Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Apr 28 7 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Renewables don't risk blackouts, said the media. But they did and they do. The physics are simple. And now, as blackouts in Spain strand people in elevators, jam traffic, and ground flights, it's clear that too little "inertia" due to excess solar resulted in system collapse. Image
Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.

At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.
In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand.
It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of ushave been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.

While Portugal’s grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on “extreme temperature variations” and a “rare atmospheric phenomenon,” and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system’s collapse.
Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that forced Spain’s grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula’s power supply at 12:38 p.m.

“No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia,” noted @JKempEnergy . “The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control.”

In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.
But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....

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Louder for the people in the back: Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not and cannot be the cause of the system’s collapse.

If you are an electric grid operator blaming the weather for your blackout, you should be fired!

FULL STORY HERE

And if you are a politician blaming the weather for blackouts, fires, or floods, the voters should fire you. Seriously! You're only advertising your own incompetence!

Politicians have been blaming the weather and climate change for blackouts for years! This is from 2021 Image
Journalists, experts, and elected officials in July 2021 blamed heat wave deaths, forest fires, and electricity shortages in New York, California, and Texas on climate change, but the underlying cause of those events was lack of air conditioning, lack of electricity, and the failure to properly manage forests, not marginal changes to temperatures.

It’s true that there have been more heat waves in the United States since 1960, and that higher temperatures dry out the dead wood in forests, contributing to a greater area burned by forest fires. “Climate dries the [wood] fuels out and extends the fire season from 4-6 months to nearly year-round,” US Forest Service scientist Malcolm North explained to me last summer.

But what determines whether people die in heat waves is whether or not they have air conditioning, not whether temperatures rose to 111° instead of 109°. Proof of that comes from the fact that heat-related deaths declined in the US by 50% to 75% since 1960 thanks entirely to air conditioning, even as heat waves grew in frequency, intensity, and length.

What determines whether a fire in a forest is high-intensity or low-intensity is the amount of wood fuel. Climate change is “not the cause of the intensity of the [mountain forest] fires,” stressed North. “The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel.”

And what determines whether or not there is enough electricity is whether there are sufficient “baseload,” reliable power plants and fuels, not marginally higher use of air conditioners. The people who manage electricity grids knew perfectly well that it could be hot last summer, hot this summer, and that a cold snap like the one that occurred in Texas in February was likely, since worse cold snaps had occurred in the past.

The main reason there aren’t enough reliable power plants is because progressive activists, scientists, and journalists successfully persuaded policymakers to shut them down, not build them, or not operate them.

And the reason California has failed to properly manage its forests is because, for decades, its leaders underinvested in fire prevention, including by diverting money that the state’s electric utilities could and should have spent on clearing the area around electrical lines, to renewables...

Full story for subscribers here!

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More from @shellenberger

Jun 29
The website of NYC mayoral frontrunner says he'll "shift the tax burden" to "whiter neighborhoods." When asked about his openly racist agenda, @ZohranKMamdani insists it's not a proposal at all but rather "a description of what we see right now." That's next-level gaslighting.😬
This guy's ability to lie so calmly while smiling should send chills up the spines of every New Yorker.

He could have taken it down and said, "You know, I regret that the website said that and so I deleted it, because it doesn't express what I believe."

Instead, he's just asked millions of New Yorkers to believe his own obviously flagrant lie rather than their own eyes. That's creepy and wrong.

Everyone can see for themselves that he used a gratuitous racial reference regarding a tax proposal. We don't tax people on race. So why use it? Because he and his campaign wanted to introduce race.

And it's not the first time. @ZohranKMamdani should delete his flagrantly racist tweets and web site language, apologize, and promise to never invoke racism in these ways again.Image
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The audacity of @ZohranKMamdani to cite Dr. Martin Luther King should make your skin crawl. King adamantly rejected anti-white racism.

