First word
JUST when I feared that the debate between climate fanatics-alarmists and climate skeptics-deniers could turn into a fruitless war of attrition, there now comes news and signs that this fight may be coming to an end.
The news from the front is not good for the climate fanatics and green energy lobby. Greta Thunberg and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be depressed.
Local green propagandists will be enraged.
Waning enthusiasm
Five reports on recent developments are particularly pointed. The enthusiasm for "green" products is collapsing, and the production of such energy is becoming disastrously unprofitable.
First, an article on the Real Clear Markets website on Nov. 7, 2023, entitled "October 2023: The month the net zero dream died." The article by Adam Shepard summarized the many recent developments that point to the collapse of net zero decarbonization and the green dream.
Second, a report on Oct. 12, 2023, by the same Adam Shepard on the German state elections, which he said "sounded the death knell for decarbonization."
"In German state-level elections in Bavaria and Hesse, conservative parties that oppose Germany's long drift into decarbonized economic development won, collectively, smashing victories. In Bavaria — a fairly important German electorate — three conservative parties collectively won about two-thirds of the vote. All of them oppose the decarbonization agenda, with the ruling Conservatives — who under Mutti Merkel had signed up for national decarbicide — having turned around entirely: it rightly labeled the Green party an enemy — of the Conservatives and of the German people. The remaining major parties, all of which are members of the current national coalition government, shared the remnant shards of the vote. The results were slightly less dramatic in Hesse, as there was one fewer conservative party on the ballot, but the message remained clear...
"The decarbonization of the world, or even Western economies, just isn't going to happen. Probably ever. And everything will be fine."
Third, "Auto execs are coming clean: Electric vehicles aren't working," a report by Alexa St. John and Nora Naughton (Oct. 27, 2023), that automobile executives are pulling back on their EV targets.
With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term.
Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market's growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.
Among those hand-wringing is GM's Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry's most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles.
In scrapping plans with GM to co-develop sub-$30,000 EVs, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said the shifting EV environment was difficult to gauge.
"After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment, we are ending development of an affordable EV," Mibe said in an interview with Bloomberg this week.
"People are finally seeing reality," Toyota Motor chairman Akio Toyoda said at the Japan Mobility Show, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Finally, on Nov.7, 2023, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a lengthy report on what is known as the "dead ocean" threat with a focus on the Nantucket region, specifically what is called the Nantucket shoals. This is a major feeding ground for the desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. It is really a good case study for all major offshore wind installations.
The report uncovers something strange but true. The physics is technical, but the basic idea is simple. Wind turbines take a lot of the energy out of the air, creating a lower energy wake behind the wind turbine facility. Lower energy wind causes lower energy waves, so there is much less mixing in the ocean surface layer. This depletes the oxygen level in the water, which can reduce the amount of living food sources that whales eat, which can harm the whales on a population level. This is why it is called the dead ocean effect.
Obituary on net zero
Shepard's November 7 article in the Real Clear Markets website amounted to an obituary on the net zero dream. He summarized the various developments that point overwhelmingly to the collapse or failure of the net zero or green energy dream. He wrote:
"A few weeks ago, I reported on state elections in Germany that signaled that Western polities — even in Germany, where the phantasm has held greatest sway — had given up on the idea of the green warriors' dream of a net-zero future and weren't willing to pay the immense costs of chasing after unicorn-powered windmills.
"Confirmation of this conclusion poured in throughout the rest of the month.
"Industry has begun to recognize that investments in a 'net-zero' future are not the path to 'doing well by doing good.' The electric vehicle market has collapsed, and car companies are retrenching. Mercedes-Benz's CFO predicted a constrained and shrinking market as that company found it impossible to unload stock even at steep discounts. At home, GM had junked a joint venture with Honda to try to make 'affordable' EVs, delayed the opening of an EV truck plant, abandoned its EV manufacturing targets, and has offered no forecast of when those targets might be met. Ford has stopped sending out EV trucks to dealerships after some refused to accept new shipments, given how many unsellable versions they already had in stock, and will renumber the unsold remainders as 2024 models.
"Toyota's chairman Akio Toyoda, who has long had a clearer vision about the risks and dangers of EVs than his peers, rightly took a discreet bow, noting that other "people are finally seeing reality.
"That reality has struck 'green' energy producers as well. Denmark's Orsted abandoned two offshore wind farm projects after losing $5.6 billion on them. Profits at China's chief wind turbine manufacturer have dropped by 98 percent. Siemens Energy stock has fallen to its lowest-ever level as it turns out that its products, pushed by political schedules rather than technological and economic reality, don't work properly.
"Solar energy companies are facing similar revenue and profit plunges.
