It would be nice if someone could inform the Democrats of WA State who have imposed a 20% climate tax on the propane I use to heat the house in winter, and which makes motor fuel 50% more expensive than in the Great Plains. And who have lied about all of it from the get-go, and still do.
And let's talk about wind turbines that they love. A slight problem, one of a few but this is the worst, yet one that the Democrats are too stupid and too arrogant to admit: The machines are lasting for one-third of their advertised life. It's an engineering issue that no one has solved and that I will explain presently. The issue has required bailouts of Siemens (#2 wind turbine producer, #1 market share in the U.S.) by the German gov't. Similar info for the others isn't publicly available but read on and you will see that ALL of them face it.
It's actually simple. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. The flows are NOT uniform. Think of wind not as the unified force that we think we feel outside because we don't stop to analyze it, but as what it really is: an infinite number of constantly varying smaller forces. This means that the wind pressure that makes the blades turn varies GREATLY on the blades. Different not only the top vs. the bottom of the blades, but along their entire length, and constantly varying on each foot of each blade as the three of them turn.
As a result, the turbines wobble at the hub. The bearings and gearboxes are warranted for 20 years but are failing at 7 years. The issue has been known since the very beginning. Anyone here drive past wind turbines and notice how many of them aren't turning? That's why. Think it's one of those easy, boring things that the engineers in the basement can fix? Think again. They can't fix it, and as a result, today's wind turbines are tomorrow's white elephants. In utility lingo, "stranded costs." We will be paying those bills for decades.
Even when they are "working," wind and solar are the least reliable power sources. Democrats hate facts and ignore critical problems. Why not, when your solution is to just raise taxes? Mr. Teixeira, I love ya to death, but I'm afraid that, alas, your underlying thesis is tragically incorrect. The "progressives" who run the Democratic Party are every bit as hooked on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis as they have ever been. They continue to lie their asses off at every turn, and to stick us with the bills for their crusade.
No one wants to tell the public about this. It's buried in the financial news, amid much jargon, not mentioned much there either. The intrepid general "news" media, including Fox, are too lazy and stupid (bunch of airheads, really) to even look at it, and the "progressives" won't be caught dead acknowledging the facts because then there'd be one hell of a lot of explaining to do.
I guarantee that I didn't make it up. Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? The search term is wind turbine bearing failure. Again, this is absolutely NOT some typical mechanical glitch, easily solved. Not one bit. Other way around. The only reason why it's not front and center is that the new turbines work for 7 to 10 years, and even longer if they overbuild a wind field so they can leave a lot of them idle.
Bernie Madoff must be having a damn good laugh from the grave. Wind turbines are a mechanical Ponzi scheme. And no, I'm not an ideologue. I don't have a love affair with Exxon. I wish they worked as advertised, but they simply do not.
Had no doubts that you weren't providing accurate facts. Thanks again.
p.s. appreciate also the fact that you can see the flaws in both sides. So do we. We also can see the good ideas on both sides. We're not partisan.....we're empiricists.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. Pragmatism, or to put it differently: "I am in favor of whatever works." By the way, I get in arguments with wingnuts about electric vehicles. They're not quite there yet for the mass market, but watch out for solid state batteries.
They are going to be here, and when they are here, you won't even be able to find a new ICEV. When this happens at acceptable prices (mid-'30s is my prediction), EVs won't need subsidies or adoption requirements. People will demand them. They will take over as fast as diesel-electric freight locomotives introduced in 1939 killed the steam locomotive.
By the way: Every single freight train rolls on electric power. The diesel part is an engine that turns an alternator to make electricity, which is then sent to electric traction motors that turn the wheels. Among other things, those motors have so much torque that trains have to be started slowly so the steel wheels don't slip on the rails. The point is this: Electric motive power is not new at all. The issue with EVs is ENTIRELY the batteries. How much power can be stored relative to the battery's weight, cost, and performance. NOTHING ELSE. Or as I learned in college: The rest is whipped cream on dogshit. LOL
Solid state batteries will at least double and probably triple the energy density, meaning that much more range per pound of battery weight. They will operate at a wider temperature range, meaning a lot less reduction of usable capacity in winter, and no overheating in a Phoenix summer. They will be less likely to catch fire. The degradation per charge will be reduced. And they will be able to recharge much faster. In short, the problems with today's liquid electrolyte EV batteries will pretty much vanish, or at least be far reduced.
It will be akin to the replacement of oil lamps by lightbulbs, steam locomotives by diesel electric, cathode ray tubes by LEDs, individual farm machines by combines, sail by steam and diesel, canals by rail ...
All of this stuff is engineering. I was a wind turbine believer until I learned about what I described above. I think the bearing issue really is a show stopper. I would love to be wrong, but I am correct now and I kinda sorta doubt that this will be solved in the foreseeable future, if ever. Can they keep it up with wind turbines? Sure. They can be good "progressives" and ignore the issue, and cause electricity rates to spike. It's what they're doing, and what they will keep doing.
Dirty little open secret: almost all "progressives" are innumerate.
p.s.: Next time you see some dumb story in the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, et al about a lithium shortage, please laugh. Not only is lithium abundant, but new deposits are constantly being found right here in the United States. And the batteries can be recycled. Hasn't happened yet because EVs are still new, but it will happen just as it has happened with those 12 volt lead-acid Sears Die Hards.
Thank you for details and engineering insights into the fundamental problem. It leads me to think a very large number of small turbines would be needed rather than gargantuan blades we see today. And I don't think that is practical or affordable.
I'm cautiously optimistic CBS News might be interested in a story like this.
The same physics and bearing issues plague home-scale turbines. Past that, there is the economy of scale issue. In some things, bigger isn't necessarily better, but when you're talking about electric utilities, bigger is definitely better.
Besides being a cellular-level Midwestern pragmatist, I was fed by a second generation German mother who could stretch a dollar all the way to the end of the block and back. I am all about cheap. To me, cheap is a love word. I'm not talking about "cheap" quality (although quality is a sliding scale and often not worth paying for the next step up) but about cheap cost.
Sorry, but even if home scale wind turbines didn't have the same issue, I'd be as skeptical as it gets about plopping a zillion of them out yonder rather than a hundred here and a hundred there. Incidentally, I am also fairly skeptical (but persuadable) of the new "progressive" enthusiasm for nuclear reactor as long as they are small.
Fer chrissakes, why should they be small? This is nuclear power. Now, I will confess to a lack of knowledge which means I can easily be wrong, but I will recall that the U.S. ended the war with Japan by dropping two nukes of about 20 kilotons. Within what, a decade, the U.S. nuclear arsenal consisted of bombs with 1,000 times the explosive power. I doubt that the H-bombs were more expensive.
This is America, god damn it. I want more bang for the same bucks, and maybe fewer. This country has been damn good at that in the past, and it should be in the future. Take those EV batteries as an example. The solid state ones under development will be triple the energy density and they won't cost any more, at least once they ride down the manufacturing volume/cost curve. Or how about computer data storage? My first computer, circa 1988, had a huge 20 megabyte hard drive. I just got one at Costco the other day, and it's got a 1 terabyte drive. I have 512 GB micro SD cards. They are cheaper previous storage. MORE!
I'm a Samuel Gompers guy. When asked what he wanted, he answered "More."
Your average "progressive" thinks that "More" is gauche. Well, that's because they are, as a rule, rich and feeling guilty about it. Jimmy Carter got his ass kicked when he told everyone that the United States should get used to an era of limits. Screw that, Ronald Reagan replied, and then he cleaned Jimmy's clock in 1980. Tell an American that (s)he shouldn't want more, and learn just what a complete a-hole that American thinks you are. LOL
Before I retired, I was a telecommunications analyst and (very) minor venture capital staffer. Don't hate me. I was actually honest. In those roles, I had to explain complicated technology to intelligent laymen who didn't know anything about the particulars.
