Introduction
When we flip the switch, the lights come on without anyone thinking about it. This has only been true for the last hundred years in metropolitan areas, and for only approximately eighty years in rural areas with the enactment of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
In 1935, only 25 percent of rural homes in the United States had electricity, and there are people alive today who grew up without electricity. Today, few people are even aware of the monolithic system that generates, distributes, and controls the electricity that flows with seeming effortlessness across the United States. This system is referred to as the grid, which is actually three grids covering the entire lower forty-eight states.
Over the past one hundred years, there have been only two area-wide blackouts affecting over 30 million people caused by a failure of the transmission system. There have been other blackouts—mostly caused by storms—affecting smaller groups, perhaps as many as several million people. Overall, the grid has worked remarkably well. Reliability can still be improved upon, but this is primarily a question of placing transmission and distribution lines underground to minimize weather-induced outages.
Suddenly, we are faced with a threat to the grid we haven’t seen before. It is a threat that can dramatically increase blackouts and the suffering that accompanies them. Some in leadership positions have viewed climate change as an existential threat to mankind and have implemented actions to eliminate fossil fuels from the generation of electricity. Some have claimed that wind and solar and other renew- ables can replace all the coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear power plants in the United States. It can be argued that the actions these people are taking are making electricity more costly and less reliable, and placing Americans at risk for little or no reason. They are willing to gamble the safety and lives of Americans, as well as the American economy, on an ideology.
Our nation has suffered through a medical war fighting COVID-19 in which thousands died. As my neighbor said,
“The inability of our country to anticipate the corona- virus pandemic and put in place adequate reserves of all of the things we needed—PPE, ventilators, masks, tests, hospital beds, etc.—speaks loudly and directly to the need for reliable on-demand electricity and the need to plan for it right now.”
Imagine if Americans had to suffer through rolling blackouts while quarantined at home during a future pandemic. How would newly erected emergency hospitals operate without electricity, let alone our existing hospitals without diesel fuel or natural gas to power emergency generators?
This was brought home by an oped in the Washington Post. Quoting from the op-ed:
Residential use is up as workers and school children stay home.
[Demand is down] in locked up restaurants, offices and factories.
Hospitals are a different story: They consume twice as much per square foot as hotels . . . lead schools and office buildings by an even greater margin. And their work couldn’t be more vital as they confront the novel coronavirus.
A grid operator, sequestered in his dispatch center in East Greenbush, New York, said it all, “Keeping the lights on. . . . It’s so critical.”3
There is little doubt there will be another pandemic. The only question is when. We must do what is needed to guarantee adequate and reliable supplies of electricity in preparation for the next pandemic.
President Trump recognized the vital importance of the grid when he issued an executive order on May 1, 2020, to protect the grid from foreign adversaries. He said the grid, “provides the electricity that sup- ports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastruc- ture, economy, and way of life.”
There is also an ideology that threatens the grid. This book will examine how federal regulators, state governments, utility companies, and the operators of the grid themselves are imposing their beliefs about climate change on all Americans and placing the grid in great jeopardy. Unelected bureaucrats and self-imposed intelligentsia are making decisions that place all Americans in danger.
Looming Energy Crisis will show you why we must continue to use fossil fuels and why we must protect the grid from the actions of those who are imposing their personal beliefs on the rest of us. Our objective should be low-cost reliable electricity available for everyone.
Reliability is a national security issue.
The graph appears to be derived from the MODTRAN (Univ. Chicago) IR absorption model, which uses data in a very large IR data base. I checked that graphic. There appears to be a small, but quite distinct difference in the IR absorption width of the 15 micron CO2 band between 400 and 800 ppm. However, there is a similarly small difference in this band width between 400 and 200 ppm CO2, and between 200 and 100 ppm, and even between 100 and 50 ppm CO2. It does not require much change in the width of absorption around 15u to produce a warming effect, and as you imply, the 15u band center has a small incremental effect. Weather satellites take advantage of the “wings” of various IR absorption bands to look down to specific altitudes in the atmosphere. The MODTRAN graphic is better suited for examining IR absorption at lower concentrations and for comparing possible overlap effects.
I add some additional detail to my comment above.
The MODTRAN calculation gives these upward IR fluxes to space for the different CO2 concentrations.
800 ppm = 295.19 W/m^2
400 ppm = 298.52
200 ppm = 301.85
100 ppm = 305.21
Starting at 100 ppm CO2, the W/m^2 decrease with each CO2 doubling is 3.36, 3.33, and 3.33.
This very modest change approximately represents the semi-log effect of decreasing CO2 influence with increasing concentration.
Thanks for both your comments.
Hi Don and others – I’m a retired Australian journalist who still writes occasionally about climate and renewable energy. Look, the stuff about extra CO2 not causing much warming has been known for decades. I have seen graphs which suggest that doubling from 400 to 800 would add around a degree centigrade, but no matter. The additional, slight warming from the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is supposed to permit the atmos to carry more water vapor and its the water vapor which causes the bulk of the warming. There is a feedback effect. It was the discovery/invention/whatever of this feedback which kicked off the modern alarmism. Almost everyone on all sides of the debate still think its all about CO2. It ain’t. I think its a load of excreta myself but, anyway, that’s the theory.
Thanks for your comment.
Note that the graph includes water and its effect.
However, I will address the feedbacks, at least indirectly, in my next article. The feedbacks are supposed to be included in the computer projections and it’s interesting to see how computer projections have not tracked reality. It’s also noteworthy how the projected temperature rises have decreased in severity over time, to the point where the projected temperature rise is not a threat. A 1 to 2 degree F rise, or even a 1.5 degree C rise, over a hundred years is no problem.
Oh sure – I’m not saying for a moment the models are of any use, all I’m saying is that its long been known that the direct warming effect of CO2 is limited .. that the supposed knock-on/feedback effect hardly exists is far from surprising. I regard all teh theory as complete nonsense..
Thanks for all your comments. And good luck in Australia. Hope you have not been affected by the wildfires.You may know that I have been a frequent visitor to Australia and have watched events there very closely.
Mark,
I agree that there are multiple factors causing global warming, and the IPCC does not fully consider all of them.
Above I point out that increasing CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm would decrease outgoing IR by about 3.3 W/m^2. Assuming that warming of one deg-C is equivalent to 3.7 W/m^2, this is less than 1C for this CO2 doubling. There is not much controversy over this direct value. Possible feedback effects are much more uncertain. Water is about 2.5 times as effective at warming as CO2, and its concentration tends to increase with warming. On the other hand, high albedo clouds likely increase also, tending to decrease warming Clouds are a large uncertainty in the climate model predictions. Then, there are other natural factors that caused warming over ~1910-1940 and cooling over ~1940-1970, which cannot be explained by increasing CO2. Possibly these represent changes in deep ocean mixing, which also produce the shorter-lived ENSO events.
Climate is Complicated.
Thanks again for your comments.
For over 10,000 years temperatures have been higher than today for over 60% of the time, and, until the mid-1800s, CO2 has been constant at around 280 ppm. (Initially 260 ppm, increasing to 280 ppm about 4,000 years ago.) Temperature changes could only be attributed to natural causes before the mid-1800s. This means there have always been changes in climate caused by nature, not CO2. Today, with an increase in atmospheric CO2, it’s possible that there could be an additional effect on temperatures, but, as I mention in today’s article, the mounting evidence is that these changes are minimal.
Nature is the main cause of climate change, which means temperatures could decrease at some point in the future.