46 Comments
Dec 18, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

Andrew this is a sad statement of our times but as time moves along deniers are becoming believers when they themselves are touched by personal climate catastrophe. Deniers are shrinking as a group however it is up to us to move our actions faster.

Expand full comment

The number of deniers among Republicans continues to grow according to Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/474542/steady-six-say-global-warming-effects-begun.aspx . They may accept it is real but most believe is caused more by natural changes than human activities.

Expand full comment

Doesn't Texas have the greatest amount of renewable energy production? Is this really a problem? Texas is ideal for renewable energy and this is going to get built. At some point the worm will turn. Probably after the current generation of politicians die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources

Expand full comment

Mike that’s right and renewables deployment is big in Texas right now and growing. Deniers in the midst of all this don’t see it. I look at deniers as the late adopters now but they are still slowing us down.

Expand full comment
Dec 18, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

From the April 2022 Mitchell Foundation report: “The world is decarbonizing... If Texas ignores the challenge to decarbonize its economy, it may eventually face the more difficult challenge of selling carbon-intensive products to customers around the world who do not want them.”

Expand full comment
author

I’ve been saying that since 2007

Expand full comment
Dec 18, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

At the end of the proverbial day, Texas (its citizens and the pols who are in climate change denial, will be demanding that FEMA and the federal government to bail them out when the inevitable catastropheS strike. Texas, along with every other state, county and city that fails to acknowledge the existence and the existential threat that is Climate Change, will end up costing all of the rest of us (read, the federal government and its coffers) BILLIONS of dollars.

Expand full comment

I have a friend in Texas I have been imploring to leave for a couple of years now. She is not native to the area, so doesn't have deep connections anyhow. I fear for her losing power in a heat wave and becoming a victim of wet bulb temperature, which a recent Penn State study of shows to have a far lower threshold than previously assumed.

https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/stunning-wet-bulb-temperature-update

Expand full comment

So I agree with this article, but I think it dismisses a crucial point: Texas is BY FAR the leader in renewable energy in the US. On some days, 40% of the state's electricity is generated via solar or wind. Currently the national average is a tick over 13%.

(It is also home to one of the most polluted parts of the world in west Texas, which is why the state is a giant contradiction.)

So while I am no defensive Texas-type, I do think the state is clearly the national leader in renewables, regardless of the idiotic comments from its leaders.

Expand full comment

I would also add that ERCOT largely acknowledged that renewables were the only reason Texas survived the worst summer in the state's history.

Expand full comment
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023

Texas is the leader in total renewable energy production, but on a percentage basis it is well down the rankings. On an annual basis for 2022, wind and solar accounted for 26.1% of the total production. A quick survey on the web indicates it ranks around 15th, https://www.fool.com/research/renewable-energy-by-state/ . If you include hydro, it ranks even lower.

Their level of renewable penetration is primarily due to economics. To Andrew's main thesis, there is no state-level goal or policy incentive to accelerate the transition.

Expand full comment
Dec 18, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

I think the real mental disease of the human species is Narcissism. Narcissism makes human blind and let them in the fantasy mood that they are absolute, which is fake. Lol

Expand full comment
Dec 18, 2023·edited Dec 18, 2023

This is a little different take on things than the positive spin Katharine Hayhoe tried to present last month about the how the Texas climate change political environment was improving, https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/texas-the-surprising-climate-solutions . Maybe both takes can be true at the same time but I feel your take is closer to reality and the partisanship challenges facing Texas and this country when it comes to climate change.

Expand full comment
author

Katharine is Canadian, so she naturally has a more optimistic view.

Expand full comment

I felt she was understating the problem and tried to convey that sentiment in my comments. It is one thing to state that more than half of Republicans vary from cautious to alarmed about climate change but then the rest of story is that only 29% believe it is caused by human activity.

Expand full comment

Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian, the daughter of missionaries, whereas I believe we are here by accident and serve no purpose in the universe. Born during WWII, which my father and both his brothers "attended", I see western civilisation collapsing, perhaps as early as next year now Biden's blind support of Netanyahu's barbarism has handed the election to Trump.

Expand full comment

I dislike politics. No, I mean I REALLY DISLIKE POLITICS!

Damned near every lunatic that died in a war died because of a political moron making moron decisions! My only personal release from reality is I keep convincing myself I am on a training mission from another dimension!

You all need to stop screwing around and redesign those damned wind turbines to function as base load! That will bring electricity costs down 90%, local communities would generate all the electricity to disconnect from the grid, and your energy problems will be gone forever! But you are going to have to put those damned politicians in a barrel first, because the wealthy will not allow you to solve the problem otherwise!

Expand full comment

If the wind isn't blowing the turbines don't generate electricity. You cannot re-engineer that away.

