RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-2-17-texas-time-to-get-rid-of-this-ridiculous-wind-powe

Texas. It is the number one energy producing state in the United States. It is both the largest producer of oil, and the largest producer of natural gas, and has been for decades. Texas also has abundant coal reserves. It has been ground zero of the fracking revolution, which has revolutionized oil and gas production, vastly increased supplies, driven prices down by around two-thirds since 2014, and turned the U.S. into a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. By all rights, Texas should be the shining beacon of fossil fuel energy abundance for everyone else to envy.

And yet in Texas this week, there has been a good blast of cold air, accompanied by some meaningful ice and snow storms, and suddenly Texas finds itself with widespread power blackouts covering much of the state. Although the levels of cold and ice have been somewhat unusual, they have also been well within the range of historical experience. Meanwhile, other states farther north have been colder and have had more snow and more ice and yet the power has not gone out. What gives?

The simple answer is that despite its great abundance of fossil fuel energy, Texas nevertheless fell big for the ridiculous scam of trying to produce a high percentage of its electricity from wind. Yes, the story is somewhat more complicated than that, as stories always are. But not much more complicated. Basically, with its grid stressed in many ways in the past week, the wind was useless to carry the load that needed to be carried.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial today collects some basic data from Texas as to electricity supply capacity and usage. Total winter generation capacity for the state is about 83 GW, while peak winter usage is about 57 GW. That’s a margin of over 45% of capacity over peak usage. In a fossil-fuel-only or fossil-fuel-plus-nuclear system, where all sources of power are dispatchable, a margin of 20% would be considered normal, and 30% would be luxurious. This margin is well more than that. How could that not be sufficient?

https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/10/26/yes-joe-biden-really-does-want-to-end-the-oil-and-gas-industry-in-america

The Biden Plan

Among other items, Biden’s energy plan calls for the elimination of carbon from power generation by 2035.  The genesis of the Biden Plan, which can be found on the Democratic Party Platform website, is the Biden-Sanders Manifesto of July 20, 2020, which was submitted to the Democrat National Committee by co-Chairs John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The plan calls for:

Installation of 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems;
Installation of 60,000 wind turbines;
500,000 charging stations along American roads
Converting the fleet of 500,000 school buses to zero-emission alternatives within five years;
Transition of the 3 million vehicles in the federal, state, and local fleets to zero-emission vehicles.
Dictate net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all new buildings by 2030, on the pathway to creating a 100 percent clean building sector by converting four million buildings.
Additional regulations for the oil and gas industry to achieve what is vaguely defined as “environmental justice.”

Joebiden.com, the official campaign website, under “The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Future,” offers more general and aspirational policies, but in line with the Green New Deal.   Through elimination of natural gas for power, government investment in electric vehicles to push out hydrocarbon fuels, and regulation of fossil fuels, the Biden plan will effectively eliminate natural gas and oil from American energy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

https://www.newsweek.com/canceling-keystone-does-more-environmental-harm-good-opinion-1568680

In President Joe Biden’s first week in office, with little more than the stroke of his pen, he took steps to revoke the permit of the Keystone XL pipeline. Of course, this policy doesn’t significantly protect the environment—the oil will still be transported—it was a virtue signal to climate change activists.

President Biden has been on the record stating that he wants to end fracking, as well as drilling and exploration for oil and natural gas. What Biden knows, but probably doesn’t care about, is that we actually need oil for most things in our daily lives. Things that may actually surprise you.

We need oil to make affordable clothes, cleaning products, soap, toothbrushes, shampoo, perfumes, nail polish, furniture, footballs, computers, cell phones, fertilizers, insecticides, car seats, heart valves, aspirin—even the plexiglass dividers that Biden wants restaurants to put up to maintain social distancing.

Crude oil, or oil in its unrefined state, is toxic to humans and animals, and destructive to the environment when spilled on land or in bodies of water. After crude oil is obtained, it must be transported safely and carefully to refineries to be chemically processed so that it can be used. It can be easily transported in one of three ways: by truck, by train or by pipeline.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/10/global-warming-alarmists-keep-letting-their-masks-slips/

Give the green shirts long enough and they will reveal their true intentions. This happened most recently when a Massachusetts official said “we have to break” the will of the average person to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s another in a long line of admissions made by the climatistas – thank you, Steven Hayward, for adding that descriptive term to our lexicon – that inadvertently exposes their authoritarian urges.

Ranting last month before the Vermont Climate Council, David Ismay, Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s undersecretary for climate change, said that “60% of our emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles,” produced by people on “the street” and seniors on fixed incomes. 

“There is no bad guy left,” he continued, “at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at, turn the screws on, and break their will so they stop emitting. That’s you, we have to break your will.”

He then added “I can’t even say that publicly.” Which itself says a lot.

Baker appeared to be unhappy with the comments and indicated that Ismay was going to get what we hope, but cannot assume, will be a stern a lecture from another administration official. But no one can, as lawyers like to say, unring that bell. Ismay’s comments are out there, and they disclose more than the alarmists want known.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/john-kerry-emitted-302-tons-co2-save-planet-daniel-greenfield/

In his last year in office, Secretary of State John Kerry was touting the fact that he had traveled over 1.06 million miles and spent some 96 days in the air in the course of 3 years. The archived State Department site tallies Kerry’s total record at 1,417,576 miles and 126 days in the air.

Kerry spent more time flying in 3 years than the average American would in 50 years.

When the Air Force Boeing 757 which ferried Kerry around the world broke down for the fourth time, the media and the foreign policy establishment treated it as some sort of accomplishment.

That might have amounted to something if the ketchup gigolo had done anything in that time except jet around the world to give speeches about the importance of not jetting around the world. Kerry kept racking up miles by flying to Morocco to address the 22nd UN Climate Change Conference, to Indonesia to deliver a speech denouncing unbelievers in global warming, and to Paris to warn that the earth was about to be destroyed if people didn’t stop living like him.

Kerry’s flights would have powered all the appliances in 50 American homes for a year.

“It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Kerry recently retorted when a reporter asked him about flying his private jet to Iceland to receive an environmental award. Environmentalists don’t fly coach or even first class. They jet set.

https://spectator.us/topic/ready-climate-lockdowns-environment/?utm_source=Spectator+USA+Email+Signup&utm_campaign=

Last week President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords. This was a mostly symbolic gesture, as the same alarmism being pushed prior to the agreement in 2016 is still being pushed now while nation-states like China are still ignoring it. Now Biden administration climate envoy John Kerry, under fire for boarding a private jet to Iceland to accept a climate award, is telling the United States and the world that the conditions of the Paris agreement are ‘inadequate’.

As the global climate elite push eating bugs and staying home to save the Earth on the masses, it’s worth posing the question: what will be adequate? With the Global Economic Forum in Davos approaching in April, we’re going to start hearing terms such ‘Climate Equity’ and ‘Climate Reset’ (a play on the WEF’s Great Reset) more frequently. We’ll probably also start to hear calls for climate lockdowns. I know, right now that sounds completely preposterous, but don’t these kooky ideas always find a way to bleed into the mainstream? Fifteen Days to Slow the Sun!

The possibility of climate lockdowns is already being floated by some of our greatest thinkers. They see a confluence of global crises as an opportunity. The perfect storm caused by COVID-19 and the resulting global economic meltdown offers a chance to take what they see as bold and dramatic action to save the planet. The Biden administration will certainly use the consequences of COVID to push through some green legislation, but just as before, it will not be enough in the eyes of progressives. There must always be more.