I love engineers, I really do, but they tend to get lost in the weeds. I'd tell the people who worked for me that it was our job to BOTH dive into the deep end of the pool and snatch the quarter off the bottom AND to then go to 35,000 feet and tell people what it means in terms they can understand.
Thanks for the good words. Trust me, I learned how to do this after multiple failures. LOL
"The reality has begun to sink in for political leaders around the world..." This truth comes about 30 years too late and at a great cost to all working class people of the world. Elected officials should not need 30 years and trillions of tax dollars to face and accept reality. If there was ever an indictment of global "leadership", this is it.
"Rebranding as “we’re just folks who want to bring down your electric bill” is beyond disingenuous." Yes, it is, and that is exactly what Biden and Congressional Democrats did when they passed a bill which spent 3/4 of its appropriations on renewable energy and called it the "Inflation Reduction Act." A Trojan horse with solar panels.
“There’s a big, beautiful world out there of economic and energy policies that can now be considered without the climate movement’s thumb on the scales.
Freedom! Democrats should embrace it.”
Amen, Amen , Amen. When my husband and I graduated from engineering school decades ago we were fierce environmentalists. Donated and had Greenoeace in our wills, bought land and took acres out of corn/ soybeans because of erosion, spent hours upon hours of our free time fighting invasive species and learning about water quality, invested in thousands of dollars in our house getting the very best insulation and kept our house quite cold in winter and warm in the summer. Then sometime in the mid 90s things started to go crazy and by the early 2000s the environmental leaders completely lost their way. The single biggest indicator of that was the screaming of global warming going to destroy all we hold dear yet a complete rejection of the only thing that gave you a realistic way to fight it nuclear energy. If in the early 2000s we had just learned from the issues around nuclear from incidents in Japan, Ukraine and 3 mile we could have been on our way now to a credible reduction in fossil fuels. I have lost faith in all the leadership both political and non political in this area. Total disgust. I want the Democrats to go after environmental issues but this strategy for the past 20-25 years has been a disaster
Exactly. The movement lost me the day they rejected nuclear in any capacity as part of the solution. “No Nuclear” became a religious tenet not to be questioned while the last 30 years have been utterly wasted on “solutions” that barely impacted the problem.
They tried to be too clever in their marketing and forgot what this was about.
It's not climate change, it's about lowering the amount all sorts of harmful pollution. The original scare tactic (in spite of what many will say) was global cooling. Big in the 1970's. Then it was the ozone layer. Then it changed to global warming.
Once they realized the goal seemed to be constantly changing and that harmed the credibility of the movement, "Climate Change" became the label. Who could argue with that. It covered almost all the possibilities and seems like a better long term naming solution.
Then there's the term, "fossil fuels" itself. Another poor choice of labels. That goes all the way back to when oil and other hydrocarbons were thought of as a product of decaying dinosaurs and other prehistoric decaying plant material. During that phase we were told we would be running out of oil (old dinosaurs can't last forever) in twenty years or less and the world would go dark. And cold.
I'm old enough to remember that from my childhood in the later 60's and 70's.
It was never about acid rain, the ozone hole, overpopulation, mass starvation because we can't grow enough food, peak oil, global cooling, now global warming, (did I miss anything?) it has always been about control, power, and money. The leftists who want these things have been casting around for an issue that had traction for 50 years or so, and with global warming they finally found it. It will take us decades to pay back the trillions wasted on "renewable energy" that doesn't work and won't pay out, money that disappeared into the pockets of the grifters who will never account for it and were never expected to produce anything useful in exchange. This has been a massive global fraud that follows a familiar script, create a panic, or a bubble, or an investment too good to be true, suck in a whole lot of money, and after a while declare the enterprise a failure so that the perpetrators can just pocket the money and walk away, while all the investors are left holding the bag. If they were successful they would need to pay back the investors and reduce their own huge profits, and that of course they have no intention of allowing to happen.
This standard block of fifth,-hand internet cliches is so fundamentally scientifically illiterate ("decaying dinosaurs" ffs) that it's pointless even making a serious response, except to say, yet again, this is another reply to my OP that 99% of all discussion on this subject is mere political hackery, with no meaningful scientific content whatsoever. Junk.
Ok, just the dumbest statement should be corrected, in the unlikely even if anyone here caring: the ozone hole was a significant problem discovered in the 1980's, caused by the reduction of ozone (a form of oxygen) in the stratosphere, caused by industrial CFC's. Through international action through the Montreal Protocol, those chemicals were banned. As a result, the hole is now smaller and has a shorter season (spring over the Antarctic, autumn over the Arctic). The result is that halfwits everywhere now love to claim the whole issue of the ozone hole was a "hoax". Because it was largely solved, by intelligent action. Jesus wept.
Those unscientific (inaccurate and untrue) terms were what the public and officials heard from the media to sell the environmental protection product. For a few decades it worked on enough to buy into that point of view.
For a few decades now, the "Sciency" folks have allowed that to happen with few public attempts to correct them because it did seem to work, and nobody wanted to rock the boat. Why argue with their success if it worked in the end?
Now you seem to want to insult your way to credibility, somehow prove that arrogance is a virtue, while beating your beliefs into the thick skulls of the Great Unwashed. The un-sciency readers here.
Which "Unscientific terms" are you referring to? Global warming? The ozone hole? Acid rain? Explain how these are unscientific. Or do you mean the stuff about global cooling, decaying dinosaurs, peak oil and renewables that "don't work", as that's the commenters' confusion, not the evil scientists' and their stolen $billions.
Instead of righteous tone-policing, why not actually consider the generally accepted situation re. climate change amongst the over-whelming majority of global scientific institutions and the relevant senior scientists?
Once again, the responses prove my point- that the scientific reality of AGW are considered irrelevant by the ideologues of political discourse, who consider a mixture of personal 'feelings' and some media headlines are all they need to know about the subject in order to entirely dismiss it.
I know this is going to make all the magical thinkers here howl with contemptuous derision, but it would be nice if there was even the SLIGHTEST consideration of, you know, boring sciency stuff like what the effect of unlimited CO2 emissions will actually BE. This isn't quite the same question as 'do voters care'.
I mean, I know this is a political site, and political enthusiasts generally believe that opinion polls defeat the laws of physics, but even just one short sentence considering the mainstream scientific position on climate change and the possible/probable economic consequences (I'm not asking for any consideration of non-human life, that would be surreal) would be very helpful if we are even pretending here to be anything other than full-on Republican "fake science/climate hoaxers". This is, in reality, your position, albeit with a slightly more sophisticated gloss and still existent (but declining rapidly into the mist) reluctance to fully embrace the high-octane Fox hyperbole.
People would more willingly trust the "boring sciency stuff" if they hadn't gotten so many false alarms from previous "boring sciency stuff." Look at the endangerment of polar bears: "Using extensive data of polar bears collected by U.S. Geological Survey scientists from 2001 to 2005, a research team including Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Christine Hunter of the University of Alaska determined that climate change in the Arctic is dramatically reducing polar bears’ survival and reproductive rates."
Since then, the population of polar bears increased by 2,000-6,000, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Either institution, or both, might be wrong. But, how can we laymen decide who to believe?
" Citing researchers during a 2009 climate change conference, (Al) Gore said there was a 75% chance that ice in the Arctic could be gone during at least some summer months within five to seven years."
" According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in 2023 was approximately 4.23 million square kilometers. "
How can I question the scienciness of a Nobel Laureate like Al Gore? By pointing out that his predictions were wrong.
This illustrates my point about the myopia of political sites about scientific issues perfectly. Why are you waffling to me about the scientific opinions of a politician?
Well, you could bother to look at the overall climatic science, rather than taking one small proxy as your sole metric- which has, as the population of one mammal species, a large set of survival factors, from sea ice retreat to the availability of food in human waste bins.
