Excellent analysis, as always. Most Americans who have never resided in CA do not understand the cost of their State climate policies. Texans and much of the rest of the Red US pay roughly 15 cents per kWh or less, Californians pay 30-80 cents per kWh, depending on the time of day, area and usage.
Add to that, gas that often seems to hover around $5 a gallon, thanks in no small part to nearly 70 cent gas taxes and the closing of state refineries. CA had nearly double the refineries working today, when their population was only 1/2 as large. The state has lost nearly 1/4 of its' refining capacity just since 2019. Nor are things likely to improve , anytime soon. Like battered wives that have finally had enough, more mistreated refiners are plotting their escape.
Due to the inflated costs, more than 10% of Californians suffer "Energy Poverty". The term refers to Golden Staters who must choose between paying for energy and eating, at the end of each month. The problem became so pervasive, state laws were passed that forbade electricity disconnection for most non payment. After only a few years, the result is 2.5 million Californians now in arrears more than $1.1 billion dollars, on their electric bills.
One can imagine the economic destruction from sea to shining sea, had the entire US ever been forced to adopt CA energy policies, as Dems have long demanded. All Americans should be grateful, the insanity will not be allowed to spread.
Can you tell me where you’re getting your figures on energy cost? I looked online, and then I used ChatGPT to search for information about solar energy prices in Texas in California. It told me the price is very similar – about $.12-$.14 per kilowatt hour in Texas and about $.14-$.16 per kilowatt hour in California. I am no expert and energy policy and prices, so perhaps i am missing a trick here. But everything I read suggest that solar power is increasingly price competitive with other sources- for example, solar is expanding rapidly in Texas.
I do agree with the larger point that Democrats should emphasize cheap, abundant energy. But the best way to do that, I’m almost certain, is to build out all energy types, not say oil and gas are good and renewables are bad.
There’s a kind of culture-war hostility toward clean power in the Republican Party that is at least as bad if not worse than Democratic Party opposition to fossil fuels. Why, for instance, are Republicans trying to do away with tax credits for zero carbon power and credits for US-based battery manufacture? Those credits aren’t limited to solar, wind, and hydro - they also go to nuclear and carbon sequestration. And we don’t make enough of any of those. The global market for electricity is booming, and we’ll need more and more power - for AI, for cars, stoves, and so on. World markets for batteries and battery powered goods are, similarly, going to explode. So, why are Republicans insisting that everything has to be fossil fuels and everything electrified or renewable is terrible? They’re going to undermine America’s competitive position in world markets, and with downstream tech and manufacturing expertise. It will also risk our national security. Ukraine just showed us what drones can do, and those need batteries. China makes a huge share of the world’s batteries, and we make very few, yet Republicans want to cut incentives for US manufacture.
Have no idea on what web site you would find CA power prices at 15 cents. Lived in CA for 25 years. At no time was electricity that cheap for large homes.
Moreover, CA prices are tiered. Use a little, basically the average use of 1000-1200 sq feet apartment or home, and the price per kWh is the lower end 30 cents. Have a large home and the more juice used, the higher the price. Also certain times of the day are more expensive.
Google Joel Kotkin. He has an army of grad assistants who do the most precise research on all things CA. He is a life long liberal who loathes Trump. His numbers are impeccable.
Solar power is expanding in Texas because West Texas has a lot of empty acreage, with very few people to look at the rural blight, and the Federal government subsidizes the heck out of it.
As for why Reps oppose Green giveaways. Rivan makes $100K luxury EVs. Wall Street calculates they lose $100K on each unit sold. They were on life support after taking billions of tax dollars. Biden handed them billions more, before walking out the door. It will only prolong their death rattle.
It is but one of numerous Green companies doused in tax dollars that will not survive without perpetual subsidies. We are $37 trillion in debt. Investors will race to invest in the next actual good sustainable Green idea, no tax dollars necessary. Mostly Dems were just transferring dollars to their big money donors, who pump and dump stocks , or drown C Suiters in huge paydays, before they crumble. Look at the stock prices of the big EV charging station corps. When it became apparent Harris would lose, investors knew the gravy train was over, they bolted.
The best studies I’ve seen say that adding renewables works in some areas, but only up to a point due to their low capacity factor (intermittency). That optimal figure is 20-30%, but it may trend higher as battery technologies improve over time. Energy needs to be 100% reliable, and renewables just aren’t there yet.
I did not say that California power cost $.15. I said that solar cost about $.15. What I’m interested in is whether adding renewables to our power mix as part of an all of the above strategy can bring down prices. And, again, I’m not an expert, but it sure seems to me that solar should be part of the picture. It’s surprising to me that even in Texas, with a growing solar industry, politics is moving against them. Makes no sense. Culture war stuff, not economics.
Texas is concerned about the problem Spain recently had. Solar and wind have no grid inertia, so if you're too dependent on either or both of them (as Spain remains), your energy frequency/herz can become unstable and collapse the system. If you just have it on your rooftop with a battery backup, it's not a problem. Systemwide, it's a problem.
My mistake. Sorry. People do not want to look at solar panels, anywhere, but the back of a roof. Try putting a solar field in the middle of Malibu, Palo Alto, the Hamptons or Chicago's North Shore. Watch liberals scream at the idea. Wealthy liberals expect the little people to tolerate the blight, not Dem enclaves.
Serious question. I will take your word on solar costs. My neighbors are old and drink a lot. Im just kidding they are nicest people on earth., and mostly sober. If solar is so cheap why is it not on every roof of every building in every major US city?. NYC has 40K buildings alone. Every major city but Ft. Worth and Miami are ran almost entirely by Dems. It should take a week to pass a mandate in every Blue City.
It is not Texas culture, but experience. Every kwh produced by wind or solar must be backed up by fossil fuels. Texas learned the hard way. Dozens dead.
Yeah, every power source has downsides, including solar. But there are huge areas of empty desert in west Texas and AZ and NV that could host solar and plain state land in the dakotas that could take windmills. Are panels and windmills lovely? Not really. But as of now those lands are empty or even sprout oil or gas derricks; nobody considers it beautiful now. Ultimately I do think we will need nuclear, because of the land issue, but there’s a lot of benefit from renewables and *every* power source comes with downsides.
As for NIMBYs, 100% it’s a liberal blind spot. But I don’t think conservatives want coal-fired power plants next to their homes either. Nimbyism is basically a landowner thing, more than it is a liberal or conservative thing. Nobody wants to bear the costs of public goods, so we try to find workarounds.
The desert is not empty, it is fragile habitat for many plants and animals that are endangered, and solar/wind systems irreversibly damage those ecosystems. The Dems used to care about that kind of thing, enough to tie up projects they don't like with endless environmental lawsuits. But since they think solar/wind are "good", they don't care how much land and habitat they destroy. I hate their hypocrisy. I came to love the desert on geology field trips and respect the plants and animals that have adapted to live in those harsh conditions. I am so sad to see acres of solar panels instead of pristine desert.
I agree. Some solar farms are hidden behind bushes like oleanders, and they generate pretty well in the Southwest. Much of the energy is lost, however, because they produce more than can be used around midday and nothing most of the time.
Nuclear is a no brainer. Most of our gains in CO2 emissions have come from replacing coal with combined cycle natural gas, and I don't see any reason not to continue that. Warren Buffett would disagree however - he has a massive coal facility that supplies California when wind and solar aren't producing. The state doesn't call it "coal". They call it "other". Gotta love it.
Being 73 years old, my wife and I checked into solar about 2 years ago. We like the idea and the cost seemed reasonable, although my electric bill is only a $108 dollars a month and that is a tough price for solar to beat, , we didn't have the 20 to 30 years left in life to recover our investment.
Solar generation is pretty cheap, maybe .03/kWh. But that doesn't include, as you pointed out, all the life cycle costs including recycling/disposal, transmission upgrades needed and, of course, the need for reliable backup power. That's why it can work up to a point, but only so far. The average capacity factor for solar is about 25% nationwide. A grid needs 100%... of something.
Solar energy does not really cost 15ct, that is artificial due to subsidies. Also, at max solar power is available 8-10 hours a day, and the rest of the time the whole installation is sitting there idle, producing nothing. In the winter, or on a cloudy day, solar produces even less. That is a very inefficient use of the invested capital, and without subsidies the actual return on the investment to project end of life is probably negative for almost all solar installations. If you amortize the actual gross kwh produced against the installation cost without subsidies, the cost would be much higher.
The only valid use for solar energy, in my opinion, is in remote locations where it is very costly to run conventional power lines. That said, I do have a solar power system installed on my property, which was not my decision because I recognized the inherent inefficiencies at the time. However, my system was installed before the junk that is around now was common, and the installers built it well, so it is still generating almost 100% of what it was designed to do after 20 years. It might actually pay out the energy that went into its construction. From what I am reading, many current installations will not do that.
I live in California, and here are some facts. The lowest tier of electricity may be around 14ct/kwh, but the ration of this is so ridiculously low that only a single person living in a tiny studio apartment who never uses heat or air conditioning could possibly stay within the limit, and maybe not then. I have a solar system which does provide a substantial portion of my energy usage, but it offsets the lowest and cheapest tiers only, leaving the amount I use over what the solar provides at high rates. I calculated out my paid kwh for the last full year of my contract with PGE, and it came to 44ct per used kwh, regardless of season or time of day. That is from my actual bill.
And, there is nothing "clean" about solar and wind energy, especially wind. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are used to make solar panels and wind turbine parts, and huge amounts of land and habitat for animals and plants (Democrats used to care about the environment) are destroyed to install them at scale. Cheap solar panels from China are failing at less than 10 years of service, and they are not recyclable. As for wind turbines, huge amounts of plastic (from oil) go into turbine blades, huge amounts of concrete and steel are used for the pylons, and they kill a huge number of birds. Most wind turbines will fail long before they have generated enough electricity to pay back the energy that went into their production and the non-recyclable blades end up in the landfill. Also, the "renewables" industry lies about how economic they are, they would all be uneconomical without massive taxpayer subsidies for their production, installation, and the artificially high rates their generated electricity receives.
There is no "culture war" hostility towards "clean power", there is only common sense. Yes, we need much more electrical power generation but it needs to be efficient, have a compact footprint on the land, and be available 24/7. Also, we now know after the national blackout due to too much solar in Spain recently, we need a large amount of spinning turbine power to maintain grid stability and reliability at all times. Solar and wind provide none of these. Nuclear is the only "clean" power source that makes any sense, if you regard "clean" the lack of air emissions. We do need to eliminate all subsidies for inefficient and environmentally destructive wind and solar, and carbon sequestration makes no sense at all on any scale. I don't like subsidies but due to the Left's long and unreasonable war on nuclear energy, I think subsidies will be needed to get next-generation reactor technology into production and installation. But after that nuclear will be able to stand on its own due to its inherent efficiency.
Republicans are not insisting that everything needs to be fossil fueled, or that electrification and renewables are "terrible". Some things make sense to be electric powered, but heating applications generally do not if natural gas is available, for efficiency if nothing else. Heat pumps work very poorly in extremely cold conditions because they rely on having heat in the environment, and if there isn't very much, well, what do you expect? Solar and wind might be "renewable" but they are far from benign, see discussion above.
Also one thing that anti-fossil fuel zealots NEVER acknowledge is that oil and gas provide chemical feedstocks for thousands of products, probably more than they do fuel. Our advanced society absolutely cannot survive without these feedstocks, and there are no reasonable substitutes AT SCALE for most plastics, natural gas-based fertilizers, and pharmaceutical chemical precursor materials.
You state that “there is nothing ‘clean’ about solar and wind energy, especially wind. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are used to make solar panels and wind turbine parts, and huge amounts of land and habitat for animals and plants.” Of course it is true that power, including power from fossil fuels, is currently used to make these things. It is also true that over the life cycle, using current technologies, these products emit much, much less carbon than fossil fuels on a per kw basis. And there’s no reason to think they won’t get more efficient. Once they are up and running, they don’t emit the particulates associated with combustion, which are also known to have bad health effects.
I do think that opposition to nuclear has been excessive and I’m glad to see things moving in the direction of including it.
But notice that in the one big beautiful Bill act passed by the house, the Republicans zeroed out a tax credit that would’ve been available to develop nuclear energy. As for Republican views about fossil fuels, I hope you would agree that the most influential Republican today is the president. Very few members of the congressional party would cross him. I suggest you run this search on Google: “What has President Trump said about solar and wind power”. There were links that quote what he said. See if you think he’s open minded and accurate about these technologies.
Is all of it solar? Is there any upcharge from the utility above the cost to generate it on a roof or in a field? My point was about the cost of solar, specifically, which as far as I can tell is cost competitive with fossil fuels. Why it’s growing in TX.
I’m certainly willing to believe CA does other things that raise the cost of power, and those might be bad/counterproductive.
it's a mix of everything here. Renewables are 31% last I looked. Shutting down San Onofre nuclear plant raised prices considerably, as has the buildout to accommodate transmissions from remote areas to the grid. One of the things people need to remember is that there is a big difference between energy generated and energy actually consumed in the case of renewables.
Yeah, I have been Abundance-pilled. We need effective national power to get land for transmission lines. And that’s true for many power types. I am glad this conversation has at least started.
:) "abundance pilled"... that's funny! I agree it's well past time that more informed discussions around energy are filtering into the mainstream media. A few more blackouts will probably move the conversation further along.
Wind, solar, and hydro are 21.2% of U.S. electricity generation. Add wood, geothermal, and waste, and you get to 22.6%. Might as well have the real numbers rather than just making it up.
I agree Jim, and your figures for energy production look about right to me without looking it up. But that’s generation, not actual consumption. People need to understand the difference. Renewables consumption for 2023 is about 9%.
Generating electricity in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but getting it to where it’s needed when it’s needed is another thing. Spoiler alert - a significant amount of renewable energy never gets consumed. Whatever their other shortcomings, that is not an issue with natural gas, nuclear or coal.
I think utility-scale solar is an expensive joke, given that uptime is in the low-20% range. For houses and buildings, solar works if there's a backup to the grid. Batteries are hideously expensive. Only the rich can swing that cost, and there really is no reason to do it.
The proposition is that these technologies are currently expensive, but as they scale up they become cheaper to make, and therefore more affordable. Once upon a time, only the rich bought an automobile or a cell phone.
