This document is part of an archive of postings on Greenie Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
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31 August, 2023
UK: Michael Gove claims ‘Brexit freedoms’ mean pollution rules can be watered down
Housing secretary sparks environmentalist fury by ripping up so-called ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules
Environmental campaigners hit out at Rishi Sunak’s government after it confirmed that EU-era restrictions that force housebuilders to mitigate the impact of new developments on rivers will be scrapped.
Levelling up secretary Michael Gove defended plans to scrap “clunky” EU-era environmental protections on nutrient neutrality – hailing it as a Brexit benefit to boost housing.
Mr Gove said it was a “myth” that water quality in British rivers has deteriorated under the Conservative government, saying they “all cleaner than they have been in the past”.
The government has argued that housing developments contribute only a small fraction of nutrient pollution and new funding is being provided to mitigate any associated increase.
But environmental campaigners accused the government of going back on its word and suggested the change would allow developers to cut corners, branding it a “disgraceful move”.
Speaking on a visit to a new-build housing estate near Norwich, Mr Sunak told broadcasters that the boost to housebuilding would be “fantastic for young, first-time buyers”.
Current nutrient neutrality rules prevent developers from building houses in protected areas when it would add harmful substances like nitrogen and phosphorus into nearby rivers and lakes, because such nutrients can cause algal blooms that deprive other plants and animals of light and oxygen.
Under legislation derived from the EU, Natural England currently issues guidance to 62 local authority areas, requiring new developments to be nutrient neutral in their area. This requirement will now be watered down to become guidance.
Changes will see the financial burden to mitigate nutrient pollution for new housing shifted from developers to taxpayers – with the government promising to double investment in the nutrient mitigation scheme run by Natural England, to £280m. A further £166m will be allocated for slurry infrastructure grants.
The changes are being proposed via an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which is currently going through the House of Lords, with the government claiming it could see additional homes being built in a matter of months.
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China continues coal spree despite climate goals
China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week, a rate energy watchdogs say is unsustainable if the country hopes to achieve its energy targets.
The government has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and in 2021 the president, Xi Jinping, promised to stop building coal powered plants abroad.
But after regional power crunches in 2022, China started a domestic spree of approving new projects and restarting suspended ones. In 2022 the government approved a record-breaking 106 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity. One gigawatt is the equivalent of a large coal power plant.
This run of approvals is continuing, potentially on track to break last year’s record, according to analysis by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, published on Tuesday.
It said in the first half of 2023, authorities granted approvals for 52GW of new coal power, began construction on 37GW of new coal power, announced 41GW-worth of new projects, and revived 8GW of previously shelved projects. It said about half of the plants permitted in 2022 had started construction by summer.
The analysts said: “Unless permitting is stopped immediately, China won’t be able to reduce coal-fired power capacity during the 15th five-year plan (2026–30) without subsequent cancellations of already permitted projects or massive early retirement of existing plants.”
Analysts have observed big advances in the renewable energy sector in China, which the government intends to make a mainstay of power supply, with coal in a supporting role.
China is the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydroelectricity. But previous analyses have found infrastructure to store and distribute has not kept pace.
Shortfalls in interconnectivity between regional grids, and issues with power supply for some areas mean energy driven by fossil fuels remains crucial for supporting grid stability or integrating variable renewable energy sources. However, the report says many or most of the approvals being rushed through are not in areas with those issues.
“Sixy per cent of new coal power projects are in grid regions where there is already an excess of coal-fired power capacity,” the report says. “The provinces adding large amounts of new coal-fired power are getting most of their added power generation from coal, contradicting the framing of coal power as a ‘supporting’ source for clean energy.”
Cory Combs, an analyst at Trivium China, said authorities appeared to be prioritising uninterrupted demand and short-term economic recovery.
“There is more development than there is need for development,” he said. “When we look at it from an energy security perspective, [provincial level governments] they are putting an extremely high premium on short-term energy security. I don’t mean systemic issues, [I mean] even making sure there’s not even a two-hour power shortage. That’s taken over everything else, including the financials, but certainly decarbonisation.”
China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, contributing almost a third of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2020. UN figures show that in terms of population size and number of environmental disasters, it is also extremely vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. In its 14th five-year-plan, which ends in 2025, China’s government committed to reducing the latter by 65%, and raised the share of renewable fuels in primary energy consumption from 20% to 25%.
Analysts have pointed to the power of the Chinese government to demand big change – another report out this week shows that Beijing’s “war on pollution” has had a significant impact, driving a decrease in global average pollution.
While China’s air pollution is still six times higher than World Health Organization guidelines, it has reduced toxic air by 42.3% since 2013, which is forecast to result in an extra 2.2 years on the average life expectancy of a Chinese resident if the results are sustained.
Combs said he was “really concerned” about the long-term impacts of the coal plant approvals apparently being made for short-term gain. Xi has promised to reduce coal consumption by the 2026-30 period, and Combs said China’s leadership was still standing by its targets, but this activity would put huge pressure on the later years of the window.
“Xi’s credibility is largely tied to the 2030 goal. But some of the year-to-year thing I don’t take much stock in. They are overridden by other interests.”
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UK: Do not heat your homes in the evenings, Net Zero quango tells public
Millions of families will be urged by a green quango not to heat their homes in the evening to help the Government hit its net zero target.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said people should turn off their radiators at peak times as part of a wider drive to deliver “emissions savings”.
In a document on “behaviour change” the body recommended Britons “pre-heat” their houses in the afternoon when electricity usage is lower.
It said the move would save families money, but critics suggested the real reason was that renewables will not be able to provide enough energy to cope with peak demand.
The advice is contained in the CCC’s sixth “carbon budget” paper, which sets out how the UK should reduce its emissions between 2033-37.
In it the quango suggests people with electrically powered heating systems, such as heat pumps, should switch off their radiators in the evening.
“There is significant potential to deliver emissions savings, just by changing the way we use our homes,” the dossier states.
“Where homes are sufficiently well insulated, it is possible to pre-heat ahead of peak times, enabling access to cheaper tariffs which reflect the reduced costs associated with running networks and producing power during off-peak times.”
The green quango said that by 2033 all newly built homes and up to half of those constructed after 1952 should be suitable for such pre-heating.
But critics said the advice was just the latest example of Britons being asked to compromise on their quality of life so the Government can hit climate targets.
Andrew Montford, the director of Net Zero Watch said: “The grid is already creaking, and daft ideas like this show just how much worse it will become.
“It’s clear that renewables are a disaster in the making. We now need political leaders with the courage to admit it.”
Craig Mackinlay, head of the Net Zero Scrutiny group of Tory MPs, added: “It is becoming clear that adherence to judicable Carbon Budgets and edicts coming from the CCC are developing into farce.
“The Climate Change Act 2008 will require amendment to free us from madcap and impractical targets foisted upon the population by long departed politicians.
“This latest advice to freeze ourselves on cold evenings merely shows the truth that the dream of plentiful and cheap renewable energy is a sham.
“I came into politics to improve all aspects of my constituents’ lives, not make them colder and poorer.”
A spokesman for the CCC insisted that the advice would benefit households and would mean “homes will still be warm, but bills can be lowered”.
He added: “This is a demonstration of homeowners benefiting from periods of the day when electricity is cheaper.
“Using electricity to heat a home opens the prospect of choosing a time when prices are lower, something that’s not possible with a gas boiler.
“Smart heating of homes like this also makes the best possible use of the grid and supports greater use of cheap renewable generation.”
The advice follows a furore over Government plans to ban the installation of new oil powered boilers from 2026 and force homes into adopting heat pumps.
Downing Street has hinted it is now set to U-turn amid warnings the move would increase rural fuel poverty and put more strain on the struggling electricity grid.
The CCC is an independent body set up by ministers in 2008 to advise the Government on how to hit its climate targets.
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Australia: NSW Premier warns giant overhead cables only way to deliver renewable energy future
Premier Chris Minns has vowed to push ahead with the construction of gigantic overhead power cables across the state, warning a delayed rollout of transmission lines could undermine the renewable energy transition and threaten supply and prices.
In an unusually blunt intervention into the fraught debate over how to connect regional wind and solar projects to the east coast grid, Minns said burying the cables below ground as some landholders have demanded could triple the cost and delay the government’s urgent effort to plug a looming hole in the state’s power supply caused by the retirement of coal-fired power stations.
Labor will have to consider how to resolve a stand-off with vocal community groups – including farmers and environmentalists – who strongly oppose overhead powerlines. This could see new policy measures to give more state control over local planning.
Speaking at a Business Sydney event, Minns acknowledged that regulatory and planning changes would be needed to accommodate above-ground transmission, but overhead powerlines were the only cost-effective option available to the government.
He warned that delays in connecting renewable energy projects in regional NSW to the eastern seaboard through new transmission could threaten energy supply and the cost of power bills.
Minns said the government could not “pretend that the difficulties of renewable energy can be just wished away, we gotta get on with those projects”.
“Part of that is us looking at the impact and cost of underground cabling to get renewable energy projects to the eastern seaboard,” Minns said.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to go overland and the reason for that is it is three times the cost. If you do it underground, that’s going to add cost [and] is going to add delay.”
Minns and energy experts are increasingly worried that time is running out to build the thousands of kilometres of high-voltage transmission lines needed to connect renewable energy zones in regional areas to major cities.
Time to accelerate the development of renewable alternatives
The federal government wants to reach 82 per cent renewables by 2030 and to hit net zero by 2050. The Australian Energy Market Operator calculates the grid needs to grow by 10,000 kilometres.
However, transmission methods have been hugely divisive in NSW amid concerns from some groups that overhead powerlines would have negative impacts on property values, the environment and the landscape.
Those concerns prompted an upper house parliamentary inquiry into the feasibility of transmission infrastructure being built underground. A report from the Labor-controlled committee is due to be released on Thursday.
“We’ve got renewable energy zones in regional NSW, we have to transmit that power onto the east coast energy grid, which is largely hugging the eastern seaboard,” Minns said.
“The best way we can execute the renewable energy revolution while keeping prices as low as possible and ensuring supply is ensuring we get those connection points.”
The renewable zones were the brainchild of the former NSW Coalition government as part of its ambitious energy road map but costs and timetables of some projects have blown out.
The Labor government has said the capital costs for the zones are estimated to be about $9.3 billion, and warned some of those projects are likely to be delayed.
Costs for the Orana renewable energy zone in the state’s Central West have increased from $650 million to $3.2 billion, while the Hunter Transmission Project has risen from $880 million to $990 million.
As well as boosting supply to the grid by fast-tracking transmission infrastructure from the renewable zones, the government may be forced to intervene to help keep Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station open beyond 2025.
The government’s electricity network review is being finalised, but Minns has previously indicated extending Eraring’s shelf-life might be necessary because “the pace of renewable energy coming online in NSW has been so slow”.
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30 August, 2023
The return of animal sacrifice
We look back with bewilderment at the ritual sacrifice of animals by our ancestors. Whether it was the Celtic people’s sacrifice of livestock to appease pissed-off deities or the Ancient Romans’ slaughter of oxen so that Jupiter might be more sparing with his stormy weather, it was all a bit mad. We would never be so superstitious, we tell ourselves. I’m not sure that’s true. Consider the proposed slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cattle in Europe in the holy name of Net Zero. This is the return of pagan lunacy, surely.
Irish farmers are under pressure to ‘cull up to 200,000 cows’ in order that Ireland might meet its ‘climate goals’, reported the Financial Times at the weekend. The Irish government is considering proposals to bump off that amount of cattle over the next three years to help it achieve a 25 per cent reduction in its agricultural emissions. Cows produce methane, you see, and methane is bad. It’s a greenhouse gas. Farming accounts for 40 per cent of Ireland’s greenhouse-gas emissions, so it has become a natural target for the Net Zero zealots. Every EU member state is under pressure to make strides towards Net Zero, and if that entails the sacrifice of livestock, so be it. Save the planet, slaughter the cows.
It’s so superstitious. A ‘mooted cow massacre’ to try to offset the angry climatic conditions apparently caused by man? If someone can explain how this is any different to an ancient people’s ritualistic killing of a poor bull in a desperate bid to placate the weather gods, I’d be most grateful. In fact, if anything, the proposed cow-culling in Ireland is worse than the paganistic antics of our ill-educated forebears. At least they were wise enough to offer up only one or two beasts to the gods of thunder – the neo-pagans of the Net Zero cult are offering up whole herds to try to assuage the heatwaves and floods they think furious Mother Earth has in store for us.
And they seem to care little for the consequences of their heathen carbon-offsetting. Irish farmers are seriously worried for their livelihoods. The dairy industry is worth €13 billion a year to the Irish economy. It provides 54,000 jobs. It brought in a staggering €6.8 billion in exports in 2022 alone. What will become of all this fruitful work if cow slaughter in the name of Net Zero takes off? We’re portrayed as ‘climate killers’, complains one Irish farmer. Indeed, eco-activists marched in Dublin with banners saying ‘Meat + dairy = climate crisis’ – a perfect snapshot of out how out-of-touch the urban elites are, who probably never give a second thought to the question of who produced the luscious cream that appears atop the €20 pancakes they scoff for Sunday brunch in a hip Dublin eatery.
The other likely consequence of Ireland’s ‘mooted cow massacre’ would be more global emissions. Ireland’s brilliant dairy farmers supply 130 markets around the world. Where will those nations source the milk, butter and cheese they need if not from the Irish Republic? Probably from countries ‘with worse green credentials than Ireland’, Irish farmers say. They’re right. Forty-three per cent of Ireland’s beef goes to the UK. Remember that next time you’re tucking into a delicious, moist burger: it was probably made by one of those ‘climate killers’ across the Irish Sea. Where will Brits get their beef if the Irish elite’s cow-killing frenzy really spins out of control? New Zealand? The air miles involved in such a long-distance meaty relationship would make the farting cows of our neighbouring nation seem perfectly eco-friendly in comparison.
So this is the double impact of the neo-paganism of Net Zero, of today’s irrational dread of weather that comes dressed in the garb of scientific revelation: we undermine domestic production while potentially increasing global emissions. It’s lose-lose. And it isn’t only in Ireland that anti-farming hysteria has taken hold. Dutch farmers have been protesting for four years over their government’s determination to slash nitrogen emissions in half by 2030, which could lead to the closure of 3,000 farms. That is, to fewer cows, and fewer jobs. This week, Australian farmers joined the growing workers’ revolt against the Net Zero ideology. They drove their tractors around the parliament in Victoria to protest a new ‘renewables’ policy that they believe will intrude on their land and limit their ability to farm.
Surely nothing better sums up the irrationalism of the 21st century’s eco-elites than their cavalier attitude to the rights and happiness of the people who make our food. Ritual sacrifice to mollify the heavens is once again all the rage among the rulers of Earth. Sacrifice not only of animals this time, but also of livelihoods and even liberty. Dairy farming, food production, pesticide-use, cheap flights, our right to drive – all are being offered up at the apologetic altar of Net Zero. ‘Forgive us our hubris’, cry the elites as they sacrifice, one by one, the things that make life good and tasty. It is time for a rational pushback, surely, against this modern paganism.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/17/the-return-of-animal-sacrifice/
**********************************************Governor Pritzker Vetos Illinois Nuclear Ban Repeal
In 1987, a provision of the Illinois Public Utilities Act banned the construction of any new nuclear power plant in the state until a permanent high level waste repository is approved without express permission via a statute by the General Assembly.
This bill artificially limits the future energy options of the state by taking a source that is currently an important source of baseload power to the state off the table for future development. Illinois currently has six nuclear power plants with 11 reactors between them. In 2021, 53.3 percent of the state’s power came from these 11 units.
Earlier this year, the General Assembly passed a bill, S.B. 0076 that would have removed the language in the Public Utilities Act that bans new nuclear plant construction. This updated language would instead allow for the construction of “Advanced” reactors, which include the AP1000 reactor which is the design of Plant Vogtle Unit 3 that recently came online in Georgia. This definition would also include new small modular reactor designs.
The bill passed both houses with supermajority votes, but has hit a road block at the Governor’s office. On August 11th, Governor J. B. Pritzker vetoed the bill.
The governor’s complaints with the bill center around the distinction between “advanced” and the initial language of “compact”. Pritzker has expressed an acceptance of small modular reactors, but appears to draw the line there.
Bill proponents, including sponsor State Senator Sue Rezin, were taken aback by the governor’s veto. “The governor’s veto of my bill was a complete shock to everyone involved. This was a heavily negotiated bill. On both sides of the aisle,” Sen. Rezin said.
Gov. Pritzker has been working very closely with anti-nuclear environmental groups during this process, punctuated by a letter from the Sierra Club Illinois Chapter and Illinois Environmental Council entreating the Governor to veto the bill.
The letter cites the expense of nuclear plants, the opinion that they would not solve grid capacity issues, outdated rules and regulations for nuclear, and the nuclear waste issue as its primary motivations.
The first two points, that of expense and of solving grid capacity issues are not decisions to be made at the level of a ban on a technology, they are decisions to be made at the utility level as a particular plant is proposed and it’s individual costs and benefits can be weighed. A blanket ban precludes that possibility. The letter also suggests that the interconnection of primarily wind, solar, and batter storage capacity from out of state will fill the state’s needs better than new nuclear plants would, a view that ignores the intermittency issues of wind and solar entirely. “We’re going to spend over $1 billion dollars in the next five years, building out, improving, and putting in new electric lines in Illinois to connect us to Iowa, Missouri and Indiana so that they can safely send more electricity without melting our grid,” said State Rep. Dan Caulkins about this preference for bringing in power from other states.
As far as regulations go, in the first place there are already incredibly stringent federal regulations around the oversight, regulation, and siting of nuclear plants. The state itself is also already in the position of regulating nuclear power plants. Illinois already operates the most nuclear power plants of any state in the country, so the implication that it is somehow ill-equiped to do so is an unreasonable one.
When it comes to the waste issue, although the ban was initially intended to be in place in the interim before a permanent geologic waste repository was established by the federal government, waste management at sites across the country is safe.
Overall, the Sierra Club and other groups have successfully lobbied the Governor to veto the bill over supermajority votes from the legislature with Rezin noting that, “This is a pattern of a governor that is bending to special interests.”
There is still the possibility of the bill being passed over the Governor’s veto, and Sen. Rezin has already filed the necessary paperwork for the bill to be brought up in the fall veto session.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/08/27/pritzker-vetos-nuclear/?omhide=true
**************************************************Will the rising cost of green energy cost US Democrats next year's elections?
A generational push to tackle climate change in New York is quickly becoming a pocketbook issue headed into 2024.
Some upstate New York electric customers are already paying 10 percent of their utility bill to support the state’s effort to move off fossil fuels and into renewable energy. In the coming years, people across the state can expect to give up even bigger chunks of their income to the programs — $48 billion in projects is set to be funded by consumers over the next two decades.
The scenario is creating a headache for New York Democrats grappling with the practical and political risk of the transition.
It’s an early sign of the dangers Democrats across the country will face as they press forward with similar policies at the state and federal level. New Jersey, Maryland and California are also wrestling with the issue and, in some cases, are reconsidering their ambitious plans.
“This is bad politics. This is politics that are going to hurt all New Yorkers,” said state Sen. Mario Mattera, a Long Island Republican who has repeatedly questioned the costs of the state’s climate law and who will pay for it.
Democrats, Mattera said, have been unable to explain effectively the costs for the state’s goals. “We need to transition into renewable energy at a certain rate, a certain pace,” he said.
Proponents say the switch will ultimately lower energy bills by harnessing the sun and wind, result in significant health benefits and — critically — help stave off the most devastating climate change scenarios. And they hope federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act, celebrating its one-year anniversary, can limit costs to consumers.
New York has statutory mandates calling for 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and a fully “zero emissions” grid by 2040, among the most aggressive targets in the country. The grid needs to be greened, while demand for electricity is expected to more than double by 2050 — the same year when state law requires emissions to be cut by 85 percent from 1990 levels.
But some lawmakers in New York, particularly upstate Democrats, and similar moderates across the nation are worried about moving too quickly and sparking a backlash against higher costs. The issue is another threat to Democrats heading into the critical 2024 battleground House races in New York, which will be instrumental in determining control of Congress.
Even Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is fond of saying that “we’re the last generation to be able to do anything” about climate change, last spring balked at the potential price tag of a policy to achieve New York’s climate targets. And she’s not the only top member of her party to say so.
“If it’s all just going to be passed along to the ratepayers — at some point, there’s a breaking point, and we don’t want to lose public support for this agenda,” state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a Democrat, warned in an interview.
Part of the problem is New York has been unable to meet its previous renewable targets, which DiNapoli’s office in a recent report attributed in part to permitting challenges and inconsistent contracting efforts.
New York got about 29 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2022, three-quarters of which came from large hydropower dams in upstate New York.
The costs of the state’s renewable energy mandates are being paid for almost solely by New York residents and businesses through their electric bills. With renewable developers asking for higher subsidies to deal with inflation, those costs are expected to increase while expected savings from the transition takes longer to materialize.
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Australia: Who’s the Coalkeeper now? The renewables disaster rolls on...
‘Victoria joins NSW in saying no to “Coalkeeper,” ran the headline in Renew Economy in September 2021. ‘Coalkeeper’ was the disparaging name that Big Renewables and their political champions gave to a proposal to pay fossil fuel generators not just for the energy that they supplied but the critical backup they provided to highly subsidised renewables. Without that backup, Australians face blackouts and businesses face being pressured to load shed to help keep the lights on.
