To Greenies: What Do We Do When All the Wind Turbines Are Frozen?
As a background on the clean energy debate, please consider The Wholesale Price of Electricity Spikes 10,000% in Texas Power Outage.
Let’s discuss wind turbines, natural gas, and coal.
A Deep Green Freeze
The Wall Street Journal editorial board says “Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal.”
I agree with some of what they say and disagree with parts of it as well.
Please consider A Deep Green Freeze by the WSJ.
Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.
A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”
Wind’s share has tripled to about 25% since 2010 and accounted for 42% of power last week before the freeze set in. About half of Texans rely on electric pumps for heating, which liberals want to mandate everywhere. But the pumps use a lot of power in frigid weather. So while wind turbines were freezing, demand for power was surging.
California progressives long ago banished coal. But a heat wave last summer strained the state’s power grid as wind flagged and solar ebbed in the evenings. After imposing rolling blackouts, grid regulators resorted to importing coal power from Utah and running diesel emergency generators.
Liberals claim that prices of renewables and fossil fuels are now comparable, which may be true due to subsidies, but they are no free lunch, as this week’s energy emergency shows. The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.
Greater Existential Threat
The Journal claims “The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.”
I agree 100%.
But what to do about it?
Clean Energy
I am a big fan of natural gas and believe it is clean energy. The byproduct of burning natural gas is carbon dioxide and water.
Neither is a pollutant in any way shape or form. Plants even need carbon dioxide to survive.
Coal is another matter.
Burning coal releases SO2 and NOx pollutants that cause Acid Rain, huge respiratory problems and will devastate forests.
If the atmosphere is polluted with sulfur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen oxides (NOx), rain becomes oxidized by ozone (O3) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to form H2SO4 or HNO3 before falling to the ground. They are known respectively as sulfuric and nitric acid.
Acid rain will dissolve panty hose on the spot.
There is a huge difference between burning coal and burning natural gas.
Anti-Coal, Pro-Natural Gas
For environmental reasons, I am anti-coal but very much in favor of Natural Gas.
Problems arise as happened last year in California and this week in Texas when pressure to eliminate all carbon wins over common sense.
Where is the CO2 Coming From?
CO2 Stats
- Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
- Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2019 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
- In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
- In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
- In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.
Wind Not Reliable
Wind is not a reliable source, as we have just proven in spades, twice over.
Yet, despite the facts that US carbon output is shrinking and the US only accounted for 14.5% of the total global footprint, the absurd push to eliminate all US carbon presses on.
John Kerry’s Straw Man Climate Arguments
John Kerry is Biden’s climate czar.
He blamed 4 hurricanes on climate change as if throwing any amount of money at the alleged problem would have stopped the hurricanes.
For discussion, please see Kerry’s Straw Man Argument for Wasting Money on Climate Change
GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040
One day after Kerry’s ridiculous rant, I noted GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040.
Assuming one believes CO2 is a problem, this is the way problems are solved.
GM is not doing this to save the world, it is doing this because market forces mandate a change.
Similarly, solar power will come into play as storage technology improves.
The free market, not populist ideas will solve real world problems.
$90 Trillion Solutions
In 2015, Business Insider noted A Plan Is Floating Around Davos To Spend $90 Trillion Redesigning All The Cities So They Don’t Need Cars
The $90 trillion proposal came from former US vice president Al Gore, former president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, and their colleagues on The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.
“We cannot have these cities with low density, designed for the use of cars,” he said. “We recommend those cities should have more density and more mass transportation.” Together with a program for reforming land use, and bringing deforestation to zero, the total cost of this plan would most likely be $90 trillion in future investment, Calderon said.
AOC’s New Green Deal
Also recall AOC’s Green New Deal Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion vs. Cost of Doing Nothing.
A Word About Cherry Picking Data
On February 3, I noted Climate Change Moves to the Forefront of Biden’s Legislation
“It’s long past time for the Senate to take a leading role in combating the existential threat of our time: climate,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The “existential threat” is politicians seeking $90 trillion solutions to hyped-up problems, not natural gas.