I’m not an expert, and I’d bet that experts from the oil and solar industries would give you very different answers. The figure I gave above was, according to the website, lifetime costs net of subsidies.
I think it’s uncontroversial that solar costs have come down a lot in recent decades, and more technological progress and benefits from scaling up are expected. Also, improvements in battery tech (very likely) would make it easier to bank power and even out supply.
I was just reading about how many recently installed solar systems are failing after less than 10 years due to shoddy equipment and installation, leaving homeowners and their rooftop solar stranded. Not efficient or effective use of capital, those systems likely never paid out.
Solar cost per kwh does not capture the full cost of solar at scale. Solar requires both an off hours backup system, either an additional generating source or battery backup, plus because of how the system is stabilized, it requires additional systems to provide stability during fluctuations in demand.
Ok, but then what should be done about climate change? Unless one wants to stick their head in sand and pretend nothing is happening, there is a reality of rising temperatures that needs to be addressed. Your comment about Texas also omits one factoid, it has low energy prices in part because of phenomenal growth in production of renewable energy, something climate deniers in the TX State Legislature are eager to kneecap.
Im a Texan, most of my native neighbors, here for more than a 1/2 century would explain our energy prices are higher due to renewables not lower. I have no idea of that Math.
In my opinion, however, most of the rest of Climate Change is a Math problem, that must be addressed where the numbers are. If the whole US tomorrow, permanently reverted to only candles and actual equine power, the world's climate would never notice. At 330 million, there are not enough of us, and we have already reduced our carbon output to 90s levels.
Climate warriors must become Climate missionaries, and go where the polluters are located. India, China and South America. When people boast about China's renewables, I often think it must be in a different China than the one we have visited a few times. Leave Beijing or Shanghai, and Chinese smoke stacks billow black smoke unseen in the US since the 70s. They lack basic scrubbers standard in the US since the early Nixon administration. India defies description. Most Americans have never seen trash and pollution that routinely exists all over South America. In much of the 3rd World, walking on water does not refer to Christ, but the actual trash floating down many rivers.
Technology will eventually solve the problem. Until then we are blessed with sufficient oil and gas, that we bring out of the ground in a more clean manner than anyone else on earth. In short, the US is not the problem, so changing the behavior of Americans, will not be the solution.
To call Climate Change by its original and more accurate name-Global Warming-the operative word is Global. Since China and India won't (and really shouldn't for the economic well-being of their people) cooperate with a global solution, we should be working on mitigation strategies for our own people. It may be that we won't actually need them. So much the better.
Not sure if it's paywalled, but if so, here is the relevant excerpt.
"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, forecasts demand for power to possibly double within five years. Bills restricting renewable energy sources would compound existing risks, Pablo Vegas, the chief executive of ERCOT, said this month."
As for the rest of the world, China is racing ahead on electrification. Other nations are even further along. I appreciate that US can't (and shouldn't) do it aloe, but the reverse is also true, if the US backs out, other countries may lose their will as well.
China is racing ahead of electrification, but the electricity is only a delivery system, not energy. The juice must still come from somewhere, which are often those smokestacks billowing black smoke, burning coal.
You are so right, China is electrifying transportation and home heating so it can export the pollution out of the crowded cities into the countryside. They are building coal plant a week on average, and the US could cease to exist as an economy without affecting the climate, insofar as CO2 release even has an effect, in the slightest. But we can kill off our economy, which is what China wants us to do.
Deborah, that’s a really good point. China is largely dictating the trend in global CO2 emissions. I don’t know why Greta Thunberg never protests in front of the Chinese embassy.
From Carbon Brief via Adam Tooze "For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth."
Possibly true, and interesting. China has embraced an “all of the above” approach, including renewables and nuclear, both at scale. This has happened 4 times in the last 20 years, after which emissions have surged higher. All in all, I think they have a pretty rational approach, and they don’t waste time on things like the Paris Accords.
Yes, they are a signatory, but it costs them nothing because they are exempt from its provisions until 2030 and beyond. All it promised (like there's any enforcement in any case-) was to reach "peak emissions" by 2030.
What a truly bizarre comment. The US is the world's biggest emitter of CO2- if you are too small to bother doing anything, who the hell should? By what logic should India, a far poorer country than the US, with a far smaller carbon footprint, be more responsible for action?
Any idea, aside from staggeringly arrogant US exceptionalism?
Actually not the case John. China is by far the largest emitter globally, about double what the U.S. emits with an economy about half the size.
Poor or not, if India increases CO2, it adds to global emissions. If you think “poor” countries should get a pass, then it tells me you’re not really worried about global warming.
You’re not alone. Most people worldwide want abundant energy, which correlates very highly with per capita economic growth. Most of the net growth in global emissions comes from China, India and, increasingly, Africa.
The entire developed world now releases about 30% of the CO2, the rest is the developing world, mostly China, India, and Africa. And no one need to do anything about CO2, it's all a hoax, a way to enrich grifter elites, to transfer wealth to the third world, and part of China's long range plan for world dominance by encouraging Europe and the US to commit economic suicide.
First, any climate change going on is natural, we are coming out of the Little Ice Age. There have been many climate fluctuations in the last several thousand years without any intervention from man at all. Second, CO2 is plant food and we need more of it. Third, human societies through known history of the last few thousand years have done much better, as have the earth's other ecosystems, in times of warmer climate, and colder times have been far harder with famines and other bad things. Fourth, "climate deniers" are right and "climate catastrophists" are liars. The "climate change CO2 is destroying the earth" is a hoax, a lie, a grift, and people who actually understand the real science understand this. We have diverted trillions of dollars into useless "green" projects that have lined the pockets of thousands of people with their hands out but generated nothing useful for society. The burden of that wasted money will lie heavily on our descendants for decades. We need to hope that the climate continues to get warmer so that the economies can grow and not drown under the burden of the debt.
There are many people who deny that the climate is changing. I've had discussions with many of them. I suspect there are a lot more of them than people who deny the existence of biology. But then you don't know the meaning of the word 'religion', so you're maybe not that person to listen to about such things.
Thanks for that relevant comment. And the phrase is, as you know, shorthand for 'climate change denier', and there are lots lot more of them than 'biology deniers'. Let's call them 'physics deniers'.
Go read Roger Pielke jr on Substack. The science being used right now is weather alchemy.
People care about what they believe. People will only take action about things they care about. The point is, few believe the climate fear is a false narrative and the policies proposed will do little except impoverish those who are already poor.
Fact, the IPCC has used RCP 8.5 for their base model that all other models have been based on. Trouble is, that model has been proven to be wrong and way to pessimistic. So, the IPCC is asking for new models to be their base model. Will all the data based on the RCP 8.5 be invalidated then?
I always love it when people say 'such and such science is rubbish, go and read so and so on the internet'. Why? There's some fool on so me corner of the internet expounding every conceivable type of drivel, from alien probes to chakra realignment. The question is not 'is there someone saying this', but 'why do you choose to believe this arbitrary person?'
Your reading comprehension needs work. I gave you all the info you needed to do an informed search. I pointed out one the issues, of what is wrong with climate science today.
Post like yours I label, "forced self ignorance" and is what you seem to be operating on. It is a sad thing to watch though. I gave his name and told you he was on Substack. I assumed any one interested was intelligent enough to research him and his page. I guess I over estimated at least you.
I don't care what you believe. Certainly you don't believe in expanding your knowledge base when given the info to do so.
Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.[1] Before he was a professor of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.[2]
He previously served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year.[3]
That search took all of less than 30 seconds. What a ball buster that was. Whew!
AEI is a legit, if right-wing, think tank (unlike Heritage Foundation). Roger Pielke Jr has endorsed carbon tax (as have all serious right-wing economists) and supported Obama EPA carbon regulations Seems like a serious dude to me.
AEI has not been Rep leaning since Trump was elected the first time.. They, and Karl Rove long for the Rep Party of old. The one that has not won an election in 20 years.
John, there’s plenty of good data out there. Pielke is a serious scientist. The more you read, the more problematic some of the simplistic opinions become.
It's true that charging folks more for fossil fuels is unpopular but subsidizing renewables has generally favorable polling, if low salience. What allowed the climate deniers in the Trump Party to win last year were the unpopular aspects of the left's agenda. Insisting on granting immediate entry to every asylum seeker, being unwilling to combat urban disorder and crime and pushing fringe culture war issues, such as requiring women's sports to allow those born as males to participate in their competitions, among other things, made the Democratic Party underwater on those issues. Virtually every Democratic candidate either endorsed or was burdened by those issue positions and many lost winnable races. We can't fight climate change if we can't win elections.
The problem with renewables was recently seen in real time with the outages in Spain and Portugal. Right after it was announced that Spain was 100% renewable. The current system of distribution is stabilized by the equipment used to generate the electricity. Renewable has no way to stabilize the system if the electric grid starts to fail, it can't be stopped or even inhibited. Answer for now is leave the old grid up and running to stabilize the whole system. Or, manufacture and add an impossible number of heavy duty batteries we have no way of manufacturing at this time.
This post is probably not detailed correct. But it is the main gist of the situation.
Ok, thanks for the tip, I'll check it out. I am trying to get a variety of views on dealing with climate change. I'd welcome reading what those who are pushing back on efforts to go net zero say, but thoughtful arguments are hard to find. I usually just encounter conspiracy theories or lame attempts at humor.
My concern is the severe denialism on populist right, to the point of trying to weaken methods of monitoring changing weather patterns, makes me wonder if they are just avoiding the topic because they know any discussion is ideologically inconvenient for them.
If only every right and left leader in this country (and on God's green earth) would periodically remind themselves and their constituents that "climate change is not a hoax, folks," and also remind them that we have successfully repositioned clean and renewable energy from "none of the above" to "some of the above" in about three decades, and we need to get to "much more of the above" sooner rather than later. To the greatest extent possible, all humans in all countries always need to be lead towards "much more" clean and renewable energy, if not net zero. The "green new scam" is leaders who treat their constituents like frogs in a pan of water and coax them to ignore rapidly rising temperatures. It's a scam to say climate change is a hoax.
Yes, but if this article and the comments below prove anything, it's that it's not just the Trumpist Republicans who believe that climate change is a essentially a hoax. The centrists just use slightly less colourful language.
I live in a pretty red exurban area, and I don’t hear “hoax.” What I hear are things like “costs too much”, “destroys farms and forests for solar farms,” or “doesn’t meet my needs,” followed by, “why do the data centers get a pass.”
When voters start telling you, you are causing more short-term pain than they can tolerate, you need to consider why.
Why, for example, are you putting solar farms on prime agricultural land, or why are you pushing back against hybrids like they’re heresy, or why are you pushing people towards dense living and public transit that they loathe - while simultaneously subsidizing and encouraging data center development for AI that is using all of the energy savings and then some?
Because, believe me, the other side is actively pointing all this out. Pushing austerity to essentially subsidize the biggest companies in the world is not a good look.
The current President of the US said climate change is a hoax. His preferred label is "the Chinese hoax". He's claimed they invented it to undermine American industry. Bolsonaro described it as a "plot" by "cultural Marxists" and Marjorie Taylor Bradford called climate change a "scam" (before 'proving' it by tweeting a chart that 'forgot' to include carbon dioxide in the list of atmospheric gases. That's three powerful public figures- there are uncountable numbers online.
I'm not sure why you bother saying things that are so obviously untrue to anyone sentient.
I'm afraid that the Iron Law applies: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single thing, because they think they are smarter and better than everyone else."
You've shown yourself to be thin-skinned and irrational, so I see no reason to try to reach you. Illusions die hard.
Oregon established renewables rules about 5 years ago, and since then the electricity rates there have risen 50% and disconnections have at least tripled. This is a direct and pristine example of how rich liberals push their boutique issues into public policy and don't care one bit about the working middle class that they once represented.
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by its rich "progressives."
Political reality can be painful. I would amend Obama’s dictum to exclude “clean coal.” There is no such thing. We need to embrace the new nuclear technology that Bill Gates is promoting. The good news about the drive to achieve net zero is it is having a “moonshot” effect on US and global technology. Consider the advances toward solid-state batteries. We will almost certainly have thermonuclear power before the end of the century, but in the meantime, we must keep the world economy functioning.
When climate was relegated to a partisan issue it did two things. It made every left activist add it to their list of things they had to support, and it lost the other half of the voting public.
Electric cars will become the norm because they are much simpler, and cheaper to run and repair, pure economic self interest will be what moves us. Scolding only causes delay.
You first paragraph is correct. The second not so much. Electrics are not cheaper to run when you consider the life cycle costs. This includes but is not limited to gigantic grid upgrades on the generation and transmission fronts, cleaning up all the toxic crap left around from the mining, processing, and non-recycling of components, and building out an adequate network of charging stations to replace the already existing network of gas stations. And EVs will never replace the ICE for those of us in rural areas. The Left has hated ICE autos back to the time where the only EVs were in museums. This is because they hate suburbs and want everyone packed into dense urban cores and the auto provides and escape hatch.
Interesting how you include the external cost of cleaning up "toxic crap from the mining" of EVs into the cost of renewables- have you also added the fossil fuel externals of not just toxic crap of production, but toxic exhaust emissions and, more to the point, global warming? Why, I wonder, does nobody ever do that? We always have equations with only one side....
The exhaust system coming out of my Cummins costs more than many cars I've bought. I like it, quiet, smells good, no black smoke, but it sure is pricey. Wrenching on our cars and the kid's cars gets more complicated all the time. For a single occupant to get from here to there, I'm betting the lifecycle cost of EVs will come down and down. They're just getting started.
I can't drive an EV because they don't hold a charge in cold weather and because I make a four and a half hour trip every month. I hate stopping for gas, no way am I going to spend 30-45 minutes in an isolated charging station that may or may not have working chargers.
As far as batteries, does anyone have a problem with the horrific conditions that children and forced laborers in the Congo endure?
Correct, and from what I have been reading, those things, and others, will go away when solid-state EV batteries come out of the research phase (already happening) and enter development and then commercialization.
Timelines are notoriously hard to predict. My prediction is that solid-state will enter the commercial sphere before the end of this decade, and the mainstream by about '35. If I'm correct, it's going to be hard to find a new ICEV after about '40.
In the meantime, EVs are viable urban second cars for commuting, but that's all.
Vast improvements in batteries are needed before they can replace the 1 ton pickup. For carrying people though I'd imagine sooner. Range, charging times, sourcing of minerals, none seem insurmountable. Worldwide competition is intense.