Mamdani’s call for higher taxes on white neighborhoods should shock New Yorkers. If they elect him as Mayor then they will have no excuses. He’s made clear that he will advance a racist agenda and then demand that people believe his lies.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 28
The idea that former Intelligence Community officials are working with European leaders to censor the Internet sounds like a conspiracy theory, but over the last two days, Obama’s CIA Director plotted with UK, EU, and Irish officials in Dublin to do precisely that. Image
These people are a direct and imminent threat to free speech and democracy worldwide. They are dangerous and out of control:

Former CIA Director John Brennan helped initiate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He used foreign spies to help trigger the FBI investigation of of the Trump campaign. And he manipulated the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to falsely claim the Russians favored Trump over Clinton.

Niamh Hodnett, Ireland’s “Online Safety Commissioner,” leads Ireland’s censorship regime under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, which mirrors EU and U.S.-backed models shaped by intelligence-linked NGOs.

Aine Kerr, a Former Facebook Policy Manager, helped manage Facebook’s public policy as it partnered with U.S. intelligence agencies post-2016, then co-founded Kinzen, which received support from EU and transatlantic institutions focused on content surveillance. Her work connects platform moderation with state-funded narrative monitoring.

Nóirín O’Sullivan, a Former Garda (Irish police) Commissioner and EUROPOL Official, who went from leading Ireland’s national police to a senior role at EUROPOL, which works closely with intelligence and security services across Europe. She advocates for integrating security principles into online content governance.

Claire Loftus, Ireland’s Former Director of Public Prosecutions, oversaw prosecutions during a period of expanding legal efforts to criminalize online expression and misinformation. Her presence signals an effort to align the judiciary with state-backed censorship.

Robyn Simcox, the UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism,
operates within the UK Home Office, a department with direct ties to MI5 and GCHQ. She frames conspiracy theories and misinformation as forms of radicalization and demands surveillance and preemptive regulation. Her office channels intelligence priorities into speech policing under the banner of counter-extremism.Image
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Brennan triggered the Trump-Russia collusion hoax
Read 10 tweets
Jun 27
Brazil has been banning and censoring journalists and politicians for years. But now it is taking steps to ban X entirely. It’s time for @SecRubio to block President Lula, Justice Moraes, and their criminal accomplices from entering the US. Image
President Trump and Secretary Rubio must not let these tin pot dictators censor speech and ban the world’s most important social media company.
The sinister Lula and creepy Moraes are trying to intimidate my colleagues and me. We won’t back down.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 10
They're launching mortar rounds, @GavinNewsom
video credit: @alexdatig
Stay safe out there, @alexdatig Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 9
Everybody in L.A. knows there aren't enough police officers. It has little more than half as many per capita as Chicago. And yet @GavinNewsom @MayorOfLA @KamalaHarris and *every single* Democratic governor opposed calling out the National Guard. Image
California has half the population as Germany and a bigger economy. We pay the highest taxes by far. And yet, not only does LA have nearly half the police per capita as Chicago, Mayor @KarenBassLA wants to lay-off 400 police officers. Image
@KarenBassLA They're not going to be satisfied until the rest of LA burns down.

Read 6 tweets
Jun 8
There's no shortage of police in L.A., said @GavinNewsom a few hours ago. In fact, L.A. has far fewer police per capita than other big cities. And now, the protesters have overrun the police and blocked the highway. Video: @AnthonyCabassa_
L.A.'s lack of police has been one of the biggest crime stories in California for a decade. As such, @GavinNewsom is either lying or even more in a bubble than we knew. And now, naturally, LA's radical-Left mayor and city council want to cut 400 more police officers. Image
@GavinNewsom Kamala Harris did more than anyone to pass the initiative that decriminalized open air drug dealing and shoplifting. She’s pro-crime because she’s against civilization — at least for poor and working class people, not her and her neighbors.

x.com/kamalaharris/s… x.com/kamalaharris/s…
Read 19 tweets

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