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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Showing posts with label Energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Energy. Show all posts

Friday, March 28, 2025

Observations From the Back Row With News and Views for 3/25/25

By Rich Kozlovich

Why do we think that way we do?  Machiavelli noted there are only two groups of people in the world. The privileged and the common people. The privileged only want to maintain their privileges, or expand them, and the common people only want security. They want to be able to house, feed, and clothe their families in safety.  That is what molds everyone’s thinking, except for the misfits who hate both, and want to destroy both.

The issue isn’t why people think what they think, it’s how many think what they think in each category, and very often that’s a result of where we are in the stream of historical cycles.  I've read three books on historical cycles and they all agree we're in an end cycle, which epitomized instability, economic downturns, and violence. 

Turkish President Erdogan apparently believed the guy running against him had a good chance of winning, and that was just unacceptable, so he had his opponent arrested on trumped up charges.  I’ve been following Erdogan's antics for some years. First, Turkish Islam has always been a bit different than traditional Islam, and it’s been far more secular, so pushing all this Islamic radicalism on Turkey and his tyrannical failures may have been part of the bridge too far construction against him.   As a result, this action filled the streets thousands and thousands of demonstrators who are outraged at this act.  Will there be a new president as a result?

The last time I remember a nation having this many people running wild in the streets over politics was Romania in 1989. That resulted in Nicolae Ceausescu being overthrown and very unceremoniously shot later on along with his wife.  Erdogan is afraid, make no mistake about that, and he has reason to be.  

If there is a new President, I’m of the opinion a new President would moderate a lot of Turkey’s policies that were promulgated by Erdogan, who created a lot of instability involving energy, trade, foreign policy, domestic stability, and economics, and that’s a big one, because Turkey’s economy is in trouble and is in very real need of stability, which I've stated for some years, and in opposition to all the "experts" who kept claiming Turkey was doing great and would be a big force in the Middle East.  Experts entirely too often are expert at ignoring the basics, and embracing preconceptualism, which means ignoring the things known because they're inconvenient, and making up the things not known, just like Henry Kissinger. More Here, and Here

If there is a new president, and he has any sense of geopolitics, he’ll want to find common ground with Trump. There will always be tension between Russia and Turkey, so looking North isn’t their answer, and they have issues with Iran.  I also think we would see a move for Turkey to have a much more harmonious relations with Israel, especially involving trade. Stability  Israel is no threat to Turkey, versus the radicals being supported by Iran.   This will be interesting to watch.  

Recently there was an article discussing how one of the first things Trump did was to restore Winston Churchill's bust to its rightful place in the oval office, which Obama had removed, which generated some conversation about his years in the “wilderness” after his failures during WWI, and it played havoc with his ego.  At one point it’s been claimed he considered suicide, although I’ve wondered how true that is, especially since during those years he set up an unofficial intelligence and spy network, all volunteers, of some of the smartest and well connected people in Europe. People who saw the dangers developing with Hitler and Mussolini.

Those people created what became the foundation for the official intelligence services when the war started and was headed up by, “Intrepid”, William Stephenson. I recommend reading the book, A Man Called Intrepid.

Those who read a lot of history are aware he did things that would have been considered despicable now, and would have ended his career today. The legend of Churchill is much bigger than Churchill, but that’s true of every hero in history. Churchill was a 19th century man of empire, and all his views and actions were predicated on that.

But one thing is clear. I never read about anyone in England that could have taken his place when doom was upon them. There may not be one now, and make no mistake, doom is upon them, and the same is true of Germany.  Unless there’s a major political upheaval, Germany is doomed also.

I keep seeing conservative writers coaching the Democrats about what they're doing wrong, and what they need to change.  And I have to wonder why? 

Actually, it really doesn’t matter what sane advice they’re given as long as they have great minds, like Mad Maxine, who claims what Trump really wants is civil war, in spite of the fact it's the left that just about has a monopoly on political violence.  And that great democrat seer, America’s very own Smeagol, James Carville, who insists Trump has put the very existence of America in jeopardy, and believes the Trump administration was going "collapse" within 30 days".

And as for those who allegedly have been educated in this arena, I have serious doubts about them also. Take AOC for an example. She graduated cum laude from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in international relations and economics. And while I may be overstating this, I think she’s dumb as dirt, nothing personal mind you.

They, along with a host of leftist celebrities and nitwits in general, just can’t keep from saying stupid things. They really are gifts that keeps on giving. They will follow the example of their moral leader, Dan Rather, and deny, deny, deny, and go down the drain together.  Or, they could change and embrace truth, but that would be a stab in their hearts because they would have become conservatives, admitting all they believed in and promoted is evil.

They’ll choose denial and go down the drain.  

I keep hearing how Donald Trump is a dictator whose goal is to destroy American democracy forever. If that’s true, why didn’t he do it during his first term?  If the Democrats were going to help America, why didn’t she do it during the 12 years of Obama and Biden?  As for being tyranny, it seems clear none of those on the left took a civic class in high school.  

Leftism is the term that encompasses communism, fascism, progressivism, environmentalism, liberalism, and a host of other "isms", but they're all scions of socialism going back to the foundation of socialism, the French Revolution.  As for groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Occupy Wall Street, all violent misfits, they're the American left's modern version of the Nazi "Brown Shirt" thugs.  Different names, same purpose!  But the underlying social philosophy is socialism. If calling them communists pleases you, I'm fine with that.