Expand full comment

Are you always inclined to state the obvious? That's OK, stating what appears to be the obvious is the first step to rethinking what is not obvious! Ask questions and get those gray matter working! We will need to change the way we use wind because it is obvious using turbines to turn generators does not allow wind to function as a base load. No you will need to make changes. Like use wind to compress air, then use compressed air to generate electricity. You can drive an electrical generator with compressed air, can't you? Now the more compressed air wind turbines you build the more compressed air you will get. Need more electricity, build more turbines. You can not do that with electric wind turbines.

Whenever we knee jerk reactions with the same answers, we can never find new solutions. We need to stop saying we can't and start saying we can, or new solutions will never be found Mike!

Expand full comment

See below. As for compressing air to run turbines. Have you run the numbers? Why do you think that would work?

Wind power is obvious. So is solar (see below). Also nuclear and natural gas for as long as it is needed. Maybe also geothermal (I'll believe it when I see it). What it not needed is petroleum (phased out in the 1970's) and coal (being phased out now). This is true today, and 40 years ago when I first started to think about this stuff.

Expand full comment

You are absolutely correct.

Yes, I have run the numbers, which you obviously have not. When you do run the numbers it will become as obvious to you as it has to me.

When you have done the work let me know and we can compare conclusions.

Expand full comment

It would be interesting to know just how large an electricity grid would need to be to function with renewable generation day and night day after day with little storage.

Also, how much inconvenience consumers would tolerate in terms of using electricity when it was available not whenever they felt like it.

Expand full comment

We have an estimate. It is almost twice as big. See NetZeroAmerica, https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report . See final report summary, pg. 25.

Expand full comment

You are basing your numbers on a non-base load device. In order for wind to work properly it must function as a base load device. Which it can easily. You just have to change design to pneumatic.

Expand full comment

You don't do that with just a couple of renewables. You have a mix. For example solar produces electricity when the sun in shining. When there is a lot of sun it makes more electricity than is needed. SO maybe you use that electricity to do something else:

Water + 40 kwh electricity = 1 kg hydrogen + oxygen

Solar electricity when the sun is shining has little value, some cost estimates I have seen are 1-2 cents per kwh. At that price it works out to $3-6 per million BTU. At that price it becomes competitive with natural gas. For certain things like fertilizer manufacture, which uses natural gas to produce hydrogen used to make ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, hydrogen so generated could have an advantage. As the older generation dies off, and fees (taxes) will be assessed on energy sources with noxious side effects (i.e. climate change) natural gas prices will rise and hydrogen generated from solar will make more and more sense to produce chemicals and fuels for things that cannot be done electrically (like powering airplanes).

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm

Expand full comment

I think you are overstating the devaluation of solar. Energy system experts understand this feature. The short term solution to add value is to add batteries and meet the late day peak demand.

Expand full comment

How is batteries a short-term solution. You will always need them if you are to use solar as an electric power source. My point is if you build excess solar and link them into a low-resistance grid you can minimize the amount of time you need to use the batteries. But then you have lots of excess solar power. So use it to make fuels, because you going to need those too. Battery-powered airliners are never going to happen.

Expand full comment
Dec 20, 2023·edited Dec 20, 2023

By short term I mean available today.

I am taking exception to your statement that solar electricity has little value when the sun is shining. That is not necessarily true. 2/3 of the installations in Texas do not include batteries. It really depends on the amount of penetration. In California, where they have a lot of solar, almost all new installations include batteries.

From a systems perspective, there is a lot of room for expanding solar with and without storage before we start utilizing it to make hydrogen.

Expand full comment

In New Zealand 85% electricity is generated by hydro and geothermal (which releases some fossil carbon) but now and again we get a "dry year" and burn coal. The Labour (leftish) government commissioned a report on building a pumped hydro station at Lake Onslow which would have solved the problem (and other problems like spilling water when the reservoirs behind dams were full) but the new National government (conservative) cancelled it before the investigation was finished - for ideological reasons. Also, the prime minister and the minister of energy are fundamental Christians (extremely rare in this country) so they think differently from me.

Anyway, when I asked the authorities the very question nobody was able to answer me. Either there is an alternative to pumped hydro apart from burning coal or there is not and I would have though someone cleverer than me could do some modelling and give some numbers. But apparently not.

Expand full comment

Ember-climate.org is a good resource for finding the current share of energy production by source. Here is New Zealand, https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/australia/ . It looks like to me like solar and wind are starting to replace coal. You also use a small amount of natural gas. I'm surprised that hasn't been used more to quit coal - less than half the CO2 per MWh.

There aren't a lot of long duration energy storage options out there yet. People are working on them, long-duration batteries, hydrogen. Your problem sounds like it is seasonal and it is best met with more generation and less dependence on hydro.

Expand full comment

Yes, wind and solar is increasing but the neoliberals sold off the generators (all were state-owned), and private companies make bigger profits when electricity is short. They certainly have no interest in storage for a (non-) rainy day.

