Electricity

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #393

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The Week That Was: January 4, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the [human] race[’s] experience from the past. I see it that way.” – Richard Feynman (1966)

Number of the Week: 14°F – 28°F (8°C – 16°C) Change

Science Is Dynamic, Not Static: As articulated by Richard Feynman, the scientific method is an on-going process of trial and error correction. It is not imposed by any organization or political power. It is a process of evaluating various concepts, ideas, guesses. If the guesses agree with physical evidence, obtained by experiments and / or observations, then they are tentatively accepted. If the guesses do not agree with the physical evidence, then they are changed or discarded. Failure to do so leads to poor science.

Elaborate models always include many assumptions, and computational models produce sets of numerical calculations. For elaborate models, it can be impossible for third parties to evaluate the internal logic, including the validity of the assumptions. Thus, the ability to describe and predict is usually the key for evaluating complex models, such as climate models. For several decades, the US climate models have not been able to correctly describe the atmospheric temperature trends. Thus, there is no logical reason to assume these models can predict changes in trends far into the future. In the formation of government policies, they should be dismissed as having no importance.

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Climate Alarmist Banks Go Carbon-Colonialist

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By Paul Driessen and David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Africa must move forward without them, using fossil and nuclear energy to build prosperity

Africa has the world’s lowest electrification rate. Its power consumption per capita is just 613 kilowatt-hours per year, compared to 6,500 kWh in Europe and 13,000 in the United States, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina observed in July 2017. That’s 9.4% of EU and 4.7% of US electricity consumption. It’s equivalent to Americans having electricity only 1 hour a day, 8 hours a week, 411 hours per year – at totally unpredictable times, for a few minutes, hours or days at a stretch.

It’s actually even worse than that. Excluding significantly electrified South Africa, sub-Sahara Africans consume an almost irrelevant 181 kWh of electricity per capita – 1.4% of the average American’s!

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Bloomberg: RCP8.5 Climate Catastrophe is Unlikely – Because of Cheap Renewables

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Heatwaves will become a daily occurrence over summer in some regions even if global warming is kept to 2°C. CREDIT Anna Jiménez Calaf on Unsplash

According to Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, untold suffering is pretty much locked in, but we won’t have to dismantle Capitalism, because cheap solar energy will soon eliminate the need for fossil fuel.

Worst Case for Climate Change Doesn’t Look Realistic

A major overhaul of energy production is still needed, but not a dismantling of capitalism. By Noah Smith

But a growing chorus of climate scientists and energy policy analysts has begun to question whether the dreaded RCP8.5 scenario should be taken seriously. The scenario assumes that after a brief flirtation with natural gas and renewable energy, the world returns to fueling industrialization primarily with coal. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that the global coal industry will increase sevenfold, as RCP8.5 envisions, even if natural gas proves to be a temporary phenomenon.

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Norway Names Controversial Climate Change Skeptic As New Oil Minister

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By Tsvetana Paraskova – From OILPRICE.COM – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Norway appointed on Wednesday a skeptic on wind power and climate change as its new oil minister who will oversee oil and gas drilling and wind turbine installations on and offshore Western Europe’s largest oil producer.

Sylvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party was appointed Minister of Petroleum and Energy on Wednesday, replacing Kjell-Børge Freiberg who was “honourably discharged from his office,” the Norwegian government said.

Norway offshore

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #391

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The Week That Was: December 21, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” ― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

Number of the Week: 1/1,000,000,000,000 (One part per Trillion)

The Greenhouse Effect – With Clouds: The CO2 Coalition has published a paper by Richard Lindzen addressing climate sensitivity trying to explain why US climate models do so poorly when tested against observations from nature. Until climate models can describe what is occurring in the atmosphere today, there is no reason to accept projections / predictions from such models about the future. Lindzen’s approach to the problem is different from those by Wijngaarden & Happer, and Roy Spencer discussed in the previous two TWTWs.

Among other things, Lindzen includes the influence of high-level cirrus clouds, which form above the tropopause, where water vapor freezes out. As Lindzen states:

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Governor Newsom Doubling Down to Dismantle the California Economy

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clip_image001   By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California

Published December 16, 2019 at California Political Review http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/stein-governor-newsom-doubling-down-to-dismantle-the-california-economy/

With California’s energy costs for electricity and fuels among the highest in the country, Governor Newsom just doubled down to increase inflation with actions to further reduce oil production and putting more electrical loads on a state that cannot generate enough electricity to meet its own needs. The Governor’s recent actions will further “fuel” (no pun intended) the growth of the homeless and those on poverty.

With its green dreams of an emission free state, California has not even been able to generate enough of its own electricity in-state and imported 29% of its needs in 2018. The good news is that other state had the extra power. The bad news is that imported electricity comes at higher costs and those costs are being borne by residents and businesses alike. California households are already paying 50% more, and industrial users are paying more than double the national average for electricity.

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Is Wind Cleaner?

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By Duggan Flanakin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Inconvenient facts show why wind energy is not renewable, sustainable or climate-friendly

Wind turbines continue to be the most controversial of so-called “renewable” energy sources worldwide. But, you say, wind is surely renewable. It blows intermittently, but it’s natural, free, renewable and climate-friendly.

That’s certainly what we hear, almost constantly. However, while the wind itself may be “renewable,” the turbines, the raw materials that go into making them, and the lands they impact certainly are not. And a new report says harnessing wind to generate electricity actually contributes to global warming!

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