As one write noted, the Democrat party views the Bill or Rights as the Bill of Permissions, and has worked for decades to create centralized power bases, that are not to be questioned, dealing with every aspect of human life, including the economy. They want to tax more, spend more, borrow more, regulate more, end the use of economically sound and effective energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, while imposing totally ineffective. and expensive, alternative energy programs on America.  

By dictate they wish to force everyone to buy electric vehicles that are a disaster,  under the pretext of saving the world from global warming, the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on humanity.  All in order to justify making everyone live in centralized communities they're calling "walkable communities", which will be small and condensed, making them easier to control.   Taking away the people's right to choose is what dictators do! 

Trump wants to decentralize power transferring it to local governments which the people can more easily control.  He wants less taxes, less spending, less regulations, and less government interference in people's lives by unelected tyrannical bureaucrats to choose how to live their lives, spend their money, and live where and how they please.   That's not what a dictator does!

 "The Democrats are rudderless, divided, and leaderless. The positions that form the core of their agenda are beyond unpopular. All they have is theater, and it’s veering into acts of domestic terrorism." - Matt Vespa

Africa
  • Black terrorists talk ‘seizing the means of production’ in South Africa - As the South African government ramps up the persecution of and aggression against white Afrikaners, having passed a new “land reform” law (legalized land seizures without compensation) in January of this year, a clip from a six-year-old Lauren Southern documentary is going viral, reminding the West (and everyone else) that not only is the anti-Boer agenda in South Africa very evil, but very Marxian as well..........
  • Dismantling USAID Services in Africa - The potential dismantling of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) services in Africa presents both opportunities and challenges. While some view this as a loss of critical support, others see it as an opportunity for African nations to assert greater control over their own development. The true impact of this decision will hinge on how African countries navigate the shift, leveraging the advantages of independence while managing the risks that come with it......
My Take - Let's not be delusional, all this foreign aid going to these petty dictatorships is going into the corrupt pockets of their leaders.  It's always been that way, and everyone knew it was that way.  So why continue?  American's aren't benefiting from this scam at all!  But I'm betting some large multinational corporations are at the expense of American taxpayers.     RK 
Canada
  • Go, Canada! Breaking Up Is Not Hard to Do - Canada is finally waking up to a bitterly cold, hard truth: its freeloading days are numbered. The maple syrup cartel isn’t keeping the economy afloat, and the national security situation is downright embarrassing. Justin Trudeau is about to hit the unemployment line, presumably with a fresh bottle of Just for Men, jeggings, and a box of tissues. With Donald Trump back in the White House and looking to balance the ledger on trade, tariffs, and defense spending, Canada is realizing that the gravy train may be reaching its final stop miles short of Tim Horton’s..........
  • Eurologic: Danes, other Europeans, vow to fight back against America by ... not buying their arms
Covid
  • Waiting for an investigation of COVID-19 crimes  -  Recently, even the left-stream media has acknowledged the lab leak origin of SARS-COV-2, which it called a conspiracy theory five years ago. It is time to take another look at crimes that the Democrat party and its accomplices perpetrated on the American people at the time of the pandemic, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans by denial of treatment.........
Dark Money
Democrats
  • Democrats and their digging- Our friend Ruy Teixeira is back with another message for Democrats.  My guess is that they won’t like it.  It ain’t pretty, to say the least.  Teixeira is telling Democrats that Trump may be underwater in some polls, but they are more like 20,000 leagues under the sea (to remember Captain Nemo).  Here are the 4 points driving the party down:.........
  • Jasmine Crockett Confesses: 'I Don't Care About Legislation, Just Want to Take Down Trump'  - In a shocking admission, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) revealed her true priorities, stating that she has little interest in passing legislation and is focused solely on taking down President Donald Trump. Her blatant disregard for productive governance highlights the growing trend among some Democrats, prioritizing partisan attacks over meaningful policy work that could actually benefit the American people. It's a clear indication that, for some, political vendettas are more important than delivering results for their constituents.
  • Jasmine Crockett: I Have Never Promoted Violence Against Elon Musk -During a Sunday appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) denied playing any role in promoting the violence waged against Elon Musk’s brand, Tesla. The Texas Democrat acknowledged participating in the so-called “Tesla takedown,” which she maintained was a “large protest.”..........
  • Dems 2025: Stalingrad II or Keystone Kops? - I am wondering about the ongoing District Judge Blitzkrieg and the Tesla Blitzkrieg and the Bernie-AOC “Fight Oligarchy” Blitzkrieg Tour. Could this be the Democrat equivalent of the Battle of Stalingrad? If so, the question is: which Democrat astroturf outfit is going to play the role of the German 6th Army?........
  •  The Democrat Party’s Identity Crisis is Far Worse Than Most of the Media Is Reporting - Ever since the 2024 election, the Democrats have been embroiled in a crisis. They have no message, no leader, and no strategy. As we have seen in recent weeks, all they have to offer the American people at the moment is rage and protests. Some people in media have acknowledged that the Democrats have a problem, but it’s far worse than anyone is admitting. Axios is a liberal media outlet, but they have published a piece that highlights how bad things are.  Here are some highlights:............
  • California Shows Without Death Penalty, Murderers Keep Killing - Who needs the death penalty anyway? Certainly not California. Just lock the murderers up at a modest cost of buying a nice house a year and everything is fine. Of course, you can’t keep them in solitary or deny them visitations because that would be inhumane............
Editor's Note: This next article by Daniel Greenfield is a must read article: RK
  • An Assassination Has Ties to California’s Political Elite, Including its Possible Next Governor - In a scene right out of a movie, cars with stolen license plates parked outside a home in the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland, made famous by BLM rioters when a career criminal was shot during a fight in a train station, and the men inside opened fire on the homeowner.  The homeowner grabbed his gun and returned fire..............Worse was yet to come.........Did the toxic mix of green energy, turning shipping containers into housing for the homeless, police defunding and corrupt political connections in the upper echelons of progressive politics turn into a murder plot? The answer to the question may determine California’s next governor............
 DOGE
  • Low-hanging fruit is not enough - No one was more pleased than I over Trump’s executive orders to cut government costs, remove DIE organizations and indoctrination, fire excess government non-workers, and prohibit men from competing with women in sports. Initially, for these actions, there is plenty of “low-hanging fruit” to be taken down.   The headlines in the news are replete with the administration’s claims of increased safety, better efficiency, and reduced costs. Promises made, promises kept.
  • Elon Musk Claims DOGE Discovered $330 Million in SBA Loans Given to Kids - Elon Musk revealed that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) discovered the Small Business Administration (SBA) had given more than $300 million in loans to children under 11 years old.
Energy
  • Trump Makes Coal Great Again - Unlike his predecessor, President Donald Trump understands that abundant and affordable energy is absolutely essential to the future of America. Since his return to the Oval Office, Trump has made energy dominance a keystone of his domestic agenda.......
Education 
  • Trump begins to dismantle Department of Education - On Thursday afternoon, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling and reorganizing the Department of Education at the federal level, shifting responsibility to the states.  This move aligns with Trump’s longstanding stance on reducing federal intervention in local governance, especially in areas such as education.  He has consistently advocated for increasing school choice and reducing federal oversight in favor of local control..............
  • Public School Teachers: The Stupidest Creatures on the Planet - Quite the statement, eh? Let me explain. I’m well into my 60s and for my entire adult life I’ve heard that public school teachers are underpaid. It has been repeated as a mantra for decades. Ignoring for a moment whether it is true or not -- and the answer to that is generally, it depends -- let’s accept the mantra and analyze why public-school teachers are still underpaid after all these years.......
Immigration
  • Birthright citizenship in America vs. in the world - Today, the United States recognizes children of foreigners and non-citizens who are born in this country as U.S. citizens.  President Trump believes that if the parents are foreign-born or non-citizens, and they happen to give birth to a child in the United States, that child does not automatically become a citizen of the United States and therefore is not entitled to all the benefits a U.S. citizen has earned and is eligible for.  Many support and many are in opposition to the president’s view........
  • Trump Hits Venezuela With Economic Sanctions for ‘Purposefully and Deceitfully’ Sending Illegal Alien Gang Members to U.S. -  President Donald Trump has announced secondary tariffs on foreign countries that purchase oil and gas from Venezuela. The tariffs are in response to Venezuela “purposefully and deceitfully” sending illegal alien gang members, including those with Tren de Aragua, to the United States via the southern border.......