The plan was devised by the Energy Security Board (ESB) and backed by the then-federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor. The proposed mechanism was a capacity market to provide a stream of income to power companies that guarantee to provide energy which can backup renewables.
Capacity markets are commonplace in energy markets but the fact that the companies providing the backup were coal or gas-fired power stations infuriated the renewable-obsessed state governments of NSW and Victoria.
In September 2021 NSW Minister for Energy Matt Kean claimed there was no need for a capacity market or to ensure the continued operation of fossil-fuelled backup. In response to a call by the UN for wealthy countries to phase out coal by 2030, Kean said ending coal-fired generation by 2030 was entirely feasible. It was quite a boast given that NSW has the biggest coal-fired fleet in Australia, with more than 10GW of capacity. Kean put his faith in his legislated renewable energy plan – the biggest in the nation’s history – with five renewable energy zones to provide 12GW of renewable energy and 2GW of energy storage. He was also counting on the federally-backed Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project. By offering generous contracts guaranteeing that the state would purchase energy, NSW received expressions of interest to produce 34 GW of energy in New England and 27 GW in the Central West Orana zone.
Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio followed Kean’s lead. She claimed she wasn’t opposed to a capacity mechanism provided there were ‘no payments to incumbent fossil fuels generators’. This is absurd given that fossil fuel generators are the only energy suppliers in Victoria capable of backing up a grid supplied by 95 per cent renewable energy – the Victorian target for 2035.
In December 2022, a headline in Renew Economy gloated ‘Coalkeeper killed off as Labor states embrace Matt Kean’s auction and underwriting plan’. ‘Coalkeeper is dead,’ wrote Queensland energy minister Mick de Brenni whose state owns more coal-fired power stations than any other entity in Australia and has committed to closing them all by 2035.
But it’s one thing to legislate targets. It’s another thing for them to deliver reliable power in sufficient quantity. Renew Economy reported the gloomy news this week. Just 188MW of new capacity was approved in July and 1.2GW this year. That’s less than half the amount needed to reach Labor’s target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 to fill the gap created by closing coal plants.
D’Ambrosio has been mugged by reality. She was forced to do a deal with AGL to keep open the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station which supplies a third of the state’s electricity until 2035. It was scheduled to close in 2048 but announced in February 2022 that it would close between 2040 and 2045. D’Ambrosio refused to disclose the cost of the deal. She also declined to disclose the cost of subsidies to keep open the Portland aluminium smelter – with power from Loy Yang – until 2035.
When AGL announced last September that the plant would close in 2035, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said, ‘The reason that this is happening is because the cheapest form of energy in Australia and globally now is renewable energy.’ In reality, it is because renewable energy is the most heavily subsidised and fossil fuels the most heavily penalised. In addition, the energy shortages created by renewables create greater profits.
Each year, the CSIRO and AEMO work with the industry on the NextGen report which gives an updated cost estimate for large-scale electricity generation. It supposedly shows that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy, however the report substantially overestimates the low capacity factor of renewables and underestimates the cost of additional transmission, battery and pumped hydro storage, land, and backup.
We can get an idea of the gap by comparing federal Labor’s estimate of the cost of its 2030 renewable electricity target of 82 per cent which it claimed was $78 billion before the last election whereas Australia’s former chief scientist Robin Batterham put it this year at $1.5 trillion.
NextGen also overestimates the cost of nuclear energy which it says is more expensive than wind and solar. Compare Ontario, which gets around almost 60 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, with South Australia which has the highest level of wind and solar in Australia. The cost of electricity in South Australia is more than three times higher than in Ontario.
In the NSW election in March, Kean suffered a 12 per cent swing against him in the primary vote and the government lost office so he didn’t have to face the embarrassment of negotiating with Origin to keep the Eraring power station open. It was originally slated to close in 2032 but last year its retirement was bought forward to 2025 because it was deemed unprofitable.
An independent report commissioned by the new NSW Labor government recommended the state keep Eraring open with the establishment of a mechanism to manage the orderly retirement of fossil fuel generators. That sounds like the establishment of a capacity market. Last year AEMO, which was managing the auctioning of Kean’s renewable energy contracts, warned that NSW would experience shortfalls in electricity if Eraring was retired in 2025.
Kean said in December 2020 that building new coal-fired plants was like going back to Blockbuster video after getting Netflix. That hasn’t worried China. Chinese imports of coal from Australia surged to their highest levels in three years in July after bans imposed in 2020 were lifted on 18 May. It approved the construction of an additional 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2022, four times higher than in 2021.
Unlike in Australia, these projects are being built in a matter of months. For the foreseeable future, it seems we are all Coalkeepers now.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/whos-the-coalkeeper-now/ ?
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29 August, 2023
Is Norway's Love For EVs Enough To Put A Dent In Fuel Demand?
I suspect that a large factor in the continuing high demand for gasoline is that buyers of electric cars have not ditched their old cars but have kept them for use on very cold days when EV range is eaten up by heating needs. Norway has a LOT of very cold days. A really cold day could HALVE the range of an EV
Road fuel demand in Norway has remained relatively stable even with soaring electric vehicle (EV) adoption, raising questions about whether EVs really have a material impact on diesel and gasoline sales. Rystad Energy research and modeling has, however, uncovered the truth behind the persistent sales – electrifying heavy-duty vehicles, especially trucks, is essential to lowering overall fuel consumption.
EVs are often positioned as the key to decarbonizing transportation, but the latest data from the Norwegian government suggests otherwise. Electric cars have accounted for at least 80% of all passenger vehicle sales for the past three years. EVs – including plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) – accounted for about 90% of all new car sales in 2023. More than 50% of passenger cars on the road in Oslo are electric, a threshold that BEVs alone will pass 50% in the next two years.
Such an aggressive growth in EV sales should lead to a dramatic fall in fuel demand. But that is yet to materialize, and sales figures from Statistics Norway (SSB) show diesel and gasoline demand has declined only modestly since 2017. In the first half of 2023, road fuel sales hovered around 62,000 barrels per day (bpd), a 10% fall from the 70,000 bpd sold between 2017 and 2019, well after the EV boom started. Current consumption is relatively stable between 60,000 and 70,000 bpd, and a precipitous drop is not forecast in the near term.
Our research – which goes beyond the numbers reported by SSB – tells a different story. Our model considers the official fuel sales, annual average mileage by vehicle type and car sales as reported by SSB. It converts this raw data into estimated diesel and gasoline demand, factoring in the efficiency of individual vehicles as of 2022. The upshot of this is a crystal-clear image that road fuel demand from passenger cars has declined rapidly since 2016, falling more than 20%, in line with the BEV market penetration.
Meanwhile, fuel demand from buses and trucks – which run predominantly on diesel – has grown, rising from about 30,000 bpd between 2010 to 2015 to 32,000 in 2022. A structural decline in fuel demand is not likely in the short term until the recently initiated electrification of these sectors takes hold. As a frontrunner in the transport electrification process, these findings pose significant questions for other countries trying to follow Norway’s lead.
Electrifying the road transportation sector is a pillar of many countries’ energy transition strategy, with policymakers around the world offering incentives to those who switch to EVs. However, the situation seen in Norway could play out on a global scale as adoption ramps up. If efforts to lower emissions and reduce the carbon intensity of road transportation are to succeed, the focus should not be solely on passenger cars, but must also address heavy-duty vehicles that run on traditional fossil fuels.
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The GOP’s Climate Change Challenge
It pains us to say it, but Greta Thunberg is winning the climate change debate.
No, she doesn’t make good, sound, thoughtful, rational arguments, and she doesn’t communicate in a way that invites consensus and collaboration. Instead, she gives decent people a rash. She’s a petulant child being exploited by her parents and by the media and by the Left. But the issue of climate change is becoming harder and harder for Republicans to simply ignore or dismiss — at least from an electoral perspective.
Young Republicans, for example, are a lot more concerned about the climate than are older Republicans. So, of course, are the centrists and the independents who tend to decide elections. According to a September 2022 AP-NORC poll, 62% of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to reduce climate change. That number includes half of Republicans under age 45 but only 32% of older Republicans. The point here is that when nearly two-thirds of the electorate feel a certain way about a certain issue, it’s electorally suicidal to dismiss that issue as a hoax — or to allow the leftist press to say you’re dismissing it as a hoax.
So if the Republican Party is to fare well in the 2024 election — both for president and all down the ballot — the party will need to hone and communicate a coherent message that goes deeper than, “Climate change is a hoax.”
Perhaps the most riveting moment of last week’s GOP presidential debate came when 38-year-old upstart Vivek Ramaswamy took a shot at the rest of the candidates on climate change: “I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for,” he said, “so I can say this: The climate change agenda is a hoax, and we need to declare our independence from it.”
Right behind Ramaswamy’s feel-good zinger was the moment when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shut down co-moderator Bret Baier’s effort to get a show of hands about whether they believe climate change is man-caused. “We’re not children here,” said DeSantis — and that was the end of Baier’s show-of-hands stunt.
Incidentally, notice how Ramaswamy said the climate change agenda is a hoax, but notice how the dishonest mainstream media reported otherwise. The Appropriated Associated Press and The Hill and plenty of others reported that he called climate change itself a hoax. That’s a lie. What he did was say that the Left’s claim that we need to enact the Green New Deal, and we need to declare war on fossil fuels, and we need more windmills and solar panels, and we need to phase out the internal combustion engine in order to save the planet — those things are a hoax.
If you’re like us, you smiled at the rhetorical force of Ramaswamy’s statement. But then, like it does after you’ve eaten a rich piece of chocolate, the endorphin rush subsides and we end up back where we were — in this case, wondering when the Republican Party will agree on a basic set of climate principles and when its candidates for president will begin communicating them. Because while “hoax” sounds great, while it sounds like a necessary thumb in the eye of Green New Dealers, it isn’t going to get it done at the ballot box — especially in the swing states, where razor-thin margins will determine who our next president is and whether our Supreme Court will retain its conservative majority for the next generation.
“We’re getting to a point where Republicans are losing winnable elections because they’re alienating people that care about climate change,” said Christopher Barnard, the Republican president of the American Conservation Coalition, the largest conservative environmental group in the nation. “You don’t have to be the biggest climate champion,” Barnard continued. “If you just say, ‘Climate change is real, and we’re going to have some sort of solution,’ that’s enough for most voters.”
That may or may not be enough, but at least it’s a start. We tend to think the Republican Party’s position on climate change should include an acknowledgement that the planet may indeed be warming slightly and that human activity might play a small role in that warming.
But beyond that, the real debate must be what to do about it. As climate thinkers like Bjorn Lomborg have long maintained, many of the elaborate and expensive actions that the Green Left proposes are both inefficient and deeply misguided. Why, for example, spend trillions of dollars in an effort to move global temperatures a fraction of a degree and ruining the global economy in the process when we can instead address issues with far greater benefit to humanity, such as fighting malaria and maintaining a safe and fresh water supply around the globe?
Furthermore, the war that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been waging on American energy independence has been, as Ramaswamy rightly put it, “a wet blanket” on the American economy. And given that it’s still the economy, stupid, this is the sort of rational environmental territory that Republicans can win on.
In short, the word “hoax” has a nice ring to it, but it’s not going to win us any hotly contested elections.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99983-the-gops-climate-change-challenge-2023-08-28
****************************************************ULEZ: A green con trick to fleece the motorist
When politicians claim to be 'on the right side of history' it invariably means they are on the wrong side of the present. So it is with London mayor Sadiq Khan, whose roundly hated Ulez extension comes into force today. It is a model of how to alienate the public against green initiatives.
The scheme has been imposed against overwhelming opposition, backed up by spurious (some would say deliberately exaggerated) statistics, and will affect the poorest most.
It is also profoundly undemocratic. Mr Khan's 2021 mayoral manifesto didn't mention the extension, and consultations have shown up to 70 per cent opposition in the affected areas.
Yet, like a despot drunk on his own power, the mayor closes his ears to all dissent, and ploughs on regardless. Most bizarrely, he claims that only climate change deniers, those with vested interests and far-Right conspiracists oppose him. Has he even read the results of his own consultations?
The Ultra Low Emission Zone, which drivers of non-compliant cars are charged £12.50 per day to enter, has been in force in central London since 2019.
It was intended to cut levels of two key air pollutants, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates, which can cause or aggravate respiratory and cardio-vascular illnesses.
However, a study carried out by Imperial College London in the early weeks of Ulez, found it had had an 'insignificant' effect on particulates and cut NOx levels by just three per cent. Indeed, at several monitoring sites, pollution had risen.
This should have tempered Mr Khan's zeal. Instead, he doubled down, dismissing the study's findings and sticking to his own flawed statistics.
Let's look a little deeper into one of the scariest of these. Mr Khan states: 'Every year 4,000 Londoners die prematurely from air pollution.'
No one apart from him even tries to pretend this is literally true. The figure relies on modelling the reduction in overall life expectancy in London deemed to be the result of air pollution, then converting that calculation into 'equivalent deaths'.
The study claimed each Londoner could be losing up to 2.8 days of life expectancy and roughly equated that to between 3,600 and 4,100 deaths.
It is at best a vague estimate, at worst an educated guess. Yet Mr Khan quotes the 4,000 toll as hard fact. It is scaremongering of the most blatant kind.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of families and businesses will suffer hardship because of the mayor's hubris.
The poor and elderly are most likely to have older, non-compliant vehicles and least likely to be able to afford a compliant replacement, so will be faced with paying £12.50 a day.
This applies not only to Londoners but also those living in areas bordering the capital – Kent, Surrey and the other Home Counties – who need to enter the zone for business, school runs or shopping.
And while the mayor will rake in £1 billion from this and his other road charging schemes, many pensioners will lose their freedom of movement and may also be cut off from visits.
There is already a furious and growing backlash, as the Uxbridge by-election proved. Everyone wants cleaner air, but this scheme fails to deliver it, serving only to make ordinary people poorer. For all Mr Khan's bluster, it's little more than a money-making racket.
Following the shock Uxbridge defeat, Sir Keir Starmer backtracked on a commitment to bring in clean air zones across the country (Yes, another U-turn).
But with so much money to be made, it's hard to believe he and his virtue-signalling colleagues could resist fleecing motorists even more if they were to win power.
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Net Zero is a revolutionary idea, but not all revolutions are a good idea
There is a saying that revolutionary ideas are first heretical, then they become interesting and controversial, until suddenly they are old hat. Or as Rowan Dean put it, ‘Today’s denounced conspiracy is tomorrow’s undisputed truth.’
So let’s get interesting and controversial about Net Zero.
Net Zero is not necessary, it’s not happening, and it’s not possible until nuclear power is in the mix. In the meantime, why don’t we burn our beautiful black and brown coal that generates the cheapest power in the world?
The push for Net Zero is driven by two propositions. The first is that the increase in global temperatures has to be kept below 1.5 or at most 2 degrees Celsius, and the second is that this warming is being driven by human activities that produce emissions of (mostly) CO2.
From there, everything follows down the chain of Net Zero policies to reduce the production of airborne plant food and a few other things, like animal farts.
What if we test the foundational assumptions? Among critical rationalists inspired by Karl Popper and Bill Bartley, this is called ‘the check on the problem’. Essentially, this check is undertaken to confirm the problem is real and alternative responses (including doing nothing) are on the table for cost-benefit analysis and due diligence.
We want to avoid the process that Roger James observed when the postwar British Labor government was building a New Jerusalem by central planning.
James coined the term ‘solutioneering’ for the process of jumping straight from a perceived problem, usually described as a crisis, to a solution before investigating the problem (if indeed there is one at all), and exploring a range of possible solutions.
Jumping to a solution before clearly formulating what the problem is (or indeed if there is one at all) or how success or failure are to be judged. Achievement of the solution then becomes the goal; and, when opposition develops, the problem becomes how to get the solution accepted, while the question of how best to solve the original problem, if there was one, never gets discussed at all. I call this mistake solutioneering
Anticipated benefits are over-estimated, the costs are under-estimated, everything is urgent, time is of the essence, it will cost more later on if it is delayed.
If all else fails, someone might decide to describe the costs as investments in a ‘glorious future’.
This process is now standard procedure for left-wing and conservative administrations, as though Key Performance Indicators are the number of new programs and the pages of legislation and regulations added to the books.
Running a check on the global warming problem and Net Zero solution reveals some concerning realities.
The first question we have to ask is, has the planet been warming?
If the answer is ‘no’, then go on with business as usual.
If ‘yes’, we require the follow up questions of how much has it warmed and is this a problem?
Some will say the planet has warmed by 1.3 degrees over the last 120 years and this has been a good thing. It may have stopped warming already and another degree or two more in the next century will most likely do more good than harm.
So again, if this is the case, the sensible thing for humanity would be to go on with business as usual, including genuine research in the field of climate science.
Others say that this warming period represents an existential threat and, because it’s our fault, the onus is on Australia to do everything we can to reduce our 1 per cent share of the world’s emissions. Never mind what China, India, and the developing nations are doing.
The next question is a no-brainer, knowing that our efforts will make no measurable difference to the climate of the world. (Alan Finkel told us as much when he was the Chief Scientist.)
Why would we spend a single dollar of public money, let alone a trillion, to press on boldly with decarbonisation?
Admittedly, we have produced a lot of remarkable achievements even at this early stage of the long march.
We have doubled, maybe tripled the cost of power with a lot more to come as we rewire the nation.
Billions of dollars of investment have gone offshore (think balance of payments, jobs, tax revenue, local skills development).
Would anyone dare to add up the cost of the new public entities in Canberra and elsewhere to mastermind and supervise and report on our Net Zero strategies? Would anyone count the new state and federal agencies, the special units in universities, or the grants handed out for new initiatives like carbon capture and pumped hydro? Not to mention hydrogen and green aviation fuel…
Look at the work big consultancies have picked up to advise firms across the nation to implement the data collection and reporting systems to satisfy the demands from every regulatory agency to consider ‘climate risks’ and ESG protocols.
All of the above add to the cost of doing business. They undermine the productivity of the private sector which is the goose that lays the golden tax eggs to pay the bills for government spending.
And there is more. We have seen the corruption of scientific research. The trashing of education from kindergarten to Year 12 and beyond. Then we have the travesty of reporting standards by stenographers and commentators in the mainstream media, especially in the public broadcaster. All this comes as the public starts to lose faith in the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.
Is there any need to go on? All we can do is look forward to the time when everyone says ‘we were always climate and energy realists’.
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28 August, 2023
The Biden Admin Is Going After Another Common Household Item in the Name of Climate Change
They want ceiling fans to be smaller. If a small fan is not enough, what will people do? Easy: Buy two. So any such regulation will be defeated, but at a cost. Fans are a lot more energy efficient than air-conditioning so should be encouraged, not discouraged. It's all ivory-tower thinking under Biden
After attempts to ban gas stoves burned such proposals' Democrat proponents and proposed new federal vehicle efficiency standards seek to force costs even higher, the Biden administration is now going after (drumroll please) ceiling fans. Republicans in the House of Representatives, however, are not fans of the proposal due to the impact it looks to have on America's small businesses.
In a new letter to the U.S. Department of Energy and its leader Secretary Jennifer Granholm, members of the House Small Business Committee pointed out the problems with the latest policy in the Biden administration's supposedly "green" energy crusade that's anything but.
"This proposed rule would decrease the maximum estimated energy consumption permissible for large diameter and belt driven ceiling fans," the letter from House Small Business Committee Chairman Roger Williams (R-TX) and Reps. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Jake Ellzey (R-TX), and Aaron Bean (R-FL) explains.
"This rule would require numerous small business fan manufacturers to redesign their products and may put between 10 and 30 percent of small business ceiling fan manufacturers out of business," the lawmakers warn Secretary Granholm and the Department of Energy. "It appears that the Department of Energy (DOE) may not have properly considered small entities during this rulemaking process."
It would be unsurprising if the Biden administration ignored the concerns or impact of such a policy as it's shown little if any concern for the impact of its climate agenda on the little guy or individual Americans. As such, the lawmakers' letter reminds Secretary Granholm that it is "important for agencies to examine small businesses interests — which make up 99.9 percent of all businesses in the United States — when passing any new rule."
Rightfully, the letter points out that "America's small businesses deserve to have their voices heard and considered," and asks the Department of Energy for more information on the policy to get a better idea of what the new energy consumption standard would mean for Americans.
Here's what the committee wants to know:
1. Did the DOE consider allowing small business fan manufacturers to attest that they are using a DOE compliant electric motor, or other forms of alternative compliance, as a means of complying with this proposed rule?
2. In the impact calculation, did the DOE expect small businesses to abandon some of their product lines to comply with this rule, or that these businesses would redesign their products?
3. Does the DOE expect this rule to decrease the availability of large diameter, or belt driven ceiling fans?
4. What additional costs would a small business, such as a restaurant, incur when purchasing a new ceiling fan that complies with these updated standards?
5. Does the DOE believe “Small Business 1” in Table VI.1 will go out of business as a result of this rule?
a. Does the DOE believe “Small Business 2” in Table VI.1 will go out of business as a result of this rule?
b. Does the DOE believe “Small Business 3” in Table VI.1 will go out of business as a result of this rule?
