Best Energy Picks - September 14, 2024
Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.
This week’s best energy picks:
Weep Not for the Polar Bears — California Mandating Climate Change Indoctrination of Students — What Happens When There's No Solar OR Wind? — The Political Costs of Net Zero Are Approaching Like a Bullet Train — and much more.
This is what passes for science with the Sierra Club:
Last year, I visited Churchill with Natural Habitat Adventures to photograph the bears myself … before it was too late. According to the most recent study by Polar Bear International (PBI), one of the largest nonprofits dedicated to protecting polar bears, that time may be coming much sooner than researchers initially anticipated…
According to a new study by York’s organization, other nonprofits, and multiple universities, if the world fails to abide by the Paris Agreement and temperatures rise 2°C above preindustrial levels, the Hudson Bay population will experience a localized extinction as soon as the next decade.
“The disappearance of the Southern Hudson Bay polar bears is imminent, with Western Hudson Bay not far behind,” said Julienne Stroeve, a University of Manitoba professor who is the study’s lead author. “Our research underscores the rapid changes human activity imparts to our climate. It's incumbent upon us to understand the impending impact on our natural world so that we can make policy decisions informed by science.”
…According to the new study, nearly two dozen climate models predict the ice in Southern Hudson Bay will fail to freeze if the temperature rises to 1.6°C–2.1°C levels. At the same time, the Western Hudson Bay region becomes an unsuitable habitat at 2.2°C or 2.6°C. Those rising temperatures also wreak havoc on ring seals. The warmer temperatures mean seals will have a tougher time creating birthing dens, as more dens will be washed away by the rain that supplants the snowfall. Fewer ring seal pups mean the polar bears’ survival is even more fraught…
on the cub, abandoned by its mother and sibling, dying and starving alone on the tundra. I broke down, weeping large, chest-heaving sobs. As the earth’s temperature continues to rise, the only pockets of polar bears will be found in the northernmost Arctic and zoos.
It’s all speculation, of course, and then there’s this:
2023 marked 50 years of international cooperation to protect polar bears across the Arctic. Those efforts have been a conservation success story: from a population estimated at about 12,000 bears in the late 1960s, numbers have almost tripled, to just over 32,000 in 2023…
There were no reports from the Arctic in 2023 indicating polar bears were being harmed due to lack of summer sea ice habitat, in part because Arctic sea ice in summer has not declined since 2007…
A survey of Southern Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 showed an astonishing 30% increase over five years, which adds another 223 bears to the global total.
A concurrent survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 showed that numbers had not declined since 2011, which also means they have not declined since 2004.
Weep not for the polar bears but, rather, those who keep acting as purveyors of ploar bear doom.
Hat Tip: D.S.
California Mandating Climate Change Indoctrination of Students
How much worse can the Golden State get? A lot worse, it appears.
California public schools are set to begin a mandatory curriculum about climate change, reportedly designed to indoctrinate children in the state, as a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, AB 285, takes effect. [emphasis, links added]
The Federalist reported on AB 285:
Science classes for students in California will feature new additions to the curriculum this year designed to indoctrinate students on climate change through the apocalyptic lens of far-left activists.
Last fall, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 285 to mandate all science classes for grades 1 through 12 “include an emphasis on the causes and effects of climate change and methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
…The bombardment of doomsday climate commentary has meanwhile contributed to widespread environmental anxiety among children. In December 2021, The Lancet published a study from a team of nine researchers, including psychologists, environmental scientists, and psychiatrists, who surveyed 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 across 10 countries about their “climate anxiety” and their governments’ responses to environmental issues.
Seventy-five percent reported feeling the “future is frightening,” and 83 percent said humanity “failed to take care of the planet.” The study also reported that nearly half said their “feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.”
What will it take to save California? Getting worse to the point there is a backlash. Sad, but accurate.
Hat Tip: S.H.
What Happens When There's No Solar OR Wind?
This is beautiful!
Over the last week or so, I saw this graph making the rounds, accompanied by a similar comment: “Wow, wind and solar seasonally balance on the grid. This is great news!”