Trump

  • Trump Didn't Kill the Old World Order -- He Just Pronounced It Dead - In the first 60 days of his second administration, President Trump has made it clear that he intends to end the Old World Order that has shaped our planet since World War II. Free trade is out; tariffs are in. Nation-building is out; territorial acquisition is in. Wars of ideology pitting democracy against communism are out; trade deals are in. Foreign aid to win hearts and minds is out; bare-knuckled mineral deals are in. America as policeman of world is out; America First is in.............
  • The president and his policies do make a difference - The main goal of Joe Biden and the Democrats was to make the government more centralized, controlling, and powerful. They want to tax more, spend more, and regulate more. They wanted to destroy oil, coal, and natural gas companies, and to take away freedom of choice on what type of vehicles to drive...........
Wokeness is a Neurological Disorder

 

Monday, December 19, 2022

Alternative Energy: Myth, Fact and Hyperbole

Astronomical battery cost looms over “renewables” - By |December 15th, 2022| Energy| 230 Comments - The amount of storage needed to make renewables reliable is so huge that even if the cost dropped fantastically we still could not afford it.

We now know that the battery storage for the entire American grid is impossibly expensive, thanks to a breakthru study by engineer Ken Gregory. Looking at several recent years he analyzed, on an hour by hour basis, the electricity produced with fossil fuels. He then calculated what it would have taken in the way of storage to produce the same energy using wind and solar power. He did this by scaling up those year’s actual wind and solar production.

Based on his work, which only covered 48 states, our round working estimate of the required storage for the whole country is an amazing 250 million MWh. America today has less than 20 thousand MWh of grid scale battery storage, which is next to nothing.

Grid scale batteries today cost around $700,000 a MWh. For 250 million MWh we get an astronomical total cost of $175 trillion dollars just to replace today’s fossil fuel generated electricity needs with wind and solar. Even the fantastically low cost estimates that some people are proposing puts the cost around the total annual GDP of America. Even worse, if we get the electric cars and trucks the Biden Administration is calling for these astronomical numbers could easily double.

