January 2024 – Page 4 – This is Not Cool

States Stepping in to Speed Clean Energy Siting – Fossil Industry Fights Back with Bogus “Grassroots” Effort

Above, Dave Loomis, Emeritus Prof of Economics from Illinois State University, who has specialized in clean energy deployment across the midwest.
I asked Dave about Illinois’ new siting reform for clean energy, which kind of mirrors what we are seeing across the Heartland.
Large majorities in favor of clean energy across all states are impatient with MAGA mobs intimidation of local boards, and threats against local landowners aimed at blocking clean energy, so taking matters into their own hands.

Associated Press:

Clara Ostrander in Monroe County (Michigan) found herself at the center of a similar conflict as rising medical costs forced her and her husband to consider selling land her family has owned for 150 years.

Leasing a parcel to an incoming solar farm could save the property, but neighboring residents complained so vehemently that Ostrander said the township changed its zoning to block the project.
“There are people in this township I will never, ever speak to again,” she said.

Local restrictions in Michigan derailed more than two dozen utility-scale renewable energy projects as of last May, according to a study by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Nationwide, and at least 228 restrictions in 35 states have been imposed to stop green energy projects.

The conflicts have hindered many states’ aggressive timelines for transitioning to cleaner energy production, with the ultimate goal of eliminating carbon pollution within the next two decades.

Michigan and more than a dozen other states are seeking to upend the decision-making process by grabbing the power to supersede local restrictions and allow state authorities to approve or disapprove locations for utility-scale projects.

The shift has sparked a political backlash that may escalate as more states seek to simplify getting green energy projects approved and built.

Under Threat, Big Fossil has Same Tactics, New Targets

Big Oil has a new playbook. Instead of getting their Internet goons to deny climate change, they've figured out how to manipulate the public in a whole new way. Are we going to let them get away with it? Share this video and go to https://t.co/dkDlmaB7mG to learn more. pic.twitter.com/Bf6KfZcb02
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) January 19, 2024

Take it from the Hulk.

As I’ve been pointing out, we are under renewed attack by a new wave of climate denial, and energy disinformation, as the fossil fuel industry understands that its power is under existential threat.

Guardian:

Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the Lights on Energy campaign will work to “dismantle policy threats” to the sector, the American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO, Mike Sommers, told CNN in an interview this week.

The ad blitz – which uses images of farm vehicles, footballers under floodlights and concert goers holding phones lit up – comes after US oil production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever recorded.

“We’re already moving in the wrong direction on fossil fuels,” said Timmons Roberts, professor of environment and sociology at Brown University. “They want to push us further.”

Roberts said the new ad blitz is rife with the kinds of “discourses of climate delay” that the fossil fuel industry commonly uses to thwart climate action, as documented in a 2020 study he co-authored on the topic. A video ad posted on Tuesday, for instance, says “demand for energy is growing and so is the need for American oil and natural gas”, positioning the sector as essential to continued human flourishing – a form of discourse Roberts and his co-authors call an “appeal to wellbeing”.

In his CNN interview, Sommers said clean energy can currently only play a limited role. “Renewable sources have a role to play, but oil and natural gas will be needed for decades,” he said.

Reposting: Textbook Trauma – the Emotions of Climate Change

This one is worth a re-watch.

My interview on the emotions of Climate Change, with Climate Scientist and Clinical Psychologist Jeffrey Kiehl, and Oceanographer/artist Sarah Myhre PhD.

“The first person to raise their hand is always a woman.”

Climate Voters Could be Key to ’24 Election

Republican politicians continue to be driven helplessly before a renewed wave of climate denial and disinformation, even as critical independent voters harbor increasing uneasiness about repetitive weather extremes.
I know because of observations in conservative communities, and conservatives who have reached out to me with questions about climate change, that these findings have merit. Climate still remains a bit of a 9000 pound gorilla in the room for middle aged and older Republicans, but for the young, it is as much an issue as it is for Democrats.

Newsweek:

The 2020 presidential election may have swung to Joe Biden‘s side thanks to fears surrounding climate change.

A new report from CU Boulder’s Center for Environmental Futures (C-SEF) revealed that many voters in the 2016 and 2020 elections were driven to cast their ballots based on climate change concerns. This influence may have won the Democrats the election in 2020.

