Trump has figured out that coal must be part of the energy mix, especially because of the voters in coal producing states. He has come out in support of “clean coal”. Since coal is about 50% dirt, clean coal must be made by processing the dirty coal that comes out of the ground. So clean coal is not cheap coal. Exporting coal to India, China and other countries that are “developing” sidesteps all the promises made to “clean” it. The slogan of Trump cadre Steve Bannon is Action, Action,Action.
We could set all the Climatistas and Net Zeroids to work cleaning the coal. It used to be a punishment in the British Army, and after it had been thoroughly cleaned, it had to be white-washed.
Great review. As a historian I can assure you that at SOME point historians will look back and see this as spectacularly stupid along the lines of the Romans just inviting in the barbarian hordes or Hitler invading Russia.
This gives me joy, I admit. And I expect it would be for the same reasons, although I guess the Romans may be excused. But Hitler could've looked at history and thought twice about what he wanted to do. I myself am not that well read in history but I did study some once upon a time, which is when I learned that pretty much everything has indeed already happened before and there are lessons to be learned from that. I guess our leaders, however, are too busy to consult a historian.
Only objection is that the loan program office is explicitly supposed to loan to projects that cannot find full commercial funding. So shock horror breaking news from the Trump appointed IG that... That is exactly what LPO is doing.
I'm not defending any specific loan, or the overall strategy such as it is. But dinging LPO for doing what it's supposed to do is ridiculous.
Not quite. The claim is that the conflicts of interest within the department yield loans that are not fiscally sound. She is saying that these debts are Solar City all over again and she is of course correct. The roll of the DoE isn't to allow government debt $ to just be handed to a company regardless of it's balance sheet and that will burn through the cash. It's fiscally absurd.
This is interesting -- what is the justification for this approach? They want to support projects that may be extra high-risk but are deemed worthy of the support on some other grounds?
Non-commercial funding means government subsidies, which results in a government cookie jar. When one of these jars is created the taxpayers money is given away with little thought to the potential success of the projects that are funded. Success after all isn't the point, emptying the jar is the goal. After a time, people forget about the cookie jars. Here's to Trump & the next congress breaking jars, not creating them.
Could you elaborate on oil companies subsidy requests? What "technologies" are they asking for help with? Euro oil hasn't swallowed Kool Aid on clean fuels and other absurdities has it?
I expect they need help making their decarbonisation efforts make sense. I also suspect the problem is more acute for the heavy industry, which needs a lot of energy and making this energy "low-carbon" is indeed pricing them out of the market, which is why they had the EC adopt the CBAM or cross-border adjustment mechanism, popularly known as carbon tax. As for Big Oil, those emission reductions must cost a pretty penny. While I couldn't find the letter itself because the EC's website is a hellscape, I'm pretty sure they did not go into any specific details. They generally don't in these please for help.
Just to be clear the Canadian government was on meltdown for at least a year. When the government changes after the election in November, all the stupidity will be gone. We are going to have a Renaissance in natural resources.
Irina it is such a pleasure to read your thoughts so well expressed and even at times witty. Responsible cogent journalism has been going extinct around the world for some time. I am old enough to remember when members of the press were called the Fourth Estate. They were put on earth to tell us when the emperor had no clothes but alas their voices have developed a case of "the dwindles." Thank god the internet came along permitting that kind of journalism to find a new home coming from what might have been an unlikely location in years past: Bulgaria. If Bulgaria has people and women like you, it may be time to think about a visit to Sofia!
Thank you, Hugh! I also used to admire journalists when I was young and wanted to become one because it sounded so cool. Well, yes, it is cool, if not exactly easy and it is really frustrating to see the profession lose credibility so fast through so many faults of its own.
In Bulgaria, as elsewhere, most f those who call themselves journalists are paid cheerleaders but there is a handful of real truth investigators who do a stellar job of exposing the emperor's naked bottom. Do drop by, I'll show you around. :)
The ultimate irony of all the insane green mandates is that they actually INCREASE CO2 emissions. There is no escape from the laws of physics, or the reality of Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROI). This is especially true of offshore wind power, with the shallow, sheltered waters of Denmark being a bit of an exception. The UK and Germany are destroying themselves, and it will result in zero benefit to anybody but China. "Stupid is as stupid does". Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Grand job - thank you Irina. My miniscule contribution is the phrase "brute force and ignorance", which I feel is more accurate than force alone, even in triplicate. I am sure the UK economy will collapse before the electricity grid becomes carbon-neutral, and Rachel from Accounts (Reeves) will be gone, so nothing much to worry about there.
I understand you're frustrated as you would prefer to write fiction. Is that because the reality you report sets such a high bar for fiction, or at least implausibility?
