- A critical assumption of climate alarmism is that the ecosystem is fragile and we naughty, mighty humans can easily overwhelm it. So we were surprised to hear, at the recent Heartland Institute International Conference on Climate Change, that one single hurricane contains more energy than the US generates in a year. And not just surprised, we were skeptical. So we checked, and, by golly, it’s true and then some. As one website gushed, “any way you slice it, hurricanes release a phenomenal amount of energy. If we start by looking at just the energy generated by the winds, we find that for a typical mature hurricane, we get numbers in the range of 1.5 x 10^12 Watts or 1.3 x 10^17 Joules/day (this is according to the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.) This is equivalent to about half of the total electrical generating capacity on the planet! For a single hurricane! But that’s not all, we’re just getting started. A hurricane also releases energy through the formation of clouds and rain (it takes energy to evaporate all that water). If we crunch the numbers for an average hurricane (1.5 cm/day of rain, circle radius of 665 km), we get a gigantic amount of energy: 6.0 x 10^14 Watts or 5.2 x 10^19 Joules/day! This is equivalent to about 200 times the total electrical generating capacity on the planet! NASA says that ‘during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs!’ And we’re just talking about average hurricanes here, not Katrina.” But sure, a few puffs from a human chimney and all those hurricanes are dancing to our Promethean tune.
- Speaking of Heartland, they put out a handy if sometimes startling (even to us) booklet AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE, AND CLEAN/ AN OBJECTIVE SCORECARD TO ASSESS COMPETING ENERGY SOURCES. And anyone can call themselves objective, along the lines that I am principled, you are stubborn and he is ideological. But they do their homework so consider this remarkable set of facts: “It requires approximately 60 square miles of solar panels to generate the same amount of power as a conventional power plant. It requires approximately 320 square miles of wind turbines to do the same… scientists at Harvard University published a peer-reviewed study showing that meeting America’s electricity use solely with wind power would require covering fully one-third of America’s landmass with wind turbines… catastrophic to open spaces, undeveloped lands, and native ecosystems. Moreover, wind and solar power generation are often most-efficient far away from urban centers and frequently require extensive networks of transmission wires to deliver wind and solar power to urban areas. Those networks of transmission wires further degrade and destroy open spaces.” Call it physics, economics or both. It’s true whether you like it or not, and an absolutely critical limitation on the supposed Green Energy Transition.
- In its verbose 360 degree turn away from economy-wrecking big-government greenness to um the exact same dang thing, the Canadian government has hit upon a $90-billion high-speed rail project to let privileged central Canadians whoosh from Ottawa to Toronto or Montreal and back. Now many things could be said against this project, from its inherent pointlessness to its environmental destructiveness, assault on private property and the certainty that if undertaken it will cost way more than the advertised $90 billion, take far longer to build than expected, and carry far less traffic once completed if ever. But there’s also the important point, raised by Tristin Hopper in the National Post, that there are many other uses for $90 billion “aside from making it slightly more convenient to take a train between Quebec and Ontario” including, as Canada mysteriously starts importing electricity from the US while boasting of elbowing Americans in the head including on energy, “Canadian engineers are some of the world’s best at building both hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants, and $90 billion could realistically pepper the country with new power plants.” Or Laurentian vanity megaprojects.
- As you know, 2026 is going to be the Hottest Year Ever™ just like all of them, due to El Climate, Niño Warming or some such. We were therefore surprised to receive a frost warning in Ottawa in mid-May. And we wanted to share with you some graphic evidence of the difficulties in gardening, and therefore presumably in farming, with global heating going full blast.
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20 May 2026 | News Roundup
To be fair, an apples to apples comparison should consider the land use for a gas field, compressor station, pipeline etc. required to provide reliable energy.
Regarding the proposed building of a new high speed railway in Canada, please, before any decision is taken, take a look at the HST project in the UK.
Meant to connect London to Birmingham to promote business etc and with reduced journey times by, wait for it, 32 minutes????
It is now estimated to be completed by 2036/40 and further extensions by 2050. Costs £106 billion and counting.
One tunnel alone, to protect BATS that would be a mile or so away from the line, £1.2 Billion!
Just go to GOV.UK
David beat me to it. The original HS2 project was to reach not only Birmingham but Manchester and Leeds as well, but will now only reach Birmingham. Trains speed has been reduced from 225 mph down to 200 mph. It was originally planned to open in December this year and cost £35 billion at 2012 prices. I think Carney must recall from his time in charge of the Bank of England at it being a thoroughly decent plan which he brought back with him to Canada, forgetting to check how it had progressed..
If passenger rail made sense, CN and CP would have done it already…ohh, they did …and got out of the business in the late 1960’s….why ? Because the public would not pay enough for tickets to cover the costs…in other words the perceived benefits to daily riders was less than the effort expended to earn the money to pay for the tickets. This situation still exists, so operations would be taxpayer subsidized. Canadian cities haven’t gotten closer together, and very few people travel to the next city for their daily employment, which is the case in places where commuter rail is a success. Only niche tourist trains with very high trip prices remain.
Rail made sense when the cost of roads through the wilderness from coast to coast was prohibitive, but with roads everywhere…passenger trains days are finished …except for city bus replacement on high volume routes…..and oh yes….political virtue signalling and vote buying to an unwitting populace….
The overwhelming majority of Canadians would never use this fancy ultra-pricy high speed train.Yet everyone would be paying for it.And this morning,it's about 4C.Pretty chilly morning in So. Ont. for late May.
Still not a fraction
The space taken by renewables is accurate. Last year during the Alberta data center scare people were suggesting solar to power 400mw datacenter via electricity to hydrogen to burning in a turbine to get over intermittency. Based on the size of an AB SOLAR farm and the round trip losses I came up with 130 square miles just for that 400mw