I have a skeptical view of scientific fundamentalism that refuses to entertain, discuss, or seriously examine heretical or novel views.I completely agree but at some point "society" needs to move forward with decisions and actions; we can't freely debate climate science decade after decade while doing nothing simply because we reject the idea of science being "settled". Scientists have been studying this for decades and I think the evidence is pretty clear that the world is warming. I'm not sure how people can seriously debate if humanity is the main factor contributing to changing the environment (which is warming), when we are drastically altering CO2 concentration, one of the main demonstrated greenhouse gases; and altering every biome on the planet, which is the main cycling mechanism for carbon on a yearly basis. It's like these people have no understanding of how systems work. When you drastically change the inputs and components of the system, it behaves differently!! Not rocket science. I guess maybe they have a quasi-religious view that the planet is just too large and powerful, operating on its own set of rules that we could never be large enough to influence; surely this view is a hangover from the Middle Ages when people believed the Earth was the centre of the universe. The historical record proves otherwise. The planet generally moves from one "equilibrium" to the next; the shifts happening when certain atmospheric and other forcing events push it over tipping points. What happened to the precautionary principle? If the planet suits us in its current form, then don't significantly change the composition of the atmosphere and wonder why the environment is changing!! Having said all that, I think the climate debate is now a moot point; CO2 is going to continue to be pumped out until there is nothing left in the ground with a reasonable EROEI. Alternative energy cannot take up the slack and emits its own CO2. Our economies cannot function without maximizing resource consumption. There's already too much CO2 out there; the time to take action was in the 70's and "we" decided not to. Our fate is sealed. "Climate change" is now being promoted as an issue just like the "Covid crisis" as a boogyman for the elites to justify instituting radical changes that benefit them and screw everyone else.
“The warming of the climate is not a straight line progression - not in the real world. It is possible to think the climate is warming over the long horizon and recognize the evidence for a short-horizon cooling period.”
One thing that seems to be happening is what was described in an earlier reply - changes to the jet stream which is resulting in more variability and some “stuck patterns”. So while the planet as a whole is warming, it’s possible that certain regions are tending to have cooler summers because the “normal” patterns in the jet stream have been altered. So it might be averaging 5 deg above normal in northern Canada but say 2-3 deg below normal in New England because of a change in the normal jet stream pattern. Overall warmer but for those of you in New England, it may not seem that way.
There are patterns on top of patterns on top of patterns in the atmosphere. Things like El Nino which tend to come in cycles, these influence weather patterns in the midlatitudes. There are other internal oscillations that have periods of years or decades. Under “normal” conditions these interact in highly unpredictable ways, which can lead to long periods (months or even years) of colder or warmer weather in a particular region. Then you throw overall global warming (which is stronger at the poles) into the mix and that just adds another huge variable that complicates everything.
Eventually there may be disruptions to ocean currents that would add another layer of complexity. Already we are seeing massive warm pools in various parts of the oceans. These not only impact the ecosystem (plankton, fish, corals etc) but they also drive atmospheric circulation patterns.
I’ve never come across this site (below) before and I’ve never seen anyone here reference him. He writes about Energy, Environment and Economy plus Society and seems to be on our same wave length. Take a look.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/02/19/texas-trip/
....The physics behind what happened in Texas this week are almost identical to those which caused Britain’s power outage in August 2019 – only the type of bad weather was different. Stable grid frequency is what allows us to plug electrical appliances into the system without frying them. It is also what prevents the components of the grid from irreparable damage. In the UK, the grid operates at a frequency of 50 Hz – in the USA it is 60 Hz – with a margin of no more than 0.5 Hz either side. In traditional – fossil fuel and nuclear – systems, grid frequency is backed up by inertia – the massive steel turbines acting like flywheels to iron out any second-by-second fluctuations. Non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) like wind turbines and solar panels do not have this in-built protection, and so depend upon energy storage, nuclear baseload and fossil fuel back-up to avoid a dangerous loss of frequency. And the higher the proportion of NRREHTs added to the grid, the greater the chance of a frequency failure. In both the UK and Texas, it was the failure of backup following a weather-related interruption of wind generation which triggered the cascading power outage across the grid.