The House Small Business Committee gave Secretary Granholm and her Department of Energy until August 30 to respond to their questions.
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Summer: The Best of Times for Climate Alarmists
August and September are great months to be a professional climate alarmist like Dr. Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania.
You have hurricanes making landfall, wildfires seemingly everywhere, the odd F-4 tornado wreaking devastation, and you can pretend that these never happened before we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Plus, you have virtually all the media and a host of “environmental” groups parroting every seemingly scientific observation without question.
Yes, alarmists find it best to use their time during the hazy, hot days of summer linking every possible weather event to our use of fossil fuels and that demon molecule, CO2. They must do this in order to instill the fear required to impose economically crippling new taxes or restrict citizens’ freedom to choose what car, dishwasher, stove, shower head or washing machine to purchase.
Right now, with wildfires in Canada and Greece and the tragic fire in Lahaina, Maui, the focus is on linking supposed man-made warming to these events and characterizing them as unprecedented. Are they really extraordinary and increasing?
NASA reports that between 2003 and 2019, the global area burned has dropped by roughly 25 percent. In addition, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reports that, according to their satellite data, the year 2020 was one of the least active years since records begin in 2003.
Heat waves in Texas and Italy are also trumpeted as global and escalating due to increasing carbon emissions. Conveniently omitted are exceedingly cold temperatures in northern Europe and the northwest of the United States. The USHCN temperature data reveal that the number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8°Celsius) peaked in the 1930s and have been ?in an 80-year decline.
See link for graphics
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Weaponizing-weather.html?soid=1101509381788&aid=XXe6fYwWQSA
**********************************************Coral reefs may have adapted to ocean warming
The bleaching of the coral off the coast of Palau in 1998 was devastating. In the clear Pacific waters, the sharks swished through lifeless and brittle reefs. The bleaching event in 2010 was bad too — swathes of coral were left damaged.
And the coral bleaching of 2017, when temperatures reached the same level as 1998 and higher? It didn’t come. The sharks prowled an exuberant reef that may have, somehow, gained resistance.
In that finding, says Liam Lachs, from Newcastle University, there is some good news for a warming world. “It does provide a glimmer of hope that some coral reefs have an innate resilience to warming oceans,” he said.
Scientists have been surveying the reef on the remote island for bleaching for almost 40 years. Their data, they believe, provides evidence that reefs may be able to adjust to ocean warming. In a paper in the journal Nature Communications, they estimate that this reef increased its heat tolerance by 0.1C a decade.
If so, then the effects of climate change on corals might be delayed, for a while at least. However, they cautioned, it was also clear that such mechanisms only take us so far — and that unless temperature stabilises we will still lose a lot of coral.
Some reefs have, anecdotally, seen similar effects, including on the Great Barrier Reef. Others, such as in Kiribati, have still been devastated by recent warming.
Lachs has a few theories as to what might be causing the apparent tolerance. The key to understanding how they might work is acknowledging that reefs are not really one thing.
“The thermal tolerance of an entire coral community is an odd concept, as it is a community made of many species, each with a symbiosis with photosynthetic microalgae that are housed in their tissue,” he said.
One idea, the simplest, is that successive bleaching events kill off the most vulnerable species and provide space for those that are more heat resistant to take over.
In Palau, at least, there is not good evidence for a large shift in the composition of coral species. Another theory, then, is that it is not the species that have changed, but the genes — with adaptation selecting those members of the same species with the best heat tolerance.
The third idea is, said Lachs, essentially “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, with individual corals that survive becoming hardier throughout their lifetime.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coral-reefs-may-have-adapted-to-ocean-warming-p97kpwcr6
********************************************Australia: A newly elected Labor State government has commissioned a report to provide a handy excuse to try and slow down the currently manic net zero transition.
What is it about the relentless pursuit of so-called renewable energy by our leaders that they overlook the need to provide affordable and reliable electricity supply to Australians?
Especially at a time when the cost of living is front of mind.
In a first-world country blessed with huge energy resources, the unreliability and cost of energy is a national scandal.
Even if one accepts the need to "transition" from fossil fuels to other forms of energy there is the foundational requirement to keep the lights on and our factories and farms producing at an affordable price.
Time and again warnings have been provided that inherent in the word "transitioning" is the imperative that energy supply and affordability need to be maintained.
Those who have correctly sounded those warnings of commonsense have been decried as "deniers" and economic vandals along with all sorts of other descriptors to avoid the discussion.
In that scenario leaders of all stripes have virtue signalled how quickly they can decommission coal-fired power stations and set zero emission targets.
Decommissioning and net zero targets can be achieved overnight by simply turning off all the power stations.
But the hugely more difficult task, with its accompanying cost factors, is the provision of alternate, affordable, and reliable energy.
An unwelcome reminder of this monumental task is the concern around the slated closure of the Eraring power station in New South Wales in 2025.
The newly elected Labor Minns government commissioned a report to provide a handy excuse to try and slow down the currently manic net zero transition.
Why a report was needed is obvious. It was to cover the government’s proverbial backside from being kicked by the citizens who feel betrayed by the hype and propaganda associated with "transitioning."
In a completely unsurprising finding the recommendation has been made to extend the life of Eraring.
Apart from that there was also the "groundbreaking" insightful suggestion that a mechanism to orderly manage the retirement of coal-fired power stations be established.
Who would have thought it necessary? Order. Management. These two previously quite foreign concepts to the renewable energy pushers and political leadership have finally mugged them and not before time.
The Eraring inquiry suggested that negotiations be entered into with the owners of the power station to prolong its life to prevent reliability gaps and guarantee no adverse price impact.
That such an inquiry was at all necessary is a complete exposure of the manic nature of the irresponsible renewable push.
Where was the leadership willing to state the bleeding obvious—we need reliability and affordability in any transition.
The false narratives are being slowly but relentlessly exposed as the predictable chickens called reliability and affordability are coming home to roost.
All this is happening at a time when speculation is rife that the Australian Energy Market Operator will soon alert the unsuspecting public that all the promised essential infrastructure and up-grading of the grid to cope is falling way behind schedule.
The management debacle of the renewable energy transition is now being witnessed on a daily basis.
A debacle that could have been easily avoided by true and responsible leadership willing to level with their citizenry about timelines, capital costs, and power bills.
The owners of Eraring will undoubtedly rub their organisational hands in glee knowing that the commodity which they were being pressured to close is now all of a sudden in demand.
The shortfall cannot be made up from elsewhere so Eraring's owner, Origin Energy, has some sway and negotiating cards with which to play.
The public is at the mercy of the provider.
This lack of foresight and deliberate denigrating of those providing the warnings by the leadership of our country is at best negligence writ large.
The fact similar stories flooding out of Europe were ignored to the detriment of Australia’s family budgets, jobs, and national well-being requires a national apology and for the responsible people to be brought to account.
The realistic fear for Australians is that Eraring will be one of many more cases to emerge over the next few years.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/australian-state-has-its-damascus-moment-on-net-zero-5480545
***************************************27 August, 2023
The "extreme events" issue
The very gradual process of global warming that we have seen so far has produced no direct ill-effects that we can see. Crops are more abundant than ever and some Pacific islands are growing rather than shrinking. So "extreme events" are the last refuge of the warmists. Bad weather generally is routinely branded as an extreme event and is attributed to global warming without any shred of evidence for the link.
Any causal statement requires controls. You have to show that the "caused" event would not have happened without the "cause" specified. But that would require you to show what would have happened WITHOUT global warming -- and that is impossible.
Single events might or might not be due to some influence or other but you have no way of showing what the influence was. It is known as the "attribution" problem and is in principle unsolvable where the event is a "one-off", a hurricane, for instance. You have to have variations in the causal condition to correlate with the alleged caused condition. Would this hurricane have happened in the absence of global warming? We cannot know. We can only surmise. And a surmise is no proof.
So the attribution of individual extreme events to global warming is LOGICALLY false. It CANNOT be shown as be fact. But science is at ease with hypotheses so it remains a hypothesis that COULD be true even if proving it is currently impossible.
And an hypothesis can be tested in various ways. It is commonly tested by asking if it generates accurate predictions. And it could be held as preliminary support for an hypothesis that the incidence of extreme events has systematically increased as the globe has warmed. Is there a correlation? So has it? There are some claims to that effect but how well-founded are they? Have extreme events in fact become more frequent?
A recent study has addressed that hypothesis. They have looked at a big range of reports about extreme events and asked are such events becoming more frequent. For each of a range or event extremes they have gathered published information about whether such events are increasing in frequency over time. An abstract of the report concerned is given below. It finds no evidence that any extreme event has become more frequent. So the claimed connections are not only logically false but they are empirically false too.
The study was published 18 months ago and various climate skeptics have quoted it approvingly. That approval has eventually got under the skin of the Warmists so they have tried to discredit the research concerned. And their antagonism to the paper has borne fruit. The paper was "withdrawn" by its publisher, which counts as evidence that it is faulty.
But is it faulty? A much quoted attack on the paper in "The Guardian" lists a whole array of orthododox Warmists who say it is faulty but detailed evidence of the faults is conspicuously missing. No detailed numbers are quoted and the issue is entirely a matter of numbers. The Guardian makes clear that orthodox scientists disagree with the paper but does not give chapter and verse why. Link to The Guardian below:
Note that some of the attacks from Warmists are of the most intellectually discreditable kind: "Ad hominem" attacks -- attacking the motives of the authors rather than the evidence they put forward
And that none of the critics quote the detailed numbers is a major scientific fault. If a scientist disagrees with the conclusions of a particular paper -- as I have often done -- he goes over the ground covered by the paper and shows where it went wrong. In this case the paper at issue is a meta-analysis so the data behind it is readily available. Its conclusions are readily tested by repeating the meta-analysis in some more cautious way. Nobody seems to have attempted that. "Do better" is the obvious retort to the Warmists but none seem even to have attempted that.
The next link takes you to an extensive discussion of whether the paper deserved withdrawal:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/thread-extended-peer-review-of-the/comments
The abstract of the deplored paper follows:A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming
Gianluca Alimonti et al.
Abstract
This article reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable. The most robust global changes in climate extremes are found in yearly values of heatwaves (number of days, maximum duration and cumulated heat), while global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant. Daily precipitation intensity and extreme precipitation frequency are stationary in the main part of the weather stations. Trend analysis of the time series of tropical cyclones show a substantial temporal invariance and the same is true for tornadoes in the USA. At the same time, the impact of warming on surface wind speed remains unclear. The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet. It would be nevertheless extremely important to define mitigation and adaptation strategies that take into account current trends.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9
***************************************************More polar bears than ever but they are still "endangered"
Like Mussolini, Warmists are always right
The Canadian town of Churchill has already had more than four times as many polar bear visitors this year compared with the same time last year, and many more could soon be on the way.
The world's unofficial polar bear capital, could see a record number of the white-furred visitors this year. Residents of Churchill, Canada, have already spotted an unusually high number of the bears in and around town, likely because of low sea ice.
Around 900 people live in the Manitoba town. But every year, between July and November, several hundred polar bears (Ursus maritimus) descend on the town and the surrounding Hudson Bay area, which also brings in thousands of tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the Arctic predators.
Conservation officers from the town's government-funded Polar Bear Alert Program (PBAP) respond to calls from people who spot bears by either shooing the bears away or capturing them and holding them in Churchill's polar bear holding facility, commonly referred to as the "polar bear jail," before later releasing them into the wild.
As of Aug. 16, PBAP officers had received 76 calls from residents about polar bears, which have led to three bear detentions. By comparison, the officers had received only 18 calls and captured zero bears by the same time last year, CBC News reported.
"There are so many polar bears in and around the town of Churchill," Chantal Maclean, a Manitoba conservation officer with the PBAR, told CBC News. It's going to be a "very busy bear season," she added. "We are [potentially] looking at record numbers this year."
On average, officers receive around 250 calls from residents and detain around 50 bears every year, according to statistics provided to Live Science by the Manitoba government. The record number of bears captured in a single year was 176, in 2003. Most sightings occur in October and November, which means the number of sightings this year could easily surpass the average if the current trend continues.
Two people in Churchill have been killed by polar bears — one in 1968 and another in 1983. The last polar bear attack was in 2013, when two people were severely injured but survived. The rise in polar bear numbers does not necessarily mean chances of attacks increase, especially if people follow polar bear guidelines, officers said.
Polar bears spend the winter hunting for seals on Hudson Bay's frozen surface. When the ice melts during spring, the bears head inland to mate and search for alternative food sources. In the fall, the bears head back out to sea. Normally, around half of the roughly 600 bears that live along Hudson Bay's western coastline pass through Manitoba as they return to the frozen waters in fall — and a majority of those make a pit stop in Churchill to look for food. The rest pass through Ontario and Nunavut.
But this year, almost all of the Hudson Bay bears that conservation officers monitor are in Manitoba, which may be why so many bears are being spotted in Churchill.
The likely cause of the change in behavior is the way sea ice is forming and melting, which has been impacted by human-caused climate change. Experts believe that the sea ice near Churchill is now freezing earlier than other parts of Hudson Bay, which makes it the best place to start hunting when winter arrives, CBC News reported.
Polar bear numbers in Churchill may be on the rise, but in general polar bear numbers are declining. The species is currently listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Studies have predicted that polar bears could be wiped out by the end of the 21st century if current warming trends continue.
Over the last five years, Hudson Bay's population of polar bears has declined by around 27% after falling by around 11% in the five years before that, according to Polar Bears International.
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Why Has Biden Declared War on Natural Gas?
Natural gas is the world's wonder fuel: cheap, abundant, made in America, reliable AND clean burning.
So why are the Biden administration and environmental groups against it? There's really no good answer.
What makes the Left's war against natural gas inexplicable is that the single biggest factor in reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere has been the increased reliance on natural gas for electric power generation as we transition slowly away from coal. (By the way, emissions from coal plants have been dramatically reduced as well, which is one reason why the air that we breathe today is much cleaner than the air 20 or 50 or 100 years ago.)
No country produces more natural gas than America. Latest reserve forecasts predict we have nearly 100 years of natural gas with existing drilling technologies, and hundreds of years of potential supply. We're not running out. We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.
The two innovations that spurred the natural gas shale revolution of the last 15 years were horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. These drilling technologies tripled our supply and output almost overnight.
No single person is more responsible for this energy revolution than Harold Hamm of Continental Resources. His new book "Game Changer" documents how drilling in places like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia helped triple U.S. oil and gas supplies while lowering the price we pay for energy.
He tells me that "U.S. natural gas price has fallen by more than half while the rest of the world has seen their prices double or triple." This means that our energy costs are a fraction of the costs that Europe and Asia pay. That is an immeasurable economic and geopolitical advantage America has.
All we need to be the world energy superpower is liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines and drilling permits. We also need states to redefine natural gas as a "clean" and "net zero" form of energy so that utilities can use it. Why isn't this happening?
The main reason is radical environmentalists want to end all natural gas and oil production, and force utilities and consumers to get our power and transportation fuels from unreliable and expensive wind and solar power. In pursuing this agenda, and moving away from the Trump pro-drilling policies, they are killing one of the cleanest forms of energy and costing the U.S. over $150 billion a year. For that amount of money, we could modernize every school in America.
Biden's strategy appears to put America last. This explains why gas prices are back up to $4 a gallon.
If we don't get smart and soon, those prices will be rising even more. Who benefits the most? Vladimir Putin and the Saudi oil sheikhs.
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Spinning the myth of Global Warming for corporate gain
The myth of human-induced global warming has always been a mixture of scientific chicanery and businesses, seeking to leverage a competitive advantage over their rivals.
For scientists – at least those in the public sector – global warming provided the opportunity to be listened to by politicians and the public, to attend international gatherings, and be shown the respect they felt was previously lacking.
For businesses, the possibility of subsidies and imposts on rival suppliers was irresistible. Indeed, the nuclear industry was among the early proponents of the greenhouse myth, seeing it as an opportunity to ride renewable energy’s coattails and gain regulatory advantages over its fossil fuel competitors.
But the main commercial impetus came from the renewable industry, which was confident that the declining costs of the energy produced from wind farms and solar systems would fall over time, and eventually be cheaper than energy derived from coal and gas. All that was needed was a bit of a nudge from the government to get the technology over the edge.
That competitive price parity never came about. Agencies like CSIRO produce data, which indicates wind might be as cheap as coal. However, this can only be so if others build the transmission lines to get that wind power into the market, provide the balancing mechanisms within the electricity system to allow it to avoid disrupting the entire network, and, above all, supply the means by which it could be ‘firmed up’ by energy supplies not dependent on the wind and sun.
These costs rise exponentially with the forced increased penetration of renewables. A full renewable system is unfeasible at any cost.
The Australian Energy Market Operator, long supportive of the Net Zero agenda, is now alarmed by it and is calling for subsidies for transmission, subsidies that would increase the cost of the network from its current $23 billion to $100 billion. Similarly, to shore up supply the Victorian government is taking steps to subsidise coal generation that is becoming insolvent as a result of the subsidies to wind/solar that it supports.
An early estimate of the direct costs imposed by regulations and by budgetary support to renewables was a 2014 submission from the IPA to the 2014 Warburton review. This projected the annual costs by 2020 at $6-7 billion. The assessment was refined for the Australian Environment Foundation’s (AEF) response to the 2017 Finkel Review.
In his 2017 report, Finkel claimed that the transition to wind and solar PV ‘is reflected in a fall in their costs’ – even though wholesale prices doubled that year. The AEF compiled the support costs for 2016 at $4.9 billion.
The costs were updated to $6.9 billion for 2019, in a report commissioned by Senator Malcolm Roberts; that estimate was also published in Chapter 22 of Pinto et al Local Electricity Markets, Elsevier 2021.
Updated for price and budget changes, annual current renewable program costs are now over $10 billion
Initially greeted with hostility by vested interests, who recognised such analysis as a threat to their ongoing subsidies, recent reaction has been subdued. The methodology is followed by the Productivity Commission in its latest Trade and Assistance Review, though the Commission declines to put an aggregate value on the subsidies.
This cost is imposed at various points of the economy: on taxpayers and on electricity consumers but the major impact is upon the generation component – overwhelmingly on coal that formerly comprised 85 per cent of supply (and now comprises 63 per cent). Before the policies started to bite, national electricity generation cost less than $11 billion a year or about $40 per Megawatt hour. Contrary to ministerial statements, the coal supplying this remains both abundant and largely non-tradeable, while plant costs are fundamentally unchanged. Hence without government interference, coal-based generation supply would be less than half the $100 plus we pay today and to deliver it to customers, we could dispense with many of the additional system, subsidy, and transmission costs that we are incurring.
How have the costs and implications of policies designed to replace low-cost, controllable coal-generated electricity by high-cost intermittent wind and solar taken so long to be recognised and even now are officially judged to be affordable? More than anything else reversion to policies that provide cheap energy could drive the cost reductions and productivity increases are vital for increased wages. But while both the Business Council and Treasury, in its Intergenerational Report claim to understand this, their prescriptions involve subsidising energy sources (renewables, green hydrogen) that will raise costs.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/spinning-the-myth-of-global-warming-for-corporate-gain
***************************************25 August, 2023
You can't win! Now PAPER straws are cancelled
We may all think we're doing our bit for the planet by sipping our drinks out of a paper straw.
But the 'eco-friendly' alternatives contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals, a new study has concluded.
In the first analysis of its kind in Europe, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws for the group of synthetic chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo.
The synthetic chemicals are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant to water, heat and stains.
They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment.
The substances break down very slowly over time and can persist over thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as 'forever chemicals.'
They have been linked to a number of health problems including lower response to vaccines, lower birth weight, thyroid disease, increased cholesterol levels, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer.
The research team purchased 39 different brands of drinking straw made from five materials – paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic.
The straws, which were mainly bought from shops, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, then underwent two rounds of testing for PFAS.
PFAS contamination has been detected in water near manufacturing facilities as well as military bases and firefighting training facilities where foam containing PFAS is used.
They also enter the food supply through food packaging materials and contaminated soil.
Analysis revealed the majority of the brands – 69 per cent - contained PFAS, with 18 different PFAS detected in total.
Paper straws were most likely to contain the synthetic chemicals.
The most commonly found PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been banned globally since 2020.
Also detected were trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS) - 'ultra-short chain' PFAS which are highly water soluble and so might leach out of straws into drinks.
The PFAS concentrations were low and – since most people tend to only use straws occasionally - pose a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.
The authors advised people use stainless steel straws, or avoid using straws at all.
'Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic,' said researcher Dr Thimo Groffen, an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, who was involved in the study.
'However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that's not necessarily true. 'Small amounts of PFAS, while not harmful in themselves, can add to the chemical load already present in the body.'
The findings were published in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants.
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Biden’s Incoherent Energy Policy Continues
President Joe Biden says he wants a carbon-free future for the United States and acknowledges that to realize that future, nuclear energy is essential. Judging by the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars that Biden is throwing at his version of “green energy,” combined with a willingness to strangle consumer choice, his commitment to his cause would seem rock solid—even though his policies make neither environmental nor economic sense.
Now, Biden has issued a proclamation establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which effectively bans any new mining claims, including for uranium, on the nearly 1 million acres covered by the monument.
Some may think that such a policy is reasonable. No one wants to see an industrial mining operation in the Grand Canyon. Furthermore, respect for ancestral lands is laudable.