Not as vast as you think. Today, the typical liquid electrolyte EV battery is good for maybe 250 miles of range using the recommended 80% of capacity. Lots of people do better than that. Deduct for winters and steep grades. Triple that density, and take a haircut for analytical conservatism, and a typical range will be at least 500 miles in even challenging topography.
They'll charge much faster, maybe 10 minutes, although that will require more powerful chargers and upgraded circuits and transformers. So it won't happen instantly, but will be driven by demand and will happen fast once there's an installed base.
You're going to be surprised at the heavy duty pickup truck side of this. Those big diesel trucks are popular because a) the construction is rugged, b) diesel is famous for torque, engine longevity, and bad weather performance, c) they are used to haul equipment and RVs. All of these will be solved by solid state batteries. Especially torque. Dirty little secret about diesel-electric rail locomotives: The electric motors that turn the wheels have so much torque that trains have to be started more slowly than the motors are capable of, because otherwise the wheels won't adequately engage with the rails. Torque is going to be a HUGE selling point with the farmers and ranchers.
The replacement cycle for farmers and ranchers is long, so notice that I predict unavailability of NEW ICEVs starting in about '40. Maybe it'll take a little longer for the heavy-duty trucks (2500, 3500, etc.) but not that much longer at all. Farmers and ranchers have an affinity for new technology that goes unnoticed by the typical urban types.
Today's liquid electrolyte batteries just aren't energy dense enough to cut it in those vehicles. Triple the energy density, and maybe put a somewhat bigger battery (if desired) in a heavy-duty truck, and make it price competitive, and I strongly believe they'll take ranch and farm country by storm.
There are some other aspects of EVs that will have major appeal. Do you know how much it costs to change the oil, and the fuel filters, and the transmission fluid, on a big truck? Answer: about a thousand bucks. A new tranny will go for at least a few grand. No more of that with electric.
One other thing that will apply in all of the light duty vehicles (heavy duty pickups are in the "light duty vehicle" category.) At present, there are no transmissions in EVs. Stick a two-speed gearbox in there, and fuel economy will go up by 15%. The equipment has already been designed, but it's not in any EVs yet because the addition to range really doesn't justify it.
Triple the energy density and deduct a haircut for conservatism's sake, and that 500-mile range goes to 575 miles. We'll see if two-speed EV trannies become a thing.
As for the minerals, the idea that lithium is somehow in short supply is laughable. There are some huge lithium deposits in the United States that at present have gone uptapped. If rare earths are a problem because of China, coal ash and slag are full of them.
Electric cars aren’t necessarily cheaper or better for most people. For people who plan to keep their cars for a LONG time (average car on the road is over 12 years old), the question of battery life and the cost of battery replacement add an element of uncertainty. For many people, charging adds a huge issue of risk and uncertainty when traveling. For people who haul loads - campers, horse trailers, work trailers - they’re impractical.
When I priced out installing a home charger, it was over 2k five years ago.
Hybrids mitigate the charging concern, but are treated as “not pure enough.”
You need to meet people’s actual needs, not what you think they should need.
Hybrids still have a complicated gas engine too. The home charger can be pretty easy especially if where you want it isn't far from a source of 220 Volts. Many do it themselves but it takes some knowledge of things electric.
Wiring a breaker box yourself is generally not covered by home insurance and is a good way to lose your uninsured house in an electrical fire. This loss does not release you from any remaining mortgage debt, either.
To comply with home insurance, wiring needs to be done by a licensed professional and properly inspected.
Yes, Ed, it is, to the tune of about 1.1 degree Celsius since 1800. And while the earth goes through constant warming and cooling cycles, it does seem pretty clear that the recent warming trend is anthropogenic.
But the world (esp. China) has chosen energy abundance over CO2 emissions, dwarfing any “green” efforts. In the near term, continued innovation and mitigation policies make more sense than senseless spending on unsustainable strategies.
What "innovation and mitigation policies"are those, Sea? So far, they are more fossil fuel.....that's it. What you actually surely mean is, ignore it and it will go away.
By the way, the planet is already warmer than it has been at any point since the birth of human civilization. It's not just 'another little warm cycle'.
Examples of innovation include changing the chemical composition of batteries for longer life, molten salt for nuclear reactors, combined cycle gas plants and nuclear fusion.
Mitigation policies include dykes, mangroves, heat tolerant coral farming and air conditioning.
Now that I'm rattling on about electricity, let's consider another "progressive" fetish, the wind turbine. You have to actually look for this, because you'll never find it in the mainstream media. Besides being ugly as hell and killing raptors and bats, those things have a critical engineering show stopper that no one other than the engineers who design them and the financial types realize.
It's a mathematical thing. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. Wind pressures vary widely between the blade tips and the hubs, and between blades at all positions as they rotate. There is nothing to be done about that. The issue is the bearings in the hubs. The warranties typically last for 20 years, but the life in service runs 7 or 8 years because of all that dang wobbling. If you strengthen the bearings, there's more resistance and less production.
The result is that all of the turbine manufacturers have been killed by warranty costs. Anyone who cares to look into Siemens Energy, the world's #2 turbine maker and #1 in North America (acquired from Gamesa, a Spanish manufacturer), will find that Siemens Energy has dragged down all of Siemens the German electronics giant.
Their stock has crashed twice within the past decade, and the German government has had to bail them out. Most of the Chinese makers (which use high-temperature semiconductors stolen by China from American Semiconductor, the pioneer) have gone bust. In 20 or 30 years, those wind turbines will be white elephants.
Electricity generation is going to return to nuclear, along with natural gas, the latter which has already overtaken coal as the top fuel for power plants in the United States. This brings up another issue, base load. Hydro is, by itself, incapable of providing year-'round base load because it depends on seasonal mountain runoff. Its uptime is somewhere in the mid-30% range. Wind is high seasonal and intermittent, with uptime in the mid-20% range. Solar is the worst, in the low-20% range.
Gas and coal are in the mid-60% range because they need a lot of downtime for maintenance. Nukes? They're in the 90%+ range. They are the answer. Even in brain-dead WA State, much to my shock even the Democrats got behind new-generation nukes to be installed on the Hanford Reservation. All of this is ENGINEERING, something that no one seems to want to think about, but increasingly those who know anything are rediscovering.
Science is a bitch. We have a population of "progressive" dolts who choose to deny biology and pretend that homo sapiens, a mammal that like all mammals is sexually dimorphic and cannot change its sex or "gender," and thereby cast a shadow over the scientific method along with the climate weenies who actively falsify temperature records. But science marches on, and it will give us a nuclear power revival and electric vehicles.
"Killing raptors and bats". Funny how this meme is used so regularly about wind turbines by the sort of people who, if the welfare of raptors and bats is brought up any other context, would sneer at it as hippy shit and dumb tree-hugging. It's amazing to see the Republican nature-contemptuous types who suddenly affect a deep concern for the welfare of bats whenever, and only whenever, renewable energy is mentioned.
You must get your information about Republicans from the legacy press, who love to caricature anyone to the right of AOC as some kind of imbecilic troglodyte who hates the environment. I have been a conservative libertarian-Republican all my life and I don't know anyone who doesn't care about the birds and ecosystems that wind and solar are destroying. I am very angry that liberals DON'T care about the destruction. The real nature-contemptuous types are city-dwelling liberals who never go out to the real rural areas and meet real people who live there, and find out how much we out here care about the land and the environment we live in. Get out of your bubble. Nature isn't a tree in a hole in the sidewalk or a city park.
I have been skeptical of that, and to some extent still am, but my eyebrows were raised when the Biden administration carved out an exemption for killing bald eagles with wind turbines. Tell me: Is there ANY principle of ANY kind that "progressives" really believe in?
The missing link between people who support subsidies and people who want lower energy prices is the number of people in each category. More people pay for electricty than make a voluntary investment of tens of thousands of dollars to get the subsidy for solar panels and reduce their monthly electric bill.
In addition people suffering too high electric bills hate the democrats’ reverse Robin Hood approach, taking from the lower income and giving to the high earners.
Ruy again has a thoughtful, logical perspective and sound argument. I would be shocked to see the democrats follow his advice.
It is indeed time to face the facts about climate change, but the facts are these: 1) Climate change is irrefutably established in 40 years of solid research from all over the world. 2) The only thing the scientific analysis has gotten wrong is that it is happening faster and more dramatically than projected. 3) But it is clear the left has botched the messaging, e.g. in the "Green New Deal", which burdened climate policies with every idea every lefty advocate ever had about anything. 4) This is not an issue where polling should be decisive: it's not like immigration or day care or whatever, which are policy issues. 5) Climate change is an exogenous threat that we will all suffer from incrementally the later it is addressed, and neither Trump or the Liberal Patriot can wish it away. 6) No matter how much irrational populist emotion is wrapped around the issue, no matter how much disinformation the fossil fuel industry or manipulative right-wingers spew out, the facts remain the facts. 7) Trump's erasure of "climate change" from government discourse, reversals of policies, etc., will only serve to hand the technologies necessary for providing energy for any kind of reasonable living standard in the future to China. 8) The Democrats would be failing their duty to the people if they don't find a way to frame the issue so that it can be addressed urgently and effectively. This could all be incorporated into a version of the "abundance agenda" focused on maintaining living standards and building the economy that we will need to live comfortably and avoid the disasters of climate change (including climate-driven mass migration).
Oh yeah, "messaging." How about critical thinking? There is a long list of failed climate predictions that you and your co-religionists choose to ignore or deny.
Well, the issue is whether to accept 40 years of well established climate analysis, the major points of which have all stood up very well, except that it's coming faster than anticipated. Reference to "co-religionists" suggests some kind of populist emotion that is impervious to the facts. No major predictions have failed; only details have had to be refined, which of course is normal in very complex analysis developing over time. Climate change is not a matter of "belief"; we're not talking about the Doctrine of the Trinity. It's whether to accept an analytical conclusion that is well grounded, generally accepted among the relevant specialists, and becoming more and more apparent every day, and with every annual review; or whether to believe the disinformation put out by the industry, by malicious right-wingers, and by those who just want to reject the real-life complexity of the times we are living in. Little children now among us, who should live into the next century, will pay the price of our not bothering to accept the serious but perhaps manageable inconveniences required to address it.
Failed prediction timeline. But you will deny it because the wrong people publish it, even though it's well documented. That's what "progressives" do. As for "well established" analysis, shall we talk about failed consensus in other realms, or about the crisis of reproducibility in scientific research? Nah. Too inconvenient.
You are seriously linking to Wattsupwiththat as your s ientific source? Jesus wept. This article really has brought out the scientific illiterates. Watt was a TV weather man, now funded entirely by anti-regulation political ideologues. There isn't an actual scientist anywhere near the site.
I love that phrase "well documented" though. Like Bigfoot is "well documented", and drinking bleach to cure COVID is "well documented". The phrase means 'it's on the internet, I've seen it'.
There you go. WUWT links to other sources, but you are a prototypical "progressive" fact denier. Whatever you don't like, you will dismiss. It's just so typical of your kind. It's sad, pathetic, amusing, and oh so predictable.
This seems to be a good example of mainstream Magical Thinking, or the belief that politics and social science can fundamentally alter, if not define, the Natural Laws of the Universe.
It's not that the political premise- ie, no-one gives a crap about the environment- is wrong. It's just that nowhere in this article does the author mention the EFFECT of ignoring climate change. It's simply assumed that if they are ignored as politically awkward, the laws of physics and chemistry will simply go away. There is deemed to be no fundamental problem- because, it seems, it simply doesn't fit into the very limited perspective of "political reality".
Now, some might say that a society that regards the cost of a packet of chips as too high a price to pay for a functioning atmosphere is a society that is literally suicidal. But the author has no problem at all with this idea- it's anyone who thinks maybe we SHOULD stop fucking up the climate who is, in his view, deluded. Think about that. Is this "realism"? No, it's Magical Thinking. It's insane.
At least the Trumpists have the intellectual integrity to invent an explanatory narrative for their denialism; scientists are either grifters after government grants, or Communists using a hoax to undermine America. But Liberals don't have the balls to do this- they always drip in the phrase "of course climate change is serious" before they go on to explain why it's deluded to do anything about it. Which means one of two things- either people like Ruy are insane, and happy to accept that a packet of potato chips is too high a price to stop what the scientists are telling us will be a catastrophe, or they too think science is bunk. It must be the latter, but being good centrists, they don't have the cahoonas to come out of the closet and explain exactly why scientists are talking out of their assholes.
So- let's hear the scientific reasoning, rather than the political bed-wetting, just for once. Please explain why physics is defeated by a bag of chips....
A little humility for all of us is in order. The fact is that the so called climate models have been way off by orders of magnitude so far, and attempts to validate their methodology have failed. Not only is no one talking about the much greater risks of a massive volcanic eruption or nuclear war or sunspot flareups, but we don't know where the climate is going and what the effects will be. So far, they've been pretty benign overall, but that may change. What we DO know is that a massive amount of wasted spending has occurred but also that all the climate concern has accelerated the development of new energy solutions, which will very likely solve the CO2 emissions puzzle by mid-century.
You really appear to be arguing against a straw man. Listen to the actual arguments being made. They are, essentially, (1) the US emits a small percentage of total carbon, around 11%, and extreme austerity in the US alienates voters while having a minimal effect on global warming, (2) US voters are not willing to accept extreme austerity or lifestyle changes, (3) given the embrace of AI, politicians and businessmen are not serious about global warming when it’s inconvenient, and (4) mitigation may be an essential step at this point, and needs to be discussed.
None of that is magical thinking. What is magical thinking is believing that ignoring those realities makes them go away. We have the economic and political reality we have. Being angry and condescending about it doesn’t help.
Most Republicans don’t deny climate change. Ruy isn’t arguing that the price is too high; he’s saying that voters are not willing to pay it. Mischaracterizing their views is not productive.
What this means that you have to figure out the best results you can get within what is actually achievable.
For example, solar on parking garages, rooftops, and brownfields do not get the strong pushback you get putting them on farms and forests. They also tend not to require long distance transmission. Nuclear is getting increased acceptance. MANY people who would not consider an EV would buy a hybrid. Multiple scientists are working on carbon mitigation strategies that need to be evaluated, whether it’s powdered rock aging, ocean seeding, new carbon absorbent materials, or something else.