No, this isn't a science site but you are making science an issue. So, here is some real science, that I have learned from my career as a professional scientist. We already know what the results of unlimited CO2 are, we have many examples in the 500 million years or so of multicellular life on this planet. Life flourishes in the oceans and on land. Ice ages are actually rare and are stressful for the biosphere. We are in an ice age today, just a slightly warmer part of it. For most of the last 500MA (until about 25 million years ago) climate was much warmer than it is today and there was more CO2 in the atmosphere, although real scientists debate whether increasing CO2 is a cause or a consequence of warming caused by other natural forces, such as variations in solar radiation. Some studies have indicated that CO2 changes lag temperature changes, not the other way around. There are strong feedback loops in the environment to remove CO2 and recycle it. Further, it appears that any warming caused by greenhouse effects of CO2 diminish with increasing amounts of the gas in the atmosphere. More CO2 is actually very beneficial to life on this planet since plant growth is greatly enhanced, and the plants also require less water and other inputs. We know this since commercial greenhouses for food production operate at CO2 levels of 1000ppm or more because they are far more efficient that way. I could write a book on this subject but I'm trying to keep this short. There is plenty of actual science, not politics pretending to be science, to back all of this up if you look for it. Oh, and by the way, actual warming has not been anywhere near as large as the climate models predict, even with the biased temperature records. Look that one up too.
I find it very hard to believe you are a scientist, Deborah, given the fact that your post here is simply an uncritical collection of all the usual confused cliches of the many ideological pseudo-science blogs around.
Just a few examples: firstly, the idea that it's all ok, because it was often hotter in the past. Although theres never been "unlimited" CO2, or anything else. Yes. Before humans had evolved, never mind human civilisation, when sea levels were hugely higher than now, much of the remaining land swamps, before any of the worlds plant life (ie, our food) had evolved. How is this relevant to our planet now, supporting 7 billion humans, rather than some dinosaurs?
Secondly, you clearly dont know what a feedback loop' is, if you think that a 'feedback loop' removes CO2 and "recycles" it. What you're describing is the carbon cycle, which is a normal part of the planet's functioning, but which is now being disrupted by the very sudden increase in CO2 production.
Thirdly, the old cliche about greenhouses is merely silly, as we are talking about an entire closed system, not a building controlled by an external system for water, nutrients, temperature and light control, etc. by a horticulturalist.
Fourth- a fringe scientist who says something you want to hear, but which goes against the great majority (ie, CO2 changes lag temperature changes, something that experiments in the late 19th century first showed to be largely false) doesn't make them, by definition, "a real (as opposed to a fake)scientist". It makes them a fringe scientist and you'd need to explain why they alone are correct.
Fifth "I could write a book about it". I'm sure you could. I could write a book about NFL football, but it would be gibberish and hopefully no-one would publish it. If you ARE goi ng to publish this putative "science" book, you really need to find out what a feedback loop is. If the carbon cycle WAS a feedback loop, life on Earth would have ended pretty quickly, even with the planet's apparent ability to thrive with "unlimited" CO2.
You stand by your scientific illiteracy? Ok. I would have thought, as a "professional scientist", you might have had the ability to elaborate your understanding of such concepts as 'feedback loops' and greenhouses as meaningful proxies for planetary systems, but clearly not.
Good luck with the 'book'. I can't wait, Prof. Another perfect illustration of my OP- thank you.
Your insults say a lot more about you than they do about me. I don't need to prove anything to some random troll on this site, I know who I am and what I know, and you are proving the same about yourself.
I haven't "insulted" you, I've just been honest about your total lack of knowledge about a subject you claim, dishonestly, to be an expert on. You are clearly not a scientist, and your claim to be one is false. Yes, I'm sure you "know what you are", and it isn't what you say it is here. If you can't argue your point rationally and factually, you merely prove that your argument is non-existent.
There is a massive amount of actual science that blows apart the entire man-made global warming nonsense but it doesn't fit the narrative so the political media does its best to ignore it. The NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) and the Energy Security and Freedom Substack are two sources for factual information.
The exact illustration of my point. A list of anti-scientic:rubbish that you 'believe ' because it conforms to your political ideology.
What is it about the name "Energy Security and Freedom" that makes me think of an objective scientific organisation? Maybe they could call themselves The Scientific Institute for the Study of Commie Climate Hoaxes,? That sounds 'sciency' yet politically on-trend.
If you want a boring “sciencey” discussion about climate change, I strongly recommend Cliff Mass’ blog in general and podcast from a few years back. Mass is a professor of atmospheric sciences at UW and an honest scientist as opposed to the climate change fanatics.
You mean, you've found a scientist who says what you want to hear, allowing to disregard all the rest. Again, standard political hackery. If you could explain seriously why Mass is correct and most of the rest are wrong, that would be a meaningful start.
I will, although there's an inherent problem with laymen deciding which scientists to 'believe', as the only grounds on which they can base their opinion is either rhetorical persuasiveness- which is largely scientifically irrelevant- or, as I say, personal political bias.
Still, at least you've referred to an actual scientist, which is more than the Liberal Patriot manages in an entire essay supposedly about a scientific issue. Although, as I say, the Magical Thinking of politics makes it apparently unnecessary.
The article says nothing about the science of climate change, only the politics. No need to quote scientists if you're merely telling people that there's not much appetite for climate activism anymore.
Again, that's exactly my point. A discussion of a scientific issue that ignores science is merely hackery. Without that context of what no action means, people's "appetite" is meaningless. What was people's "appetite" for moving before the Pompeii eruption? What worth would that discussion have had without SOME consideration of the consequences of volcanic eruptions? 'The people vote the Earth's geology to be of no significance'.
Ds could actually leapfrog Rs by embracing not only small nuclear reactors and large data centers, but a national transmission grid for oil and nukes; embrace AI and big data centers; and most of all get in the forefront of desalinization plants to water these things. Cuz right now, no one is in that position.
But I think that's an impossible U-turn for Ds (It was my Civil War #3)
Bravo. Very astute observation. It will be a positive for Dems to no longer be held hostage by Climate zealots. Let's hope Western Europe follows the US to sanity, soon.
The current Sec of Energy notes when he studied renewable energy in college at the end of the 1970's, 83% of the world's energy was derived from fossil fuels. Nearly a 1/2 century later, after spending hundreds of trillions of dollars around the globe, 81% of the world's energy still originates from fossil fuels.
Affordable, abundant clean energy will arrive some day, but it would appear, not anytime soon.
The Colorado Supreme Court is allowing Boulder County to proceed with its lawsuits against Exxon and Suncor over claims of "nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy" extending several decades in the past. If the county prevails in its suit and gets some ka-ching, how soon will every other county in the nation file their own lawsuits? That interval of time would have to be measured with a stopwatch.
Forget other state counties--how about the next POTUS who is climate-lobby-friendly, and their DOJ? Those are parties far more likely to succeed in a suit.
Unfortunately, it's no longer a very far-fetched idea. Heck, it's possible they could just put out an order like this--
Climate change as a phenomenon- whether you believe it is a cataclysmic right-now emergency, or a slow boil problem to fix - cannot be addressed in any meaningful way. It is a GLOBAL problem. There is no global consensus, nor is there a global body with authority to create policy and the teeth to back it up. Man cannot solve truly global problems without a global totalitarian government (a cure worse than the disease).
So all the (obviously costly) solutions being tried result in competitive advantages for those not participating. Second tier countries become free riders while first tier countries cheat like a 5-fingered poker player.
The countries that pivot from “solving it” to new tech for a warmer world will probably be the winners. Of course any breakthrough technology like fusion (which has shown promise of late) or even new types of fission reactors could make all the money spent on climate change moot.
Personally I think most leaders know this but the cause gives them money to play with and a soapbox. Seems like it is running its course though.
