting a “ginormous inferno” in Yosemite National Park. Democratic politicians had insisted climate change was to blame for the blaze, which destroyed more than 100 homes and injured several firefighters in July 2022.

• Edward Fredrick Wackerman (his actual name) of Mariposa, Calif., faces a number of charges including aggravated arson following his arrest on Friday.

By the numbers: The arson suspect has donated $1,775 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2020, government records show, including a $1,000 donation to Tim Ryan’s failed U.S. Senate campaign in 2022 and $400 to the Lincoln Project, a disgraced liberal super PAC.

• The so-called Oak Fire destroyed 127 homes and 66 outbuildings. Roughly 6,000 people were forced to evacuate as the inferno torched 30 square miles of land and smoke from the fire drifted more than 200 miles into parts of Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area.

What they’re saying: “Ed Wackerman is facing several felony charges, including aggravated arson. These charges carry serious legal consequences and the District Attorney is committed to ensuring a fair trial and upholding justice,” Mariposa County District Attorney Walter Wall said in a statement. Authorities did not say how Wackerman is believed to have started the fire.

What they said: “Thank you to all the firefighters and first responders working tirelessly under difficult conditions to combat the #OakFire,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D., Calif.) wrote on Twitter on July 25, 2022. “Worsening drought and severe weather will only continue to put lives and property at risk from wildfire if we don’t take climate action NOW.”

• “More people will be killed and the survival of our civilization is at stake,” former Vice President Al Gore said on July 24, 2022, citing climate change as the reason “droughts and fires are hitting us so hard.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/20/time-to-buy-stock-in-candle-companies/

Summer arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on Wednesday and it’s likely to be a cruel one in the countries where policymakers are forcing a green energy transition. Enlightened, these people are not.

There’s a lot of truth to the old joke that goes: “What did socialists use before candles? Electricity.” The green energy “revolution” is taking us backward, to an era in which there won’t be enough electricity to meet the demand.

Members of the House Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security were told last week to expect “potentially catastrophic consequences” due to dispatchable generating sources being retired “far too quickly” in the race to replace those sources – natural gas, coal and nuclear, which are available on demand – with renewables, primarily wind and solar. Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark C. Christie told the congressmen that lawmakers’ and activists’ obsession (our characterization) with green energy threatens “our ability to keep the lights on.”

Though obvious to us all, it’s important to continually point out that wind can’t produce electricity when it doesn’t blow and solar can’t generate power when it’s dark (or the sun is screened out by smoke from forest fires that are caused by man’s refusal to properly manage forests, not his emissions of carbon dioxide).

Christie also told subcommittee members that PJM Interconnection, a regional power transmission organization that serves 13 states and the District of Columbia, is expected to lose 40 gigawatts of generation capacity by 2030 due to early retirements of generating units.

Roughly 90% of the lost capacity is energy spun out by dispatchable sources, mainly coal and gas, which produce at the flick of switch. Meanwhile, as PJM unplugs dependable sources, it will need an additional 13 gigawatts by 2030, and California, where the petty tyranny is outlawing automobiles with internal-combustion engines, which are to be replaced by electric vehicles, won’t have enough energy to chase away the dark in the coming decades.