GERMANY – Natural Gas is Bad, People Freezing is Good

ALAS ALAS.   Germany’s Deutsche Welle has just posted an article inspired by Climate Analytics which claims that Natural Gas is NOT a green source of energy and must be poo-pooed given it is actually more harmful than – coal. Never mind that it’s carbon emissions are 50% lower than coal, never mind it is plentiful, and never mind the NordStream II project which would provide Germany with cheap energy remains uncertified while Germans are freezing!   Why?   Because Climate Analytics said so.

Apparently, the pipelines are the problem.   Because pipeline infrastructure destroys the environment adding an additional carbon footprint.   Ah! It gets even prettier:   “Geopolitics is another problem: Just look at the delays getting the Nord Stream 2 Russia to Germany gas pipe connected amid escalating threats of war in Ukraine. It’s ready to go but can’t flow. Gas prices skyrocket as supply ebbs.”

Who wrote this drivel?   Apparently an anonymous person at Deutsche Welle who is afraid of getting pilloried for the … um drivel.

With a quaint picture in the background showing a windmill circa 1800 or so, the hideous monolith of a metal that is the new and improved windmill, and an old man on a bicycle, the idea is that we should all go back in time whereby we grind our own grain, saw wood, and transportation is a sailboat and a bicycle.

At some point the Cheshire Cat will reveal himself and we can all have a grand laugh!   If pipelines are the factor, then what next?   Roads?   Railways?   Houses?   ALL buildings?   Because they all degrade land and consume power in their production.  Ultimately, why not just rid the planet of people, then the planet would be carbon free! Right?

Actually – NO!

The largest natural source of carbon dioxide is the ocean. Oceans absorb carbon to feed the all living organisms that live there.  Without carbon the ocean and all that lives in it would not survive.   In fact, if there were no carbon in the ocean it would freeze solid.

“Carbon dioxide plays an important part in vital plant and animal process, such as photosynthesis and respiration. Plants and animals, in turn, convert the food compounds by combining it with oxygen to release energy for growth and other life activities. This is the respiration process, the reverse of photosynthesis.”

The cells in our body make carbon dioxide as part of their job, flowing thru the respiratory system and exhaling it when we breathe. When excess carbon is produced, it rises into the atmosphere and is absorbed into the oceans making them more acidic. An acidic ocean can harm shellfish and coral – like when a persons bones becoming softer. In a person, the effect is demineralization – loss of calcium and minerals that support bone health.

Remember ‘acid rain’?

The means of deterring the effect back in the 1970’s was to mediate pollution and deforestation. And then people got lazy.   Or maybe there simply wasn’t enough money to be made in recycling… I’m all in for completely stopping ocean pollution and getting rid of the arsonists!   But for some reason our esteemed governments want to get rid of our current energy sources without an alternative already in place!

Sometimes it seems theses mitigations are about as helpful as asphalt roads…   It’s cheaper than concrete, but within one year it requires repaving and/or filling all the cracks and potholes.  What it does achieve is a steady line of employees.

The idiocy of converting to wind power is the same – windmills die at age 18 and are buried in mass graves – somewhere. Meanwhile steel factories are busily firing their coal plants to make the windmills to preserve our environment.   At the last ‘climate summit’ in Germany, the wind had stopped – and Merkel was forced to fire up coal in order to provide the necessary energy so all the government representatives were ‘comfortable’.  Windmills are grand when its windy, but what happens when it’s not?

A Swedish Company has been dabbling for the past decade in using hydrogen instead of coal in the process of making steel.   Still in its infancy, a small amount has been made and sent to Volvo for testing in the making of trucks. The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it can embrittle metal making it more prone to break apart.

The production process of this hydrogen requires methane and water.   Today Methane Is Produced from “Natural Gas”. In the US 95% of hydrogen is produced using natural gas – the same gas that Climate Analytics has declared is more pervasive in environmental degradation than coal.  The same gas Germany refuses to accept in the NardStream pipeline to make German citizens more ‘comfortable’.

The National Resource Council has determined that a transitional use of hydrogen could be in place by 2037.   Fifteen YEARS from now.   At that point they estimate 60 billion kg of hydrogen will be produced annually at a water cost of “19-69 trillion gallons of water”!

“This would account for a 27-97% increase from the 195 billion gallons per day (72 trillion gallons annually) used today by the thermoelectric power sector to generate about 90% of the electricity in the US.”   Water our most precious resource for sustaining ALL LIFE.

Electrolysis of water is still being studied as a means for reducing that water usage which is primarily a part of the cooling process.   But this has yet to happen.

In the end, I doubt anyone would argue against reducing emissions if the hypocrisy were eliminated 100%. If the water usage was significantly reduced.   IF its value for the environment in all it’s creation/production did actually perform better, more efficiently, and with less impact on our natural resources than our present sources.

Today we aren’t there.   Until we are it makes absolutely no sense to freeze people to death, deprive them of low cost fuel and guilt them as being hazards to our globe.

But then Climate Analytics wouldn’t even exist because what they do is parade about analyses regarding all the harm – without any consideration to ‘The Flow”.

Climate Analytics supports climate-vulnerable countries in strengthening their roles and voices in international climate negotiations.

And evaluate the risks to sustainable development.

In a 2017, the Federal GAO found that of the $13.2 billion in climate change funding that year among the non-transparent organizations receiving the money all they actually accomplished was the creation of ‘talking points’. Hundreds of Billions spent across thousands upon thousands of organizations across the globe burning through the money to produce ‘talking points’ and articles.

As of 2018, US taxpayers had doled out $154 billion for talking. Not for science, not for the development of alternatives, but for more ‘talking’.   Including Climate Analytics.

In the meantime Germany has shuttered 3 of its 6 nuclear facilities and shuttered the NordStream II pipeline until next year… maybe.   Because now natural gas – is bad.   And freezing is good.