I would have thought that to (1) recommend Lake Onslow pumped hydro, or (2) cancel it, you would want to know the answer to my question:

How big does the grid have to be to deal with a dry year without burning coal? (Or wood, as also proposed.) For example, a HVDC cable to Australia? How much overbuilding of wind/solar? How much inconvenience will consumers tolerate in having outages if they insist on switching on their stoves+dishwashers+washing machines all at the same time in the evening when there is never sunshine and maybe no wind -- despite higher prices at that time?

If you are going to spend $30B (old government), or say it's a waste of money and cancel it (new government), surely you need to answer my question.

With numbers.

Expand full comment

Do the other ISOs have climate scientists on their staffs? If so, what functions do they fill? Do they do independent scientific research?

Expand full comment

Fresh off the presses in Texas:

Texas power plants have no responsibility to provide electricity in emergencies, judges rule.

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-power-plants-electricity-emergencies-court-ruling/

Expand full comment

The climate change debate really boils down to the facts that I enumerated. If those are true, and I think they are, then CO2 cannot be the principal cause of climate change. Simple logic precludes it and the fact that CO2 absorbs OLR then is not a meaningful factor.

Expand full comment

While i agree with them ignoring climate change because that is how you keep a public job in Texas, let's go up one rung on the ladder. What possible upside will there be for the current political powers when it all comes crashing down? Are they just going to move away? All of these local and world powers behave like they won't have to live here on Earth when it gets really bad. Think if the people that tell people like Cruz what to say. What's their plan? They really have a climate haven somewhere? Really? It doesn't make sense. It just doesn't. And there has to be a logical answer. What is their own personal plan. They are not stupid. If you can see it, so can they.

Expand full comment
author

My guess is that they’ve bought in to the “it won’t be that bad, we’ll adapt rhetoric.”

Expand full comment

Maybe like when I knew I needed to quit drinking, "I'm not THAT much of a drunk" lol

Expand full comment

Texas manages to keep embarrassing itself in every way imaginable.

Expand full comment

In the world of climate science, there is the science and there are beliefs. Those with strong beliefs will never, regardless of what the science is clearly telling them, change their minds. Climate alarmism has become a belief bordering on religious fervor. No science that we “Deniers” (I personally prefer Heretic) can ever present will change the mind of the Believers, but we will continue to challenge their beliefs until the science tells us different. Below are the scientific facts that directly contradict the CO2 As Control Knob hypothesis:

1. On any time scale, changes in the concentration of CO2 have been either poorly correlated with temperature (geologic time spans) or they follow temperature (millennia, centuries, decades, months). Always.

2. Changes in the amount and distribution of solar radiation reaching the earth are well correlated with changes in temperature and follow predictable multiple cycles that are evident in all paleoclimate proxy records.

3. The sun is the only meaningful source of heat input for the earth.

4. The current Modern Warm Period is not in any way unusual for an interglacial and hasn’t reached a level above previous interglacials nor has it surpassed previous highs during our present Holocene interglacial.

5. The heat-trapping ability of CO2 becomes saturated at levels below the current level and further increases can only have a minimal impact.

6. Total Solar Irradiance, the measure of the Sun’s output is at a multi-millennial high known as a Grand Solar Maximum.

7. The current warming trend, the Modern Warm Period, started at the end of the Maunder Minimum in 1700 AD when CO2 was at pre-industrial levels. CO2 didn’t begin to increase until approximately 75 years later.

8. There have been several decades long periods during the Modern Warm Period when temperatures dropped due to decreases in solar irradiance while CO2 was rising.

9. Very minor changes in the Earth’s albedo due to changes in cloud coverage have a large impact on surface temperature. Cloud cover is governed ultimately by the sun. Cloud cover is the least well understood aspect of climate modeling and has been underestimated since the early days of climate science.

Expand full comment

Why then do satellites show less heat lost by the planet Earth in the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 molecules?

Earth is warming because it is radiating less energy - energy which of course arrives as sunlight.

Consensus is not a way of doing science but it IS a consequence of doing it right. If you cannot persuade your peers then you are likely wrong, and after 2 centuries (cf Fourier 1824) I think I can say with some confidence you are deep down a rabbit hole.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

So what set that phenomenon in train?

Please cite evidence global warming is not the result of more non-condensable greenhouse gases, in particular CO2.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

ERCOT claiming El Nino is the big factor in this year's warming is absurd, because El Nino, La Nina and neutral years are all warming. 2020 and 2022 set records for warmest La Nina years.

The warmest 9 years since 1880 were the last 9 years. This year will make it 10 consecutive years.

And the last 3 were La Nina years, which is unusual. This from NASA shows how dumb denier claims are, so many of which are nothing but Slogans - "climate always changes" "CO2 is plant food" etc.

"As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years.

In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly TEN TIMES FASTER than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."

NASA Earth Observatory

-----------------------------

And the cause?

"The maximum rate of change in CO2 concentrations from the ice core records is around 100 ppm in 10,000 years, or around 1 ppm per century.

The current rate of change in CO2 concentrations is 1 ppm every 21 weeks."

NASA Climate

My simple arithmetic shows the CO2 increase now is 247 times faster.

Expand full comment