Ranger from the North

John Hinderaker:

The fate of this particular EU proposal remains unknown, but the handwriting is on the wall. The “green” dream of an economy powered exclusively (or even mostly) by wind and solar energy is impossible, not because of a lack of political will but because of the laws of physics. The end of this story has already been written. The question is how much wealth will be destroyed before greenies admit that their dreams have turned into nightmares.

And:

Batteries are incredibly expensive compared with the power that can be generated by reliable energy sources—nuclear, coal, natural gas and hydropower. Cranking up the world’s battery capacity with vast mining projects to acquire the necessary lithium and other minerals would entail massive environmental degradation along with driving up the price of those materials. And obtaining and processing the materials needed to manufacture the turbines and panels needed to convert the world’s economy to wind and solar energy—a hopeless pipe dream in any case—would be a mining and manufacturing project unprecedented in human history.

Also, one that would be mostly under the control of the Red Chinese—they are not major players in fossil fuels, but utterly dominate “green” energy. But for liberals, that is probably a feature rather than a bug. If you think that America deserves to be destroyed, this is a quick way to do it.

At some point in human history, there must have been a dumber idea than converting our industrial base to wind, solar and imaginary batteries, but offhand I can’t think what it was.

The basic point here is that wind energy shows up only sporadically and unpredictably, and tends to disappear when it is needed the most. The worst time for a blackout is when the mercury is at -20, as it was yesterday where I live. Note where electricity was actually coming from in the chart above: coal, the dark brown line, was the principal source, while natural gas, the light brown line, is only slightly behind. These are the sources that liberals want to do away with. Wind was flighty; sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t. Is that how you want your light switches to operate? And if you can find solar energy on this chart, a technology in which many billions of dollars have been invested, your eyes are sharper than mine.

On energy, we are in a race against time. We need to inform voters before the lavishly-funded “green” energy lobby destroys our electrical grid and our economy, at great profit to them but at ruinous loss to the rest of us.

One of mankind’s great achievements has been the way that, across an ever-increasing part of the planet, we have reached a level of technological sophistication that has meant that we can go about our business without, extreme events aside, having to worry too much about what the weather is doing.

One of the countless ironies running through current climate policies is that that progress may be about to go into reverse, not because of climate change, but because of policies designed to combat it, and, more specifically, what looks more and more like a premature dash into wind energy. One of the triggers of the prolonged energy-price squeeze in the U.K. was the failure of winds over the North Sea to do what was expected of them in the late summer/early fall.

Biden thus puts the interests of Putin and Erdoğan ahead of those of Israel and Greece, among other friendly nations.

Finally, let’s remember that Biden nixed our own Keystone Pipeline. As far as I can tell, his administration has never supported a pipeline project other than the one that will enormously benefit Vladimir Putin.

Less than two years ago, America had become the dominant oil and gas producer on the planet, with much of the credit going to our partnership with Canada. Gas prices dropped to the lowest levels in a generation and stayed there. We were a net energy exporter for the first time in our history. Now, after barely one year under the new administration, we are once again going to some of our adversaries with our hats in our hands and asking for more oil. At the same time, we’re sticking a knife in Canada’s back. To try to write this off as some sort of coincidence that isn’t a result of Joe Biden’s energy policies is a fool’s errand.

# posted by Ranger @ 8:55 AM