natural gas

The time of the climate change shills is coming to an end, but not before literally billions has been poured into their pockets. Stephen F. Hayward looks and the whole Climate Change debacle and the decline of the deception.

 [T]he climate change story has been overtaken by facts on the ground. Most significant: The pause in global warming​​—​​now going on 15 years​​—​​has become so obvious that many of the leading climate scientists are grudgingly admitting that global warming has stopped. James Hansen, who recently stepped down as NASA’s chief climate scientist to become a full-time private sector alarmist, is among those admitting that the recent temperature record has flatlined.

After two decades of steady and substantial global temperature increase from 1980 to 1998, the pause in warming is causing a crisis for the climate crusade. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The recent temperature record is falling distinctly to the very low end of the range predicted by the climate models and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, something is going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding​​—​​the oceans​​—​​is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too.

These inconvenient data are causing the climate science community to reconsider the issue of climate sensitivity​​—​​that is, how much warming greenhouse gases actually cause​​—​​as I predicted would happen in these pages three years ago: “Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases?”  Read more »

The Greens oppose fracking when the reality shows they should actually be supporting it. It has been responsible for massive price reduction in power and also massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Against all expectations, US emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since peaking in 2007, have fallen by 12 per cent as of 2012, back to 1995 levels. The primary reason, in a word, is “fracking”. Or, in 11 words: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to recover deposits of shale gas.

No other factor comes close to providing a plausible explanation. Unlike the European Union, the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, in which participating countries committed to cut CO2 emissions by roughly 5 per cent, relative to 1990 levels, by 2012.

Nor is America’s continued emissions reduction a side effect of lower economic activity: While the US economy peaked in late 2007, the same time as emissions, the recession ended in June 2009 and GDP growth since then, though inadequate, has been substantially higher than in Europe. Yet US emissions have continued to fall, while EU emissions began to rise again after 2009.

One can virtually prove that shale gas has been the major influence driving the fall in US emissions. Just ten years ago, the natural-gas industry was so sure that domestic production was reaching its limit that it made large investments in terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Yet fracking has increased supply so rapidly that these facilities are now being converted to export LNG.  Read more »

David Shearer appeared on Larry Williams’ show last night to clarify…uhm….er…his…ahhh…position on…um lowering power…um…power prices.

There you go, all cleared up…got it.  Read more »

Replacement of coal gas with increased usage of natural gas kills less kids.

A working paper (PDF; abstract) from economists Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin, and Aydogan Ulker explores the effects of increased natural gas use on infant mortality:

In this paper, we use the variation across space and time in the expansion of natural gas infrastructure in Turkish provinces using data between 2001 and 2011. Our results indicate that the rate of increase in the use of natural gas has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of infant mortality in Turkey. In particular, a one-percentage point increase in the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services would cause the infant mortality rate to decline by 4 percent, which could result in 348 infant lives saved in 2011 alone. These results are robust to a large number of specifications.  Read more »

If it wasn’t for the green taliban and the boy MP, Gareth Hughes, dramatically misleading people we would be able to get on with fracking a whole lot faster.

We should stop listening to the green taliban and start listening to people like Ronald Bailey argues that the “environmental and economic benefits of fracking greatly outweigh the costs“:

Environmental activists, who once hailed natural gas as the bridge fuel to the renewable energy future, have turned with a vengeance against it. Originally, activists who worried about man-made global warming produced by burning fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide favored fracking because burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide emitted by coal. However, local and national environmental groups have turned decisively against shale gas based on both not-in-my-backyard concerns and the fear that cheap natural gas undermines the economic case for solar and wind power.

The green taliban are covered by the shield of sanctimony which protects them from hypocrisy.  Read more »

Regular readers of this blog know that I hate subsidies and even more I hate subsidising so-called green technologies. Wind power is one of those technologies.

Some people may ooh and ahh over those hideous turbines junking up the view but I do not. Wind power is doomed in the UK and now it is looking increasingly doomed in the US as people find out that the billions in subsidies have done bugger all except line the pockets of the turbine salesmen.

With the fiscal cliff approaching it looks like wind subsidies are finally doomed:

Federal subsidies for new wind-power generation will end on Dec. 31 unless they are renewed by Congress. For the sake of our economy and the smooth operation of the energy market, Congress should let the subsidies lapse. They waste taxpayer money, subvert the allocation of capital, and generate a social cost many times the price tag of the subsides themselves.

Since 1992, the federal government has expended almost $24 billion to encourage investment in wind power through direct spending, tax breaks, R&D, loan guarantees and other federal support of electric power. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that a one-year extension of existing federal subsidies for wind power would cost taxpayers almost $12 billion.

