King Coal: ‘It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker’
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Inconvenient energy fact: It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker
In an April 25 New York Times article (“Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal“) reporter Nadja Popovich wrote that “Last year, the solar industry employed many more Americans [373,807] than coal [160,119], while wind power topped 100,000 jobs.” Those energy employment figures are based on a Department of Energy report (“U.S. Energy and Employment Report“) released earlier this year that provides the most complete analysis available of employment in the energy economy.
But simply reporting rather enthusiastically (see the NYT headline again) that the solar industry employs lots of Americans, more than twice as many as the number of coal miners and utility workers at electric power plants using coal, is only telling a small part of the story. Here are some important energy facts that help provide a more complete picture about how much energy is being produced in different sectors, how many workers it takes to produce a given amount of electric power, and which sectors receive the most generous taxpayer handouts.
To start, despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the United States last year (EIA data here). And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company and Procter & Gamble.
In contrast, it took about the same number of natural gas workers (398,235) last year to produce more than one-third of U.S. electric power, or 37 times more electricity than solar’s minuscule share of 0.90 percent. And with only 160,000 coal workers (less than half the number of workers in either solar or gas),
Environmentalists Flood The Courts With Lawsuits To Stop Trump’s Agenda
‘Won with years of research, lobbying and organizing’
Source: Environmentalists Flood The Courts With Lawsuits To Stop Trump’s Agenda…
Trump’s EPA: Coal Is A ‘Safeguard’ Against Attacks On Electric Grid
‘This country need[s] fuel diversity’
Source: Trump’s EPA: Coal Is A ‘Safeguard’ Against Attacks On Electric Grid…
Warmist rips fellow warmists as ‘more interested in political & intellectual purity than they are to fighting climate change’
Look at today’s People’s Climate Marches. They include entire sections dedicated to the anti-nuclear movement? Can anyone tell me what happens when you pull nuclear out of your energy mix? Well Energieweinde showed that the nuclear was not replaced by renewables, but rather by coal. When Diablo Canyon closes in California, the result will be an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted as they will be making up that low-carbon power with natural gas.
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So what have the climate crew done for us recently? They are punishing one of their biggest allies in the free press, while alienating political leaders who have gone to bat for them. They are fighting against low-carbon energy alternatives because those alternatives don’t represent their preferred technologies. Rather than accepting compromises that could help advance their cause and implement policies that can provide realistic reductions in carbon emission they are out on the streets holding their protests. Protests where they reserve entire sections for groups intended solely to the task of attacking potential allies. I despair for my cause and have started to resign myself to failure because these people are more interested in political and intellectual purity than they are to fighting climate change.…
Colorado Paper’s Editor Implies If Bombing Syria Is Justified, So Are Acts Of Terror On Americans
By Chris White
An editor of a Colorado newspaper argued that environmental activists could morally justify committing violent acts of terror on Americans in the fracking industry, similar to how President Donald Trump justified bombing Syria, in a brief email exchange Saturday with The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Boulder Daily Camera Executive Editor Kevin Kaufman believe citizens who support Trump’s decision to bomb Syria had no grounds to contest the idea that anti-fracking activists were justified blowing up oil and gas wells in the U.S. He told TheDCNF that the two issues are essentially one and the same.
“I suspect it was a violent act supported by both the right and left, but it also was one fundamentally based upon a moral question,” Kaufman wrote in email about Trump’s decision to strike a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“So it’s ok for the U.S., currently under the leadership of a right-leaning president, to take violent action on moral grounds, but it is not ok for citizens of Boulder County to ask fellow citizens to consider even violent actions?” Kaufman asked.
Kaufman’s statement was in response to questions about whether it was appropriate for The Camera to publish a letter promoting violence against the fracking industry. Kaufman’s paper published a letter April 19 suggesting Colorado citizens have a moral obligation to destroy pipelines and eliminate oil jobs.
Editors altered the piece after publication, but left the writer’s basic thesis in place: violence may be the only way to prevent pipeline construction.
“If the oil and gas industry puts fracking wells in our neighborhoods, threatening our lives and our children’s lives, then don’t we have a moral responsibility to blow up wells and eliminate fracking and workers?” Andrew O’Connor wrote in a letter to the paper’s editors.
The piece was edited the following day to read “don’t we have a moral responsibility to take action to dissuade frackers from operating here?” The editorial staff included in the edits its reason for not retracting the letter entirely.
O’Connor’s piece is worthwhile, the editorial board noted, because it brings up philosophical ideas that are important to consider when discussing fracking.
“This letter was edited to delete references that may have been construed to expressly advocate violence or property destruction,” the editors wrote. “The Camera does not condone or endorse violence or property destruction of …
Why Big Oil wants Trump to stay in UN climate deal – Restrictions on emissions favor natural gas
by Matt Egan
Excerpt:
A BP (BP) spokesman told CNNMoney that it “welcomed the Paris agreement when it was signed, and we continue to support it…
“We believe it’s possible to provide the energy the world needs while also addressing the climate challenge,” BP said.
Chevron (CVX) told CNNMoney it “supports continuing with” the Paris deal because it “offers a first step towards a global framework.”
Exxon (XOM), the biggest US oil company that Tillerson used to lead, sent a letter to the White House last month hailing the Paris agreement as an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change.”
A Shell (RDSA) spokesman confirmed that the energy giant remains “strongly in favor” of the Paris deal.
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At first glance, it might seem surprising to hear that Big Oil isn’t seizing on the shifting political environment to poke holes in a deal that undermines fossil fuels like crude oil.
After all, Trump himself has called climate change a “hoax” and blasted COP21 as a “bad deal” for the U.S. (Trump later told The New York Times he has an “open mind” about the agreement).
But these traditional energy companies have a vested financial interest in the Paris deal. That’s because COP21’s crack down on carbon emissions favors natural gas, which emits much less pollution than coal.
While Exxon, BP and Shell are primarily identified as oil companies, they are actually diversified energy firms that rely heavily on natural gas to make money.
For instance, 42% of Exxon’s total daily production last quarter was actually in natural gas, according to FactSet. BP and Shell also lean on natural gas for a large chunk of their output.
“These companies view natural gas as a key growth area going forward for them. It just makes sense for them to be at the table,” said Brian Youngberg, senior energy analyst at Edward Jones.
Natural gas production has soared over the past decade, thanks to the abundance of shale gas in North America.
And now there’s the added benefit that governments are cracking down on carbon emissions.
BP’s statement mentioned its commitment to “reducing emissions in the power sector by producing and marketing natural gas.”…
Every green initiative has been a disaster says Christopher Booker
Nine years ago, MPs voted almost unanimously for then Labour minister Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, thus making Britain the only country in the world committed by law to cut its ‘carbon emissions’ by 80 per cent in just 40 years.
Not one of those politicians bothered to wonder how in practice such an absurdly ambitious target could be met: which is why we have since seen successive governments thrashing about trying to adopt one dotty ‘green’ scheme after another.
Last week, I was asked in conversation: ‘Why is it that almost all these green schemes seem to end up as a fiasco?’ To which I replied: ‘You’ve only got one word wrong there. You can leave out the word “almost”.’
The truth is that every single green scheme the politicians have fallen for has proved to be a total fiasco: failing to achieve any of the results claimed for them and costing us more billions with every year that passes.
Consider the scandal of Drax in Yorkshire, until recently the largest, cleanest, most efficient coal-fired power station in Europe.
Now, thanks to an annual half-a-billion pounds of public subsidy, Drax has been switching from burning coal to millions of tons a year of wood pellets.…
Cheap Coal Drives China’s New Coal Boom
Coal conversion has become profitable in China because of an unusual combination of low coal and higher gas and petrol prices. An existing coal conversion plant in Ningdong © Getty Water-guzzling coal-conversion projects are springing to life in arid western China, setting the stage for the large-scale deployment of what was previously a niche industry.
Trump Begins To Deconstruct Corrupt EPA-Owned ENERGY STAR Scam
Last year our US Attorney General was threatening to file criminal racketeering charges against private citizens for mockery of state science. Last week the new administration announced the repeal of the ENERGY STAR mandate, essentially shutting down the EPA’s Department of Junk Science. Elections have consequences!
President Trump has officially begun the deconstruction of the ENERGY STAR program, ending one of the most corrupt federal programs in US history. Repealing the ENERGY STAR mandate represents one of the most significant government reforms in decades, and a huge boost for science, education and commerce.
The EPA owns the ENERGY STAR brand, which is allegedly producing multi-billion dollar revenues in Global markets from ‘certified’ energy-efficiency. Just don’t ask to see the evidence, or the government might throw you in jail. And I mean that literally!
Thankfully President Trump just took Draining The Swamp to a whole new level. The repeal of the ENERGY STAR mandate is historic, which is why mainstream media must be in a complete state of panic. The ENERGY STAR mandate served as a Pay To Play toll-booth for all government contracting and services for decades. In terms of economic opportunity for the small business community in America, this is totally off the chart.
ENERGY STAR is arguably the most corrupt federal program in US history, a true National Disgrace which has inflicted more damage on America’s economy, scientific, educational and legal systems than an entire army of Bernie Madoff’s and John Beale’s.
Built entirely on myth, fraudulent scientific research and bogus technical reports promoted by the media, this secretive program has been mired in scandal and controversy since day one.
ENERGY STAR’s big break came rather suddenly in 2009, when EPA began boasting that their products save 25-50% more electrical energy than other identical products. Apparently EPA scientist were somehow able to infuse a ‘Social Justice’ component onto the electrons flowing in ENERGY STAR’s certified products that don’t exist in the rest of the universe. Or so it seems. No technological breakthroughs were involved in this miracle, only the reshuffling of words on paper were required to create this rare commodity.
‘Blindingly stupid’: Soros-funded LA Times report mocked for blaming 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on global warming
A report blaming the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in part on global warming has generated more ridicule than alarm, renewing scrutiny over the role of liberal foundations in keeping the fading #ExxonKnew social-media campaign alive.
The article, “The role a melting glacier played in Exxon’s biggest disaster,” earned a few hat tips from the environmental movement after appearing Thursday in the Los Angeles Times, but the taunting from climate-catastrophe challengers has been merciless.
“Blindingly stupid,” “climate change fan fiction,” “irrelevant” and “ridiculous” were among the insults hurled at the report, written by students from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.
“Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, which is funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.”
Not lost on critics were the project’s funders: left-of-center philanthropies, including those backed by the Rockefeller family and billionaire George Soros, that have made no secret of their support for climate advocacy and antipathy toward the fossil-fuel industry.
A disclosure at the end of the article said that the foundations “have no involvement in or influence over the articles produced by project fellows in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times,” but not everyone was buying it.
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Roy W. Spencer, meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was also dubious, calling it “quite a stretch to blame the disaster on human-caused global warming.”
“Glaciers naturally flow to the ocean and calve. As long as it snows on them, gravity makes them flow to the ocean — no global warming required,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “Even if calving increased in the 1980s, the warming in Alaska that abruptly started around 1980 was due to a shift in a natural climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), not the result of a slow warming trend due to humans.”
By the article’s logic, “anyone can blame basically anything that happens to them on climate change. Did you avoid a puddle when you hit that telephone pole? Sue Exxon!”