Get Serious: More C02 Isn’t Making Earth ‘Uninhabitable’

Once again I feel I have to bring up the generally forgotten point that only a small part of the world is average in temperature -- and the tropics are ALREADY much warmer than the global average.  Yet people live in the tropics perfectly well.

I myself was born into a place -- Far North Queensland -- with an average temperature that was wildly above the global average.  100 degree F temperatures were common and  temperatures in the 90s were  experienced for at least half the year

We tended to drink a lot of beer but otherwise life went on pretty much as it did elsewhere.  And life would go on untroubled by the two degree rise that Warmists panic about

But what about the melting glaciers?  Someone will ask.  Over 90% of the glacial ice is in Antarctica and the average temperature there is many degrees below zero so very little there is going to be  melted by a puny 2 degree rise


Former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and Princeton University economist Alan Blinder recently wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal: “cumulative CO2 emissions heat up the atmosphere, causing climate changes of all sorts—most of them bad. Because this huge negative externality has been allowed to run rampant, we are gradually making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

Increasing CO2 emissions have been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans?” Really?

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show that over the last one hundred years, CO2 emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere indeed have both sharply increased.

And NASA data show that since 1920, our planet’s temperature has risen by 1.25 degrees Celsius.

But the data also show that the increase in CO2 emissions and the rising temperature have not been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

The University of Oxford’s Our World in Data has reported that since 1920, the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to over seven and half billion.

It also has reported that the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 74 percent in 1910 to less than 10 percent by 2015.

And EM-DAT (The International Disaster Database) data show that since 1920, the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined from almost 55,000 per year to less than 10,000 per year.

Sustaining a population that has grown by about six billion people, lifting most of those people out of extreme poverty, and reducing the number of natural disaster deaths by over 80 percent show that whatever impacts increasing CO2 emission and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures have, they are not making the planet “an inhospitable place for humans.”

The data instead suggest that increasing CO2 emissions and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures are making the planet more, not less, hospitable for human life.

The Heartland Institute has extensively documented “increased plant and forest growth, bigger crop yields and longer growing seasons as benefits derived from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.”

Better yet, an extensive 2015 study found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat.

Twenty-two scientists from around the world analyzed over 74 million deaths in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1985-2012.

The cold caused 7.29 percent of these deaths, while heat caused only 0.42 percent. And “moderately hot and cold temperatures” caused 88.85 percent of the temperature-related deaths, while “extreme” temperatures caused only 11.15 percent.

But what about the economic catastrophe that global warming supposedly will cause in the coming decades? If future global warming has any negative impact on the nation’s economy, it is likely to be minimal.

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimated in 2019 that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.01 degrees Celsius per year through 2100, the total U.S. GDP in 2100 will be 1.88 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be.

Yet based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a 1.4 percent annual real long-term potential labor force productivity growth rate, the nation’s per person GDP will be about 204 percent higher by 2100.

With the reduction that NBER estimates based on global warming, GDP per person would be an almost indistinguishable 200 percent higher.

NBER’s extreme case projection that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.04 degrees Celsius per year through 2100 (five times the actual rate of increase since 1880), total U.S. GDP will be 10.52 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be, similarly would leave GDP per person about 172 percent higher.

In other words, after taking account of the supposedly harmful impact of global warming, U.S. income per person in 2100 will be about triple today’s level.

Professor Blinder undoubtedly teaches his students that sound science depends on data. When it comes to the impact of increasing CO2 emissions, he needs a refresher course.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Time to ‘Sober Up’ About Green Energy’s Flaws

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.

Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

There is currently high demand for electricity across the state, as the entire West Coast has been hit by a heat wave and record-breaking temperatures.

One reason the state lacked power, officials admitted, was its over-reliance on “renewables” — i.e. wind and solar power.

There was not enough wind to keep turbines going, Newsom said, and cloud cover and nightfall restricted solar power.

“While we’ve had some peak gust winds,” he explained, “wind gust events across the state have been relatively mild.”

That was good for fighting fires, he said, but bad for the “renewable portfolio” in the state’s energy infrastructure. In addition, high demand for electricity in the evening hours, coupled with less input from solar plants, created strain.

On Friday, Newsom said, the state had fallen about 1,000 megawatts short; on Saturday, it fell 450 megawatts short. Sunday saw only “modest or minor” interruptions. But on Monday, he said, the state would be 4,400 megawatts short of “where we believe we need to be.”