More at www.thestreet.com
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Joseph Olson
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to control the once independent masses, the FEW must control information, then energy, then fuel > if you can’t see this reality, or it is too grim, brighten your day with some satire,
“Piñata Planet Syndrome” at CanadaFreePress
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Wildman 100%
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Frozen Turbines are such a hoax and typical psy-op for the US INC’s subsidiary–Texas Inc. I wonder how they keep the wind turbine farms running in the Norweigan and North Seas which are thousands of miles closer to the arctic circle and have far worse weather conditions than “Tex-ASS” ever had. As usual, they have ruined the natural environment and installed unsightly, heavily subsidized & economically unfeasible wind turbines all over those once beautiful and picturesque mesas and mountain ranges, not only in Texas, but nearly every scenic mountainous location in the lower 48. As a frequent driver through west Texas from south, east and central Texas, sometimes driving back and forth twice in a “26 hour-day” I have rarely seen any of the arrays in Texas, (as well as California) operating at more than 80% of their potential capacity, or in other words; at least 1 or more turbines per array were shut down and locked into position. This was claimed to be for maintenance reasons, but if it takes several weeks to perform maintenance on one or two turbines that had been stationary while the rest of the array is generating, imagine that cost! Obviously, it was just a part of the “Money Bilking Scheme” that wind generation on a massive scale actually is! It’s just like all of the other energy “bilking schemes” involved in Nuclear, Solar, and Coal, Oil and Gas, (which are not “Fossil Fuels”) that are actually regenerative natural mineral Hydocarbon Compounds manufactured by natural processes starting deep in the Earth. This used to be in the geologic books even up to the 1940’s, but then the “master hoaxers” took over control of the scientific community and suddenly it became something else, which has no chemical relation to Hydrocarbon Fuels plus, all of a sudden it became an exhaustable source and “rare”…the “perfect lie.” It’s not about needing or even running out of oil. It’s about controlling the flow of oil to keep prices ridiculously high! Hydrocarbon fuels could be “mined” and “burned” nearly pollution free, but then that would produce a big problem for the OIL Barons who have been massively profiting from one of the many “greatest hoaxes” in History. Refer to: Abiotic Oil. Why do you think they rarely remove the idle for years “jack pumps” from well-head sites? Because eventually and sometimes rapidly, they fill up again, and once they own the site or field they never surrender it even though they claim it to be “unfeasible” or “depleated”
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Wildman 100%
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And as far as dissolving pantyhose, take a look into the phosphate industry which destroys the entire environment, paint, glass, as well as pantyhose and many other materials. because of the lack of emission controls and supervision thereof. Burning natural gas produces other pollutants basically because it is contaminated with other synthetic and natural compounds, otherwise you would not be able to smell it when there is a ruptured line. Very poor research in this article and I give it a full “two thumbs and two big toes”– DOWN !!!
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patrick brogan
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first of all to the commenters, learn to read! Phrases like “The wholesale price of electricity spikes 10,000% in a Texas power outage. Among other problems, the wind turbines are all frozen”. and
“My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. For the writer of this article, a little advice go get a job in a nursery school-pre kindergarten and teach them how and why to brush their teeth, a noble pursuit for you unethical writing style! Anything more relevant in the world you should be banned from even google searching! This article says nothing definitive about wind power or green power it eludes to it! The disingenuous biased narrative really stands out in that the author did not bother to try to parse the differing points of view, I .e. was the spike due to all the wind turbines frozen, and were they? or was it due to the “among other problems” in the other quote? If it was among them what was the percentage since your only calling out green energy what was its impact on the overall problem? No idea because the dullard with the abilities similar to a palsey sufferer in a professional fly tying contest didn’t bother to address or answer this fundamental question as the topic of the paper would infer to at least address! I like PS, BUT FIRE THIS IDIOT, HE WILL NEVER PRODUCE A SINGLE THING WORTHY OF MERIT, he will however give all the fuel needed to discredit the otherwise independant and necessary journalism you provide! to the readers start calling out the use of terms like these used to dupe the reader into thinking a valid point had been made when in reality “from what I heard, I think that” means nothing! “Texas has 200 wind turbines, of those 170 failed, as opposed to only a 2% decrease in failure of coal and natural gas!” if that were true, it is as long as this needed to be- the fact that it is not true is why it goes on like a bedtime story for hardcore insomniac on speed!
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