Wind Power Is a Joke

Every now and then you should check out the Alberta Electric System Operator’s “Current Supply Demand Report” page.

This handy little page shows us the total net generation of power from different sources. It is constantly being updated.

Wind power sucks. It’s hellishly cold in Alberta right now and wind power contributes nothing to make our lives better. LITERALLY NOTHING. 

wind power sucks.JPG

You see that? Despite 1445 MW max capacity with wind power, and total net generation is zero. On one of the coldest days of the year.

Just look at all those wind farms and all the magical wind power generated!

lol-wind

Oh wait. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.

You get the idea.

You can build all you want for capacity, but it doesn’t mean you get much actual electricity out of it.

Natural gas is reliable, cheap, clean, and plentiful. Wind power is unreliable, expensive, and requires back up from something you can count on (i.e. fossil fuel based energy that just works).

Wind power is a joke.

Anyone who thinks the government should tax perfectly good and reliable fossil fuel energy production & use to subsidize pathetically inefficient wind power is a fool or a knave.

Advertisement

Sentence-by-Sentence Refutation of Boilerplate Climate Change Propaganda

World leaders are currently enjoying their fancy party in Paris and pontificating about how global warming is going to kill us all and we must let bureaucrats and politicians lead us into a glorious new era of the centrally planned renewable energy economy.

At this time it’s useful to review an article that shamelessly repeats the typical mantra of climate change lies and fallacies. The subject of the following piece relies on all the usual propaganda you hear spouted by would-be central planners and cronies, and is rebutted sentence-by-sentence. Overall, this presents a useful summary of common climate change lies and their refutation.

AP’s Seth Borenstein gets something right (but only the date)

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

I often get emails asking me to comment in detail on an article on global warming that pretends the “problem” is worse than it is. Here is my reply to one such request.

Earth is a wilder [no], warmer [no] place since last climate deal made in 1997

By SETH BORENSTEIN, November 29, 2015 [At least he got the date right]

PARIS (AP) — This time, it’s a hotter [Satellites show no global warming for the 223 months (i.e., 18 years 7 months) since April 1997], waterier [Water vapour is difficult to measure, but some records show no change in water vapour except in the vital mid-troposphere, where it has actually declined], wilder Earth [The IPCC, both in its 2012 Special Report on Extreme Weather and in its 2013 Fourth Assessment Report,says there has been no particular overall trend in storminess, floods or droughts] that world leaders are trying to save [They are not trying to save the world: Bjorn Lomborg has reliably calculated that the effect of honouring all nations’ Paris pledges will be to reduce global temperature by 0.05-0.17 C° by 2100 compared with having no pledges, and the cost of getting that reduction will be $1 trillion].

The writer is actually giving the propagandist, Mr. Borenstein, too much credit about getting the date right. That was probably automatically generated with the website software — even a monkey trying to publish an attempt at Hamlet on his blog would have gotten the date right.

But hey, he… um… spelled his own name correctly?

— Read the rest of the article. —

Would You Spend Trillions of Dollars to Reduce Earth’s Temperature by 0.05°C?

Someone actually bothered to look at the IPCC’s own models to evaluate the impact of all the different programs proposed as CO2 mitigation plans on Earth’s climate. The results are extremely impressive if your goal is spending gargantuan sums of money and impoverishing humanity to achieve almost nothing.

From the abstract of the paper (emphasis and formatting added):

This article investigates the temperature reduction impact of major climate policy proposals implemented by 2030, using the standard MAGICC climate model. Even optimistically assuming that promised emission cuts are maintained throughout the century, the impacts are generally small.

  • The impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100.
  • The full US promise for the COP21 climate conference in Paris, its so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) will reduce temperature rise by 0.031°C.
  • The EU 20-20 policy has an impact of 0.026°C, the EU INDC 0.053°C, and China INDC 0.048°C.
  • All climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100.

These impact estimates are robust to different calibrations of climate sensitivity, carbon cycling and different climate scenarios. Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.

To illustrate the utter impotence of these asinine proposals, let’s take the first case: the US Clean Power Plan, which would strive to reduce carbon emissions by reducing coal based energy production. If these reductions are implemented and adhered to until 2100 (when most of the people reading this will be dead), the reduction in temperature rise would be 0.013°C.

Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem like very much. Maybe some perspective will be helpful:

Everyone knows that as you go up a mountain, the air gets cooler. The rate at which non-condensing air cools with increasing altitude is called the “dry adiabatic lapse rate”. The rule of thumb states that for every hundred metres higher that you climb, the temperature drops by 1°C.

