Life in the Age of the Lie: California passes a law stating that methane is carbon free.

[NNadir]

It was always more painful for me when my sons displayed a flaw that I know myself to have.

With respect to Republicans and to us:

It hurts me less when they embrace lies than it does when we embrace a lie.

The structure of methane is a scientific fact; no one can pass a low level organic chemistry class without knowing its structure and its composition.

The laws of science are not subject to repeal by legislatures. Period.

As a lifelong Democrat, I wish I could say that this isn't true, but it is:

California governor Gavin-Newsom Proclaims Natural Gas to be Zero Carbon.

I'm very glad I don't live in California anymore. If I still lived there, voting for Governor would be extremely painful, as painful as when I had to vote for Michael Dukakis. I did it, but I hated that I had to do so.

I'm really in pain.

[PXR-5]

1. As always, follow the money.

[applegrove]

2. Denver has a environmentally safe suburb. They did not allow

Last edited Thu Nov 11, 2021, 08:06 PM - Edit history (1)

gas lines at all. Said gas was as bad as anything. Used geothermal. The owner had to sell the extra property due to a divorce. Traditional developer bought it. First thing he put in was gas lines. This is like big tobacco.

Link to tweet

[Ocelot II]

3. The chemical formula for methane is CH4.

That means it has carbon in it. So how does that work?

[NH Ethylene]

4. Omg.

That makes me sick.

[Turbineguy]

5. So now it's a

Hydro-non-carbon?

[JackSabbath]

6. Oh please😆

That's like passing a law that says ' rocks are soft and fluffy'🙄

[Ocelot II]

7. And table salt is sodium-free.

[cstanleytech]

10. Well, compared to the compressed neutrons from a neutron star they are though of course

that is not the densest thing in the universe.
For that you would have to look to the Republican base voters.

[hunter]

8. Hey, we've got near zero emission vehicles here in California as well.

Better than burning coal, I suppose, but what isn't?

I post this criticism for all the "Perfection is the enemy of good" apologists who've realized that natural gas is essential to their "renewable energy" fantasies.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. The headline is BS (from Forbes) ... he signed a Senate Bill where this is somewhere in the text

That's very different from Gavin Newsome himself personally 'proclaiming Natural Gas to Be Zero Carbon', as the SPIN from Forbes tries to make it out.

Not saying I don't have a problem with the idea generally, but Democrats control both state houses, and they passed the same bill, so singling out Newsome and saying he's made some grand 'proclamation' because he signed it ... is some bullshit, man.

THis is the gist of the 'argument' this author is spinning up ...

Gene Nelson, legal analyst for Californians for Green Nuclear Power, pointed out the troubling definition tucked within aspirational language in the bill.

SB 423 defines firm zero-carbon resources as "electrical resources that can individually, or in combination, deliver electricity with high availability for the expected duration of multiday extreme or atypical weather events and facilitate integration of eligible renewable energy resources into the electrical grid and the transition to a zero-carbon electrical grid"

And Newsome signed the bill, ergo, Newsome is 'proclaiming Natural Gas to Be Zero Carbon'.

Weak sauce, IMHO.

[NNadir]

11. Thanks for your opinion, but the fact is...facts matter...it describes the California dependence...

...on dangerous natural gas completely accurately and totally.

The combustion of dangerous natural gas dominates electricity production in California, even though there have been decades, going back to when I lived there almost 30 years ago, "100% renewable energy" proclamations "by such and such year" regularly.

It is well known if you sign a document you own it. It's why it's a good idea to read documents, or at least have an assistant read a document before signing it.

Unless you're Gavin Newsome, of course. Then you can say, "I never said methane is carbon free.""

You are entitled to your opinion of course, but the word "transition," also in the document is a fucking lie.

L-I-E.

This should be obvious because the sun goes down reportedly every evening, or appears to do so, since the Earth rotates. It also should be obvious that the wind doesn't blow constantly.

Well, having studied the CAISO data extensively, pretty much weekly, I can say that the failure of the wind industry to deliver electricity with "high availability" is not an "atypical event." It's pretty much a daily event.

If one is interested in something other than defending the indefensible one can head over to the CAISO website, which I do frequently.

I've taken the trouble to download the *.csv files available for various sources of energy, and demand.

