Issue No7: The World Needs to Quickly Stop Using Fossil Fuels…Not So Fast!
This is NOT an article making any claims about the presence or lack there-of global warming. Rather, it’s focus is on the pace and energy producing options being pursued. And, I have never been employed or consulted with any fossil fuel companies.
Last year I published a 6-part series titled, The World Needs to Quickly Stop Using Fossil Fuels…Not So Fast! that explored the same subject in detail. Here’s my original first installment and this article is a continuation of my series.
After Al Gore’s failed 1988 presidential campaign, he returned to the Senate and invited James Hansen, a former NASA scientist with a Ph.D in physics and a B.A. in astronomy, to testify to Congress about global warming. In 1988, warming wasn’t a public concerns because only a few years before we warned about a coming global cooling event. His testimony massively raised the public and political awareness of warming. It’s not a stretch to describe Hansen as American first global warming alarmist.
Twenty years later, Hansen continued to heap praise on Gore and his recently released An Inconvenient Truth, a 2006 apocalyptic documentary, stating that it was “a coherent account of a complex topic that Americans desperately need to understand.”
Fast forward 5 years later, this same renowned climate expert summarized the findings of his most recent climate analysis stating, “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” Hansen concluded saying that renewables were “grossly inadequate for our energy needs now and in the foreseeable future.”
Gore remains steadfast in his advocacy for weather-dependent wind and solar energy as the best options that should replace carbon-emitting fuels. In 2021, he states that “…90% of new electricity generation facilities installed worldwide are almost all from solar and wind”. Note the word facilities versus the word power. A new wind turbine or a new coal burning furnace or nuclear reactor are examples of facilities. But the resulting power output of a wind turbine is a miniscule versus a new power plant. Gore hasn’t lost his politicians skill for misleading and intentional exaggeration.
So, is Hansen correct about renewables? According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US government’s energy data collection agency and the best unbiased score keeper in the energy sector, says he’s spot on. As the chart below indicates, hydropower is correctly defined as a renewable source, but it’s been around for over a 100 years. So, removing it and adjusting for just newer renewables, they accounted for 11% of total power generation in 2022.
Here’s the same chart for 2010. Again, adjusting for just newer renewables, they represented roughly 6% the power generation. So, renewables are making good progress, but 12 years later non-renewables still represent roughly 90% of US power generation. So, Hansen is correct.
Mark Mills, is a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. In 2016, he was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society, an organization with zero political ties. This honor is considered the premier literary award for the energy sector.
This compelling YouTube video published by conservative Prager University and hosted by Mills confirms James Hansen’s opinion. He states “contrary to headlines claiming that we’re rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels, it’s just not happening. Two decades and five trillion dollars of governments “investing” in green energy and we’ve barely moved the needle”. The speaker’s expertise and credentials deserve 5-minutes of any objective thinker’s time on this important issue.
Once again, based on both Hansen’s and Mill’s comments about the reliance on an all-renewables strategy, Gore and many renwable energy proponents are dead wrong. Based on 2021 EIA projections, global energy demand will increase nearly 50% compared to 2050. No competent decision maker would settle for anything but 24/7 reliable and inexpensive energy options with this kind of forecasted growth. As the chart indicates below, the EIA global projection indicates a doubling of renewables in the total mix of energy options, but fossil fuels still account for roughly 65% of the total in 2050.
Not unlike traditional energy sources, renewables have numerous Achilles’ heels too. Wind and solar are both weather dependent and therefor unreliable compared to existing options. According to NikkeiAsia, a major Japan-based English-language weekly news magazine focused on Asia, 60% of the globally installed wind turbines in 2022 are manufactured in China. And finally, According to CNBC, each installed turbine requires on average 80 gallons of a specific synthetic oil-based lubricant annually. Wind and solar should be expanded sensibly as a coexistent energy player, but not as THE strategy. This chart illustrates global energy consumption for the last 20+ years and only coal is showing a slight downturn. The reported downturn of fossil fuels is simply not true based on the latest EIA data.
Steven E. Koonin’s 2021 best-seller Unsettled is a provocative must-read for anyone seeking a balanced understanding of climate change. The author is a theoretical physicist and has impeccable credentials including:
Academia: a Ph.D from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), served for 9 years as the provost at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) which is consistently ranked within the top 10 universities in the world. He’s a former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University (NYU). He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering.
Business: BP’s chief scientist for 5 years.
Politics: Under Secretary for Science in the Obama administration.
He’s also been intimately involved for many years with United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC), the 180+ country multi-national group that is at the center of measuring and advocating about global warming issues. He describes in detail their decision making and data publishing process.
His opinions on climate change began to shift away from the prevailing consensus around 2015. He wondered why there was such strong pushback from global warming advocates in academia when something as benign as suggesting the application of the long-accepted scientific method for questioning their conclusions. In his opinion, their resistance disregarded professional research behavior and could be better described as tribelike religious zealotry. Hence, the publishing of his book.
Koonin completely agrees with Hansen and Mills regarding our current “shoot yourself in the foot” ill-conceived approach to energy planning. One of his amusing anecdotes deals with a 2013 National Geographic lead story titled “Rising Seas — How They Are Changing Our Coastline’s”. He states, “Any curious reader could’ve consulted the record of the tide gauge at The Battery at the tip of Manhattan (less than 2 miles from the statue) and seen that the sea level there has been rising at an average rate of about 1 foot per century since 1855 and a quick calculation would show that, at that rate, it would take more than 20,000 years for the water to reach the level shown menacing poor Lady Liberty”. Unfortunately, this kind of gross exaggeration is a common media tactic.
One final example of why we need to lower the hostility directed at the fossil fuel companies: Electric vehicles (EV) are a great innovation. They represent roughly 6% of the 2022 US vehicle market. However, the electricity they require is created from fossil fuels.
The chart below shows a typical long-term projection for the US for different approaches to producing an EV that implies a 30% EV market share by 2030. Conversely, this also implies that 70% of US vehicles will continue to require fossil fuels after 2030.
We need an energy strategy that recognizes the vital role of the fossil fuel companies. Like it or not, we remain and will remain very dependent on their products for decades. It also best serves our mutual interests to have a secure and domestic source for their products.
The Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy can’t solve problems. And, neither can politicians that possess old-time American prairie revivalist's skills designed to get your money for promises that can’t possibly be delivered. Today’s revivalist just wants your vote for unfulfillable promises.
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