When you refuse to pivot, you waste political energy on futile efforts while ignoring achievable gains.
First of all, the US is the world's biggest CO2 emitter. It takes quite some arrogance for the US to claim that it's "too small" to have any responsibility do anything about it. What this is effectively saying is that no-one-one has any responsibility to do anything about it- which is essentially what the article is saying.
When I use the term "magical thinking", I mean his (and your) acceptance of this situation as a simple part of political reality, and the actual, real-world physical consequences are just not up for discussion. Humans CAN ignore it, because that's just how it is. That is insanity, not realistism. The fact that you and the author call the fact that (relatively, globally) rich US citizens won't pay a dollar to have
a functioning planetary
atmosphere "reality" is a
ludicrous situation. Physics is
reality, food is reality, wildfires
and oceans are reality- what you
are talking about is opinion. A
suicidal opinion. Like driving a
car towards a wall and saying
'well, the passengers won't
accept me upsetting their drinks
by swirving, so the only realistic
option is to continue in the same
direction, but turn the radio up and slow down by 2 mph'.
Accepting that opinion as "reality", rather than something that any scientifically literate and ethical human would bust every gut to change, involves
In other words, 88-89% of carbon emissions are outside the US.
The article is saying that people will not vote for austerity now for less global warming later. That is based on multiple and repeated polls - literally hundreds of them - and decades of election results. At some point, yes, you have to accept that people do not agree with you and you need to try another approach.
I made a list of examples of potential other approaches - “For example, solar on parking garages, rooftops, and brownfields do not get the strong pushback you get putting them on farms and forests. They also tend not to require long distance transmission. Nuclear is getting increased acceptance. MANY people who would not consider an EV would buy a hybrid. Multiple scientists are working on carbon mitigation strategies that need to be evaluated, whether it’s powdered rock aging, ocean seeding, new carbon absorbent materials, or something else.”
If you cannot get elected, you have no impact on policy.
You're right, I should have said the per capita- other countries have higher ones, but I ly very small countries in deserts. The point is that the Chinese emissions are part of the hated fact that the US has outsourced it's manufacturing there. If, as Trump supposedly desires, it returned home, US emissions would go through the roof. But it's good to be able to blame the country making all your shit for the consequences.
Your mitigating policies are, as I m sure you actually know, trivial- as my example of turning the radio up and slowing by 2 mph on your way towards the wall. They are magical thinking. I realise you are talking about politics, and I am talking about scientific research- I am not, thank God, a politician. Which is precisely why I can point out the insanity of the politics. You are fighting the laws of physics with polling- I understand why. But it's ludicrous, nonetheless. You are telling the vulcanologists that the people of Pompeii regard moving out of the way as unacceptably inconvenient, and that the vulcanologists are unrealistic. Realistic Magical thinking.
The point is that US regulations affect US emissions only. That is not blaming anything.
Manufacturing coming back here would increase US emissions but reduce global emissions, as the US has a cleaner energy mix.
Politics is an essential part of change. Belittling it is not helpful.
Mitigating policies are not trivial. Solar panels don’t care where they are located. Hybrids could help a lot. Nuclear has huge potential for reducing emissions. Direct mitigation could help a lot, but that needs research to do responsibly.
I am telling you that you need to figure out what you can get done rather than treating this like a religious belief. You do not appear to appreciate how counter productive that is.
Energy policy under Biden was essentially the same as under Obama: "all of the above". Oil and gas output reached all-time highs under Biden. Dem policy makers had decided that the "all carrots and no sticks" approach was the only thing that would fly electorally, so they dropped things like carbon taxes and subsidized green alternatives.
Going forward, climate change is real and constitutes a slow-motion emergency, which we've known since the 50s
Powering as much as possible with sustainably-generated electricity as soon as practical looks like the only way forward that avoids terrible outcomes in the mid-term future.
Construction Physics finds that "the falling costs of solar PV will make it feasible for solar to supply large fractions of electricity demand cost-effectively. Reaching 90 or 95% is indeed costly, but 70-80% appears to be well within the realm of possibility" and "If solar PV and battery costs continue to fall, supplying very large fractions of electricity demand with solar PV becomes feasible. At $400 a kw solar and $100 a kwh batteries (costs China is probably achieving right now), we could meet 80% of electricity demand with solar PV for roughly current US average combined cycle gas turbine costs.
The above analysis doesn.t even consider measures to attenuate peaks in demand, that would further reduce the cost of supplying electricity, since it's the peak demand that determines how much total generating capacity you need to build.
Americans use way more electricity than is needed for a comfortable existence. German households use about a third as much through measures such as improved home insulation, district heating systems and (gasp) tolerating higher home temps in summer and lower temps in winter, maybe even wearing a sweater indoors.
In my house, we close the registers in unoccupied rooms. When I had the house built in '17, I equipped it with triple pane windows, the maximum available insulation, a heat pump that works fine until freezing, and a backup propane unit, and a propane-powered on-demand water heater. Of course, in WA State, the Democratic climate Nazis now tax propane at 20%.
Between that the so-called climate taxes whose proceeds go straight into the general fund, and pseudo-environmentalist opposition to new oil refineries, motor vehicle fuel costs about $1.50 a gallon more than it does in the Great Plains and most of the rest of the Midwest. All of this reduces the state's CO2 emissions by about 1%. This has NO impact on global CO2 emissions. It is virtue signaling gone wild, inflicted by the rich "progressives" of the Puget Sound.
The newly-elected "moderate" Democratic governor of WA State just signed the largest tax increase in WA State history. All while cutting funding to the food banks. As a relatively new wingnut (about a decade since I left that party that I'd called home for 40 years), I bake a dozen loaves of home made bread every week for the food bank, and recently finished planting the last of our 15 raised beds, 13 of whose crops go to the local food bank.
I cannot save the world, but I can walk my talk, which is a hell of a lot more than almost all of this state's faux "progressives." The stupidity, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of this state's Democratic liberals is thick enough to cut with a chain saw. I lived in Seattle for 21 years, and while I was there, I adapted a longstanding quip about the stubborn Norwegian fishermen of Ballard, who to this day land much of the Alaskan catch on the docks that were a mile from our house there.
It goes like this: "You can always tell a Seattle 'progressive,' but you can never tell a Seattle 'progressive' a single god damned thing," to which I added, "because they think they are smarter and better than everyone else." The smugness, arrogance, and unearned intellectual superiority there is truly something to behold.
Back to that propane tax. Even in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, home heating fuel is not taxed. Neither is food. In WA State, a "gross receipts tax" helps make groceries there some of the most expensive in the country, and the Democrats stick it to people heating their houses.
My fantasy, which will never come true, is to meet some of the Seattle "leaders" and congratulate them for doing the impossible and turning me into a wingnut. The "progressives" actively despise the working middle class. I have ZERO respect for them.
Oh, and it gets better. The worthies of the Seattle City Council passed a resolution advocating the destruction of the dams on the Columbia River that supply more hydropower than anywhere in the country. Naturally, they did not include the one dam that generates Seattle City Light's electricity. There's nothing quite like the marriage of self-righteousness, arrogance, and stupidity. You have to see it to believe it.
Besides not being 35, not born in the U.S. or a citizen, it looks like the issue of renewable energy will contribute to preventing Greta Thunberg from running for President.
The majority of people’s support for cheap fossil fuels reflects their tendency to have a time horizon rarely more than ten years. Fossil fuels will eventually become more and more expensive as natural reserves are depleted, and no amount of government subsidies will change that basic fact of real economics. I wish that political leaders would take a longer term approach to the issue without the panic driven inefficient centrally controlled approach of leftist extremists.
The idiot lefties have been predicting "peak oil" for decades. In reality, U.S. oil and gas production has done nothing but go up. There are vast reserves of shale oil in this country along with conventional oil and gas. The stupidity and dishonesty knows no bounds.
I am no fan of Archie Bunker Trump, the Rodeo Clown from Queens, but I fully understand his appeal. In many ways, I share the resentment. It's best captured in the link below, which while being over-written, hits the nail squarely on the head with respect to what the author calls the "smugtivists" who have captured the Democratic Party that I once called home.
Here's the thing. If, as I predict, the Democrats lay a political egg in the '26 midterms and again in '28, the results will scare the living hell out of them. Bring it on! The first result will be that the 6-3 Supreme Court advantage will become 7-2 and later, 8-1. The second result will be that, once Roberts leaves, the next chief justice will be far more conservative.
The coup de grace will come after the 2030 census and reapportionment. It will shift about a dozen electoral votes from blue states to red states, demolishing the so-called "blue wall." And that's not even taking into account the very possible reversals in Minnesota, New Hampshire, and even New Jersey. Do the grand pooh bahs, let alone the deluded "base" liberals, even begin to realize just how close to the cliff they are?
Nope, not at all. First it happens gradually. Then all at once. "Progressives," think it's bad for you now? Just wait until the '30s. As an old fart, one thing I have come to realize is how fast time goes by. Your denouement is fast approaching, and when it arrives you will be shattered to learn just how lonely the political wilderness will become.
Your predictions of future political trends seem reasonable (although it is rare for such predictions to be more than a little accurate).
But I question the relevancy of your observation that the predictions of "peak oil" have not materialized over a couple of decades, while "U.S. gas and oil production has done nothing but go up." That illustrates the type of short-term thinking that I was criticizing.
The issue of providing enough energy for an advanced industrial economy is one that spans much more than a few decades.
The fact that new technology (that is, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing) has increased the ability to extract oil and gas has "bought" civilized humanity perhaps a few decades before the real cost of extracting oil and gas from the remaining reserves makes those fossil fuels increasingly unavailable to "ordinary" consumers. But that few decades is trivial in comparison to the millennia over which human civilization has developed.
Unlike leftist extremists, I appreciate the opportunity that those technologies (especially regarding natural gas) have given us. But I care about the future of civilized humanity in general -- and my descendants in particular -- more than 10, 20 or even 100 years into the future. So, I recognize the need to gradually transition away from fossil fuels to other energy sources -- including nuclear -- before the energy issue further develops into a global crisis involving economics, environmental quality, and national security.
And, yes, I'm one of those "globalists" who not only cares about the quality of life of people in other countries (especially those that share my centrist political values) but one with a background in economics, environmental science, and military service who recognizes how -- like it or not -- we are all interdependent.
My predictions are tentative but also based on what happened in the 1980s. The Republicans won the presidency three times in a row, and it really took those three defeats to shove the Democrats closer to the middle. They looked over the cliff and they saw that it was a long way down to the rocks below.
The difference now is that I don't think they'll have that much time. My prediction hinges on '26 and especially '28, and as I've written in a different comment thread, '28 will depend on the direction of the economy (proxy being the unemployment rate) in the spring of that year. They could get saved by an economic downturn, but if they don't, it's going to be dire.
I mention the "peak oil" thing because this was an article of faith among "progressives" for a few decades, and it didn't happen. The oil producers have every incentive to underestimate reserves, and there are new ones being discovered all the time, the latest being among Venezuela's neighbors and off the coast of Brazil. But there are others, including in the United States.
I expect a decline in oil consumption for light vehicles (responsible for about a quarter of oil use in industrial economies) as solid state batteries make EVs standard everywhere, so the pressure on discoveries will abate to a degree. The various global environmental catastrophes simply have not panned out, in in fact the quality of life has been steadily rising globally.
I trace the recent (as in last 50 or so years) global doom stuff on the hysterics that surrounded the first Earth Day and the Santa Barbara oil spill. When you look back at the Mathusian predictions at that time, all you can do is have a laugh. I think the catastrophic risks are what they were back then: nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare. Those things really can kill people by the billions. The rest, to me, is whipped cream on dogshit, to recall a phrase invented by a college friend back in the 1970s.
As other commentators have already noted, this is an astute and insightful analysis. The issue however is this: if anything, climate change models have underestimated both the magnitude and the rapidity of climate change, along with the massive financial consequences of it.
The US is being left in the horse drawn coach era by China, which does recognize the advantages of a solar and battery powered future: we don't. True leadership would devise a palatable and convincing narrative promoting the economic value of sustainable energy.
As Henry Kissinger noted, " A great leader is someone who takes a nation where it needs to go even when its people don’t realize they need to get there." Yet, we can't even deal with the immediate exigent of Trump, much less an existential and potentially avertable ecological debacle.
Well, it didn't take long for my original question to be answered; a couple of prods, and the 'reasonable realist' stance quickly shows itself to be essentially Trumpist anti-science. After all, I've said nothing that isn't endorsed by the world's science institutes, which you call, with magnificent intellectual corruption, "religionist".
Could you give a list of these failed projections please- I'm sure the Heartland Institute will have something for you. You might like to mention the venerable classic memes 'Medieval Warm Period", "CO2 is vital for life", "consensus isn't scientific" and "when I was a kid all the scientists told us there was about to be an Ice Age".
Excellent analysis, as always. Most Americans who have never resided in CA do not understand the cost of their State climate policies. Texans and much of the rest of the Red US pay roughly 15 cents per kWh or less, Californians pay 30-80 cents per kWh, depending on the time of day, area and usage.
Add to that, gas that often seems to hover around $5 a gallon, thanks in no small part to nearly 70 cent gas taxes and the closing of state refineries. CA had nearly double the refineries working today, when their population was only 1/2 as large. The state has lost nearly 1/4 of its' refining capacity just since 2019. Nor are things likely to improve , anytime soon. Like battered wives that have finally had enough, more mistreated refiners are plotting their escape.
Due to the inflated costs, more than 10% of Californians suffer "Energy Poverty". The term refers to Golden Staters who must choose between paying for energy and eating, at the end of each month. The problem became so pervasive, state laws were passed that forbade electricity disconnection for most non payment. After only a few years, the result is 2.5 million Californians now in arrears more than $1.1 billion dollars, on their electric bills.
One can imagine the economic destruction from sea to shining sea, had the entire US ever been forced to adopt CA energy policies, as Dems have long demanded. All Americans should be grateful, the insanity will not be allowed to spread.
Can you tell me where you’re getting your figures on energy cost? I looked online, and then I used ChatGPT to search for information about solar energy prices in Texas in California. It told me the price is very similar – about $.12-$.14 per kilowatt hour in Texas and about $.14-$.16 per kilowatt hour in California. I am no expert and energy policy and prices, so perhaps i am missing a trick here. But everything I read suggest that solar power is increasingly price competitive with other sources- for example, solar is expanding rapidly in Texas.
