The Laughable Fantasy Of 100% Renewable Energy

You probably have heard by now of the famous part of the Green New Deal (endorsed by all major Democratic candidates for President!) that would eliminate “farting cows and airplanes”; but you haven’t yet actually read the full quote. As a service to readers, I provide it here (from the FAQ):

Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases. Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it [sic] — this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible. We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees, and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.

So yes, you’ll have to wait until after the first 10 years to fully eliminate the farting cows and airplanes. But the good news is that achieving 100% “renewable manufacturing and power production” and “the smart grid” is not a difficult problem at all. Only the evil fossil fuel companies stand in our way!

Does your pesky inquiring mind just keep wondering how exactly they propose to keep the lights on and the heat running on a calm winter night? . . .

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Progressivism: What Is The Limiting Principle?

Yesterday’s semi-official launch of the Green New Deal has done a big favor for our national political debate: It has finally put squarely on the table the fundamental question that needs to be addressed, yet never is addressed, namely, what is the limiting principle of the progressive project? Or really, is there any limiting principle at all? Let me illustrate.

Always (or at least, always before now) the progressive proposals to make the world perfectly just and fair have been presented one by one. Wouldn’t the world be so much more fair if we only had free (government paid) college for all? Many people look at such a proposal and think, sure, that would make things a little more fair; I guess I could get on board with it. Then, wouldn’t the world be so much more fair if we had universal (government paid) health care for all. In isolation, same reaction. Separately, wouldn’t it be great to “save the planet” by getting carbon emissions under control (by some form of government subsidy and/or command)? Addressed separately, and with no context of what other proposals may be coming, many people find themselves nodding along. With your attention diverted from the big picture, any of these proposals might get your support. . . .

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The Climate Scare: Ever More Shrill, Ever Less Serious

The Climate Scare:  Ever More Shrill, Ever Less Serious

The Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives! And, for their first act, how about some scary “climate” hearings? The New York Times, of course, takes the occasion to run a big front-page story with the headline (in the print edition — online is different) “2018 Continues Warming Trend, As 4th Hottest Year Since 1880.” Let’s apply a little critical analysis.

The Times adorns their article with a huge temperature graph, covering the period 1880 to 2018, that goes across two-thirds of the top of the front page. The overall trend looks up at first glance. But on not-very-much-closer inspection, it is obvious that 2017 was down from 2016, and 2018 was down from 2017. How exactly does that constitute 2018 “continu[ing the] warming trend”? I would have said that the last two years in a row down is the opposite of “continuing the warming trend,” but what do I know?

The Times’s graph derives from the systematically-altered NASA/GISS surface temperature series. Go to my 19-part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” to learn more than you would ever want to know about the adjustments that NASA and NOAA make to the surface temperature record to lower earlier year temperatures and raise later year temperatures to create a fake enhanced warming trend. Since all reasonably-informed readers would know about the serious allegations of data alteration in the surface temperature records of NASA and NOAA, would you think that the Times would deign to mention the issue, let alone mention the existence of the far more accurate satellite record that exists since 1979 and shows something far different? . . .

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Eulogy For Roger Andrews

Eulogy For Roger Andrews

The Energy Matters web site reports today that Roger Andrews has died. This is a tremendous, almost immeasurable loss. He was 77 year old.

Although I have relied repeatedly on Mr. Andrews’s work since I first discovered it a couple of years ago, you may not recognize his name. He was by far the major contributor to the Energy Matters site. In the field of energy and the environment, he covered a particular niche, namely, analyzing data in order to evaluate the practical problems of trying to power an electrical grid with intermittent energy from the wind and/or sun. Although he was a trained engineer, his most important posts did not rely on any sort of arcane engineering knowledge inaccessible to the layman. Most of the time, what he did was simply to collect publicly available data and perform analysis of it based on simple arithmetic. The most important thing was that he thought like an engineer. Always he was asking, “What problems would you need to solve in order to actually make this system work?” The problems that he uncovered and exposed were generally blindingly obvious once you looked at his analysis — but, in a field currently dominated by quasi-religious zealotry, somehow people can’t see such things.

Today, I will remind you of a few of Mr. Andrews’s important contributions. . . .

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What Is The Biggest Problem Facing The United States?

If you were asked to identify the biggest problem facing the United States today, what would be your answer? I think that the answer is obvious: out-of-control entitlement spending that threatens to bankrupt the country.

Reasonable people might differ about this assessment. For example, some might cite the threats posed by international strategic adversaries, like China or Russia or Iran. Or the threat of a rogue power like North Korea or Iran getting, and maybe using, nuclear weapons. I’m not saying that these aren’t serious problems, but just that there’s not much that can be done about them that we aren’t already doing. Also, I don’t think the chances of any of these guys doing something really stupid, like launching an unprovoked nuclear strike, are very high.