In this sense, both the political left and right are partially correct in their view of what went wrong. In the UK a lightning strike on a large North Sea wind farm tripped an automatic safety shutdown which should have resulted in a back-up gas generator powering up. But problems with the gas generator resulted in a dangerous drop in power; triggering automated systems which began disconnecting users across the eastern half of the UK. In similar fashion, as snow, ice and freezing temperatures caused wind generation to fall; automated systems in Texas should have fired up the gas back-up plants… the ones whose water intake pipes had frozen. Faced with a dangerous loss of power, the Texas system did the same thing the UK system had done – only on a much wider scale and in weather which proved far more deadly.
It is precisely for this reason that I have spent several years pointing to the folly of adding even more NRREHTs capacity to the system before appropriate storage, back-up and management systems have been put into place. It is also why the economics of electricity generation needs an urgent rethink while there is still time....
And this one:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/02/24/jevons-in-the-fall/
In the 1860s, some British economists began to wonder if the economy was about to enter a steady-state. With so much of its economic activity automated with coal-powered steam technologies, surely Britain could rest on its laurels. Instead of having to dig ever deeper to extract ever more coal – and iron, copper, limestone, etc. – Britain could coast along at its current rates of extraction.
Economist William Stanley Jevons begged to differ. In his 1865 book, The Coal Question, he correctly argued that the savings made through automation would increase demand in the economy. This demand would translate into the expansion of existing steam technologies like railways and steamships, as well as in the invention of new steam technologies. As a result, rather than curbing Britain’s appetite for coal – and other mineral resources – the application of steam technology would result in even more extraction.
This observation gave rise to “the Jevons Paradox;” that any local attempt to save energy will result in an aggregate increase in energy consumption. This was borne out more recently when, in the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s, car manufacturers worked to make their products more energy efficient. Lean burn engines, electronic ignition and computer-controlled fuel injection eventually made engines efficient. Improved suspension, better tyres and streamlined bodies cut fuel use still further. And the oil industry improved the chemistry of the fuels themselves. If we had settled for the levels of car ownership seen in the early 1970s, then the improvements would have led to a dramatic fall in demand for petrol. Instead, the savings on the cost of fuel brought car ownership to the masses. Indeed, by the early 2000s in the UK, not only was it rare not to have a car at all, but many households had two cars.
The lesson has not been wasted on ecologists concerned with the effect of burning fossil fuels on the environment. While energy-saving has a certain common sense to it – if you don’t burn the carbon then you don’t have to deal with its effects – it is likely to be counter-productive. If, for example, people’s homes were properly insulated, common sense says that they will use less electricity, gas or oil to heat and power them. The trouble is that the money they save on heating and lighting will simply be spent on alternative energy-consuming consumption instead. And so, as Jevons observed, aggregateenergy use will grow.
It is for this reason that environmental campaigners have pressed on with the futile attempt to replace fossil fuels with a combination of non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs), biofuel and nuclear. This is ill-starred, first, because our dependence on fossil fuels is so high that these “alternatives” have yet to lower our consumption; and second, because they are not truly alternatives when it comes to agriculture, mining, heavy industry and most transport, where eighty percent of fossil fuels are consumed. Indeed, even in electricity generation, NRREHTs and nuclear power come with some serious drawbacks. The intermittency of NRREHTs requires storage and back-up technologies which either don’t exist or are so prohibitively expensive that they cannot be deployed. So long as NRREHTs remained a small proportion of electricity generation, this was not a problem because fossil fuel – particularly gas – generation provided sufficient back-up. Nuclear, unfortunately, cannot provide back-up rapidly enough to overcome intermittency. But as NRREHTs became a large enough share – around 50 percent – of electricity generation, unpredictable power outages started to become an unpreventable feature of the system....
Great commentary Dr. M.
As a Texan, you totally nailed my viewpoint. This whole event was foreshadowing of our future. You can’t depend on anyone but yourself, and if you’re lucky, your neighbors.
I knew it was coming and I should have come here for advice from our more northernly members before it hit. Count on me to offer advice on hurricane prep when they come north this summer.
I thought I was prepared and God laughed.