Now, a human being is typically around 1.7 metres tall, plus or minus. This means that other things being equal, the air at your head is about 0.017°C cooler than the air at your feet. And recall from above that the “impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100” …

Which means that after spending billions of dollars and destroying valuable power plants and reducing our energy options and making us more dependent on Middle East oil, all we will do is make the air around our feet as cool as the air around our heads … I am overcome with gratitude for such a stupendous accomplishment.

Okay then.

But that’s just one proposal for one country. What if the entire world successfully implements all its proposals by 2030 and maintains them until 2100? Far-fetched maybe, but let’s go with it.

Realistically, this would result in a 0.05°C temperature reduction by 2100.

Since it’s perfectly normal to experience a difference of 20°C in a single day, this is pretty much completely meaningless.

And again, this is all based on the IPCC’s own climate models, which have enough problems on their own but nonetheless are the basis for all the anti-carbon hysteria and fear-mongering.

— Read more at WUWT

This Is What Happens When a Leftist-Environmentalist Investigates the Claims of Climate Change Propagandists

Some of my favorite stories are those where a person begins as a true believer in one dangerous myth or another but then critically analyzes his assumptions and is forced to abandon his false beliefs.

Here is the story of a man who started out as a fairly typical environmentalist-leftist-liberal Democrat kind of guy who had swallowed the propaganda over CO2 and climate change, and even wrote his own book of propaganda on the issue. But as he looked more closely at the data, he started coming to a different conclusion.

What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?

If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that’s what I thought, too. This is my story.

As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems.

This guy deserves a lot of credit for investigating the issue in the first place. It is always so much easier to continue walking around in a deluded haze of lies churned out by the hivemind.

His piece proceeds to offer a series of propositions then proceeds to carefully substantiate them.

  1. Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.

  2. Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural, not man-made. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.

  3. There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.

  4. New research shows fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, better than CO2 levels.

  5. CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much.

  6. There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.

  7. Sea level will probably continue to rise — not quickly, and not much. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.

  8. The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.

  9. No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people, who eat them.

  10. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface*.

This is a long and well researched article and deserves to be widely read. Be sure to watch the linked videos as well.

We often overlook the fact that evidence has causal power and it pushes the mind towards truth — if this were not so, we could never say that evidence caused someone to come to a conclusion. Any honest person who examines the evidence should be hard pressed to keep swallowing the endless lies and deception about climate change, which are merely tools for those who seek political power, centrally planned economies, and crony capitalism.

Siegel’s article should be read by everyone.

— Read more at ClimateCurious.com

Observations on the Royalty Review Panel Open House

In the following I will share the observations of a man who attended last night’s Royalty Review Panel Open House in Calgary, originally posted on Instaface or Facegram or whatever it’s called. This man is an entrepreneur in the Alberta oil industry, so it seems reasonable that he understands many of the underlying issues. His reporting rings true to me and it should deeply unsettle not just Albertans, but also the other Canadians who gobble up the transfer payments out of Alberta:

Well I went ahead and attended the Royalty Review Panel Open House in Calgary last evening to see what they had to say. They had lots of stand up displays with hundreds of factoids about supply, world prices, reserves and a whole bunch of other information most of us Albertans have known about for decades. Interestingly enough they had whiteboards for attendees to write comments, Trevor Marr took pictures and the attendees were hammering the government hard on the many points you’ve already posted, read, liked and shared on these pages.

I spoke and asked questions about the risk of engaging in a review at a time when prices are low and royalty revenues are already in full collapse. The Al Gore trained political hack, ATB CEO Dave Mowat did confirm that the government would be lucky to collect $3 Billion this year, down from $9 Billion last year. He couldn’t answer why if we were at $13 Billion prior to the last review and it contributed to a drop to $9B since and were now down at less than $3B, what good could possibly come from throwing two plus years of uncertainty into the mix now? He kept referring to how they were sure that they could OPTIMIZE the royalty rates. But no, the full report wouldn’t be shared with Albertans as a large portion of their process was so complicated it could only be done by 3 separate expert non public panels that they are hiring to work for a whole month. But the end result would be the best Royalty Rate system ever done and the OPTIMIZED recommendations would be provided to the NDP government by December 31st, 2015. He also said that since oil would be phased out over the next 20-30 years, it can no longer be viewed as a finite resource since we have more than will ever be able to be sold! He said the inability to get to markets wasn’t relevant to the rate structure! He also said if our oil wasn’t competitive in the world markets not having pipelines to those possible clients didn’t matter. He said it wasn’t their concern if other taxations such as corporate tax rate increases or carbon tax burdens were put on our oil and gas industry as they were only mandated to recommend a royalty rate structure that was based upon 4 core principles that could guide all the future rate reviews. He suggested that every two years or so they might want to adjust rates! He admitted that the $65 Billion in annual investment by the oil and gas industry was dependent upon both pricing and royalty competitiveness. He wouldn’t say how much lower the investment is this year nor how much investment might be withheld due to the not knowing what the rates are going to be. He couldn’t answer as to how long it might take the NDP government to implement their recommendations or even if they would.