There is a difference between admitting a problem is politically hard to solve and claiming it isn't a problem at all. The impact of rising temperatures is still going to cause us problems, sticking our heads in the sand won't make it go away. So, should those on the coasts just plan to move to higher ground in coming decades?
Fundamental extremism , ignorance and intimidation that so typified the climate movement caused leftist governments around the world that have cost thier economies so much since the early 1990s.
That blighted ignornance on full display on the NYT editorial page contending that higher electricity costs across America is because of insufficient committment to decarbonize Amerian regardless of the real economic consequences.
Transgenderism, open borders, anti-Semitism and climate change are the crosses that the Democratic party will die on.
Affordability is a real issue, but as always leftist governance will only make it worse.
I think most people don't recognize is the climate play was a globalist and Wall Street oligarch project... with the administrative part of that Professional Managerial Class hoping that the disruption in the old socioeconomic status-making path from industrial enterprise, something that these PMC cretins have no talent to do, would net them more of their own status-making opportunity... and the money side of the PMC seeing the old energy markets as fully saturated and not a good enough "roll-the-dice" money making opportunity... and that by forcing a move to new hardware, software and services in the "green" energy space would give them a lot of pre-bet Ponzi Scheme plays.
They tried and failed. But they caused a lot of damage to the economies of the existing industrialized countries that China exploited.
In general Ruy, I'm a big fan of your Substack, but the tone of this piece is very bad. While I agree that voters don't prioritize climate change, that doesn't make carbon in the atmosphere any less of a problem that ultimately needs to be dealt with.
Fortunately, there is a path that addresses the issue in a way that won't alienate voters, and ironically this is one of the areas where the Biden Administration wa generally on the right path in substance (if not in rhetoric).
The right answer is an abundance, all of the above energy strategy that in the short term pairs continued use of fossil fuels with big investments in greener technologies that will make a broad shift away from them economical. In other words, continue to use fossil fuels (and stop pointless pipelines opposition) with huge investments in nuclear, solar and wind, and battery technology, as well as significant investments in more speculative technologies like carbon sequestration.
Abundance is clearly the right answer here, and we should be celebrating more than dancing on the grave of climate activism. And while that may be in practice what you're calling for, I think the tone of this piece doesn't lead in that direction.
CO2 is not a pollutant, it's plant food and we need more of it, not less. Current CO2 level in the atmosphere is about 420 ppm, and plant starvation level is around 250-300 ppm so we aren't much above that now. There has been a marked greening of the planet as CO2 levels rise. The earth is also in a natural warming cycle over the last 100-150 years after 300 years or so of the Little Ice Age so we should expect warming, as has happened for at least three previous warm-cool cycles during historic times and others we can identify through proxies during the last 11,000 years since the end of the last ice age. The climate hysterics never explain how the earth was able to warm up all on its own without our help numerous times in the past. I can't think of much that is more un-scientific than the idea that human activity is now uniquely and sinfully responsible for climate warming that has happened multiple times before the industrial age. In science, when you observe a repeating pattern, you don't decide that one of the iterations has some completely new cause that you do not observe in any of the other iterations, that is an irrational explanation. The Left hasn't gotten the message yet that the climate grift is over.
That is my husband POV too. But when he and I set that aside we both agree that regardless of whether or not we are in a global warming or not we need to find a source of energy when we start to run out of fossil fuel. That may take a long time but it is going to take a long time to get fission or fusion nuclear energy where we want it too. Our whole push to insulate our house and reduce the demand of energy was based on this not global warming. So I chose not to get into this debate too much because true or not true we still have the same challenges.
Energy efficiency is always good regardless of the source, it has no to do with ideology. I also do what I can to improve my efficiency and that just makes sense
The Biden administration missed the mark on policy by restricting new leases for oil and gas drilling, refusing to lessen the red tape around nuclear, and going all in on wind and solar which are the least reliable and shortest lasting means of generating power and come with their own host of environmental issues when implemented at scale that are perpetually swept under the rug.
Perpetually swept under the rug. And I am very supportive of solar energy, particularly hydro electric but also see the place for other solar energy but it is just not enough and when scaled issues develop and the cost is still way to high which is why it is usually heavily subsidized. But there really is no long term realistic solution to a world that will demand incredible amount of energy in the coming decades without the investment in nuclear.
I agree with your idea of huge investments in nuclear. Until I see the political leadership pushing this and more importantly doing the hard work of getting all the political non Profit groups pushing this I give zero credibility to abundance. The key issue of the global warming groups and their leaders is that they allowed a completely unrealistic position of setting carbon emission goals without getting their members to understand they had to do this primarily through nuclear energy. Instead they took the easy and lazy way of letting these groups think they did not need nuclear as their cornerstone. This was the heart of their problem which has ended them where they are now. I am not saying it will be easy. It will not be easy it will be tough as ….. but that is the only path of ultimate political success.
That said, while I agree that nuclear energy is an important part of the puzzle because of intermittency issues with solar (and wind), we also shouldn't overstate its important. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear and on a path to get cheaper. And advances in battery power could further reduce some of the need for nuclear.
Biden's handlers (he wasn't really there) said a lot of things but did the opposite out of the spotlight. Nuclear energy was one of these. Whatever they said, they staffed the nuclear regulatory agency (whatever its current name is) with dedicated anti-nuclear leftists who saw it as their mission to stop further development of nuclear energy and to shut down currently operating plants when they could. I believe Trump has at least started to clean out the people in that agency who are standing in the way, as he has with other staffers who think their job is to resist and undermine the administration, but I haven't seen much about that in a while.
Yeah, the "newly signed bill" didn't show up until July of 2024, when the Biden administration had only seven months to run, and was piggybacked on a bill for fire grants. Not, obviously, a priority.
Biden invested tens of billions of dollars in nuclear compared to hundreds of billions of dollars in other renewable energy. Now I am happy for any money going there but tens of billions is not a serious investment. Just wait. The practical engineering, environmental and other issues are going continue to reveal themselves in all the non nuclear renewable. I am not saying we shouldn’t do them. I am saying they are not a practical way of long term getting us the energy we will need over the next 75-200 years.
I'm not technical enough to be able to substantively discuss whether you're last sentence is correct or not. I will just say that I'm more optimistic than you. The sun, tides, and winds obviously produce enormous energy, and I think over the last hundred years it's been a mistake to bet against technological progress achieving things that just a few years were considered unsolvable problems. So I'm optimistic that the challenges involved in converting this latent energy into usable electricity can be solved.
Anyway, I think we'll have to return to this question in 5-10 years to know. I'll put something in my calendar. :) :)
Sun and wind are low-density energy sources and also intermittent. They are inherently unable to carry a grid that needs constant input at the moment of consumption, which is how the grid works. It is basic physics not engineering. There is no engineering solution to efficient capture of low-density energy. Tides/waves are energy but so variable, and so destructive, that I don't think it's likely we will have any cost-effective engineering solution to capturing that energy. It comes back to nuclear energy, very concentrated, efficient, and always on. We only use the nuclear reactor as a heat source, the electrical generation happens in steam turbines that are very well understood and common to other large coal, oil, and gas-fired power plants.
It would be nice if someone could inform the Democrats of WA State who have imposed a 20% climate tax on the propane I use to heat the house in winter, and which makes motor fuel 50% more expensive than in the Great Plains. And who have lied about all of it from the get-go, and still do.
And let's talk about wind turbines that they love. A slight problem, one of a few but this is the worst, yet one that the Democrats are too stupid and too arrogant to admit: The machines are lasting for one-third of their advertised life. It's an engineering issue that no one has solved and that I will explain presently. The issue has required bailouts of Siemens (#2 wind turbine producer, #1 market share in the U.S.) by the German gov't. Similar info for the others isn't publicly available but read on and you will see that ALL of them face it.
