August 09, 2022

We May Have Dodged A Bullet In The Misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act"

August 09, 2022/ Francis Menton

On Sunday (August 7) the Senate passed the 700+ page bill with the Orwellian name of the “Inflation Reduction Act.” The bill has essentially nothing to do with supposedly reducing inflation, and is really just a conventional tax-and-spend extravaganza, with hundreds of billions of dollars of completely counterproductive taxing on the one hand, and even larger amounts of equally counterproductive and wasteful spending on the other hand.
The bill is still not final, since it differs substantially from a version previously passed by the House. So it may be a while before there is an enacted statute. But now that the main hurdle of Senate passage has been cleared, there probably will be a statute within days, in all likelihood identical to what the Senate has passed.
This is one of the very worst bills ever to clear a house of Congress, although to be fair the (equally misnamed) Build Back Better bill passed by the House toward the end of last year was much larger and would have been even worse.
But from information coming to me, it appears that the very most destructive provision of the proposed bill got scrapped at the very last minute, just prior to Senate passage. That was a provision that would have attempted to substantially undo the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in West Virginia v. EPA.
Although the bill is not final, and I cannot find definitive information at the time of this writing, it appears likely that we have dodged a huge bullet, at least for the moment.

August 06, 2022

Net Zero Is Not Just For Carbon Emissions -- Now It's Nitrogen

August 06, 2022/ Francis Menton

In recent months the insane world-wide campaign against the emission of carbon into the atmosphere has not been going all that well for the zealots.
Among other things, the Ukraine war has highlighted the fact that wind and solar electricity generators can’t really work on their own to power a modern economy. That has left places like Germany and the UK that built the most of them facing soaring energy prices and dependence on natural gas from Russia for backup. Those countries and others are in the process of being forced by reality to at least slow down on their march toward Net Zero as to carbon emissions.
But meanwhile, there’s another campaign for Net Zero that until recently has been flying mostly under the radar. That is the campaign against nitrogen.

August 03, 2022

August 03, 2022/ Francis Menton

The front page of today’s New York Times features a big article clearly intended to get the readers riled up about the latest environmental horror that must be stopped. The headline is “The Illegal Airstrips Bringing Toxic Mining to Brazil’s Indigenous Land.” Subheadline: “The Times identified hundreds of airstrips that bring criminal mining operations to the most remote corners of the Amazon.”
Wow, this is bad. The airstrips are “illegal.” The mining is “toxic,” and not only toxic but also “criminal.” And it’s all happening in the most pristine place left in the whole world, the “remote corners of the Amazon,” much of it inhabited by the most innocent of all innocent indigenous people, the Yanomami.
So what is driving this big rush of miners into these remote regions? Could so-called “green energy” — with its vast demands for raw materials like nickel, manganese, aluminum and iron — have anything to do with it?

August 01, 2022

August 01, 2022/ Francis Menton

Although the issues surrounding “climate change” are among the most consequential ones in our politics, you have probably noticed that head-to-head debates on the subject are quite rare. The main reason is that proponents of climate change orthodoxy generally refuse to debate anyone who questions any aspect of the dogma.
So you will be glad to hear that a real debate between significant figures on the two sides of the issues will shortly take place at — where else? — the Soho Forum. That’s the organization where daughter and frequent Manhattan Contrarian contributor Jane Menton is the Chief Operating Officer. The date of the debate is Monday, August 15.
The debaters will be Andrew Dessler and Steven Koonin.

July 30, 2022

July 30, 2022/ Francis Menton

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!

July 28, 2022

July 28, 2022/ Francis Menton

If my posting has been a little light for the last month or so, it’s because I’ve been working on a big Report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the subject of energy storage as a means to back up electricity generation from wind and solar facilities. The Report is basically finished, and now going through an editing process. It will probably be published some time in September.
In doing the research for the Report, I have had occasion to look carefully into the plans of many countries and U.S. states that claim to be the “leaders” in climate virtue, specifically on the subject of how they intend to reach the goal of Net Zero carbon emissions from generation of electricity.
These climate “leaders” include, in Europe, Germany and the UK, and in the U.S., California and New York. One would think that for any jurisdiction pursuing Net Zero ambitions, and seeking to abolish use of fossil fuels, it would be completely imperative that some energy storage solution absolutely must be found to provide back-up for the electricity system when the wind and sun are not producing.
But what my research has shown is that every one of these jurisdictions seeking to be the leader toward Net Zero has given astoundingly insufficient consideration to the energy storage problem.