I came away convinced that the whole process is a traveling Gong Show run by ideologues who are so enamored with their own intelligence that they actually believe that they can squeeze more revenue out of the resources that we own by performing a superb OPTIMIZATION of the rates. They have no concept of RISK. Dave Mowat declared that the USA is no longer a trusted customer, that they have become our biggest competitor and since they produce so much oil relative to our miniscule output, we cannot compete. I also spoke with Peter Tertzakian from the panel who accused the PC’s of not collecting enough over the past decades. He also had absolutely no concern that the revenues had fallen due to the low prices, he expressed a concern that Albertans weren’t getting enough revenue from the oil being sold with no concern that the O&G industry were operating at a loss as is!

In other words, much like Rachel’s NDP government, nobody on this Royalty Review Panel are prepared to Stand Up For Alberta! They do not understand risk management, product promotion, stability needs of large long term investment, spinoff benefits from capital investment, incentivization potential, access to tidewater ports and human cost impacts from reduced employment opportunities. We must redouble our efforts to wake them up. I got under their skin, Mowat tried to label me as smug but apologized when I called him out for attempting to assign a negative connotation on a brief facial expression I might have had while listening to another speaker grill him. Although someone in the back did holler that I should be the next Energy Minister. 🙂

Let me call attention to a few of the most startling comments here.

[Mowat] also said that since oil would be phased out over the next 20-30 years, it can no longer be viewed as a finite resource since we have more than will ever be able to be sold!

WHAT.

Dave Mowat declared that the USA is no longer a trusted customer, that they have become our biggest competitor and since they produce so much oil relative to our miniscule output, we cannot compete.

WHAT.

I also spoke with Peter Tertzakian from the panel who accused the PC’s of not collecting enough over the past decades. He also had absolutely no concern that the revenues had fallen due to the low prices, he expressed a concern that Albertans weren’t getting enough revenue from the oil being sold with no concern that the O&G industry were operating at a loss as is!

WHAT.

We shouldn’t be surprised by foolishness coming out of a Royalty Review Panel that is chaired by Al Gore fanboy Dave Mowat, but this is actually worse than I expected. If such considerations are guiding the panel’s recommendations, Alberta is in a lot of trouble.

The entire royalty review is based on asinine premises as demonstrated above along with the laughable pretense of caring what the public has to say.

Anyone Who Hates Fossil Fuels Is Anti-Human

aaa1Sources: Boden, Marland, Andres (2010); Bolt and van Zanden (2013); World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data, April 2014

Scary NDP Climate Change Survey Reveals Their Desired Policies

Members of Notley’s NDP government are global warming radicals. Remember that the global warming movement is not actually about science and global warming, which is why global warming fanatics disregard the mountain of evidence that refutes them. Global warming activists slavishly cling to junk science because they yearn for power where lawmakers, bureaucrats, and crony capitalists who favor socialism can gain control over the economy.

With that in mind, the government has released a fake survey regarding Alberta’s policies on climate change. It is fake because they really don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s like “you can choose any color you like as long as it’s red.”

(By the way, you don’t need to be an Albertan to take the survey.)

Basically, it is a rather unfair survey. It doesn’t really give you the option to reject all the proposals. Sure, it asks you whether you support more “government action” on climate change, but after that you only get loaded questions and the option to rank various dumb policies from most awesome to least awesome. So obviously the plan is to disregard any opinion where the respondent says they want no further government action on climate change, and just tally up results the rest of the survey and say “Such and such are the policies Albertans support the most!”

First it asks you whether you are worried about climate change. Well, despite all the chatter about it, no one really seems to be all that concerned about climate change to be honest. They care about it less and less with each year, and it’s at the bottom of their list when it comes to environmental issues.

global warming gallup poll

worriedagreatdeal

From there, each section starts with a preamble of deceptive, shallow propaganda. A large section of deception precedes the bulk of the survey:

The world’s climate has changed at an unprecedented rate since the 1950s. Increasing concentration of greenhouse gases have warmed the atmosphere, diminishing snow and ice, warming oceans, raising sea levels, and causing more extreme weather, such as floods and droughts. We can also see its effects locally through impacts such as the spread of the mountain pine beetle.

Scientific evidence tells us that – without significant action on a global scale – the consequences of climate change will be severe.