It's actually simple. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. The flows are NOT uniform. Think of wind not as the unified force that we think we feel outside because we don't stop to analyze it, but as what it really is: an infinite number of constantly varying smaller forces. This means that the wind pressure that makes the blades turn varies GREATLY on the blades. Different not only the top vs. the bottom of the blades, but along their entire length, and constantly varying on each foot of each blade as the three of them turn.
As a result, the turbines wobble at the hub. The bearings and gearboxes are warranted for 20 years but are failing at 7 years. The issue has been known since the very beginning. Anyone here drive past wind turbines and notice how many of them aren't turning? That's why. Think it's one of those easy, boring things that the engineers in the basement can fix? Think again. They can't fix it, and as a result, today's wind turbines are tomorrow's white elephants. In utility lingo, "stranded costs." We will be paying those bills for decades.
Even when they are "working," wind and solar are the least reliable power sources. Democrats hate facts and ignore critical problems. Why not, when your solution is to just raise taxes? Mr. Teixeira, I love ya to death, but I'm afraid that, alas, your underlying thesis is tragically incorrect. The "progressives" who run the Democratic Party are every bit as hooked on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis as they have ever been. They continue to lie their asses off at every turn, and to stick us with the bills for their crusade.
You comment was very informative. Thank you.
No one wants to tell the public about this. It's buried in the financial news, amid much jargon, not mentioned much there either. The intrepid general "news" media, including Fox, are too lazy and stupid (bunch of airheads, really) to even look at it, and the "progressives" won't be caught dead acknowledging the facts because then there'd be one hell of a lot of explaining to do.
I guarantee that I didn't make it up. Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? The search term is wind turbine bearing failure. Again, this is absolutely NOT some typical mechanical glitch, easily solved. Not one bit. Other way around. The only reason why it's not front and center is that the new turbines work for 7 to 10 years, and even longer if they overbuild a wind field so they can leave a lot of them idle.
Bernie Madoff must be having a damn good laugh from the grave. Wind turbines are a mechanical Ponzi scheme. And no, I'm not an ideologue. I don't have a love affair with Exxon. I wish they worked as advertised, but they simply do not.
Had no doubts that you weren't providing accurate facts. Thanks again.
p.s. appreciate also the fact that you can see the flaws in both sides. So do we. We also can see the good ideas on both sides. We're not partisan.....we're empiricists.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. Pragmatism, or to put it differently: "I am in favor of whatever works." By the way, I get in arguments with wingnuts about electric vehicles. They're not quite there yet for the mass market, but watch out for solid state batteries.
They are going to be here, and when they are here, you won't even be able to find a new ICEV. When this happens at acceptable prices (mid-'30s is my prediction), EVs won't need subsidies or adoption requirements. People will demand them. They will take over as fast as diesel-electric freight locomotives introduced in 1939 killed the steam locomotive.
By the way: Every single freight train rolls on electric power. The diesel part is an engine that turns an alternator to make electricity, which is then sent to electric traction motors that turn the wheels. Among other things, those motors have so much torque that trains have to be started slowly so the steel wheels don't slip on the rails. The point is this: Electric motive power is not new at all. The issue with EVs is ENTIRELY the batteries. How much power can be stored relative to the battery's weight, cost, and performance. NOTHING ELSE. Or as I learned in college: The rest is whipped cream on dogshit. LOL
Solid state batteries will at least double and probably triple the energy density, meaning that much more range per pound of battery weight. They will operate at a wider temperature range, meaning a lot less reduction of usable capacity in winter, and no overheating in a Phoenix summer. They will be less likely to catch fire. The degradation per charge will be reduced. And they will be able to recharge much faster. In short, the problems with today's liquid electrolyte EV batteries will pretty much vanish, or at least be far reduced.
It will be akin to the replacement of oil lamps by lightbulbs, steam locomotives by diesel electric, cathode ray tubes by LEDs, individual farm machines by combines, sail by steam and diesel, canals by rail ...
All of this stuff is engineering. I was a wind turbine believer until I learned about what I described above. I think the bearing issue really is a show stopper. I would love to be wrong, but I am correct now and I kinda sorta doubt that this will be solved in the foreseeable future, if ever. Can they keep it up with wind turbines? Sure. They can be good "progressives" and ignore the issue, and cause electricity rates to spike. It's what they're doing, and what they will keep doing.
Dirty little open secret: almost all "progressives" are innumerate.
p.s.: Next time you see some dumb story in the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, et al about a lithium shortage, please laugh. Not only is lithium abundant, but new deposits are constantly being found right here in the United States. And the batteries can be recycled. Hasn't happened yet because EVs are still new, but it will happen just as it has happened with those 12 volt lead-acid Sears Die Hards.
Thank you for details and engineering insights into the fundamental problem. It leads me to think a very large number of small turbines would be needed rather than gargantuan blades we see today. And I don't think that is practical or affordable.
I'm cautiously optimistic CBS News might be interested in a story like this.
The same physics and bearing issues plague home-scale turbines. Past that, there is the economy of scale issue. In some things, bigger isn't necessarily better, but when you're talking about electric utilities, bigger is definitely better.
Besides being a cellular-level Midwestern pragmatist, I was fed by a second generation German mother who could stretch a dollar all the way to the end of the block and back. I am all about cheap. To me, cheap is a love word. I'm not talking about "cheap" quality (although quality is a sliding scale and often not worth paying for the next step up) but about cheap cost.
Sorry, but even if home scale wind turbines didn't have the same issue, I'd be as skeptical as it gets about plopping a zillion of them out yonder rather than a hundred here and a hundred there. Incidentally, I am also fairly skeptical (but persuadable) of the new "progressive" enthusiasm for nuclear reactor as long as they are small.
Fer chrissakes, why should they be small? This is nuclear power. Now, I will confess to a lack of knowledge which means I can easily be wrong, but I will recall that the U.S. ended the war with Japan by dropping two nukes of about 20 kilotons. Within what, a decade, the U.S. nuclear arsenal consisted of bombs with 1,000 times the explosive power. I doubt that the H-bombs were more expensive.
This is America, god damn it. I want more bang for the same bucks, and maybe fewer. This country has been damn good at that in the past, and it should be in the future. Take those EV batteries as an example. The solid state ones under development will be triple the energy density and they won't cost any more, at least once they ride down the manufacturing volume/cost curve. Or how about computer data storage? My first computer, circa 1988, had a huge 20 megabyte hard drive. I just got one at Costco the other day, and it's got a 1 terabyte drive. I have 512 GB micro SD cards. They are cheaper previous storage. MORE!
I'm a Samuel Gompers guy. When asked what he wanted, he answered "More."
Your average "progressive" thinks that "More" is gauche. Well, that's because they are, as a rule, rich and feeling guilty about it. Jimmy Carter got his ass kicked when he told everyone that the United States should get used to an era of limits. Screw that, Ronald Reagan replied, and then he cleaned Jimmy's clock in 1980. Tell an American that (s)he shouldn't want more, and learn just what a complete a-hole that American thinks you are. LOL
I like your clear engineering analysis in terms anyone can understand, that isn't easy to write so congratulations. Also like the way you think.
Before I retired, I was a telecommunications analyst and (very) minor venture capital staffer. Don't hate me. I was actually honest. In those roles, I had to explain complicated technology to intelligent laymen who didn't know anything about the particulars.
I love engineers, I really do, but they tend to get lost in the weeds. I'd tell the people who worked for me that it was our job to BOTH dive into the deep end of the pool and snatch the quarter off the bottom AND to then go to 35,000 feet and tell people what it means in terms they can understand.
Thanks for the good words. Trust me, I learned how to do this after multiple failures. LOL
"The reality has begun to sink in for political leaders around the world..." This truth comes about 30 years too late and at a great cost to all working class people of the world. Elected officials should not need 30 years and trillions of tax dollars to face and accept reality. If there was ever an indictment of global "leadership", this is it.
The demise of the climate cult isn't just good news for Democrats; it's good for America.
"Rebranding as “we’re just folks who want to bring down your electric bill” is beyond disingenuous." Yes, it is, and that is exactly what Biden and Congressional Democrats did when they passed a bill which spent 3/4 of its appropriations on renewable energy and called it the "Inflation Reduction Act." A Trojan horse with solar panels.
“There’s a big, beautiful world out there of economic and energy policies that can now be considered without the climate movement’s thumb on the scales.
Freedom! Democrats should embrace it.”
Amen, Amen , Amen. When my husband and I graduated from engineering school decades ago we were fierce environmentalists. Donated and had Greenoeace in our wills, bought land and took acres out of corn/ soybeans because of erosion, spent hours upon hours of our free time fighting invasive species and learning about water quality, invested in thousands of dollars in our house getting the very best insulation and kept our house quite cold in winter and warm in the summer. Then sometime in the mid 90s things started to go crazy and by the early 2000s the environmental leaders completely lost their way. The single biggest indicator of that was the screaming of global warming going to destroy all we hold dear yet a complete rejection of the only thing that gave you a realistic way to fight it nuclear energy. If in the early 2000s we had just learned from the issues around nuclear from incidents in Japan, Ukraine and 3 mile we could have been on our way now to a credible reduction in fossil fuels. I have lost faith in all the leadership both political and non political in this area. Total disgust. I want the Democrats to go after environmental issues but this strategy for the past 20-25 years has been a disaster
Exactly. The movement lost me the day they rejected nuclear in any capacity as part of the solution. “No Nuclear” became a religious tenet not to be questioned while the last 30 years have been utterly wasted on “solutions” that barely impacted the problem.
Utterly wasted is right and so frustrating and if you look at the next 30-60 years we are going to need so much energy.
It isn't just about climate, it is about destroying capitalism.
The name for these people is watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.
They tried to be too clever in their marketing and forgot what this was about.
It's not climate change, it's about lowering the amount all sorts of harmful pollution. The original scare tactic (in spite of what many will say) was global cooling. Big in the 1970's. Then it was the ozone layer. Then it changed to global warming.
Once they realized the goal seemed to be constantly changing and that harmed the credibility of the movement, "Climate Change" became the label. Who could argue with that. It covered almost all the possibilities and seems like a better long term naming solution.
Then there's the term, "fossil fuels" itself. Another poor choice of labels. That goes all the way back to when oil and other hydrocarbons were thought of as a product of decaying dinosaurs and other prehistoric decaying plant material. During that phase we were told we would be running out of oil (old dinosaurs can't last forever) in twenty years or less and the world would go dark. And cold.
I'm old enough to remember that from my childhood in the later 60's and 70's.
It was never about acid rain, the ozone hole, overpopulation, mass starvation because we can't grow enough food, peak oil, global cooling, now global warming, (did I miss anything?) it has always been about control, power, and money. The leftists who want these things have been casting around for an issue that had traction for 50 years or so, and with global warming they finally found it. It will take us decades to pay back the trillions wasted on "renewable energy" that doesn't work and won't pay out, money that disappeared into the pockets of the grifters who will never account for it and were never expected to produce anything useful in exchange. This has been a massive global fraud that follows a familiar script, create a panic, or a bubble, or an investment too good to be true, suck in a whole lot of money, and after a while declare the enterprise a failure so that the perpetrators can just pocket the money and walk away, while all the investors are left holding the bag. If they were successful they would need to pay back the investors and reduce their own huge profits, and that of course they have no intention of allowing to happen.
This standard block of fifth,-hand internet cliches is so fundamentally scientifically illiterate ("decaying dinosaurs" ffs) that it's pointless even making a serious response, except to say, yet again, this is another reply to my OP that 99% of all discussion on this subject is mere political hackery, with no meaningful scientific content whatsoever. Junk.
Ok, just the dumbest statement should be corrected, in the unlikely even if anyone here caring: the ozone hole was a significant problem discovered in the 1980's, caused by the reduction of ozone (a form of oxygen) in the stratosphere, caused by industrial CFC's. Through international action through the Montreal Protocol, those chemicals were banned. As a result, the hole is now smaller and has a shorter season (spring over the Antarctic, autumn over the Arctic). The result is that halfwits everywhere now love to claim the whole issue of the ozone hole was a "hoax". Because it was largely solved, by intelligent action. Jesus wept.
Those unscientific (inaccurate and untrue) terms were what the public and officials heard from the media to sell the environmental protection product. For a few decades it worked on enough to buy into that point of view.
For a few decades now, the "Sciency" folks have allowed that to happen with few public attempts to correct them because it did seem to work, and nobody wanted to rock the boat. Why argue with their success if it worked in the end?
Now you seem to want to insult your way to credibility, somehow prove that arrogance is a virtue, while beating your beliefs into the thick skulls of the Great Unwashed. The un-sciency readers here.
Good luck with that approach.
Which "Unscientific terms" are you referring to? Global warming? The ozone hole? Acid rain? Explain how these are unscientific. Or do you mean the stuff about global cooling, decaying dinosaurs, peak oil and renewables that "don't work", as that's the commenters' confusion, not the evil scientists' and their stolen $billions.
Instead of righteous tone-policing, why not actually consider the generally accepted situation re. climate change amongst the over-whelming majority of global scientific institutions and the relevant senior scientists?
Once again, the responses prove my point- that the scientific reality of AGW are considered irrelevant by the ideologues of political discourse, who consider a mixture of personal 'feelings' and some media headlines are all they need to know about the subject in order to entirely dismiss it.
I know this is going to make all the magical thinkers here howl with contemptuous derision, but it would be nice if there was even the SLIGHTEST consideration of, you know, boring sciency stuff like what the effect of unlimited CO2 emissions will actually BE. This isn't quite the same question as 'do voters care'.
I mean, I know this is a political site, and political enthusiasts generally believe that opinion polls defeat the laws of physics, but even just one short sentence considering the mainstream scientific position on climate change and the possible/probable economic consequences (I'm not asking for any consideration of non-human life, that would be surreal) would be very helpful if we are even pretending here to be anything other than full-on Republican "fake science/climate hoaxers". This is, in reality, your position, albeit with a slightly more sophisticated gloss and still existent (but declining rapidly into the mist) reluctance to fully embrace the high-octane Fox hyperbole.
People would more willingly trust the "boring sciency stuff" if they hadn't gotten so many false alarms from previous "boring sciency stuff." Look at the endangerment of polar bears: "Using extensive data of polar bears collected by U.S. Geological Survey scientists from 2001 to 2005, a research team including Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Christine Hunter of the University of Alaska determined that climate change in the Arctic is dramatically reducing polar bears’ survival and reproductive rates."
Since then, the population of polar bears increased by 2,000-6,000, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Either institution, or both, might be wrong. But, how can we laymen decide who to believe?
" Citing researchers during a 2009 climate change conference, (Al) Gore said there was a 75% chance that ice in the Arctic could be gone during at least some summer months within five to seven years."
" According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in 2023 was approximately 4.23 million square kilometers. "
How can I question the scienciness of a Nobel Laureate like Al Gore? By pointing out that his predictions were wrong.
This illustrates my point about the myopia of political sites about scientific issues perfectly. Why are you waffling to me about the scientific opinions of a politician?
Well, you could bother to look at the overall climatic science, rather than taking one small proxy as your sole metric- which has, as the population of one mammal species, a large set of survival factors, from sea ice retreat to the availability of food in human waste bins.
No, this isn't a science site but you are making science an issue. So, here is some real science, that I have learned from my career as a professional scientist. We already know what the results of unlimited CO2 are, we have many examples in the 500 million years or so of multicellular life on this planet. Life flourishes in the oceans and on land. Ice ages are actually rare and are stressful for the biosphere. We are in an ice age today, just a slightly warmer part of it. For most of the last 500MA (until about 25 million years ago) climate was much warmer than it is today and there was more CO2 in the atmosphere, although real scientists debate whether increasing CO2 is a cause or a consequence of warming caused by other natural forces, such as variations in solar radiation. Some studies have indicated that CO2 changes lag temperature changes, not the other way around. There are strong feedback loops in the environment to remove CO2 and recycle it. Further, it appears that any warming caused by greenhouse effects of CO2 diminish with increasing amounts of the gas in the atmosphere. More CO2 is actually very beneficial to life on this planet since plant growth is greatly enhanced, and the plants also require less water and other inputs. We know this since commercial greenhouses for food production operate at CO2 levels of 1000ppm or more because they are far more efficient that way. I could write a book on this subject but I'm trying to keep this short. There is plenty of actual science, not politics pretending to be science, to back all of this up if you look for it. Oh, and by the way, actual warming has not been anywhere near as large as the climate models predict, even with the biased temperature records. Look that one up too.
I find it very hard to believe you are a scientist, Deborah, given the fact that your post here is simply an uncritical collection of all the usual confused cliches of the many ideological pseudo-science blogs around.
Just a few examples: firstly, the idea that it's all ok, because it was often hotter in the past. Although theres never been "unlimited" CO2, or anything else. Yes. Before humans had evolved, never mind human civilisation, when sea levels were hugely higher than now, much of the remaining land swamps, before any of the worlds plant life (ie, our food) had evolved. How is this relevant to our planet now, supporting 7 billion humans, rather than some dinosaurs?
Secondly, you clearly dont know what a feedback loop' is, if you think that a 'feedback loop' removes CO2 and "recycles" it. What you're describing is the carbon cycle, which is a normal part of the planet's functioning, but which is now being disrupted by the very sudden increase in CO2 production.
Thirdly, the old cliche about greenhouses is merely silly, as we are talking about an entire closed system, not a building controlled by an external system for water, nutrients, temperature and light control, etc. by a horticulturalist.
Fourth- a fringe scientist who says something you want to hear, but which goes against the great majority (ie, CO2 changes lag temperature changes, something that experiments in the late 19th century first showed to be largely false) doesn't make them, by definition, "a real (as opposed to a fake)scientist". It makes them a fringe scientist and you'd need to explain why they alone are correct.
Fifth "I could write a book about it". I'm sure you could. I could write a book about NFL football, but it would be gibberish and hopefully no-one would publish it. If you ARE goi ng to publish this putative "science" book, you really need to find out what a feedback loop is. If the carbon cycle WAS a feedback loop, life on Earth would have ended pretty quickly, even with the planet's apparent ability to thrive with "unlimited" CO2.
Now you're just trolling. I stand by what I have stated.
You stand by your scientific illiteracy? Ok. I would have thought, as a "professional scientist", you might have had the ability to elaborate your understanding of such concepts as 'feedback loops' and greenhouses as meaningful proxies for planetary systems, but clearly not.
Good luck with the 'book'. I can't wait, Prof. Another perfect illustration of my OP- thank you.
Your insults say a lot more about you than they do about me. I don't need to prove anything to some random troll on this site, I know who I am and what I know, and you are proving the same about yourself.
I haven't "insulted" you, I've just been honest about your total lack of knowledge about a subject you claim, dishonestly, to be an expert on. You are clearly not a scientist, and your claim to be one is false. Yes, I'm sure you "know what you are", and it isn't what you say it is here. If you can't argue your point rationally and factually, you merely prove that your argument is non-existent.
There is a massive amount of actual science that blows apart the entire man-made global warming nonsense but it doesn't fit the narrative so the political media does its best to ignore it. The NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) and the Energy Security and Freedom Substack are two sources for factual information.
The exact illustration of my point. A list of anti-scientic:rubbish that you 'believe ' because it conforms to your political ideology.
What is it about the name "Energy Security and Freedom" that makes me think of an objective scientific organisation? Maybe they could call themselves The Scientific Institute for the Study of Commie Climate Hoaxes,? That sounds 'sciency' yet politically on-trend.
See my reply above to a previous comment about real science. And did you look at the NIPCC site?
If you want a boring “sciencey” discussion about climate change, I strongly recommend Cliff Mass’ blog in general and podcast from a few years back. Mass is a professor of atmospheric sciences at UW and an honest scientist as opposed to the climate change fanatics.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/09/new-podcast-my-views-on-global-warming.html
You mean, you've found a scientist who says what you want to hear, allowing to disregard all the rest. Again, standard political hackery. If you could explain seriously why Mass is correct and most of the rest are wrong, that would be a meaningful start.
You can check out Mass and decide for yourself. He makes his own arguments far more persuasively than I can.
I will, although there's an inherent problem with laymen deciding which scientists to 'believe', as the only grounds on which they can base their opinion is either rhetorical persuasiveness- which is largely scientifically irrelevant- or, as I say, personal political bias.
Still, at least you've referred to an actual scientist, which is more than the Liberal Patriot manages in an entire essay supposedly about a scientific issue. Although, as I say, the Magical Thinking of politics makes it apparently unnecessary.
The article says nothing about the science of climate change, only the politics. No need to quote scientists if you're merely telling people that there's not much appetite for climate activism anymore.
Again, that's exactly my point. A discussion of a scientific issue that ignores science is merely hackery. Without that context of what no action means, people's "appetite" is meaningless. What was people's "appetite" for moving before the Pompeii eruption? What worth would that discussion have had without SOME consideration of the consequences of volcanic eruptions? 'The people vote the Earth's geology to be of no significance'.
Ds could actually leapfrog Rs by embracing not only small nuclear reactors and large data centers, but a national transmission grid for oil and nukes; embrace AI and big data centers; and most of all get in the forefront of desalinization plants to water these things. Cuz right now, no one is in that position.
But I think that's an impossible U-turn for Ds (It was my Civil War #3)
Bravo. Very astute observation. It will be a positive for Dems to no longer be held hostage by Climate zealots. Let's hope Western Europe follows the US to sanity, soon.
The current Sec of Energy notes when he studied renewable energy in college at the end of the 1970's, 83% of the world's energy was derived from fossil fuels. Nearly a 1/2 century later, after spending hundreds of trillions of dollars around the globe, 81% of the world's energy still originates from fossil fuels.
Affordable, abundant clean energy will arrive some day, but it would appear, not anytime soon.
I see absolutely NO EVIDENCE that the Democratic Party has moved away from their climate crusade. NONE.
They are so scared of being outflanked by those even farther to the left that they are doubling down.
That might keep them in the game during primary season but it's going to result in even larger loses in the actual elections season.
Other than the fact that no one is talking about it.
The Colorado Supreme Court is allowing Boulder County to proceed with its lawsuits against Exxon and Suncor over claims of "nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy" extending several decades in the past. If the county prevails in its suit and gets some ka-ching, how soon will every other county in the nation file their own lawsuits? That interval of time would have to be measured with a stopwatch.
Forget other state counties--how about the next POTUS who is climate-lobby-friendly, and their DOJ? Those are parties far more likely to succeed in a suit.
Unfortunately, it's no longer a very far-fetched idea. Heck, it's possible they could just put out an order like this--
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
--and put Exxon and co. on the list of terrorist groups, citing "civil conspiracy". Then it's not just a lawsuit these companies have to worry about.
Cross your fingers (like I'm crossing mine) that some future POTUS doesn't find such options attractive.
Climate change as a phenomenon- whether you believe it is a cataclysmic right-now emergency, or a slow boil problem to fix - cannot be addressed in any meaningful way. It is a GLOBAL problem. There is no global consensus, nor is there a global body with authority to create policy and the teeth to back it up. Man cannot solve truly global problems without a global totalitarian government (a cure worse than the disease).
