Articles by
Michael Barnard
No, US Offshore Wind Developers Aren’t Killing Whales, & Haven’t Been Given Permits To Do So
By
Michael Barnard
So, I have a history with anti-wind nuts of all types. A long history. I became Margaret Atwood’s — yes, the Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood — green technology pro bono consultant after debating with Ontario’s anti-wind nuts on her blog. The American Wind Energy Association, when it existed and was a positive force in the country, used to check my Barnard on Wind blog to see if I’d written about something before they bothered to start debunking. I was drawn into fights against anti-wind nuttery globally, including on tiny King Island between Tasmania and Australia.
How Many Things Must One Analyst Get Wrong In Order To Proclaim A Convenient Decarbonization Minerals Shortage?
By
Michael Barnard
Yesterday, as I’m writing this, Dave Borlace of Just Have a Think dropped a new video. This one was debunking the somewhat infamous Simon Michaux un-peer reviewed document which purported to prove that there weren’t enough minerals in the world to enable us to get off of fossil fuels.
Airborne Wind Energy: It’s All Platypuses Instead Of Cheetahs
By
Michael Barnard
March 3, 2014 -- Kite-based wind generation was first proposed in the 1940s, the seminal power potential paper was published in 1980 and it was first demonstrated in 1986. So why isn’t there a single production system or even an a quarter-scale production prototype in existence today?
Comparing The US & China On Climate, Economy, & Other Outcomes Should Be Deeply Humbling For America
By
Michael Barnard
The narrative that Americans and many Europeans share about China and themselves is not aligned with observable reality, and the USA is in significant danger of economic decline even as the world improves.
Hydrogen Pipelines Studies Keep Making The Same Mistakes
By
Michael Barnard
Recently a variety of studies and memes have been expressing an odd distortion of reality, supported strongly by oil and gas industry lobbying and PR groups. The claim is that gas pipelines move a lot more energy a lot more cheaply than high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission.
Ontario’s Unfunded Nuclear Decommissioning Liability Is In The $18-$27 Billion CAD Range
By
Michael Barnard
So yes, Ontario’s nuclear program will be a fiscal burden on Ontarians to the tune of around $40 billion CAD which will be spent through roughly 2135, finally being paid off by the great-grandchildren of babies born in 2021. Nuclear, the gift that keeps on giving.
Can Tesla, GM, Ford, & Others Deliver On Biden’s 50% EV By 2030 goal?
By
Michael Barnard
Headlines all over the EV, cleantech, and normie media are highlighting Biden’s new EV plan. The big question becomes: is it feasible? Let’s look at some data and numbers and do a bit of projecting.
New Republican-Only Conservative Climate Caucus Light On Science, Heavily Pro-Fossil Fuels
By
Michael Barnard
New Republican Climate Caucus policies: Point fingers at others. Give money to fossil fuel industry. Pretend US is a leader, as opposed to a laggard.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Mostly Bad Policy
By
Michael Barnard
Small modular reactors won’t achieve economies of manufacturing scale, won’t be faster to construct, forego efficiency of vertical scaling, won’t be cheaper, aren’t suitable for remote or brownfield coal sites, still face very large security costs, will still be costly and slow to decommission, and still require liability insurance caps. They don’t solve any of the problems that they purport to while intentionally choosing to be less efficient than they could be.
Nuclear plant decommissioning costs three times as much as estimated
By
Michael Barnard
But they need a fund of closer to $70 billion, and they are short regardless. So the US fleet cleanup is going to cost the taxpayer probably closer to an additional $40 billion, if it all goes according to the estimates.
Stupid New Talking Point Against EVs: “You Need To Pay For The Roads! (That We Don’t Pay For)” — Part 2
By
Michael Barnard
Is it a sin that electric car owners don’t pay gas taxes? No, not at all, but you’d never know it listening to some people squawk. There are anti-electric car types who think this is a huge deal, instead of kind of an embarrassing story for internal combustion cars. Let’s tear it apart and see, shall we?
Canada Used To Provide A Lot Of World’s Lithium, But Can It Revive That?
By
Michael Barnard
There’s a lot of lithium in the world. There’s no particular worries about running short, and many innovators such as E3 are working to make places where it isn’t dirt cheap and easy at least competitive. Canada’s oil and gas region might have a secondary product as demand for their primary output dries up.