But that’s not the real story.
The Biden administration presents the decision as a choice between protecting the Grand Canyon and ancestral lands or allowing mining to occur, which, by implication, would destroy both.
This framing is simply not accurate.
The modern mining industry is perfectly capable of undertaking commercial operations while also protecting public health, safety, and the surrounding environment. Indeed, strict state and federal regulatory oversight ensures that mining operations are safely carried out and that disturbed landscapes are appropriately restored.
Further, the designated area lies to the north and south of the 1.2 million-square acre Grand Canyon National Park, so there is no threat that a tour of the Grand Canyon would one day be highlighted by a uranium mine pit stop.
Unfortunately, this move is just one more in a long line of policy decisions from the Biden administration that creates barriers to domestic energy development and mineral mining.
While Biden likes to talk about green energy and energy independence, his policies toward reliable clean energy alternatives like nuclear and natural gas make it almost impossible for the American mining industry to develop the resources necessary to manufacture and fuel the president’s vision.
And in this case, it matters a lot.
The United States gets around 20% of its electricity from 93 commercial nuclear power reactors, and these reactors are powered by uranium fuel, of which the United States imports 95%. Though friendly countries like Canada, Australia, and Namibia provide about 36% of imports, the United States also depends on Russia for 14% of its uranium.
Interestingly, this was not always the case. Though there were ups and downs in production, the United States produced much of its own uranium until 1980, when the declines never recovered.
No one cared much about this dependence on Russian uranium until the spring of 2022, when it became abundantly clear that America’s reliance on Russian uranium was a real problem. Not only was America energy dependent on Russia for uranium and related nuclear fuel services, but roughly a billion dollars were flowing to Russian state-owned enterprises annually as a result.
This situation alone should have made removing from potential domestic production any uranium resources that could have been used to offset our Russian dependence a nonstarter. But it is worse than that, and here is why.
Uranium is produced in some of the least politically stable countries in the world, including Niger, which produces about 5% of the world’s uranium and is in the midst of a military coup. While America is not dependent on Nigerien uranium per se, the situation in Niger could have an effect on America.
That is because uranium is a global commodity and supply disruptions will raise global prices, affecting everyone who uses uranium. Though a near-term challenge, disruptions from Russia, Niger, or anywhere else should not be an issue for a uranium-rich country like the United States.
But it is.
The problem is that opening new mines in the United States is extremely difficult and policies like Biden’s decision to take domestic supplies out of service prevent domestic uranium markets from responding to foreign supply disruptions.
Not only do domestic uranium miners miss out on the opportunity to provide secure supplies of uranium to American reactors, but American reactor operators have no choice but to continue their dependence on foreign suppliers.
This problem is about to get far worse as the world could be at the beginning of a massive expansion of nuclear energy. This means greater demand for uranium in the future, tighter uranium markets, higher prices, and greater dependence on foreign suppliers for America’s energy.
The president’s supporters say his monument designation protects the Grand Canyon from uranium mining, but no one wants to mine in the Grand Canyon. To suggest as much is disingenuous.
With his announcement, Biden is protecting foreign uranium suppliers from American competition and preventing American reactors from accessing domestic fuel supplies. This is a loss on both the environmental and economic fronts for America and a win for foreign competitors and our adversaries.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/23/bidens-incoherent-energy-policy-continues/ ?
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Who fact checks the fact-checkers?
Toby Young
Last week, a retired physics professor called Nick Cowern said it was time to get tough with ‘climate denialists’. ‘In my opinion the publication of climate disinformation should be a criminal offence,’ he posted on Twitter. He was ridiculed, but what sounds ludicrously over-the-top today could easily become the norm tomorrow. At least four EU member states have made it a criminal offence to spread disinformation – Hungary, Lithuania, Malta and France – and others including Ireland are preparing to do the same. In the UK, the Online Safety Bill will introduce a new false communications offence.
I have a dog in this fight since I run a news publishing website that’s frequently accused of spreading false information about climate change. Scarcely a week goes by without a fact-checking agency concluding that an article we’ve published – often by Chris Morrison, the environment editor – is false or misleading. If support for free speech continues to deteriorate, it’s possible that in about five years I’ll be found guilty of ‘denialism’ and sentenced to hard labour.
One of the problems with criminalising ‘climate disinformation’ is there’s no infallible authority the courts could rely on to determine whether a particular claim about something climate-related is true or false. Advocates of net zero and other measures designed to reduce carbon emissions often use the term ‘climate deniers’ to describe their opponents, thereby persuading themselves that proving them wrong would be easy. But even the most hardened sceptics wouldn’t dispute that average global temperatures have increased in the past 150 years. Rather, the argument is about the role of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, in global warming and how much impact changing our behaviour would have. We also dispute just how catastrophic rising global temperatures are, and are unimpressed by the hyperbole of the environmental lobby (‘global boiling’). In other words, proving us wrong isn’t as straightforward as pointing to temperature data.
I suppose the prosecution could summon distinguished climate scientists as expert witnesses, but then so could the defence – for instance Dr John Clauser, last year’s joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, who’s just signed a declaration stating there is no climate emergency. No doubt the would-be jailers would invoke the ‘97 per cent of scientists agree’ canard, but not only is that stat dubious, it’s also a non-sequitur. As Einstein said when 100 physicists published a book rubbishing his theory of relativity: ‘Why 100? If I was wrong, one would have been enough.’
Perhaps Exhibit A for the prosecution would be a ‘fact check’ by a reputable news organisation. Last year Reuters took issue with a piece by Chris Morrison in which he noted that Arctic sea ice was making a comeback and the coverage was well above a 2012 low point. This was said to be ‘misleading’, although the figures came from an official EU weather source. Reuters’ experts said that the sea ice was not recovering, pointing to a declining trend over a longer time period. One of them didn’t dispute the ice had recovered since 2012, but said it was a ‘wiggle’ and should not be cited as evidence that ‘climate change isn’t real’, which Chris hadn’t claimed. Nevertheless, he was accused of ‘cherry-picking’, although the sea ice improvement continues to this day. Send him down m’lud.
Or maybe not. I doubt the evidence of an ‘independent fact-checker’ would be taken as gospel by a jury. A defence barrister could ask them during cross-examination why they never scrutinise the statements of climate alarmists like Greta Thunberg. Last week, she pulled out of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, claiming the sponsor, Baillie Gifford, ‘invests heavily in the fossil fuels industry’. But wasn’t that a tad ‘misleading’? A spokesman for Baillie Gifford says just 2 per cent of its clients’ money is invested in companies with businesses related to fossil fuels. But assertions such as Greta’s, along with her pretence that western governments have done ‘nothing’ to tackle climate change, are never fact-checked.
Setting aside the difficulty of securing convictions, what would be the point of criminalising ‘climate disinformation’? History teaches us that you cannot legislate against ‘fake news’. Far from stopping its spread, it just adds to its allure. As the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, the best way to counter what you think of as false speech is not enforced silence but more and better speech. If Nick Cowern is so sure he’s right, he shouldn’t be afraid to debate the ‘climate denialists’ in the public square.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/who-fact-checks-the-fact-checkers/
*************************************************Australia-California: A climate partnership made in la-la land
Last week, Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding in Sacramento on climate change. It should have been called a memorandum of waffle, as both governments jointly promised to do precisely nothing.
In what seemed like a classic Freudian slip, Governor Newsom expressed shock at the level of interest in the MOU. “This is a hell of a turnout – we are not used to this many people, particularly for something like this,” he said. Of course, he was right.
After ploughing through 1600 words of waffle, the reader learns the MOU “does not create any legally binding rights or obligations and creates no legally recognisable or enforceable rights or remedies, legal or equitable, in any forum whatsoever”.
“This MOU may be modified at any time by mutual consent,” it concluded unnecessarily, given neither party agreed to do anything. The high point of the small section on “specific activities” was “organising joint symposiums, seminars, workshops … hosting trade and investment missions”, which in practice translates to more taxpayer-funded business-class flights across the Pacific.
Sky News host Chris Kenny says Australians are poised to learn a lot from California after Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd was seen in a conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom which focused on a climate change deal. “It's a marriage made in heaven this climate deal, because California More
A better MOU would have spelled out how California’s and Australia’s energy policies have produced among the highest electricity prices in the world at the same time as their leaders have promised to reduce them, although even Newsom hasn’t had the audacity to promise household power bills would fall by $275 a year by 2025, as Labor did at the federal election last year.
California’s power prices are now the highest in the US, except for far-flung Hawaii and Alaska. In Los Angeles residents paid an average of 28c a kilowatt hour for electricity last month, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.
Statewide prices are more than 77 per cent above the national average, up from 37 per cent above in 2012. But, unlike Australians, at least Californians can move to states with lower prices. Despite California’s salubrious weather and natural beauty, residents have been leaving the nation’s most populous state in droves – at first pushed out by extreme Covid-19 measures, but increasingly by a cost-of-living and a broader socio-economic crisis.
The state’s population, according to the government’s own figures, has declined three years in a row, to 39 million. In total that’s almost 600,000 people, more than the population of Tasmania or Wyoming, between April 2020 and January this year.
The MOU also promised to convene “policy dialogues” with “suitable government administrators, regulators, legislators and thought leaders”. It’s uncertain whether renowned Swedish climate expert Greta Thunberg, who once derided nuclear power as “extremely dangerous”, will make the cut. Last year Thunberg acknowledged turning off nuclear power stations in Europe was a mistake given the huge increases in fossil fuel power generation that had led to.
Indeed, the word nuclear isn’t mentioned once in the MOU, which advocated instead for “participation and leadership of Indigenous peoples in climate action” and “nature-based solutions and climate-smart land management” – what on earth these mean is anybody’s guess. Solar and wind generated abut 25 per cent of electricity in both Australia and California last year, and each are near equally ambitious.
Despite the obvious advantages in reliable and emissions-free power, Australia has ruled out any nuclear energy generation (except in submarines) while holding fast to its 82 per cent renewable power target by 2030.
California has legislated 90 per cent by 2035, although the Golden State has one big advantage over Australia achieving its goal: nuclear energy. Unreliable power evangelists aren’t stupid enough to plunge their economies into darkness just yet, knowing that could turn voters against their utopian project. In January, California rescinded an earlier decision to shut down its last nuclear power station at Diablo, a 2.2-gigawatt facility that is the state’s single biggest source of power, providing a little more than 10 per cent energy.
In the similarly strong Democrat state of Illinois – which maintains a similar brand of Democrat politics as California – 11 nuclear power plants generate about 50 per cent of the state’s electricity and the average electricity price was about half of California’s in 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
A more honest MOU would have included a pledge to ignore scientific and economic reality. In France, which generates around 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power and has the among the lowest carbon dioxide emissions in the world per capita, a law was passed in May to pave the way for the construction of another six to eight nuclear reactors, rather than plaster the French countryside with hideous solar panels and gigantic windmills.
“I’ve been around for a long time on the climate change debate,” Rudd said at the Sacramento launch. “Way back when I pronounced in Australia that climate change was the greatest economic, environmental and moral challenge of our generation I was ridiculed. I make no apology for saying it then. And I make no apology for repeating it now.”
California’s departing residents may disagree, pointing to other more pressing challenges. San Francisco’s social decline has become so egregious that tour guides have started offering “doom loop” tours. Major department stores are leaving the state or locking up their products. Parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco look increasingly like an open-air asylum.
Even as California’s population shrinks, violent crime and property crime have increased since 2020 by 11 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, according to the state attorney-general’s latest 2022 crime statistics.
Whatever agreements California and Australia make won’t make a scrap of difference to the global climate, given the near entirety of additional increases in carbon dioxide emissions now arise in India and China.
The idea of modern economies being powered entirely by wind and solar is a fantasy, technologically and economically, yet one that holds powerful sway among a very rich virtue-signalling elite, often living in gated communities, for whom California’s rising prices and crime mean relatively little.
California dreaming for the few, not the many.
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24 August, 2023
I’m a climate scientist. Here’s how I’m handling climate grief
How amusing. It seems that at least one group of climate "scientists" is seriousy deranged. How can anyone in good mental health seriously convince themselves that just one degree of warming over the last century or more is worth concern? I liked Roy Spencer's comment: "Everyone knows warming causes snowflakes to melt"
Last September, before the rains came, my field team learnt that it was probably too late for half the blue oaks affected by California’s drought in the region in which we were working. Because of years of ongoing drought, many of the trees would not recover from the long-term water loss and would die. The next morning, I sat outside our science team meeting and cried.
A friend sat with me and explained that she had just recovered from an episode of extreme climate grief brought about by studying rapidly changing terrestrial ecosystems. She had started taking weekends off (many of us work seven days a week) and encouraged me to do so, as well. After we talked, I walked around the parking area for a while, listening to the birds and watching the midday light filter through the diverse trees in downtown Santa Barbara. I breathed the ocean air and grounded myself in the present, where the air was cool and the birds were singing.
Soon after that, I started taking weekends off to kayak near my home in Southern California and hike on the trails above Pasadena, and built a small bird garden on the porch of my apartment. I also started talking frankly to my colleagues about the emotional turmoil that is often sparked by working as a climate scientist today, and many others had similar stories. I am in my mid-thirties, working at NASA as a scientist, and I already have five scientist friends with severe, emergent health challenges. They are all affected by overwork, exhaustion and extreme stress. The only other thing they all have in common is that they study climate change.
Climate scientists have advocated for recognition of the destabilization of Earth’s ecosystems for four decades. Even within my lifetime, the climate system has changed noticeably, with hotter summers, longer dry periods and more frequent and severe storms. Some climate scientists have left the field, some have died and some have retired, but even more are just starting their careers. Early-career climate scientists across a range of fields are faced with comprehensive, esoteric challenges as ecosystems begin to cross tipping points. Knowing how to look at these huge changes and still be able to relax at the end of the day can be an ongoing problem.
Even for the most experienced and well-trained field scientists, changing dynamics can introduce sudden risks to health and safety. Whether in the shape of increased glacier flow rates, rainstorms that become atmospheric rivers, or abrupt permafrost thawing that disrupts sections of highway, these unforeseen risks are emerging increasingly. Scientists with decades of experience in one field location might find themselves confronted with a new atmospheric or hydrologic circulation pattern, an unseasonal storm or freeze, or literally shaky ground. Although we have a responsibility to track how certain sites are changing in a climate that’s getting hotter and more extreme, that can put scientists at considerable risk.
Recently, I spoke to Dave Schimel, one of the scientists who led the work for which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded a Nobel prize in 2007, about how we can address climate grief. After decades of working to convince the public that climate change is real, he said that we need to work on solutions. He thinks that the current generation of climate scientists needs to move on from education and advocacy to providing solutions for mitigation, adaptation and resilience. The best treatment for climate grief, he says, is knowing you’ve made a contribution to reducing emissions or building resilience.
For me, healing comes in the form of spending my time outside work enjoying the world around me, rewilding hard-to-access land, writing letters to congresspeople and protecting migrating birds. I’ve spoken to many others who have planted gardens for native pollinators, eaten from local farms and advocated for change with local policymakers. Although small actions might not solve the climate crisis, they remind us that we are intrinsic parts of the world and its ecosystems.
In California, rainstorms started in December and lasted until May. Reservoirs were refilled, and many oaks were saved. The hills glowed with yellow and orange wildflowers, and leaves exploded from branches in rapid growth, a benefit of the winter of moisture. For just this one year, the blossoming hills gave me a breath of relief amid the ongoing struggle, and I rededicated myself to continuing to fight for everything we can still save.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02619-0
*************************************************Sweden to lift parliamentary ban on uranium mining
The Swedish Parliament has shown majority support for a lift on the ban, according to Pourmokhtari.
The government plans to build at least ten large reactors in the next 20 years to meet the demand for low-carbon energy. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters in January that the government is “changing the legislation”, which will increase nuclear investment in the country.
Swedish ministers decided to phase out nuclear generation in 1980 and have historically taken an anti-nuclear stance. However, this policy was repealed in June 2010. Pourmokhtari is a public advocate of nuclear generation and says it should form a part of Sweden’s future energy mix.
“The government is aiming at doubling electricity production in 20 years,” Pourmokhtari told The Times this weekend.
“For our clean power system to function, a large part of this has to be dispatchable where nuclear power is the only non-fossil option. Nuclear power also has a reduced environmental footprint and requires limited resources in comparison with most energy sources.”
Uranium mining has become a point of concern for Europe’s nuclear industry as Russia dominates the processing of the fuel. Following the country’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the EU has sought to reduce its energy dependence on Moscow.
Kazakhstan, however, is by far the largest uranium miner. According to the World Nuclear Association, the country produced the largest share of mined uranium (43% of the global supply) in 2022, followed by Canada (15%) and Namibia (11%).
The European Parliament has been the site of heated debate over the role of nuclear generation in a net-zero future. France, which generates around 70% of its energy from nuclear sources, has been vocally pro-nuclear. Meanwhile, Germany, which has shut down its final three nuclear power stations this year, says that the fuel is not renewable.
Sweden accounts for 80% of the EU’s uranium deposits and already extracts uranium as a waste product when mining for other metals.
Several companies, including Australia’s Aura Energy and Canada’s District Metals, have already expressed interest in developing uranium sites in Sweden.
https://www.mining-technology.com/news/sweden-lift-uranium-mining-ban/?cf-view
*********************************************California's solar mess
In the land of palm trees and sunny skies, the saga of California’s energy industry unfolds, and its latest chapters paint a distressing picture. In a state known for its commitment to renewable energy, residents interested in harnessing rooftop solar face a surprising hurdle in the form of government regulation. As the state struggles to grapple with a power grid afflicted with numerous issues stemming from surging demand, the burden of rooftop solar falls disproportionately on the shoulders of individuals and businesses alike, while highlighting the flaws of an adulterated energy market.
The State of California could be “exhibit A” of what utility regulator Travis Kavulla was picturing when he wrote:
Understanding the [energy] sector is not just important because electricity is important; the market for electricity is really a window into the workings of the modern administrative state. The economic regulation of the sector often blurs the line between government and business, turning each into the other’s client. Even in places where competitive features exist, the marketplace is still designed by government and warped by subsidies. Today there is no genuinely free market for electricity. Ironically, many of the ideologically driven, market-oriented reforms of recent decades have precipitated a retrenchment of the monopoly problem they intended to solve.
California’s history with rooftop solar systems dates back to 1996, when the state introduced the Net Energy Metering (NEM) program. This innovative billing system allowed owners of electricity generation systems, such as rooftop solar installations, to sell surplus electricity back to the grid at retail rates. This incentive proved enticing to consumers, making alternative power generation more appealing as it helped defray the substantial cost of solar systems over their lifespan. Consequently, it fostered a diverse energy resource mix and facilitated private investments in renewable energy.
The initial iteration of NEM, aptly named NEM 1.0, achieved resounding success for California and its residents in terms of increasing solar uptake. Solar system installations surged to record highs, costs of solar systems decreased annually, and the share of energy generated from individual systems kept climbing, meeting all expectations set forth by regulators.
However, after two decades of relative stability under NEM 1.0, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved NEM 2.0 as its successor. While NEM 2.0 maintained some benefits of its predecessor, such as full retail rates for excess power generation and exemptions from standby and fixed charges, it introduced a one-time interconnection fee of $75-$150 and a charge of approximately $0.02/kWh on the total electricity consumed by the grid from new NEM customers.
In less than three years after the launch of NEM 2.0, the CPUC embarked on a reform journey that would change the foundations of this once-celebrated program. Collaborating with Investor-Owned Utility companies (IOUs), the CPUC conducted extensive studies, focus groups, and hearings from August 2020 to August 2021, aiming to evaluate the impacts of net metering on the grid and consumers. A chief concern with NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0 is that the program was not cost-effective for utilities and non-participating customers. The outcome was a proposed NEM 3.0, released in November 2022, which received unanimous approval from the CPUC in December of the same year and was scheduled to take effect in April 2023 as a net billing tariff.
Under NEM 3.0, consumers could expect to receive a mere 25% of the credit they enjoyed under NEM 1.0 or 2.0 during the summer months. Regrettably, this new policy painted a bleak picture for individuals, schools, and small businesses that were considering future renewable generation. Pre-existing system users could be grandfathered into their current NEM rate by way of an application. However, no such luck for those who were stuck in the process or slow to complete their system installation.
One of the primary goals behind NEM 3.0 was to nudge consumers into adopting storage systems alongside their solar installations. During the previous iterations of NEM, the percentage of NEM systems that had storage was lackluster, with less than 6 percent of systems including storage by 2019. With NEM 3.0, individuals can expect, on average, to pay an additional $8,000–$16,000 to have a storage system installed alongside their solar. While a 26% federal tax credit for qualifying storage installations provides some relief, it exemplifies a pattern of shifting the cost burden onto the consumers, even customers without solar. According to Severin Borenstein, Meredith Fowlie, and James Sallee at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, “Utility customers who install solar save 20 to 30 cents for every kilowatt-hour their system produces, but the utility’s costs go down by only 7 to 9 cents. That leaves 10 to 20 cents in costs that still must be covered, so electricity rates go up, which hits people without solar panels.” Their working paper can be found here.