The researchers say the same concerns could influence votes in the coming 2024 election.

The report concluded that if it wasn’t for the climate change issue, the Republicans may have won a 3-percent swing, enough to win the 2020 election.

“We analyzed multi-issue polling data from the voters in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. We found that how important voters considered climate change to be as an issue was one of the strongest predictors of whom they voted for in 2020, especially among independents,” the report said.

The report revealed that around twice as many votes are concerned about climate change than those who are not, with 57 percent of voters preferring a candidate who supports actions preventing climate change, compared to 16 percent preferring a candidate who opposed these actions, according to a 2023 Yale University survey.

“Voters who stated that climate change was a ‘somewhat important’ or ‘very important’ issue to them represented 67 percent of voters, and 77 percent of these voters voted for the Democratic candidate (Joe Biden). Therefore, climate change opinion represents an electoral advantage for the Democrats,” the report stated.

Additionally, many Republicans who see climate change as a key issue may have been swung in 2020: around a quarter of Republicans who thought climate change a “very important” issue voted for Biden.

“This is obviously information that politicians and advocates across the political spectrum will want to know, heading into the 2024 election cycle,” Matthew Burgess, CIRES Fellow and C-SEF director, said in a statement. “How to reduce political polarization of climate change is one of the questions our research group is most interested in currently, and this provides some insight.”

New Study: Fracking Fractures Bird Populations. Wind Turbines Not so Much. But we Knew That.

New study confirms what people in wind turbine areas keep telling me.
They are not seeing impacts on bird populations, or wildlife, from wind turbines.
Above, farmer, former County Commission Chair, and keen wildlife observer George Green of Isabella County, MI. We sat in the shed behind his house, which is equipped with a powerful bird-spotting scope, which, as he describes, he uses to watch eagles in the area.

Los Angeles Times:

Erik Katovich, an environmental economist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, had been following all the news coverage of wind power and bird deaths, and he feared it was being “weaponized by those opposed to renewable energy.” A longtime birder himself — he grew up in Minnesota bird-watching with his dad — he wanted to know whether the harm to avian life from wind energy development in California, Iowa and other states was getting blown out of proportion.

So like any good scholar, he ran the numbers.

Katovich turned to data from the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, an annual effort dating to 1900 during which tens of thousands of volunteers methodically record bird sightings at consistent locations around the world. Last winter’s count produced more than 36 million sightings of 671 bird species in the United States alone.

In a clever bit of science, Katovich compared the Christmas Bird Count numbers with data showing where wind turbines were built in America’s lower 48 states between 2000 and 2020. He did the same comparison for bird counts and new oil and gas extraction in shale fields — a process defined by the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

His peer-reviewed study was published last month. The conclusions are fascinating.

Katovich found that wind energy development had no statistically significant effect on bird counts, or on the diversity of avian species within five kilometers of a Christmas Bird Count site. Fracking, on the other hand, did have an impact. The drilling of shale oil and gas wells “reduces the total number of birds counted in subsequent years by 15%,” Katovich wrote in the study.

In other words: Oil and gas drilling is worse for birds than wind power.And that’s without even getting into the consequences of burning fossil fuels. Audubon scientists have estimated that nearly two-thirds of North American bird species could go extinct if humanity doesn’t accelerate its transition from planet-warming fuels to climate-friendly energy such as wind and solar.

“The U.S. is now by far the world’s largest oil and gas producer,” Katovich told me. “This is another cost we should consider.”

Do EVs Have a Cold Weather Problem? Ask a Norwegian.

As I’ve written recently, there is a new effort to kill the electric car, – it’s a scorched earth drive by the desperate fossil fuel industry to cling to its near absolute political power. The nihilistic campaign is being waged despite the potential to seriously damage the US auto industry, which has shot itself in the foot numerous times historically during times of transition.
Sadly, the media loves “dog bites man” stories about electric cars bogging down in the cold, but seem to have forgotten that standard issue emergency kit for any driver in northern climes includes jumper cables, for those inevitable cold morning clusterfucks.
Are EVs uniquely vulnerable to cold? We asked some Norwegians – who as readers here know, are well on the way to transitioning their national auto fleet.