"Neither the production of 'green' energy products nor the provision of the energy itself — which is just as harmful to the environment as traditional energy — would have limped along this long without massive government subsidies. Orsted's last hope for keeping its projects viable was to convince Washington to treat it as a domestic producer, entitling it to 50-percent subsidies instead of the still massive subsidies that foreign producers receive. A recent Texas Public Policy Foundation study reveals that the full cost of powering an EV over 10 years is the equivalent of $17.33/gallon. The figure cited by EV boosters of a gas equivalent of $1.21/gallon fails to take into account all of the various subsidies provided by governments, other electric-grid ratepayers, and other auto purchasers — a total of the equivalent of $16.12/gallon over the whole of those 10 years of operation, for a total of nearly $47,000 per car. And the Biden administration has recently admitted that 'renewable' energy receives massively greater subsidies than its reliable-energy counterparts.
"This largesse cannot last forever, though. Rising interest rates will cut significantly into federal revenues, requiring cuts to luxury goods like boutique energy subsidies — and that's even if Republicans in the House were willing to continue such indiscriminate bounty. They likely are not, given that even New York has begun to reject requests for additional dosh in pursuit of the net-zero chimera.
"If interest in 'green' products is collapsing and the production of such energy is proving disastrously unprofitable, even with the provision of massive subsidies, imagine their future when those subsidies begin to be reduced, and perhaps — as will surely happen the next time there's a significant change of power in Washington — broadly curtailed. Then consider that all of this is unfolding in an effort to provide, in total, 10 percent of the world's energy in such forms.
"The verdict is undeniable to objective observers: the net-zero dream is nothing more than a mirage. An immensely costly and increasingly indefensible mirage.
"This doesn't mean, of course, that there will never be any partial, and profitable, shift away from current technologies and power provision. Of course, there will be. The market for hybrid autos is still vibrant (though query where those sales figures would be without their own subsidies). The simple, undeniable truth, though, is that the great public-private push to force the adoption of new and unreliable technologies before they have been proven by the free market to be technologically and economically feasible has failed. It has failed completely."
PH policy review
Given these developments in Europe and the US, our government should conduct a review of its own policies and tentative actions in support of the UN's climate change agenda.
Our climate change commission will now be hard put to justify its existence or its continued funding. All junkets to UN climate conferences should be ruled out.
JUST when I feared that the debate between climate fanatics-alarmists and climate skeptics-deniers could turn into a fruitless war of attrition, there now comes news and signs that this fight may be coming to an end.
The news from the front is not good for the climate fanatics and green energy lobby. Greta Thunberg and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be depressed.
Local green propagandists will be enraged.
Waning enthusiasm
Five reports on recent developments are particularly pointed. The enthusiasm for "green" products is collapsing, and the production of such energy is becoming disastrously unprofitable.
First, an article on the Real Clear Markets website on Nov. 7, 2023, entitled "October 2023: The month the net zero dream died." The article by Adam Shepard summarized the many recent developments that point to the collapse of net zero decarbonization and the green dream.
Second, a report on Oct. 12, 2023, by the same Adam Shepard on the German state elections, which he said "sounded the death knell for decarbonization."
"In German state-level elections in Bavaria and Hesse, conservative parties that oppose Germany's long drift into decarbonized economic development won, collectively, smashing victories. In Bavaria — a fairly important German electorate — three conservative parties collectively won about two-thirds of the vote. All of them oppose the decarbonization agenda, with the ruling Conservatives — who under Mutti Merkel had signed up for national decarbicide — having turned around entirely: it rightly labeled the Green party an enemy — of the Conservatives and of the German people. The remaining major parties, all of which are members of the current national coalition government, shared the remnant shards of the vote. The results were slightly less dramatic in Hesse, as there was one fewer conservative party on the ballot, but the message remained clear...
"The decarbonization of the world, or even Western economies, just isn't going to happen. Probably ever. And everything will be fine."
Third, "Auto execs are coming clean: Electric vehicles aren't working," a report by Alexa St. John and Nora Naughton (Oct. 27, 2023), that automobile executives are pulling back on their EV targets.
With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term.
Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market's growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.
Among those hand-wringing is GM's Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry's most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles.
In scrapping plans with GM to co-develop sub-$30,000 EVs, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said the shifting EV environment was difficult to gauge.
"After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment, we are ending development of an affordable EV," Mibe said in an interview with Bloomberg this week.
"People are finally seeing reality," Toyota Motor chairman Akio Toyoda said at the Japan Mobility Show, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Finally, on Nov.7, 2023, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a lengthy report on what is known as the "dead ocean" threat with a focus on the Nantucket region, specifically what is called the Nantucket shoals. This is a major feeding ground for the desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. It is really a good case study for all major offshore wind installations.
