The obvious question was, who did it? Four suspects emerged: the United States, Ukraine, an undetermined party probably involving Poland, and Russia. But, as stated in Putin’s PR Machine Throws up Smoke as the Nord Stream Pipeline Explosion Investigation Begins, my personal view is that Russia was the most likely culprit.

1. The pipelines were not producing income; they were costing money to operate.
2. The war forced Nord Stream customers to find other sources, and it was unlikely that Nord Stream would operate again.
3. It made it clear to Germany what the price was for helping Ukraine.
4. It avoided breach of contract financial penalties that would hit Gazprom if Germany desired to re-open the pipeline, and Russia refused.
5. The repair cost of the pipelines was insured.
6. Breaching the pipelines at the deepest part means that the shortest area would be flooded, and the damage would be the cheapest to repair.
   In my view, the bonus was that the explosions took place in Scandinavian fishing grounds, and the first explosion was in the vicinity of a new Norway-Poland pipeline which gave it a “nice pipeline you’ve got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it” flavor.

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Here's the math behind making a star-encompassing megastructure.

In 1960, visionary physicist Freeman Dyson proposed that an advanced alien civilization would someday quit fooling around with kindergarten-level stuff like wind turbines and nuclear reactors and finally go big, completely enclosing their home star to capture as much solar energy as they possibly could. They would then go on to use that enormous amount of energy to mine bitcoin, make funny videos on social media, delve into the deepest mysteries of the Universe, and enjoy the bounties of their energy-rich civilization.

But what if the alien civilization was… us? What if we decided to build a Dyson sphere around our sun? Could we do it? How much energy would it cost us to rearrange our solar system, and how long would it take to get our investment back? Before we put too much thought into whether humanity is capable of this amazing feat, even theoretically, we should decide if it’s worth the effort. Can we actually achieve a net gain in energy by building a Dyson sphere? //

Even if we were to coat the entire surface of the Earth in solar panels, we would still only capture less than a tenth of a billionth of all the energy our sun produces. Most of it just radiates uselessly into empty space. We’ll need to keep that energy from radiating away if we want to achieve Great Galactic Civilization status, so we need to do some slight remodeling. We don’t want just the surface of the Earth to capture solar energy; we want to spread the Earth out to capture more energy. //

For slimmer, meter-thick panels operating at 90 percent efficiency, the game totally changes. At 0.1 AU, the Earth would smear out a third of the sun, and we would get a return on our energy investment in around a year. As for Jupiter, we wouldn’t even have to go to 0.1 AU. At a distance about 30 percent further out than that, we could achieve the unimaginable: completely enclosing our sun. We would recoup our energy cost in only a few hundred years, and we could then possess the entirety of the sun’s output from then on. //

MichalH Smack-Fu Master, in training
4y
62

euknemarchon said:
I don't get it. Why wouldn't you use asteroid material?
The mass of all asteroids amounts to only 3% of the earth's moon. Not worth chasing them down, I'd guess. //

DCStone Ars Tribunus Militum
14y
2,313
"But [Jupiter]’s mostly gas; it only has about five Earth’s worth of rocky material (theoretically—we’re not sure) buried under thousands of kilometers of mostly useless gas. We'd have to unbind the whole dang thing, and then we don’t even get to use most of the mass of the planet."

Hmm. If we can imagine being able to unbind rocky planets, we can also imagine fusing the gas atmosphere of Jupiter to make usable material (think giant colliders). Jupiter has a mass of about 1.9 x 10^27 kg, of which ~5% is rocky core. We'd need to make some assumptions about the energy required to fuse the atmosphere into something usable (silicon and oxygen to make silicates?) and the efficiency of that process. Does it do enough to change the overall calculation though? //

Dark Jaguar Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
11,066
The bigger issue is the sphere wouldn't be gravitationally locked in place because the sun is cancelling it's own pull in every direction. Heck even Ringworld had to deal with this flaw in the sequel. That's why these days the futurists talking about enclosing the sun recommend "Dyson swarming" instead.

