From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
We’re left with demand management to keep the lights on – rewarding the rich at the expense of the poor, and all using taxpayer funds
So near, and yet so far. A couple of weeks ago, when the air was mild and the wind was blowing strongly, it became fashionable to thumb your nose at Vladimir Putin. We made it through the winter of 2022/23 without the blackouts he tried to inflict on us. Russia can keep its filthy gas and oil – we can do without it thanks to our cheap and plentiful renewables.
Not so fast. Temperatures have plummeted again, Britain is becalmed by an anticyclone, and the National Grid is warning that supply is going to be tight this evening. Coal plants are being dusted down several months after they were supposed to have closed, and the National Grid is activating what it calls its Demand Flexibility Service. This means customers signed up to the scheme can earn up to £6 per kilowatt-hour saved if they agree to turn off their appliances between 5 and 6pm.
It is not hard to spot a slight issue with this offer: the more electricity you use on a normal Monday, the easier it will be for you to cash in today. As with so many green subsidies, it perversely rewards the well-off at the expense of the poor. If you own an 18 bedroom mansion you can easily claim your fee by switching off the lights in the east wing and delaying recharging your Tesla until 7pm. If you normally use only one electric light, there will be no savings for you. And needless to say, the free electricity for some households will ultimately be subsidised through higher bills for everyone else.
But there is a far bigger problem with trying to deal with the intermittency of wind and solar power through demand management. The gaps in supply are far too big to be filled in this way. Britain already has enough installed wind and solar capacity – 38 gigawatts of it – to theoretically meet 100 per cent of average electricity demand. On a good day, such as we had a fortnight ago, solar and wind generate more than 50 per cent of our energy needs. But this morning at 10 am it was down to 19 per cent, and at times in December it fell to less than two per cent. If you are going to try to build a grid based on wind and solar, and try to manage demand by paying people to switch their appliances off, you are going to have to chuck such enormous quantities of money at people that they are prepared to spend days on end shivering in the dark.
The trouble is that that is more or less what the Government is trying to do. For years it has incentivised the green energy industry to build more and more wind and solar farms. Energy storage, on the other hand, has followed way, way behind. A few token – and very expensive – battery installations have been built, but, together with pumped storage systems built between the 1960s and 1980s, they can only store enough energy to keep Britain powered-up for less than an hour. Meanwhile, the steady baseload provided by nuclear is shrinking as old reactors shut down and new ones fail to open; Hinckley C is still years away.
At the moment we fill the gaps with gas-generated power, but once that has been removed from the grid, as the Government intends to do by 2035, all we will have to save us from unplanned blackouts is demand management – which is really just blackouts through bribery.
Well when every EV (assuming it does the same annual mileage as the average ICE vehicle) needs to draw 10kWh from the grid on a daily basis and you understand that 10kWh is coincidentally the same as the average three-bedroomed house without taking into account the heating requirement, you can begin to realise the scale of the problem.
Pushing everybody towards electric vehicles will see the grid being overloaded every single day. There are around 32 million ICE-only cars in the UK and in less than seven years under present rules they cannot be replaced except by electric vehicles.
Seems as though we are looking to add the equivalent of another 32million three-bed house to the grid over lets say 15 years beginning 2030, Where is the upgrading work needed to accommodate that being undertaken?
That is a very clear way to express this problem. Thank you.
Answer: There will not be 32 million cars on the road, more like 3 million. Their mileage will be lower, it will not be 10kWh but more like 2kWh.
This will be proclaimed as a great success for what was the aim of the policy all along, to reduce car traffic in cities and promote public transport, cycling and walking.
You have to remember who is making these policies. Its a generation who have spent their formative years being taught what exactly? When you find out, you’ll understand.
There will not be 32 million cars on the road, more like 3 million.
Correction:
There will not be 32 million ICE cars on the road, more like 3 million EVs owned by the wealthiest.
…..and if the formerly ICE vehicle owning population are forced onto Shank’s or Tebbikes I confidently predict that the number of usable EVs will experience a very rapid decline as soon as the penny drops. Mass civil unrest awaits.
And with lithium batteries, it won’t take Molotov cocktails to ignite them, only a well placed bullet or maybe even a good well placed swing of a pick into the batteries.
What about a long spike and a sledge hammer.
Or a good computer hacker making the charger or charge controller rapidly overcharge the batteries.
What would prevent people from buying a lot of ICE vehicles through 2025 model, and keeping them for an average of 15 to 20 years? There would be a huge savings with an ICE vehicle or a hybrid, and by 2026, I imagine charging an EV could be more expensive than buying gasoline. It may already be more expensive if you use rapid chargers exclusively.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Its obvious enough as a possibility that there must already be planning about it.
I expect that in 2027 or 2028 new taxes will be introduced on ICE vehicles. Maybe bans on driving them in some locations. They will be made too expensive to buy and run or not useful enough to own.
Vehicle licensing, fuel duties, number plate recognition charges on entry to some areas. Parking bans.
And lack of refueling stations due to decreased demand for petrol.
Petrol/Gas refueling stations will be driven out of business by regulations and deliberate lack of supply.
Oops! I posted similar! Didn’t see your comment in time!
As mentioned above there are over 32m ICE vehicles in the UK. Is any government really going to pi$$ off that many people?
