Comments on Random Subjects

Iran spends about $1 billion a year to fund terrorism, making it the number 1 funding source for terrorists.

In October, there were only 3% of Americans who did not have a job and wanted a job.  This is the lowest percentage since this statistic has been determined starting in 1994.

PG&E has cut off power in large areas of California due to high winds and claims that the damage of falling trees and limbs to their power lines and equipment can start fires.  A good part of this problem is because PG&E has put so much money into other tasks dictated by the socialist government of California instead of removing trees from the vicinity of their power lines and updating their essential distribution equipment.

Wind and solar power account for about 17.9% of all electric power generation in California now. Wind generators, which operate in the wind speed range from 6 or 7 mph to about 55 mph.  A wind speed of about 30 mph is usually the optimum power generation wind speed.  The high winds that are driving the California wildfires are also causing shut-downs of wind generators or causing them to operate at higher than optimum power generation speeds.  This may well be causing the wind generator portion of the California electricity supply to be under-performing.  To be sure, under-performing wind generation is a common problem with this intermittent, unreliable power source.

Multilateral anti-Development Banks by Paul Driessen and David Wojick

USA finances prolonged poverty, misery, disease, and death through international banks

“Foreign Operations” appropriation bills now working their way through Congress supposedly provide funding to “advance U.S. diplomatic priorities overseas,” “increase global security,” and continue “life-saving global health and humanitarian assistance programs for the world’s most vulnerable populations.”

The bills include handsome funding for the World Bank and other so-called Multilateral Development Banks: some $1.8 billion in total. The United States is by far the World Bank Group’s largest donor, and a major funder of four other MDBs: the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In recent years, these banks have embraced manmade climate change alarmism as a key foundation for their lending policies. In particular, they refuse to fund the development of electric power generation via fossil fuels – thereby starving impoverished nations and families of desperately needed electricity.

Instead, the MDBs are pouring money into solar and wind power schemes that simply cannot produce affordable, reliable electricity on a large enough scale to help raise their client countries out of poverty.

In fact, they are ramping up their green madness. The five just-named MDBs, along with the European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank, recently released a joint report on what they call “climate finance” – which last year jumped a whopping 30% – to a staggering $34 billion dollars!

With over $13 billion in its coffers, the World Bank has the lion’s share of this green oppression money. But every one of these banks has greatly increased its climate focus, some even doubling it.

That is not just appalling. It is immoral and contrary to the supposed purposes of the appropriation bills. The MDBs have become anti-development banks, anti-vulnerable people banks. Their virtue-asserting “climate finance” terminology is more accurately described as climate callousness.

These tens of billions of dollars should help support projects that provide real, affordable, dependable power for the nearly 1.2 billion people around the world who still do not have electricity. Another 2 billion have electrical power only sporadically and unpredictably. In India alone, almost as many people as live in the USA still lack electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 700 million people (the population of Europe) rarely or never have electricity, and still cook and heat with wood, charcoal, and animal dung.

Every year, hundreds of millions become ill and 5 million die of lung and intestinal diseases from inhaling pollutants from open fires, and from lack of clean water, refrigeration and bacteria-free food. Largely because their nations lack energy to power modern economies, nearly 3 billion survive on a few dollars per day, and more millions die every year from preventable or curable diseases.

But the anti-development banks simply double down on their lethal policies. Their new report asserts: “The joint methodology for tracking climate change mitigation finance recognizes the importance of long-term structural changes such as the shift in energy production to renewable energy technologies, and the modal shift to low-carbon modes of transport.”

They’ve served notice that they stopped financing coal-fired power in 2010. Now they intend to stop financing oil and gas exploration by poor countries, and instead will push for total “decarbonization.”

Just like that. Fossil fuels gone from developing nation energy funding. No discussion. No vote. No actual evidence for climate cataclysms. No recourse. Just a policy decision by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats – supported by self-serving pressure groups, politicians and “green” energy companies.

These bankers, pols and activists couldn’t even run their own operations (or their homes) on sporadic, unpredictable, 14/4/265 wind and solar power. The companies couldn’t even manufacture their wind turbines and solar panels. Yet they demand that entire developing nations accept whatever jobs, medical facilities, schools, homes and living standards can be supported by this fairy tale energy.

It is an obscene global tragedy. These MDB policies condemn billions to poverty and millions to slow, agonizing death. America should no longer support any of this. No decent country should.