The dilemma of rooftop solar does not solely extend from statewide regulations either. Certain municipalities have also enacted restrictive regulations that make it difficult for homeowners to adopt solar energy solutions. These ordinances often impose stringent permitting processes, cumbersome paperwork, and excessive fees, dissuading residents from pursuing rooftop solar installations. Varying and inconsistent permitting requirements across jurisdictions create confusion and prolong the approval process for solar projects, leading to frustration among potential adopters.
Moreover, solar energy systems face a fundamental challenge—their peak generation occurs during the middle of the day when the demand for power is relatively low. In contrast, the highest demand for energy occurs in the evenings, when people return from work, plug-in electric vehicles, and use air conditioning. While large-scale storage systems could potentially offset this disparity, they are costly and rarely built at the scale required to power entire cities. Unfortunately, the CPUC’s decision seemed to favor the interests of massive IOUs over individual customers.
Adding to this predicament, California enacted a law in 2020 that required all new residential single-family homes, condominiums, and apartment buildings three stories or lower to install solar systems. Although the state aspires to lead in renewable energy production, this rule adds to the housing cost burden, further exacerbating the state’s existing housing and homelessness crisis. As Lawrence J. McQuillan notes in How to Restore the California Dream: Removing Obstacles to Fast and Affordable Housing Development this building requirement can add between “$10,000 to $30,000 to the cost of a new home.” The group Solar Rights Alliance purports that in California, a typical rooftop solar installation costs over $25,000, more than the rest of the United States (~$22,000), and far more than other countries like Japan ($13,200) or Germany ($9,600). Adding additional costs for home buyers while simultaneously reducing the ability to effectively pay off those accrued costs is a surefire way to compound the problem that is already prevalent.
If the concern is that NEM adds costs to other grid customers, who are not using solar, then all the more reason to have freer markets in electricity. Embracing a more market-driven approach could help alleviate the issues faced by California’s energy industry. By allowing supply and demand dynamics to dictate pricing, consumers who generate excess solar power could negotiate fair compensation directly with those who require it, promoting a more efficient allocation of resources. With a transparent and competitive market, innovative solutions such as peer-to-peer energy trading platforms could emerge, where individuals with excess solar power could sell it directly to others, bypassing the need for complex regulatory frameworks like NEM. This would not only empower consumers but also encourage investments in energy storage technologies that could bridge the gap between solar generation and peak demand periods, benefiting both solar owners and other grid customers. Ultimately, a freer electricity market could pave the way for a more resilient, cost-effective, and sustainable energy future.
Until then, California’s ambitious journey towards renewable energy and climate resilience is therefore marred by this series of policy choices. IOUs have been either direct beneficiaries, or have been slated to receive billions of dollars in order to develop and maintain infrastructure that is efficient, reliable, and safe. But the results are underwhelming. Planned outages across the state for load management at the hottest points of summer leave people vulnerable to heat-related illness. Their lack of powerline maintenance is a constant cause of fires that have led to tragedies that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres, tens of thousands of homes and businesses, and over 100 deaths.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/08/22/californias-solar-dilemma/
*******************************************Seaweed farming
It was September 2017, and Elsom attended a lecture by renowned environmentalist Tim Flannery. In his speech, Flannery discussed the potential of seaweed to store quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It instantly inspired Elsom. He would farm seaweed and help save the planet.
But there was another twist. Elsom’s commitment coincided with recent research out of the CSIRO and James Cook University in Townsville, north Queensland – that some compounds in seaweed had the ability to dramatically reduce methane production in cows and sheep. They would discover that two species of a particular Australian red seaweed – the Asparagopsis taxiformis (found in warm Queensland waters), and the Asparagopsis armata – (common in the cooler waters of Tasmania) – reduced livestock methane production by up to 90 per cent if added to the animals’ diet.
Given that 11 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions came from ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats), Elsom saw an opportunity. He would grow commercial quantities of Asparagopsis and take a significant chunk out of the world’s, greenhouse gas emissions. (The planet’s 1.5 billion cows and 1.1 billion sheep contribute roughly 6 per cent to all global emissions.)
Elsom’s Tasmanian-based company Sea Forest was born. The challenge was to grow enough seaweed to actually make a lasting difference.
By 2021, Sea Forest had attracted more than $40m in investment funds, and it continues to expand. By late last year it was producing 7000 tonnes of Asparagopsis per year, or enough to feed 300,000 cattle.
Sea Forest is not alone in the seaweed farming industry, which is rapidly developing into a multibillion-dollar global industry. In August 2021, an Australian Seaweed Institute report predicted the domestic industry could potentially generate $1.5bn annually by 2040, while reducing greenhouse emissions by 10 per cent. And that’s all thanks to a native Australian red seaweed, and visionaries like Sea Forest chief executive Elsom. He told The Australian last year: “Australia is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet and there’s a tremendous opportunity to better understand the life of seaweed and its many uses.”
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23 August, 2023
Joe Biden Enjoys His 1967 Corvette While Forcing You to Go Electric
While President Joe Biden enjoys his beautiful gas-guzzling 1967 Corvette Stingray, he wants to dictate what kind of car you get to own. Auto companies will be forced to produce more EVs, even if Americans don’t want to buy them.
The Biden administration ought to be looking at lowering barriers it has imposed on oil drilling, reducing gas prices, and scaling down burdensome regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed de facto electric vehicle mandate would force auto manufacturers to make nearly 70% of their new automobiles electric by 2032. Now, Biden’s Department of Transportation is following up with a second punch. On the Friday before Congress’s August recess, when members were leaving town, DOT released a new, expensive, and likely unattainable fuel economy standards proposal requiring passenger cars to meet a standard of 66 miles per gallon and light trucks to reach 54 miles per gallon by 2032.
This new burden being foisted on the auto industry, working-class Americans, and small businesses is being perpetrated in the name of stopping climate change, a top priority of the Biden administration that is being zealously pursued regardless of how it will hurt Americans and how little of an impact their extreme proposals will have on the climate.
According to The Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician, Kevin Dayaratna, if the United States were to eliminate not some, not most, but all of its conventional fuel use, we could expect a less than 0.2-degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Thus, despite claims that the global environment will collapse within the next decade, leading to a possible “human extinction event” unless the most drastic measures are taken, this onerous regulation will have no environmental benefit and wreak plenty of economic havoc across the nation.
Just as with the Biden regime’s proposed efficiency standards on dishwashers, gas stoves, and water heaters, DOT makes the argument that such restrictive fuel economy standards will save Americans money even though it openly admits “consumers would pay more for new vehicles upfront.” It claims the difference can be made up over time through savings at the gas pump. But the more likely result, when Biden’s overall climate agenda is factored in, is higher auto and gas prices, less consumer choice, and reduced road safety.
As DOT argues, at face value, a higher miles per gallon standard does mean fuel can be stretched further. But when Biden says, “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” add that to shutting down oil pipelines while draining the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves, and investors become reluctant to spend, energy supply contracts, and fuel prices rise. Thus, while the fuel in these new cars’ tanks might go further, if it costs more, then it cancels out the efficiency savings.
As with the EPA’s proposed tailpipe emissions rule intended to convert much of America over to EVs, the new DOT fuel economy standards mean less consumer choice. Such high fuel standards are extremely difficult to achieve and are unlikely to be attained, meaning that if this rule were to be finalized as is, auto manufacturers will be constrained in what types of vehicles they can build.
Auto companies will be forced to produce more EVs, even if Americans don’t want to buy them. These cars will be more expensive, take longer to recharge than a simple gas fill-up, and will not work as well in very cold or very hot climates. They likely will have reduced functional versatility, such as not possessing any real towing capacity, meaning consumers will be paying more for cars that do less.
Lastly, these fuel economy standards will reduce passenger safety. Per DOT’s own admission noted above, the expected increase in auto prices would make purchasing a new car prohibitively expensive for many Americans.
With unaffordable newer models, consumers lose access to the latest advancements in safety technology. As Americans work to keep their old cars on the road longer and odometers tick up, the law of averages dictates that parts will fail, which not only results in costly repairs, but sadly, can lead to serious car accidents, as older models are shown to be less safe in accidents relative to new vehicles.
The DOT’s latest fuel economy standards, especially when considered in conjunction with the EPA’s tailpipe rule, should be rejected. Of equal importance, it is long past due for the central planners in Washington, D.C., to leave drivers alone.
https://www.heritage.org/energy/commentary/joe-biden-enjoys-his-1967-corvette-while-forcing-you-go-electric ?
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Weird California Transportation Policy
Not only does California want to require that all new vehicles sold in the Golden State are electric by 2035, it also wants all light-duty vehicles and school buses sold there to have “bidirectional charging” by model year 2030. Bidirectional charging means that while your electric vehicle is plugged in to charge, if California needs it, it can take the energy stored in your battery and return it to the electrical grid.
Imagine the surprise when you go to bed thinking your electric pick-up truck will be fully charged for a long-haul business trip the next day, only to find when you wake up that the government has taken your electricity back. When I told this to Daniel in Midland, he said, “That’s crazy!”
Some people think that California’s blackout problems mean that it should not require EVs, as they just drain more power from an already overtaxed grid. But State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is sponsoring a bidirectional charging mandate bill because she believes that energy stored in Californians’ batteries will solve the state’s energy shortage.
Skinner said, “The battery capacity in today’s electric vehicles give them the potential to be mini power plants on wheels. That’s crucial as California continues to face unprecedented impacts from climate change, including record heatwaves, wildfires, and destructive storms that can lead to power outages.”
Some vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and the Ford F-150 Lightning, already have such bidirectional charging systems.
Skinner’s bill has passed the Senate and three committees in the State Assembly. If it passes the State Assembly, Gov. Gavin Newsom will likely sign it into law. Last September, he called the technology a “game changer” and said that “this is the future.”
The bill also includes the ability for the state to require other types of vehicles to have bidirectional charging systems at the discretion of the California Air Resources Board without the passage of a new law. It the state’s power problems are not solved with electricity from cars and school buses, it can draw down electricity from tractors, public transit buses, and trucks.
Carbuzz has calculated that “a 60 kWh EV battery [a typical electric vehicle battery] can provide backup power to the average US household for two to three days.” But that doesn’t absolve the state’s largest power company, Pacific Gas and Electric, of the responsibility to provide power to homes. People should not have to choose between transportation needs, such as going to work or taking someone to the doctor, and keeping their refrigerators and home heating operating.
Bidirectional charging changes the concept of the right to personal mobility and property rights. If EV owners in California must return the electricity in their car batteries to the grid during power shortages, they don’t truly own the energy in their EVs. In essence, the state has the power to tell them when to travel. It also has the power to tell them where to travel, because the state is setting up the network of electric charging stations.
This vast attempt at industrial regulation is meant to reduce global temperatures. But even getting rid of all American fossil fuel emissions would only reduce global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to government models, because increases in emissions are coming from China, Russia, India, Africa, and Latin America.
Industrial energy policy is not the only reason for the migration from California to Texas. California’s high taxes and high cost of housing are also factors. But the contrast between attitudes about transportation, looked at as a right and a key to the American dream, is stunning and a lesson to other states.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/17/dont-bring-california-transportation-policies-texas
**************************************************Why the Montana climate change lawsuit ruling is total bunk
A Montana district court under Judge Kathy Seeley has ruled in favor of a group of green Zoomers, backed by fearmongering legal outfit Our Children’s Trust, who sued the state over its regulatory policy of not using carbon emissions as a standard when permitting new fossil fuel projects.
In other words, the war on domestic energy continues apace, with judges now getting in on the action.
It will do nothing to slow warming, as the world’s leading polluters (like China) will be utterly unaffected by it.
It will do massive economic harm to average Americans, by driving up energy prices.
President Biden’s federal war on production proves that: Energy prices have skyrocketed under him, and his fossil-fuel clampdown is a huge contributor.
Plus, beyond the practical considerations here, it’s absurd for a judge to find a state-constitutional right to be protected from the warming that results from global carbon emissions.
Yes, carbon output contributes to warming.
But warming is a slow-motion risk, whereas carbon drives currently everything in the modern economy: refrigeration, clean water, farming.
No one needs to be protected from emissions.
They will, however, need lots of protection if green nuts succeed in their decarbonization schemes and all the goods and services we count on go dark one by one.
The Montana attorney general’s office was dead right to call the judgment a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt” — and to plan an appeal.
Indeed, the judge herself is a true believer, apparently citing pie-in-the-sky claims that Montana can go 80% renewable in seven years as a factor in her judgment.
Luckily, the decision is a low-level state one, limited in scope and nearly certain to be reversed.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/15/why-the-montana-climate-change-lawsuit-ruling-is-total-bunk/
*****************************************************Susan Crockford: Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces
A Grist article last week pandered to activist polar bear specialists over their failed climate change agenda as it tried to minimize why the climate movement doesn’t talk about polar bears anymore. Apparently, the Arctic icon has “largely fallen out of fashion” through “overexposure” resulting in polar bear images invoking “cynicism and fatigue.” But that isn’t really true, is it?
While there is an admission that the over-hyped lies about starving bears promoted by National Geographic in 2017 and 2018 were a factor, there is no mention in the article of the well-known, documented evidence of scientists’ own failed assumptions that polar bears require summer sea ice for survival have had any impact on public opinion (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023; Lippold et al. 2019; Rode et al. 2021).
Thriving populations in the Chukchi Sea and elsewhere amid low summer ice levels have busted the myth that polar bears need ice year-round.
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21 August, 2023
Sorry Mainstream Media, Climate Change Has Not Caused 2023’s Heatwaves
Yeah, it’s summer and summer is typically hot, but it has been hotter than usual this summer across much of the globe.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of local daily temperature records around the world have been set during the present heatwave, which, in some locations, has persisted for an extended period of time. The heatwaves are real. I say heatwaves because it is not a single global heatwave but a series of regional ones.
For progressive bloviating politicians and alarmed reporters in mainstream media the cause of the present hot weather is simple: climate change. As H. L. Mencken once said, “[f]or every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Climate change is a long-term phenomenon, driven by a combination of numerous factors at different locations during different eras. A single year’s spike in heatwaves is not evidence of long-term climate change; a steadily increasing trend in heatwaves would be, but that’s not what the evidence shows. Instead, data show that the warming of the past 150 to 170 years has not produced a trend of increasing heatwaves. As a result, the modest recent rise in global temperatures serves as a backdrop or baseline for the recent heatwave; it is not its cause.
It turns out a confluence of overlapping weather and meteorological events account for the pattern of persistent heatwaves in many locations.
One event contributing to a global rise in temperatures this year is the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha?apai volcanic eruption. Water vapor makes up 98 percent or more of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the subsea Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha?apai eruption added an additional 10 to 13 percent to atmospheric water vapor. Scientists from NASA and the European Space Agency agree that this huge addition to the dominant atmospheric greenhouse gas is contributing significantly to this years’ temperatures.
In addition, El Niño is back, and it’s a strong one. Before the summer heatwave struck and the mainstream media focused on climate change as the reason behind it to the exclusion of almost every other factor, the media was warning that with the shift from La Niña to El Niño, hotter temperatures would result.
"Essentially, the atmosphere borrows heat out of the Pacific, and global temperatures increase slightly. This happened in 2016, the time of the last strong El Niño," commentary from The Conversation noted. "Global temperatures increased by about 0.25 F (0.14 C) on average, making 2016 the warmest year on record. A weak El Niño also occurred in 2019-2020, contributing to 2020 becoming the world’s second-warmest year."
The Heartland Institute and other groups held a press briefing in early July when the El Niño was officially declared, warning that as summer heated up, the mainstream media would largely begin to ignore El Niño’s role in present temperatures, focusing instead on climate change. Our concerns proved prescient. As heatwaves began setting local records, discussions of El Niño’s role disappeared.
One little discussed factor affecting this summer’s temperatures is the increasingly active sun. After a period of relative quiescence with little solar activity, the sun has become active again. An active sun has a direct, if modest, effect on the Earth’s temperatures.
Regionally, a variety of entirely natural weather patterns have also contributed to warming.
Across parts of the western and southeastern United States, and in southern and central Europe, heat domes or “blocking patterns” formed and persisted. As CNN described the situation, “an enormous, relentless stubborn ridge of high pressure has trapped air inside in a ‘heat dome’ resulting in extreme temperatures as the dome parks itself over areas.”
The blocking patterns in Europe trapped a heat dome there as it did in the western United States. In addition, in early July, the jet stream shifted. These two meteorological events combined to deliver colder than average, even fall like temperatures, in northern Europe and across the United Kingdom in July and into August, while locking-in, for an extended period of time, extreme summer temperatures in a large swath of southern European nations abutting or near the Mediterranean Sea.
Another factor contributing to hotter than average temperatures this summer is changes in the ocean circulation patterns in the North Atlantic. As Judith Curry, Ph.D., and Jim Johnstone note, it seems that sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic are unusually high this summer, due to significant changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation and weak surface winds. The resulting increase in Atlantic Ocean temperatures has been hyped in the media, but wrongly attributed to long-term climate change rather than localized, natural weather anomalies.
Fossil fuel use does not cause volcanic eruptions, oceanic and wind current shifts, or changes in solar activity, thus their use can’t be blamed for this summer’s heatwaves.
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Anatomy of the climate change hoax
Judith Sloan has decided to name Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy, ‘B1’. I prefer to think of Chris Bowen as a joker, because if he is not a joker, he is delusional. And that would make Senator McKim doubly delusional considering the outbursts we witnessed from him last week.
My belief in their delusion has been confirmed in my mind by reading Steven E Koonin’s book Unsettled: what the climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters. The book is replete with case studies about how science is being used and dramatically misused. It is the latter that has formed a pattern in our current public debate on climate.
Koonin explains the process that normally happens between when the science is being done and when we get to hear about it. He describes it as the ‘long game of telephone that starts with the research literature and runs through the assessment reports to the summaries of the assessment reports and on to the media coverage’.
Koonin realised this when he was asked to ‘stress test’ the literature about climate change. He was ‘not only surprised, but ‘shaken’ by what he found. At each point along the telephone game, there was dilution, obfuscation, or denial of what the science did and did not know. That means, as far as I can tell, that by the time the media got hold of the reports about the assessment of the science based on the actual scientific literature, it was a mess – but it was a targeted mess designed to fit the alarmist narrative.
Here are some results he found that contradict the meta-story in the media:
Humans have a growing but small warming influence.
The multitude of climate models disagree with or even contradict each other.
Government and UN press reports do not accurately reflect the reports themselves.
One of the founders of Green Peace, Patrick Moore, has catalogued other ‘fake, invisible catastrophes and threats of doom’ in his book (of that name). He also gives detailed descriptions of the fuller science on topics such as the Great Barrier Reef (and why Dr Peter Ridd was correct), why the CO2 alarmists are wrong, the polar bear fear of extinction, and many other fearful environmental stories that have become disconnected from reality. As an example of the dangers of computer modelling as tools for predicting the future, he notes: ‘The authors of this paper [about polar bears] are once more using a computer model as if it can actually predict the future. It’s time to call the alarmists out on this.’
Does our Minister for Climate Change and Energy read this stuff? If not, do his advisors? Worse still, on what grounds does the Labor government condemn so many Australians to hardship from his unrealistic energy agenda? Why does this federal leadership on energy make life harder for the most vulnerable of society? Why does this government prattle on about aged care while taking healthy options (like heating) from them? Are the Labor Party and its nest of advisors unaware of the basic science that deaths due to increased cold are much more frequent for the vulnerable than warmer climes? Do they understand that during the last warming period the Earth flourished in the Northern Hemisphere? Has it escaped them that the greening of the planet is doing better with whatever mild warming is occurring?
How does the Minister avoid the logic of Ian Plimer, Bjorn Lomberg, or Michael Shellenberger? Where are the public, informed debates about these very public contradictions within the science? Why haven’t journalists, or the Opposition, peppered him with this alternative assessment by Koonin?
…the science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.
I really like how Claire Lehmann summarised this in her recent articles in The Australian. She outlined exactly how the telephone game happened. She notes, ‘GenCost’s modelling applies to hypothetical power prices from 2030 onwards – assuming all the infrastructure the Albanese government is currently investing in need not be accounted for. Is Chris Bowen aware of this? Has anybody told him?’
Lehmann proceeded to list questions that Bowen should be asked about his sources on which to make his claims about ‘the cheapest source of energy’.
But Bowen will not answer these questions. On that I am certain. Why? Because this scenario is the same as one through which we have just recently lived – Covid. Were we allowed to openly pursue the uncertainties in the science then? No. Were we allowed to talk publicly about our concerns? Not really, if we wanted to keep our jobs or social media accounts. Was our freedom about how to live, including how to earn our income and how we could spend our money, curtailed? Yes. Was the future generation being penalised for the acrimonious actions of fear-mongering and controlling elites? Yes. Were any of those elites making millions, if not billions of dollars from the misfortune of others? Yes.
And that is exactly what we are experiencing now in Australia, again. Senator Matt Canavan is correct in calling for a Royal Commission into how we managed Covid.
I claim that we need a Royal Commission into our response to climate science, now, while our economy and freedoms still have some semblance of democratic civility left in them. Without such a strong corrective, environmental alarmism continues to be a platform from the sneering elites in politics, business, and education to cancel the thoughts and freedoms of others.
Will we get such a review at this time? No – the B1 Joker appears to lack the capacity to understand these life-changing dynamics of his portfolio. And if the capacity is not there, he cannot have any will to change his approach even in the face of overwhelming public frustration.