It is the implausibility that gets me the most but perhaps not the way you expect. Here I am, doing my darnedest to make my story plausible if fantastical, failing and trying again until I make it decent, and there are all those people who don't give a toss about not only plausibility but the very laws of nature. I'm getting back at them by writing them into my stories.
It really has become a sort of ...madness. A mania. Politicians making announcements and proclamations that will never, ever happen.
Every time I see these pronouncements; I ask the basic question - how many nuclear power plants are you breaking ground on then? How much carbons sequestration projects? How many geothermal projects? How many new hydroelectric dams? What's that? Zero?
Carry one then.
I mean, seriously. It's like grandly pronouncing you'll for sure win the Kentucky derby, and all you need is a horse. Then pissing your pants and falling over into a flower bed.
Crazy thought, start construction of the nuclear power plant, then announce the carbon reductions you'll achieve.
The Kentucky derby/pissed pants analogy is going into my quote list and I will use it in a future post. Thank you for enriching my material.
What you're proposing is not going to happen, not with the current crop of political leaders. It's not spectacular enough compared to megalomaniacal declarations.
Kudos for working in a Douglas Adams reference. He left us way too soon.
As you point out, many folks, including yourself have been pointing this out for years (decades?) yet the media never, ever reports this point of view or examines the basis behind such analyses.
The media's failure to do its [insert expletive] job on this topic has been criminal and led to the squandering of trillions of dollars of human potential.
Yes, people like David have been doing it for decades, unheard. The media did not really fail to do its job. The media was only too happy to turn its collective back on its job and dig into the massive source of daily clickbait that is the transition narrative. I know there's money involved but I maintain that a lot of the motivation also has to do with simply having something to write about. This is a fundamental consideration for media outlets. If there's no news to report, you might have to make up some. The climate narrative comes in handy. And so transition activists became "researchers".
Adams did leave us too soon. I could've definitely done with a few more Dirk Gently stories.
Aww…life the universe and everything! I sure wish Douglas was still with us. He’d have plenty to say about the world as we know it.
Every time I hear some cluster of morons say we are going to spend billions on the grid in 5 years I laugh until my eyes water. Every wind or solar plant needs multiple transformers and circuit breakers to connect to the grid. If you call Siemens today and order a 230KV circuit breaker they’ll tell you to expect delivery in 61 months. That’s 2030. Hard as they might try they can’t build the grid fast enough. They can spent the money like we spent $7billion on 7 car chargers,
Wow, talk about a shortage. It must be really annoying to keep running into such realities as supply constraints that no amount of money can do anything about because it takes time to manufacture.
"Yet here is my concern: with every other form of plant life susceptible to the devastatingly catastrophic effects of climate change, who is to guarantee that the money trees will be spared the devastating catastrophe? " So brilliantly stated.
Given the European view on climate policies, perhaps it is easier to understand the rush to assisted suicide in nations. after all, if it is happening on a national basis, then it should be fine on an individual basis, right?
You be the judge... when you read the following mind-blower:
If you change the first letters of the "EU's Climate Commissioner" Wopke Hoekstra's names... you get "Hopke Woekstra". And isn't Hope basically the only thing next to considering yourself "Woke" keeping the whole green energy transition afloat?
And if you can't really launch an in-demand product that people want to buy, the next best thing obviously would be to mandate buying - but only if you have the option to do so, say in a socialistic-nightmarish kind of economy. Or if you already destroyed the real economy already and there's really nothing else to buy... I mean: they're on their way to do that judging by developments!
Since I know you like Pratchett as much as the next man - meaning the term in the generic masculinic sense of the language, aka the latter part of hu...man:
If you don't know how a demand economy works and insist on making people buy products they don't want, they don't need or that don't even work you might have been missing a few intake of your frog pills, I figure.
I always thought he was one very unfortunately named individual but that must be due to cultural differences. Great anagram!
I agree our central planners are going in exactly this direction: limited choice to guarantee demand for the products they want to push. It's totalitarianism 2.0, which is a worse version of 1.0 because, I will never tire of pointing it out, totalitarians 1.0 knew how important cheap energy and food are and they made sure to keep them cheap.
Trump has figured out that coal must be part of the energy mix, especially because of the voters in coal producing states. He has come out in support of “clean coal”. Since coal is about 50% dirt, clean coal must be made by processing the dirty coal that comes out of the ground. So clean coal is not cheap coal. Exporting coal to India, China and other countries that are “developing” sidesteps all the promises made to “clean” it. The slogan of Trump cadre Steve Bannon is Action, Action,Action.
We could set all the Climatistas and Net Zeroids to work cleaning the coal. It used to be a punishment in the British Army, and after it had been thoroughly cleaned, it had to be white-washed.
Some critics of Trump would say he was dense. I always thought they were talking about his fuel preferences.
Great review. As a historian I can assure you that at SOME point historians will look back and see this as spectacularly stupid along the lines of the Romans just inviting in the barbarian hordes or Hitler invading Russia.
This gives me joy, I admit. And I expect it would be for the same reasons, although I guess the Romans may be excused. But Hitler could've looked at history and thought twice about what he wanted to do. I myself am not that well read in history but I did study some once upon a time, which is when I learned that pretty much everything has indeed already happened before and there are lessons to be learned from that. I guess our leaders, however, are too busy to consult a historian.
Only objection is that the loan program office is explicitly supposed to loan to projects that cannot find full commercial funding. So shock horror breaking news from the Trump appointed IG that... That is exactly what LPO is doing.
I'm not defending any specific loan, or the overall strategy such as it is. But dinging LPO for doing what it's supposed to do is ridiculous.
Not quite. The claim is that the conflicts of interest within the department yield loans that are not fiscally sound. She is saying that these debts are Solar City all over again and she is of course correct. The roll of the DoE isn't to allow government debt $ to just be handed to a company regardless of it's balance sheet and that will burn through the cash. It's fiscally absurd.
This is interesting -- what is the justification for this approach? They want to support projects that may be extra high-risk but are deemed worthy of the support on some other grounds?
Non-commercial funding means government subsidies, which results in a government cookie jar. When one of these jars is created the taxpayers money is given away with little thought to the potential success of the projects that are funded. Success after all isn't the point, emptying the jar is the goal. After a time, people forget about the cookie jars. Here's to Trump & the next congress breaking jars, not creating them.
Could you elaborate on oil companies subsidy requests? What "technologies" are they asking for help with? Euro oil hasn't swallowed Kool Aid on clean fuels and other absurdities has it?
I expect they need help making their decarbonisation efforts make sense. I also suspect the problem is more acute for the heavy industry, which needs a lot of energy and making this energy "low-carbon" is indeed pricing them out of the market, which is why they had the EC adopt the CBAM or cross-border adjustment mechanism, popularly known as carbon tax. As for Big Oil, those emission reductions must cost a pretty penny. While I couldn't find the letter itself because the EC's website is a hellscape, I'm pretty sure they did not go into any specific details. They generally don't in these please for help.
Just to be clear the Canadian government was on meltdown for at least a year. When the government changes after the election in November, all the stupidity will be gone. We are going to have a Renaissance in natural resources.
Irina it is such a pleasure to read your thoughts so well expressed and even at times witty. Responsible cogent journalism has been going extinct around the world for some time. I am old enough to remember when members of the press were called the Fourth Estate. They were put on earth to tell us when the emperor had no clothes but alas their voices have developed a case of "the dwindles." Thank god the internet came along permitting that kind of journalism to find a new home coming from what might have been an unlikely location in years past: Bulgaria. If Bulgaria has people and women like you, it may be time to think about a visit to Sofia!
Thank you, Hugh! I also used to admire journalists when I was young and wanted to become one because it sounded so cool. Well, yes, it is cool, if not exactly easy and it is really frustrating to see the profession lose credibility so fast through so many faults of its own.
In Bulgaria, as elsewhere, most f those who call themselves journalists are paid cheerleaders but there is a handful of real truth investigators who do a stellar job of exposing the emperor's naked bottom. Do drop by, I'll show you around. :)
If I may: Work, work, work, force, force, force, fight, fight, fight, farce, farce, farce.
Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.
The ultimate irony of all the insane green mandates is that they actually INCREASE CO2 emissions. There is no escape from the laws of physics, or the reality of Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROI). This is especially true of offshore wind power, with the shallow, sheltered waters of Denmark being a bit of an exception. The UK and Germany are destroying themselves, and it will result in zero benefit to anybody but China. "Stupid is as stupid does". Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Several (oldish) references on this topic:
"CO2 Emissions Variations in CCGTs Used to Balance Wind in Ireland"
http://euanmearns.com/co2-emissions-variations-in-ccgts-used-to-balance-wind-in-ireland/
"Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Avoided by Wind Generation" By Peter Lang
https://bravenewclimate.com/files/2009/08/peter-lang-wind-power.pdf
"Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?" by Barry Brook, references Lang above.
https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/08/does-wind-power-reduce-carbon-emissions/
"Why solar and wind won’t make much difference to carbon dioxide emissions"
https://blog.oup.com/2017/10/solar-wind-energy-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
"Wind Integration: Incremental Emissions from Back-Up Generation Cycling (Part V: Calculator Update)" By Kent Hawkins
https://www.masterresource.org/wind-power/wind-integration-incremental-emissions-from-back-up-generation-cycling-part-v-calculator-update/#more-7271
"HOW LESS BECAME MORE… Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences
in the Colorado Energy Market"
https://docs.wind-watch.org/BENTEK-How-Less-Became-More.pdf
Another Pearl Ms. Slav!
Instead of the 18th century faux pas,
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", the 21st century’s trigger may be “make them buy very expensive electrons.”
Grand job - thank you Irina. My miniscule contribution is the phrase "brute force and ignorance", which I feel is more accurate than force alone, even in triplicate. I am sure the UK economy will collapse before the electricity grid becomes carbon-neutral, and Rachel from Accounts (Reeves) will be gone, so nothing much to worry about there.
I understand you're frustrated as you would prefer to write fiction. Is that because the reality you report sets such a high bar for fiction, or at least implausibility?
Write, write, write.
It is the implausibility that gets me the most but perhaps not the way you expect. Here I am, doing my darnedest to make my story plausible if fantastical, failing and trying again until I make it decent, and there are all those people who don't give a toss about not only plausibility but the very laws of nature. I'm getting back at them by writing them into my stories.
It really has become a sort of ...madness. A mania. Politicians making announcements and proclamations that will never, ever happen.
Every time I see these pronouncements; I ask the basic question - how many nuclear power plants are you breaking ground on then? How much carbons sequestration projects? How many geothermal projects? How many new hydroelectric dams? What's that? Zero?
Carry one then.
I mean, seriously. It's like grandly pronouncing you'll for sure win the Kentucky derby, and all you need is a horse. Then pissing your pants and falling over into a flower bed.
Crazy thought, start construction of the nuclear power plant, then announce the carbon reductions you'll achieve.
The Kentucky derby/pissed pants analogy is going into my quote list and I will use it in a future post. Thank you for enriching my material.
What you're proposing is not going to happen, not with the current crop of political leaders. It's not spectacular enough compared to megalomaniacal declarations.
Kudos for working in a Douglas Adams reference. He left us way too soon.
As you point out, many folks, including yourself have been pointing this out for years (decades?) yet the media never, ever reports this point of view or examines the basis behind such analyses.
The media's failure to do its [insert expletive] job on this topic has been criminal and led to the squandering of trillions of dollars of human potential.
Yes, people like David have been doing it for decades, unheard. The media did not really fail to do its job. The media was only too happy to turn its collective back on its job and dig into the massive source of daily clickbait that is the transition narrative. I know there's money involved but I maintain that a lot of the motivation also has to do with simply having something to write about. This is a fundamental consideration for media outlets. If there's no news to report, you might have to make up some. The climate narrative comes in handy. And so transition activists became "researchers".
Adams did leave us too soon. I could've definitely done with a few more Dirk Gently stories.
Interesting hypothesis on media's motivations. Definitely food for thought.
I work in media. It's a "lived experience" you could say.
Aww…life the universe and everything! I sure wish Douglas was still with us. He’d have plenty to say about the world as we know it.
Every time I hear some cluster of morons say we are going to spend billions on the grid in 5 years I laugh until my eyes water. Every wind or solar plant needs multiple transformers and circuit breakers to connect to the grid. If you call Siemens today and order a 230KV circuit breaker they’ll tell you to expect delivery in 61 months. That’s 2030. Hard as they might try they can’t build the grid fast enough. They can spent the money like we spent $7billion on 7 car chargers,
Wow, talk about a shortage. It must be really annoying to keep running into such realities as supply constraints that no amount of money can do anything about because it takes time to manufacture.
"Yet here is my concern: with every other form of plant life susceptible to the devastatingly catastrophic effects of climate change, who is to guarantee that the money trees will be spared the devastating catastrophe? " So brilliantly stated.
Given the European view on climate policies, perhaps it is easier to understand the rush to assisted suicide in nations. after all, if it is happening on a national basis, then it should be fine on an individual basis, right?
That's a very good point, Andy. Terrifying but good.
Funny coincidence or consipracy?
You be the judge... when you read the following mind-blower:
If you change the first letters of the "EU's Climate Commissioner" Wopke Hoekstra's names... you get "Hopke Woekstra". And isn't Hope basically the only thing next to considering yourself "Woke" keeping the whole green energy transition afloat?
And if you can't really launch an in-demand product that people want to buy, the next best thing obviously would be to mandate buying - but only if you have the option to do so, say in a socialistic-nightmarish kind of economy. Or if you already destroyed the real economy already and there's really nothing else to buy... I mean: they're on their way to do that judging by developments!
Since I know you like Pratchett as much as the next man - meaning the term in the generic masculinic sense of the language, aka the latter part of hu...man:
If you don't know how a demand economy works and insist on making people buy products they don't want, they don't need or that don't even work you might have been missing a few intake of your frog pills, I figure.
I always thought he was one very unfortunately named individual but that must be due to cultural differences. Great anagram!
I agree our central planners are going in exactly this direction: limited choice to guarantee demand for the products they want to push. It's totalitarianism 2.0, which is a worse version of 1.0 because, I will never tire of pointing it out, totalitarians 1.0 knew how important cheap energy and food are and they made sure to keep them cheap.