The US elected Brandon, then let his cronies keep control of the Senate, so apparently pissing off the populace does not really matter, as long as over 1/2 the “voters” are either government employees of living on the dole.
Probably over 1/2 of those ICE drivers are as above, so, unless the UK dumps Scotland before the next elections, you are screwed. The US has a last chance in 2024, and it the electoral tide does not turn then, we might as well have never had TRUMP! because the commies will have won.
Remember the UK is a lot smaller than the US and has a population of around 68m. Many of those 31m ice vehicles will be family cars used by more than one adult. It’s quite possible that they represent 50% of the UK population.
What would prevent people from buying a lot of ICE vehicles?
Cost would be one main factor (I couldn’t afford to buy multiple vehicles at one time)
Availability of fuel would be another. (Commirfornia banning ICE sales is leading to banning Gasoline/Diesel fuel sale as well)
You would potentially have brand new useless vehicles. I suppose you could rent them as homeless shelters.
There will be a lot of ICE vehicles on the road in 2030 even if sales of new ICE vehicles are banned starting in 2030. Banning gasoline and diesel fuel for them would lead to a depression and a civil war.
I meant people timing their next vehicle purchase to get an ICE vehicle just before they can no longer buy any new ICE vehicles.
Or just keeping an existing ICE vehicle as long as possible, like in Cuba!
If you know ICE vehicles will no longer be on sale in 2030, you could plan your “last” ICE vehicle purchase for 2027, 2028 or 2029.
Today, in 2023, you should have some idea how long you could keep your current ICE vehicle, and roughly when you are likely to need a new vehicle.
For example, I have a 2016 Toyota Camry ICE vehicle. It will still be fine in 2029.
(My 2005 Toyota Camry lasted until 2022 — 17 years and 210,000 miles — and someone else bought it and is still using it).
With my 2016 Camry, the year 2029 might be my last opportunity to buy an affordable ICE Camry or a Hybrid Camry. I would want to buy one in 2029 because i can’t afford $50,000 for an EV.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
I have a 1998 Dodge Durango (bought in 2000) with 100,540 miles. Haven’t had a car payment in 17 years. And only about $1000 in repairs over the last 22+ years that I have owned it.
So long as the State keeps selling reasonably priced gas, I could keep it for another 20 years
The number of miles a year you drive that it is close to the average for electrics that I think I remember reading on this site.
Of course if you WANT o go 2000 miles across the country, you could do in in 4 or 5 days with no strain, not so with an electric.
I drove from Utah to Las Vegas 3 days ago and passed a Tesla on I15, with the temperature around 30 degrees f, and the lady in the passenger seat was wearing her HEAVY coat and what looked like a scarf. I guess they were worried about their range and not using their heater. Speed limit is 80 mph and they were not going 80. Funny.
When thinking of free enterprise and supply and demand, if even a minor increase in demand, 10% or more, for ICE vehicles was to occur, very few more would be sold, but the auto makers and salesmen would have a very good couple of years.
Remember, the auto manufacturers would be shutting down their ICE factories in preparation of the ban.
I started looking AT new vehicles in preparation of buying to replace out 2011 vehicle with the intention of getting a little bigger and more comfortable and capable 4wd SV. Went to a Chevy dealer, and the auto that best suited that description was only available in the highest trim line, and only ONE of those. The last time I bought a vehicle at the same dealer, after 9-11, I had a choice of 10 to 20 of the model I wanted, a PU truck, and although I got a 4X4, I could have gotten an exact same colo(u, lol)r trim lime, etc. in 2WD.
Went across the street to look at an equivalent Toyota and they didn’t have even ONE of the model in 4WD, and only a coupe in 2WD.
Supply chain my a$$, this looks like a plan to me. BUT, on the positive side, well cared for vehicles last for hundreds of thousands of miles NOW without rebuilding of the engines or transmissions, and upholstery is just not that expensive when compared to a new vehicle. That PU mentioned above, bought in 2001, is still running, only a new transmission at about 180K miles, and no new shocks, struts, bushings, or other suspension parts, over 20 years, over 240K miles, not burning oil, etc. Regular oil changes at 3K, used oil Teflon treatment for the first 20 or so oil changes, and on she goes.
The ONLY problem with most older vehicles is the lack of the new bells and whistles of newer vehicles, like “lane assist” and blue tooth hands free calling, etc. BTW I keep lane assist turned OFF on my newest vehicle. I like the hands free calling.
See whale oil price chart.
The fuel to run those ICEs will not be available or will be eye-wateringly expensive. Additionally, ICE vehicles will not pass so-called “road safety tests” designed to have only EVs pass, due to features like self-driving or accident avoidance. I suspect driving ICEs in cities will be banned due to “pollution” and parking will be severely restricted everywhere.
To see what earnest govts can do to save you from your bad decisions, look at what govts here in Canada have done with smoking cigarettes — they aren’t banned per se either. (And when smokers turned to e-cigarettes as a safer alternative, the onerous restrictions and costs followed. )
Also don’t forget that if you drive an ICE vehicle your social score will go down which will allow/deny access to certain services, such as food…
And where will the copper come from for making such enormous changes?
Trust you to throw a spanner in the works 🙂
The guberment will stop minting pennies freeing up copper supplies and 3 vehicles per year will be available for purchase.