Edit: A little additional note. You can't really get the centrifugal force needed to generate artificial gravity across an entire sphere like you can with a ring. A swarm doesn't negate this. If you orbit fast enough to generate that artificial gravity, you're now leaving the sun behind. Enjoy drifting endlessly! No, rather each of these swarm objects are just going to have to rotate themselves decently fast.

The summer of 2023 may be remembered as an important point in human civilization as the threat to critical and efficient energy supplies began to recede.

Sweden’s government has ditched plans to go all-in on “green energy,” green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants. Fossil fuel giant Shell announced it was scaling back its energy transition plans to focus on . . . gas and oil! Specific wind farm projects began to topple due to strong economic headwinds because the cost of the electricity to be generated was deemed too high. //

A little closer to home, Deep Blue California has recently announced the state is delaying the closure of 3 fossil-fuel-based power plants.

The reason? The green energy fantasies are not compatible with actual power realities. //

As has long been the case, the largest single source of electricity in California comes from natural gas.

The amount of natural gas in the state’s mix of energy resources has been reduced by about one-fifth in the past 10 years, falling from 130,995 gigawatt-hours in 2012 to 104,495 in 2022. //

CommoChief in reply to DaveGinOly. | September 1, 2023 at 8:34 pm
One way to actually help the environment is cut down on additional transmission lines. How about limiting imported electricity in each State to 10% of peak demand and tying that to the ability of the State to receive any waivers? So if CA isn’t generating 90% of peak electricity demand (they ain’t) then CA no longer gets to set their own more stringent standards for fossil fuels, types of appliances, airborne particulate matter, fuel efficiency in vehicles and so on. All they gotta do to regain their current ability to disrupt national markets is be willing to generate 90% of their peak electric demand. Maybe add in State refining capacity for special fuel blends as well; not just from already ‘cracked’ product imported from elsewhere but from crude oil. Surely CA would want to do that in their State with their enlightened and virtuous environmental safeguards? Since they’re so much smarter, better, virtuous and more caring than the rest of us. /s?

As we grapple with the twin challenges of energy security and energy reliability, revisiting Nixon’s vision offers valuable lessons. //

In the annals of American energy policy, few moments stand out as boldly as the unveiling of Nixon’s nuclear agenda. His plan, set against the backdrop of the 1973 oil embargo, was both a response to the immediate crisis and a long-term strategy for the nation’s energy security. One allure of nuclear power was its potential to diversify America’s energy portfolio and market, providing a backup in case of a crisis in one sector. Nixon envisaged a future where America’s cities and industries would be powered by the atom, reducing domestic risks associated with dependence on foreign oil. //

However, several factors derailed Nixon’s nuclear dream. During the Cold War, concerns about nuclear proliferation were already mounting, particularly around civilian nuclear programs that could lay the groundwork for weapon development if nuclear energy expanded into politically unstable regions. These proliferation concerns, combined with environmental fears intensified by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and later the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, significantly dampened public and political support for nuclear energy. This climate of skepticism led policymakers to impose regulatory hurdles on nuclear plant construction that ultimately proved insurmountable.

Every major advance in human technology, in human standard of living, has come with increases in energy density. From wood to charcoal to coal to oil to natural gas to fission power, the arc of progress in energy has always been toward greater, not lower, energy density. That is until the green energy types came along with their insistence on low-density sources like solar and wind.

So, with nuclear fission reactors providing the highest energy density available today, the question arises, "Where do we go from here?" What energy source can provide greater energy density than fission power?

The answer is fusion power. But the problem is that it's a few decades away, and has been since the '50s:

Meta believes it will need one to four gigawatts of nuclear power, in additional to the energy it already consumes, to fuel its AI ambitions. As such, it will put out a request for proposals (RFP) to find developers capable of supplying that level of electricity in the United States by early 2030. //

But while Meta plans to continue investing in solar and wind, hyperscalers seem convinced that harnessing the atom is the only practical means of meeting AI's thirst for power while making good on its sustainability commitments.

SpaceWeatherNews @SunWeatherMan
·
Trying to shoot a hole in this argument. Can’t. Any takers?
prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️
@mrexits
He is kind of asking the right questions here

There exist magic rocks that can boil water.

Boiling water gives us energy.

We stop using magic rocks because they exploded that one time.