By contrast, the entitlement funding problem is gigantic, and obvious, and by no means imaginary, and currently nobody is doing anything about it whatsoever. The bonded national debt — currently around $20 trillion and about 100% of annual GDP — is often cited as a big problem. But the unfunded future liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare programs are far higher. The 2018 Trustees’ Reports for the Social Security and Medicare programs put their 75-year unfunded liabilities at approximately a combined $50 trillion (approximately $13 trillion for Social Security and $37 trillion for Medicare). And many analysts give credible reasons why those figures represent substantial low-balling of a much bigger problem. For example, James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute, in a June 2018 post following release of the Trustees’ Reports, points to highly optimistic assumptions about ability to control future Medicare costs (“the Medicare projections assume deep, permanent, and ongoing cuts in payment rates for physicians and hospitals that are difficult to believe will be implemented”), as well as equally optimistic birth rate assumptions. Other credible observers think the shortfalls, particularly on the Medicare side, could easily be double or more the government’s official projections. For example, from Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in 2015 (“[I]f we return to double digit health care inflation, we could see Medicare’s liabilities swell to more than $88 trillion.”).

You may recall that President George W. Bush made a serious effort at least to begin to address this problem. During his first term, he appointed a Commission to come up with some solutions on the Social Security side, and the Commission proposed a series of reforms. None of them went anywhere in Congress. W did not try again in his second term. President Obama, and now President Trump, have showed no interest in this subject.

Anyway, I mention this subject today because not only is nobody paying any attention whatsoever to the huge problem, but over on the Democratic side, with the 2020 presidential sweepstakes just getting started, there has suddenly erupted some kind of a bidding war as to who can offer the most grandiose and completely impossible set of proposed expansions to the existing entitlement state.

It was Bernie Sanders, of course, who laid down the original marker for the bare minimum list of new entitlements for a true “progressive” Democrat to embrace. Bernie’s list in his campaign for the 2016 nomination included the following:

  • Medicare for all.

  • Social Security benefit increases

  • Infrastructure program

  • College affordability (free tuition for all!)

  • New paid leave fund

  • Bolster private pension funds

  • Youth jobs initiative

In a September 2015 article, the Wall Street Journal put a ten-year price tag on that list of $18 trillion. Others put the figure at $30 trillion or more. Whichever it is, Bernie’s list has turned out to be merely the small opening bid in what is quickly becoming a much grander game.

Credit new “it” Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with launching the advocacy for what she calls the “Green New Deal.” We’ll eliminate all fossil-fuel energy within 10 years! With government spending and subsidies tossed out left and right, of course. Next thing you know, the presidential candidates are lining up to get on the bandwagon: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris. Do any of them have a clue how much this might cost, let alone how it could be engineered? Not a chance. A recent study by Roger Andrews at the site Energy Matters put the cost of batteries alone for a wind/solar/battery system just for California at about $5 trillion. Multiply by about 8 to get a cost for the full U.S.: $40 trillion. As you know from your cell phone, the batteries would need to be replaced every few years. The cost of the wind turbines and solar collectors is extra.

Where to from here? Ms. AOC is never short of other bright new ideas. How about “Housing as a human right”? She must be inspired by the great “success” of the New York City Housing Authority — an infinite sink for about $2 billion a year in federal funds and in desperate need of some $30 billion for capital repairs. Multiply those numbers by about 30 if you want to replicate on a national scale. Oh, and the 170,000 units of NYCHA housing somehow never make a dent in the “homeless” problem.

And then there is the proposal for “reparations” for black Americans, most prominently pushed by Representative Maxine Waters. She has recently become the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Any price tag for that? It’s whatever you want it to be. Make your bid!

These are people who talk endlessly about “sustainability.” They just have a different definition of the word than I do.

The January Climate Follies

In my last several weeks out of the country, I have not been keeping up with the ridiculous “climate” follies. What has been going on? Let’s check a few data points.

You will not be surprised to learn that the state of Minnesota aspires to be a green energy leader. After a big push since 2000, Minnesota has gotten its percent of electricity generation from wind on an annual basis up to almost 19%. Sounds great! Then, yesterday and today, the temperature in much of the state plunged to -20 deg F and below. Yesterday in St. Paul, the wind was completely calm for much of the day, and very light the rest of the time. Isaac Orr at the Center of the American Experiment took the occasion to write a piece headlined “It’s Negative 24 Degrees and the Wind Isn’t Blowing.”

[W]ind is  producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part. . . . Coal, on the other hand, is churning out 45 percent of our power, nuclear is providing 13 percent, and natural gas is providing 26 percent of our electricity. This is exactly why the renewable energy lobby’s dream of shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants and “replacing” them with wind and solar is a fairy tale. . . .

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