The human eye has evolved (or been designed - take your pick) with more green receptors than any other colour for a reason - the planet's already green!
Exactly. We need to expect less from life and be happy with what )increasingly little) we have. Great "conspiracy theory", making an important point at a time when CO2 is being called a pollutant.
Have you seen an article yet about how pets are destroying the planet! I mean, they eat meat and they emit carbon dioxide, and it is very unpleasant to be near them when they emit methane!
I’m sure we could reach our net zero goals much more quickly if we had zero carbon pets - I remember the 1970s and the pet rock fad.
Pet rocks would be the solution for pet emissions!
Pet Rock is a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl. They were rocks packaged in custom cardboard boxes complete with ventilation holes and straw bedding imitating a pet carrier. The fad lasted about six months, ending after a short increase in sales during the Christmas season of December 1975. Although by February 1976 they were discounted due to lower sales, Dahl sold over 1 million Pet Rocks for $4 each, and became a millionaire.
I used to think that most of California would disappear when the San Andres fault let her rip. I have changed my mind. I now think that all of California will disappear if the bobbleheads in Sacramento are allowed to continue to govern, with no critical thinking skills & absolutely no adult supervision. Irina, with every post you create my new favorite Irina saying. You really did it this time. "I excel at holding a grudge." Keep 'em coming! 🤘😎🤘
I think I understand the California PUC now. You pay a dollar today for electricity but tomorrow you will pay .75 and .25. Your electricity is magically cheaper. I would have thought the lack of mathematical skill engendered by our so called education system would have taken longer to work it's way through to the political class. Apparently not. A=B+C is apparently beyond their intellectual capacity.
Perhaps we're underestimating them, though. Today, you can pay $1 one day and just $0.75 another if you use less electricity but when the $0.25 becomes fixed, you pay it every single day, however much you consume. I suspect a cunning plan. Not very good at concealing it effectively, however, if a cunning plan is indeed the case.
“…. Emissions are going down.” Just as they are going up in China. I wonder if that is because much of what was manufactured in Europe is now manufactured in China?
Meanwhile, the British jealous it might lose leading position in the Net Zero idiot parade: “Oil and gas rigs in United Kingdom waters of the North Sea could be forced to convert over to green energy or low-carbon fuels, or either face closure or getting banned from opening new platforms, in an effort to reduce emissions, according to reports.
The Telegraph reported there are currently over 280 oil and gas platforms in UK waters, which produce about 3% of the total CO2 emitted by the country per year.
The same rigs, though, produce nearly half of the UK’s energy.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has regulatory authority over the waters off the UK, and reportedly gave oil producers an ultimatum to either convert platforms to operate on low-carbon fuels or green electricity, or face closure.”
That’s 3% from oil platforms of Britain’s less than 2% annual emissions - sure to stop global warming. China meanwhile which emits 28% of global emissions has increased its emissions by 5.7%.
The UK is bonkers. There was a report this week that oil and gas production is at an all-time low or thereabouts. And that 3% you mention -- this is insanely low and yet they're squeezing them again. Painful to witness.
Irina - that’s an understatement. The UK Govt treats oil & gas like a piggy-bank to raid with periodic ‘windfall’ taxes.
Incentives matter. You can see how this ‘encourages’ further investment and increased output.
And since all minerals under the UK - land & sea - are property of the Crown, it provides oil & gas provides significant revenues - windfall taxes aside - for the Treasury, shutting it down would be madness… but when the criminally insane are in charge, madness is the norm.
The current Govt has issued some new licences, but the Opposition Labour Party (which will most likely win next election) says it will cancel licences. It rather does make planning a business on a 20 year investment cycle, difficulty. But… see last paragraph.
I would be curious to know how much methane emission potential that hydropower actually has. Somehow I think it it trivial in comparison to already existing natural methane seeps in the ocean.
A recently published paper in "Marine and Petroleum Geology" by Boles, et.al., discusses the effectiveness of methane seep tents set in the sea floor in 1982 over seeps in the Pacific Ocean offshore California. The seeps are believed to be emitting 43,650 metric tons of methane per year. Until recently, when the zealots of California's regulatory apparatnik shut down the production, a significant amount of the seepage was captured and put into commercial natural gas systems for sale. Now, because the operator has been driven into bankruptcy by not being allowed to produce oil and gas (a long story) those seeps have returned to their natural rate before any remediation was applied. To give you a comparison, I looked up the EPA emissions calculator, and found that this amount of methane, from a purely natural source, is equivalent to 137,526,724 gallons of gasoline burned, or 6,722 railcars full of coal burned, or 0.314 coal-fired power plants in one year, or the carbon sequestered in 1,426,954 acres of US forest land in one year. Nothing to sneeze at, but we seem to prefer emitting this methane to producing it and using it. Put another way, this amount of natural methane seepage from just one small area equals 1,222,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
So we have 1.2 million tons/yr of CO2 that we could have remediated and captured, but we are unwilling to let oil and gas production do that for us because we have this irrational fear of "fossil fuels." Instead we get to breath it and wonder why we have increased rates of smog when we have so many shiny new electric vehicles. Meanwhile we are obsessing over dissolved methane from rivers and lakes.