Are we re*ed? Imagine if pre historic (sic) peoples stopped using fire because some red burnt his house down once.
10:54 AM · Dec 2, 2024

It's an interesting question. It's also a great illustration of the irrational thinking in some quarters when things like climate change are concerned. The fact is that nuclear energy is safer, with a lower rate of injury, than any energy method other than solar.

Climate scolds, people who want to keep the earth at some human-approved level, are all about "clean energy." They love the intermittent, low-energy-density sources - windmills, solar power - but can't abide and will not discuss nuclear power or "magic rocks." And when it comes to energy density, there just isn't any comparison. One fuel pellet of uranium in a light-water reactor produces as much energy as 1.3 tons of coal, 250 gallons of oil, and 34,000 cubic feet of natural gas. In a breeder reactor, the numbers are much higher: 22 tons of coal, 4,350 gallons of oil, and 590,000 cubic feet of natural gas. //

Forget what climate scolds claim to want. Look at what they are in favor of: You (not they) reducing your standard of living to meet their claimed goals. Look at the actions of the high-profile members of the opposition: Jetting around the globe in private jets, living in huge mansions a few feet above the tide line in the oceans they claim are rising out of control. They expect you to pay the price they aren’t willing to.

Do you want clean energy? This is clean energy. It's safe energy. No “still just thirty years away” fusion boondoggles are required. Not that fusion wouldn’t be even greater if we can make it work on an industrial scale, but how long have various organizations been trying to make that happen? This technology, nuclear power, especially the promising small modular reactors, is a technology we have now.

The new, improved small modular reactors described above could and should be built today. Technological societies like ours are dependent on abundant, cheap energy, and nuclear power has the ability to provide that power. Throughout our history, every major technological advance in power – from animal to machine, from wood to coal to oil to gas – has had one key characteristic in common, and that is increased energy density. Nuclear power represents just such an increase over generating electricity with coal or gas. Solar and wind power run in just the opposite direction, which is why they don’t scale up. //

anon-j5pd
a day ago
I’m an engineer and was a nuclear operator in the Navy. I’m a big supporter of nuclear power.
My dad used to work at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in AZ. It’s the biggest nuke in the country.
Just for fun I calculated the area of solar panels required to match Palo Verde’s output. It would require a field of panels 25 miles on a side, 625 square miles of panels. I used the power conversion factor and highest rate of sunlight incidence on the panels.
Palo Verde churns out the same amount of power day and night and isn’t impacted by dust. //

They Call Me Bruce
a day ago
Can't argue with a word of this.

As for safety, I used to be fond of pointing out that more people died in Ted Kennedy's car than in every civilian nuclear accident in the US combined.

We expect an increase in reliability in modern tech – unless one is a climate scold, and unless the topic in question is solar and wind power:

Wind and solar have been growing as a share of US electrical power generation over the last two decades. State and federal mandates and subsidies have driven the expansion of renewables because of their inherently and intermittent nature. But it’s clear that renewable electricity sources have a third strike: they are fragile and prone to weather damage and destruction. //

In May 2019, a massive hailstorm in West Texas destroyed 400,000 solar modules of the Midway Solar Project, about 60% of the facility. The project was only one year old. The system was rebuilt, costing insurers more than $70 million. //

This whole problem presents a doom loop of unreliable and fragile electrical generation. The climate scolds would have us believe that the weather is growing hotter/colder/more unpredictable because of human activity causing climate change. And to solve the climate change that we have supposedly solved, we must restrict further our use of reliable energy sources for unreliable and fragile "green" energy systems like solar and wind power, which clutter up the landscape and are less reliable and more expensive than the traditional source.

How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power? | ITIF

An interesting (albeit saddening) article from the Swamp-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

• China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.

• China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.

• China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).

• Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.

• China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.

That used to be the US’s strength – the ability to take smart ideas from anywhere around the world and actually implement them. That was before the US changed itself into a make-work program for bureaucrats & lawyers.