We live in a rural community about 60mi north of Dallas, in a home built in 1900 with next-to-no insulation (because we have had other, more pressing issues requiring our $$ in the 13 years we’ve owned it). Whenever the temperatures go below 32F, we have always had to leave the taps running and open up the cabinets under the sink and run fans to circulate warmer air. This time around, we realized quickly that there was literally no way we could keep up with that kind of cold, so my husband went out to the main cutoff in the yard and shut off the water to the whole house, and we evacuated to other relatives who have much more modern digs. Thankfully, our gas lines were never disrupted, and we just left our gas space heaters running (in hopes the indoor temps might hover closer to the 20s instead of the minuses). Thank to my husband’s foresight, we only ended up losing the upstairs toilet (cracked tank) and the upstairs sink (we’re not sure why that pipe broke, but it did – and it didn’t destroy the entire house because the mains were off). From what my neighbors say, the power up here in Cooke County actually did do the rolling blackouts, on a fairly regular schedule. Down in Aledo, where I evacuated to my mom’s, we never “rolled.” We just blacked out. For two days. Even her well-insulated modern house got pretty chilly after two days in minus temps. Her gas wasn’t disrupted, so we just huddled around the gas logs in her fireplace. Her central heat is gas, but the thermostat is electric, so gas heat didn’t do us much good. She also had to boil water for a while even after the temps warmed up a little. Up here, we didn’t have to boil.
We are thankful that our house wasn’t a total loss; we are Texans, but we spent a decade living in Iowa, so we KNOW what to do when the weather gets cold. I feel terrible for the folks living in apartment buildings; they may know what to do, but they’re at the mercy of the building supers. I don’t like living at the mercy of someone else. If I’m gonna fail, I want it to be MY fault and not because I’m dependent upon another person.
the way things are going we are going to have a global climate czar soon. and a war on climate since the war on drugs went so well. greta was a featured speaker at davos. does that tell you anything?
walk into a room with 8 people and 7 of them are there solely because of fossil fuels. the entire global economy runs on fossil fuels. solar and wind don’t exist w/o fossil fuels. billions would perish w/o fossil fuels.
it is pure hubris to say we should have or even could have taken action on climate change. what would you do to keep the corn belt’s weather steady? to keep the snowpack in the sierra’s at levels sufficient for l.a.'s water and crop irrigation? humans love to think they can play god just look at bill gates.
there are too many people making too many demands on finite resources. at least that is what i glean from the crash course , which btw does not get mentioned much anymore. there was a time here when climate discussions were relegated to the controversial topics dungeon. everybody complains about the climate but nobody can do anything about it.
gail said this years ago .
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/21/ten-reasons-intermittent-renewables-wind-and-solar-pv-are-a-problem/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1131192413986592
Here’s a CNN interview I did, on how I dealt with the situation in Texas.
I was sooooo grateful to know that my basic needs were covered, due to the preparations I’ve made at Chris and Adam’s suggestions. And as Chris always says, having my preparations in place freed me up to help others.
Thank you, Chris and Adam, for your many years of advice. Following your advice has benefitted me and those around me greatly.
I live 3 States north of TX, over 600 miles away. I measured 15 inches of snow in my backyard and temp dropped to -30 below Zero. We have some of the cheapest electric rates in the country and our utilities are public owned. We have no problem with cold weather here. -30 below was not even a new record. Why were we part of rolling blackouts? Because our local utilities were part of an agreement to “share” the power under threat of $$ penalties if they didn’t comply.
Who knew? I don’t recall ever hearing from our Electric Co. about being held accountable for miss-managed corporations in other states. Agreement or not, you don’t just turn off power without notice when it is -30 below! I’m sure some people would be glad to pay instead of having the power turned off. The point is that there was no problem with the system here.
This was a planned sharing exercise like WWII rationing. Ration sugar and other plentiful items so that everyone feels the pain equally. I feel for the folks in Tx. It was tragic and was avoidable if the companies had followed the warnings from a decade ago and had been prepared. But the worst part is that people are not really in control of there own welfare because the people in control don’t care to let them know how fragile our system is.
When we saw that the temp was -30 that morning, I checked my phone for weather info. There was a banner about rolling blackouts at the university. 45 min to 1 hour long rolling blackouts in the city and around the state. Then the power went out. My wife said now what? I said get in bed and turn up the electric blanket and I turned on the large TV and we watched you-tube videos until the power came back on. I had built a small battery bank and 400 watts of solar panels last summer because I didn’t like the idea of going out and starting my generator at night or in bad weather at a moments notice. I knew how much power I had and how long I would need it so we splurged.
We have enjoyed your work at Peak Prosperity. Thanks for what you do!
Observation from an old fart; Colder than imaginable to most residents, reliance on electric heating without alternative sources, ignorance in oh so many theaters and last but by-no-means-least, a population increase in the last 12 months that defies belief by us old timers.
We had some odd lessons in resilience in the TX Deep Freeze Week, I want to share. Hopefully some of the points below may be helpful to others.