I took a few hours and combined the *.CSV files for so called "renewable energy," individually broken down in five minute increments for each form, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and biogas, and combined them with the *CSV files for dangerous natural gas, dangerous coal, as well as carbon dioxide outputs for the whole State for the period between 09/06/21 through 09/13/21, slightly to the summer side of the equinox. The average output of the wind industry, spread over more than 1500 square miles of destroyed wilderness laced with access roads, was 1767.3 MW. The standard deviation, a measure of reliability, was 916.1 MW. (The decimal is not a significant figure.) The standard deviation for the solar scam was actually greater than its average. Not good.

On a 12 acre foot print, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant averaged in that same period, 2261.2 MW with a standard deviation was 2.9 MW.

The average power load of dangerous natural gas in California in that period was 13,713.5 MW, with a standard deviation of 4,211 MW.

Of course, you claim that I am compelled to agree with your claim that I am making the "perfect the enemy of the good," thus requiring me to agree that there is something "good" about so called "renewable energy." I have declined your offer, because I refuse to acknowledge the ridiculous claim that there is any good thing at all about requiring the combustion of dangerous natural gas.

In the period mentioned above, the State of California dumped, in a seven day period, 1,801.916.8 tons of carbon dioxide to power its grid.

To remove and reduce that carbon dioxide will require future generations to produce all of the energy burning that shit produced, plus a massive greater amount of energy to overcome the entropy of mixing.

If Gavin Newsome can't read, he shouldn't sign. The bill says methane is carbon free. Period, and all the dancing around in denial doesn't mean shit.

OK?

It's certainly not "weak sauce" to say so, certainly not any weaker than saying that California intends in any fucking way to eliminate dependence on dangerous natural gas. It doesn't. What it intends to do is to redefine the structure and composition of dangerous natural gas, period. It's a crime against science, but greater than that, a crime against humanity.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

13. You really don't have to keep saying the same things to me over and over, I know your arguments

We've repeatedly agreed we hate the idea of shutting down Diablo Canyon, for the record. You don't have to keep giving me the specs on the power produced in the wonderfully small footprint.

Here's mine:

Lets say in CA we generate 50 units of energy a day with dangerous natural gas NOW.

Important point here, by definition we HAVE A REQUIREMENT to burn this gas ALREADY. This is the power we use.

So, let's say we build wind and solar generation that can produce 20 units a day on a good day, or maybe 7.5 units on a bad one (the sun DOES reliably shine roughly 12 hours a day after all).

Then, we only have to burn 30-42.5 units of dangerous natural gas a day, instead of 50.

As long as building and maintaining the solar/wind units does not eat up that 7.5-20 unit IMPROVEMENT we achieved (and if you have evidence that it actually does, I'm open to read the numbers you provide, but it's my understanding it does not), then the net impact is ... we burned LESS natural gas. Which is better than MORE.

Optimally, yes, instead of expending the resources to build the windmills and solar equipment, we should be building nuclear plants to replace the natural gas (and certainly not closing DCNPP), I agree. It IS frustrating we're not taking the most sensible approach.

But no matter what, even if we WERE doing that, they take a WHILE to design, build, get the permits for, get the insurance for, staff with competent personnel, etc. This isn't the 50's and 60's, stuff takes way longer, there's way more people (nimbys) around to complain, more laws, more hand-wringing, etc.

OTOH windmills and solar can be spun up much more easily, quickly, and cheaply. Ergo in the meantime, until people come to their senses and start up the Manhattan Project for Nukes, we are burning LESS dangerous natural gas by having renewable sources, are we not?

And if/when that Project actually happens? Because of renewables, we probably won't to build as MANY nuclear plants, so it will cost many billions less. I mean, having a bunch of windmills and solar farms does not preclude that happening, does it? Nukes and windmills can actually work okay together just as LNG and windmills do, can they not? Or we can just tear 'em down once the NP's are built, they don't last forever, as you oft point out.

In fact, there's a number of ways even besides nuclear we could provide more consistent, eco-friendly power, like expanding geothermal and hydropower (bit tenuous admittedly in the days of ACC), off the top of my head.

AND it's possible there will be major breakthrough in energy storage technology that makes today's batteries look like caveman days.

There's also the technology of pumping water uphill when there's excess power being generated, basically a giant battery-like hydropower system. I know it's only suitable for a small % of regions, but CA for example has a lot of hill and mountains. Maybe we could build a few more of those storage systems?

