RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/renewable-energy-balancing-costs-united-kingdom-energy-bills-9795e48d?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

A billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking about real costs from politicians’ headlong rush toward net zero carbon emissions. United Kingdom households received a reminder of this truth recently with the latest data on how renewables drive up their energy bills.

The British electric-grid operator spent £4.2 billion in 2022 balancing supply and demand on the network, a record amount. This works out to £150 per household, according to the Nuclear Industry Association, the lobbying group that crunched the numbers based on data released by National Grid.

These charges arise because with current technology it’s impossible to store large amounts of electricity for long. The grid must balance supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis, and the task becomes urgent and costly as renewables take up a greater share of installed generation. Whenever the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining—which is often in northern Europe—the grid operator must rack up high fees buying emergency power from conventional generators.

These balancing costs constitute a growing burden on British households and businesses that already have seen their bills skyrocket by up to 230% over the past year, prompting the government to step in with as-yet incalculable subsidies to reduce the amount people must actually pay. The annual balancing cost was about £1.2 billion as recently as 2019.

https://www.cfact.org/2023/03/08/american-suppression-of-fossil-fuels-courts-a-national-security-disaster/

The capacity of a modern economy to produce food and products for its citizens, and weapons and fuels for its military to project power, are the undeniable twin pillars of global power. Both depend on reasonably priced and readily available products made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. In other words, American literally runs and fights on products from fossil fuels.

The renewables of wind and solar only generate occasional electricity, but manufacture nothing for society.

Take for example the medical industry that did not exist just a few hundred years ago, that is now maintaining the health and well-being of the 8 billion now on this planet. Today, as an exercise in energy literacy, try to identify something, anything, in your doctor’s office, or the hospital, or the pharmacy, which was not made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

President Biden has been campaigning for years for the elimination of fossil fuels. But ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths. Shortages of fossil fuel products would necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s, and could be the greatest threat to the planet’s eight billion residents.

The ruling class in wealthy countries are not cognizant that the planet populated from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years, and that population explosion began right after the discovery of oil. That growth in the population was not just based on crude oil by itself, as crude oil is useless until it can be manufactured into something useable. Today, through human ingenuity, we have more than 6,000 products  currently benefiting society and fuels for the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.

https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/22/you-cannot-run-businesses-hospitals-and-the-military-on-occasional-electricity/

Regardless of the intermittency of the weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather.

Power grid blackouts are driven by the rapid retirement of small acreage coal and natural gas power plants.

Wind and solar electricity generation requires vast amounts of pristine acreage, but due to the intermittency and variability of breezes and sunshine being a significant deficiency, wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time.

This is illustrative of why a myopic focus on renewables for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions through a deepening dependence on the intermittency of wind and solar electricity must ultimately come to terms with the laws of physics and the high financial and environmental cost of achieving a reliable electrical grid with these technologies.

Future carbon dioxide concentrations in the global atmosphere will be largely determined by developing nations who are digging themselves out of abject poverty through the development of coal and natural gas energy resources.

Politicians have backed utility engineers into a corner as politicians now designing the power grid to their liking. However, politicians are not cognizant enough to know that renewables only generate electricity, and thus have no plans for the replacement of what is now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!

Over the last 200 years when the world populated from 1 to 8 billion, we learned that crude oil is virtually useless, unless it’s manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products in our daily lives that did not exist before the 1900’s, and the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space program.

Chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and fertilizers, are essential for supporting modern lifestyles.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/14/the-climate-scare-narrative-continues-to-collapse/

Hot, cold, wet, dry, sunny, clear, snow, no snow – it doesn’t matter, it’s caused by global warming, the climate alarmists tell us over and again. Their desperation is palpable, the cords that keep them tethered to reality fraying more than ever, their charade coming apart.

For more than 30 years, the crisis peddlers have carried the narrative that man’s carbon dioxide emissions are creating an existential threat. They’ve cajoled, bullied, lied, deceived, screeched and burned an immense volume of fossil fuels to get their hard-left agenda codified and executive ordered, and they have some successes to refer to. But their efforts have been, and always will be, useless.

Despite their insistence, facts tell a story that’s quite different.

First, we are now in the 101st month of a warming pause.

“​​There has been no trend in the UAH global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies since September 2014: eight years, five months and counting,” reports Christopher Monckton on Anthony Watts’ website, where he helpfully also posts a chart of University of Alabama-Hunstville data to show us what he means.

Going back further, to the date when the satellite measurements – the most trustworthy data we have – began, the temperature record shows only a mild warming of 0.134 degrees Celsius per decade. Hardly anything to be concerned about.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-crusaders-are-coming-for-electric-cars-too-global-warming-energy-power-fossil-fuels-environment-31a692ca?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

“Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth.”

Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.

The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.

Problem No. 1: Electric-vehicle batteries require loads of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, which must be extracted from the ground like fossil fuels. “If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market,” the report notes.