His latest endeavor, "Landman," centers on the oil industry and contrasts the lives of Texas-based tycoons and workers, and one clip is already going viral. Billy Bob Thorton, who plays "Tommy Norris" in the show, lays out the reality of wind turbines and the human need for fossil fuels in a way that will have you fist-pumping. //

TOMMY NORRIS: Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete? Or make that steel and haul this ** out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? Do you want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that ***** thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won't offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don't get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Telsa battery. //

TOMMY NORRIS: And never mind the fact that if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don't have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It'd take 30 years if we started tomorrow. And unfortunately for your grandkids, we have a 120-year petroleum-based infrastructure. Our lives depend on it. And hell, it's in everything. That road we came in on. The wheels on every car, including yours. It's in tennis rackets and lipstick, refrigerators and antihistamines, pretty much anything plastic, your cellphone case, artificial heart valves, any kind of clothing that's not made with animal or plant fibers, soap, hand lotion, garbage bags, fishing boats, you name it. Every thing, and you want to know what the kicker is? We're gonna run out of it before we find its replacement. //

I will mention that some people have questioned that last sentence which states "We're gonna run out of it before we find its replacement." Is that true? In a macro sense, sure. Humans will eventually reach a point where they can't get to what is left of the Earth's fossil fuels. With that said, past hysteria surrounding the specific timeline has proven to be false and will likely continue to be proven to be false as more reserves are discovered and newer extraction techniques are developed. //

TOMMY NORRIS: No, the thing that's gonna kill us all is running out before we find an alternative, and believe me, if Exxon thought them things right there were the future, they'd be putting them all over the place. Getting oil out of the ground is the most dangerous job in the world. We don't do it because we like it. We do it because we've run out of options.

For my money, this is the most important part of the clip. No one has more of an incentive to pursue and dominate the market for "renewables" than the oil companies. They also happen to have the most capital to do so.

If the oil companies thought wind turbines or solar panels were a viable alternative to fossil fuels, they'd be first in line to seize the market because, in the end, it's all about sustainability in making money for them. That they aren't is the biggest tell. Yes, Chevron and Exxon dabble in the sector, mostly for public relations reasons, but it's clear they aren't believers. //

DavidW
14 hours ago
If the wind is not blowing hard enough to get the turbines to turn, they have to use electricity (from gas/coal) to turn the blades, otherwise they will warp if they are in one position too long. In the winter they have to use electricity to keep the gear boxes unfrozen (if they are using oil-based gearboxes). AND, while the life of the turbine might be 20 years, the life of the blades are less thanks to the sandpaper effect of dust-laden wind on them. And of course ethanol isn't the miracle either - I read that it can take several gallons of "fossil" fuel (diesel or gas) to create one gallon of ethanol.

Let's hope that Trump can break this cycle of stupidity and get us on the right track toward real energy independence. //

headhunt DavidW
13 hours ago
The amount of water needed to produce ethanol dwarfs what is needed from oil based product.
Huge areas of the Midwest/west have sunk well over 20' all to feed a political, ineffective, fuel additive. //

mopani Geowhiziker
a few minutes ago
Given how essential and useful they are for so many non-fuel products, people in the future will look back on this era with astonishment that we wasted hydrocarbons by burning them. //

mopani Jason A Jones
10 minutes ago
Look at the distribution of the most common elements in the universe: hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon are in the top 5 (H2 is #1 of course).

Assume that this same distribution existed when the earth was formed and the large amounts of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon were trapped inside our planet.

H2+O2 + heat+ pressure = water

H2 + C + heat + pressure= hydrocarbons (not fossil fuel!)

Is being squeezed out of the earth under pressure.

The fuel today with the greatest energy density is nuclear fuel; a chunk of enriched uranium the size of a thumbnail contains as much energy as one ton of coal, 120 gallons of oil, or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.

So when our nearest neighbor, Canada, has the potential to become the Saudi Arabia of uranium, the United States should sit up and take notice. //

Nuclear power is the energy source of the future. We can't wait for the day when fusion power becomes economically viable, either. America's energy requirements in coming decades will be increasing, not decreasing, and anyone who has looked at the data knows that wind, solar, and other "green" sources won't meet the needs. We need nuclear power, we need reliable, friendly sources of uranium to augment our own production, and we need to streamline the process for approving new reactors.