I do agree with the larger point that Democrats should emphasize cheap, abundant energy. But the best way to do that, I’m almost certain, is to build out all energy types, not say oil and gas are good and renewables are bad.
There’s a kind of culture-war hostility toward clean power in the Republican Party that is at least as bad if not worse than Democratic Party opposition to fossil fuels. Why, for instance, are Republicans trying to do away with tax credits for zero carbon power and credits for US-based battery manufacture? Those credits aren’t limited to solar, wind, and hydro - they also go to nuclear and carbon sequestration. And we don’t make enough of any of those. The global market for electricity is booming, and we’ll need more and more power - for AI, for cars, stoves, and so on. World markets for batteries and battery powered goods are, similarly, going to explode. So, why are Republicans insisting that everything has to be fossil fuels and everything electrified or renewable is terrible? They’re going to undermine America’s competitive position in world markets, and with downstream tech and manufacturing expertise. It will also risk our national security. Ukraine just showed us what drones can do, and those need batteries. China makes a huge share of the world’s batteries, and we make very few, yet Republicans want to cut incentives for US manufacture.
Have no idea on what web site you would find CA power prices at 15 cents. Lived in CA for 25 years. At no time was electricity that cheap for large homes.
Moreover, CA prices are tiered. Use a little, basically the average use of 1000-1200 sq feet apartment or home, and the price per kWh is the lower end 30 cents. Have a large home and the more juice used, the higher the price. Also certain times of the day are more expensive.
Google Joel Kotkin. He has an army of grad assistants who do the most precise research on all things CA. He is a life long liberal who loathes Trump. His numbers are impeccable.
Solar power is expanding in Texas because West Texas has a lot of empty acreage, with very few people to look at the rural blight, and the Federal government subsidizes the heck out of it.
As for why Reps oppose Green giveaways. Rivan makes $100K luxury EVs. Wall Street calculates they lose $100K on each unit sold. They were on life support after taking billions of tax dollars. Biden handed them billions more, before walking out the door. It will only prolong their death rattle.
It is but one of numerous Green companies doused in tax dollars that will not survive without perpetual subsidies. We are $37 trillion in debt. Investors will race to invest in the next actual good sustainable Green idea, no tax dollars necessary. Mostly Dems were just transferring dollars to their big money donors, who pump and dump stocks , or drown C Suiters in huge paydays, before they crumble. Look at the stock prices of the big EV charging station corps. When it became apparent Harris would lose, investors knew the gravy train was over, they bolted.
The best studies I’ve seen say that adding renewables works in some areas, but only up to a point due to their low capacity factor (intermittency). That optimal figure is 20-30%, but it may trend higher as battery technologies improve over time. Energy needs to be 100% reliable, and renewables just aren’t there yet.
I did not say that California power cost $.15. I said that solar cost about $.15. What I’m interested in is whether adding renewables to our power mix as part of an all of the above strategy can bring down prices. And, again, I’m not an expert, but it sure seems to me that solar should be part of the picture. It’s surprising to me that even in Texas, with a growing solar industry, politics is moving against them. Makes no sense. Culture war stuff, not economics.
Texas is concerned about the problem Spain recently had. Solar and wind have no grid inertia, so if you're too dependent on either or both of them (as Spain remains), your energy frequency/herz can become unstable and collapse the system. If you just have it on your rooftop with a battery backup, it's not a problem. Systemwide, it's a problem.
My mistake. Sorry. People do not want to look at solar panels, anywhere, but the back of a roof. Try putting a solar field in the middle of Malibu, Palo Alto, the Hamptons or Chicago's North Shore. Watch liberals scream at the idea. Wealthy liberals expect the little people to tolerate the blight, not Dem enclaves.
Serious question. I will take your word on solar costs. My neighbors are old and drink a lot. Im just kidding they are nicest people on earth., and mostly sober. If solar is so cheap why is it not on every roof of every building in every major US city?. NYC has 40K buildings alone. Every major city but Ft. Worth and Miami are ran almost entirely by Dems. It should take a week to pass a mandate in every Blue City.
It is not Texas culture, but experience. Every kwh produced by wind or solar must be backed up by fossil fuels. Texas learned the hard way. Dozens dead.
Mrs
Yeah, every power source has downsides, including solar. But there are huge areas of empty desert in west Texas and AZ and NV that could host solar and plain state land in the dakotas that could take windmills. Are panels and windmills lovely? Not really. But as of now those lands are empty or even sprout oil or gas derricks; nobody considers it beautiful now. Ultimately I do think we will need nuclear, because of the land issue, but there’s a lot of benefit from renewables and *every* power source comes with downsides.
As for NIMBYs, 100% it’s a liberal blind spot. But I don’t think conservatives want coal-fired power plants next to their homes either. Nimbyism is basically a landowner thing, more than it is a liberal or conservative thing. Nobody wants to bear the costs of public goods, so we try to find workarounds.
The desert is not empty, it is fragile habitat for many plants and animals that are endangered, and solar/wind systems irreversibly damage those ecosystems. The Dems used to care about that kind of thing, enough to tie up projects they don't like with endless environmental lawsuits. But since they think solar/wind are "good", they don't care how much land and habitat they destroy. I hate their hypocrisy. I came to love the desert on geology field trips and respect the plants and animals that have adapted to live in those harsh conditions. I am so sad to see acres of solar panels instead of pristine desert.
I agree. Some solar farms are hidden behind bushes like oleanders, and they generate pretty well in the Southwest. Much of the energy is lost, however, because they produce more than can be used around midday and nothing most of the time.
Nuclear is a no brainer. Most of our gains in CO2 emissions have come from replacing coal with combined cycle natural gas, and I don't see any reason not to continue that. Warren Buffett would disagree however - he has a massive coal facility that supplies California when wind and solar aren't producing. The state doesn't call it "coal". They call it "other". Gotta love it.
What happens to old batteries, old solar panels, and old windmills?
Being 73 years old, my wife and I checked into solar about 2 years ago. We like the idea and the cost seemed reasonable, although my electric bill is only a $108 dollars a month and that is a tough price for solar to beat, , we didn't have the 20 to 30 years left in life to recover our investment.
Are you from the Cornhusker state?
Solar generation is pretty cheap, maybe .03/kWh. But that doesn't include, as you pointed out, all the life cycle costs including recycling/disposal, transmission upgrades needed and, of course, the need for reliable backup power. That's why it can work up to a point, but only so far. The average capacity factor for solar is about 25% nationwide. A grid needs 100%... of something.
Solar energy does not really cost 15ct, that is artificial due to subsidies. Also, at max solar power is available 8-10 hours a day, and the rest of the time the whole installation is sitting there idle, producing nothing. In the winter, or on a cloudy day, solar produces even less. That is a very inefficient use of the invested capital, and without subsidies the actual return on the investment to project end of life is probably negative for almost all solar installations. If you amortize the actual gross kwh produced against the installation cost without subsidies, the cost would be much higher.
The only valid use for solar energy, in my opinion, is in remote locations where it is very costly to run conventional power lines. That said, I do have a solar power system installed on my property, which was not my decision because I recognized the inherent inefficiencies at the time. However, my system was installed before the junk that is around now was common, and the installers built it well, so it is still generating almost 100% of what it was designed to do after 20 years. It might actually pay out the energy that went into its construction. From what I am reading, many current installations will not do that.
I live in California, and here are some facts. The lowest tier of electricity may be around 14ct/kwh, but the ration of this is so ridiculously low that only a single person living in a tiny studio apartment who never uses heat or air conditioning could possibly stay within the limit, and maybe not then. I have a solar system which does provide a substantial portion of my energy usage, but it offsets the lowest and cheapest tiers only, leaving the amount I use over what the solar provides at high rates. I calculated out my paid kwh for the last full year of my contract with PGE, and it came to 44ct per used kwh, regardless of season or time of day. That is from my actual bill.
And, there is nothing "clean" about solar and wind energy, especially wind. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are used to make solar panels and wind turbine parts, and huge amounts of land and habitat for animals and plants (Democrats used to care about the environment) are destroyed to install them at scale. Cheap solar panels from China are failing at less than 10 years of service, and they are not recyclable. As for wind turbines, huge amounts of plastic (from oil) go into turbine blades, huge amounts of concrete and steel are used for the pylons, and they kill a huge number of birds. Most wind turbines will fail long before they have generated enough electricity to pay back the energy that went into their production and the non-recyclable blades end up in the landfill. Also, the "renewables" industry lies about how economic they are, they would all be uneconomical without massive taxpayer subsidies for their production, installation, and the artificially high rates their generated electricity receives.
There is no "culture war" hostility towards "clean power", there is only common sense. Yes, we need much more electrical power generation but it needs to be efficient, have a compact footprint on the land, and be available 24/7. Also, we now know after the national blackout due to too much solar in Spain recently, we need a large amount of spinning turbine power to maintain grid stability and reliability at all times. Solar and wind provide none of these. Nuclear is the only "clean" power source that makes any sense, if you regard "clean" the lack of air emissions. We do need to eliminate all subsidies for inefficient and environmentally destructive wind and solar, and carbon sequestration makes no sense at all on any scale. I don't like subsidies but due to the Left's long and unreasonable war on nuclear energy, I think subsidies will be needed to get next-generation reactor technology into production and installation. But after that nuclear will be able to stand on its own due to its inherent efficiency.
Republicans are not insisting that everything needs to be fossil fueled, or that electrification and renewables are "terrible". Some things make sense to be electric powered, but heating applications generally do not if natural gas is available, for efficiency if nothing else. Heat pumps work very poorly in extremely cold conditions because they rely on having heat in the environment, and if there isn't very much, well, what do you expect? Solar and wind might be "renewable" but they are far from benign, see discussion above.
Also one thing that anti-fossil fuel zealots NEVER acknowledge is that oil and gas provide chemical feedstocks for thousands of products, probably more than they do fuel. Our advanced society absolutely cannot survive without these feedstocks, and there are no reasonable substitutes AT SCALE for most plastics, natural gas-based fertilizers, and pharmaceutical chemical precursor materials.
Excellent comments.
You state that “there is nothing ‘clean’ about solar and wind energy, especially wind. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are used to make solar panels and wind turbine parts, and huge amounts of land and habitat for animals and plants.” Of course it is true that power, including power from fossil fuels, is currently used to make these things. It is also true that over the life cycle, using current technologies, these products emit much, much less carbon than fossil fuels on a per kw basis. And there’s no reason to think they won’t get more efficient. Once they are up and running, they don’t emit the particulates associated with combustion, which are also known to have bad health effects.
I do think that opposition to nuclear has been excessive and I’m glad to see things moving in the direction of including it.
But notice that in the one big beautiful Bill act passed by the house, the Republicans zeroed out a tax credit that would’ve been available to develop nuclear energy. As for Republican views about fossil fuels, I hope you would agree that the most influential Republican today is the president. Very few members of the congressional party would cross him. I suggest you run this search on Google: “What has President Trump said about solar and wind power”. There were links that quote what he said. See if you think he’s open minded and accurate about these technologies.
Theodore, that data is readily available. I’m in San Diego area and our electric bill averages between.40-.50 cents per kWh.
Is all of it solar? Is there any upcharge from the utility above the cost to generate it on a roof or in a field? My point was about the cost of solar, specifically, which as far as I can tell is cost competitive with fossil fuels. Why it’s growing in TX.
I’m certainly willing to believe CA does other things that raise the cost of power, and those might be bad/counterproductive.
it's a mix of everything here. Renewables are 31% last I looked. Shutting down San Onofre nuclear plant raised prices considerably, as has the buildout to accommodate transmissions from remote areas to the grid. One of the things people need to remember is that there is a big difference between energy generated and energy actually consumed in the case of renewables.
Yeah, I have been Abundance-pilled. We need effective national power to get land for transmission lines. And that’s true for many power types. I am glad this conversation has at least started.
:) "abundance pilled"... that's funny! I agree it's well past time that more informed discussions around energy are filtering into the mainstream media. A few more blackouts will probably move the conversation further along.
Wind, solar, and hydro are 21.2% of U.S. electricity generation. Add wood, geothermal, and waste, and you get to 22.6%. Might as well have the real numbers rather than just making it up.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf
I agree Jim, and your figures for energy production look about right to me without looking it up. But that’s generation, not actual consumption. People need to understand the difference. Renewables consumption for 2023 is about 9%.
Generating electricity in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but getting it to where it’s needed when it’s needed is another thing. Spoiler alert - a significant amount of renewable energy never gets consumed. Whatever their other shortcomings, that is not an issue with natural gas, nuclear or coal.
Is solar competitive with fossil fuels? Are you including land acquisition, construction costs, and subsidies?
I think utility-scale solar is an expensive joke, given that uptime is in the low-20% range. For houses and buildings, solar works if there's a backup to the grid. Batteries are hideously expensive. Only the rich can swing that cost, and there really is no reason to do it.
The proposition is that these technologies are currently expensive, but as they scale up they become cheaper to make, and therefore more affordable. Once upon a time, only the rich bought an automobile or a cell phone.
I’m not an expert, and I’d bet that experts from the oil and solar industries would give you very different answers. The figure I gave above was, according to the website, lifetime costs net of subsidies.
I think it’s uncontroversial that solar costs have come down a lot in recent decades, and more technological progress and benefits from scaling up are expected. Also, improvements in battery tech (very likely) would make it easier to bank power and even out supply.
I was just reading about how many recently installed solar systems are failing after less than 10 years due to shoddy equipment and installation, leaving homeowners and their rooftop solar stranded. Not efficient or effective use of capital, those systems likely never paid out.
Solar cost per kwh does not capture the full cost of solar at scale. Solar requires both an off hours backup system, either an additional generating source or battery backup, plus because of how the system is stabilized, it requires additional systems to provide stability during fluctuations in demand.
Ok, but then what should be done about climate change? Unless one wants to stick their head in sand and pretend nothing is happening, there is a reality of rising temperatures that needs to be addressed. Your comment about Texas also omits one factoid, it has low energy prices in part because of phenomenal growth in production of renewable energy, something climate deniers in the TX State Legislature are eager to kneecap.
Im a Texan, most of my native neighbors, here for more than a 1/2 century would explain our energy prices are higher due to renewables not lower. I have no idea of that Math.