“This next few days, we are anticipating being challenged,” Newsom said, as the heat wave was predicted to last through Wednesday.

“We failed to predict and plan these shortages,” Newsom admitted boldly, “and that’s simply unacceptable.” He said he took responsibility for the crisis, and for addressing it immediately, so that “we never come back into this position again.”

Newsom said the state would try to address shortfalls through conservation, and through procuring new sources of energy.

Though the state would continue its “transition” to 100% renewable energy, Newsom said, “we cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition.”

He promised “forecasting that is more sober” regarding solar energy, and a stronger focus on energy storage.

California’s shift toward “green” energy has led the way for Democrats nationwide, who hope to impose even more ambitious targets for renewable energy nationwide.

As Breitbart News noted Monday:

California has been rushing to replace fossil fuel energy sources with “renewables,” primarily wind and solar power, in pursuit of its own version of the “Green New Deal.”

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a law requiring the state to obtain 100% of its energy needs from renewables by 2045, though no one could explain how the state would do that.

In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Green New Deal, which aimed to achieve the same goal by 2030.

And in 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, adopted a version of the Green New Deal that commits the U.S. to reach 100% renewables in electricity generation by 2035.

Newsom asked the public to help manage the current crisis by conserving energy. Air conditioning, he said, should be set to 78º from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., for example, and children should be reminded to turn lights off in rooms as they left.

In 2019, Newsom canceled the state’s high-speed rail project — long seen as a key “green” project — because he said it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

SOURCE





New book brings clarity to a world without fossil fuels

Electricity from wind and solar are the rage these days, as governments around the world are advancing their energy policies believing that intermittent electricity can replace the fossil fuels industry. The purpose of the recently released book “Just GREEN Electricity – helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” is to help citizens understand a world without fossil fuels.

The book is an “aha moment” that every green advocate should experience. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900’s led us into the Industrial Revolution and victories in World Wars I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that did not exist before 1900.

Today, we have a medical industry, electronics, communications, plastics, transportation, militaries, and a space program that did not exist prior to 1900.

Possibly to the dismay of those promoting current energy policies, intermittent electricity from wind or solar cannot produce the thousands of products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that help the world economies “make products and move things” around the globe.

Many in the world believe we are facing climate change caused primarily by fossil fuels that will cause irreversible damage to the planet and humankind unless we act now and, therefore, we must curtail or quit all fossil fuel use, this book will enlighten you on understanding a world without fossil fuels.

The book reviews why China and India — two of the world’s most populous countries — are rejecting the use of intermittent electricity from wind and solar for scalable, reliable, affordable, abundant and flexible electricity from coal; and discusses the worldwide environmental degradations and humanity abuses for the materials mined for solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries.

With billions living in abject poverty in underdeveloped lands, the authors believe this book will make you look at electricity, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy in a new and fresh way while obtaining a better understanding of the lifestyle demands of societies within developed countries, and how it is different from most of the world’s population now living in developing countries.

Meanwhile, leaders around the globe are suggesting intermittent electricity from solar panels and wind turbines can save us. The reality, however, is much more complicated.

Ronald Stein and Todd Royal, two seasoned veterans of the energy industry, explore the implications of a world reliant on intermittent green electricity without fossil fuels in the book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” that will enhance your energy literacy. They are also the authors of the five-star rated “Energy Made Easy – Helping Citizens Become Energy Literate” in 2019.

Energy is multifaceted, and the just published book allows the reader to grasp enough knowledge quickly so they can participate in discussions with family, friends, co-workers, or while watching news reports. The main purpose of the both books is to help citizens become energy-literate.

It is dangerous and delusional to believe anything can be explained in sound bites, much less energy. This book will make you look at energy and ELECTRICITY in a new, fresh way, and perspective. We believe this is desperately needed with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, and global events taking place in China, Russia, Iran, Africa, India, and South America.

Energy is more than electricity. Electricity by itself cannot support the military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures. Nor can electricity alone, and especially that generated solely from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar, provide the thousands of products from petroleum that are essential to our medical industry, transportation infrastructure, our electricity generation, our cooling, heating, manufacturing, and agriculture—indeed, virtually every aspect of our daily lives and lifestyles.

Electricity needs fossil fuel derivatives for its parts to function, and in the context of Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the instability in the Middle East, and the U.S. – China trade war/tensions, are circumstances electricity faces. The book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” explains them all in a clear, concise, well-researched and documented way, while showing the deep ramifications of a world without fossil fuels, nuclear power, and the products from petroleum derivatives that support lifestyles and economies around the world.