The report uncovers something strange but true. The physics is technical, but the basic idea is simple. Wind turbines take a lot of the energy out of the air, creating a lower energy wake behind the wind turbine facility. Lower energy wind causes lower energy waves, so there is much less mixing in the ocean surface layer. This depletes the oxygen level in the water, which can reduce the amount of living food sources that whales eat, which can harm the whales on a population level. This is why it is called the dead ocean effect.
Obituary on net zero
Shepard's November 7 article in the Real Clear Markets website amounted to an obituary on the net zero dream. He summarized the various developments that point overwhelmingly to the collapse or failure of the net zero or green energy dream. He wrote:
"A few weeks ago, I reported on state elections in Germany that signaled that Western polities — even in Germany, where the phantasm has held greatest sway — had given up on the idea of the green warriors' dream of a net-zero future and weren't willing to pay the immense costs of chasing after unicorn-powered windmills.
"Confirmation of this conclusion poured in throughout the rest of the month.
"Industry has begun to recognize that investments in a 'net-zero' future are not the path to 'doing well by doing good.' The electric vehicle market has collapsed, and car companies are retrenching. Mercedes-Benz's CFO predicted a constrained and shrinking market as that company found it impossible to unload stock even at steep discounts. At home, GM had junked a joint venture with Honda to try to make 'affordable' EVs, delayed the opening of an EV truck plant, abandoned its EV manufacturing targets, and has offered no forecast of when those targets might be met. Ford has stopped sending out EV trucks to dealerships after some refused to accept new shipments, given how many unsellable versions they already had in stock, and will renumber the unsold remainders as 2024 models.
"Toyota's chairman Akio Toyoda, who has long had a clearer vision about the risks and dangers of EVs than his peers, rightly took a discreet bow, noting that other "people are finally seeing reality.
"That reality has struck 'green' energy producers as well. Denmark's Orsted abandoned two offshore wind farm projects after losing $5.6 billion on them. Profits at China's chief wind turbine manufacturer have dropped by 98 percent. Siemens Energy stock has fallen to its lowest-ever level as it turns out that its products, pushed by political schedules rather than technological and economic reality, don't work properly.
"Solar energy companies are facing similar revenue and profit plunges.
"Neither the production of 'green' energy products nor the provision of the energy itself — which is just as harmful to the environment as traditional energy — would have limped along this long without massive government subsidies. Orsted's last hope for keeping its projects viable was to convince Washington to treat it as a domestic producer, entitling it to 50-percent subsidies instead of the still massive subsidies that foreign producers receive. A recent Texas Public Policy Foundation study reveals that the full cost of powering an EV over 10 years is the equivalent of $17.33/gallon. The figure cited by EV boosters of a gas equivalent of $1.21/gallon fails to take into account all of the various subsidies provided by governments, other electric-grid ratepayers, and other auto purchasers — a total of the equivalent of $16.12/gallon over the whole of those 10 years of operation, for a total of nearly $47,000 per car. And the Biden administration has recently admitted that 'renewable' energy receives massively greater subsidies than its reliable-energy counterparts.
"This largesse cannot last forever, though. Rising interest rates will cut significantly into federal revenues, requiring cuts to luxury goods like boutique energy subsidies — and that's even if Republicans in the House were willing to continue such indiscriminate bounty. They likely are not, given that even New York has begun to reject requests for additional dosh in pursuit of the net-zero chimera.
"If interest in 'green' products is collapsing and the production of such energy is proving disastrously unprofitable, even with the provision of massive subsidies, imagine their future when those subsidies begin to be reduced, and perhaps — as will surely happen the next time there's a significant change of power in Washington — broadly curtailed. Then consider that all of this is unfolding in an effort to provide, in total, 10 percent of the world's energy in such forms.
"The verdict is undeniable to objective observers: the net-zero dream is nothing more than a mirage. An immensely costly and increasingly indefensible mirage.
"This doesn't mean, of course, that there will never be any partial, and profitable, shift away from current technologies and power provision. Of course, there will be. The market for hybrid autos is still vibrant (though query where those sales figures would be without their own subsidies). The simple, undeniable truth, though, is that the great public-private push to force the adoption of new and unreliable technologies before they have been proven by the free market to be technologically and economically feasible has failed. It has failed completely."
PH policy review
Given these developments in Europe and the US, our government should conduct a review of its own policies and tentative actions in support of the UN's climate change agenda.
Our climate change commission will now be hard put to justify its existence or its continued funding. All junkets to UN climate conferences should be ruled out.