Electrek:

Electric vehicles fail at a lower rate than gas-powered cars in the extreme cold, according to a road assistance service in Norway.

Electric vehicles often get bad press about their performance in the cold. Just yesterday, we reported on dead Tesla vehicles piling up at supercharger stations across Chicago.

It now looks like the extreme cold conditions have affected the chargers themselves rather than the vehicles, according to local sources.

But it mainly gets attention because it’s a new technology and it fails for different reasons than gasoline vehicles in the cold.

Now, we get actual data comparing failure rates of EVs versus ICE cars thanks to our friends in Norway.

Everywhere in the world, internal combustion engine vehicles fail in the cold a lot more often than electric vehicles, but that’s mostly due to the fact that there are a lot more of them.

In Norway, almost 1 in 4 cars on the road is electric, which makes it easy to adjust per capita.

Teslarati:

According to a local media outlet, car insurance companies and car recovery services in Norway have been busy with the issues arising from the frigid cold weather this winter. In the first 14 days of January, Norway experienced temperatures between -7 °F (-21.7°C) and -2 °F (-18.9°C).

In 2024, so far, most Viking missions relate to vehicles with battery problems or drivers having trouble starting their cars. Setrom noted that 13% of starting difficulties are linked to electric cars, while 87% are from fossil fuel vehicles. He added that 23% of the cars on Norwegian roads are EVs.

Tesla was the top-selling automaker in Norway three years in a row. It holds an overall market share of 20% in Norway.

The Tesla Model Y was the best-selling car model in Norway last year, followed by Volkswagen’s ID.4. Tesla sold 23,088 Model Y units in Norway in 2023. The Volkswagen sold 6,614 ID.4 units.

Dr Richard Pence in Electrek:

I’ve been driving Teslas for over 10 years, since they were introduced. The problem with very cold batteries is that they don’t like taking a charge or won’t take a charge. The solution with Teslas is to precondition the battery prior to charging. When I’m heading to a super , I’ll tell my navigation which one I’m going to, and it will, in cold weather, say ‘starting battery conditioning’. Then I arrive at the supercharger with a warm enough battery to charge. New adopters of EV‘s will also realize regenerative breaking doesn’t work in very cold weather for the same reason.

Look for another post soon where I will discuss new sodium ion battery technologies that are already being implemented in the industry, and include among their advantages lower price, good performance in cold weather, and zero fire risk compared to lithium based batteries.

ARPA Drives New Tech for Undergrounding Grid

Huge impact if it works.

Involves worms.

Utility Dive:

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $34 million in funding to support a dozen projects focused on improving the nation’s power resilience by moving some grid infrastructure underground.

The projects span 11 states, and are being developed by small and large businesses, national labs, and universities. They are being funded through the Grid Overhaul with Proactive, High-speed Undergrounding for Reliability, Resilience, and Security program — aptly known as GOPHURRS — and managed by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

Projects include multiple worm-inspired digging approaches, an artificial intelligence and aerial drone solution, ground penetrating radar and advances in cable deployment and splicing.

Under the Arctic Air

You may have heard there’s a weather system impacting North America in the last few days.
This is what it looks like under my tiny sliver in the middle of Michigan.

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands were out of power, including everyone on the other side of my street – for 30 hours or so.

There was some wind, but what really hammered the trees around here was, the first 3-4 inches of snow were heavy and wet, and when the temps dropped, it set up like cement on the tree branches. If we get another strong wind, I’m worried there will be more limbs coming down on transmission lines, roads, and cars.
Looking like the rest of this week in deep freeze.

Solar Panels Attract Tornadoes, and Other Facebook Wisdom

In rural Carrol County, Indiana last week, I happened to listen in briefly on remarks at a County Commission meeting discussing wind and solar energy.
As familiar as I am with the entire range of bogus anti-clean energy talking points, I did hear a new one.

“Solar panels attract tornadoes.”

Kicked that around with some of my companions and everyone agreed that was a new one.

Well, this week I may have stumbled on the source. A good friend, centennial farmer and proud wind turbine host called me and asked me to take a look at a facebook posting about solar energy. He said the author claimed to be some kind of expert, and my friend did not feel well versed enough to respond.
This is what he passed along.

