Greta vs Wind Farms; The Twilight of Trudeau; & What's With the Empty Planes?
Greta vs Wind Farms; The Twilight of Trudeau; & What's With the Empty Planes?
This week Richard Fernandez contributed an article on one of the practical problems with renewable energy.
'Saving' the Planet, Only to Despoil It
Shifting the world's energy supply from petrochemicals to solar power involves solving two major challenges. The first is finding enough land to capture enough power from diffuse sources. The second is expanding the world's electrical grid capacity to at least double its present size to energize societies from which the internal combustion engine has been at least temporarily banned. "Saving the world: won't restore Gaia to its pristine state, rather it will disfigure the planet in different ways.
Renewable does not necessarily mean accessible. The sun delivers to the earth 1,300 to 1,400 watts of power per square meter at the equator on a clear day, theoretically enough power to run all of the electrical appliances of an average American household -- but only at the equator with 24 hours of sunlight per day. At latitudes farther north and south, direct available solar power diminishes. It's intermittent and requires a lot of resources to capture it.
So-called "Green Energy" is a physical quantity. Different fuel types need different amounts of space, and renewable energies generally need more space than petrochemicals. One way to compare them is to use the concept of power density – the average electrical power produced in one horizontal square meter of infrastructure. Researchers at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, gathered estimates of U.S. power densities for nine specific energy types. "They found that power densities can vary by as much as 1000 times, with biomass the lowest (at 0.8 W/m^2) and natural gas the highest (at 1000 W/m^2). Solar and wind power needs around 40-50 times more space than coal and 90-100 times more space than gas."
Because of the low-power densities the more "green" energy a country uses the more land it must devote to the purpose. This means vast amounts of land must be converted from other uses. Densely populated countries far from the equator like Japan and Korea will have the hardest time. To generate enough electricity most cities would have to be roofed with solar panels. "If at least half of the produced electricity comes from solar power... land for solar would amount to over 50 percent of the current E.U. urban land, over 85 percent for India, and over 75 percent in Japan and South-Korea." Inevitably the area appetite of renewables will encroach on cropland, the more so if used to grow biofuels. To a very real degree, a commitment to renewables will lead to intensive land management by the government on a vast scale, the so-called "agrisolar" developments being of one type.
The magnitude of these land impacts are only now dawning upon climate activists. Time Magazine recently reported that Greta Thunberg protested wind farms in Norway. "Wind farms?" you might wonder: why is Thunberg protesting Green? "Completed in 2020, the wind farms sit on lands that the Saami use for reindeer herding—a central part of their lifestyle. Herders say their animals are terrified by the noise and sight of the turbines, which are 285 ft. tall, leaving the lands unsuitable for grazing and the fate of the area’s Saami in jeopardy." Thunberg belatedly realized that wind farms need space, not only for the terrifying turbines but for the expanded electric grid to bear the wattage away. That could destroy a tribe.
Clarice Feldman wrote about the disappointment of Green investments.
'Green' Investors Seeing Red
Peak green seems to be arriving years before peak oil will, and investors are heading back to oil and gas fields and away from windmills and solar as consumers eschew electric vehicles. Investing in renewables has proven to be unprofitable and the smart money is going elsewhere. Once the darling of the "climate change" adherents and governments which propped them up with diktats and massive subsidies, investors are throwing in the towel.
Meanwhile, six governors have asked the federal government for financial help because the overruns on off-shore wind farms keeps escalating;
The need is urgent as the offshore developers are demanding immediate power price increases of around 50% lest they leave for better opportunities elsewhere. They can do this because offshore wind is a global boom. Even mid-income developing countries like Indonesia are talking big offshore numbers. Ironically, it is this boom that is driving some of the sticker-shocking price increases. There is even a shortage of highly specialized crane ships to erect these huge towers. The supply chain is a seller’s market, at least on paper. Rising interest rates are another big driver.
Norway is asking energy companies to step up their oil and gas exploration, and Chevron just announced it had made a $53 billion bid for Hess Corporation “because it knows the world will need oil and gas for the foreseeable future no matter how much politicians subsidize green energy.” Both BP and Shell are cutting back on renewable investments and focusing instead of fossil fuels:
If Chevron believed that demand for hydrocarbons would soon peak and decline—as the International Energy Agency (IEA) claimed last month—it instead could have boosted investment in heavily subsidized green-energy ventures such as hydrogen or increased shareholder buybacks. But oil and gas are yielding a higher return on capital than renewables, even with government’s enormous green subsidies.
Automobile companies' investments in electric vehicles have also proven to be a bust. Slowing consumer demand has caused GM and Tesla to slow down production, and it’s clear that part of the reason for the UAW strike is the fact that fewer auto workers are required in the production of electric vehicles -- cars that are not selling in any event. Honda has joined the pack of auto makers stepping on the electric vehicle production brakes.
Automakers Honda and General Motors have ditched a $5 billion plan to create more affordable electric vehicles amidst an industry-wide slowdown in EV development. The manufacturers agreed in April 2022 that they would combine powers to slash the battery costs on eco cars and develop vehicles below GM's $30,000 Chevrolet Equinox. The partnership was intended to compete with Elon Musk's Tesla which has aggressively cut prices this year. Honda CEO Toshiro Mibe, however, confirmed the project had been scrapped.
