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The Surprising Truth: King Coal's Resilience in the Face of Renewable Energy

The prevailing belief that renewable energy sources like wind and solar have swiftly surpassed fossil fuels in recent decades is a powerful narrative, but in reality, coal for power generation is still king across the globe.

Coal produced more than 35% of the world's electricity in 2022—the highest percentage of any source. At 22.7%, natural gas has the second-highest proportion. Hydroelectricity made up 14.9% of the total, nuclear power accounted for 9.2%, wind for 7.2%, solar energy for 4.5%, and a combination of geothermal and biomass energy for 3.6% were the other sources.

In the past, the total percentage of low-carbon energy sources—nuclear, hydropower, wind, and solar—peaked in 1995, the year of the UN climate summit. Remarkably, even after over 30 years and 27 UN climate summits, the proportion of low-carbon energy generated worldwide has stayed relatively stable into 2022.

Fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, continue to produce the majority of the world's electricity. Amazingly, in 2022, the demand for coal even hit new all-time highs. In reaction to energy shortages and price surges, China, India, and Indonesia—the world's three largest producers of coal—are quickly increasing their output to record levels. The production of coal is expected to increase much more globally in 2023.

In the first half of 2023 alone, China approved more than 50 gigawatts of new coal power plant capacity. The goal of this coal development is to make up for China's decreased hydropower output as a result of severe droughts linked to the effects of climate change. Due to drought, the output of other significant hydroelectric producers, such as India and parts of Europe and North America, has also decreased, increasing the need for dispatchable coal and gas facilities to satisfy demand for energy.

Given that the United States accounts for less than 7% of worldwide coal use, factors that have driven drops in U.S. coal consumption over the past 15 years—such as cheap, abundant natural gas from fracking and growth in subsidized renewables—have not similarly altered global coal demand patterns.

Therefore, even though renewable energy sources like solar and wind are growing quickly, their bases are not very large. For the foreseeable future, fossil fuels—coal in particular—continue to account for the majority of the world's power generation. The vital development of energy storage, which is required to support the further expansion of intermittent renewables, is also hampered by a persistently high demand for coal.

Above text and video are based on this excellent article.

Climate Alarm or Misinformation? The Deceptive "60% Warming Faster" Statistic in Biden's 2023 National Climate Assessment Report

The Biden administration's Fifth National Climate Assessment (FNCA) report makes alarming claims about rapid warming across the United States that exceeds global warming by 60%, but examination reveals that claim is 100% bogus.

Experts have discovered various flaws in the FNCA, including its pineapple versus apple temperature comparison (i.e., comparing global land and sea temperatures to contiguous U.S. land-only temperatures) and the merging of geographically unrelated temperature datasets. These obvious flaws have produced a distorted outcome.

An excellent breakdown of the flaws and errors (manipulation-fraud?) can be found here, which includes a discussion of the U.S. metropolitan Urban Heat Islands impact.

Correcting for the truly misleading pineapple-to-apple comparison that found U.S. temperatures warming 60% faster than global temperatures since 1970 is rather straightforward. Simply eliminate the cherry-picked 'pineapple', so to speak.

The appropriate temperature comparison is global land temperatures versus U.S. land temperatures, which NOAA, the nation's chief climate agency, updates and publishes every single month.

This correct comparison reveals that since 1970, global land temperatures have actually risen 18% faster than U.S. land temperatures.

The FNCA's purposefully including global ocean temperatures in their comparison skews their results significantly. Oceans represent 71% of Earth's area, with a warming rate that is only 42% that of global land, since 1970. Thus, by including ocean temps in their comparison, it assures that U.S. land-only temperatures would have a faster warming rate.

By correcting for the FNCA mismatch, what are the results of comparing NOAA global land temperatures and U.S. land temperatures starting in January 1895?

This chart compares those two exact monthly temperature datasets. (Again, unlike the FNCA comparison, both datasets represent temperature readings from land-based climate stations.)

As the two plots and their respective linear trends make clear, since 1895, global land temperatures have been warming faster than U.S. contiguous land temperatures.

In fact, over the long run, 

global land temperatures have increased 1.4 times faster than U.S. land temps.

Another method of analysis is to examine shorter-term warming rates to determine how NOAA global land and U.S. land temperatures differ in rates of warming.

The second chart does this by plotting the moving 10-year (aka, moving 120-month) warming and cooling rates for both the monthly land datasets, starting with December 1904.

As is shown, from the end of 1904 through October 2023, both datasets exhibit a back-and-forth cycling between warming and cooling trends.

The chart also displays the 5-year averages of the moving 10-year trend comparison, which confirms the essential facts: consistently, global land temperatures over shorter periods have been warming faster than U.S. temperatures. From the early 1900s to present time, the mean of the global 5-year average exceeds the U.S. mean by 25%.

Furthermore, the FNCA report fails to mention that, per NOAA, contiguous U.S. temperatures have experienced a cooling trend since April 2011 (over 12 years) at a rate of -0.34°C per century, while during the same period, NOAA's global land temperatures have been warming at a rate of 4.17°C per century.

Conclusion: Global land temperatures have been warming faster than U.S. land temperatures since 1895; since 1970; over the last 30 years; over the last 20 years; and over the last 10 years. Because the authors of the Fifth National Climate Assessment needed to convince mainstream journalists of the narrative that U.S. climate warming was the opposite of reality, they recklessly chose to ignore the official published NOAA temperature records. As a result, the FNCA's foundational climate statistic - "U.S. warming 60% faster than the world" - is a blatant fabrication that puts into question every other extreme claim the report makes. 

Below is a sampling of major news sources on the FNCA report's very questionable findings that were published without any apparent fact checking. (links archived)

Fortune

MSNBC

New York Post

Yahoo

Boston Globe

ABC News

Additional global, regional & historical temperature charts.

Notes: Excel used for all calculations and plots. Source for NOAA's monthly global land temperature dataset; and source for NOAA's monthly U.S. national contiguous land temperature dataset. NOAA's national dataset Fahrenheit values were converted to Celsius in order to establish (i.e. calculate) Celsius anomalies from the 1901-2000 monthly baseline averages.

"Ice"-Breaking News: Climate Experts Reveal Startling Admission About Arctic Sea Ice

[Click on image to watch brief video.]

Arctic sea ice, a potential marker of global warming, experienced a shift in the late 1990s called the Arctic Shift. Initially, the 1980s and 1990s saw moderate declines in September Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE).

However, after the 1997 climate shift, a rapid decline set in, leading to "consensus" concerns about a potential ice-free Arctic.

Computer models predicted this outcome by 2040, triggering much public anxiety.

More recent research now suggests that 60% of the September SIE decline since 1979 may be due to atmospheric circulation changes. Additionally, persistent Arctic summer cloud cover has mitigated the ice-albedo feedback, slowing the decline since 2007 unexpectedly and contrary to predictions.

Thus, despite the approved consensus narrative, uncertainty persists among climate researchers regarding the natural climate shift influence versus the human influence on overall sea ice change and what direction Arctic sea ice will take in the future.

And then the unexpected recovery of sea ice in 2013 truly challenged the alarmist predictions. With the original 7-year pause now extending to 17 years that means there was only a 10% probability of that taking place.

This implies that past sea ice predictions were 90% inaccurate, in turn raising significant concerns about climate model reliability.

In June 2023, promoting more anxiety, global headlines warned of ice-free Arctic summers by the 2030s, irrespective of emission reduction efforts, based on a a new peer-reviewed study.

Unfortunately, this study relied on data only up to 2019, ignoring available 2020-22 data. Model projections for 2021 and 2022 significantly differed from observed data, prompting scrutiny and questions as to why the study was approved for publication in the first place.

Clearly, policymakers and the public grapple with challenges when relying on inaccurate computer model projections. Studies that are produced by flawed computer model predictions pose serious potential consequences that highlight the need for thorough evaluation and transparency in climate research. (source of information for above & video)

Is America's Electric Grid Ready For The Shock of Biden's "Green" EV Plans?

 

(click on image to watch short video)

Based on this video, there are serious issues to overcome if EVs are ever to become the majority of the U.S. auto fleet.

Key points from video:

- The electric grid is not equipped to handle the increased power demand from electric vehicle charging stations and intermittent renewable energy sources.
- The National Electric Reliability Corporation and Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioners have expressed concerns about the Biden administration's push for electrification.
- Technical issues related to electric vehicles must be addressed before the grid can effectively support millions of electric cars and trucks.
- The proposed regulations, including the requirement for carbon capture and storage technology, may lead to the closure of a significant portion of the nation's fossil fuel power plants.
- The early retirement of dispatchable power plants raises concerns about the reliability of the grid.
- The United States would need to significantly increase its production of renewable energy to compensate for the loss of capacity from coal and natural gas facilities.
- The Biden administration's goal of having a large number of new electric vehicles on the road within the next decade will require more electricity than the American electric grid is currently capable of providing.
- There is a lack of preparation to overcome the physical, technical, and financial challenges associated with implementing the Biden administration's climate-friendly policies. (source of information)