I believe this adds proof to the hypothesis that the transition is not really about emissions but about killing the oil and gas industry and replacing it with others.
How is methane dissolved in reservoirs and then released when the water goes through a turbine different from methane dissolved in a natural lake and then released when the water goes through some rapids or over a waterfall?
Exactly. I mean I guess the large lakes would create an anerobic place for digestion of legacy plant life, but the biodecomposition would happen anyway. Even if it were aerobic it would be releasing CO2, which of course is what methane turns into in the atmosphere after 15 or so years.
When it comes to climate science, there’s a thin veneer of actual knowledge spread over a very deep layer of “ignorance” (which I mean in the honest sense of “unknown”, not in the pejorative sense of “stupidity”).
Put another way, climate is a complex system, and we have very limited observations and even less true understanding. Any models we’ve developed are incomplete and haven’t been tested over any significant time period. You cannot really understand complex systems even at the best of times. You sort of have to muddle through. Rather than admit that everything is a “best guess”, however, the climate scientists are absolutely convinced of their “rightness”, and they silence dissent. We’ve seen this before, during Covid.
I think you misunderstood my reference to what is stupid. At root this is just another “we must destroy anything we have built that is not wind and solar” argument from the greens. “I CANT BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE WATERSKIING THERE!- IT MUST BE DESTROYED” is basically the depth of their argument.
As for climate, sure we know some stuff, but there is more we don’t know, and some humility and curiosity are desperately needed by the science believer crowd.
Ah Irina, I marvel that you have the capacity to read about sooooo many insane actions. Don't you get tired after a while just trying to read them all?
But also, it seems to me that Europe will clearly see its emissions decline as the continent continues to deindustrialize. so, no industrial activity means no emissions. Hooray! everybody is happy, right? Except maybe for all those people who lost their livelihoods.
I also find that I see the climate hysterics more as lemmings heading over the cliff, rather than approaching a wall, but either way, the ending will be abrupt
I think what the CPUC is trying to say is - “We screwed up and made the rooftop solar subsidies so high that it is putting the poor people into energy poverty. We need to fix that without pissing off the rich people who get the solar subsidies”. Hmmm…a problem we need to solve without losing our phony jobs.
I know! Let’s make EVERYBODY (even the rooftop solar rich people) pay a fixed charge and make the fixed charge smaller for the poor people so they won’t have to subsidize the rich people quite so much. Oh, and don’t tell the rich people, they are stupid and will never figure it out.
And don't tell the poor people they will actually be paying more for electricity from now on because part of their bill won't be tied to how much they use. Geniuses, come to think of it.
My head was hurting reading the BBC story. So, is the water in the reservoir coming from rainwater? If so, then the rain is washing methane from the atmosphere. Or is the water coming from underground streams - bringing trapped methane to the surface? If the former, we need more reservoirs, but with no way for the water to escape so it becomes a methane sink. In which case we need to build more dams.
By the way, I thought we were tearing down dams to save the salmon!
No, it is from decaying plant and organic matter at depth underwater, where there is limited oxygen (anaerobic digestion). Of course, this is just the start of a peat bog, which occur naturally all over the world.
The funny thing is, if they used this old plant matter to generate biofuels to burn instead it would be heralded as “saving the planet.”
Doesn't all water in dams come from rain and rivers/underground streams? I am ignorant in the area, I admit but since dams are usually built on rivers I assumed that's the case every time.
As a citizen of the Southern Section of the Socialist State of Taxifornia it never ceases to amaze me how our Emperor Pretty Boy Gavin and his woke friends make laws to suck more money out of us mear mortals. My guess is this will continue to drive more and more of us to the likes of Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, Texas and other more attractive states.
I am honestly amazed there are still people living in California, besides the rich ones who don't have to worry about bills. I mean, I am strongly attached to my land but if living here becomes financially unbearable I'll move.
Unfortunately, when they come to Texas, they immediately start voting for the types of people who implement the types of policies that are destroying California. They are a plague.
"...given the conversations we are having ..." well yes, that's the point really isn't it - talk is cheap, but 'free' alternative energy isn't!
How many words have been generated on this topic over the last four decades? How many feet can Al Gore fit in his mouth?
The geologists explained it decades ago - the sun heats the planet, the seas (2/3 of its surface) evaporate to form clouds, the cloud cover reflects incoming solar radiation and moderates the temperature.
It's a WELL-DESIGNED, SELF-REGULATING FEEDBACK SYSTEM. The only reason to tinker with it is to line the pockets of unscrupulous politicians and grifters.
And the lining is being enabled by thousands of true believers, including in political circles, who don't care about facts and are utterly terrified of being exposed as being wrong.
I must say I appreciate your views. It doesn't take a genius to figure all this out - sitting down with a calculator or excel spreadsheet and you can approximate the answer in little or no time.
1) The solution to carbon dioxide emissions has to count on largely (at least 80%) on dispatchable energy sources. This is an inalterable fact.
2) Energy storage is not going to work - the volume of energy to store, and the storage losses, are way too high. Besides which, you are fighting against the fundamental laws of the universe, wherein energy doesn't want to be stored.
3) Hence, we need clean dispatchable sources that can be built in reasonable time frames at reasonable cost. We are left with nuclear, geothermal, or hydrocarbons with carbon capture. Geothermal might supply 10% with a concerted push. Say 20% wind+ solar+ storage. 10% hydro. That leaves 60 % that has to be either nuclear or hydrocarbons with carbon capture.
Okay, which one do you want to use? You really have just two choices - pick one and get a move on.
The human eye has evolved (or been designed - take your pick) with more green receptors than any other colour for a reason - the planet's already green!
Exactly. We need to expect less from life and be happy with what )increasingly little) we have. Great "conspiracy theory", making an important point at a time when CO2 is being called a pollutant.
Have you seen an article yet about how pets are destroying the planet! I mean, they eat meat and they emit carbon dioxide, and it is very unpleasant to be near them when they emit methane!
I’m sure we could reach our net zero goals much more quickly if we had zero carbon pets - I remember the 1970s and the pet rock fad.
Pet rocks would be the solution for pet emissions!
Pet Rock is a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl. They were rocks packaged in custom cardboard boxes complete with ventilation holes and straw bedding imitating a pet carrier. The fad lasted about six months, ending after a short increase in sales during the Christmas season of December 1975. Although by February 1976 they were discounted due to lower sales, Dahl sold over 1 million Pet Rocks for $4 each, and became a millionaire.
-Wikipedia
I have seen the idea floated that they are bad for the climate, yes. Children, too.
I used to think that most of California would disappear when the San Andres fault let her rip. I have changed my mind. I now think that all of California will disappear if the bobbleheads in Sacramento are allowed to continue to govern, with no critical thinking skills & absolutely no adult supervision. Irina, with every post you create my new favorite Irina saying. You really did it this time. "I excel at holding a grudge." Keep 'em coming! 🤘😎🤘
Ha! I was going to borrow that saying, too! This article achieved new heights in snarcism. A totally informative, humorous and enjoyable read.
Very happy to hear it!
It's only the truth, I am good at holding grudges no matter how hard I try to rise above them. :D Thank you!
Thank you for the good survey of the latest "self-kneecapping" activities. Stranger than fiction, truly.
Yes, life beating art at its own game.
I think I understand the California PUC now. You pay a dollar today for electricity but tomorrow you will pay .75 and .25. Your electricity is magically cheaper. I would have thought the lack of mathematical skill engendered by our so called education system would have taken longer to work it's way through to the political class. Apparently not. A=B+C is apparently beyond their intellectual capacity.
The political class believes there are only 3 types of people: those who understand mathematics, and those who don't.
Perhaps we're underestimating them, though. Today, you can pay $1 one day and just $0.75 another if you use less electricity but when the $0.25 becomes fixed, you pay it every single day, however much you consume. I suspect a cunning plan. Not very good at concealing it effectively, however, if a cunning plan is indeed the case.
“…. Emissions are going down.” Just as they are going up in China. I wonder if that is because much of what was manufactured in Europe is now manufactured in China?
Meanwhile, the British jealous it might lose leading position in the Net Zero idiot parade: “Oil and gas rigs in United Kingdom waters of the North Sea could be forced to convert over to green energy or low-carbon fuels, or either face closure or getting banned from opening new platforms, in an effort to reduce emissions, according to reports.
The Telegraph reported there are currently over 280 oil and gas platforms in UK waters, which produce about 3% of the total CO2 emitted by the country per year.
The same rigs, though, produce nearly half of the UK’s energy.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has regulatory authority over the waters off the UK, and reportedly gave oil producers an ultimatum to either convert platforms to operate on low-carbon fuels or green electricity, or face closure.”
That’s 3% from oil platforms of Britain’s less than 2% annual emissions - sure to stop global warming. China meanwhile which emits 28% of global emissions has increased its emissions by 5.7%.
The UK is bonkers. There was a report this week that oil and gas production is at an all-time low or thereabouts. And that 3% you mention -- this is insanely low and yet they're squeezing them again. Painful to witness.
Irina - that’s an understatement. The UK Govt treats oil & gas like a piggy-bank to raid with periodic ‘windfall’ taxes.
Incentives matter. You can see how this ‘encourages’ further investment and increased output.
And since all minerals under the UK - land & sea - are property of the Crown, it provides oil & gas provides significant revenues - windfall taxes aside - for the Treasury, shutting it down would be madness… but when the criminally insane are in charge, madness is the norm.
The current Govt has issued some new licences, but the Opposition Labour Party (which will most likely win next election) says it will cancel licences. It rather does make planning a business on a 20 year investment cycle, difficulty. But… see last paragraph.
I would be curious to know how much methane emission potential that hydropower actually has. Somehow I think it it trivial in comparison to already existing natural methane seeps in the ocean.
A recently published paper in "Marine and Petroleum Geology" by Boles, et.al., discusses the effectiveness of methane seep tents set in the sea floor in 1982 over seeps in the Pacific Ocean offshore California. The seeps are believed to be emitting 43,650 metric tons of methane per year. Until recently, when the zealots of California's regulatory apparatnik shut down the production, a significant amount of the seepage was captured and put into commercial natural gas systems for sale. Now, because the operator has been driven into bankruptcy by not being allowed to produce oil and gas (a long story) those seeps have returned to their natural rate before any remediation was applied. To give you a comparison, I looked up the EPA emissions calculator, and found that this amount of methane, from a purely natural source, is equivalent to 137,526,724 gallons of gasoline burned, or 6,722 railcars full of coal burned, or 0.314 coal-fired power plants in one year, or the carbon sequestered in 1,426,954 acres of US forest land in one year. Nothing to sneeze at, but we seem to prefer emitting this methane to producing it and using it. Put another way, this amount of natural methane seepage from just one small area equals 1,222,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
So we have 1.2 million tons/yr of CO2 that we could have remediated and captured, but we are unwilling to let oil and gas production do that for us because we have this irrational fear of "fossil fuels." Instead we get to breath it and wonder why we have increased rates of smog when we have so many shiny new electric vehicles. Meanwhile we are obsessing over dissolved methane from rivers and lakes.
I believe this adds proof to the hypothesis that the transition is not really about emissions but about killing the oil and gas industry and replacing it with others.
How is methane dissolved in reservoirs and then released when the water goes through a turbine different from methane dissolved in a natural lake and then released when the water goes through some rapids or over a waterfall?
Exactly. I mean I guess the large lakes would create an anerobic place for digestion of legacy plant life, but the biodecomposition would happen anyway. Even if it were aerobic it would be releasing CO2, which of course is what methane turns into in the atmosphere after 15 or so years.
This is all very very stupid.
When it comes to climate science, there’s a thin veneer of actual knowledge spread over a very deep layer of “ignorance” (which I mean in the honest sense of “unknown”, not in the pejorative sense of “stupidity”).
Put another way, climate is a complex system, and we have very limited observations and even less true understanding. Any models we’ve developed are incomplete and haven’t been tested over any significant time period. You cannot really understand complex systems even at the best of times. You sort of have to muddle through. Rather than admit that everything is a “best guess”, however, the climate scientists are absolutely convinced of their “rightness”, and they silence dissent. We’ve seen this before, during Covid.
I think you misunderstood my reference to what is stupid. At root this is just another “we must destroy anything we have built that is not wind and solar” argument from the greens. “I CANT BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE WATERSKIING THERE!- IT MUST BE DESTROYED” is basically the depth of their argument.
As for climate, sure we know some stuff, but there is more we don’t know, and some humility and curiosity are desperately needed by the science believer crowd.
Sorry, I realized after I posted that comment that you might think I was critiquing your use of the word "stupid". I agree with you.
Ah Irina, I marvel that you have the capacity to read about sooooo many insane actions. Don't you get tired after a while just trying to read them all?
But also, it seems to me that Europe will clearly see its emissions decline as the continent continues to deindustrialize. so, no industrial activity means no emissions. Hooray! everybody is happy, right? Except maybe for all those people who lost their livelihoods.
I also find that I see the climate hysterics more as lemmings heading over the cliff, rather than approaching a wall, but either way, the ending will be abrupt
I do get tired, Andy, mostly of facepalming but there's some sad laughter, too. :D
We're definitely doing deindustrialisation but we're calling it degrowth, which is a cool thing and will make everyone happier, you know.
Lemmings are a great analogy, yes, only these lemmings are dragging all the rest of us with them.
Lemmings with bulldozer blades mounted...
they are certainly trying
I think what the CPUC is trying to say is - “We screwed up and made the rooftop solar subsidies so high that it is putting the poor people into energy poverty. We need to fix that without pissing off the rich people who get the solar subsidies”. Hmmm…a problem we need to solve without losing our phony jobs.
I know! Let’s make EVERYBODY (even the rooftop solar rich people) pay a fixed charge and make the fixed charge smaller for the poor people so they won’t have to subsidize the rich people quite so much. Oh, and don’t tell the rich people, they are stupid and will never figure it out.
And don't tell the poor people they will actually be paying more for electricity from now on because part of their bill won't be tied to how much they use. Geniuses, come to think of it.
https://www.solar.com/learn/nem-3-0-proposal-and-impacts-for-california-homeowners/
My head was hurting reading the BBC story. So, is the water in the reservoir coming from rainwater? If so, then the rain is washing methane from the atmosphere. Or is the water coming from underground streams - bringing trapped methane to the surface? If the former, we need more reservoirs, but with no way for the water to escape so it becomes a methane sink. In which case we need to build more dams.
By the way, I thought we were tearing down dams to save the salmon!
No, it is from decaying plant and organic matter at depth underwater, where there is limited oxygen (anaerobic digestion). Of course, this is just the start of a peat bog, which occur naturally all over the world.
The funny thing is, if they used this old plant matter to generate biofuels to burn instead it would be heralded as “saving the planet.”
No, that was the European eel. :D
Doesn't all water in dams come from rain and rivers/underground streams? I am ignorant in the area, I admit but since dams are usually built on rivers I assumed that's the case every time.
As a citizen of the Southern Section of the Socialist State of Taxifornia it never ceases to amaze me how our Emperor Pretty Boy Gavin and his woke friends make laws to suck more money out of us mear mortals. My guess is this will continue to drive more and more of us to the likes of Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, Texas and other more attractive states.
I am honestly amazed there are still people living in California, besides the rich ones who don't have to worry about bills. I mean, I am strongly attached to my land but if living here becomes financially unbearable I'll move.
Unfortunately, when they come to Texas, they immediately start voting for the types of people who implement the types of policies that are destroying California. They are a plague.
"...given the conversations we are having ..." well yes, that's the point really isn't it - talk is cheap, but 'free' alternative energy isn't!
How many words have been generated on this topic over the last four decades? How many feet can Al Gore fit in his mouth?
The geologists explained it decades ago - the sun heats the planet, the seas (2/3 of its surface) evaporate to form clouds, the cloud cover reflects incoming solar radiation and moderates the temperature.
It's a WELL-DESIGNED, SELF-REGULATING FEEDBACK SYSTEM. The only reason to tinker with it is to line the pockets of unscrupulous politicians and grifters.
And the lining is being enabled by thousands of true believers, including in political circles, who don't care about facts and are utterly terrified of being exposed as being wrong.
A guy named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov once called them useful idiots. And in my estimation they would number in the millions today.
I must say I appreciate your views. It doesn't take a genius to figure all this out - sitting down with a calculator or excel spreadsheet and you can approximate the answer in little or no time.
1) The solution to carbon dioxide emissions has to count on largely (at least 80%) on dispatchable energy sources. This is an inalterable fact.
2) Energy storage is not going to work - the volume of energy to store, and the storage losses, are way too high. Besides which, you are fighting against the fundamental laws of the universe, wherein energy doesn't want to be stored.
3) Hence, we need clean dispatchable sources that can be built in reasonable time frames at reasonable cost. We are left with nuclear, geothermal, or hydrocarbons with carbon capture. Geothermal might supply 10% with a concerted push. Say 20% wind+ solar+ storage. 10% hydro. That leaves 60 % that has to be either nuclear or hydrocarbons with carbon capture.
Okay, which one do you want to use? You really have just two choices - pick one and get a move on.
Well, yeah, but being rational and realistic is not as much fun as betting on things that have proven to not work as needed.