Thankfully for the sidelined nations, Chinese banks have begun helping to finance coal- and gas-fired power in Asia and Africa. In the process, they have gained tremendous political and strategic leverage, at the expense of the United States, Europe and MDBs. Other banks can and should do likewise.

All developing countries should avoid doing what rich nations are doing now that they are rich. Instead, they should do what rich nations did to become rich. They should remember that wealthy industrialized countries did not have MDBs to help them. They created institutions to finance the power generation and factories that created the jobs, middle classes, health and prosperity that paid for it all – and far more.

China, India and other emerging economies are doing the same thing. They are effectively telling the World Bank and other MDBs: “Get lost. We don’t need your funding, with all your anti-development strings. You eco-imperialist banks and activists will not hold us back any longer. We are going to chart our own destiny and take our rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.”

The MDBs claim their policies reflect Paris Climate Treaty vision of “making financial flows consistent with low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” – by coordinating climate “mitigation” (prevention) and “adaptation” programs. This moral preening ignores critical realities.

To be resilient in the face of climate change (natural or manmade), countries must be wealthy and technologically advanced. That is impossible with existing or foreseeable renewable energy on scales required to replace today’s fossil fuel energy and power up countries that are still in the dark ages – especially if the banks and their allies remain opposed to nuclear (and hydroelectric) power.

Moreover, the obsessive, unbending focus on alleged fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos ignores the enormous social, economic, health and other benefits that fossil fuels have bestowed on humanity over the past 150 years. It ignores the ways actual temperature and weather observations have been revised, “homogenized” and exaggerated to reflect alarmist narratives and computer models.

It ignores the unsustainable amounts of metals, hydrocarbons, concrete, and especially scenic and habitat land that would be required to convert the world to wind, solar, battery and biofuel power. And for what?

At this point, there is no convincing evidence (observations instead of models) demonstrating that carbon dioxide levels drive climate and weather; today’s temperatures, polar ice, sea level rise, storms or droughts are dangerously or profoundly unprecedented; humans can control all of this by limiting CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions; or anything on the horizon can replace fossil fuels anytime soon.

Indeed, on what basis was it decreed that a crisis or tipping point would be reached if Earth experienced 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 Fahrenheit) in higher average global temperatures since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended and the modern industrial age began? Where is the real-world evidence?

For MDBs to remain focused on alleged climate and weather chaos, mostly in the distant future – while ignoring today’s massive, horrendous poverty, disease, malnutrition and death – is morally depraved.

President Trump, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan and Secretary of State Pompeo need to end the insanity and manslaughter. They need to give this money to agencies and programs that will support fossil fuels and real life-saving actions for the world’s most vulnerable people.

Congress and the White House are a short trek from the World Bank headquarters. They should have no trouble delivering the message – and making it resonate with the other Multilateral Development Banks.

If Congress isn’t up to the task, perhaps Mr. Trump can redirect some of this money – or other billions that are being wasted on climate alarmism and renewable energy fantasies.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and economic development. David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science and logic in public policy.

My Comments:

I am not an advocate of taxing Americans to provide economic aid to other nations.  But if you are going to do this, do it so that you maximize raising their standard of living and their productivity so that they will make better trading partners and become better people in the future.  The Multilateral Development Bank policies to prevent people of the underdeveloped nations from having reliable power are contrary to good policy and a sad, sad waste of the American taxpayers' money.

Simple Illustration of the Limits of Alternative Power for the Electric Grid

The Institute for Energy Research has just put out a new report: Assessing Emerging Policy Threats to the U. S. Power Grid by Travis Fisher.  There are two graphs that quickly illustrate some of the critical limits on using solar and wind power generation on the electric power grid.  The first important plot is the daily average power output of the alternative energy sources:

Here one can easily see that the average daily output of electric power generated by solar power is a very small fraction of its peak output at the time of day when the electric power need is at its peak, namely at 5:53 PM.  This plot makes it hard to see whether wind power generation is a good actor.  With wind the time of day average is more of a problem than the above graph makes it appear and the time of year average changes are even worse.  To see this, examine the plot below:

This graph shows that the summer electric power usage greatly exceeds the average annual electric power usage for all hours of the day as shown in the black solid and dashed curves, respectively.  The red dashed curve shows the average annual wind generation percentage by hour of the day.  It has a minimum when the average annual power need has a maximum.  This problem is greatly increased in the summer months because except for a few hours in the night, summer wind power generation is less than the annual average.  That decrease relative to the annual average is the most dramatic during the peak electric power usage hours of the day.  Thus the seasonal peak load is in the summer, while the seasonal minimum in wind availability is also in the summer, creating a catastrophic disconnect.

