March 11, 2024

The Mystery Of The Uncontrolled Hatred Of Fossil Fuels And Those Who Produce Them

March 11, 2024/ Francis Menton

What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?
I’ve been trying to figure out the answer to that question for many years, but I’m no closer today than when I started.
I look at the use of fossil fuels in the world, and somehow I see enormous benefits to mankind — reliable electricity, transportation of people locally and at long distances, and of freight to enable worldwide trade, comfortable heating and cooling of homes, refrigeration to preserve food, computers, and so much more, all at remarkably low cost and remarkably small environmental impact. Most uses of fossil fuels either have no good substitutes (e.g., air travel, ocean shipping, steel-making), or only substitutes that have both higher cost, plus inferior functionality and/or their own environmental problems (e.g., wind, solar, or nuclear for electricity).
With almost no exceptions (e.g., the Unabomber) everybody who has access to fossil fuels or their energy output uses them in large quantities, precisely because they provide great benefits at low cost and low environmental impact, in ways that nothing else can. Even the most virtue signaling of climate fanatics, with almost no exceptions, won’t give up air travel, or buildings made with steel and concrete, or full-time life-saving electricity at the hospital, or plenty of other things that come only from fossil fuels.

March 08, 2024

New York And California Getting Totally Lost With Energy Storage

March 08, 2024/ Francis Menton

For a number of years, I’ve been observing demands of activists and promises of politicians that we transition our electrical grid to being supplied mainly by the intermittent renewables, wind and solar, with all large dispatchable sources (fossil fuel and nuclear) banished.
Early on, I thought it was obvious that such a transition would inevitably mean that the only way to make the grid function full-time would be energy storage — on a vast scale never before contemplated or attempted.
How much storage, and at what potential cost? This is actually an arithmetic problem, somewhat cumbersome but conceptually very elementary, and easily done with today’s widely-available spreadsheet programs. To help matters along, in December 2022 I produced my energy storage Report (“The Energy Storage Conundrum”), laying out the main options and the calculations involved. My conclusion was that I could not see any way that this could be done at remotely feasible cost. (Anybody who disagrees is welcome to prove me wrong.) Today, if somebody wants to effect an energy transition in a state or country, they can just look to my Report to quickly understand the nature and extent of the energy storage challenge.
What has actually occurred since December 2022 is that our “climate leader” jurisdictions — in the U.S., that would be New York and California — have moved forward with energy storage proposals that any moron can easily see will not work.

March 05, 2024

March 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

The energy implosion set in motion by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act) continues to unfold slowly. This week we have gotten a few more new data points.
If you can read between the lines of wild spinning by the Governor and her team of bureaucrats, you will find that the scope of offshore wind projects moving forward with accepted bids has decreased by about two-thirds, while the price has just jumped by over 30%.
First, some background. The Climate Act sets several unachievable and impossible targets, the first of which is 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030.
How to get there? The bureaucrats in charge of meeting the targets have no idea what they are doing, but they have established as a first goal to have some 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines (nameplate capacity) up and running by some point in the 2030s.

March 02, 2024

March 02, 2024/ Francis Menton

Two weeks ago, on February 16, in a case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Justice Arthur Engoron of the New York State Supreme Court issued his decision ordering Donald Trump to pay some $355 million of “disgorgement” penalties.
The issuance of Justice Engoron’s decision brought forth an immediate reaction from many quarters (including Manhattan Contrarian here).
If the AG can use a broad statute to target a politically-disfavored individual like Trump in this way, how could any person doing business in New York think they are safe from similar legal abuse?
Recognizing the problem, our lightweight Governor Kathy Hochul went on a radio talk show on February 18 in an effort to reassure the New York business community.

February 28, 2024

February 28, 2024/ Francis Menton

In 2019, New York enacted a Climate Act, imposing on the citizens various legal mandates for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and net zero targets, the most immediate of which is a mandate of 70% of electricity production from zero-carbon-emissions sources by 2030. The official title of the Act is actually the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
I’ve written a lot about portions of the Act dealing with reducing carbon emissions. Those portions are completely delusional, but at least they ostensibly have something to do with protecting the world’s climate.
And then there is this “Community Protection” piece. What is that about? Try reading some of the materials coming out of our climate bureaucracies and you will learn that a second and co-equal focus of the Act is supposedly helping or protecting what they call “justice communities” living near at least some of the power plants.

February 25, 2024

February 25, 2024/ Francis Menton

Every year millions of people move from one country in the world to another with the intent to remain permanently in the destination country.
Generally such people then congregate in the destination country among others who have come from the same place of origin. In other words, they form colonies of settlers. According to the normal meanings of the words, they are “settler colonialists.”
So how should these “settler colonialists” be treated upon arrival by their destination countries?
Oddly, the political left has designated some of the settler colonialists as heroes deserving of an enthusiastic welcome replete with lavish taxpayer-funded benefits — free housing (at least temporarily), free medical care, free education for the kids, even cash handouts for food and incidentals; while other settler colonialists have been designated by the same leftists as the ultimate evil.