Unlike fossil fuels, these minerals are mostly found in undeveloped areas that have abundant natural fauna and are often inhabited by indigenous people. “Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities,” the report says. Mining can be done safely, but in poor countries it often isn’t.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/new_geological_study_proves_that_the_green_energy_movement_is_impossible_to_achieve.html

The renewable energy fantasy goal is achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Carpet-bombing propaganda has convinced the public to accept the extravagant claim that technology currently exists to reach net zero carbon emissions. Like carnival barkers, the net-zero fanatics say renewable energy is affordable, sustainable, scalable, and not an economy wrecker. 

The goal is to create a first-generation green power grid relying on wind turbine farms, solar array farms, and power storage battery banks replacing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. In addition, the new power grid would power a global fleet of electric vehicles that would replace the internal combustion engine. 

Western society has taken one hundred fifty years of progress to achieve a fantastically complex energy system using the dense source of cheap hydrocarbon energy, the master resource. Yet, the net-zero devotees believe the complex energy system can be dismantled with minimal disruption and replaced with a low-density renewable energy grid that is intermittent and nonscalable, in less than thirty years. 

Well, I have horrible news for the devotees; the green energy fantasy collides with the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenies never researched whether or not there are sufficient base and rare earth metals and adequate time to mine and build out the technologies to accomplish the net-zero carbon 2050 target date. 

Simon P. Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland has compiled an exhaustive study dismantling the overly ambitious task of phasing out fossil fuels. His comprehensive analysis focuses on the required physical material resources and the extraction timeframe to create renewable energy generation systems. A PowerPoint summary of his thousand-page study can be downloaded HERE.

The comprehensive study found the current estimated metal reserves are woefully deficient in almost every category. The table below lists base and rare earth metals requirements to build the new grid and EVs. Deficits are yellow highlighted. For example, copper is an integral part of a high-voltage grid system, coming up short by a shocking 3.7 billion tons. Can we dig enough open mile-deep ore pits to meet that shortfall? Improbable.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/02/04/hot-air-no-global-warming-for-eight-years-n1667955

Recently published data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that there has not been global warming for the past eight years. And NASA satellite data reportedly confirms that evidence, showing no global warming for eight years and five months, according to JunkScience’s Steve Milloy. But leftists are quick to warn people against drawing the obvious conclusion that the world isn’t about to become a burning ball of fire.

Recently published evidence also showed that there was actually a near-record low of major hurricanes in 2022, indicating that weather isn’t getting progressively and exponentially worse globally, despite the climate frenzy of the media and governments. And the Northeast is currently experiencing record cold in a harsh winter, with Mt. Washington, N.H., yesterday dropping to -45.5 degrees Fahrenheit and -107 degree wind chill.

Axios, which normally loves to scare-monger about global warming, reported today, “Arctic outbreak shatters records in Northeast.” I’m going to go out on a limb — or a glacier — and say that the Northeastern U.S. is definitely not about to suffer devastating effects from “global warming.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-inconvenient-truth-for-environmentalists/

Democracy, for once, isn’t dying in darkness.

The Washington Post, an outlet all-in for net-zero energy, conceded recent whale deaths off the Atlantic Coast spell doom for the Biden administration’s offshore wind prospects.

“The humpback was one of nine large whales to get stranded over six weeks on or near beaches in the Northeast, not far from where developers of hundreds of offshore wind turbines are engaged in a flurry of preconstruction activity,” the publication noted.

The article added, “It’s the latest in a string of threats to a fledgling offshore wind industry that climate advocates say is central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Surging costs from inflation and labor shortages have developers saying their projects may not be profitable. A raft of lawsuits and pending federal restrictions to protect sensitive wildlife could further add to costs.”

The Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, two influential radical preservationist organizations, haven’t questioned its potential harmful effects on whales. Instead, they are quick to assign blame to vessel strikes and fishermen. But one unlikely skeptic is Center for Biological Diversity—a group that actively targets and works to displace conservationists like lobstermen, hunters, and anglers.

“I’m skeptical that either side is correct,” Brett Hartl, the government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Fox News. “I saw environmental groups saying wind definitely isn’t the cause of this and then others are saying wind is definitely the cause of this. These things take a lot of time – they’re going to do autopsies and necropsies to figure it out.”

https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/01/everything-that-needs-electricity-is-made-with-oil/

The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.

Renewables may be able to generate intermittent electricity form breezes and sunshine, but they cannot replace what is manufactured from fossil fuels, that are demanded by lifestyles and economies around the world.

Efforts to cease the use of crude oil will be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change, and lead the world to an era of guaranteed extreme shortages like we had in the decarbonized world in the 1800’s without fossil fuel products. This pursuit of renewables without fossil fuels can only lead us back to shorter life spans, diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths resulting from the elimination of the products from fossil fuels that are now benefiting society.

If the zero-emission cult succeeds in ridding the world of fossil fuels, wind turbines and solar panels may be able to generate intermittent electricity, but they cannot manufacture anything. Electricity from breezes and sunshine may be renewable, but it’s not reliable. Again, short memories about the zero-emission society that we already had in the 1800’s.

Everything that needs electricity is made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. Let’s take a look at a few infrastructures, and products, that did not exist before the 1800’s, that now need electricity to operate:

Transportation

Hospitals

Medical equipment

Appliances

Electronics

Telecommunications

Communications systems

Space programs

Heating and ventilating

Military