We must not also forget that there are large variations in the availability of wind at any time of the year.  Wind speeds are often below their average or at speeds in excess of those for safe operation of a wind generator.  As for solar, well cloud cover is highly variable.  These are inherently very unreliable sources of energy.

The technology to store massive amounts of power from solar energy and wind generation inexpensively through the daily cycle for use when needed does not exist.  Of course then it also does not exist to deal with the seasonal changes in electric power use and generation by solar or wind as well.

This will never stop the green socialists from insisting that we stop using reliable and inexpensive fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which we have in abundance in the U.S.  No, they are very willing to proceed with the destruction of a vital source of our standard of living.  It must be because they wish to condemn mankind to a hell on Earth because their religion holds man to be the murderer of Mother Nature.  No matter how long the surface temperature of the Earth fails to rise in accord with their climate computer models, they will not admit to the failure of their alarmist belief in the claim of catastrophic man-made global warming.  That claim is just too useful to their need for more political power and control of the lives of the People.  It does not matter either that they have no practical alternative source of power for the fossil fuels for which they have an unreasoning hatred. 

King Coal Will Continue to Rule the World

The renewable energy, non-fossil fuel phantom is not about to replace Coal as the King of World Electric Power Generation.  The Western European attempt to replace coal with wind energy and solar power has only proven what was perfectly obvious:  They are unreliable and very expensive.  They are threatening Germany and other nations with severe winter power inadequacies and these are continuing to mount.  Industry is fleeing Germany for less expensive and more reliable electricity power.

The problem is not just that wind and solar power generation plants themselves are unreliable and expensive.  Because these power sources are unreliable, they have to be backed up by natural gas power plants, which can be tuned to higher or lower power outputs relatively rapidly, unlike coal-fired power plants.  The late start and the resistance to the development of shale oil and gas fields by using the well-proven frakking technique has left Europe with only high cost natural gas, much of which is imported from Russia.  The use of coal provides much less expensive and very reliable electric power, but also produces more of the falsely accused CO2 villain.

The European Union has regulations that were designed to reduce CO2 emissions which discouraged coal use altogether and limited natural gas power plants to standby duty, only to be turned on when the wind did not blow or blew too hard.  But, natural gas power plants are too expensive to keep running at less than about 57% of their capacity.  The result is that 60% of European natural gas electric power plants will be closed by 2016.  Power outages will become a frequent occurrence.  It will be miserable for residences and businesses will go out of business or move to other parts of the world.  Many of the big European businesses will continue, at an accelerated pace, to move more manufacturing operations to the US, where power is still more reliable and less expensive in many states despite Obama's best efforts to drive prices sky high.

Idiot European Union regulations or not, Europe will have to build more coal-fired power plants at some point.  According to the World Bank, in 2011 world-wide electric generation plant capacity was just over 22 trillion KWH or 22 billion MWH.  The presently known proposed building plans for coal-fired electric power plants are summarized in the schematic map below.  The 1.4 billion MWH of plants proposed will be a about a 6.4% increase in electric power generation capacity.  The biggest two contributors by far to this increase are China and India.  But, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam are a distant 3, 4, and 5 by rank.  In Europe, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany are ranked 1, 2, and 3 with their proposed coal power plant increases.  Ukraine and Poland rightly have no qualms about this, but Germany is being driven to it out of necessity.

Given the coal-fired power plant plans of China, India, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, South Africa, and the US, the contribution of Germany would have no significant impact on global warming, even if the failed hypothesis of CO2 emission catastrophe were true.  Obama's madmen and madwomen at the EPA are trying to nix the US building of such power plants and may succeed for awhile.  Eventually, we will learn what Germany is in the process of learning.