The environmental cost of wind and solar in NetZero - By  December 14th, 2022|General Information|174 Comments - Birds, bats, whales, even people pay the price. Cats, the BBC tells us, kill more birds than wind turbines. And they are right.

But unlike cats, notes British journalist Matt Ridley, all over the world, the largest and rarest eagles and vultures are dying in significant numbers as a result of wind turbines. — wedge-tailed eagles in Australia, Verreaux’s eagles in South Africa, sea eagles in Norway, and bald and golden eagles in the United States.

Ridley notes that a32-turbine wind power station in Spain kills a vulture every three days – decimating rare populations of griffon, cincerous, bearded, and Egyptian vultures. In California’s Altamont Pass wind turbines kill over 1,000 birds of prey each year. A Norwegian wind power station has reduced the number of sea eagle territories on the island of Smola from thirteen to just five – making local extinction a real possibility................

Tasmanian mega wind farm approved that can’t operate half the year - By - When does it make sense to build 122 giant industrial turbines that can’t operate for nearly half a year?  he EPA has approved Robbins Island Mega Wind Factory in a remote island off Tasmania that will have to stop working for five months of the year so it doesn’t hurt the Orange-bellied Parrot. It will however be able to kill eagles and other birds for the other seven months of the year.  Green electrons are revered, Orange-bellied parrots are sacred but our way of life is up for grabs. It’s a cult.

This is infrastructure that only works about 30% of the time anyhow, and now will be reduced to something like 17%. The theoretical capacity will be 340MW in the first stage, supposedly growing to 900MW if they can somehow build the extra 170km transmission lines and perhaps get the taxpayer to help build another undersea cable across the Bass Strait. (If the company was going to pay, why was the Tasmanian government spending $20m on the “business case”?)

It will be one of the largest wind factories in the Southern Hemisphere (the biggest being West of Melbourne), but as Tom Quirk showed years ago, when the wind stops in Tasmania it often also stops in Victoria. So the two giant wind factories with supposedly 2GW of random unreliable power between them will both probably be useless together.  In 2019, this mega industrial proposal was the point where the Greens suddenly realized that skeptics were right and wind-farms were ugly bird killers..........

CFACT’s Morano on OAN TV “praises” Biden’s fossil fuel ban in fed buildings - By |December 13th, 2022|CFACT TV, Regulation|82 CommentsCFACT’s Marc Morano, editor of Climate Depot, appeared on OAN TV’s “In Focus” with Addison Smith to address the Biden Administration’s plans to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in federal buildings.

“This is actually one thing we should wholeheartedly support President Biden. He’s talking about eliminating fossil fuels in federal buildings and new construction renovation and existing buildings,” Morano said. “This is the first conservative thing Joe Biden has done. He is going to make federal workers live in a Net Zero world that means when August heat waves hit DC and air conditioning isn’t going to be sufficiently powered by solar, and wind and renewable, bureaucrats are going to be too uncomfortable to think of even more regulations.”

“A less efficient bureaucracy is what we actually want in Washington and I can’t think of anything more distasteful or unpleasant to impose on federal bureaucrats than working in miserably powered buildings by energy that can’t possibly power them well.”

Watch the full segment here.

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Why Science Journalists Rarely Get Their Stories Right

by | Aug 6, 2022 | @ America Out Loud

As I sat down to begin this essay, I turned on the television to see the beginning of Stage 19 of this year’s Tour De France bicycle race. Before I got to the correct station, I passed a morning news program with a reporter stating that today’s headline news was Scientists discover that humans are now causing the greatest mass species extinction in history.”

It was undoubtedly the inspiration to build on material from Alex Epstein’s new book Fossil Future to support my headline for this article. I am optimistic that most of the public is beginning to ignore these constant scary headlines, which have no basis in fact.

The problems can be placed in the order of efforts that must be applied to all research that generates a near limitless amount of specialized knowledge that only the rare scientists can know close to everything in their own fields. There is no better example than climate science, where specialists may prevail in paleoclimatology, climate physics, oceanography, climate modeling, or others.

The knowledge must be synthesized, disseminated, and evaluated to prepare the research results. This is always performed by other than the researchers. Synthesizing means organizing, refining, and condensing. Disseminators are those who broadcast the synthesized knowledge such as newspapers, radio, and television. Evaluators are those who tell us what should be done with the information, which could be making policies of all kinds.

Along the path from research to public knowledge lies a minefield of obstacles to the ultimate truth of everything. I recognized this in my early work in environmental science, so I contacted 50 different scientists working in the environment and asked if they had experienced similar distortion of their work before it reached wide recognition. One and all had witnessed the same problems and agreed to write an original paper explaining their individual issues. It allowed me to compile the articles into a new book titled Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns. It was published by the company now known as John Wiley & Sons in 1991. I was honored to learn that it played a role in Alex Epstein’s attacks on these problems that I will describe now further.

In climate science, the leading synthesizers are the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United States Government, and other organizations like the American Meteorological Society and the National Academy of Science. The synthesis can and does go badly wrong by virtue of honest mistakes but more often as a result of biases existing within the synthesizers, which are the non-stop targets of influence groups able to gain from how the research is presented.