The costs of wind subsidies are extraordinarily high—$52.48 per one million watt hours generated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By contrast, the subsidies for generating the same amount of electricity from nuclear power are $3.10, from hydropower 84 cents, from coal 64 cents, and from natural gas 63 cents.

Cost is only part of the problem:

Subsidized, wind-generated electricity is displacing other, much cheaper sources of power. The subsidies are so high that wind-power producers can pay utilities to take the electricity they produce and still make a profit. Such “negative pricing” has occurred for some time in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and in Texas—and, according to the Energy Information Administration, it will likely grow.

But wind isn’t constant which means that costly redundant back up power generation capacity must be maintained.

Power grids that rely on wind-generated electricity have to maintain redundant, backup generating capacity in case the wind isn’t blowing and the demand for electricity is high. Many of these backup sources, such as coal and gas-fired plants, have to be kept up and running to be available when they are needed—even if they are not used. This partially offsets the environmental benefits of wind power.

Wind power proponents are having a lend.

In the 1990s, the federal government began subsidizing wind power based on the hope that, with a helping hand, the technology would improve rapidly, costs would decline, and the industry would become economically viable. Congressman Phil Sharp (D., Ind.), the original proponent of the subsidies, argued in 1991 for “a sunset provision to ensure that the temporary incentive does not become a permanent subsidy..

But the sun has never set. Again and again—on seven subsequent occasions in all—federal subsidies for wind were extended.

Yet wind power is less economically viable today than it was when the current subsidies started in 1992. After the expected gains in moving from one-off production to assembly-line production, no major technological breakthrough has occurred that would substantially lower the cost of wind-power electricity generation. The Department of Energy’s “2009 Wind Technology Market Report” finds average wind-power costs were higher in 2009 than they were in 1994, two years after the subsidies began. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu has observed on more than one occasion, wind energy is a “mature technology.”

Time to end the subsidies.

It is increasingly difficult to make a case that taxpayers should continue to subsidize wind-generated electricity. The end of the subsidy will not induce owners of existing windmills to shut them down, since so much of the cost is fixed in the original construction project and so little of their costs are entailed in operating the windmill once it is constructed. Under current law, billions of dollars in subsidies will continue to be paid out over the next decade on existing projects even if the subsidies for projects built in the future expire.

If unimpeded, the expanded use of cheap natural gas to generate electricity will raise living standards and attract millions of new industrial jobs back to our shores. A vote to stop wind subsidies from being extended is, therefore, a vote for cheaper, more reliable power, higher living standards, reindustrialization and fiscal sanity.

The US is into fracking boots and all, and political opposition is waning. We need to be telling the Green Taliban to frack off and get cracking with the fracking here:

Political obstacles to oil and gas production are starting to fall away at the state and local levels as voters, elected officials and courts jump on the energy boom bandwagon.

Voters are rewarding local politicians who support production. Ballot measures are distributing potential tax windfalls broadly. And most state legislatures are focused on managing the economic and environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, so the drilling boom can speed up rather than slow down.

The trend is crucial to the nation’s energy future because oil and gas production is regulated and taxed almost entirely by state and local governments. The federal government’s role is largely advisory, except on federal lands and on pipelines.

“Fracking is happening and it’s not going to stop, so we have to take the high road of good regulation and taxes so communities are better off, not worse off, after it’s done,” says Ted Boettner, executive director of the liberal West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

Most states were caught off guard when fracking turned Pennsylvania into a major natural gas producer in 2009. Fracking could produce oil or gas in as many as 36 states. Result: The USA will become the world’s No. 1 producer of natural gas in 2015 and oil in 2017, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia, respectively, predicts the International Energy Agency.

The relentless, daily, news about the collapse of every dingbat Green environmental policy is getting hard to endure.

And reading this, (in the New York Times mind you) together with every other report about Green political failures in ethanol, carbon tax, electric cars and solar energy at the same time as polls show these fools might be in government in NZ is pretty hard to take.

At its peak in 2008 and 2009, the industry employed about 85,000 people, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry’s principal trade group.

About 10,000 of those jobs have disappeared since, according to the association, as wind companies have been buffeted by weak demand for electricity, stiff competition from cheap natural gas and cheaper options from Asian competitors. Chinese manufacturers, who can often underprice goods because of generous state subsidies, have moved into the American market and have become an issue in the larger trade tensions between the countries. In July, the United States Commerce Department imposed tariffs on steel turbine towers from China after finding that manufacturers had been selling them for less than the cost of production.