China is talking about trying to reduce its coal-fired power plant contribution to its increasing power needs.  However, the projected 2030 electric power plant generation capacity in 2030 is expected to compare with that of 2006 as shown below:

So in 2006, China had a 2.77 trillion KWH capacity and by 2030 it is expected to have an 8.55 trillion KWH capacity.  This is a 3.1 times increase.  Try as China may, the only way that can happen is if the use of coal powered plants greatly increases.  The 2006 coal-fired power plant capacity was 2.19 trillion KWH and it will expand in 2030 to 6.41 trillion KWH.  This is a 2.9 times increase!  The 2030 coal-fired power plant capacity of China will be the equivalent of nearly 30% of the present total world electric power generating capacity.

It is a very good thing that the hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming has failed.  The world is not going to be able to avoid the continued and even the increased use of coal.  If it tried, that would be a catastrophe.  The global warming alarmists time is drawing to a close.  King Coal will remain well ensconced on his throne.

Solar Power Increased Cost for German Electricity

Both the federal government and many of the state governments are mandating much increased use of so-called renewable power such as solar and wind generated electricity.  We should be very aware of the costs of doing this.  Germany has gone far down this road.  What are the results in Germany?

Germany makes Germans pay high levies on their electricity bills to pay people to invest in offshore wind turbines and roof-mounted solar panels.  These levies are guaranteed for 20 years.  Offshore wind turbine generated electricity is supported with a levy of $0.21 per kilowatt-hour and roof-mounted solar panels are given $0.46 per kilowatt-hour!  As a result, Germans have rushed to put solar panels on their roofs and the levies paid for wind, solar, and hydro power will be $11.3 billion this year, which is a 55% increase from last year.  About 8 gigawatts of new solar panel installations are projected for this year.  This is the electricity output of 4 large nuclear power plants, or would be if the sun always shone brightly in Germany 24 hours a day.  Those installing solar panels after this summer, will be paid 16% less for the electricity they produce.

The result is that on a German's electric bill, taxes and levies are now 41% of the bill and that percentage has been climbing rapidly.  VZBV, the German consumer association, says the solar panels installed in 2010 alone will cause additional electricity charges of $36 billion over the next 20 years.  Similar mandated renewable energy is constantly being advocated by Democrats, our version of socialists, in the U.S.  Our costs, especially if you live in California, have been cranked up as a result also.  Texas and Colorado are other states where the cost of electricity has been cranked upward significantly.  Read more about this here.

Incurring these increased energy costs is pointless.  Political central planners are frightening people around the world with stories of almost immediate failures of our energy supplies and catastrophic man-made global warming which require us to turn to incredibly expensive renewable energy.  The renewal they are talking about is apparently the renewed poverty of people around the world, who have often been improving their standards of living recently.  Their improved standard of living is offensive to Democrats and will be greatly impeded by nonsensical requirements to drive energy costs sky-high in accordance with the otherworldly dreams of Obama, Pelosi, Waxman, Markey, and others of the lunatic fringe of American socialist politics.

Regional Electricity Sources in 2008

The 2008 power sources for electricity in the Pennsylvania - New Jersey - Maryland Interconnection Region according to Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. are:

Coal 51.2%
Nuclear 33.2%
Natural Gas 6.4%
System Mix 4.3%
Oil 0.3%
Renewable Energy 4.7%

The breakdown on the renewable energy is:

Hydroelectric 2.8%
Wood or Biomass 1.5%
Captured Methane Gas 0.3%
Solid Waste 0.1%

Geothermal, solar, and wind are all reported as 0.0%. Clearly this mid-Atlantic region is going to be in a heap of trouble when Obama bankrupts the coal-fired electric power plants! My laboratory is going to be in a heap of trouble with much less power, erratic power, and much more expensive power. Our electric bill is one of our bigger expenses each month already. As I have complained here before, we have suffered from unreliable power over the last few years thanks to childish Maryland policies in regulating the power utility companies. Since those problems were brought on largely by energy cost increases and the desire of state government to shield the voters from the consequences, imagine what Gov. O'Folley's mandates for more alternative energy and Obama's similar mandates are going to do to the power costs and availability in the future throughout this area.

We have a future it is awful to contemplate. However much each politician waves his magic wand, the portion of our power coming from solar and wind power will not become impressive. It will remain puny, since each is too unreliable and too expensive. Of course, it might be that I am wrong and one or both of these politicians is such a great scientist and businessman that he will develop cheap, reliable alternative energy in the nick of time. If you are one of their supporters, you might hold your breath until they do. I am not obligated to do so, since I have consistently noted that these men are so little able to recognize reality that it is very fair to assess them as insane.