A good example is that if you wade through thousands of pages of recent IPCC reports, you will not find a single proven statistic of increasing weather-related deaths in recent decades. Yet, the final summary states emphatically that this is the case. The opposite is absolutely the truth based on dozens of studies. 

Once the synthesizers do their jobs, however well or poorly, the essentials of their synthesis must be disseminated. There are all kinds of disseminators, certainly alternative media today. Still, the most important ones remain the mainstream media that we all know spread misinformation daily to a public not well trained to recognize its veracity.

If one has time to read the actual reports made by the synthesizers, the absurdity of conclusions comes clear. A recent IPCC report summary popularized the term ”code red for humanity” with obvious terrifying intent. Yet the report offered more opposite data on decreasing floods and droughts etc., the disseminators grabbed code red” and ran with it.

It is difficult for any science journalist to grasp the reality of what is going on, and if they have a political bias, all is really lost.

Finally, we have the evaluators of the synthesized and disseminated information. Prominent evaluators are the editorial pages of major newspapers such as The NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. They are the institutions and people who help us evaluate what to do about what is disseminated and tell us what is true about the world.

One way to spot when potential bad evaluations are being made is when we are told to listen to the scientists.” This refrain is almost always used to get us to accept a given policy evaluation without critical thinking, which is what we should never do. Very quickly, one can recognize when an evaluation system is very wrong. The first is when the evaluation has an anti-human basis, and the other is when all sides of an issue, pros and cons, are not considered. If you have long followed the evaluation by nearly all radical environmental groups, and one wonders which are not, they all focus on the terrible things humans do to nature when the reality is that it is mankind that is good and nature destructive.

The moral case for eliminating fossil fuel is a profoundly anti-human argument which Alex Epstein proves brilliantly through his 420-page magnum opus. It is my intent to help you grasp the clarity of his wisdom, allowing you to be a citizen warrior on the side of humanity with your friends, neighbors, and colleagues that one day will turn the corner on the public understanding of the lies they have been exposed to.

A clear indication of the anti-human evaluation is their insistence not just on rapidly eliminating fossil fuels but on replacing them with exclusively green unreliable energy systems. The most substantial evidence by far of their plans going catastrophically wrong is that they oppose things on the basis of side effects ignoring massive benefits. The obvious ones are:

1 – Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy.

2 – Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing. Get used to this term as it should always guide our decisions.

3 – Billions of people remain suffering and dying for lack of cost-effective energy.

It should be obvious now to most of us that the anti-fossil fuel folks are, in fact, opposed to human beings. They actually believe humans are a cancer on the Earth. Otherwise, would they desire to force mankind to use only the intermittent, uncontrollable sources of energy from the sun and the wind that currently supply only three percent of the world’s energy and even that must have fossil fuel back up to avoid crushing destruction of electric grids that become unbalanced. The obvious answer is no!

Human Flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within the context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue such efforts.

Portions of this article were excerpted from the book, Summary of Fossil Future By Alex Epstein: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less, with permission of the author Alex Epstein and the publisher Portfolio/Penguin.

I strongly recommend this book to everyone fighting for the preservation of life in America, which has been made possible by our abundance of fossil fuels before the leftist, liberal, progressives, and communists attempted to limit humankind’s well-being.


Dr. Jay Lehr

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

 

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Biden Promises, Policies and Pesky Political Problems

Paul Driessen Paul Driessen

Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to reunite America following its “season of darkness” under President Trump, and “shut down the virus, not the economy.” We’ve seen how that’s working out. 

His promise that there’ll be “no more drilling, no more pipelines, no more fossil fuels” has been far more successful. Within hours of taking office, President Biden ended Keystone XL pipeline construction and began imposing leasing and drilling moratoriums, slow-walking permits, pressuring banks not to fund oil companies, and taking other steps to turn his promises into policies. 

Unfortunately, with a little assistance from Putin’s savagery in Ukraine, Mr. Biden’s war on fossil fuels brought a host of pesky political problems. 

Gasoline and diesel prices more than doubled since November 2020; they reached $9.50 per gallon in parts of California before falling slightly. Mr. Biden’s approval plummeted, as food prices and inflation soared, and farmers, families, commuters and truckers voiced outrage. 

But because allowing more drilling would anger climate cultists obsessed with the catechism of climate cataclysm, Mr. Biden asked Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran to increase their oil production, so that he could keep America’s resources locked up.

He also released 125,000,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s emergency stockpiles – and on July 26 said he’d release 20,000,000 additional barrels. The administration claims this will “help lower energy costs,” “reduce the pain Americans are feeling at the pump,” and combat the “Putin price hike.” Perhaps minimally. 

Worse, Team Biden sent some 5,000,000 barrels of this oil overseas. Still more incredibly, it sold 950,000 barrels to the China Petrochemical Corporation. That’s China as in Chinese Communist Party – not Taiwan. The same Chinese government that is buying up thousands of acres of U.S. land, much of it near sensitive military installations

The optics are not good. And for an administration (and Democrat Party) focused on “racial justice” and America’s terrible legacy of slavery, public perceptions will only get worse, as the realities of the “green energy transition” become clear. 

First, this energy is not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. The sheer numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, and vehicle and backup batteries defy imagination. 

President Biden intends to eradicate coal and natural gas for generating electricity, gasoline and diesel for powering vehicles, natural gas for smelting and manufacturing, and natural gas for heating, cooking and water heating in homes, hospitals, schools and businesses. 

This would send America’s annual electricity requirement to almost 7.5 billion megawatt-hours per year by 2050. That’s nearly three times the fossil fuel portion of today’s U.S. electricity generation. It would require tens of thousands of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of half-ton backup-power battery modules – sprawling across America

Oil and natural gas are also feed stocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and numerous other products. How does Team Biden plan to replace them

President Biden’s proposal for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind power alone would require 2,500 enormous 800-foot-tall 12-megawatt turbines. Even if they operated at full capacity 24/7, they wouldn’t meet peak summertime electricity needs for New York State, much less the entire USA. 

But the turbines would require millions of tons of raw materials from hundreds of new mines – steel, aluminum, copper, fiberglass, concrete and others, whose extraction, processing and refining are energy- and land-intensive and highly polluting. 

Billions of solar panels would require massive amounts of polysilicon and other materials, from hundreds more mines. Billions of battery modules would require prodigious quantities of cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements, copper and other metals. More transformers and transmission lines – still more materials, from still more mines. 

Second, American environmentalists and climate campaigners steadfastly oppose these activities anywhere in the USA. The supply chains for most of these materials thus run through China – which controls the mining (in Mongolia, Africa, South America and elsewhere), processing (in China and Mongolia) and manufacturing (in China). 

China and the Chinese Communist Party achieve this because they have acquired mining properties all over the world; have huge coal-fired power plants to generate cheap electricity; don’t bother much with air or water pollution control, mined land reclamation or workplace safety standards required in Western countries; and utilize dirt-cheap, slave and child labor, most notably in Africa and Uyghur territories. 

Some 40,000 children already labor with their parents in Democratic Republic of Congo cobalt mines, for a few dollars a day, under threats of cave-ins, and with constant exposure to toxic air, mud, dust and water – just to meet today’s cobalt needs for manufacturing batteries. Those needs would skyrocket under a U.S. Green New Deal, and vastly more under an international “energy transition.” 

The cobalt ore is processed in China, under equally abominable safety and pollution conditions. Air and water pollution and an enormous toxic waste dump for rare earth effluents in Inner Mongolia have created serious health issues for plant workers and local residents. 

China also uses Uyghur slave labor to manufacture solar panels it sells to the United States. And Mr. Biden wants to suspend tariffs on Chinese solar panels, to make importing them even easier and cheaper.  

Over the past decade, the United States significantly reduced its (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide emissions, largely by replacing coal-fired electricity generation with natural gas. 

Meanwhile, in 2020 alone, China put 38,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants into operation. It relies on coal for 60% of its electricity and expects to mine 300 million more tons of coal in 2022 than in 2021. Beijing is also building, planning or financing more than 300 coal plants in Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, African countries and elsewhere, to raise their people out of poverty. India too burns millions of tons of coal annually.   

The United States could go fossil-fuel-free, and it wouldn’t affect global greenhouse gas levels one iota. 

But America could easily go from being a net oil and gas exporter two years ago, to being almost totally dependent on often unfriendly foreign sources for the materials required for its “renewable” energy, economy, manufacturing, living standards, communication, transportation – and national defense. Energy, food and consumer prices would climb even higher, hammering minority and other poor families. 

Moreover, every increase in “green” energy makes the United States more reliant on China which, like Russia, increasingly wields its energy, mineral and economic power as a weapon, to keep its client countries in line, dependent and subservient. Every increase makes us more complicitin slavery, eco-colonialism, environmental degradation and climate injustice. 

This Land of the Free must change course. As America reflects on its past, seeks “a more perfect Union,” reassesses the Separation of Powers, and endeavors to be a world leader in environmental protection and human rights, it must chart a future based on reality and true justice for all people

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

 

Great Idea For U.S. Energy Policy: Let's Follow The Example Of Germany!

@ Manhattan Contrarian

As readers here well know, Germany has long sought the mantle of world leader in the march to save the planet by eliminating fossil fuels from the production of energy. This has been the strategy: induce, via large government subsidies and tax credits, the construction of vast amounts of wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity; and as more of those come online, gradually phase out facilities that use fossil fuels, and also phase out nuclear.

Unfortunately, the Germans have been so blinded by their religious fervor to save the planet that nobody bothered to figure out how much energy storage would be needed to back up these intermittent technologies and keep the grid functioning 24/365 in the absence of fossil fuels and nuclear. Now Germany has an excess of wind and solar facilities that, however, are incapable of providing reliable power on their own; and it has inadequate back-up other than natural gas from Russia. Thus Germany is facing an imminent energy disaster.

Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., the word is that the Senate Democrats have finally gotten their black sheep Joe Manchin on board with a big “green energy” bill to take the U.S. to its own energy nirvana via a big reduction in carbon emissions. And how will that be done? Basically, we’re now going to follow the strategy of Germany! Lots and lots of tax credits and subsidies to build more and more wind turbines and solar panels, without any serious consideration of what will be needed in the way of storage to provide back-up for the intermittency and build a fossil-fuel-free grid. Is anybody around here paying attention to what is going on in the world?

Let’s check out the latest news from Germany on the energy front. On Wednesday, July 27, the Guardian reported that Russia had reduced the flow of natural gas to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline to 20% of capacity. It’s still July, and we’re several months from heating season, but Germany is rapidly realizing that its energy jig is up. Just one day later, on July 28, the Guardian had another article reporting that the energy rationing in Germany has already begun:

Cities in Germany are switching off spotlights on public monuments, turning off fountains, and imposing cold showers on municipal swimming pools and sports halls, as the country races to reduce its energy consumption in the face of a looming Russian gas crisis.

Meanwhile, Germany in June adopted an “energy emergency plan” that involves jacking up consumer prices to force less usage:

[A]n energy emergency plan initiated in June enables utility firms to pass on high gas prices to customers. . . . On Thursday, Germany’s government confirmed that a planned gas surcharge on customers could be much higher than previously expected, to save energy companies from going bankrupt in the coming months.

And Spiked on July 27 reports on various other energy rationing measures that Germany is adopting, well in advance of peak energy usage in the winter:

Germany is already having to make drastic cutbacks to energy use. Town councils are dimming or turning off street lights and even traffic lights. Large landlords and housing associations have started turning down the heating on their residents and rationing their hot water. Some local authorities are considering setting up ‘warm rooms’ for elderly people to gather in the winter.

But hang on a second. After more than a decade of a crash program to build wind turbines and solar panels, doesn’t Germany have more than enough of them to supply all of the electricity it could ever possibly use? You would think so, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, in 2020 (latest year given) Germany used 500,000 GWh of electricity, which would mean that its average usage (divide by 8760) was about 57 GW. 

Its peak usage (according to Montel) is about 100 GW. So if it had dispatchable generation resources (fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro) of about 120 GW, Germany should have a more than sufficient 20% margin and plenty of electricity. Instead Germany has vastly more generation capacity, 248 GW (again from the U.S. EIA for 2020). Of that, 54 GW is solar and 62 GW is wind, a total of 116 GW between those two, well more than its entire peak usage, and more than double average usage. But you can’t count on any of it when you need it. The small amount of nuclear (8 GW) is on the way out. So they can’t get rid of the natural gas as backup, and with fracking banned in their own country and also throughout Western Europe, they are left completely dependent on natural gas from Russia.

The price to German households for electricity at the end of 2021 stood at an average of 32.16 cent per KWh, which is before any further recent increases. That is about triple the average U.S. consumer electricity price. For that you get shortages and rationing.

So what is the U.S. energy strategy going to be under the new Senate bill just negotiatied by Manchin and Majority Leader Schumer? The answer is, it’s basically the same as the German strategy. In a few words, massive subsidies and tax breaks to incentivize the construction of vast amounts of wind turbines and solar panels. From E&E Daily, July 28:

Huge win for clean energy. . . . Clean energy tax credits are the centerpiece. Under the deal, existing renewable credits would be extended. After 2025, they would become technology neutral and based on greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Is there any deeper thinking behind this than just that wind and solar are “clean” so we should build more of them? Doesn’t look like it. So give us a few years of this, and we’ll be right where Germany is: vast excess capacity of wind and solar panels, none of which is there when you need it, and electricity rates tripled to pay for the redundant excess capacity and subsidies to the people who built it. At least so far we have our own natural gas for the backup, but they’re trying to shut that down too.



 

“Green” Is Unsustainable

August 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker 

The administration’s “green” energy proposals, like those that have been adopted in Europe, are leading this country toward an economic, social and strategic disaster. It is hard to think of any set of policies, adopted by any government at any moment in history, that rival our “green” mania for sheer destructiveness. Although, that said, Sri Lanka’s brief commitment to “sustainability” comes to mind. 

Speaking of sustainability, this piece by Stuart Gottlieb in today’s Wall Street Journal, titled “Biden’s Climate Plans Are Unsustainable,” makes some great points.

[T]he greatest threat to [environmental] progress—particularly in the critical realm of climate—comes not from such emerging mega-emitters as China and India, although they certainly play a role. It comes from the energy and climate initiatives promoted by the Biden White House, which are themselves unsustainable—so aggressive and unduly optimistic that they risk a backlash that would set back the cause of environmental sustainability for generations.

This is true for at least three reasons.

To begin with, the agenda is economically unsustainable. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, global demand for energy will rise nearly 50% by 2050, with fossil fuels still accounting for roughly 75% of world supply. Though many Democrats insist this simply proves the urgency of making the transition, there are no economic models showing how that could occur without causing massive harm to the underlying economy. A McKinsey & Co. report shows that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 would require nearly $6 trillion in new spending globally every year for the next 30 years—roughly equal to one-third of all tax receipts by every government in the world.

My experience with energy-related studies by companies like McKinsey causes me to think that this estimate is probably low by a factor of several times, if not orders of magnitude. But McKinsey’s numbers are bad enough. It simply isn’t going to happen..............On energy, as on a number of other issues, the Democratic Party is on a collision course with reality. Call me an optimist, but throughout human history when ideology meets reality, reality generally wins................To Read More....

 

Thursday, June 30, 2022

Biden’s electric caravan to Green utopia runs out of gas

By | June 28th, 2022| Energy| 54 Comments @ CFACT

The woke Biden administration is receiving loud wake up calls from appropriately alarmed constituents as their poll numbers tank.