Facebook:

As more & more counties get more solar farms…here’s some truth about solar farms.

From a STEPHENVILLE resident, George Franklin:

I should start by telling you what bonafides I have for writing this. I am a retired aerospace engineer. A literal rocket scientist if you will. I worked on MX (Peacekeeper) Space Shuttle, Hubble, Brilliant Pebbles, PACOSS, Space Station, MMU, B2, the Sultan of Brunei’s half billion dollar private 747 with crystal showers, gold sinks and 100 dollar a yard coiffed silk carpets. I designed a satphone installation on prince Jeffry’s 757. I did all of the design work for the structure of Mark 1V propulsion module currently flying on at least 3 spacecraft that I know of. Some of the more exciting projects I have worked on are not shareable. My personal projects include a spin fishing reel with a 4.5 inch spool which is entirely my own designed, machined and assembled. It has 2 features that are patentable. A unique true flat level wind and a unique line pickup mechanism. I am also am FAA certified glider pilot and FAI certified gold glider pilot. I fly both full scale and model sailplanes. I am Microsoft certified and ComTIA A+ certified.

Solar panels are at best about 20% efficient. They convert almost 0% of the UV light that hits them. None of the visible spectrum and only some of the IR spectrum. At the same time as they are absorbing light they are absorbing heat from the sun. This absorbed heat is radiated into the adjacent atmosphere. It should be obvious what happens next. When air is warmed it rises. Even small differences in ordinary land surfaces are capable of creating powerful forces of weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes. These weather phenomena are initiated and reinforced by land features as they are blown downwind. It is all too obvious to me what will happen with the heat generated by an entire solar farm. Solar farms will become thunderstorm and tornado incubators and magnets.

Solar panels are dark and and they emit energy to the space above them when they are not being radiated. This is known as black-body radiation. Satellites flying in space use this phenomenon to cool internal components. If they didn’t do this they would fry themselves.

So solar farms not only produce more heat in summer than the original land that they were installed on, but they also produce more cooling in winter, thus exacerbating weather extremes.

So I conclude with this. There is nothing green about green energy except the dirty money flowing into corrupt pockets.

There is no such thing as green energy. The science doesn’t exist. The technology doesn’t exist. The engineering doesn’t exist. We are being pushed to save the planet with solutions that are worse than the problems.
———

Well alrighty then. But, as Samuel L. Jackson said, allow me to retort…

Peter Sinclair on Facebook:

Who’s Trying to Kill the Electric Car – Again?

Part of the fossil industry’s full court press to hold off the transition is a massive propaganda campaign against EVs.
We have been inundated with breathless headlines like the Wall Street Journal’s recent “EVs Losing Momentum” , where I learned that EV sales in November were “only” up 42 percent from the previous year.

The campaign has, weirdly, been very intense in the precisely those areas where the most jobs depend on a healthy auto industry and a successful transition to the EV future.
The question is urgent because for more than a decade, GM has sold more cars in China than in the US. A recent Detroit Free Press story shows that 2023 was the first year since 2009 that the company sold more cars in the US. It’s relevant that prospective buyers in China an overwhelming (69 percent) expect to purchase EV or hybrid vehicles. The same survey showed that a global tipping point has been reached with a 52 percent majority of buyers internationally expecting to purchase an electric or hybrid.
It seems shortsighted to be sabotaging an industry that is so important to the future, but not without precedent. It’s worth reviewing the trailer above for 2006’s “Who Killed the Electric Car” and considering where GM would be today if it had kept investing in the technology that it pioneered in the 90s.
In comparison, Toyota introduced the Prius hybrid in the 90s as a niche-marketed attempt at a practical, low emission vehicle, and stuck with it long enough to create the most successful hybrid vehicle, and one of the best selling cars of any type over the last 20 years.
Meanwhile, BMW has announced that, at least for them, a tipping point has been crossed in the EV transition, where they feel most of their future growth will be in the EV space.

Electrek:

BMW has crossed the “tipping point” as the automaker shifts from gas-powered vehicles to EVs. According to BMW’s CFO, from here on out, most of its growth will come from electric vehicles.