Even if all of this were true (it isn’t; global warming exists only in the minds of charlatans and cranks), it doesn’t follow that we can or should use the government to do anything about it. So the survey basically starts off with a big non sequitur and by lying to the respondent .

Then comes the craziness:

In advance of the conference, the Government of Canada has proposed a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. While Alberta’s energy-based economy helps fuel economic growth across Canada, we also account for approximately 37 per cent of Canada’s total emissions. The reputational impact of Canada’s action on climate change is likely to fall heavily on our province, which has already drawn domestic and international criticism.

This is really awful. The NDP is telling us that we should ravage the economy for the sake of our reputation among contemptuous and ignorant people — within and without Canada — who might not like us because we burn a lot of fossil fuels while we recover even more fossil fuels, supporting humanity with cheap energy which makes the modern world’s economy possible at all. At the same time, some people seeking power in the next federal election want to prevent Alberta from mining tar sands and burning fossil fuels in the process.

Slight detour: Regardless of any commitment Ottawa makes, there is no real constitutional authority for the federal government to interfere with a province’s resource development. The 1982 Amendments to the Constitution Act explicitly state the that the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over their non-renewable natural resources. Of course, as always with these matters, there are some loopholes. The federal government has jurisdiction over  “local Works and Undertakings declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the Advantage of two or more of the Provinces.” That’s a problem. Plus, we had the National Energy Program regardless of any constitutional division of powers. So the Constitution Act doesn’t seem to be worth a damn. On the other hand, provincial governments have the constitutional right to do anything they want regarding the resources in their territories.

But anyway…

Then the propaganda tries to make us care about another climate change conference and fairy tale treaties:

In December 2015, the United Nations is hosting the Conference of Parties in Paris. The desired outcome is to create a binding treaty that will commit all nations to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This is completely Irrelevant. These treaties never go anywhere. No one cares about them. There are no sanctions. The governments of the world never bothered to implement the Kyoto treaty of 1992 or its update in 1997. It lapsed on with the end of 2012. Game over. No one cares.

Then comes this nonsense:

Alberta’s energy economy depends on its ability to reach – and sell – our resources in markets throughout North America and around the world. These markets are increasingly demanding cleaner forms of energy. If we don’t take action on climate change locally, Alberta will find itself increasingly isolated and shut out of markets.

This is just wrong and sneakily misleading. When it comes to the environmental issue, opposition to the pipeline infrastructure stems from people, rightly or wrongly, being afraid of toxic substances flowing through the country in pipelines with the potential to leak out or spill and poison everything around them and kill everybody. It has nothing to do with climate change! Alberta can implement all the climate change policies it wants, but people will still have rational and irrational concerns about pipelines. Alberta’s efforts to access new markets for its products will not at all be helped by its abusive government’s bigger, badder climate change policies.

From there, the various agree/disagree questions reveal all the dream policies of the NDP. Question #14 is where it becomes obvious that they don’t care about your opinion. These are the things the NDP wants and it’s going to do them.

Now, thinking about the options discussed above, please rank them by priority with the highest being the action you would most like to see taken. Drag the choices into your preferred order, or use the arrow buttons to move the options up or down.

choices

So it asks you to rank a bunch of terrible policies that all belong in the “evil and uneconomical” category: an exploitative interprovincial cap n’ trade system, increasing taxes on industrial companies that burn fossil fuels, increasing subsidies to companies with political connections, increasing taxes on everyone, and subsidizing middle and upper class people who own buildings and houses.

You’ll notice it fails to include the option of “no further government intervention, thanks.”

Then in goes on to ask whether you support more horrible policies, including:

  • Redistributing money to favored municipalities and spending more money on government institutions for “retrofits”
  • Subsidizing homeowners (which tend to be middle or upper class people) with ‘incentives’ and grants (theoretically, incentives could include reducing taxes and regulations on more energy efficient technology — but who are we kidding? This is the NDP).
  • Subsidizing and protecting politically favored renewable energy producers.
  • Literally killing (or “phasing out,” as the NDP likes to say) an industry that some people don’t like. Don’t you love when the government decides who will be in business and who won’t be?

This is all quite terrifying. This tells us what the NDP wants. They just want to beat us over the head with fake survey results in a pathetic attempt to justify their destructive policies.

If you want bureaucratic control over the economy, inefficiency, unemployment, and impoverishment, you should support the NDP’s climate change policy.

If you want to subsidize India and China, where they don’t care about the bureaucratic rules and regulatory systems in Alberta, then you should support the NDP’s climate change policies.

If you want to get less energy and pay more for everything, then support the NDP’s climate policies.

If you are a good person, you should oppose them.

%d bloggers like this: