Let's Burn More Coal

I know you are going to be shocked, but our international efforts to combat climate change-- now blessed by the Queen of England herself-- have led to a severe energy shortage. Better yet, shutting down coal and nuclear plants has produced blackouts, along with factory shutdowns and people freezing to death. 

It's what happens when you have fanatical teenagers making policy.

The solution to the current energy crisis, governments around the world are discovering, is burning more coal. Zero Hedge reports the sad realities:

One of the biggest ironies to start this decade is the transition from fossil fuel generation to green energy has created a global energy crisis that is forcing the U.S., among many other countries, to restart coal-fired power plants monumentally ahead of the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere to prevent electricity shortages.

The virtue-signaling assault by the green lobby spearheaded by hapless puppet Greta Thunberg must beside herself as U.S. power plants are on course to burn 23% more coal this year, the first increase since 2013, despite President Biden's ambitious plan for a national grid to run on 100% clean energy by 2035. 

A global energy crunch is rippling through the world amid a huge rebound for power. Natural gas has soared to record highs as supplies remain tight, and countries are finding out that renewable energy sources aren't as reliable as previously thought. This has created a massive worldwide scramble by power companies for fossil fuels, especially coal. 

U.S. utilities are transitioning to coal because soaring natural gas prices make it uneconomic to produce electricity. At the moment, 25% of all U.S. electricity produced is derived from coal-fired plants, up ten percentage points since the beginning of COVID. 

And then there is James Rickards. On the Daily Reckoning site Rickards proclaims that it’s time for: “The Revenge of the Fossil Fuels.” (via Maggie’s Farm)

In a take-no-prisoners style, Rickards explains that environmental fanatics are responsible for the current state of affairs:

According to the fanatics, this substitution of renewable energy sources for so-called “fossil fuels” and uranium-powered plants would reduce CO2 emissions and save the planet from the existential threat of global warming.

Everything about this climate alarmist agenda is a fraud.

The evidence that the planet is warming is slight and the effect is likely temporary with global cooling in the forecast. The contribution of CO2 emissions to any global warming is not clear and is at best unsettled science and at worst another fraud.

Most importantly, global energy demand is growing much faster than renewables can come online, meaning that oil, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear energy will be needed whether renewables grow or not.

As for renewables, remember Texas last winter, when the wind turbines froze and where the solar farms failed to work and where people also froze. 

Wind turbines and solar panels cannot be the backbone of a modern energy grid because they are intermittent sources. Wind turbines require continual wind and solar panels require continual sunlight. Turbines don’t produce when the wind stops. Solar panels don’t produce at night or on cloudy days.

Countries like Germany and Japan have shut down their nuclear and coal plants, to their dismay:

Despite these scientific and practical hurdles, the climate alarmists have been very effective politically. Many countries such as Germany and Japan have shut down nuclear and coal plants in an effort to substitute renewables in major industrial economies.

China has its own energy crisis, too:

China is quickly running out of electrical-generating capacity. China gets more than 50% of its electricity from coal, but it is running out of coal. China has had to lift its ban on Australian coal imports (arising from a dispute about tracing the source of the COVID outbreak) and it’s now taking as much Australian coal as it can get.

Things are not looking so hot in Europe, where the great Merkel chose to make her country depend on Russian natural gas:

A similar situation exists in Germany where the failure of renewables to provide a reliable source of supply combined with a shutdown of nuclear plants have led to dependence on Russian natural gas.

Putin is slowly closing the taps to increase Europe’s desperation. The price of natural gas in Europe is skyrocketing. In Lebanon, the two power plants that supply 40% of that country’s electricity have shut down due to oil shortages. There is no electricity and probably won’t be for days.

And the global economy will also be hurt for lack of energy:

Many will die this winter as power outages spread and as heating systems fail. The global economy will also suffer due to decreased output as China and Europe both close factories in order to conserve electricity for homes.

This is what the climate alarm fanatics have produced — billions of people freezing in the dark and a slowing global economy — all in pursuit of the false dogma of global warming.

Journalist Noah Rothman accuses policymakers, especially in the Biden administration:

The intended consequence of these [Biden] policies was to create artificial energy scarcity and incentivize alternative fuel producers to enter the marketplace. “If you restrict the supply (of oil and gas), you alter the market and you create a better environment for more sustainable fuels,” New York University professor Max Sarinsky told The Associated Press. This was all part of the plan, to the extent there was a plan.

So yes, there’s a lot of blame to go around if… a dark, cold and scary winter materializes. No small share of that blame should be apportioned out to the central planners who sought to kneecap the existing energy market in favor of an insufficient alternative.

Just in case you were thinking that these stories have not been adequately source, Rickards quotes this from Boomberg:

For nearly a decade, it appeared in terminal decline as investors shunned miners and European countries shut down coal-fired power plants.

And yet the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel won’t go away. Global consumption peaked in 2014, but rather than fall rapidly, as many expected, it stabilized in a gentle plateau. And now, just as the fight against climate change intensifies, it’s growing again, with the resurgence largely driven by China.

Hard to imagine that global economic growth would require more, not less energy. Apparently, the idiot fanatics who pushed this worldwide hysteria did not think quite that far.