Will anyone else?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/from-unsettled-to-unhinged
************************************************Is it time to ban electric vehicles?
The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, “There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes.” The resulting fire is “very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous.”
Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.
A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.
FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It’s happening all over the country as these blazes have become commonplace. Cars and e-bikes are randomly blowing up in driveways and garages.
Now let’s be honest: 13 deaths in a city the size of New York with some 8 million people is hardly an epidemic. Regulations should always be based on a cost versus benefit calculation, or there would be no cars at all.
And yet the same scaremongers on the left who have zero tolerance and want bans for small risks when it comes to everything from swimming pool diving boards, gas stoves, plastic straws, vaping, fireworks and so on, have a surprisingly high pain threshold when it comes to people dying or suffering critical injured from “green” electric battery fires.
Or consider this: In 1965, Ralph Nader almost single-handedly helped ban the popular Chevrolet Corvair — famous for its engine placed in the back trunk of the car. Nader’s bestselling shock book “Unsafe at Any Speed” declared the car was deadly. But there was no real evidence of that claim, and to this day there are no reliable statistics on how many passengers — if any — died in Corvairs from rear-end accidents.
What is indisputable is that EVs will cause far more deaths than Corvairs ever did.
One other example: There have been more fatalities in just one city in a single year from lithium-ion batteries in cars than all the people who died from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident — which was zero.
Yet, after the accident, thanks to the environmentalists’ fear campaign (with the help of the blockbuster anti-nuke movie “The China Syndrome”), no domestic nuclear plants were built for three decades. That is despite the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.
But with EVs, the greens are pushing aside any concerns about the collateral damage of deaths and injuries. Biden wants to mandate that nearly ALL new cars sold in the U.S. be EVs by 2032. If that happens, many thousands of Americans may die or will be inured from electric vehicle fires.
All this is especially hypocritical because once upon a time the left’s mantra was “no trading blood for oil.” Now they are willing to trade blood in exchange for getting Americans to stop using oil. An irony of all this is that because of all the energy needed to produce windmills, solar panels and electric batteries, new studies are showing that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to this “net zero” transition is close to zero. It turns out, green energy causes some pollution, too.
For the record, I’m not in favor of the government banning EVs or e-bikes or just about anything. I just believe that we should make policy decisions based on real and factual risk assessments, not false scares and sensationalism.
As for the future of EVs, maybe it’s time for Ralph Nader to write a sequel to “Unsafe at Any Speed.”
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/08/15/stephen-moore-is-it-time-to-ban-electric-vehicles-1386863/
*******************************************************Gas bans ignite culture war, battery bonus is better, says Australian Liberal Party senator
Bans on household gas use risk opening up a fresh culture war over climate policy, moderate Coalition senator Andrew Bragg has warned, adding that the derailing of households’ use of electrical appliances could stop Australia reaching its climate targets.
Bragg said the federal government should instead offer tax breaks for household batteries, which he said would drive the uptake of systems that will be crucial to harnessing Australia’s vast supply of rooftop solar energy to continue cutting the nation’s carbon footprint.
“If we lose electrification to a culture war, we may never get to net zero,” Bragg will say in a speech to the Coalition for Conservation group on Friday.
The Victorian state government announced in July that gas connections to all new homes would be banned at the start of next year.
Bragg told this masthead that moves to remove the right to choose energy sources had sparked a damaging backlash in the US and said he believed it would likewise harm public support for climate action in Australia.
“During debates in the US Congress, the following is standard fare: ‘If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands’,” Bragg will say.
“Australia can do a lot better than that. If we lose electrification to a culture war, we may never get to net zero.”
Household emissions including electricity use and personal vehicles account for more than 40 per cent of Australia’s annual emissions. However, there are fewer than 50,000 household batteries installed across the country.
Installing electrical appliances backed with household batteries to lower gas use, such as induction cooktops, water heaters and reverse cycle air conditioners, is widely viewed as a crucial way to cut emissions and reduce power bills.
Bragg asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to model a tax deduction for home batteries.
It found a tax deduction of 50 per cent, capped at $3500, on the installation of a new home battery would deliver a 10 per cent increase in uptake by the middle of 2033. This scheme would cost the budget $375 million over the next 10 years.
The Parliamentary Budget Office also modelled a tax deduction of up to 75 per cent, capped at $5250, which it found would result in a 15 per cent increase in uptake by mid-2033 and cost the budget $584 million.
However, some experts say a ban on gas, coupled with subsidised loans for new appliances, is the best policy to drive household emissions reduction.
The Grattan Institute’s Getting Off Gas report urged governments to impose bans on new household gas connections and said low-interest loans to home owners were also needed to spur the uptake of appliances.
Grattan found that by switching from gas to electric appliances, an average household in Melbourne could save between $12,000 and $14,000 over 10 years based on their energy consumption, while an average household in Sydney could save between $2000 and $7000.
Bragg told this masthead that experts had failed to factor in the community division that would be caused by banning new households from gas connections.
“Household electrification is an absolute no-brainer and I don’t want to see it lost in a political bun fight,” he said.
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20 August, 2023
The old air pollution boogeyman rides again
For many years now, I have been reviewing studies of air pollution. Both Greenies and health advocates abhor it. But the research results are always disappointing. The ideal research result would be a demonstration that motor vehicle emissions give you cancer but there is no solid proof of that. Pollution repeatedly turns out to be peskily harmless. But no-one believes that. So they keep on doing studies to prove their point. One such is below. They hypothesize that air pollution sends you gaga.
Does it? It's another geography study. It tests your health according to where you live. It does NOT detect your personal exposure to air pollution. So that is a major flaw. But its conclusions are still amusing. They found no effect from most sources of pollution -- with one exception: Dust that farmers kick up when plowing etc. Avoid farms or lose your marbles!
As I said, the results are shaky anyway -- with their lack of personal data -- so I would not start demonizing farmers yet. The global warming folk demonize them enough already. And farm populations may be more prone to dementia anyway
I probably should note again why I think air pollution is so harmless: It is because human beings have been sitting around smoky campfires for about a million years. Over that time they have adapted to all the resultant pollution they inhale. Basically, they just cough it up. Looking at the big picture does help, doesn't it?
Comparison of Particulate Air Pollution From Different Emission Sources and Incident Dementia in the US
Boya Zhang et al
Question Are long-term exposures to particulate air pollution from different emission sources associated with incident dementia?
Findings In this nationally representative cohort study in the US, higher residential levels of fine particulate matter were associated with greater rates of incident dementia, especially for fine particulate matter generated by agriculture and wildfires.
Meaning These findings support the hypothesis that airborne particulate matter pollution is associated with the likelihood of developing dementia and suggest that selective interventions to reduce pollution exposure may decrease the life-long risk of dementia; however, more research is needed to confirm these relationships.
Abstract
Importance Emerging evidence indicates that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution may increase dementia risk in older adults. Although this evidence suggests opportunities for intervention, little is known about the relative importance of PM2.5 from different emission sources.
Objective To examine associations of long-term exposure of total and source-specific PM2.5 with incident dementia in older adults.
Design, Setting, and Participants The Environmental Predictors of Cognitive Health and Aging study used biennial survey data from January 1, 1998, to December 31, 2016, for participants in the Health and Retirement Study, which is a nationally representative, population-based cohort study in the US. The present cohort study included all participants older than 50 years who were without dementia at baseline and had available exposure, outcome, and demographic data between 1998 and 2016 (N = 27 857). Analyses were performed from January 31 to May 1, 2022.
Exposures The 10-year mean total PM2.5 and PM2.5 from 9 emission sources at participant residences for each month during follow-up using spatiotemporal and chemical transport models.
Main Outcomes and Measures The main outcome was incident dementia as classified by a validated algorithm incorporating respondent-based cognitive testing and proxy respondent reports. Adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated for incident dementia per IQR of residential PM2.5 concentrations using time-varying, weighted Cox proportional hazards regression models with adjustment for the individual- and area-level risk factors.
Results Among 27 857 participants (mean [SD] age, 61 [10] years; 15 747 [56.5%] female), 4105 (15%) developed dementia during a mean (SD) follow-up of 10.2 [5.6] years. Higher concentrations of total PM2.5 were associated with greater rates of incident dementia (HR, 1.08 per IQR; 95% CI, 1.01-1.17). In single pollutant models, PM2.5 from all sources, except dust, were associated with increased rates of dementia, with the strongest associations for agriculture, traffic, coal combustion, and wildfires. After control for PM2.5 from all other sources and copollutants, only PM2.5 from agriculture (HR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.01-1.27) and wildfires (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.02-1.08) were robustly associated with greater rates of dementia.
Conclusion and Relevance In this cohort study, higher residential PM2.5 levels, especially from agriculture and wildfires, were associated with higher rates of incident dementia, providing further evidence supporting PM2.5 reduction as a population-based approach to promote healthy cognitive aging. These findings also indicate that intervening on key emission sources might have value, although more research is needed to confirm these findings.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2808088
****************************************The Maui wildfires are proof that carbon zealotry can kill
Ask the grieving families of Maui, the Hawaiian island ravaged by wildfires last week.
As the fires raged, liberal media blamed the devastation on climate change. “How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii into a Tinderbox,” announced The New York Times.
Sorry, the evidence is piling up that the opposite is true.
Zero carbon extremism diverted the island’s main electrical producer, Hawaiian Electric, from insulating wires, clearing areas around vulnerable transmission sites and taking other precautions to prevent wildfires it knew were likely to occur.
It dithered on prevention, while pouring funds and manpower into meeting the Hawaiian government’s mandate that all electricity must be produced from renewables by 2045.
The death toll from Lahaina Fire has reached 111, but will go higher, because much of the island hasn’t been searched.
The fire’s already the deadliest in US history. But wildfires ignited by inadequately maintained electrical transmission systems — uninsulated wires, flimsy poles, out-of-control plant growth — have also devastated Texas, Colorado and California.
Six out of 20 recent wildfires in California, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, the Kinkade fire in Sonoma in 2019 and the Dixie Fire in 2022, were caused by sparks due to aging transmission equipment and poor maintenance.
California’s Pacific Electric & Gas boasts that it’s “helping to heal the planet” and is determined to achieve a “net zero energy system in 2040 — five years ahead of California’s current carbon neutrality goal.”
What about healing the families who needlessly lost loved ones in these fires? Pursuing zero carbon by sacrificing safety and the production of a reliable electricity supply is crazy. We all want to protect the planet, but at a reasonable pace.
As the grisly facts come out about Maui, that lesson is clearer than ever.
Though an official report on the fires’ causes will take months, photos and evidence from grid monitors point to a string of fires ignited as power lines hit trees, other lines or the ground because of wind.
“This is strong confirmation — based on real data — that utility grid faults were likely the ignition source for multiple wild fires on Maui,” says Bob Marshall, CEO of Whisker Labs, which monitors electric grids across the US, including in Maui.
Four years ago, in the aftermath of a damaging 2019 wildfire season, Hawaiian Electric concluded that power lines emitting sparks were a serious threat, and the company prepared a plan for fire retardant poles, monitoring technology and insulation.
Then it dithered, spending less than $245,000 on wildfire prevention, while it went whole hog launching big projects in renewable energy.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/18/the-maui-wildfires-are-proof-that-carbon-zealotry-can-kill/
***********************************************The EPA Defies the Supreme Court
In politics, inadvertently telling the truth is called a “gaffe.” Last year Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a remark in passing that gave away the Biden administration’s plans for enforcing its climate agenda through a “suite of rules” imposed under programs lacking any credible connection to climate. A few months later, a Supreme Court opinion transformed Mr. Regan’s indiscretion into justification for wholesale judicial repudiation of the Biden administration’s climate regulatory blitz.
Mr. Regan’s comment came on March 10, 2022, when he addressed the press following his keynote address to CERAWeek, a climate conference in Houston. A reporter asked about vulnerabilities of the EPA’s approach to installing climate regulation through the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was then awaiting judgment by the court. Mr. Regan replied that the agency had abandoned the idea of relying on any specific grant of regulatory authority. Instead it was in the process of tightening rules under numerous and varied regulatory programs all at once, pressuring disfavored operations to close and compelling investment consistent with the EPA’s desires.
Mr. Regan went on to cite rules to tighten regulation of mercury, ozone, soot, hazardous air pollutants, water effluent and coal ash under acknowledged congressional grants of authority. But he also called the “expedited retirement” of power plants “the best tool for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions” and opined that the “industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean-energy future?’ ”
This already reflected something of a scofflaw position. Congress never approved what Mr. Regan described. It became a serious problem when the justices struck down the Clean Power Plan in June. West Virginia v. EPA held that the agency didn’t have the authority it claimed to force power-plant closures by setting unmeetable emission standards and thus dictate, as the court had put it, “how Americans get their energy.”
Chief Justice John Roberts noted for the 6-3 majority that after Congress had repeatedly considered and rejected providing the agency authority to regulate power-sector greenhouse gases, the EPA claimed “to discover an unheralded power” that represented a “transformative expansion in [its] regulatory authority” to force “generation shifting.”
The court invoked the major-questions doctrine—a principle grounded in the separation of powers—which states that when a regulatory agency seeks to impose burdens of “economic and political significance,” there is “reason to hesitate.” If an agency can’t point to “clear congressional authorization,” the authority doesn’t exist.
Many climate activists took the lesson that they should stop bragging about clever regulatory approaches. Two weeks after West Virginia v. EPA came out, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a funereal webinar in which panelists warned about candid outbursts turning up in Supreme Court reversals, mentioning such statements as President Obama’s “if Congress won’t act soon . . . I will,” and Mr. Biden’s then-chief of staff Ron Klain’s tweeting about “the ultimate work-around” of constitutional limits to impose Covid vaccine mandates. Several panelists urged activists to be careful in their press releases and to not let appointees’ cheerleading “get out in front of the lawyers.”
That’s good advice, but the administration appears undeterred. Records obtained by policy groups I represent in Freedom of Information Act litigation show Mr. Biden’s EPA team came in with this plan to hit fossil generation with a barrage of disparate regulations as a climate strategy. One impressively prescient email sent the day after Mr. Biden’s election by law professor and soon-to-be Biden climate advisor Ann Carlson laid out the approach, even using the phrase “suite of climate policies.”
Two weeks into Mr. Biden’s term, a PowerPoint slide show—given by a lawyer named Joe Goffman, who is hailed in media profiles as the administration’s “law whisperer” because “his specialty is teaching old laws to do new tricks”—detailed a plan of tightening regulation on power plants by using solid waste, water and even visibility standards. The audience for his plan to blitz fossil power generation with these non-climate programs? The White House Climate Office. FOIA records also include activist correspondence to Mr. Goffman specifically urging the EPA to tighten “haze” rules as a back door for the climate agenda, which EPA appears to be doing.
Long-held plans are hard to let go. Despite the court’s rejection of each authority the administration has claimed so far to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, one email written during the immediate post-West Virginia scramble refers to “EPA’s CAA toolbox” for “Power Sector GHG Reductions.” (The abbreviations stand for Clean Air Act and greenhouse gas.)
West Virginia v. EPA addressed power the agency claimed under a specific rule, but the opinion’s scope extends far beyond that rule. The justices flatly stated that trying to force the plant-closure agenda Mr. Regan described, for which the EPA can cite no statutory mandate, presents a “major question” requiring a clear congressional statement of authority.
Academics now call on Mr. Biden to ignore the Supreme Court. His EPA is doing so, while also ignoring Congress. It seems inevitable the court will confront this latest gambit to evade constitutional limits. As always, the question will be how much lasting harm the EPA can inflict before the courts act to stop it.
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Reality deserves a look in when teaching children the science of global warming
I have pondered this more than usual lately given on-air discussions and media reporting about rising levels of anxiety and depression in our children. A recent Sydney Morning Herald report focused on record levels of mental health disorders, with many children refusing to go to school.
We unnecessarily frightened our kids for three years over Covid-19, keeping them from school for extended periods. Now we wonder why they are too anxious or despondent to return. Half their parents have not returned to the workplace either, so they are not getting an ideal lead.
Then there is climate change. For years the climate alarmists have been instilling the fear of Gaia into our children, from pre-school to the classroom, from the nightly news to the kids programming.
The ABC’s flagship kids television current affairs program, Behind the News, kicked off an episode this month by declaring: “scientists say that last month was officially the hottest month Earth has ever recorded. And the UN says we’re no longer facing global warming, but something worse.”
And on they went with vision of extreme weather events and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres telling us global warming was over and “the era of global boiling has arrived”.
The reporter then said: “Global boiling, it sounds pretty intense, but the UN says the threat the world’s facing is intense.” Neither the UN nor the media are interested in context or reassurance; their currency is hysteria.
Guterres is a former Portuguese Socialist Party prime minister – a green-left politician, no more and no less – and scaring people into realigning the global economic order is his life’s work.
But our children, do we really want to be doing this to our children? After reading about the record anxiety and mental health problems for our young people in the SMH, it occurred to me that they might be part of the problem. When you click through to their climate-change coverage, there is plenty of climate fear porn to be found.
“Global boiling, Sydney hasn’t done enough to prepare for lethal heat,” screams one headline. “Record July heat prompts dire warning; Act now or we all scorch and fry,” shouts another. “Crucial global climatic system could face tipping point in two years,” we read, surely not another tipping point? Then: “The hottest July in 120,000 years. What’s in store for Australia this summer?”
Not a hint of context, subtlety, or scepticism. Imagine the absurdity of claiming a day or month is the hottest in 120,000 years.
The more you research these matters, the more you doubt even records claimed over the past century, given so many early readings have been revised downwards.
The Bureau of Meteorology claimed Adelaide recorded the hottest ever maximum for a capital city on January 24, 2019, when the temperature hit 46.6C. Yet the record it broke from 1939 was actually recorded as the equivalent of 47.6C before, in recent years, it was “homogenised” downwards. There are endless other examples.
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18 August, 2023
Major Credit Rating Agency Drops ESG Scores Amid Backlash to Corporate Wokeism
Rating agency S&P Global has dropped its use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores to assess corporate borrowers amid questions over the usefulness of such metrics and amid broader backlash to “woke” agendas being pushed in board rooms across the United States.
Since 2021, the credit rating agency has rated companies on a scale from 1 (best) to 5 (worst) in each of the three components of ESG. But now, S&P Global’s ESG scoring system is being dropped in the rating agency’s credit quality assessments of publicly rated firms.
“Effective immediately, we are no longer publishing new ESG credit indicators in our reports or updating outstanding ESG credit indicators,” the rating agency announced in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.
The rating agency hinted that lack of effectiveness was the rationale for dropping the ESG scoring system—which has been the subject of sharp criticism from conservatives who see it as a manifestation of leftist or even neo-Marxist agendas in corporations.
“We have determined that the dedicated analytical narrative paragraphs in our credit rating reports are most effective at providing detail and transparency on ESG credit factors material to our rating analysis, and these will remain integral to our reports,” S&P Global said in the statement.
A Bloomberg report citing a “person close to the process” who declined to be identified indicated that the change was prompted by “expressions of confusion” on the part of investors who rely on the agency’s credit ratings to inform their investment decisions.
A request for clarification from The Epoch Times as to why the ESG scores were being dropped wasn’t returned by press time.
‘Not That Reliable’
Patrick Welch, chief ESG and ratings policy officer at Kroll Bond Rating Agency, told Bloomberg that confusion is the likely chief culprit driving the change at rival S&P Global.
By using a five-point rating scale, “you’re putting one scoring system—an ESG one—inside another scoring system, which is the credit rating,” Mr. Welch told the outlet.
He said some of the confusion is about whether the rating reflects financial risk to the company or the company’s effect on, for example, society and the environment.
Tom Lyon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s business school who has studied ESG ratings, told the Financial Times that ESG ratings are “not that reliable, and they disagree.”
Mr. Lyon noted that ESG ratings have been under attack by conservatives and congressional Republicans while suggesting that S&P Global folded in the face of pressure to stop using them.
While S&P Global has dropped its ESG scores, its rivals Moody’s and Fitch continue to use an alphanumeric scale for their ESG assessments.
Richard Hunter, chief credit officer at Fitch Ratings, told Pensions & Investments, “Fitch believes that there are profound limits to what text disclosures can do for investors monitoring an entire portfolio of hundreds of serviced issuers and bonds.
“We have found that having a numeric score that crisply identifies individual issuers with actual rating changes that can be classified as driven by a factor which has a direct relevance for ESG as well, or where those factors are heavily discussed at the committee, without rising yet to an actual rating change, has been highly valued by users.”
‘Obsession With Radical Social Change’
S&P Global, which is one of the world’s largest raters of corporate debt, faced calls for an investigation last year by a coalition of Republican attorneys general.
“Too many consumers and investors have been hurt by the woke ESG movement’s obsession with radical social change and willingness to ignore the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement in September 2022.
“We’re investigating S&P Global to find out whether they’ve engaged in the types of destructive, illegal business practices that are so pervasive in the ESG movement. If so, they will have to answer for their actions.”
While that investigation has yet to conclude, other experts say the pushback against ESG isn’t confined to conservatives.
Scott Shepard, a fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, which is a free-market public policy research group, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that opposition to ESG is gaining steam in the United States.
“We’re seeing something very different this time. Because it’s not just the conservatives, who are always interested in this sort of thing; it’s the whole country,” Mr. Shepard said of boycott calls facing brands such as Bud Light and Target over their embrace of left-wing principles.
