Reposted by The Manhattan Contrarian
June 05, 2021 / Francis Menton
It’s easy to get discouraged by fear of “climate” aka the socialist takeover of everything under the cover story of a false moral crusade to “save the planet.” Sometimes it seems that all you can hear is cute politicians and academics and journalists and “scientists” screaming about the imminent “existential crisis” that requires an immediate end to fossil fuels and that your energy use (but not theirs) will be severely curtailed got to.
Just today, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned in a statement that the next ten years would be our “last chance” to avert a “climate catastrophe”:
We are quickly reaching the point where there is no going back for the planet. We face a triple environmental emergency – biodiversity loss, climate degradation and escalating pollution. . . . Science tells us that these next 10 years will be our last chance to avert a climate catastrophe. . . .
The few people who push back are screamed down and drowned. How could this end well?
When I discuss this topic with my climate-skeptical friends, most of them are amazed that I remain an optimist. But good reasons are on my side. While we realists may not have the megaphone right now, I’m very confident that energy realism will ultimately prevail, and much sooner than you might think. The reasons are simple: the magical “renewables” don’t work and are ridiculously expensive. And when people find out, which will inevitably be the case, anti-fossil jihad can quickly become toxic to the left.
As a background, recall a story from my own state of New York that I reported on a little over a year ago. Economic growth in certain regions of the state – Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island in particular – had led local gas utility National Grid to propose a new pipeline under the New York Harbor to provide the additional capacity required; but the pipeline was blocked by the governor’s henchmen at the behest of anti-fossil zealots. In autumn 2019, the utility ran out of pipeline capacity and began refusing gas connections to new customers. 3,000 customers were quickly turned away and a political outcry had started. At this point, if the governor had actually believed his own climate rhetoric, he would have stood up and admitted that he was the one blocking the pipeline and telling people to go without the gas and get much more expensive electrical heat and Ovens for the benefit of the planet. But no. Instead, the governor was quick to give in to homeowners and companies that wanted the gas, cynically making statements blaming the utility company. The utility responded by implementing a program that would deliver the gas in compressed form to thousands of trucks. As far as I can tell, this temporary non-resolution remains today. In the meantime, the state is expected to double up with a new plan to ban all new natural gas heating systems by 2025. Do you think this will actually happen?
The fact is, fossil fuels are cheap and work, and when faced with the reality of what not using them actually means, people are not going to give them up. The past few days have brought a number of new data points worth mentioning:
- Over in the UK, the nominally conservative governments of Theresa May and now Boris Johnson have allegedly committed the country to achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, with practical implications. In May, the government dropped the ban on gas boilers by 2035, and anyone using gas for heating would have to switch to electricity – at an estimated cost of tens of thousands of dollars per home. There are currently almost 24 million gas-fired households in the UK compared to less than 2 million electric-heated households. The political setback was immediate. From the viewer, May 25th: “[I]It is becoming increasingly clear how expensive net zero exposure could be. . . . The government’s threat to ban gas boilers in existing homes by 2035 and fines homeowners for failing to meet the deadline appears to have lasted less than a day. Tuesday morning it was reported that ministers were considering including such a ban in a new heating and buildings strategy to be released next month – but by the afternoon the government appeared to have backed out and said there would be no fines. “
- In the US, a very similar political story is beginning to play out as with natural gas. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 31 that “[m]Other cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and New York have either taken or proposed measures to ban or ban the use of the fossil fuel [natural gas] in new homes and buildings. ”So far, these proposed bans have come without major political setbacks; but on the other hand, the validity dates are several years in the future, and as I reported a few days ago, there has been little press coverage of the practical consequences here in New York, and I think very few people yet know what their masters are for them to plan. But now some Republicans are smart enough to figure out that this could be a big political problem. According to the Journal, “The bans, in turn, have led Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas, and Louisiana to pass laws banning such communal bans in their states before they can spread, on the grounds that they are too restrictive and be costly. Ohio is considering a similar move. “
- Climate crusaders believe they are making serious strides to force the big, bad oil companies based in the west to reduce their “carbon footprint” and withdraw from the oil exploration industry. The International Energy Agency said in May that all new oil and gas production must cease by 2022 for the world to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. And companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell seem to be making at least some noise about complying with demands to cut fossil fuels. But does that mean that oil is not being produced to meet consumer demand? Get real. This kind of nonsense only opens up an opportunity for Russians and other such disgusting characters to step in to fill the void. Gizmodo reported on May 28th on a truly huge new oil project from Russian oil giant Rosneft that recently began construction in the Arctic: “The project called Vostok Oil is owned by Rosneft, which is controlled by the Russian government. . . . The proposed project is terrifyingly large. Rosneft expects to export 25 million tons of oil per year by 2024, 50 million tons by 2027 and 115 million tons by 2030. [115 million tons is around 850 million barrels.] (The company plans to build 15 entirely new cities for the estimated 400,000 workers it will need.) ”.