Perhaps thieves will steal your copper pipes at the guberment behest and they will be able to produce a few more annually
In US, Pennies are 97% zinc and 3% copper. So, not minting them will not free up much copper.
1943 steelies
That’s why it makes 3 EVs
steel pennies 1943
About 20,000 minted in copper prior to the change
we always find a way
peru, chile, south american WIN
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273637/copper-reserves-by-country/
The problem with that is the assumption that every ICE car will be replaced with an EV. The intention is not for everyone to have an EV, it’s for almost no one to have a car at all.
Only a very small minority will be authorised to use (probably not own) a car. Even they will be heavily restricted in where they can travel. Everyone else will not be permitted to own a car or to travel outside their permitted area.
There is no way the grid can handle everyone having an EV, and there isn’t enough raw materials to make them without increasing mining by orders of magnitude. It’s clear that the intention is something very different to what they are promising.
A hidden implication, no car industry, millions directly and indirectly, unemployed. Economic ruin, mass poverty, starvation, shorter lifespan.
Still there is a bright side, the rich, will still be able to enjoy their caviar, run around in ICE vehicles i.e.Rolls Royce’s etc. and tour the world in their private jets.
Eh, just like the old times, c 1850.
It’s slightly more indirect than that. The powerful will ban cars in major cities while heavily taxing the rural and suburban populations with their cars and trucks to pay for urban transit schemes. It works because the uneven voter blocks allow it. Then just import the resources from other countries when the rural providers go under.
I’m not sure how widespread this is in the US, but if you work in a large city’s city limits but live outside the city limits, you still pay that city’s income tax but can’t vote in that city’s elections.
It’s not common in the U.S. but the current notable exceptions now want to move ahead with wealth taxes to go after those fleeing to Florida with a longer tax enforcement reach over state lines and with wealth valuations in place of actual realized gains. That’s after losing the top 1 percent taxpayers to migration at an accelerated rate. All of that is after passing the extra $1 trillion stimulus programs for these failed states well after the 2-month long pandemic recession in 2020.
“ with a longer tax enforcement reach over state lines and with wealth valuations in place of actual realized gains.” A state cannot tax across state lines, that unconstitutional and losses every time Dimms try it.
I think what they will do ultimately is effectively a State Exit tax whereby a tax is assessed on the leaving person’s total worth. As if all the stock gains were realized, etc. If the federal govt and IRS is onboard with the idea, which is likely. Why else would the US federal govt be trying to vastly expand IRS both in numbers and powers? They’ll start with saying they will make the rich pay, and then keep dropping the base until it includes everyone with any assets.
In California the average annual mileage for EVs is only about 5,000 miles
The US average for all car & light trucks is about 14,000 miles per year..
EVs are obviously mainly second cars and third cars in CA, mainly purchased by wealthy people, because they start at about $50,000 for a Tesla Model 3 with sales tax, delivery fee, and an option or two.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
I went to a local KIA dealer to look at a potential replacement for our aging SUV. As expected, there weren’t any new ICE SUVs on the lot, but they did have an EV6 in the showroom. 546 HP and 0-60 in about 3 seconds should tell anyone that EVs have nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with assuaging the ‘issues’ of middle aged rich people.
I have some inside information from engineers in Michigan working on 2026 EV programs. Theye are very negative on the news EVs they are creating. That is unprecedented in product development, where I worked for 27 years before becoming a lazy retired bum at age 51. Engineers are usually too optimistic about new vehicles they are creating. It was somewhat of n inside joke. No so with EVs.
THE PROBLEMS WITH EVs OBSERVED SO FAR:
High cost
Very inconvenient “refueling”
Unpredictable percent charged gauges
More battery charge lost than expected when EV is sitting in a cold garage
Level one charging is too slow for most people. Few people have a spare 240 volt receptacle in their garage = extra cost
Batteries should be kept between 10% and 80% of charged to preserve them, losing 30 percentage points of capacity
Fast changing is too expensive, relative to gasoline when its priced closer to $3 a gallon, and fast charging deteriorates the batteries too
Cold weather testing in Northern Minnesota, during a cold week during December 2022, revealed range reductions of 40% to 60%, depending on the model tested. 30% to 40% was expected, not 50% or 60%.
Those numbers ( 40% to 60% ) were for a cold start drive — no time spent warming up the car interiors in extremely cold weather. One engineer commented that his wife would never get inside a car so cold and just drive off — she would warm up the car until the interior was comfortable. Which s would be a further range reduction.
In addition, the cars were never stopped outdoors for recharging (too cold!), when people inside the car would want the heater on to stay warm during that recharging, which took longer than expected. There would have been less range as a result of keeping the car interior warm while recharging.
If the engineers designing 2026 EVs are so pessimistic, that is a bad omen for the auto industry. An electrical engineer friend who recently retired told me the news in the above comment. Engineers at work are careful to be optimistic when their management is around. So most high level management is still cheerleading EVs. With the exception of the Toyota CEO. who obviously knows what’s going on.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
‘Cold weather testing in Northern Minnesota…’
Anyone else remember those old ‘Diehard’ TV commercials when they left cars out on a frozen lake all night with their lights on in order to see which one would start in the morning?