And now, on top of the business challenges, the industry is facing a big political problem in Washington: the Dec. 31 expiration of a federal tax credit that makes wind power more competitive with other sources of electricity.

It would be nice if the MSM in NZ picked up some of the load from bloggers and informed people about this useless party and their failing policies.

Let’s accept, for argument’s sake, that you give a rat’s arse about too much carbon, and lay awake nights imagining the future when your children are armpit deep in tepid water, fending off the floating corpses of dead polar bears.

Right, now you are Green.   But you did everything to stop this didn’t you?    Solar power, wind power, ethanol, carbon trading.

But wait.

The outcome of every one of these Green and bureaucratic interventions has been near enough the complete opposite of what you intended.

Solar power is a bankrupt industry rorted by Chinese dumping subsidies and a blot on every landscape where it has been introduced.

Windpower?   Its most enthusiastic proponents are now the cunning mates of top Tories in the UK, where the extended families of the Conservative PM and his deputy are making fortunes from subsidies, while the only winners from windfarms are the landholding Lords who rent out the family estates for rows of bird-shredders.

Ethanol?  BIG agriculture has taken that over (it’s BIG and you hate that).   The result, further devastation of the rainforests and a worldwide increase in food prices that is starving the poor.

Carbon Trading?  Scammed by governments and smart traders, collapsing under the weight of its own absurdity.   Even in NZ, the ETS means $330 million in corporate welfare for BIG agriculture.

Every move a total failure, the only beneficiaries the very institutions and classes you despise.

Hey Greenie…you know what is working?    The Free Market, that’s what.   It is working for you.

Weather conditions around the world this summer have provided ample fodder for the global warming debate. Droughts and heat waves are a harbinger of our future, carbon cuts are needed now more than ever, and yet meaningful policies have not been enacted.

But, beyond this well-trodden battlefield, something amazing has happened: Carbon-dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years. Estimating on the basis of data from the US Energy Information Agency from the first five months of 2012, this year’s expected CO2 emissions have declined by more than 800 million tons, or 14 percent from their peak in 2007.

The cause is an unprecedented switch to natural gas, which emits 45 percent less carbon per energy unit. The U.S. used to generate about half its electricity from coal, and roughly 20 percent from gas. Over the past five years, those numbers have changed, first slowly and now dramatically: In April of this year, coal’s share in power generation plummeted to just 32 percent, on par with gas.

America’s rapid switch to natural gas is the result of three decades of technological innovation, particularly the development of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which has opened up large new resources of previously inaccessible shale gas. Despite some legitimate concerns about safety, it is hard to overstate the overwhelming benefits.

For starters, fracking has caused gas prices to drop dramatically. Adjusted for inflation, natural gas has not been this cheap for the past 35 years, with the price this year three to five times lower than it was in the mid-2000s. And, while a flagging economy may explain a small portion of the drop in U.S. carbon emissions, the EIA emphasizes that the major explanation is natural gas.

The reduction is even more impressive when one considers that 57 million additional energy consumers were added to the U.S. population over the past two decades. Indeed, U.S. carbon emissions have dropped about 20 percent per capita, and are now at their lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in 1961.

Fracking is making a big difference in the world, more so that whacky Green ideas for energy. Now it appears the benefits of fracking can be extended further by using Carbon Dioxide.

Very strange how the Greens oppose this wondrous technology:

Talk about a win-win situation. Compressed carbon dioxide may be more suitable than water for fracturing methane-rich rock – a finding that could help the growing hydraulic fracturing industry extract more natural gas from spent fields. And because the carbon dioxide is then trapped below ground, the discovery could also spur the development of large-scale carbon sequestration.

Natural gas production has soared worldwide in recent years as a result ofhydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a process of injecting pressurised water into shale formations to fracture the rock and release massive amounts of natural gas trapped inside.

The more extensive the network of fractures created in the shale, the more pathways are available for the gas inside it to escape. Tsuyoshi Ishida at Kyoto University, Japan, and his colleagues have now found a way to greatly extend that network of fractures by replacing pressurised water with liquid or supercritical CO₂.

On a broad scale, the pattern of fractures created in rock by conventional hydraulic fracturing is two-dimensional – the fractures tend to occur along a plane. Ishida’s team found, through experiments involving cubes of granite, that compressed CO₂ yielded a fracture pattern that was three-dimensional. Ishida expects the compressed CO₂ would produce a similar 3D pattern of fracturing in shale too.

It’s unclear exactly why pressurised CO₂ yields a different fracture pattern from water, but Ishida’s team suggest it might be connected to the fact that compressed CO₂ is around 10 times less viscous than water.