- The crusaders against fossil fuels speak primarily of the electricity sector, where the replacement of coal and natural gas with wind and solar energy may seem plausible, at least for the less informed. But the electricity sector only accounts for about 25% of energy consumption in the US, and many other large sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, aircraft, and shipping – which use much more energy overall than the electricity sector – do not have realistic strategies to get rid of fossil fuels. On June 3, the New York Times reported on the maritime industry, which emits as much CO2 as all US coal-fired power plants combined, in an article entitled “Tasked to Fight Climate Change, a Secretive UN Agency Does the Opposite.” The bottom line is that the shipping industry, under the auspices of the United Nations International Maritime Organization, is doing absolutely nothing to reduce carbon emissions. “The organization has repeatedly delayed and watered down climate regulations even though emissions from merchant shipping continue to rise, a trend that threatens to undermine the goals of the 2016 Paris Agreement. . . . Next week the organization is slated to enact its first greenhouse gas regulations since Paris – regulations that do not reduce emissions, have no enforcement mechanisms, and keep important details secret. ”Well, guess what – the shipping industry will never reduce carbon emissions. To get used to something. The only plausible way for shipping to get rid of fossil fuel use is to return to sailing ships and wind power. It’s not going to happen. Large sailing ships carrying large amounts of cargo can take a month or sometimes two months to cross the Atlantic – you never know what, depending on the weather – and it could take twice as long to cross the Pacific. In addition, sailing ships cannot be nearly as large as fossil fuel ships, require vastly more personnel, and can pose great risks to both cargo and crew. For these reasons, no sailing ship can even come close to being competitive in the ocean freight business. Trust me it won’t happen. And what about nuclear power? The same people who are calling for the fossil fuel get rid of will never allow it.
- Finally, in order to dispose of fossil fuels, huge areas of land must be used for wind and solar systems. A large study by Princeton University in December 2020 estimated that it would take several hundred thousand square miles of land for the US to get to a complete “net zero” situation. But when facilities are proposed by a small fraction of that sum, the enormity of the construction becomes clear to local residents and environmentalists, who then stand up to block the projects. The Wall Street Journal published a front page article on June 4, “Solar Power’s Land Grab Hits a Snag: Environmentalists.” The article focuses on a large new solar array planned in Nevada that will cover approximately 22 square miles – a tiny, tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of square miles it would take to bring the US to net zero. But here’s the reaction: “[M]anyone here [in Nevada] are right in front of a planned solar system on Mormon Mesa, which overlooks this valley 80 km northeast of Las Vegas. Arevia Power’s Battle Born Solar Project, planned to be the largest solar array in the United States, would cover 20 square miles – the equivalent of 7,000 soccer fields – with more than a million solar panels 10 to 20 feet high. It would be capable of producing 850 megawatts of electricity, or about a tenth of Nevada’s current capacity. “It will destroy this land forever,” said Ms. Rebich, 33, after riding her bike on the 600-foot mesa. “Here is a picture of the proposed site:
Read the full article here.
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