Elizabeth Nickson contributed a defense of small farms against Big Agriculture and intrusive government.
Uniting for a Conservative Environmental Policy
You can laugh at Gwyneth Paltrow all you like, but her upper class followers, millions of them, determine the future via their purchasing power. Their focus is their family's health, and they only buy clean food. In that lies an end to the pitched fight over the environment. Chemical free, humanly raised, local, small batch, caring. Marketing 101. Aspiration determines choice. Axiom.
In fact, anyone with sense and a little extra money buys organic food. And farmer/thinkers on both the right and left, see, argue, agitate for, and write about the drawing down of Big Ag, combined with a deliberate, policy-led revitalization of the country. Regenerative farming is a growth industry on both the right and the left, because rural people understand the depletion of the soil, the poisoning of the waters and air. Joel Salatin and Wendell Berry, natural political opponents, both want the same thing, which is to say a revitalizing of farming country and a hardening of property rights, the opposite of current policy on both sides of the fence.
A new book, Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival, argues for the overturning of rapacious Big Agriculture behavior and a re-envisioning of environmental policy on the right. Its author, John Klar, a tax lawyer, ill with one of those mysterious modern conditions, moved to a dairy farm with his wife, and dove in. This book is the result of painstaking analysis, deep reading, and lived experience. Another recent entry is Saying No to a Farm-Free Future, the Case For an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods. Chris Smaje, a Brit, argues from the left for a nation of small farmers, spread across the land, engaged in deep stewardship of both land, animals and adjacent community. Both believe that the economic prosperity resulting from that would light up a dying economic model.
Tom Finnerty looked into the Canadian Supreme Court’s ruling against Trudeau’s "No More Pipelines" bill.
Some Rare Good News from Canada
Things just keep getting worse for Justin Trudeau. His party has been cratering in opinion polling for months now, to the point that they're slowly being overtaken by the third place New Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, as the above indicates, the Conservative Party of Canada is on the rise, with current polling suggesting that it would easily win a majority if the election were held today. This isn't at all surprising, of course, since the Conservatives have won the popular vote in the past two elections, with the Liberals depending on the support of the far-left NDP to remain in power for the past few years.
At the heart of it all is that Canadians are just sick of Trudeau. They recognize that his authoritarian streak -- seen most clearly during Covid and the trucker protest, but more recently in his plan to combat "disinformation" by forcing podcasters to register with the government -- coupled with his various scandals have made Canada a laughing stock on the world stage.
At the same time, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who was seen at the time of his selection as too right-wing to lead the Conservative Party, has been steadily winning over the country, while refusing to compromise on principle, something the last CPC leader did constantly.
Clips like this one have gone viral, and increasingly Canadians are seeing Poilievre as a breath of fresh air.
And now the Supreme Court of Canada -- a body which is not exactly known for its devotion to legal principles or conservative arguments -- has dealt Trudeau another serious blow. In a 5-2 ruling, the Court found that his cherished Bill C-69 -- nicknamed the "No More Pipelines" Act -- to be, at least in part, unconstitutional. The bill, which passed in 2019, increased the jurisdiction of Federal regulators over infrastructure projects, and mandated that public consultations on potential new projects take into consideration their potential impact on a variety of leftist obsessions, including "climate change" and gender equality.
David Cavena wrote about the Greens’ tyrannical impulses.
'Green' Fixes Minus the Grift and the Graft
What should concern us regarding the “climate change” hoax is not so much the grift but the actions of governments and (unaccountable) NGOs to reduce our nation based on that grift. Would I mind having an E.V.? Maybe - if I could “refill” its tank in a few minutes, and it would stay charged for another 400 miles, wherever I decide to travel (even in the winter). Maybe not. But if the point of the E.V. scheme is to kill fossil fuels, that irks me. Especially since most of the electricity to charge the battery would itself come from fossil fuels.
Do I mind shutting down coal-fired power plants? If there is a sufficient replacement, then no. Living in Arizona, I visit the Grand Canyon often and have hiked to the bottom and back and across, winter and spring. The (now-closed) coal plant in northern Arizona would sometimes reduce visibility within this beautiful canyon. Coal is abundant and cheap, which is why it has historically been so popular, but all else being equal I’d much rather have electricity generated by clean nuclear power than have my view of the Grand Canyon dimmed. And our widespread transition from coal to natural gas is the reason the U.S. has led the world in carbon emissions reduction over the past quarter century.
And it's worth noting that there's nothing wrong with emissions reductions. Our problem shouldn't be the reductions, but the authoritarian approach to it. Especially because the benefits are overstated, the costs are underplayed, and the whole discussion takes place in an atmosphere of hysteria. The grifters don’t own the air – and they don’t own the water or the land. We the People do.
He also contributed a blog post about the odd tendency of German aviation firm Lufthansa to fly many thousands of empty planes per year, which seems to run counter to their pledge to aim at net-zero emissions.
Flying Blind Into Net-Zero
And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, dealt with some frustrations in Oxford.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Connecting
That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming pieces at The Pipeline!