In my opinion, however, most of the rest of Climate Change is a Math problem, that must be addressed where the numbers are. If the whole US tomorrow, permanently reverted to only candles and actual equine power, the world's climate would never notice. At 330 million, there are not enough of us, and we have already reduced our carbon output to 90s levels.
Climate warriors must become Climate missionaries, and go where the polluters are located. India, China and South America. When people boast about China's renewables, I often think it must be in a different China than the one we have visited a few times. Leave Beijing or Shanghai, and Chinese smoke stacks billow black smoke unseen in the US since the 70s. They lack basic scrubbers standard in the US since the early Nixon administration. India defies description. Most Americans have never seen trash and pollution that routinely exists all over South America. In much of the 3rd World, walking on water does not refer to Christ, but the actual trash floating down many rivers.
Technology will eventually solve the problem. Until then we are blessed with sufficient oil and gas, that we bring out of the ground in a more clean manner than anyone else on earth. In short, the US is not the problem, so changing the behavior of Americans, will not be the solution.
To call Climate Change by its original and more accurate name-Global Warming-the operative word is Global. Since China and India won't (and really shouldn't for the economic well-being of their people) cooperate with a global solution, we should be working on mitigation strategies for our own people. It may be that we won't actually need them. So much the better.
Thanks for your response. No offense to your neighbors but they have it backwards. There was an interesting article in NY Times on this recently.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/us/politics/renewable-energy-republicans.html
Not sure if it's paywalled, but if so, here is the relevant excerpt.
"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, forecasts demand for power to possibly double within five years. Bills restricting renewable energy sources would compound existing risks, Pablo Vegas, the chief executive of ERCOT, said this month."
As for the rest of the world, China is racing ahead on electrification. Other nations are even further along. I appreciate that US can't (and shouldn't) do it aloe, but the reverse is also true, if the US backs out, other countries may lose their will as well.
China is racing ahead of electrification, but the electricity is only a delivery system, not energy. The juice must still come from somewhere, which are often those smokestacks billowing black smoke, burning coal.
You are so right, China is electrifying transportation and home heating so it can export the pollution out of the crowded cities into the countryside. They are building coal plant a week on average, and the US could cease to exist as an economy without affecting the climate, insofar as CO2 release even has an effect, in the slightest. But we can kill off our economy, which is what China wants us to do.
Deborah, that’s a really good point. China is largely dictating the trend in global CO2 emissions. I don’t know why Greta Thunberg never protests in front of the Chinese embassy.
From Carbon Brief via Adam Tooze "For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Possibly true, and interesting. China has embraced an “all of the above” approach, including renewables and nuclear, both at scale. This has happened 4 times in the last 20 years, after which emissions have surged higher. All in all, I think they have a pretty rational approach, and they don’t waste time on things like the Paris Accords.
China is a signatory to the Paris Accords
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Paris_Agreement#:~:text=As%20of%20February%202023%2C%20194,acceded%20to%20the%20Paris%20Agreement.
Yes, they are a signatory, but it costs them nothing because they are exempt from its provisions until 2030 and beyond. All it promised (like there's any enforcement in any case-) was to reach "peak emissions" by 2030.
What a truly bizarre comment. The US is the world's biggest emitter of CO2- if you are too small to bother doing anything, who the hell should? By what logic should India, a far poorer country than the US, with a far smaller carbon footprint, be more responsible for action?
Any idea, aside from staggeringly arrogant US exceptionalism?
Actually not the case John. China is by far the largest emitter globally, about double what the U.S. emits with an economy about half the size.
Poor or not, if India increases CO2, it adds to global emissions. If you think “poor” countries should get a pass, then it tells me you’re not really worried about global warming.
You’re not alone. Most people worldwide want abundant energy, which correlates very highly with per capita economic growth. Most of the net growth in global emissions comes from China, India and, increasingly, Africa.
The entire developed world now releases about 30% of the CO2, the rest is the developing world, mostly China, India, and Africa. And no one need to do anything about CO2, it's all a hoax, a way to enrich grifter elites, to transfer wealth to the third world, and part of China's long range plan for world dominance by encouraging Europe and the US to commit economic suicide.
China is the world's biggest emitter- there is a large gap.
The US is responsible for 10-12% of the world's carbon, much caused by the fact we feed a good chunk of the world and provide them with oil and gas.
First, any climate change going on is natural, we are coming out of the Little Ice Age. There have been many climate fluctuations in the last several thousand years without any intervention from man at all. Second, CO2 is plant food and we need more of it. Third, human societies through known history of the last few thousand years have done much better, as have the earth's other ecosystems, in times of warmer climate, and colder times have been far harder with famines and other bad things. Fourth, "climate deniers" are right and "climate catastrophists" are liars. The "climate change CO2 is destroying the earth" is a hoax, a lie, a grift, and people who actually understand the real science understand this. We have diverted trillions of dollars into useless "green" projects that have lined the pockets of thousands of people with their hands out but generated nothing useful for society. The burden of that wasted money will lie heavily on our descendants for decades. We need to hope that the climate continues to get warmer so that the economies can grow and not drown under the burden of the debt.
There is no such thing as a "climate denier," but there are liberal "biology deniers" in spades on the "transgender" front.
There are many people who deny that the climate is changing. I've had discussions with many of them. I suspect there are a lot more of them than people who deny the existence of biology. But then you don't know the meaning of the word 'religion', so you're maybe not that person to listen to about such things.
Thanks for that relevant comment. And the phrase is, as you know, shorthand for 'climate change denier', and there are lots lot more of them than 'biology deniers'. Let's call them 'physics deniers'.
There is no such thing as a "climate change denier" either. Thanks for the religion.
Go read Roger Pielke jr on Substack. The science being used right now is weather alchemy.
People care about what they believe. People will only take action about things they care about. The point is, few believe the climate fear is a false narrative and the policies proposed will do little except impoverish those who are already poor.
Fact, the IPCC has used RCP 8.5 for their base model that all other models have been based on. Trouble is, that model has been proven to be wrong and way to pessimistic. So, the IPCC is asking for new models to be their base model. Will all the data based on the RCP 8.5 be invalidated then?
I always love it when people say 'such and such science is rubbish, go and read so and so on the internet'. Why? There's some fool on so me corner of the internet expounding every conceivable type of drivel, from alien probes to chakra realignment. The question is not 'is there someone saying this', but 'why do you choose to believe this arbitrary person?'
Your reading comprehension needs work. I gave you all the info you needed to do an informed search. I pointed out one the issues, of what is wrong with climate science today.
Post like yours I label, "forced self ignorance" and is what you seem to be operating on. It is a sad thing to watch though. I gave his name and told you he was on Substack. I assumed any one interested was intelligent enough to research him and his page. I guess I over estimated at least you.
I don't care what you believe. Certainly you don't believe in expanding your knowledge base when given the info to do so.
Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.[1] Before he was a professor of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.[2]
He previously served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year.[3]
That search took all of less than 30 seconds. What a ball buster that was. Whew!
AEI is a legit, if right-wing, think tank (unlike Heritage Foundation). Roger Pielke Jr has endorsed carbon tax (as have all serious right-wing economists) and supported Obama EPA carbon regulations Seems like a serious dude to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.
AEI has not been Rep leaning since Trump was elected the first time.. They, and Karl Rove long for the Rep Party of old. The one that has not won an election in 20 years.
I just read where Wiki is not a legit source for anything. I’ll find where I read that and get shack to you. Just an FYI.
BINGO!
John, there’s plenty of good data out there. Pielke is a serious scientist. The more you read, the more problematic some of the simplistic opinions become.
It's true that charging folks more for fossil fuels is unpopular but subsidizing renewables has generally favorable polling, if low salience. What allowed the climate deniers in the Trump Party to win last year were the unpopular aspects of the left's agenda. Insisting on granting immediate entry to every asylum seeker, being unwilling to combat urban disorder and crime and pushing fringe culture war issues, such as requiring women's sports to allow those born as males to participate in their competitions, among other things, made the Democratic Party underwater on those issues. Virtually every Democratic candidate either endorsed or was burdened by those issue positions and many lost winnable races. We can't fight climate change if we can't win elections.
The problem with renewables was recently seen in real time with the outages in Spain and Portugal. Right after it was announced that Spain was 100% renewable. The current system of distribution is stabilized by the equipment used to generate the electricity. Renewable has no way to stabilize the system if the electric grid starts to fail, it can't be stopped or even inhibited. Answer for now is leave the old grid up and running to stabilize the whole system. Or, manufacture and add an impossible number of heavy duty batteries we have no way of manufacturing at this time.
This post is probably not detailed correct. But it is the main gist of the situation.
Ok, thanks for the tip, I'll check it out. I am trying to get a variety of views on dealing with climate change. I'd welcome reading what those who are pushing back on efforts to go net zero say, but thoughtful arguments are hard to find. I usually just encounter conspiracy theories or lame attempts at humor.
My concern is the severe denialism on populist right, to the point of trying to weaken methods of monitoring changing weather patterns, makes me wonder if they are just avoiding the topic because they know any discussion is ideologically inconvenient for them.
There is no such thing as "climate denialism."
If only every right and left leader in this country (and on God's green earth) would periodically remind themselves and their constituents that "climate change is not a hoax, folks," and also remind them that we have successfully repositioned clean and renewable energy from "none of the above" to "some of the above" in about three decades, and we need to get to "much more of the above" sooner rather than later. To the greatest extent possible, all humans in all countries always need to be lead towards "much more" clean and renewable energy, if not net zero. The "green new scam" is leaders who treat their constituents like frogs in a pan of water and coax them to ignore rapidly rising temperatures. It's a scam to say climate change is a hoax.
Yes, but if this article and the comments below prove anything, it's that it's not just the Trumpist Republicans who believe that climate change is a essentially a hoax. The centrists just use slightly less colourful language.
I live in a pretty red exurban area, and I don’t hear “hoax.” What I hear are things like “costs too much”, “destroys farms and forests for solar farms,” or “doesn’t meet my needs,” followed by, “why do the data centers get a pass.”
When voters start telling you, you are causing more short-term pain than they can tolerate, you need to consider why.
Why, for example, are you putting solar farms on prime agricultural land, or why are you pushing back against hybrids like they’re heresy, or why are you pushing people towards dense living and public transit that they loathe - while simultaneously subsidizing and encouraging data center development for AI that is using all of the energy savings and then some?
Because, believe me, the other side is actively pointing all this out. Pushing austerity to essentially subsidize the biggest companies in the world is not a good look.
No one says that climate change is a hoax. But keep it up. We need the laughs.
The current President of the US said climate change is a hoax. His preferred label is "the Chinese hoax". He's claimed they invented it to undermine American industry. Bolsonaro described it as a "plot" by "cultural Marxists" and Marjorie Taylor Bradford called climate change a "scam" (before 'proving' it by tweeting a chart that 'forgot' to include carbon dioxide in the list of atmospheric gases. That's three powerful public figures- there are uncountable numbers online.
I'm not sure why you bother saying things that are so obviously untrue to anyone sentient.
As usual, you tell a half story.
No, I point out the simple fact that you were talking nonsense. What's the missing half? More nonsense?
I'm afraid that the Iron Law applies: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single thing, because they think they are smarter and better than everyone else."
You've shown yourself to be thin-skinned and irrational, so I see no reason to try to reach you. Illusions die hard.
Oregon established renewables rules about 5 years ago, and since then the electricity rates there have risen 50% and disconnections have at least tripled. This is a direct and pristine example of how rich liberals push their boutique issues into public policy and don't care one bit about the working middle class that they once represented.
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by its rich "progressives."
Political reality can be painful. I would amend Obama’s dictum to exclude “clean coal.” There is no such thing. We need to embrace the new nuclear technology that Bill Gates is promoting. The good news about the drive to achieve net zero is it is having a “moonshot” effect on US and global technology. Consider the advances toward solid-state batteries. We will almost certainly have thermonuclear power before the end of the century, but in the meantime, we must keep the world economy functioning.
When climate was relegated to a partisan issue it did two things. It made every left activist add it to their list of things they had to support, and it lost the other half of the voting public.
Electric cars will become the norm because they are much simpler, and cheaper to run and repair, pure economic self interest will be what moves us. Scolding only causes delay.
You first paragraph is correct. The second not so much. Electrics are not cheaper to run when you consider the life cycle costs. This includes but is not limited to gigantic grid upgrades on the generation and transmission fronts, cleaning up all the toxic crap left around from the mining, processing, and non-recycling of components, and building out an adequate network of charging stations to replace the already existing network of gas stations. And EVs will never replace the ICE for those of us in rural areas. The Left has hated ICE autos back to the time where the only EVs were in museums. This is because they hate suburbs and want everyone packed into dense urban cores and the auto provides and escape hatch.
Interesting how you include the external cost of cleaning up "toxic crap from the mining" of EVs into the cost of renewables- have you also added the fossil fuel externals of not just toxic crap of production, but toxic exhaust emissions and, more to the point, global warming? Why, I wonder, does nobody ever do that? We always have equations with only one side....
And the one side is calling EVs clean. No one denies the externalities of ICE.
Yes they do deny it- constantly. That point is that it's about RELATIVE cleanliness- surely you can grasp that.
The exhaust system coming out of my Cummins costs more than many cars I've bought. I like it, quiet, smells good, no black smoke, but it sure is pricey. Wrenching on our cars and the kid's cars gets more complicated all the time. For a single occupant to get from here to there, I'm betting the lifecycle cost of EVs will come down and down. They're just getting started.
I can't drive an EV because they don't hold a charge in cold weather and because I make a four and a half hour trip every month. I hate stopping for gas, no way am I going to spend 30-45 minutes in an isolated charging station that may or may not have working chargers.
As far as batteries, does anyone have a problem with the horrific conditions that children and forced laborers in the Congo endure?
I’ve never heard those who worry about global warming give a rat’s patootie about those kids in the Congo. They’re just collateral damage.
Correct, and from what I have been reading, those things, and others, will go away when solid-state EV batteries come out of the research phase (already happening) and enter development and then commercialization.
Timelines are notoriously hard to predict. My prediction is that solid-state will enter the commercial sphere before the end of this decade, and the mainstream by about '35. If I'm correct, it's going to be hard to find a new ICEV after about '40.
In the meantime, EVs are viable urban second cars for commuting, but that's all.
Vast improvements in batteries are needed before they can replace the 1 ton pickup. For carrying people though I'd imagine sooner. Range, charging times, sourcing of minerals, none seem insurmountable. Worldwide competition is intense.
Not as vast as you think. Today, the typical liquid electrolyte EV battery is good for maybe 250 miles of range using the recommended 80% of capacity. Lots of people do better than that. Deduct for winters and steep grades. Triple that density, and take a haircut for analytical conservatism, and a typical range will be at least 500 miles in even challenging topography.
They'll charge much faster, maybe 10 minutes, although that will require more powerful chargers and upgraded circuits and transformers. So it won't happen instantly, but will be driven by demand and will happen fast once there's an installed base.
You're going to be surprised at the heavy duty pickup truck side of this. Those big diesel trucks are popular because a) the construction is rugged, b) diesel is famous for torque, engine longevity, and bad weather performance, c) they are used to haul equipment and RVs. All of these will be solved by solid state batteries. Especially torque. Dirty little secret about diesel-electric rail locomotives: The electric motors that turn the wheels have so much torque that trains have to be started more slowly than the motors are capable of, because otherwise the wheels won't adequately engage with the rails. Torque is going to be a HUGE selling point with the farmers and ranchers.
The replacement cycle for farmers and ranchers is long, so notice that I predict unavailability of NEW ICEVs starting in about '40. Maybe it'll take a little longer for the heavy-duty trucks (2500, 3500, etc.) but not that much longer at all. Farmers and ranchers have an affinity for new technology that goes unnoticed by the typical urban types.
Today's liquid electrolyte batteries just aren't energy dense enough to cut it in those vehicles. Triple the energy density, and maybe put a somewhat bigger battery (if desired) in a heavy-duty truck, and make it price competitive, and I strongly believe they'll take ranch and farm country by storm.
There are some other aspects of EVs that will have major appeal. Do you know how much it costs to change the oil, and the fuel filters, and the transmission fluid, on a big truck? Answer: about a thousand bucks. A new tranny will go for at least a few grand. No more of that with electric.
One other thing that will apply in all of the light duty vehicles (heavy duty pickups are in the "light duty vehicle" category.) At present, there are no transmissions in EVs. Stick a two-speed gearbox in there, and fuel economy will go up by 15%. The equipment has already been designed, but it's not in any EVs yet because the addition to range really doesn't justify it.
Triple the energy density and deduct a haircut for conservatism's sake, and that 500-mile range goes to 575 miles. We'll see if two-speed EV trannies become a thing.
As for the minerals, the idea that lithium is somehow in short supply is laughable. There are some huge lithium deposits in the United States that at present have gone uptapped. If rare earths are a problem because of China, coal ash and slag are full of them.
Probably true but not in the timeline that is being mandated.
I lament the SCR system because it keeps me from rolling coal on Portland bicyclists.
Electric cars aren’t necessarily cheaper or better for most people. For people who plan to keep their cars for a LONG time (average car on the road is over 12 years old), the question of battery life and the cost of battery replacement add an element of uncertainty. For many people, charging adds a huge issue of risk and uncertainty when traveling. For people who haul loads - campers, horse trailers, work trailers - they’re impractical.
When I priced out installing a home charger, it was over 2k five years ago.
Hybrids mitigate the charging concern, but are treated as “not pure enough.”
You need to meet people’s actual needs, not what you think they should need.
Hybrids still have a complicated gas engine too. The home charger can be pretty easy especially if where you want it isn't far from a source of 220 Volts. Many do it themselves but it takes some knowledge of things electric.
Wiring a breaker box yourself is generally not covered by home insurance and is a good way to lose your uninsured house in an electrical fire. This loss does not release you from any remaining mortgage debt, either.
To comply with home insurance, wiring needs to be done by a licensed professional and properly inspected.
My whole house isn't permitted, there is no mortgage. I generally don't comply with anything.
Global warming is happening: Around 73-75% of Americans believe global warming is happening. (Yale/George Mason, Fall 2024; Gallup 2025)
Human-caused: About 60% of Americans understand that global warming is mostly caused by human activities. (Yale/George Mason, Fall 2024)
Scientific Consensus: Around 57% of Americans understand that most scientists agree global warming is happening. (Yale/George Mason, Fall 2024)
Yes, Ed, it is, to the tune of about 1.1 degree Celsius since 1800. And while the earth goes through constant warming and cooling cycles, it does seem pretty clear that the recent warming trend is anthropogenic.
But the world (esp. China) has chosen energy abundance over CO2 emissions, dwarfing any “green” efforts. In the near term, continued innovation and mitigation policies make more sense than senseless spending on unsustainable strategies.
What "innovation and mitigation policies"are those, Sea? So far, they are more fossil fuel.....that's it. What you actually surely mean is, ignore it and it will go away.
By the way, the planet is already warmer than it has been at any point since the birth of human civilization. It's not just 'another little warm cycle'.
Examples of innovation include changing the chemical composition of batteries for longer life, molten salt for nuclear reactors, combined cycle gas plants and nuclear fusion.
Mitigation policies include dykes, mangroves, heat tolerant coral farming and air conditioning.
For a history of what we know, or think we know about climate over eons, I would recommend this as a succinct summary: https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2015/11/26/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years-updated/
Now that I'm rattling on about electricity, let's consider another "progressive" fetish, the wind turbine. You have to actually look for this, because you'll never find it in the mainstream media. Besides being ugly as hell and killing raptors and bats, those things have a critical engineering show stopper that no one other than the engineers who design them and the financial types realize.
It's a mathematical thing. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. Wind pressures vary widely between the blade tips and the hubs, and between blades at all positions as they rotate. There is nothing to be done about that. The issue is the bearings in the hubs. The warranties typically last for 20 years, but the life in service runs 7 or 8 years because of all that dang wobbling. If you strengthen the bearings, there's more resistance and less production.
The result is that all of the turbine manufacturers have been killed by warranty costs. Anyone who cares to look into Siemens Energy, the world's #2 turbine maker and #1 in North America (acquired from Gamesa, a Spanish manufacturer), will find that Siemens Energy has dragged down all of Siemens the German electronics giant.
Their stock has crashed twice within the past decade, and the German government has had to bail them out. Most of the Chinese makers (which use high-temperature semiconductors stolen by China from American Semiconductor, the pioneer) have gone bust. In 20 or 30 years, those wind turbines will be white elephants.
Electricity generation is going to return to nuclear, along with natural gas, the latter which has already overtaken coal as the top fuel for power plants in the United States. This brings up another issue, base load. Hydro is, by itself, incapable of providing year-'round base load because it depends on seasonal mountain runoff. Its uptime is somewhere in the mid-30% range. Wind is high seasonal and intermittent, with uptime in the mid-20% range. Solar is the worst, in the low-20% range.
Gas and coal are in the mid-60% range because they need a lot of downtime for maintenance. Nukes? They're in the 90%+ range. They are the answer. Even in brain-dead WA State, much to my shock even the Democrats got behind new-generation nukes to be installed on the Hanford Reservation. All of this is ENGINEERING, something that no one seems to want to think about, but increasingly those who know anything are rediscovering.
Science is a bitch. We have a population of "progressive" dolts who choose to deny biology and pretend that homo sapiens, a mammal that like all mammals is sexually dimorphic and cannot change its sex or "gender," and thereby cast a shadow over the scientific method along with the climate weenies who actively falsify temperature records. But science marches on, and it will give us a nuclear power revival and electric vehicles.
Good comments
"Killing raptors and bats". Funny how this meme is used so regularly about wind turbines by the sort of people who, if the welfare of raptors and bats is brought up any other context, would sneer at it as hippy shit and dumb tree-hugging. It's amazing to see the Republican nature-contemptuous types who suddenly affect a deep concern for the welfare of bats whenever, and only whenever, renewable energy is mentioned.
You must get your information about Republicans from the legacy press, who love to caricature anyone to the right of AOC as some kind of imbecilic troglodyte who hates the environment. I have been a conservative libertarian-Republican all my life and I don't know anyone who doesn't care about the birds and ecosystems that wind and solar are destroying. I am very angry that liberals DON'T care about the destruction. The real nature-contemptuous types are city-dwelling liberals who never go out to the real rural areas and meet real people who live there, and find out how much we out here care about the land and the environment we live in. Get out of your bubble. Nature isn't a tree in a hole in the sidewalk or a city park.
I have been skeptical of that, and to some extent still am, but my eyebrows were raised when the Biden administration carved out an exemption for killing bald eagles with wind turbines. Tell me: Is there ANY principle of ANY kind that "progressives" really believe in?
The missing link between people who support subsidies and people who want lower energy prices is the number of people in each category. More people pay for electricty than make a voluntary investment of tens of thousands of dollars to get the subsidy for solar panels and reduce their monthly electric bill.
In addition people suffering too high electric bills hate the democrats’ reverse Robin Hood approach, taking from the lower income and giving to the high earners.
Ruy again has a thoughtful, logical perspective and sound argument. I would be shocked to see the democrats follow his advice.
It is indeed time to face the facts about climate change, but the facts are these: 1) Climate change is irrefutably established in 40 years of solid research from all over the world. 2) The only thing the scientific analysis has gotten wrong is that it is happening faster and more dramatically than projected. 3) But it is clear the left has botched the messaging, e.g. in the "Green New Deal", which burdened climate policies with every idea every lefty advocate ever had about anything. 4) This is not an issue where polling should be decisive: it's not like immigration or day care or whatever, which are policy issues. 5) Climate change is an exogenous threat that we will all suffer from incrementally the later it is addressed, and neither Trump or the Liberal Patriot can wish it away. 6) No matter how much irrational populist emotion is wrapped around the issue, no matter how much disinformation the fossil fuel industry or manipulative right-wingers spew out, the facts remain the facts. 7) Trump's erasure of "climate change" from government discourse, reversals of policies, etc., will only serve to hand the technologies necessary for providing energy for any kind of reasonable living standard in the future to China. 8) The Democrats would be failing their duty to the people if they don't find a way to frame the issue so that it can be addressed urgently and effectively. This could all be incorporated into a version of the "abundance agenda" focused on maintaining living standards and building the economy that we will need to live comfortably and avoid the disasters of climate change (including climate-driven mass migration).
Oh yeah, "messaging." How about critical thinking? There is a long list of failed climate predictions that you and your co-religionists choose to ignore or deny.
Well, the issue is whether to accept 40 years of well established climate analysis, the major points of which have all stood up very well, except that it's coming faster than anticipated. Reference to "co-religionists" suggests some kind of populist emotion that is impervious to the facts. No major predictions have failed; only details have had to be refined, which of course is normal in very complex analysis developing over time. Climate change is not a matter of "belief"; we're not talking about the Doctrine of the Trinity. It's whether to accept an analytical conclusion that is well grounded, generally accepted among the relevant specialists, and becoming more and more apparent every day, and with every annual review; or whether to believe the disinformation put out by the industry, by malicious right-wingers, and by those who just want to reject the real-life complexity of the times we are living in. Little children now among us, who should live into the next century, will pay the price of our not bothering to accept the serious but perhaps manageable inconveniences required to address it.
Failed prediction timeline. But you will deny it because the wrong people publish it, even though it's well documented. That's what "progressives" do. As for "well established" analysis, shall we talk about failed consensus in other realms, or about the crisis of reproducibility in scientific research? Nah. Too inconvenient.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/failed-prediction-timeline/
You are seriously linking to Wattsupwiththat as your s ientific source? Jesus wept. This article really has brought out the scientific illiterates. Watt was a TV weather man, now funded entirely by anti-regulation political ideologues. There isn't an actual scientist anywhere near the site.
I love that phrase "well documented" though. Like Bigfoot is "well documented", and drinking bleach to cure COVID is "well documented". The phrase means 'it's on the internet, I've seen it'.
There you go. WUWT links to other sources, but you are a prototypical "progressive" fact denier. Whatever you don't like, you will dismiss. It's just so typical of your kind. It's sad, pathetic, amusing, and oh so predictable.
This seems to be a good example of mainstream Magical Thinking, or the belief that politics and social science can fundamentally alter, if not define, the Natural Laws of the Universe.
It's not that the political premise- ie, no-one gives a crap about the environment- is wrong. It's just that nowhere in this article does the author mention the EFFECT of ignoring climate change. It's simply assumed that if they are ignored as politically awkward, the laws of physics and chemistry will simply go away. There is deemed to be no fundamental problem- because, it seems, it simply doesn't fit into the very limited perspective of "political reality".
Now, some might say that a society that regards the cost of a packet of chips as too high a price to pay for a functioning atmosphere is a society that is literally suicidal. But the author has no problem at all with this idea- it's anyone who thinks maybe we SHOULD stop fucking up the climate who is, in his view, deluded. Think about that. Is this "realism"? No, it's Magical Thinking. It's insane.
At least the Trumpists have the intellectual integrity to invent an explanatory narrative for their denialism; scientists are either grifters after government grants, or Communists using a hoax to undermine America. But Liberals don't have the balls to do this- they always drip in the phrase "of course climate change is serious" before they go on to explain why it's deluded to do anything about it. Which means one of two things- either people like Ruy are insane, and happy to accept that a packet of potato chips is too high a price to stop what the scientists are telling us will be a catastrophe, or they too think science is bunk. It must be the latter, but being good centrists, they don't have the cahoonas to come out of the closet and explain exactly why scientists are talking out of their assholes.
So- let's hear the scientific reasoning, rather than the political bed-wetting, just for once. Please explain why physics is defeated by a bag of chips....
A little humility for all of us is in order. The fact is that the so called climate models have been way off by orders of magnitude so far, and attempts to validate their methodology have failed. Not only is no one talking about the much greater risks of a massive volcanic eruption or nuclear war or sunspot flareups, but we don't know where the climate is going and what the effects will be. So far, they've been pretty benign overall, but that may change. What we DO know is that a massive amount of wasted spending has occurred but also that all the climate concern has accelerated the development of new energy solutions, which will very likely solve the CO2 emissions puzzle by mid-century.
Nice job pushing your secular climate religion. You and your fellow "progressives" have wrecked the Democratic Party with that crap.
You really appear to be arguing against a straw man. Listen to the actual arguments being made. They are, essentially, (1) the US emits a small percentage of total carbon, around 11%, and extreme austerity in the US alienates voters while having a minimal effect on global warming, (2) US voters are not willing to accept extreme austerity or lifestyle changes, (3) given the embrace of AI, politicians and businessmen are not serious about global warming when it’s inconvenient, and (4) mitigation may be an essential step at this point, and needs to be discussed.
None of that is magical thinking. What is magical thinking is believing that ignoring those realities makes them go away. We have the economic and political reality we have. Being angry and condescending about it doesn’t help.
Most Republicans don’t deny climate change. Ruy isn’t arguing that the price is too high; he’s saying that voters are not willing to pay it. Mischaracterizing their views is not productive.
What this means that you have to figure out the best results you can get within what is actually achievable.
For example, solar on parking garages, rooftops, and brownfields do not get the strong pushback you get putting them on farms and forests. They also tend not to require long distance transmission. Nuclear is getting increased acceptance. MANY people who would not consider an EV would buy a hybrid. Multiple scientists are working on carbon mitigation strategies that need to be evaluated, whether it’s powdered rock aging, ocean seeding, new carbon absorbent materials, or something else.
When you refuse to pivot, you waste political energy on futile efforts while ignoring achievable gains.
First of all, the US is the world's biggest CO2 emitter. It takes quite some arrogance for the US to claim that it's "too small" to have any responsibility do anything about it. What this is effectively saying is that no-one-one has any responsibility to do anything about it- which is essentially what the article is saying.
When I use the term "magical thinking", I mean his (and your) acceptance of this situation as a simple part of political reality, and the actual, real-world physical consequences are just not up for discussion. Humans CAN ignore it, because that's just how it is. That is insanity, not realistism. The fact that you and the author call the fact that (relatively, globally) rich US citizens won't pay a dollar to have
a functioning planetary
atmosphere "reality" is a
ludicrous situation. Physics is
reality, food is reality, wildfires
and oceans are reality- what you
are talking about is opinion. A
suicidal opinion. Like driving a
car towards a wall and saying
'well, the passengers won't
accept me upsetting their drinks
by swirving, so the only realistic
option is to continue in the same
direction, but turn the radio up and slow down by 2 mph'.
Accepting that opinion as "reality", rather than something that any scientifically literate and ethical human would bust every gut to change, involves
either climate change denialism,
or magical thinking. One of the
two.
The US is NOT the worlds biggest CO2 emitter. Not even close. China produces nearly three times as much.
China produces about 34% of world emissions. The US produces 11-12% - a third of China’s. See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/co2-emissions-by-country
In other words, 88-89% of carbon emissions are outside the US.
The article is saying that people will not vote for austerity now for less global warming later. That is based on multiple and repeated polls - literally hundreds of them - and decades of election results. At some point, yes, you have to accept that people do not agree with you and you need to try another approach.
I made a list of examples of potential other approaches - “For example, solar on parking garages, rooftops, and brownfields do not get the strong pushback you get putting them on farms and forests. They also tend not to require long distance transmission. Nuclear is getting increased acceptance. MANY people who would not consider an EV would buy a hybrid. Multiple scientists are working on carbon mitigation strategies that need to be evaluated, whether it’s powdered rock aging, ocean seeding, new carbon absorbent materials, or something else.”
If you cannot get elected, you have no impact on policy.
You're right, I should have said the per capita- other countries have higher ones, but I ly very small countries in deserts. The point is that the Chinese emissions are part of the hated fact that the US has outsourced it's manufacturing there. If, as Trump supposedly desires, it returned home, US emissions would go through the roof. But it's good to be able to blame the country making all your shit for the consequences.
Your mitigating policies are, as I m sure you actually know, trivial- as my example of turning the radio up and slowing by 2 mph on your way towards the wall. They are magical thinking. I realise you are talking about politics, and I am talking about scientific research- I am not, thank God, a politician. Which is precisely why I can point out the insanity of the politics. You are fighting the laws of physics with polling- I understand why. But it's ludicrous, nonetheless. You are telling the vulcanologists that the people of Pompeii regard moving out of the way as unacceptably inconvenient, and that the vulcanologists are unrealistic. Realistic Magical thinking.
The point is that US regulations affect US emissions only. That is not blaming anything.
Manufacturing coming back here would increase US emissions but reduce global emissions, as the US has a cleaner energy mix.
Politics is an essential part of change. Belittling it is not helpful.
Mitigating policies are not trivial. Solar panels don’t care where they are located. Hybrids could help a lot. Nuclear has huge potential for reducing emissions. Direct mitigation could help a lot, but that needs research to do responsibly.
I am telling you that you need to figure out what you can get done rather than treating this like a religious belief. You do not appear to appreciate how counter productive that is.
Energy policy under Biden was essentially the same as under Obama: "all of the above". Oil and gas output reached all-time highs under Biden. Dem policy makers had decided that the "all carrots and no sticks" approach was the only thing that would fly electorally, so they dropped things like carbon taxes and subsidized green alternatives.
Going forward, climate change is real and constitutes a slow-motion emergency, which we've known since the 50s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
Powering as much as possible with sustainably-generated electricity as soon as practical looks like the only way forward that avoids terrible outcomes in the mid-term future.
Construction Physics finds that "the falling costs of solar PV will make it feasible for solar to supply large fractions of electricity demand cost-effectively. Reaching 90 or 95% is indeed costly, but 70-80% appears to be well within the realm of possibility" and "If solar PV and battery costs continue to fall, supplying very large fractions of electricity demand with solar PV becomes feasible. At $400 a kw solar and $100 a kwh batteries (costs China is probably achieving right now), we could meet 80% of electricity demand with solar PV for roughly current US average combined cycle gas turbine costs.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/can-we-afford-large-scale-solar-pv
The above analysis doesn.t even consider measures to attenuate peaks in demand, that would further reduce the cost of supplying electricity, since it's the peak demand that determines how much total generating capacity you need to build.
Americans use way more electricity than is needed for a comfortable existence. German households use about a third as much through measures such as improved home insulation, district heating systems and (gasp) tolerating higher home temps in summer and lower temps in winter, maybe even wearing a sweater indoors.
In my house, we close the registers in unoccupied rooms. When I had the house built in '17, I equipped it with triple pane windows, the maximum available insulation, a heat pump that works fine until freezing, and a backup propane unit, and a propane-powered on-demand water heater. Of course, in WA State, the Democratic climate Nazis now tax propane at 20%.
Between that the so-called climate taxes whose proceeds go straight into the general fund, and pseudo-environmentalist opposition to new oil refineries, motor vehicle fuel costs about $1.50 a gallon more than it does in the Great Plains and most of the rest of the Midwest. All of this reduces the state's CO2 emissions by about 1%. This has NO impact on global CO2 emissions. It is virtue signaling gone wild, inflicted by the rich "progressives" of the Puget Sound.
The newly-elected "moderate" Democratic governor of WA State just signed the largest tax increase in WA State history. All while cutting funding to the food banks. As a relatively new wingnut (about a decade since I left that party that I'd called home for 40 years), I bake a dozen loaves of home made bread every week for the food bank, and recently finished planting the last of our 15 raised beds, 13 of whose crops go to the local food bank.
I cannot save the world, but I can walk my talk, which is a hell of a lot more than almost all of this state's faux "progressives." The stupidity, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of this state's Democratic liberals is thick enough to cut with a chain saw. I lived in Seattle for 21 years, and while I was there, I adapted a longstanding quip about the stubborn Norwegian fishermen of Ballard, who to this day land much of the Alaskan catch on the docks that were a mile from our house there.
It goes like this: "You can always tell a Seattle 'progressive,' but you can never tell a Seattle 'progressive' a single god damned thing," to which I added, "because they think they are smarter and better than everyone else." The smugness, arrogance, and unearned intellectual superiority there is truly something to behold.
Back to that propane tax. Even in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, home heating fuel is not taxed. Neither is food. In WA State, a "gross receipts tax" helps make groceries there some of the most expensive in the country, and the Democrats stick it to people heating their houses.
My fantasy, which will never come true, is to meet some of the Seattle "leaders" and congratulate them for doing the impossible and turning me into a wingnut. The "progressives" actively despise the working middle class. I have ZERO respect for them.
Oh, and it gets better. The worthies of the Seattle City Council passed a resolution advocating the destruction of the dams on the Columbia River that supply more hydropower than anywhere in the country. Naturally, they did not include the one dam that generates Seattle City Light's electricity. There's nothing quite like the marriage of self-righteousness, arrogance, and stupidity. You have to see it to believe it.
Besides not being 35, not born in the U.S. or a citizen, it looks like the issue of renewable energy will contribute to preventing Greta Thunberg from running for President.
Or maybe that boat on the way to Gaza hits (ahem) an exploding rock. We can only hope.
The majority of people’s support for cheap fossil fuels reflects their tendency to have a time horizon rarely more than ten years. Fossil fuels will eventually become more and more expensive as natural reserves are depleted, and no amount of government subsidies will change that basic fact of real economics. I wish that political leaders would take a longer term approach to the issue without the panic driven inefficient centrally controlled approach of leftist extremists.
The idiot lefties have been predicting "peak oil" for decades. In reality, U.S. oil and gas production has done nothing but go up. There are vast reserves of shale oil in this country along with conventional oil and gas. The stupidity and dishonesty knows no bounds.
I am no fan of Archie Bunker Trump, the Rodeo Clown from Queens, but I fully understand his appeal. In many ways, I share the resentment. It's best captured in the link below, which while being over-written, hits the nail squarely on the head with respect to what the author calls the "smugtivists" who have captured the Democratic Party that I once called home.
https://suedonym.substack.com/p/the-great-temptation-donald-trump
Here's the thing. If, as I predict, the Democrats lay a political egg in the '26 midterms and again in '28, the results will scare the living hell out of them. Bring it on! The first result will be that the 6-3 Supreme Court advantage will become 7-2 and later, 8-1. The second result will be that, once Roberts leaves, the next chief justice will be far more conservative.
The coup de grace will come after the 2030 census and reapportionment. It will shift about a dozen electoral votes from blue states to red states, demolishing the so-called "blue wall." And that's not even taking into account the very possible reversals in Minnesota, New Hampshire, and even New Jersey. Do the grand pooh bahs, let alone the deluded "base" liberals, even begin to realize just how close to the cliff they are?
Nope, not at all. First it happens gradually. Then all at once. "Progressives," think it's bad for you now? Just wait until the '30s. As an old fart, one thing I have come to realize is how fast time goes by. Your denouement is fast approaching, and when it arrives you will be shattered to learn just how lonely the political wilderness will become.
Your predictions of future political trends seem reasonable (although it is rare for such predictions to be more than a little accurate).
But I question the relevancy of your observation that the predictions of "peak oil" have not materialized over a couple of decades, while "U.S. gas and oil production has done nothing but go up." That illustrates the type of short-term thinking that I was criticizing.
The issue of providing enough energy for an advanced industrial economy is one that spans much more than a few decades.
The fact that new technology (that is, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing) has increased the ability to extract oil and gas has "bought" civilized humanity perhaps a few decades before the real cost of extracting oil and gas from the remaining reserves makes those fossil fuels increasingly unavailable to "ordinary" consumers. But that few decades is trivial in comparison to the millennia over which human civilization has developed.
Unlike leftist extremists, I appreciate the opportunity that those technologies (especially regarding natural gas) have given us. But I care about the future of civilized humanity in general -- and my descendants in particular -- more than 10, 20 or even 100 years into the future. So, I recognize the need to gradually transition away from fossil fuels to other energy sources -- including nuclear -- before the energy issue further develops into a global crisis involving economics, environmental quality, and national security.
And, yes, I'm one of those "globalists" who not only cares about the quality of life of people in other countries (especially those that share my centrist political values) but one with a background in economics, environmental science, and military service who recognizes how -- like it or not -- we are all interdependent.
My predictions are tentative but also based on what happened in the 1980s. The Republicans won the presidency three times in a row, and it really took those three defeats to shove the Democrats closer to the middle. They looked over the cliff and they saw that it was a long way down to the rocks below.
The difference now is that I don't think they'll have that much time. My prediction hinges on '26 and especially '28, and as I've written in a different comment thread, '28 will depend on the direction of the economy (proxy being the unemployment rate) in the spring of that year. They could get saved by an economic downturn, but if they don't, it's going to be dire.
I mention the "peak oil" thing because this was an article of faith among "progressives" for a few decades, and it didn't happen. The oil producers have every incentive to underestimate reserves, and there are new ones being discovered all the time, the latest being among Venezuela's neighbors and off the coast of Brazil. But there are others, including in the United States.
I expect a decline in oil consumption for light vehicles (responsible for about a quarter of oil use in industrial economies) as solid state batteries make EVs standard everywhere, so the pressure on discoveries will abate to a degree. The various global environmental catastrophes simply have not panned out, in in fact the quality of life has been steadily rising globally.
I trace the recent (as in last 50 or so years) global doom stuff on the hysterics that surrounded the first Earth Day and the Santa Barbara oil spill. When you look back at the Mathusian predictions at that time, all you can do is have a laugh. I think the catastrophic risks are what they were back then: nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare. Those things really can kill people by the billions. The rest, to me, is whipped cream on dogshit, to recall a phrase invented by a college friend back in the 1970s.
As other commentators have already noted, this is an astute and insightful analysis. The issue however is this: if anything, climate change models have underestimated both the magnitude and the rapidity of climate change, along with the massive financial consequences of it.
The US is being left in the horse drawn coach era by China, which does recognize the advantages of a solar and battery powered future: we don't. True leadership would devise a palatable and convincing narrative promoting the economic value of sustainable energy.
As Henry Kissinger noted, " A great leader is someone who takes a nation where it needs to go even when its people don’t realize they need to get there." Yet, we can't even deal with the immediate exigent of Trump, much less an existential and potentially avertable ecological debacle.
Well, it didn't take long for my original question to be answered; a couple of prods, and the 'reasonable realist' stance quickly shows itself to be essentially Trumpist anti-science. After all, I've said nothing that isn't endorsed by the world's science institutes, which you call, with magnificent intellectual corruption, "religionist".
Could you give a list of these failed projections please- I'm sure the Heartland Institute will have something for you. You might like to mention the venerable classic memes 'Medieval Warm Period", "CO2 is vital for life", "consensus isn't scientific" and "when I was a kid all the scientists told us there was about to be an Ice Age".
All of which are true.
John, here’s my question: what’s the optimal temperature for earth?