Our son’s family and my wife and I live in the northern part of the DFW area in separate residences. We each also have off-grid cabins in Northern TX, reasonably well supplied. However, we had a well at the cabins’ location where -8 degrees was forecast.
Our home did not lose power but our son’s house did. He had a small generator and a fireplace, but was lacking firewood and sufficient electric heaters.
He traveled to the cabins location in AWD vehicle, moved a small propane heater and some stored propane into the pumphouse to have a neighbor monitor and retrieved a another small propane heater, a modern kerosene heater, firewood and fuel from our cabins to bring back to his home. This enabled his family to take in a large family who was not well prepared and were going to sleep in their car!!
The “Boil Water” order included both his home and ours and that was solved because we each had ceramic water filter alternatives.
Lessons Learned:
1.To put things in perspective James 4:13 17 “Listen carefully those
who make your plans and say…”
2.Power, heat, water, Sanitation and food storage need ENDURING winterized plans in place and ready to use.
3.Kerosene heaters were extremely valuable at cabins AND at home. Have adequate supplies and know Bulk sources and your own containers.
4.Same as above for Propane.
5.In our well insulated cabins (but unheated) cabins 6 cases of canned food glass jars (that were wide mouth) froze, but did not break, but we had one suspect seal break. Swapped boxes for containers that would contain potential spills. Were not stacked high
6.Access to 4x4, AWD vehicles essential for in progress in foul weather travel.
7.Share your resources when your neighbor is in need and you can help.
8. Be flexible!
I rent in a nice neighborhood where I’d never be able to afford owning a home. Ergo, neither power nor water failed in my place. I was warm and comfortable the whole time, in a neighborhood surrounded by others deprived of heat and drinking water.
I don’t really know why, as there are no obvious essential facilities nearby. I cynically wonder how many city councilmen live in the area, in addition to my multimillionaire neighbors.
Still, in addition to luck, I managed to come out without damages, even though houses are built for the warm weather of Texas, with pipes in outer walls. I let the faucets run a trickle and monitored appliance connections, even waking up at 3:00 to run the toilets and the appliances for a few minutes.
The heating uses gas heated hot water and, due to poor insulation, it would run constantly to maintain 20°C inside. I turned the temperature down a bit to give it a break, but not by much, afraid that the water connection to the heater core would freeze.
There just is no incentive for energy efficient building. I could never understand the lack of roof overhangs and varandas to cast a shadow on the walls, the lack of plentiful attic ventilation to drain the heat out or the small windows that don’t barely allow a natural breeze in mild weather, among other passive means to mitigate the heat. Alas, homes are built to rely exclusively on energy intensive active cooling. Even cheap solar water heating is sight unseen in sunny Texas. The builders couldn’t care less about the running costs when it gets in the way of the profit margin or market competition, even though they often own whole subdivisions.
At the grim weather forecast, I restocked the pantry the week prior. If the worst had happened, I still had camping gear and dried food ready to go to keep me warm and fed. I also had water for a week, a reserve that I put in place after the city stayed for days in a water boil notice a couple of years or so ago.
However, one thing that I wasn’t prepared for was to come and go in this weather. For instance, my hiking boots were warm, but did not have good traction on ice; so I got traction spikes for it. Also, though my car had permanent AWD, the tire socks I had for my previous car didn’t fit it; then I got proper tire socks for it.
I mention this because, since I was fairing well, I offered help to friends and neighbors, but, should any of them have accepted my offer, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get to them safely.
In spite of the preparation, it was much worse than I thought. Though I expected difficulties on the roads and scarcity in the groceries, I wasn’t counting on the blackouts or the water shortage, though I was spared. Thank God I paid no price to learn these lessons, but many friends and neighbors did pay dearly. Hopefully, they learned too.
Good site.
Folks here also might like this one, one of my favorites: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
- Feb ’21 polar vortex was a severe, but not unprecedented event. The power grid should be able to handle such an event without systemic outages, as it did twice in the 1980s.
- The root cause of systemic outages was improper prioritization by ERCOT. They were still working from a script written when coal and nukes were a bigger part of the mix. They curtailed industrial facilities first just like they always have, but this time some of those facilities were producing a large percentage of gas feeding the generation plants. ERCOT’s power prioritization schedule and designation of critical facilities did not evolve to keep up with current reality.
I am trouble finding new youtube videos re covid-19 and vaccine info. The last one I saw said You Were Back! and now ur gone again. Ru still posting on You Tube or have you gone to a different site?