Natural Gas: Pipeline To Prosperity...Bridge Fuel To Nowhere Jul 23rd 2013, 08:00
Natural Gas (Photo credit: todbaker)
During the June 25 Georgetown "Climate Action Plan" speech announcing his administration's full-throttle regulatory assault on coal, President Obama acknowledged that America can look to natural gas as a cleaner "transition" fuel leading to a non-carbon energy future. He said: "Now even as we're producing more domestic oil, we're also burning more clean-burning natural gas than any country on Earth. And again, sometimes there are disputes about natural gas, but we should strengthen our position as the top natural gas producer because in the medium-term at least, it can provide not only safe cheap power, but it can only help reduce our carbon emissions."
He went on to observe: "The bottom line is natural gas is creating jobs, it's lowering many families' heat and power bills and it's the transition fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution, even as our businesses work to develop and then deploy more of the even cleaner technology for the energy economy of the future."
Yes, there's that "carbon pollution" thing again…meaning the plant food that rain forests, agriculture, and all of Earth's critters depend upon. This is despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence connecting human carbon emission to deleterious climate influences, or for that matter, to any measurable influences at all. Also, if natural gas merely offers a transition bridge to future "cleaner" energy economy alternatives, what are they?
Climate Crisis Confusion:
First of all, while there can be no doubt that America is truly blessed with huge natural gas abundance, there is no basis whatsoever for conflating this enormous energy resource either with climate benefits over coal, or with disadvantages relative to non-fossil "alternatives". At long last, even the New York Times reported on June 6 that "The rise in the surface temperature of Earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace."
Reporter Justin Gillis went on to admit that the break in temperature increases "highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system", whereby the lack of warming "is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists."
Should lack of actual recent observed warming be taken to mean that climate doesn't change, or that warming won't occur again? No. But it does mean that the highly theoretical climate models upon which all crisis claims are entirely based can't be trusted. Let's recognize that the global climate has warmed in fits and starts since the end of the Little Ice Age which lasted from about 1400 with 1700 AD. That warming began some time before American industrialization brought carbon-stoked smoke stacks and SUVs….and that development occurred long after comparable or even warmer global temperatures existed during the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago.
Some notable scientists attribute the Little Ice Age and recent flattening of global temperatures to periodic ebbs and wanes in the Sun's energy output. In fact, scientists at Russia's prestigious Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg have stated that solar activity is now waning to such an extent that the global average yearly temperature will begin to decline into a very cold and protracted climate phase.
Observatory head Habibullo Abdussamatov, one of the world's leading solar scientists, member of the Russian Academy of Science, and director of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, points out that over the last 1,000 years deep cold periods have occurred five times. Each is correlated with declines in solar irradiance much like we are experiencing now with no human influence. "A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man's industrial activity as a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect."
Murry Salby, a climate scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney agrees about the cause and effect reversal: "in the real world, global temperature is not controlled exclusively by CO2, as it is in the model world…in significant part CO2 is controlled by global temperature, as it is in the proxy record." Salby points out that when models that have been predicting CO2-induced heating differ from direct observations, then they're wrong, calling practices that claim otherwise a "cult science."
And What Fossil Alternatives Lie Across the Natural Gas Bridge…..?
According to 2012 EIA figures, slightly more than 42 percent of U.S. electrical power came from coal, 25 percent from natural gas, 19 percent from nuclear, about 3.4 percent from wind, and about 0.11 percent from solar. Both wind and solar are unreliable time-of-day, season and weather-dependent, as well as geographically very limited, typically in areas remote from urban population centers where demands are greatest. They are also very cost-inefficient compared with coal, natural gas and nuclear, requiring heavy subsidies and utility mandates to even begin "leveling" fields of competitive pricing.
Since 2009 American taxpayers have shelled out $14 billion in cash payments to solar, wind and other renewable energy project developers. This includes $9.2 billion to 748 small and large wind projects, and $2.7 billion to more than 44,000 solar projects, which will add just 48 terawatt hours of electricity.
Despite all of the sequester hype, the Obama administration's Department of Energy has awarded more than $1.2 billion in charity to 435 new renewable energy projects since January 1, including 381 solar awards. In addition, DOE is pressing ahead with plans to throw in $150 million more for renewable projects which was left over from a separate 48C tax credit stimulus program.
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