Ergo:

"I refuse to acknowledge the ridiculous claim that there is any good thing at all about requiring the combustion of dangerous natural gas"

Is tenuous to me, because building windmills does not CREATE a NEW requirement. There already IS ONE. We already need the 50 aforementioned units of energy, and they're coming from LNG right now.

So, my take is ... nothing about building renewable sources now REQUIRES dangerous natural gas in perpetuity as you suggest, nor does it CREATE a requirement that does not already exist! They actually just require supplemental 24/7 power through SOME MEANS, of which there are multiple possibilities. Maybe we figure out a storage system that can make renewables viable 24/7. It COULD happen, IMHO.

I know it's probably not the OPTIMAL solution, and building a bunch of nuclear power plants probably makes more sense. But I disagree with your assertions that building renewables is basically the ultimate stupidity on humanity's part. We're really just "great system(s) for storing the renewable power" away from being able to replace LNG plants, at least in some regions.

This all said, I already understand your arguments, and I'm not saying they're without merit. And I'm sure you understand mine at this point as well. So ... how about we agree to disagree about certain points, and agree on others, and call it a day?

[NNadir]

14. First all, I was a little credulous with respect to Forbes and Newsome

The bill is exceedinly stupid and is more of the same "by such and such" crap they were handing out when I lived there in the 1970s.

In fact the same bill with the same language could have been written, and probably was written with slight variations in 1980, 1990. 2000, 2010, not that I give a rat's ass. In my lifetime the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste rose by close to 100 ppm, despite all the "by 25 years from now" bills through which it's been my misfortune to live.

I've been hearing my whole adult life about "Renewable hydrogen" and I'm not young.

I will post a correction and clarification as to why the bill is stupid but also Gavin Newsome did not claim that fossil methane is carbon free. The bill does state that it's possible to synthesize methane, and ads a bunch of shit about fermentation based methane in a state with withering water supplies.

As for repeating myself, if it's important to you that I not do it, you might consider breaking the cycle by repeating over and over and over the "renewables are better than nothing" rhetoric. True I have repeated many times that I have zero respect for the claim, especially with the interminal use of the conditional word "could" that's been attached to everything connected with this toxic nonsense for my entire adult life.

Perhaps you think I'm poorly educated, and need to be instructed on the subject of the chemistry of fuels. As it happens I have probably hundred of publications from the Journal of Hydrogen Energy in my files, downloaded over the decades. I've gone through the table of contents of pretty much every issue of the ACS journal Energy and Fuels for the last ten years, and have commented on several papers therein here. I also suffer from routine familiarity with the laws of Thermodynamics, which the California legislature is incompetent to repeal.

If the so called "renewable energy" scheme produced half as much energy as it does complacency and wishful thinking, I might consider changing my mind, but it hasn't, it isn't and it won't.

The bill plainly confesses that the nonsense it dumps on future generations is dependent, wholly dependent, on access to the second worst climate forcing gas, methane.

It is, I think, the only honest element in it.

"Renewable energy" is worthless and destructive, not merely physically although the physical destruction connected with this junk is very real and getting worse, but is psychologically destructive as well, because it's a tool to bury reality, in short, a lie.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

15. Well, then consider it done. We agree on most points, but disagree on a handful of others.

I don't think it's 'worthless' I think it's a 'compromise with the ability to HELP if it replaces already burning fossil fuels'. You don't and that's fine

Of course I don't think you're poorly educated dude, give me a break on that. I know how intelligent and knowledgeable you are. But there are other smart people who don't think it's as worthless as you do. I don't mean me, I mean other people like you, who know a ton about all this.

I do agree the mentality that 'renewables' can solve everything is misplaced because, in order to truly be a great solution, it's dependent on storage solution(s) to overcome the intermittent nature that doesn't presently exist, and may never.

But if we DID figure out way(s) to store the energy in a battery-like system that's cheap, eco-friendly, scalable, etc ... I believe there's a possibility that renewables COULD be at least a bit of a panacea, at least in some regions.

At the same time, I understand the frustration of a lifetime of hearing claims that never actually happen and being cynical about the prospects as a result.

[Jim__]

12. Exactly! When someone has to lie about what was done, they must believe ...

... what was actually done wasn't really that bad.