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How Coal Can Help The Billions Without Electricity

The movie “Juice” brilliantly illustrates through a visual representation of how billions are without electricity; and without electricity and the energy from mainly fossil fuels, life returns to the Dark Ages.

Whereas liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore exposes the fallacy, human misery, and environmental degradation that occurs when towns, cities, counties, states, nations, or continents rely on renewable energy to electricity from wind turbines (enormous emitters of greenhouse gases) and solar panels, or destructive biomass is used for electrical generation.

Literally, life has no purpose, happiness, and meaning without electricity and sources of energy that are abundant, scalable, reliable, affordable, and flexible.

That describes coal – but isn’t coal outdated, outlawed, and the worst form of energy possible?

In fact, coal has always been and now at the forefront of what could save billions without hope, a future, and the key to environmental stewardship the West desperately craves.

At this time, approximately 1,600 coal-fired power plants are being planned, permitted, or currently under construction.

Hard to believe since this reliable source of electricity is under attack in western nations such as the U.S. and the entire European Union.

Elsewhere, coal is used more than ever. China, Japan, and India are using and building newer “high-efficiency low-emission (HELE), ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants.”

HELE electricity-generating plants operate at higher than normal temperatures and increased efficiency. A HELE-plant additionally operates at emission and pollutant levels “45% lower than from existing coal-fired power plants.”

Official Indian energy policy is for coal to be its main energy source of electrical generation. Japan is working towards building 22 HELE plants to replace nuclear power after the Fukushima accident. China wants to build 300 HELE plants domestically and internationally.

Any Green New Deals, Paris Climate Agreements, or excoriating of coal by the EPA are offset by Japan, India, China, and the EU, which is building twenty-seven coal-fired plants to counter the energy to electricity dysfunction from overreliance on the wind and sun.

The West, led by the U.S. and EU, is committing energy suicide when they refuse to embrace and regulate out of existence lower-emitting by up to forty-five percent, rich in energy density, and always firing 24/7/365, HELE coal-fired power plants.

Countries rich in coal but unable to afford sophisticated and lower-emitting but expensive natural gas-fired power plants and billion(s) dollar(s) liquid natural gas terminals (LNG) could use coal to leave lives without fulfillment, and sophistication.

The book The End of Doom describes in rich detail that poorer peoples, nations, and continents generally destroy their environments searching for basic necessities the U.S. and Europe take for granted.

MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel says:

“If you want to minimize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2070 you might want to accelerate the burning of coal in India today (as an example). It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon.

“But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they (India) make themselves wealthier, (similar to America in the early 1900s), and by making themselves wealthier (any poor region of the world), they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070. We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.”

Billions without energy or electricity who are mainly using wood and cow dung, which are the worst emitting forms of energy, could be generating sustainable energy and electricity utilizing coal to save their local environments, and lives.

HELE plants generate overwhelmingly more energy to electricity than renewables under current technological constraints.

The main factor why is “HELE plants have a capacity factor of 86%, while wind has a capacity factor of 35%, and PV solar has a capacity factor of, at best, 22%.”

Counterintuitive for today’s energy wisdom, and climate-change nihilism, coal can lead to cleaner air and healthier children and families.

Climates changing are about more than the Earth warming or not over mankind’s activities. We are living in the “Asian century,” and they need more energy, power, and electricity than at any point in mankind’s history that coal provides.

Aggressive climate change action that the U.S. Democratic Party and European Green parties advocate for are “egregiously misleading” when coal is demonized in favor of lowering human flourishing.

The mantra of “coal is death” is unbelievably exaggerated when economic reality meets an environmental movement termed a “climate-industrial-complex.”

Nowhere is the poor kept in the rotting pits of life more than when coal-fired power plants are not allowed to be built to the detriment of billions of Chinese, Africans, and Indians. Soul-crushing poverty the West can’t even imagine becomes the norm.

Multilateral development is then crushed when organizations such as the World Bank don’t allow the Asian century to flourish, or the second half of this century where Africa is likely to become the largest region in the world.

Asserting renewables and climate-change-mitigation programs bring “co-benefits” is a bald-faced lie, and justifies the worse kind of environmental racism.

These bold souls in India, China, Africa, and elsewhere deserve the abundant, affordable, scalable, reliable, flexible, and energy-dense life-giving qualities that coal brings globally.

Coal can lay the foundation for prosperity that historically leads to clean landscapes, fresher air, and all-around better earth for all.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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