And don’t they have a point? See how at the monthly level, whenever wind dips, solar rises, and vice versa? Maybe Europe just needs more wind and solar! Maybe if we can build the right models we can figure out how to get there!
But let’s take a closer look at Germany.
Notice where both wind and solar fail. At those moments, you’ll need full back-up, which means you’ll need capacity at least equal to demand in those moments to make it through random moments of renewable failure. Or else, blackouts.
Thus, the dream of seasonal balancing is two 7’s and a cherry—“almost” but actually “not at all.”
Simple and to the point. Just beautiful!
Hat Tip: R.N.
The Political Costs of Net Zero Are Approaching Like a Bullet Train
The great Mark Mills:
To understand where current federal energy policies are taking the nation, we can look to the states, the “laboratories of democracy,” and especially to a group of them eagerly following California’s lead, putting into effect massive changes to energy policies.
Consider New Jersey. As its website brags, it has “one of the most ambitious Renewable Portfolio Standards in the country.” Earlier this summer, headlines featured news about citizens shocked at soaring electric bills, thanks to a state-approved price hike. And that’s just for starters. Early in August, PJM, the grid administrator that manages electricity for a 13-state region that includes New Jersey, reported the results of its auction for supplying next year’s wholesale power: the bids came in nearly ten times as high as last year.
Those cost hikes are a direct consequence of the fact that New Jersey, along with neighboring New York and half of PJM’s regional members, share similar goals: the aggressive pursuit of an “energy transition” to renewables. The plans reach far beyond electricity markets. The goal is to force—by mandates, regulations, and subsidies—a transition away from all uses of hydrocarbons: petroleum, natural gas, and coal.
There is rampant naïveté, at best, about the associated costs of trying to force such a transition at all, and especially doing so quickly. Start with the fact that hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of society’s energy—in New Jersey, over 90 percent. Even this understates reality because those data relate to the statistical share of so-called primary energy. Hydrocarbons are used in at least some part of all supply chains for all products and services. But New Jersey and many other states’ declared policy is “to achieve 100 percent clean energy by 2035,” wherein “clean” is defined as “carbon free.” It’s no stretch to assert that this won’t happen. What’s more important is having some honesty about the costs of pursuing that goal…
And transition plans for New Jersey and elsewhere are more ambitious than merely rendering electricity expensive and unreliable. Their goals—along with those of numerous other states, and now our federal government—also include forcing consumers into electric vehicles (EVs) by banning the sale of conventional cars and pushing electrification for heating and cooking in homes and buildings. Hype aside, it’s becoming obvious that EVs are, on average, more expensive for consumers, and building the electricity infrastructure to fuel them (which ratepayers ultimately pay for) will be fantastically expensive. During the time it will take for EV mandates to collapse under the weight of reality, billions of dollars will be squandered. Meantime, policy initiatives to transition away from natural gas stoves and water heaters are also intended to drive costs up—at least until outright bans are put into place.
Ultimately, the economic fallout becomes political. Every politician knows that polls show most citizens rank economic issues as a top, if not the top, concern. Neither creative subsidies nor flowery rhetoric can hide the economic—and eventually electoral—consequences.
He's 100% correct.
Hat Tip: K.L.
And, Briefly:
Europe Hammered with Cold, Not Heat, from D.S.
Yes, Virginia, China Will Keep Using More and More Coal, from D.B.
Green Bread, No Ham, from I.S.
More Solar Silliness In The New York Times, from R.B.
The Tragedy of the German Commons, from R.M.
An ESG Backlash Erupts in Europe on World's Strictest Rules, from S.H.
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #Electricity #Solar #GlobalWarming #Wind #EVs #Oil #Gas
Bears are omnivores. That means they can eat just about anything, so I'm not worried about them, as long as they don't eat me. Also, some polar bears are interbreeding with grizzly bears, and I'm sure they can mix with brown bears and black bears too.
https://www.livescience.com/pizzly-bear-hybrids-created-by-climate-crisis.html
This highlights the lunacy of the climate cult!