The message is that a vast majority of the country isn’t feverish enough about global warming Armageddon hyped by a powerful coalition of globalist non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), investment corporations, well-funded environmental activist, green subsidy lobbies, far left government special interest groupsand politicosto warrant sacrificing reliable, affordable fossil-fueled energy sufficiency essential to individual life quality and national economic prosperity.

The rude awakening is warranted.

Throughout our history, America’s rich abundance of oil, natural gas and coal has afforded US citizens the world’s highest living standards. And until very recentlyjust before Joe Biden took officeour nation was not only energy independent, but also a leading global oil and gas exporter.

Witness the current paradox, a presidential promise to kill the hydrocarbon industry, followed up by implementing every conceivable regulatory measure to do precisely that.

And then the hubris to demand that this same “big oil” pump more of their evil product as they simultaneously plead with Saudi Arabia, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuela, and Iran to do the same.

The consequences should hardly be surprisingrecord gasoline and diesel prices that are rippling through every corner of business and driving up food and commodity costs with a devastating 8.6% four-decade high inflation.

Perhaps even far left liberals are beginning to realize that the idea of replacing the more than 80% of reliable energy we get from hydrocarbons by growing the less than 4% provided by intermittent wind and solar combined plus then also try to add millions of electric vehicles to already overstressed power grids that require big batteries that depend upon rare earth minerals where 80% come from Chinamay not be a feasible, winning strategy after all.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Joe and his core White House and congressional supporters have attempted to push and sell to the public when, as a presidential candidate, he promised: “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.”

On his first day in office, President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and halted new leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

A week later, he banned new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, and in June he shut down exploration on existing leases in ANWR.

In October, he increased the regulatory burdens on building pipelines and other infrastructure, and last February, he limited leasing in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A).

Then, in April, almost a year after a federal judge enjoined the White House from implementing its pause on leases in federal lands and waters, the Biden administration finally offered 144,400 acres for exploration—only 20% of the acreage originally slated for this tranche of leases—an area less than half the size of Phoenix.

By comparison, bear in mind here that the Federal Government owns and manages 640 million acres, 28% of all US land, totaling about six times the size of California.

The feds also raised the federal royalty rate for new leases 50% from 12.5% to 18.77%, the first increase since they were first imposed in the 1920’s.

On top of that, the Biden White House intently nominated vehemently anti-fossil energy officials to shepherd draconian regulatory policies including climate impact disclosures to dry up industry investment capital in favor of preferred “clean” alternatives.

Enter the administration’s Department of Energy Secretary, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who supported every failed government subsidized green boondoggle the Obama-Biden administration threw in her lap.

The Mackinac Center, a Michigan think tank, reported that only 2.3% of Granholm’s hundreds of millions of handouts for favored start-ups in her state during her governorship from 2003 to 2011 met their advertised job creation promises.

Appearing recently on CNN’s “State of the Union,” ahead of President Biden’s plan to meet with the Saudi’s once again seeking relief from his self-inflicted policies, Granholm said, “we need to have increased production, so that everyday citizens in America will not be feeling this pain that they’re feeling right now.”

This national indignity, after the Saudi crown prince previously refused to take our president’s call, followed Biden’s letter to seven major oil producers and refiners in June, demanding them to take “immediate action” to increase the supply of gasoline, and blasting them for record prices at the gas pump—which he also conveniently blamed on Vladimir Putin.

After all, it was Biden’s war on America’s hydrocarbons, not Putin’s war on Ukraine, that reduced supplies and drove up prices.

In January of 2021, the average price of regular gasoline was $2.33 a gallon.

By February of this year, it was up to $3.52.

Since as of May, the average price was $4.44, 56% of that rise predated the invasion.

Rapidly approaching midterm elections leave Democrats little time to relieve inflationary pump pains. Other than return to Trump-era policies—which his party’s far left wing won’t possibly allow, Joe Biden’s only remaining options are short-term gimmicks intended to appear show he’s doing something helpful.

A total public feel-good deception was to have his EPA increase the maximum allowable amount of ethanol additive in petroleum from 10% (E10) currently, to 15% (E15) over summer driving months between June 1 and Sept. 15.

The ethanol strategy is a sham “fix” which will only add to inflationary food costs by consuming more of our nation’s corn supply, provides about 40% less energy than petroleum (reducing milage efficiency); and offers no environmental advantages or CO2 emission reduction benefits whatsoever.

The White House is also pushing for Congress to suspend the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax for three months, primarily a public relations play that could save about $3 on the $75 it costs to fill up an average 15-gallon gas tank at $4.98 per gallon.

New York’s June 1st suspension of its 16-cent gas tax—out of roughly 46 cents a gallon between state and local taxeshas had notably little consumer benefit, leaving the $4.98 a gallon pump price nearly unchanged.

In the end, President Biden and his progressive playbook have successfully accomplished what they set out to do—to make fossil energy prohibitively expensive so that we use less of it.

Their major failure in the process was attempting to replace those marvelously abundant and efficient hydrocarbons with magical green alternatives before their empty promises ran out of gas, their midterm polls tanked, and their roadmap to Utopia led the country to nowhere any of us should ever wish to be.

This article originally appeared at NewsMax

Author

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    CFACT Advisor Larry Bell heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston. He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. He is also the author of "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax."