Required Reading: NIPCC 2019 Summary on Fossil Fuels

Science Matters

Those who seek the truth about global warming/climate change should welcome this latest publication from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Excerpts from the Coauthors’ introduction in italics with my bolds. H/T Lubos Motl

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels assesses the costs and benefits of the use of fossil fuels (principally coal, oil, and natural gas) by reviewing scientific and economic literature on organic chemistry, climate science, public health, economic history, human security, and theoretical studies based on integrated assessment models (IAMs). It is the fifth volume in the Climate Change Reconsidered series and, like the preceding volumes, it focuses on research overlooked or ignored by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

NIPCC was created by Dr. S. Fred Singer in 2003 to provide an independent peer review of the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unlike the…

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Fracking Update: Texas Leads US in Pure Energy, Pure Water

Science Matters

John Tintera writes at Texas Alliance of Energy Producers Congress, Look at Texas for the Facts on Fracking.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

On Thursday, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources will hold a hearing to investigate whether oil and gas drilling causes water pollution. It’s a very important topic. If drilling pollutes our drinking water, new restrictions would obviously be needed to safeguard public health.

Fortunately, every available piece of scientific evidence shows that drilling — particularly the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — is safe. As a geologist who has spent decades regulating the energy industry, I’ve seen firsthand the extensive precautions companies take to avoid any accidents and protect our water sources. Current safety regulations are already working. There’s no need to impede energy production by binding companies with additional red tape from the federal government.

Just look at…

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Australian Daily Electrical Power Generation Data – Friday 17th May 2019

PA Pundits International

By Anton Lang ~

This Post details the daily power consumption data for the AEMO coverage area in Australia. For the background information, refer to the Introductory Post at this link.

Each image is shown here at a smaller size to fit on the page alongside the data for that day. If you click on each image, it will open on a new page and at a larger size so you can better see the detail.

Note also the scale change for all of the images, and that even though they look similar in size of generation, that scale (the total power shown on the left hand vertical axis) has been changed to show the graph at a larger size to better fit the image for that graph.

Friday 17th May 2019

Total Power Generation All Sources

Here, the total power generation from every power plant source is the…

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The West vs. Africa: Energy Hypocrisy as Seen from Kenya

Science Matters

Suleiman Shahbal writes in Kenya at Standard Media Global warming: Why the West preaches water yet drinks wine.. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A few months ago I was with a group of Kenyan politicians in Abu Dhabi. Hosting us for a cup of coffee was my good friend Abdalla Nassir. Abdalla is a serial entrepreneur who owns 94 businesses, including the coffee shop. His 95th business is a steel mill that he was going to open in Djibouti, targeting the Ethiopian market of 80 million people.

I asked him why not in Kenya; the gateway to the Comesa market of 150 million people, to which he replied that the cost of power in Kenya is more than twice that of Djibouti and Ethiopia. One week later, I read that a glass company in Mtwapa had just closed down, with the loss of over 400 jobs…

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U.S. energy use rises to highest level ever

Tallbloke's Talkshop

In terms of original power sources (i.e. not electricity), the runaway leaders were petroleum and natural gas which between them took over two-thirds of the total share. Coal and nuclear were a distant third and fourth. Best of the rest was biomass at just over 5% of the total, easily more than wind and solar combined.

Americans used more energy in 2018 than in any other year, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Overall total energy consumption rose to 101.2 quadrillion BTU (or “quads”), reports TechXplore. The prior record, set in 2007, was 101.0 quads.

Energy use went up by 3.6 percent from 2017, which also is the largest annual increase since 2010.

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New York Times Pushes Nuclear Power as the Solution to Climate Change

Reblogged from Watts Up With That:

Eric Worrall / April 7, 2019

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

In the face of the utter failure of large investments in renewables to deliver CO2 reductions, greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change.

Nuclear Power Can Save the World

Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy.

By Joshua S. Goldstein, Staffan A. Qvist and Steven Pinker
Drs. Goldstein and Qvist are the authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.” Dr. Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard.

April 6, 2019

…

Where will this gargantuan amount of carbon-free energy come from? The popular answer is renewables alone, but this is a fantasy. Wind and solar power are becoming cheaper, but they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon. Today, renewables work only with fossil-fuel backup.

Germany, which went all-in for renewables, has seen little reduction in carbon emissions, and, according to our calculations, at Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.

…

But we actually have proven models for rapid decarbonization with economic and energy growth: France and Sweden. They decarbonized their grids decades ago and now emit less than a tenth of the world average of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. They remain among the world’s most pleasant places to live and enjoy much cheaper electricity than Germany to boot.

…

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-nuclear-power.html

The rise of mainstream green advocacy for nuclear power is long overdue.

I have never understood how anyone who thinks CO2 is a looming threat can argue in good faith against the evidence of two countries which have affordably reduced their CO2 emissions to a tenth of what everyone else emits, by embracing nuclear power.

Do You Really Understand How Shale Gas Companies Drill Horizontally?

PA Pundits International

By Dr. Jay Lehr ~

Admit it, you have no clue. Of course we have all seen the diagrams of Shale Gas Wells with the pipe going vertically down into the ground and then turning a right angle to proceed horizontally where the well will be hydraulically fractured (not Fracked). How is that possible? Can you think of any mechanism underground where pipe could turn ninety degrees and keep the end of the pipe, where the drill bit is spinning 360 degrees, to continue penetrating the rock encountered? Of course you can’t, because it cannot be done. Yet amazingly, surely 90 percent of all folks even remotely interested in the topic of shale gas development do not question the possibility of this impossibility. So read on, this well kept secret will be unveiled.

Hydraulic fracturing flat schematic vector illustration. Fracking process with machinery equipment, drilling rig and gas rich ground…

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Going Dutch: How Not to Cut Emissions

Science Matters

Everyone knows the Dutch are serious and determined people.  Their saying: “God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.”  A relative of mine had some run-ins with Dutch neighbors, and his saying about them:  “Wooden shoes, wooden heads, wouldn’t listen.”  Well, now the Dutch have another saying:  “Whatever you do, don’t try to cut carbon emissions the way we did.”

You see, being Dutch they took on the challenge of “fighting climate change,” and are now living to regret their actions.  Karel Beckman writes in Natural Gas World  The Flaws in Dutch Climate Policy Mar 20, 2019.  H/T GWPF  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Why should the wisdom of Dutch climate policy be of concern to anyone besides Dutch taxpayers? At this moment all developed countries are entering a new phase in their climate policies. They are moving beyond broad reduction targets and temperature goals to the…

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Air Got Cleaner – More Sunshine Hit The Ground

sunshine hours

Less sulphates, cleaner air , more sunshine hitting the ground.

An observed decline of surface shortwave radiation (SSR) in Europe discovered from about 1950s until about the 1980s and many parts of the world is attributed to increasing emissions of anthropogenic aerosols (dimming phase). The followed increase of SSR in some regions (brightening phase) is a consequence of the clean air business in Europe.

The simulations with detailed treatment of aerosols and their interaction with clouds are needed for understanding the regional SSR trends. The NASA GISS ModelE2 is used in this study. It is based on transient simulations with natural and anthropogenic forcings.

We compare two simulations with transient aerosol emissions with the focus on aerosol effects on clouds. For the annual mean SSR, the dimming trends range between -4.4 W/m² over the Mediterranean region and -1.7 W/m² over the middle Europe. Brightening trends range from…

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Megawatts And MegaWattHours

PA Pundits International

By Anton Lang ~

These two similar sounding terms are perhaps the most misunderstood things in the whole electrical power generation debate, and while there are some important things in this debate, these two terms are in that small group of the most important of them all.

Firstly, the simple explanation for both terms.

Megawatts means the design specification maximum power that the generator can actually deliver. This is what I refer to as the Nameplate for the generator. The acronym for Megawatts is MW.

MegaWattHours is what that generator, while it is actually working, delivers in power to the grid over a period of time, here hours, and that period of time can be an hour, a day, or a year. The acronym for MegaWattHours is MWH.

I will explain it in a little more depth below, and show you, with the use of some graphs what the difference…

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