ESG, which started as guidelines, has now turned into heavy-handed mandates on controversial “social justice” ideologies, he said.
Mr. Shepard noted that ESG initiatives could expose businesses to legal action if they can be shown to be a breach of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
Will Hild, executive director of Consumer’s Research, a nonprofit consumer protection group, told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that woke business practices aren’t going away without a fight.
Corporate leaders fear losing their jobs if they drop ESG more than they fear corporate losses, Mr. Hild said. That’s why woke companies don’t seem to learn their lesson and keep pushing ESG’s “far-left agenda,” he said.
“It’s a cover for pushing politics using other people’s money,” Mr. Hild said.
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Judicial Climate Activism in Montana
In a case that would make Greta Thunberg proud, 16 young people ages five to 22 successfully sued the state of Montana for failing to protect their right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Their entire case rested upon the utterly unmeasurable and unquantifiable claim that the Treasure State’s Environmental Policy Act has “harmed” them since it precludes local officials from incorporating “greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding impacts to the climate” into their evaluation process when considering energy project approvals.
In other words, since Montana passed laws to prevent ecofascists from crushing the fossil fuel industry in the state, these children sued. Nothing like using gullible kids to promote a Marxist political agenda, which is what the climate change cult is really all about.
Indeed, given the judge’s reasoning, it was clear that these young people were merely used as props in a show trial — the outcome of which was decided before it began.
Judge Kathy Seely of the First District Court in Montana effectively based her “harm” ruling on a rationale that could be boiled down to this: The kids are so sad. Seely claimed, “Youth plaintiffs have experienced past and ongoing injuries resulting from the state’s failure to consider [greenhouse gas emissions] and climate change, including injuries to their physical and mental health, homes and property; recreational, spiritual and aesthetic interests; tribal and cultural traditions, economic security and happiness.”
Seely further enumerated, “Plaintiff’s mental health injuries stemming from the effects of climate change on Montana’s environment, feelings like loss, despair, and anxiety, are cognizable injuries.” Really? Just reading Seely’s ridiculous ruling causes feelings of despair and anxiety over the state of our nation’s judicial system.
Reading through the decision, we’re left wondering who Seely paid off to get her district judge gig. It is really that bad.
Making matters worse, while the plaintiffs had little other than feelings to offer, the state brought data and evidence to support its defense. The state even brought in world-renowned climatologist Judith Curry to back up its claims. Curry blasted the climate alarmist group Our Children’s Trust, the ecofascists behind the lawsuit, cogently observing, “There is no right to a ‘safe and stable climate,' for the simple reason that Earth’s climate is constantly out of equilibrium and evolving.”
Ignoring sound science and reasoned logic, the Leftmedia celebrated the verdict as a landmark, precedent-setting decision upon which judicial momentum can be built for furthering the Left’s war against fossil fuels.
Hopefully, however, the vacuous argument of elevating feelings as facts won’t play with the appellate courts. Children crying emotional distress over the climate change bogeyman they have been indoctrinated to fear should not sway any sober-minded judge. If it does, then a bed manufacturer could be held liable for the nightmares a child experiences over fears of the imaginary monster living under his bed.
Finally, if anyone is at fault for the emotional “trauma” these children are experiencing, is it not the Chick Little climate alarmists? People like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg have often literally screamed their apocalyptic vision of a near future world where the oceans rise and the earth burns. How many times have these charlatans claimed that earth will end in X number of years if we don’t immediately stop carbon emissions, only for the date to come and go without even a hint of remorse for the deceit they’ve peddled? And how many children suffer despair and anxiety because of this climate alarmism hysteria?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99742-judicial-climate-activism-in-montana-2023-08-17
******************************************************Man learns unforgettable lesson about electric vehicles on 1,400-mile road trip: 'Biggest scam of modern times'
A Canadian man recently learned the hard way that electric vehicles have significant disadvantages compared to gas-powered vehicles.
On July 27, Dalbir Bala packed his wife and three children in his truck — a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat that he purchased for $85,000 (or $115,000 in Canadian currency) in January — for a business trip to Chicago, the CBC reported.
Along the 1,400 mile trip from his home near Winnipeg to the Chicagoland area, Bala planned to stop at three charging stations. The truck's range, when fully charged, is about 320 miles.
Bala's stop at the first station in Fargo, North Dakota, was successful — albeit inconvenient because it took more than two hours to recharge the battery to 90%. But at the second station in Albertville, Minnesota, Bala discovered a charging station that did not work. After unsuccessfully calling for help, Bala drove to a nearby charging station in Elk River, Minnesota — but that one didn't work either.
With just 12 miles remaining on his battery, Bala made the decision to have his truck towed to a nearby Ford dealership, where he also rented a gas-powered Toyota 4Runner to complete his trip to Chicago. He picked up his electric truck on the return trip.
Now, Bala is telling his story and warning other consumers about the problems with electric vehicles.
"People have to make the right choices. I want to tell everybody to read my story," he told Fox Business. "Do your research before even thinking about it and make a wiser choice. ... The actual thing they promised is not even close. Not even 50%. And once you buy it, you're stuck with it, and you have to carry huge losses to get rid of that. And nobody is there to help you."
The nightmare trip is not Bala's only problem with the truck.
He explained in a social media post that not long after purchasing it, he was involved in a "minor fender bender" with a small amount of damage. Shockingly, it took six months for the damage to be repaired because of a parts shortage.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/dalbir-bala-electric-truck-road-trip
***********************************************The Barrier reef: A very expensive false alarm
In 2018, the Coalition government gifted $444 million of other people’s money to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. The money was apparently not even asked for by the foundation, but the Decider in Chief, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his profligate offsider Josh Frydenberg, signed off on ‘… the record funding agreement without an open tender.’ Said Turnbull at the time: ‘So this is a wonderful investment in ensuring that we maintain the health of the Great Barrier Reef.’
The purpose of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is to: ‘To find and grow the best solutions to protect the world’s greatest reef.’
Meanwhile, reported this week from the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition: ‘In 2022, the GBR (Great Barrier Reef) continues to recover, registering the highest levels of coral cover yet recorded in the Northern and Central regions over the past 36 years of monitoring.’
To repeat. The highest level of coral cover in 36 years of monitoring across two-thirds of the reef.
This begs the question… For what was $444 million of public money provided by the Coalition government? Either the Great Barrier Reef Foundation was absolutely brilliant at saving the reef or it achieved very little and the reef repaired itself. Was this another Coalition waste of money? Looks like the latter rather than the former.
According to Peter Ridd, someone with some familiarity of the subject: ‘The reef now has twice as much coral as in 2012 when it hit a low point after being smashed by major cyclones.’ Then Ridd added: ‘The truth is we have been scammed for decades, and the perpetrators have been caught out. Once-trusted science institutions have become untrustworthy. It is time they are subjected to serious scrutiny.’
Over 4 years, we have burned through approximately $245 million to achieve … what? Whatever it is, it is difficult to quantify. With this spending you’d think this project was part of the Department of Defence!
The final and most important question to ask then is … can we have the money back?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/can-we-have-that-444-million-back/
***************************************17 August, 2023
Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’
Two prominent climate scientists have taken on new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”
Citing extensive data (pdf) to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations aren’t based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong.
“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen wrote. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.
“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data. The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”
Climate models such as the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes, Mr. Happer told The Epoch Times. To illustrate his point, he presented the EPA with a table showing the difference between those models’ predictions and the observed data.
“That was already an embarrassment in the ’90s, when I was director of energy research in the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said. “I was funding a lot of this work, and I knew very well then that the models were overpredicting the warming by a huge amount.”
He and his colleague argued that the EPA has grossly overstated the harm from CO2 emissions while ignoring the benefits of CO2 to life on Earth.
Many who have fought against EPA climate regulations have done so by arguing what’s called the “major questions doctrine,” that the EPA doesn’t have the authority to invent regulations that have such an enormous effect on Americans without clear direction from Congress. However, Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen have taken a different tack, arguing that because the EPA regulations are “arbitrary and capricious,” they fail a test laid out in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.
“Time and again, courts have applied ‘State Farm’s’ principles to invalidate agency rules where the agency failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or cherry-picked data to support a pre-ordained conclusion,” they wrote.
According to Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen’s testimony, “600 million years of CO2 and temperature data contradict the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming.”
They present CO2 and temperature data indicating much higher temperatures and levels of CO2 than are observed today, with little correlation between the two. They also argue that current CO2 levels are at a low point historically.
“The often highly emphasized 140 [parts per million] increase in CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Age is trivial compared to CO2 changes over the geological history of life on Earth,” they wrote.
The scientists’ testimony to the EPA also stated that the agency’s emissions rules fail to consider that CO2 and fossil fuels are essential to life on earth, particularly human life.
“Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create more food for people worldwide, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas,” they wrote. “Increases in carbon dioxide over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million to about 420 ppm, caused an approximate 20 percent increase in the food available to people worldwide, as well as increased greening of the planet and a benign warming in temperature.”
More CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plant growth and higher farming yields, they said. Synthetic fertilizers, which are derivatives of natural gas, are responsible for nearly half the world’s food production today. “Net zero” goals would reduce CO2 emissions by more than 40 gigatons per year, reducing the food supply proportionally, according to the scientists.
In addition to disregarding the benefits of CO2, they stated, the EPA’s emission rules and the global warming narrative that has been used to justify them are based on flawed data.
In addition to teaching physics at Princeton, Mr. Happer’s decades of work in physics have focused on atmospheric radiation and atmospheric turbulence, and his inventions have been used by astronomers and in national defense.
“Radiation in the atmosphere is my specialty,” Mr. Happer said, “and I know more about it than, I would guess, any climate scientists.”
His expertise “involves much of the same physics that’s involved in climate, and none of it is very alarming,” he said.
The global warming narrative argues that as people burn fossil fuels, they emit higher concentrations of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere, which creates a “greenhouse effect,” trapping the sun’s radiation and warming the earth.
But one aspect of CO2 emissions that global warming models fail to take into account, according to Mr. Happer, is a phenomenon called “saturation,” or the diminishing effect of CO2 in the atmosphere at higher concentrations.
“At the current concentrations of CO2, around 400 parts per million, it decreases the radiation to space by about 30 percent, compared to what you would have if you took it all away,” he said. “So that’s enough to cause quite a bit of warming of the earth, and thank God for that; it helps make the earth habitable, along with the effects of water vapor and clouds.
“But if you could double the amount of CO2 from 400 to 800, and that will take a long time, the amount that you decrease radiation to space is only 1 percent. Very few people realize how hard it is for additional carbon dioxide to make a difference to the radiation to space. That’s what’s called saturation, and it’s been well-known for a century.”
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Leftmedia Finally Questions Ethics of EVs
It’s taken long enough, but members of the Leftmedia finally have begun noticing that the promise of an electrically driven future may not quite live up to the morally superior moniker it has been given. In fact, a future where the vast majority of cars Americans drive are electric holds some considerable downsides, especially when it comes to human labor and negative environmental impacts.
Even The Washington Post has begun highlighting several of the genuinely problematic and morally reprehensible aspects of the “green revolution.” In a recent article titled “In scramble for EV metals, health threat to workers often goes unaddressed,” the Post notes the serious health dangers associated with the mining and production of manganese, one of the materials necessary for the production of EV batteries.
These mines and production facilities are located in places such as South Africa and Gabon, where worker protections and safeguards are often secondary as the demand for manganese rises. An increasing number of workers are suffering the negative health effects. The article highlights one former worker who asks: “How long is it going to take until people start realizing what is happening? Another 30 or 40 years? Must we wait until people start dying?”
Another Washington Post article, published this week, is titled “Despite reforms, mining for EV metals in Congo exacts steep cost on workers.” This time, the Post observes that mining cobalt from Congo, the world’s largest producer, comes via dire working conditions often endured by child laborers. Slave labor is also a significant contributing factor in the mining of cobalt.
While noting that “EVs are widely considered crucial to addressing climate change,” the article observes, “Without a full accounting, there is a risk that the green-energy transition could repeat the painful history of earlier industrial revolutions.” Ya think?
However, the reprehensible labor conditions for mining the minerals necessary for making EV batteries are just one of many problems with forcing this green revolution.
It’s painfully ironic that Kamala Harris is busy lying about Florida’s slavery curriculum while the Biden administration is seeking to force more Americans to buy into an industry that relies on slave labor.
While leftists largely ignore the exploitation of those laboring in the mines, Americans are increasingly bearing the economic brunt of Biden’s green revolution, which is being foisted upon the country via the regulatory state and will cost Americans billions of dollars. It’s everything from new CAFE standards that are heavily pushing the market toward EVs to a proposed change to the National Environmental Policy Act that would require all federal agencies to consider climate change for “environmental justice” when evaluating projects.
On top of all this is the fact that the country simply doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to handle a significant increase in EVs. There are not enough charging stations and not enough power being produced to provide for millions more new EVs.
Speaking of power, renewable energy sources cannot even promise to sustain the current power demands of the country, let alone a huge influx of EVs. Ask California.
Will the Leftmedia eventually get around to admitting this reality as well? Or is it too committed to the climate cult to be bothered?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99544 ?
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Brighton rock bottom: How the Greens nearly destroyed the city I love
Julie Burchill
When you’re short-sighted, everyone seems attractive; for this reason, I don’t often wear my glasses, as I think myopia has a felicitous effect on my attitude to life. However, after a whopping 28 years living in Brighton & Hove, it’s dawning on me that this has coloured my view of my adopted hometown too.
I love living in Brighton and wouldn’t dream of moving anywhere else. But I am privileged to do a thing I love for a living, when and where I want; for people who need to get around it on a daily basis, Brighton is an increasingly unpleasant place to be. A good deal of this is the fault of the Green council, the UK’s first ever; looking back on their recently ended rule, it feels like the city was overcome by an invading force who tried their best to destroy it, leaving residents looking around in dazed disbelief.
Oddly, considering the party’s name, the natural world appears to have been one of their main targets. The Greens had something of a slash-and-burn attitude to local flora. Hedges, bushes and even a bowling green, which had been standing for years, were eviscerated. Dutch elm disease ran riot: the council refused to properly treat all of the affected trees, some of which have now been chopped down.
Angry men on bicycles are the kings of our seaside urban jungle
Most perverse was the destruction of a large part of the oldest and longest ‘green wall’ (a vertically built structure intentionally covered by vegetation) in Europe in the spring of 2021, during nesting season for the hundreds of birds who inhabited it. Perhaps as it was established by the Victorians, it was probably a nasty colonialist nature reserve and deserved to die? One specimen of local flora which the Greens did like was weeds, which took over to the point of being a health hazard. Still, if you’ve righteously cracked down on herbicides, who cares if a few old ladies are hospitalised by nasty falls? The council even blamed Brexit for the weeds they had so lovingly nurtured.
In contrast to the disregard shown to the elderly, Brighton’s huge student population was endlessly pandered to by the council, who focussed on expanding student accommodation in the city practically to the exclusion of all other. Students often ride bikes; the justification for slashing the living wall was that it could allow a cycle lane to be built. This wasn’t a surprise: cyclists are the only beasts who have protected status here. Angry men on bicycles are the kings of our seaside urban jungle; it’s a cliche that fellows in flash cars are trying to compensate for inadequacies elsewhere, but a quarter of a century in Brighton has convinced me that this is equally true of grown men who ride huge bikes on pavements. It’s not like there aren’t any enough cycle lanes; in fact, there are so many that they regularly help bring our traffic to a standstill, causing extra congestion and pollution from cars.
Exorbitant parking fees imposed by the council are estimated to have cost us more than £1 million in day-tripper revenue over three years, but gridlock was nevertheless a regular occurrences. Some dunces suggested that this chaos was a sign that Brighton was a successful city. Another of the clowns, councillor Sarah Nield, had to apologise in 2020 for tweeting ‘laughed at queue of cars’ while observing how many freewheeling cyclists were around.
It was the stated aim of some Green councillors in 2020 that the city could be ‘car-free’ within three years. Luckily, the loonies were kicked out this May. The prospect of a crackdown on cars might have been appealing for the student population, but it would have effectively curtailed the movements of the old and the physically disabled. As is usual, it was one rule about transport-induced climate change for us and another for the planet-huggers, as we’ve seen with the globe-trotters of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, whose Instagram feeds often resemble recces for a re-make of Around The World In 80 Days. The leader of the city’s Green council had to apologise for a ‘major failure of judgement’ after being caught flying to a Cop conference in Glasgow on the same day he criticised the government for a ‘lack of action’ over climate change.
The old saucy Brighton was anathema to these pronoun-ed puritans
Apart from students, there were few people the Greens actually liked having here in Brighton. Those made to feel unwelcome included those who were born here (priced out), the working-class young (ditto), tourists (they planned to close public toilets) or those who preferred the naughty seaside-postcard town before Green Year Zero.
The old saucy Brighton was anathema to these pronoun-ed puritans who even attempted to ban the Christmas Day charity swim for ‘health and safety’ reasons. Why would you move to the louchest city in Britain and attempt to turn it into Gilead-on-Sea?
The list of Green idiocies and inefficiencies goes on forever, but thankfully I’ve got limited space. There was the infamous bin strike described so memorably by resident Lynne Truss:
‘The place turned into Armageddon…a tide of used teabags, eggshells, soiled kitchen paper, banana skins, smelly tin cans, and used sanitary towels advanced in such a determined and menacing manner down nice residential streets, you could almost hear it breathing.’
Somehow we managed to achieve one of the lowest recycling rates in England – 29 per cent whereas the national average is around 45 per cent. The pathetic and pointless British Airways i360 tower, opened in 2016, cost a fortune and is barely used. The decrepit West Pier once stood out; for the past decade it has fitted in perfectly as the city became a ghost of itself. When the Royal Albion Hotel burned down last month, it was found to be full of asbestos, making Brighton literally as well as figuratively toxic at the height of the tourist season.
Now the smoke has cleared and the future looks brighter. The Greens were sentimental sadists when they were in charge: sweet words smeared over actions of cruelty and callousness. A friend who moved to Stockholm told me: ‘The UK Greens seem to use ecology as an excuse to ruin people’s lives while the Swedes make the green thing about enhancing people’s lives.’ She’s right.
Brighton still shows up in national surveys as one of the best places to live; it’s a hopeful city, which has none of the feeling of ‘managed decline’ which other once-thriving cities have. My local heroine is the independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh, who never ceased drawing attention to the way the Greens were running the city into the ground. ‘Like many residents,’ she said, ‘I have high hopes for the new Labour administration – they have fresh ideas and aren’t tied to Labour of the past.’
Council leader, Bella Sankey, appears to be doing all she can to distance her party’s policies from those of the disgraced council; this feels very much like what will happen nationally at election time, when Keir Starmer will put clear water between himself and any Green policies in order to win back the Red Wall. Labour’s leader knows that yapping on about a better future is incompatible with delivering a net-zero one at great expense to an impoverished population.
The only fly in the ointment is the fact that the ghastly Eddie Izzard is planning to stand at the next election as a Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion – the seat of the country’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas. Talk about being caught between a frock and a hard place; hasn’t my beautiful, beleaguered, bashed-about city suffered enough? But, short-sighted though it may be, I still wouldn’t live anywhere else.
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Australia: millions of animals die in the fires of environmentalism
From the 1980s, green academics introduced the theory that people are bad for the environment. They embraced the Wilderness Myth and burning was restricted. In 2003, after hundreds of homes were burnt and people were killed in Canberra, the Nairn Inquiry identified the problem that we weren’t burning enough.
Green academics and fire chiefs boycotted that parliamentary inquiry. They gave us the 2004 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Inquiry which preached about ‘Learning to Live With Bushfires’. Now we have emergency response and evacuation instead of sustainable land and fire management. Over the years, hundreds of people and countless millions of animals have died as a consequence of mismanaged forests and the failure to keep up with controlled burn programs.
After Black Saturday 2009 and Black Summer 2019/20, emergency leaders and academics used the Climate Cop-Out to cover their derrieres. The bushfires Royal Commission turned into the Natural Disasters Royal Commission. The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action convinced our leaders that alleged warming had visited a holocaust upon us.
The only thing unprecedented about Black Summer was the filthy unmanaged scrub that fuelled the firestorms. During the Settlement Drought from 1790 to 1793, there were three consecutive extreme fire seasons in the area around Sydney. At one stage Parramatta had three straight days of searing northwesterly gales with mid to high 40s temperatures. Masses of flying foxes and lorikeets dropped dead on the ground in what is now Parramatta Park. Imagine what Flannery and Mullins would say if that happened today!
People were living in bark humpies, but there were no disasters, even though Aboriginal fires were burning 24/7 to the northwest. Firestorms couldn’t develop in the clean open landscape. After we made it a wilderness, a lightning strike in that same area ignited the world record Gospers Mountain fire of more than half a million hectares. Emergency Generalissimos with fire engines, heavy waterbombers, and computer models couldn’t save buildings clad with brick and steel.
This is not a climate crisis but a lack of common sense. Now green academics are trying to turn Aboriginal culture to their own ends. There’s nothing magic about cultural burning nor is it particular to any one race. Some of our elders, black, white, and brindle have the knowledge and experience to manage bushland. The academics advising governments don’t. Frequent mild burning is effectively illegal in New South Wales because the stupid rules and regulations are dictated by academics, not experienced practitioners.