Legal Insurrection readers will recall that in my post on the United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan this week, its president boldly declared that oil and gas were a ‘gift from God’.

The eco-activists attending the event were enraged.

The climate cultists will likely be working themselves up into even more hysteria because of another climate conference that occurred mid-November in the Czech Republic city of Prague.

The Czech division of the International Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel) organized a two-day climate conference in Prague on November 12-13, 2024, where climate scientists declared that the “climate emergency” is over. The conference concluded with a communiqué drafted by the participating scientists and researchers that targeted the climate hysteria promoted by the United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.’

Moreover, the scientists at the conference declared that even if all nations moved straight to net zero emissions, by the 2050 target date the world would be only about 0.1 C cooler than with no emissions reduction.

So far, the attempts to mitigate climate change by international agreements such as the Paris Agreement have made no difference to our influence on climate, since nations such as Russia and China, India and Pakistan continue greatly to expand their combustion of coal, oil and gas.

The cost of achieving that 0.1 C reduction in global warming would be $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ worldwide gross domestic product.

The declaration has 18 different point referencing climate science and facts that counter the narratives being pushed by the IPCC and those who want to push their green agendas. //

1 The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.

2. Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
3. The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
4. The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
5. Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual. //

Though I have to say, #17 is a favorite of mine:

17. Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generated than any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.

But, perhaps most importantly, the conference attendees demand the end of persecution of those researchers doing real science who struggle to share their reasonable and reliable findings whenever the data counters the political narratives.

It didn't take long for the media to run a hit piece on Chris Wright, who President-elect Donald Trump nominated as his Secretary of Energy. Wright, the founder and CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, a fracking company, was nominated earlier this week; see NEW: Trump Taps Fracking Exec As Next Energy Secretary. Today, Reuters is on the move with a story headlined: Trump energy pick wrote ESG report hailing oil, gas, downplaying climate worry.

President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the energy department believes fossil fuels are the key to ending world poverty which, he says, is a greater problem than climate change's "distant" threat, according to a report he penned as CEO of oilfield services company Liberty Energy.

In a corporate report released in February called 'Bettering Human Lives,' Chris Wright said that the energy transition has not begun and that climate change, while a challenge, is not the greatest threat to humans.

Poverty is a bigger threat that can be alleviated with access to hydrocarbons, said Wright, who started a foundation aimed at expanding propane cook stoves in developing countries. //

Wright wrote "the wealthy world has gone beyond over-optimism surrounding the breadth and scalability of a narrow slice of alternative energy and, unfortunately, has rushed head-long into outright obstruction of hydrocarbon infrastructure and production." //

Wright places the welfare of people and communities above scientific grift. He supports what works and is critical of what doesn't and can't work...looking at you, wind and solar. He understands that energy production is inextricably linked to our freedom and prosperity. This bill of indictment against Wright should be read into the Congressional Record ...

david says:
January 20, 2015 at 1:50 PM

There’s a big difference in what we’re told about climate change versus the effects of radiation.

Decades ago people subjected test animals to “large” amounts of radiation, and extrapolated their results to “small” amounts of radiation. The assumption was that as the amount of radiation decreased, then so did the effects of the radiation linearly. This implies that even at low doses of radiation there would be some damage. (ie. 1/10th the radiation = 1/10th the damage, 1/100th the radiation = 1/100th the damage..)

However, that’s not how science works. They had an hypothesis, but where were the experiments to prove it true?

Eventually it was found that the LNT model didn’t hold to be true. The expected cancers from Chernobyl didn’t match what was expected. Different parts of the world have different background levels of radiation, yet those changes don’t seem to correspond with the LNT hypothesis. There were accident where people were subjected to radiation, yet once again no correlation with cancer rates as suggested by the LNT hypothesis; in fact, in such cases it sometimes appeared that low doses of radiation could decrease cancer rates.

The LNT hypothesis is dead, or at least it should be. But there are people who benefit from keeping it alive, and rather than going back to the labs to try to figure out the proper relationship between radiation at low levels, and genetic damage, they try to muddy the waters.

