Reality bites the green energy agenda
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November 28, 2023
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First word
WHILE UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other promoters of the climate emergency are preparing to convene the 28th conference of the parties (COP28) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the United Arab Emirates, starting on November 30 and stretching to December 12, the negative news about the climate program and the longed-for green energy transition continue to pile up and haunt the forthcoming climate powwow.
Fox News network has dealt a devastating blow with a report by policy analyst Kristen Walker on November 21 entitled, "The slow demise of green energy; the wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon."
The Issues & Insights website, in turn, has published an editorial entitled, "The latest on global warming ... there is no global warming."
Ms. Walker reported:
"The wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon. The rose-colored glasses are clearing up, and reality is sinking in.
The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs) and investments.
Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month when the world's largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects off the New Jersey coastline, taking the wind right out of Gov. Phil Murphy's green energy sails. Ørsted is also suspending work on offshore projects in Maryland and Delaware.
Among the wave of cancellations are projects in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut. Several other projects are on the ropes, and a host of companies are paying millions to break their contracts.
The industry hit another snag recently when Germany-based Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy pulled the plug on its wind turbine blade facility in Portsmouth, ******ia. Siemens Gamesa, one of the world's leading suppliers, says, 'development milestones to establish the facility could not be met.'
According to Bloomberg NEF, at least half of US wind contracts are at risk of being terminated. The causes are typically due to skyrocketing inflation, high-interest rates, choked supply chains and financial troubles.
EV losing steam
The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production.
Ford Motor Company stands to lose $4.5 billion on its EV business for 2023 and will be delaying many of its EV investments.
General Motors said it was restructuring EV goals, Honda shelved plans to develop affordable EVs with GM, and Hertz said it would slow their rate of purchasing them due to high repair costs. Elon Musk is even considering putting off plans for a $1 billion plant in Mexico.
Most, if not all, manufacturers are reporting major losses per EV sold. Ford lost $62,000 per vehicle in the third quarter; one luxury electric vehicle company lost an astounding $430,000. Countless others are losing tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, quarter after quarter.
Car dealers are slashing EV prices. EVs sit on lots nearly twice as long as internal combustion engines. Even industry leader Tesla has been shaving thousands off their retail prices due to unmet sales expectations.
This kind of loss is not sustainable for any company.
The Economist says the EV market could become the next big flop.
The EV market is niche. Those who want one have one. But the rest of America is not convinced they would be better off with an EV on account of a multitude of reliability factors. Nor can they afford the steep price tag.
Consequently, the last few months have seen stock prices drastically dropping in companies across the green spectrum. From wind to solar to EVs to fuel cells, investors are abandoning the 'green' energy ship in droves. It might be sinking.
Siemens Energy stock is down 45 percent; Ørsted, 67 percent; Power Inc., a hydrogen fuel cell producer, 71 percent; Charge Point Holdings Inc., an EV charging company, 70 percent; Blink Charging Co., another EV charging company, 72 percent; and Nikola Corp., maker of heavy-duty EVs, has gone from $65 a share in mid-2020 to the current price of less than $1 per share.
We need to read between the lines here. The green energy revolution is not working, nor is central planning. You cannot force Americans to buy cars they don't want any more than you can force energy transitions that aren't viable.
Green energy is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of all Americans and, turns out, is insanely expensive.
The World Economic Forum says that getting to net zero by 2050 will cost an extra $3.5 trillion a year. The US has already poured hundreds of billions into the effort and continues to keep shoveling. All on the backs of the American taxpayer, to save a mere fraction of temperature. Maybe.
Heritage Foundation's chief statistician estimates that even if all fossil fuels were eliminated from the United States, not even 0.2 degrees Celsius would be salvaged.
It's time to quit throwing other people's money into these projects and let the market dictate the solutions."
No global warming?
An Oct. 25, 2023 editorial from the Issues & Insights editorial board boldly states, "There is no global warming." It wrote:
"A new study out of Norway is exactly what was needed to shut down the climate alarmists. Its findings show that man has not set fire to his home planet.
Right from the top, in the abstract not 10 lines into the study, the authors get to the point.
'Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests,' the researchers say, 'we find that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.'
In other words, our words, the greenhouse effect is so weak that it should be sidelined as an argument.
From there, the bad news only gets worse for priests of the climate religion.
'Even if recent recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way, it is still a difficult challenge to establish how much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.'
The researchers from Statistics Norway, the government's official data agency, also address the apparent 'high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made)' while noting that 'is certainly the impression conveyed by the mass media.'
Of course, the climate zealots won't like the study. Well, they also won't like another new paper, this one from the University of Alabama in Hunstville climate scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy, who have submitted 'Urban Heat Island Effects in US Summer Surface Temperature Data, 1880-2015' to a science journal.
They believe they have demonstrated that 'not only do the homogenized ('adjusted') dataset not correct for the effect of the urban heat island (UHI) on temperature trends, the adjusted data appear to have even stronger UHI signatures than in the raw (unadjusted) data.'
According to Spencer, 'the bottom line is that an estimated 22 percent of the US warming trend, 1895 to 2023, is due to localized UHI effects,' and that 'the effect is much larger in urban locations.'
In other words, our words, the temperature record we're expected to accept without question is a sham — an argument we've been making for more than 20 years.
After so many decades, we finally realize that nothing will make these people — that's right, these people — shut up. They will continue swearing that every weather anomaly is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and go on recalculating their end-of-the-world schedules — in the same way that doomsday cults swear that they just got the day of doom wrong and then double down on the loco. For this, we will be all the poorer, financially and even intellectually."