So all the (obviously costly) solutions being tried result in competitive advantages for those not participating. Second tier countries become free riders while first tier countries cheat like a 5-fingered poker player.
The countries that pivot from “solving it” to new tech for a warmer world will probably be the winners. Of course any breakthrough technology like fusion (which has shown promise of late) or even new types of fission reactors could make all the money spent on climate change moot.
Personally I think most leaders know this but the cause gives them money to play with and a soapbox. Seems like it is running its course though.
There is a difference between admitting a problem is politically hard to solve and claiming it isn't a problem at all. The impact of rising temperatures is still going to cause us problems, sticking our heads in the sand won't make it go away. So, should those on the coasts just plan to move to higher ground in coming decades?
Fundamental extremism , ignorance and intimidation that so typified the climate movement caused leftist governments around the world that have cost thier economies so much since the early 1990s.
That blighted ignornance on full display on the NYT editorial page contending that higher electricity costs across America is because of insufficient committment to decarbonize Amerian regardless of the real economic consequences.
Transgenderism, open borders, anti-Semitism and climate change are the crosses that the Democratic party will die on.
Affordability is a real issue, but as always leftist governance will only make it worse.
I think most people don't recognize is the climate play was a globalist and Wall Street oligarch project... with the administrative part of that Professional Managerial Class hoping that the disruption in the old socioeconomic status-making path from industrial enterprise, something that these PMC cretins have no talent to do, would net them more of their own status-making opportunity... and the money side of the PMC seeing the old energy markets as fully saturated and not a good enough "roll-the-dice" money making opportunity... and that by forcing a move to new hardware, software and services in the "green" energy space would give them a lot of pre-bet Ponzi Scheme plays.
They tried and failed. But they caused a lot of damage to the economies of the existing industrialized countries that China exploited.
So true.
In general Ruy, I'm a big fan of your Substack, but the tone of this piece is very bad. While I agree that voters don't prioritize climate change, that doesn't make carbon in the atmosphere any less of a problem that ultimately needs to be dealt with.
Fortunately, there is a path that addresses the issue in a way that won't alienate voters, and ironically this is one of the areas where the Biden Administration wa generally on the right path in substance (if not in rhetoric).
The right answer is an abundance, all of the above energy strategy that in the short term pairs continued use of fossil fuels with big investments in greener technologies that will make a broad shift away from them economical. In other words, continue to use fossil fuels (and stop pointless pipelines opposition) with huge investments in nuclear, solar and wind, and battery technology, as well as significant investments in more speculative technologies like carbon sequestration.
Abundance is clearly the right answer here, and we should be celebrating more than dancing on the grave of climate activism. And while that may be in practice what you're calling for, I think the tone of this piece doesn't lead in that direction.
CO2 is not a pollutant, it's plant food and we need more of it, not less. Current CO2 level in the atmosphere is about 420 ppm, and plant starvation level is around 250-300 ppm so we aren't much above that now. There has been a marked greening of the planet as CO2 levels rise. The earth is also in a natural warming cycle over the last 100-150 years after 300 years or so of the Little Ice Age so we should expect warming, as has happened for at least three previous warm-cool cycles during historic times and others we can identify through proxies during the last 11,000 years since the end of the last ice age. The climate hysterics never explain how the earth was able to warm up all on its own without our help numerous times in the past. I can't think of much that is more un-scientific than the idea that human activity is now uniquely and sinfully responsible for climate warming that has happened multiple times before the industrial age. In science, when you observe a repeating pattern, you don't decide that one of the iterations has some completely new cause that you do not observe in any of the other iterations, that is an irrational explanation. The Left hasn't gotten the message yet that the climate grift is over.
That is my husband POV too. But when he and I set that aside we both agree that regardless of whether or not we are in a global warming or not we need to find a source of energy when we start to run out of fossil fuel. That may take a long time but it is going to take a long time to get fission or fusion nuclear energy where we want it too. Our whole push to insulate our house and reduce the demand of energy was based on this not global warming. So I chose not to get into this debate too much because true or not true we still have the same challenges.
Energy efficiency is always good regardless of the source, it has no to do with ideology. I also do what I can to improve my efficiency and that just makes sense
The Biden administration missed the mark on policy by restricting new leases for oil and gas drilling, refusing to lessen the red tape around nuclear, and going all in on wind and solar which are the least reliable and shortest lasting means of generating power and come with their own host of environmental issues when implemented at scale that are perpetually swept under the rug.
Perpetually swept under the rug. And I am very supportive of solar energy, particularly hydro electric but also see the place for other solar energy but it is just not enough and when scaled issues develop and the cost is still way to high which is why it is usually heavily subsidized. But there really is no long term realistic solution to a world that will demand incredible amount of energy in the coming decades without the investment in nuclear.
I agree with your idea of huge investments in nuclear. Until I see the political leadership pushing this and more importantly doing the hard work of getting all the political non Profit groups pushing this I give zero credibility to abundance. The key issue of the global warming groups and their leaders is that they allowed a completely unrealistic position of setting carbon emission goals without getting their members to understand they had to do this primarily through nuclear energy. Instead they took the easy and lazy way of letting these groups think they did not need nuclear as their cornerstone. This was the heart of their problem which has ended them where they are now. I am not saying it will be easy. It will not be easy it will be tough as ….. but that is the only path of ultimate political success.
While I fully agree that they should have done more, the Biden Adminstration was behind nuclear:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/newly-signed-bill-will-boost-nuclear-reactor-deployment-united-states
That said, while I agree that nuclear energy is an important part of the puzzle because of intermittency issues with solar (and wind), we also shouldn't overstate its important. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear and on a path to get cheaper. And advances in battery power could further reduce some of the need for nuclear.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar
To be clear, I'm definitely not saying don't invest in nuclear. But we also shouldn't use it as a reason not to continue to investt deeply in solar.
Biden's handlers (he wasn't really there) said a lot of things but did the opposite out of the spotlight. Nuclear energy was one of these. Whatever they said, they staffed the nuclear regulatory agency (whatever its current name is) with dedicated anti-nuclear leftists who saw it as their mission to stop further development of nuclear energy and to shut down currently operating plants when they could. I believe Trump has at least started to clean out the people in that agency who are standing in the way, as he has with other staffers who think their job is to resist and undermine the administration, but I haven't seen much about that in a while.
Yeah, the "newly signed bill" didn't show up until July of 2024, when the Biden administration had only seven months to run, and was piggybacked on a bill for fire grants. Not, obviously, a priority.
Biden invested tens of billions of dollars in nuclear compared to hundreds of billions of dollars in other renewable energy. Now I am happy for any money going there but tens of billions is not a serious investment. Just wait. The practical engineering, environmental and other issues are going continue to reveal themselves in all the non nuclear renewable. I am not saying we shouldn’t do them. I am saying they are not a practical way of long term getting us the energy we will need over the next 75-200 years.
I'm not technical enough to be able to substantively discuss whether you're last sentence is correct or not. I will just say that I'm more optimistic than you. The sun, tides, and winds obviously produce enormous energy, and I think over the last hundred years it's been a mistake to bet against technological progress achieving things that just a few years were considered unsolvable problems. So I'm optimistic that the challenges involved in converting this latent energy into usable electricity can be solved.
Anyway, I think we'll have to return to this question in 5-10 years to know. I'll put something in my calendar. :) :)
Sun and wind are low-density energy sources and also intermittent. They are inherently unable to carry a grid that needs constant input at the moment of consumption, which is how the grid works. It is basic physics not engineering. There is no engineering solution to efficient capture of low-density energy. Tides/waves are energy but so variable, and so destructive, that I don't think it's likely we will have any cost-effective engineering solution to capturing that energy. It comes back to nuclear energy, very concentrated, efficient, and always on. We only use the nuclear reactor as a heat source, the electrical generation happens in steam turbines that are very well understood and common to other large coal, oil, and gas-fired power plants.