Climate change might have its fear-mongers, much like the supporters of the LNT hypothesis do, but it has yet to be proven wrong. We know that greenhouse gases do affect the Earth’s climate, though to what degree our meddling will affect it is open to some debate, as is how harshly those changes will affect us humans. But, since the Earth isn’t a frozen wasteland, we “know” that greenhouse gases do affect the climate.

In short:
———-

Low doses of radiation:
-> has fear mongers
-> those fear mongers have been proven wrong.
-> end of story, (or it should be.)

Climate Change:
-> has fear mongers, and also
-> has those who benefit from denying it.
-> greenhouse gases affect climate, else the Earth would be a lot colder.
-> end of story, including how bad it will be, is yet to be written.

Given we don’t know the full story, we should research, and act, because the worse case scenario is disaster for us human. Replacing coal with nuclear is a no brainer. If there is room for some small release of greenhouse gases by us humans, it won’t include the use of coal to generate electricity. That’s one of the lower-hanging branches that we should be eliminating now.

Wayne SW says:
January 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM

Well, you identified a major part of the problem. Those wind farms don’t harvest wind so much as they harvest subsidies. And governments are the ones who put those subsidies in place. In my state (Ohio), the state government is mulling removing the state portion of those subsidies, and the unreliable energy lobbyists are raising holy hell. They say they won’t proceed with any new projects without those subsidies. That right there tells me how they are making their money. And of course they also lobby for high-priced PPAs, while you have travelling anti-nuclear activists decrying PPAs for any company with nuclear plants (they say it shows the nukes need “subsidies”).

Brian Mays says:
January 12, 2015 at 8:05 PM

“The question arises: Were the decisions concerning this enormous funding for global warming research taken out of genuine concern that the climate is allegedly changing as a result of CO2 industrial emissions, or do some other undisclosed ideas stand behind this money, IPCC activity, Kyoto, and all the gruesome catastrophic propaganda the world is now exposed to? If this concern is genuine, then why do we not see a storm of enthusiastic environmentalists and United Nations officials demanding to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants, which have zero emission of greenhouse gases, are environmentally friendly, more economical, and much safer for plant workers and much safer for the general population than other sources of energy?”

– Zbigniew Jaworowski

On day one of Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency, he canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Since then, he’s waged a war on drilling and energy and has tried to shove a green agenda down our throats. It’s one of the many reasons a Democrat won’t be in the White House come January.

On Thursday, he made a strange but somewhat conciliatory speech where he promised a smooth transition of power to President-elect Donald Trump.

Yet it was only hours before he made a move to defy the GOP nominee and former president INCOMING PRESIDENT and further limited drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. //

But in 2017, Trump signed a tax bill mandating at least two lease sales in the refuge’s 1.6 million-acre coastal plain by the end of 2024. //

Trump reinstated the drilling program in a 2017 tax cut law enacted by congressional Republicans. Even so, no drilling has occurred in the refuge. //

USGS estimates there’s somewhere between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the coastal plain. Those are huge numbers. For comparison, Alaska’s second biggest oil field, Kuparuk, holds about 2.5 billion barrels.

Meanwhile, several studies have found that cleaner, clearer air due to falling pollution from China and lower sulfur marine fuels made only a small contribution to last year’s temperatures. One study, submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, found that declining pollution could raise global temperatures by 0.03°C over the next 20 years, with the strongest effect not occurring until later this decade. It’s not nothing, says study co-author Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at Scripps, but far too little to explain last year. Taken together, says Mika Rantanen, a climate scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the results are “a good reminder that it was indeed El Niño that was the major player.” //

None of the data justifies making energy more expensive. None of the data justify covering thousands of square miles of open ground, including vital wildlife habitat, with windmills and solar panels.

Forget what Kamala Harris is saying. Look at who she's hiring — in this case, someone who is an unrepentant climate scold, a fanatical anti-child, anti-energy, anti-modern lifestyle (except for herself, we feel sure) lunatic. //

Key campaign workers like this frequently go on to take related positions in the staff of election winners when they assume office. There can be little doubt that a Harris administration would include Camila Thorndike, almost certainly in some position having to do with energy and climate policy. She would be pushing policies that would make energy more expensive, and in so doing make everything more expensive; she would be pushing policies that would damage, if not destroy, our modern technological lifestyle.