The situation will not be very different in many, in fact most, other areas of the U.S. Coal is cheap and reliably available and natural gas is a very serviceable adjunct. Both create CO2 when burned, so both sources will be condemned or made outlandishly expensive with CO2 scrubbing requirements. All this destruction is justified with a false theory that emissions of CO2 due to man's use of fossil fuels are causing a catastrophic global warming. In fact, natural forces have caused the preponderance of such warming as has occurred globally and urban heat island effects have made that warming appear much greater than it has actually been. Not that such warming as has occurred should not be welcome. The CO2 should also be welcomed as further plant fertilizer. But, no, the alarmist religion requires that the activities of man be shrouded in guilt, so warmth and healthy plants are both painted catastrophes.

Obama: I Want Electricity Costs to Go Up, Up

A tape from earlier this year has surfaced in which Obama pledges to make it so expensive to operate a coal-fired power station that anyone building one will go bankrupt. Presumably HIS plan to heavily tax plants for their CO2 emissions will bankrupt already built power plants as well. Those who mine coal and transport it will lose their jobs in droves. Such a tax will also have to apply to natural gas and to oil-fired power plants, though they emit somewhat less CO2 per BTU of energy. Perhaps this means that some natural gas and oil-fired power plants will survive the socialist Obama's attack upon industrial society and upon the comforts of our homes.

But, these costs have to be passed on to consumers, ....or, the electric companies will hemorage money and will soon be unable to keep generating electricity. Their electricity distribution systems will age and deteriorate. The power companies will not be able to afford to replace old transformers and old, corroded power cables. Power delivery will become ever more unreliable.

Presently, 50% of our electric power is generated from coal, which is also the cheapest source of electricity except for hydroelectric power. Natural gas produces another 20% of our electricity. What does Obama intend to replace 50 to 70% of our electricity generation plants with? Taxpayer subsidized wind and solar power! What a Joker you are Obama! Where is Batman when you need him?

Old people on fixed incomes will not be able to afford to cool and heat their homes. Obama will create new federal programs to provide heat and air-conditioning to those HE favors and the rest of us will be taxed and taxed to pay for their power use. American industries power costs will skyrocket and they will not be able to compete in the world market. The unreliable delivery of power will cost companies huge amounts of money in downtime, destroyed product, and procedures that will have to be redone. American jobs will disappear. A few jobs in alternative energy industries will be generated by tax subsidies, but millions more jobs will be lost. Americans will be hurting as much when they pay their electric bills each month as they did when they were paying $60 or more to fill up their car tank. Of course, with no drilling in the U.S. in places that actually have oil being allowed, the cost of filling your gas tank will increase again.

Why will we have these added taxes on the use of energy? The reason is a completely unproven hypothesis that CO2 emissions will cause catastrophic global warming. Well, we have had increased CO2 for the last 10 years and the temperature has not increased. In the history of the world, much higher CO2 emissions have often occurred during ice ages. Often times they occur as the result of a previous warming of the oceans, which then start emitting more CO2. In any case, most people would benefit from a slight warming, if it were to result. Growing seasons would be longer. Fewer people would want to move to Arizona and Florida. Some warming is not a catastrophe, contrary to the hype.

In fact, now that we are in a sunspot cycle with very low sunspot activity and the next cycle is likely to be long and of very low sunspot activity, the earth is much more likely to cool off. Such a low sunspot activity period is thought to have caused the Little Ice Age. It is particularly insane to pursue drastically damaging economic and tax policies with an already weak economy for the wrongheaded reason of preventing global warming when the earth is not warming and is probably going to be cooling!

Barack Obama is both insane and insanely destructive. HE is anti-capitalism and anti-individual. HE is thoroughly a dogmatic socialist with no understanding of reality. But, HE is a brilliant demogogue and a strangely effective liar. It is clearly a victory of our socialist public schools and our universities that HE is taken seriously and that HIS nonsense is not widely unmasked. Most of our younger people simply have no reasoning ability anymore and are easy victims to carnivores such as HIM. African Americans, who have largely adopted a culture with little regard for learning and knowledge, are following HIM in droves. Unfortunately, HE is so lacking in understanding and wisdom, that HIS presidency will soon be regarded by most as even worse than the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter. The first Black president will be so completely an otherworldly being that the apparent triumph for African Americans will be an American Tragedy. And this is a shame, especially since there are African Americans who would be good presidents.