Draft script:
The title of an undated paper at United Press International: Much of North America may face electricity shortages starting in 2024
The subhead echoes the title: Power outages could come to many regions of North America in the coming years
I’ll read the first paragraph in its entirety:
“MORE than 300 million people in the US and Canada face the growing possibility of electricity shortages beginning as early as this year and continuing to 2028. In a recent report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation – an international regulatory authority – projected that a majority of regions in the US and Canada will have insufficient electricity supply to reliably meet demand during extreme weather conditions. A few may even see interruptions under normal weather conditions.”
Let’s return to that first sentence: “MORE than 300 million people in the US and Canada face the growing possibility of electricity shortages beginning as early as this year and continuing to 2028.” Wait, what? Electricity shortages will stop after 2028? How? Naturally, there is no mention of aerosol masking, the best-kept secret in climate science. Professor James E. Hansen has said and written many times that the aerosols will fall out of the atmosphere in about five days. According to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper published on 15 June 2021, the loss of aerosol masking will lead to a substantial increase in planetary warming: 55% globally, and 133% over land. Most of us live on land. As I have indicated previously in this space, we passed the 2 C Rubicon several months ago, according to governmental bodies representing a few countries. These governmental bodies were catching up to Andrew Y. Glikson, who wrote that Earth had surpassed the 2 C mark in his 9 October 2020 book, The Event Horizon. Furthermore, as nearly as I can tell, additional heating of Earth is a one-way street. Once the planet warms, cooling it is a rather challenging task.
Of course, there is also the issue of shifting the baseline. Whereas in professional sports recent rules have made it easier to score points, the opposite is occurring with respect to climate change. Acknowledging that we are in the midst of abrupt, irreversible climate change has become increasingly difficult over time. Nonetheless, the political organization known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted that Earth is in the midst of abrupt, irreversible climate change with reports in October 2018 and September 2019, respectively.
According to a member of a think tank in Washington, D.C. as published in the paper by United Press International: The report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found that North America’s peak demand – the highest amount of electricity needed in a given period – is rising faster than at any time in the past five years. The sharp increase also represents a reversal of a decades-long trend involving falling or flat growth in demand.
New York state, New England, and the entire western US, along with some of the most populous Canadian regions, such as Ontario and British Columbia, are at “elevated risk” of experiencing electricity shortfalls in summer heatwaves or winter storms. But two central US regions have been designated by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation as being at “high risk” of disruptions even in normal weather. One of these areas stretches from the US-Canadian border in Michigan and Minnesota to Louisiana on the US’s Gulf Coast, and the other encompasses Tennessee, along with portions of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Kentucky. These areas are quite large and contain many people.
It is difficult to say how long these disruptions may last because the industry standards meant to limit shortfalls are based on the “1-in-10 rule.” Some interpret this as allowing one day of outages every 10 years, while others indicate it allows for only one disruption event – no matter how long – during those 10 years. Stunningly, the people in the industry have not yet agreed on the standards.
One issue contributing to the problem of electrical shortages is the supply of energy. As power plants that run on fossil fuels are retired, they aren’t being replaced with so-called renewable energy sources at the same pace, according to a member of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation during a media briefing on 13 December 2022. Challenges around agreeing on routes for transmission lines and getting the required permits have delayed new renewable energy sources being connected to the US power grid.
About that renewable nonsense: According to five peer-reviewed papers by Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Tim Garrett at the University of Utah, civilization is a heat engine. It matters not how civilization is powered. It is a heat engine.
There has also been a spike in demand for electricity from industries such as cryptocurrency mining, data storage, and battery manufacturing. The broader push for the electrification of heating and transport systems is also creating new winter peaks in electricity demand beyond those seen in the summer with increased use of air conditioning. Natural gas has been seen as a “bridge fuel” in the transition to renewable power. However, as the winter peak demand has grown, firms have struggled to keep power plants, pipelines, and gas-production wells operating in cold temperatures due to equipment failures and frozen wellheads. That means a reliable electricity supply may depend on implementing higher standards for the natural gas industry, according to a representative of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation during the media briefing held on 13 December of last year.
These so-called renewable sources of energy are neither substantial enough nor resilient enough to withstand recent temperatures. Recent, sub-freezing temperatures throughout the US caused electric car batteries to die. In addition, the surviving batteries required charging times up to three times longer than during warmer temperatures.
As if those challenges are not bad enough, there is also the issue of nuclear facilities as one means of generating electricity. Nuclear power plants require grid-tied electricity to operate. What happens when the grid fails, even locally? The subsequent implosion of how many nuclear power plants will be sufficient to strip away stratospheric ozone, thereby superheating the planet? Unfortunately, we do not know the answer to this question. We are running an unreplicated experiment while paying no attention to the precautionary principle.
We do know that ionizing radiation from a single super-volcano was sufficient to strip away considerable stratospheric ozone. This event, some 74,000 years ago, was not enough to destroy habitat for human animals, much less all life on Earth. However, the ionizing radiation from a few dozen nuclear facilities might do the trick. I’d rather not find out, of course.
"AI could drive a natural gas boom as power companies face surging electricity demand"
Fancy that:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/05/ai-could-drive-natural-gas-boom-as-utilities-face-surging-electric-demand.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2paQUZ2jv4yvg-t_BiTxCNdg7zaYT45JzZOsfPdPwp9iJGpp6jl9TvJRs_aem_AWHCaJcy5uIJKHHQwM3dJsM_xAGvN-wWffJkFKxdA8Whs57DpPHiei7ddr0vPFwq220R-ENEzyNgQckBo0Tyr6iZ
"You begin to see the challenge. AI generates enormous new energy demand on top of everything else. This is pure growth, not the replacement for something that will go away—at least not yet."
Industrial civilisation was insatiable, before Artificial Intelligence: sic.
"The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human race is our inability to truly understand the exponential function." Albert Bartlett.
Powering the AI
By John Mauldin | Mar 23, 2024
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/powering-the-ai