You mean this one?
The boss of Kia in the UK recently told the Times newspaper that a mass market in affordable electric cars will not happen because of the difficulty in producing them on a viable basis and said Kia had no immediate plans for a mass market vehicle (Times 23rd Jan)
EVs are also obviously incapable of extended range driving over the same time period. I can drive my ICE from Santa Rosa to Seattle in 14 hours with 2 refueling stops.
I can also drive to Las Wages in 12 hours with 2 refueling stops.
Can’t do that in an EV. Vegas would need 3-4 recharging stops and require hours waiting to recharge.
The total driving distance from Santa Rosa, CA to Seattle, WA is 788 miles or 1 268 kilometers.
If you used an EV. you might need to start back home a day ot two after you arrived, assuming you ever arrived.
Every EV long trip experiment in the US, UK and EU that I’ve read about in an article in the past few years has been a “never again drive”. 100% negative.
Did you see the article in Car and Driver regarding the 762 mile race from Chicago to the Tesla Museum on Long island? 2013 model S and 1913 model T Ford. The Ford was plagued with fuel leaks and had to rebuild their carb mid way. Tesla won by 45 minutes.
Of course, that doesn’t allow for economic growth either.
Prof Mike Kelly, U Cambridge, as done back of envelope calculations, it will take at least £1Tn just to upgrade the supply network to the premises. And as we know, with all good gov’t projects, they always overrun timescale, and massively over budget. And that doesn’t include upgrading the grid etc.
Don’t worry. We have a plan.
Actually, with Nut Zero there is no plan
Just long-winded vision statements and arbitrary completion dates.
2024 Headlines
Nut Zero is not going according to plan, because there never was a plan.
2025 Headlines
While working on the Nut Zero project, we discovered an alarming number of subjects that we knew nothing about.
2026 Headlines
By making a little progress every year, we have gradually let the Nut Zero project completely overwhelm us.
The best climate science and energy articles I tread today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
To leave with our wealth just ahead of the raging mob.
Well when every EV (assuming it does the same annual mileage as the average ICE vehicle) needs to draw 10kWh from the grid on a daily basis and you understand that 10kWh is
UK avaerage is 10000 km per year or 27 km per day
thats around 6 kWh per day for average EV
The whole green energy thing is little more than an ill conceived pipe dream. Better yet a nightmare. End it now it is less than worthless.
A pipe dream which will soon suffer a blockage!
I’m hoping so.
A Hopium pipe dream.
Better than building more unreliable renewables, we can increase their grid share by restricting production from reliable sources while simultaneously reducing usage/demand.
Told you so 20 years ago – see these Nov2002 Correct Predictions at:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
DEBATE ON THE KYOTO ACCORD The PEGG Nov2002
– by Sallie Baliunas (Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian), Tim Patterson (Paleoclimatologist, Carleton U), Allan MacRae (Professional Engineer, retired (Queen’s U, U of Alberta)
Told you so ten years ago on my explicit warning of 2013:
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA
British Undersecretary for Energy and Climate Change, 31Oct2013
By Allan MacRae
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1130954
[excerpt]
“So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.”
See CorrectPredictions.ca and my papers listed therein for proof and links.
Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., Calgary
https://energy-experts-international.com/
Where is baroness verma now? Safely retired so unable to face the music?
The Climate (CAGW) scam is now over 50 years old since it started circa 1970.
The Climate scam has squandered trillions of dollars of scarce global resources and wasted millions of lives, especially in the developing world, by denying them access to affordable, reliable fossil fuel energy.
We need a Nuremberg 2.0 for all the political crimes committed in the name of Climate and Green Energy, like we need a similar tribunal for the crimes of the Covid-19 scam. More trillions of dollars and more millions of lives wasted. Both crimes were promoted by the same totalitarian self-appointed elite.
Four barrels of oil is energy-equivalent to a lifetime of hard labor. That is what modern primary energy does for us, and ~85% of modern primary energy is fossil fuels – oil, coal, and natural gas. Most of the rest is hydro and nuclear, and only a few percent is wind and solar, despite trillions of dollars of squandered subsidies. Green energy schemes and the alleged fossil-fuel-driven global warming crisis are scientific and technical falsehoods.
The promotion of green energy in the developed world has hugely increased costs and destabilized electrical grids – it is a proven green energy debacle, as we correctly predicted 20 years ago, Germany, Britain and others are now paying the price for their climate-and-energy foolishness.
Anyone who wants to understand the real science that disproves the cargo-cult CAGW hypothesis can read this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/18/the-climate-feedback-debate/#comment-3668435
[excerpt]
Here is the Global Warming Alarmists’ dirty little secret, that they’ve been trying to hide for 33 years:… The CAGW hypo was proved false by Kuo et al in the journal Nature in 1990, who proved that CO2 changes happen after (lag) temperature changes…. That scientific fact proved that increasing atmospheric CO2 cannot significantly drive temperature, because THE FUTURE CANNOT CAUSE THE PAST.
MacRae independently re-discovered this same fact in 2008.
Humlum et al independently re-discovered this same fact in 2013.
Kuo 1990, MacRae 2008 and Humlum 2013 were all swept under the rug.
THE ABYSMAL FAILURE OF THE GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS’ PREDICTIVE TRACK RECORD. ”THE LEFT LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING!”
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
For 60:40 predictions, the odds of being this wrong are 1 in 13 quintillion; for 70:30 predictions, the odds are 1 in 13 septillion. It’s not just climate scientists being randomly mistaken – they must have known they were not telling the truth.
See https://CorrectPredictions.ca/
“It’s not just climate scientists being randomly mistaken – they must have known they were not telling the truth.”
Are there only 2 options: random or intentional?
“Should be” is not “is”.
Every climate prediction wrong
No evidence of CAGW
But CAGW can’t be proven wrong since it has never existed in the first place. It’s just a wrong prediction.
CO2 changes lead temperature changes mainly because of the ocean’s thermal inertia. They do not lag.
The temperature changes from increasing CO2 are too small to be concerned about. Because CO2 over 400ppm is a weak greenhouse gas. The benefits of more CO2 outweigh costs from more CO2 — there is some air pollution from burning hydrocarbon fuels in two cycle engines, and other locations without modern pollution controls, and coal ash is a real pollutant.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Every climate prediction wrong – Wrong predictions by Warmists, yes.
No evidence of CAGW – Correct.
But CAGW can’t be proven wrong since it has never existed in the first place. It’s just a wrong prediction.
NO – wrong – CAGW is a hypothesis and it has been proved wrong many ways. I listed over 20 in one paper, and I omitted a few because I was tired of writing – And Einstein said “One is enough”.
CO2 changes lead temperature changes mainly because of the ocean’s thermal inertia. They do not lag.
Wrong – do the math – the links are above. Do you think you are somehow more insightful than Kuo et al, or Humlum et al?
The temperature changes from increasing CO2 are too small to be concerned about. Because CO2 over 400ppm is a weak greenhouse gas. The benefits of more CO2 outweigh costs from more CO2 — there is some air pollution from burning hydrocarbon fuels in two cycle engines, and other locations without modern pollution controls, and coal ash is a real pollutant.
Generally correct. In Alberta, our coal plants had bag houses to capture particulates, and real pollution from BC forest fires was 1000 times more than all our coal plants combined. Our idiot govts converted all our coal plants to natural gas, wasting billions in subsidies and increasing power costs by about tenfold.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
I published all that in 2002 – told you so 20 years ago.
Yes, we bow to your greatness.
Thank you, Charles. Insufferable always comes to mind.
Every climate prediction wrong – Wrong predictions by Warmists
nope.
Your 2002 CAGW prediction was not a prediction
EVERY climate skeptic had that belief
ONLY YOU CLAIM IT AS A CORRECT PREDICTION
It was also a common belief that fossil fuels could not be replaced. Every climate skeptic who thought about energy had that belief. ONLY YOU CLAIM IT AS A CORRECT PREDICTION
The sun does not affect climate change because there is no known change of Top of the Atmosphere solar energy, as measured by NASA satellites. If you believe NASA is wrong, or lying, explain how.
Your prediction of global cooling has been wrong for several years so far.
Your incessant bragging about your so called correct predictions, which were actually just belief of ALL climate skeptics, or were wrong, is puzzling. Everyone else may want to be polite to you, but I am no longer treating conservatives with kid gloves. I demand honesty among conservatives and no false science claims that are easily fact checked by leftists. Why? Because we are seriously losing the battle against climate scaremongering — this is no time to pat ourselves on the back or invent alt-science theories. This is no time for a popularity contest, posting what you think will make others happy. Or to make yourself look good.
The leftists are winning. They have spun the CAGW myth so well that most people believe it, despite the fact that CAGW has never existed, and the CAGW prediction has been wrong since the 1979 Charney Report, 43 years ago. Wrong cli,ate predictions 34 ears in a row and most people still believe CAGW predictions. .
Can’t you just oppose CAGW scaremongering and Nut Zero, like the rest of us, without so much false bragging about yourself? It is unbecoming, to say the least.
The best climate science and energy articles I tread today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Also “going back to the first Earth Day in 1970.” creates a too-easy target. People said things in 1970 that a cell phone search could have fixed in 1 second.
Richard, the Scientific Method does not work the way you think it does.
Your comments include some valid points, mixed with utter nonsense.
The rest of you make no sense at all.
Richard, Charles, Steven and Kevin – you sound like “controlled opposition”.
I’m done with you.
How will I sleep at night?
I’m sure they weep.
gas generated power does not just fill in the gaps as the article says.
The grid is kept in supply and demand balance by gas. Gas power can modulate output (As can coal, if we build some more?),wind and solar cannot,
So what magic are they going to find by 2035 to keep the frequency stable and within limits?
Batteries. Millions and millions of batteries that will drop, like mana, from heaven and fill all the demand gaps with their magical lithium hearts.
Electricity demand reduction, voluntary
(time of day electricity pricing and unaffordable electric vehicles)
Demand reduction, forced
(smart meter forced, no EV charging from 3pm to 7pm?)
Demand reduction by rolling blackouts
(can’t use electricity if there is none to use)
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
What they’ll probably need to do is to allow charging for vehicles with VIN# ending with 1,2 Monday’s, 3,4 Tuesday’s, 5,6 Wednesday’s etc. Controlled by the vehicle computer.
There was a reason why the Victorian Industrialists abandoned water mills as their source of power.
Unreliability.
…..and the availability of FF generated “reliables”……..
Unreliable as water may have been, it beat wind hands down.
Buy generator futures.
You know that California is banning the sale of generators, right?
Nevada isn’t.
STORY TIP:
Model & assumptions all the way down
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2822%2900310-2/fulltext
You won’t live any longer; it will just seem that way.
Yes, The British political class, Conservative, Labour, SNP, Greens, Liberals have all lost their collective minds. Not just on energy. Also on race, freedom of speech and association, and most strikingly of all in Scotland sex and gender. Where the attempt has been made to permit any 16 year old to change their birth certificate to show they were born as the opposite sex. No parental approval required.
The pattern on all of these issues goes like this.
First some imaginary crisis is declared.
Then some policies are proposed. These are invariably either useless, impossible or will actually make the supposed problem worse.
The policies are implemented and fail.
The objectives of the policies are then rewritten so that they can be called a success.
You can see this pattern in all of the progressive policies of the last 30 or so years. Look, as a clear example, at the EV policies, or heat pumps in the UK. Look more widely at the effort to introduce non-spelling and syllabic reading education, which in the effort to remedy some imaginary problem produced large scale school leaving functional illiteracy. Its not clear what the gender mania is aiming at, but we can tell from the Tavistock case that the policies have done far more harm than good, and from the reports from schools that they are producing rather than lessening or ameliorating gender dysporia.
The EV and Net Zero proposals manage similarly to be both unachievable and environmentally far more damaging than the supposed crisis they are directed at.
I have no idea what the solution to all this is. Its like living in a community of religious nutters who cannot see reality as it is….
“It’s like living in a community of religious nutters who cannot see reality as it is”.
I have been saying that for years. Whenever I point out the obvious problems in climate alarmism, the response is exactly what you would expect from religious fanatics.
If you call people nutters they might not read your comment carefully.
Or even atheist nutters who cannot see reality as it is.
Mao, Stalin and Vlad
It is the result of Socialist/Left wing ideologically driven so called Teachers – if you dumb down the education for the masses over time, they cannot become a threat to their existence by virtue of ability to think critically, let alone read, spell, speak and write as literate people, and thereby spot the drivel these Teacher Commissars trot ( Pun very intended ) out. Result – as in the brainwashed dancing on top of the skyscraper hysterically welcoming the alien spaceship just before the extinction event weapon obliterates them in “Independence Day”.
Or so I reckon…..”my opinion, you are free to disagree” – whilst you can.
Best fiction authors of the last 200 years- politically right or left?
Best musicians of the last 200 years- politically right or left?
“I have no idea what the solution to all this is. Its like living in a community of religious nutters who cannot see reality as it is”
Exactly right.
Leftism is a religion whether you call it woke, progressive, fascist. Marxist, communist, or the more accurate “big government nutters”.
It is not that hard to figure out why EVERY leftist plan and decision seems intended to ruin a nation. We love our nations, and want to improve them. Leftists hate our nations, and want to fundamentally transform them. It’s that simple.
The correct answer: Leftists hate the current economic system — socialism now, but used to be capitalism — and they want fundamental transformation. They get there by ruining everything that worked in the old economic system. Leftists are trying to break down the existing economic systems they hate. This is not incompetence, or ignorance — it is a deliberate and devious plan to achieve maximum political power for leftists.
The Big Picture
Leftists reject capitalism AND socialism
They want fascism and Marxism
They get there incrementally by ruining what works under capitalism and socialism. They ruin what works to create crises. Those crises convince many people that a new economic system is needed, because the old one is failing.
The new economic system, as desired by leftists for over a century, is rule by government “experts\”. Since the so called “experts” are not experts. they eventually ruin industries they are trying to micromanage.
Then they decide they must talk over those failing industries, and the result is Marxism. Not every industry has to be taken over by the government — that is not the case in Communist China. But every industry not managed by the government — those still privately owned — must be controlled by government mandates, which is fascism.
This drive for powerful governments will not be stopped by votes. The lefist election fraud will see to that. With the ultimate Marxism, there will be no elections, or else there will be massive election fraud. Leftists want power and will not give it up — truth and honesty are not leftist values. that’s why is is difficult for conservatives and libertarians to think like leftists.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Hinckley C is an admission of renewable fail
What that station is, will be, is one humongous (still not sufficient ##) Synchronous Capacitor.
It is there to fill in the holes that consumers normally, always and unavoidably, punch in the grid as they switch appliance on and, some devices, off again
It is also being put there to enable a Black Start = a tacit admission that such things and events are going to happen and that renewablees are incapable of getting back on their feet if/when they fall over.
It is why the builders and subsequent operator(s) were able to squeeze such a good financial deal, for themselves, out of UK Gov.
iow: UK Gov knew it was destroying the grid with renewables and Hinckley is a fig-leaf.
Cronies (ex-ministers most of them) realised the mess and made damn sure it was an expensive fig-leaf
## How it gets worse is that another capacitor is being built – in the south of England but as geographically as far from Hinckley as you can get – in Suffolk.
If, if nuclear was the low-carbon wunderkid, why not simply build a Hinckley D? While all the plant machinery and workers are on site in Somerset.
It’s simply because The Grid is a big thing and it’s not super-conducting. Having only one large capacitor would have the effect of causing as many cascade fails as it fixed or alleviated.
(Take a leaf from electronic, esp digital, circuit designers and how they disperse small capacitors all across their circuit boards so as to keep down the noise on the supply line.
Especially near sensitive components – notice how Suffolk is sooooo much closer to London than Hinckley Somerset
Why is everybody a liar these days, why is everybody now so full of shit?
(UnoMe: I’ve said why dozens of times. Because they eat shit and it’s because they have to – there’s nothing left that’s any good-to-eat any more.)
“”Why is everybody a liar these days””
It pays well
Leftists have been liars since the early 20th century
They have had a lot of practice
You can’t defend leftism with facts, data, logic and the truth.
Hinckley, a town in Leicestershire, is a long way from Hinkley C as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
There’s nothing to do but fire up the Marshall and play it loud
Whilst one still can
I am a true believer in Strat power, if not its best exponent ( AGB RIP )
If you believe in Strat power, you too can believe in this…
https://open.spotify.com/track/56mfTLzRXHRqNsy1vAZT1T?si=c366e3b07c994b02
Technically, a Stratocaster generates very little power. The pickups are small magnets wrapped in winding coils and the moving metal strings in close proximity to the coils, per Maxwell’s equations, do generate a voltage signal. Very small voltages…
That said, when connected to an AC powered amp, magic can happen.
Well not that small. ISTR around up to 50mV from a single coil and up to 200mV from a humbucker. Maybe up to a whole volt when thrashing power chords.
Meanwhile in la-la land….
‘The kids loved it’: readers on taking part in National Grid energy-saving trial
…five people share what it was like to reduce their power use for an hour – from those who turned off everything to those who cut back – and what motivated them to take part.
‘It’s no hardship for us’
We’ve been already participating in the Octopus saving sessions. I think we saved about £8 across three sessions last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/24/the-kids-loved-it-readers-on-taking-part-in-national-grid-energy-saving-trial
8 quid? An hour isn’t exactly much, days, weeks and months will be.
LARPing the apocalypse. Who doesn’t like an end-of-the-world movie? A couple of hours of make-believe. Sure the kids will enjoy it; like they enjoy “camping” in the garden—for the first couple of hours until they get cold.Then they want to come in and sleep in a proper bed.
E.On customers have been co planning that they were offered as little as 5p to participate. Presumably E.On were planning to pocket the difference.
“We made it through the winter of 2022/23 without the blackouts he tried to inflict on us. Russia can keep its filthy gas and oil – we can do without it thanks to our cheap and plentiful renewables.”
The above claim is misleading:
The UK last imported Russian LNG in March 2022.
Imports of Russian oil in the 3Q 2022 were only 0.4 per cent of all oil from 10.2 per cent last year.
Imports of Russian coal also dropped.
Natural gas provided 41.9% of UK electricity generation by Major Power Producers, with renewables at 37.8%, nuclear at 17.0% and coal at 2.4%.
In 2021 UK imports from Russia made up 4% of gas used in the UK, 9% of oil and 27% of coal. In 2021, imports of gas, oil and coal from Russian to the UK were worth a combined £4.5 billion.
The best climate science and energy articles I read today:
The best climate science and energy articles I read today, January 25, 2023 (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Demand management isn’t just blackouts through bribery. Sometimes they just turn your power off without asking.
I’m 69 years old, lived through the 1965 New York blackout, the 2003 Michigan blackout, and have lost electric power many times, for up to four days in a row. Not once has my electric utility ever asked me for permission before the electric power stopped. I ought to sue them!
Here is another example from UK insanity – from the Telegraph. One Mike Foster writing:
Where is the hydrogen going to come from?
Well, this is also the country (or rather, the Scottish part of the country is) where its thought to be one’s human right to falsify one’s birth certificate at will.
Pixie dust is even better than hydrogen with no emissions whatsoever.
It has been estimated that the UK gas distribution system could operate with up to 20% hydrogen but would need to be almost completely overhauled if the hydrogen content was any greater. Over 22m of the UK’s 28m+ households are connected to the gas grid.
Plus all appliances and boilers would need to be swapped to hydrogen specific ones if the hydrogen content was greater than 20%
The 668 residential properties in the village of Winlanton in NE England are currently undergoing a trial with the 80/20 mix.
https://hydrogen-central.com/hydrogen-heat-homes-uk-wired/
Here’s the energy chart for the New England grid yesterday (Jan. 24) at 11:30 in the morning. Wind and solar make up about 5% despite billions having been spent on “clean energy”.
If only the operators of NEISO were aware of the Pollock Limit, ‘a beautifully simple and simply beautiful instance of the logical application of mathematical principles to derive a crucially-important but unexpected and hitherto wholly overlooked result.’
/sarc
Or my Flounder Limit
Different fish !
Overbuilding unreliables will continue until the money runs out or until a major grid flounders with a blackout. The percentage of unreliables average output when that blackout happens — let’s say 35% unreliables — will become the Flounder Limit that utilities see as the danger zone for unreliables penetration.
I see Wood is now considered “green”? Do the tree-huggers know this? If so, why don’t they care?
OFGEM is helping it happen.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/ofgems-energy-market-briefing-building-a-flexible-and-robust-market
What that means is imposing the inflexibility of wind on a fragile market with ever greater amounts of demand curtailment on the one hand and renewables curtailment on the other. It will be expensive. Consumers will be asked to fund grid expansion on a massive scale to allow more wind to be connected as and when built. They will pay for the intermittency coming and going. Live in the wrong place and your power may cost a fortune under locational pricing.
Truly horrific.
As most wind power is in Scotland or far out in the North Sea doesn’t the vast majority of the UK population live in the wrong place? 🙂
Fixed route public transport systems are highly inefficient because they rarely go from where you are to where you want to be.
In this fashion they are much like wind and solar. Delivering service with little regard to the needs of the customer.
Many transit systems in fact track vehicles, not customers. Many systems have no idea where the customer started and ended their trip. Imagine if cab companies didn’t know where to pick you up or drop you off.
If you look at yesterday:
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
you see that on a pretty normal day in winter, the kind that occur several times a winter, you would need, to make up the wind deficit, around 5GW for about 20 hours.
Of course there are also regular periods when wind falls below 5GW for several days at a time, so this would not be enough, it would be just about the minimum entry fee.
That is 100GWh. There is nowhere in the world that has installed even that in a functioning total grid backup environment.
This is from an installed base of about 25GW of wind. If the net zero plans are implemented, this is going to have to rise to more like 50-100GW.
And that’s 100GWh is just the price of entry to get you through the day.
When you have to get through a week or ten days? And when the gap is not 5GW but more like 20 or 30GW? Because you have also at the same time as you moved to wind also moved to heat pumps and EVs?
Pipe dreams.
Spent a year in Papua New Guinea. Good money to be made selling replacement computers and backup power in an unstable grid. Every problem is an opportunity.
An unstable grid will no doubt fry charging station and EV’s. Burn down houses and buildings. Fry electronics and power transformers. Entire new industries will spring up.
And with dropping demand for gasoline, those people able to keep their ICE vehicles on the road will drive around in style. The new Cuba, where cars are still on the road after 70 years.
Most of the 1950s US cars in Cuba have replacement engines, sometimes diesel powered engines, but they are still running.
It is estimated about 90 percent of the vintage American cars in Cuba have had their original engines torn out and replaced. In addition, many of the original parts and pieces are simply not available anywhere in the world today. But no worries, Cuban mechanics can make the parts virtually from scratch!
If sales of new ICE vehicles are banned, are we going to see a black market in cars like we had with booze during prohibition. A new class of gangster? Buying Chinese knockoffs of the 2030 Ford F-150 in 2040 and smuggling them into the West using salvaged or forged VIN numbers? A new G-man. A new Elliott Ness promising a war on ICE?
Alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level.
Demand management is a desperate move by declining utilities to keep the lights on just a wee bit longer before the system collapses. In Texas, load shedding contracts with businesses and remote-controlled “smart metering” started just about the time that wind and solar began wrecking system reliability and dispatchable capacity.
If I can afford the power and I have a preferred lifestyle, then I should darn well be able to buy electricity whenever and however I want. That privilege is now being reserved for the wealthy elites.
Energy storage, on the other hand, has followed way, way behind. A few token – and very expensive – battery installations have been built, but, together with pumped storage systems built between the 1960s and 1980s, they can only store enough energy to keep Britain powered-up for less than an hour.
using the UK as an example of anything but stupidity is wrong headed
storage?
https://newatlas.com/energy/worlds-largest-flow-battery-grid-china/
https://www.iea.org/reports/grid-scale-storage
This is a long way from a city living off wind & solar and having stored battery power enough to sustain them for a week or so in the dead of winter with no wind.
Our street uses ~ 120 MWh per day. (14 condos).
So we would last how many days in the dead of a winter wind drought before our power disappeared? (Presuming the rest of the buildings in our ~ 55,000 town had switched everything off)
From the IEA report
“While progress is being made, projected growth in grid-scale storage capacity is not currently on track with the Net Zero Scenario”
more fear mongering grid panic
real demand
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-much-power-will-uk-electric-vehicles-need/
“you are going to have to chuck such enormous quantities of money at people that they are prepared to”
The cost might not be so high.
sux to be the UK! Thanks Boris,
With a smart meter, they can shut you down whether you need electricity or not. it will be brown-outs for the plebes.
…..which is really just blackouts through bribery.
Climate changing elites prefer to think of them as Greenouts.
Origin Energy in Oz now welcomes you all to ‘Spike’ after your power bills have spiked-
https://spike.originenergy.com.au/help-support/why-spike-rJjxTtyYU
Why we’re introducing Spike
The way we produce energy is changing. And so too is the way you use energy.
Which puts more demand on the electricity grid during peak times.
Spike is how we can work together to create new energy-saving habits to help reduce the load on the grid and transition to more renewable sources.
No chaps the way you produced energy didn’t impact my demand at all but I did sit up and take notice of the spike in pricing with all that ‘cheap’ electricity from Gaia every man and his dog was banging on about.
PS: I’m apparently the start of something BIG-
https://email-view.campaign.marketing/origin/e99365db-70bf-43f4-8368-71a911219931/
and if that link doesn’t work here’s the video promo-