You can’t burn too often. In mild weather, fire will only carry after continuous flammable fuel has accumulated. The trick is to burn it as soon as possible – when it is easy and safe. Even if people could control the climate, it wouldn’t change that simple fact. Equally important is managing the whole landscape, not just patches.
Uncontrollable firestorms explode from the wilderness because three-dimensionally continuous fuels accumulate in the absence of management. Hiring a waterbombing airforce costs zillions of dollars and makes no difference to wildfires in severe weather. It takes money away from land management, hurts taxpayers, and lines privileged pockets. But, I suppose it’s a small part of the Climate Scam.
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16 August, 2023
A ‘once every 7.5 million years’ event is currently unfolding in Antarctica: ‘To say unprecedented isn’t strong enough’
A pithy comment from meteorologist Anthony Watts about this claim: To say he is an "incompetent f****** alarmist hack" isn't strong enough. We only have actual data on the Antarctic sea ice extent back to 1979.. everything else is just a wild ass guess
In the past eight years, sea ice in Antarctica has reached a new record low four times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports. The first three times, ice levels that have dropped in the summer have rebounded in the winter.
But this year — during what is currently winter in Antarctica — scientists have confirmed that the ice is not re-forming, leaving long stretches of the Antarctic coastline bare.
What’s happening?
According to physical oceanographer Edward Doddridge, this is the first time an event like this has been observed, the ABC reports — and it’s extremely unlikely to have happened on its own.
“To say unprecedented isn’t strong enough,” Doddridge told the ABC. “This is a five-sigma event. … Which means that if nothing had changed, we’d expect to see a winter like this about once every 7.5 million years. … There are people saying it could be natural variability … but it’s very unlikely.”
According to Doddridge and others, the most likely cause is human activity. People create air pollution through activities like burning fuel, and that pollution traps heat on our planet, heating up the atmosphere and the ocean. Some combination of warmer water and higher-energy weather patterns is likely what’s melting the ice, scientists told the ABC.
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UK’s ‘broken’ energy system revealed as firms set to make £1.7bn in profit from customers
Britain’s energy suppliers are set to rake in a massive £1.74bn in profits from hard-pressed customers’ bills over the next 12 months, according to a shock new report.
It comes as a separate study found that regulator Ofgem’s energy price cap is preventing customers from accessing lower tariffs, harming competition and boosting inflation.
Rishi Sunak’s government has indicated it is unlikely to step in again to protect Britons still struggling with their energy bills – dismissing the idea of another subsidised price guarantee.
However, despite the ongoing cost of living crisis, UK energy companies will be allowed to increase the amount they make from customers on variable-rate tariffs.
Suppliers have seen the annual profit they make from the average customer on a variable tariff rise from £27 in 2017 to £130 in early 2023, according to Warm This Winter – a coalition of anti-poverty and green groups.
The gas and electricity giants will make £1.74bn profit from variable customers alone in the year ahead, according to the report, produced in partnership with the Future Energy Associates (FEA) analysts.
Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty campaign, said the report “shines a light on the murky depths of Britain’s broken energy system”.
Calling for the Sunak government to introduce a “social tariff” to guarantee an affordable rate for low-income families, Mr Francis added: “Without a fundamental overhaul of the energy grid and energy tariffs, households will continue to lose out while suppliers will profit.”
The figure does not include fixed-rate tariffs – or profits made through allowances for Covid debt and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which helped contribute to the enormous profits announced by British Gas and Scottish Power last month.
Ofgem recently raised how much gas and electricity suppliers could claim from hard-hit households to make up for costs incurred from both the pandemic and Ukraine war.
Since October 2022, energy firms have added an average of £41 a year to each bill as a “wholesale cost adjustment” to cover the extra costs of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
And since April this year they also added an average of £12 a year in “Covid true up allowance” to cover the costs of bad debt which mounted up during the pandemic.
Last month British Gas announced record profits of £970m for the first six months of 2023, while Scottish Power made £576m in profit during the same period.
Labour condemned the “windfalls of war being pocketed by oil and gas companies”, while the Liberal Democrats said energy companies were being allowed to “rake in extraordinary profits while millions of families struggle”.
Suppliers are also set to make an increasing amount of profit from so-called EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) and headroom allowances in the energy price cap set by Ofgem.
While household energy bills are set to rise again before falling back only slightly next year, the regulator said it will allow the permitted profit margin further to rise from 1.9 per cent of EBIT to 2.4 per cent from later in 2023.
Tessa Khan, director of the anti-fossil fuel group Uplift, part of the Warm This Winter campaign, said: “The government seems to think the energy crisis has gone away, but for millions of households this winter will be as hard as the last.”
She added: “For energy companies to be pocketing this money, when bills are still twice what they were and so many people are being pushed into energy debt, is completely unacceptable.”
Energy secretary Grant Shapps has indicated that the government is unlikely to revive the energy price guarantee, which kept the average bill at £2,500 a year over the winter, after it ended in June.
It comes as a new report from centre-right think tank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) said the energy cap has gone “far beyond” its original purpose of providing protection for customers to become a “de facto regulated market price”.
The report urges the government to move “from a wartime to a peacetime regulatory regime” by abolishing the regulator’s cap and returning to a retail market “with competition at its heart”.
It also backed calls for stronger protections against fuel poverty – such as a social tariff for households spending an excessive proportion of their income on energy bills.
“Utility firms are being actively discouraged from offering new, more affordable deals to customers because of state interventions in the energy market. Competition has all but disappeared, meaning prices are being kept high, further contributing to measured inflation,” said CPS energy and environment researcher Dillon Smith.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-bills-profits-british-gas-b2388968.html
**************************************************Plastic-eating fungi could help take a bite out of Earth's rampant pollution crisis, study suggests
In the forest, certain fungi attach to trees and fallen logs to break down and digest the carbon within their wood before releasing it as carbon dioxide. But when their preferred meal isn't available, these wood-decaying fungi can chow down on plastic instead, according to a new study published July 26 in the journal PLOS One.
White-rot fungi can break down lignin — an extremely strong organic polymer that helps give wood its rigidity — by using enzymes, which are proteins that accelerate the chemical reactions that take place within cells.
"We were thinking, if these fungi can decay these decay-resistant hardwoods, and lignin particularly … they have some weapons with them to decay some other polymers as well," such as polyethylene, or plastic, study co-author Renuka Attanayake, a plant pathology professor at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, told Live Science.
For their study, the researchers isolated 50 fungal samples from decaying hardwoods found in the Dimbulagala dry zone forest reserve in central Sri Lanka. Then, they divided the samples into two main experimental conditions: a dish with low-density polyethylene (a type of plastic), and a dish with both the plastic and wood. After 45 days, it was clear that the fungi consistently preferred wood to plastic, but in both experimental setups, particularly the dish with just plastic, the fungi broke down the polyethylene.
"We think that these organisms are metabolically flexible, I would say, and this may be an evolutionary advantage," Attanayake said. "[The fungi] had to survive in the environment utilizing whatever available."
Though the scientists don't yet know how the chemical pathways in the fungi change when they eat polyethylene, they do know that the white rot used some oxidizing enzymes to break down both the wood and the plastic.
To date, more than 430 species of fungi and bacteria have been found to break down plastic, according to Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in London. Scientists believe that identifying and replicating the enzymes these microorganisms secrete to degrade plastic could eventually help remove some of the 400 million tons of plastic waste produced each year, which often sits in landfills or overflows into the ocean rather than being recycled.
This new study is a "tiny baby step" toward understanding how fungi could help tackle plastic pollution, Attanayake said. First, though, scientists must see how wood-decaying fungi fare in different conditions, such as landfills, and whether they pose a threat to native trees. However, "under restricted conditions we may be able to utilize this thing one day, but a lot more research has to be done before that," she added.
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Environment can’t afford cost to save the planet
JUDITH SLOAN
It is slowly dawning on more people that destroying the environment to save the environment doesn’t really make any sense. The people living in rural and regional Australia have known this for some time, but more city folk are waking up to the fact that the process of decarbonisation imposes some hefty costs that are not evenly distributed.
Absent any zealous devotion to net zero by 2050, and recognising that the world’s top emitters are not on board – think here particularly China, but there are others – it’s hard to warm to the vision of Alan Finkel, former chief scientist. “Think forests of wind farms carpeting hills and cliffs from sea to sky. Think endless arrays of solar panels disappearing like a mirage into the desert. What we have now has to be scaled up by a factor of 20.”
While we might forgive him for his flowery prose – he is a scientist, after all – the harsh reality is that many of us are not keen to see our landscapes plundered and ruined by the intrusion of monstrous turbines measuring up to 250 metres in height (nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty) and fields of unattractive solar panels generating unwanted ambient heat for the surrounding district.
Would the residents of the seats of Kooyong, Warringah or Wentworth be happy to have their parks, empty land and adjoining water ways – perhaps some big backyards? – handed over to mainly overseas-owned renewable energy developers to construct intrusive and sometimes noisy installations in the quest of decarbonisation?
We all know the answer to that question. But the members for these seats (and others) are more than happy to impose the external costs on their country cousins and create unfortunate divisions within previously harmonious rural communities.
It is worth going through some facts here because facts are often missing in the emotional debate about saving the planet. The first thing to note is the large amount of land needed to accommodate renewable energy relative to high-energy-density fossil fuels and nuclear energy. For every megawatt hour produced, wind needs seven times more land than coal-fired plants and 10 times more than gas-fired plants, for example.
The second is the low-capacity efficiency of both wind and solar. The average output of wind installations is just over one-third of the nameplate capacities; it’s one-quarter for solar. This is an important point because the proponents of new renewable energy projects often quote the nameplate capacities and then spuriously claim they will power a given number of thousands of homes while ignoring the necessary and costly in-fill and back-up sources of electricity generation.
Another important point is the life cycles of renewable energy installations and how these compare with coal/gas plants and nuclear. The lifespan of onshore turbines ranges from 15 to 25 years; it’s shorter for offshore ones. Solar panels don’t generally last more than 20 years and their efficiency falls every year. There is virtually no scope to recycle either turbines or solar panels, which raises the tricky issue of their ultimate disposal. Coal, gas and nuclear plants can last five decades or longer.
One feature of the renewable energy landscape Finkel missed in his florid description is the kilometre upon kilometre of new transmission lines required to hook up wind and solar installations to the grid. Think here huge steel pylons up to 100 metres in height requiring easements of up to 50 metres on each side.
The point here is that no one would regard these unsightly new transmission lines weaving their way through agricultural land, national parks and regional communities as enhancing the environment. They may also constitute an extra fire risk. For those affected, it is a perfectly rational response to oppose their construction, to seek alternative paths or to advocate for underground transmission.
We know the good burghers of Kooyong, Warringah and Wentworth would do so. Attempting to bribe those affected with substantial annual annuities – they are currently more than $200,000 per kilometre – runs the risk of dividing communities as those who miss out on any compensation can still be adversely impacted.
The potential environmental damage caused by renewable energy projects has been highlighted by number of recent cases. A proposed wind farm north of Point Fairy in western Victoria has been approved subject to strict restrictions, including reducing the number of turbines from 59 to 18. This is because of the sensitive nature of the land for nesting brolgas and bent-wing bats. Construction will also be banned from July through to November. In all likelihood, this project will now not proceed.
A wind project on Robbins Island off the northwest coast of Tasmania has been approved to operate for only seven months of the year because of the threat to the orange-bellied parrots that live on the island. Again, this project is unlikely to go ahead.
Much controversy surrounds the Chalumbin wind farm development in far north Queensland where large tracts of land – up to 1200 hectares – will be cleared adjacent to a World Heritage-listed rainforest, west of Cairns. An earlier small-scale wind farm has resulted in a number of disused turbines simply rusting on the land. It’s hard to square this development with genuine concern for the environment, particularly as there are serious doubts about the windiness of the area.
Just in case you think offshore turbines are the solution to this dilemma, the reality is very different. Turbines as far out as 10 to 15 kilometres from the coast can still be seen from land. Again, the rational response from those who live nearby, including retired sea-changers, is to oppose these developments. Moreover, there is mounting evidence these turbines, which require enormous amounts of concrete to fix them in place, can interfere with marine life, including migrating whales.
The opposition to offshore wind farms may prove to be irrelevant as the economics of these projects massively deteriorate. The large Swedish renewable energy firm, Vattenfall, has recently stopped two major projects – one in the UK – citing higher inflation and capital costs. The huge losses incurred by the wind division of Siemen Energy are also noteworthy. The only way offshore projects will proceed in Australia is if the operators are given even more subsidies than are currently on the table, which will translate into even higher consumer prices.
It is now crunch time for Energy Minister Chris Bowen and a number of state governments. It’s clear the dream of more renewable energy, lower emissions and lower electricity prices is unattainable, if it ever was. The ditching of the Marinus Link between Tasmania and Victoria has finally put paid to the vision of the Apple Isle being the battery of the nation; indeed, it is now running short of power itself.
Plan B can’t come quickly enough, including the nuclear option – think of the environment.
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15 August, 2023
How That ‘Scientific Consensus’ on Climate Change Was ‘Manufactured’
John Stossel
We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.”
“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”
She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.
The media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.
“We found that the percent of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realized, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!”
“So, this hysteria is your fault!” I tell her.
“Not really,” she smiles. “They would have picked up on it anyways.”
But Curry’s “more intense” hurricanes gave them fuel.
“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists, and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”
But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research—years with low levels of hurricanes.
“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry. She realized that the critics were right. “Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.“
Curry was the unusual researcher who looked at criticism of her work and actually concluded: “They had a point.”
Then the Climategate scandal taught her that other climate researchers weren’t so open-minded. Alarmist scientists’ aggressive attempts to hide data suggesting climate change is not a crisis were revealed in leaked emails.
“Ugly things,” says Curry. “Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests. Trying to get journal editors fired.”
It made Curry realize that there is a “climate change industry” set up to reward alarmism.
“The origins go back to the … U.N. environmental program,” says Curry, adding:
Some U.N. officials were motivated by anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along.
The United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Says Curry:
The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.
Then, the national funding agencies directed all the funding … assuming there are dangerous impacts.
The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about man-made climate change.
This is how “manufactured consensus” happens. Even if a skeptic did get funding, it’s harder to publish because journal editors are alarmists.
“The editor of the journal Science wrote this political rant,” says Curry. She even said, “The time for debate has ended.”
“What kind of message does that give?” adds Curry. Then she answers her own question:
Promote the alarming papers! Don’t even send the other ones out for review. If you wanted to advance in your career, like be at a prestigious university and get a big salary, have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding, be director of an institute, there was clearly one path to go.
That’s what we’ve got now—a massive government-funded climate alarmism complex.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/09/fake-climate-change-consensus
************************************************Europe’s summer of climate hysteria
If the British weather were a person with bank accounts, it would by now likely find itself, like Nigel Farage, ‘de-banked’ for political incorrectness.
While the BBC has gone into hysterics over the hot summer in southern Europe, further north the British weather has stubbornly refused to co-operate with the Green warming narrative. Temperatures for much of the summer have barely reached those of a winter’s day in Canberra. Much of the British media has tied itself in knots trying to explain why, if the world just had its hottest July ever, and is, in the words of UN Secretary-General Gutteres, ‘boiling’, everyone in Britain is wearing jumpers and has the heating on.
As the media have pulled out all the stops to stir climate fear, Australians will recognise echoes of the ABC’s coverage of the 2019-20 bushfires – especially the silence about revelations that Europe’s recent ‘wildfires’ were fuelled by Green-tinged failures to backburn and were started in many cases by arsonists.
Sadly a watershed moment has been reached: you can no longer trust Europe’s weather forecasts and readings. Many of the BBC’s forecasts in mid-July for southern Europe proved wildly exaggerated. For example, on 18 July, it reported Sardinia was expected that day to see a high of 46 degrees and that ‘there are warnings that extreme heat could continue for a further 10 days’. In fact, Sardinia peaked at 40 and temperatures then fell steadily to the low-30s over the following week.
Much of the hyperbole appears to have been based on a swifty pulled by the European Space Agency (ESA), on which many media outlets rely for weather forecasts. On 13 July it issued a press release claiming that the ‘air temperature’ of Sardinia and Sicily was ‘expected’ to climb to 48 degrees, ‘potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe’. In Sicily in fact it never went above 35 degrees. Unusually, the 13 July ESA press release, updated five days later, claimed that land temperatures in the 40s and 50s had been recorded across southern Europe in the previous days. The standard measurement of temperature is that of the air, made two metres above the ground. Land temperatures will of course always be many degrees higher, as anyone who has walked barefoot on a concrete footpath in summertime Australia will know. The ESA’s 48 degree forecast of the ‘air’ temperature in southern Italy was obviously an error – in reality it was the forecast land temperature. The forecast was never corrected, went unnoticed by most in the media and was repeated around the world.
Yet despite the unrelenting propaganda, European voters continue to defy the climate lobby’s plan to make them colder and poorer. Voters over the past year have given the Green-left a bloody nose at virtually every opportunity – in national and regional elections in Italy, Sweden, Finland, Greece and Germany. The Netherlands might join that list after elections later this year – the Farmer-Citizen Movement recently came out of nowhere against the government’s Green jihad on farming and is on course to influence policy as the country’s equal-largest party. Meanwhile in Spain, the elections in July saw a major swing to the right against the ultra-eco Socialists, even if it wasn’t enough this time to unseat them.
By contrast Britain’s left defeated the Tories at two of last month’s three by-elections – largely because grumpy Conservative voters failed to turn out. But the result which has had the most political impact is the Tories’ surprise retention of Boris Johnson’s former seat in outer London, Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Fought more or less solely on London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan’s planned expansion of the city’s ‘Ultra Low-emission Zone’ (ULEZ) – which would mean owners of older cars would be hit with green levies – it has allowed the Tories to glimpse a possible path to victory at next year’s general election.
While ULEZ is not directly related to the net-zero agenda, it has only now dawned on the Tories that while the vast majority of Britons want a cleaner environment, they oppose Green measures involving cost and/or inconvenience. A recent YouGov poll found that while net zero in principle attracted 70 per cent support, if net zero entailed ‘costs for ordinary people’, support fell to just over a quarter.
Since Uxbridge, Prime Minister Sunak has suddenly started portraying himself as ‘pro-motorist’, now opposing ULEZ-like schemes across the country and the proliferation of 20mph speed limits. He’s also suddenly approving new North Sea oil and gas development projects, while attacking Labour as eco-fanatics in bed with extremists like Just Stop Oil.
Over 40 Tory MPs and peers have told Sunak they want him to go further and to defer Boris Johnson’s ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 – a planned measure opposed by 83 per cent of Tory members, according to an opinion poll. Sunak and other members of the Tory establishment for the moment flatly reject this.
Yet panic if the opinion polls don’t shift could lead the Conservatives to shift more dramatically on their net-zero policies. The obvious options are to delay the looming bans on non-electric cars and gas boilers. An even bolder move would be to announce a referendum on net zero, as championed by Nigel Farage and the Daily Telegraph. That would provoke meltdown by much of the British establishment but isn’t inconceivable.
Tony Blair has implied that Labour should also shift on net zero, warning against asking the British public to do a ‘huge amount’ to tackle climate change – ‘Frankly whatever we do in Britain is not really going to impact climate change,’ he declared.
While some on Labour’s right and in the unions would probably support Blair, the party is probably too deeply in bed with the Green metropolitan left to match pragmatic shifts by the Tories.
So however little the Tories relax their net-zero policies, they still should be able to portray Labour as, by comparison, scarier eco-fanatics. Despite their multiple failures in so many areas, especially their inability to get a grip on immigration, the issue might mean the Conservatives are still in with a faint chance at the next election.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/europes-summer-of-climate-hysteria/
**************************************************Just one look
Ian Plimer
The Minister for Climate Change and Energy is well out of his depth, yet he’s ankle-deep at the shallow end of the pool. His climate policies are destroying an economy underpinned by energy and are based on an unbalanced green ideology underpinned by hysterical apocalyptic lies and not science, environmentalism, economics, common sense, or the interests of the nation.
A cheap, reliable electricity system has been replaced with an unreliable horrendously expensive system that profits foreign wind and solar companies and sounds good if one has no knowledge and asks no questions. Knowledge, experience, curiosity, and scepticism are the only way of picking the bones out of the modern information age carnage.
The Minister must have been told that no one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming and that ice cores show that the atmospheric carbon dioxide increased after global warming and hence could not drive warming.
Time with real people would have led the Minister to conclude that we are living in times of mass delusion, universal political and bureaucratic deceit, and censorship. For example, a ‘fact check’ on August 1, 2023 by Facebook declared that my latest book which was being printed at that time was fraud. Either the fact checker was psychic or someone was telling porky pies.
Maybe if the Minister read rigorous science at university rather than the dismal science, he might have absorbed some basics. The past can be understood using sedimentary rocks, fossils, and mineralogy. These give a window into past and present surface processes.
Undergraduate geology shows that all past climate changes have been driven by the position of the continents, the Earth’s orbit, and the energy released by the Sun. The planet’s climate was boiling until oceans formed some 4,000 million years ago. In the past, carbon dioxide has not driven climate change, as shown by the diagram (after Berner). Why should it now?
Over the last 542 million years, despite five major mass extinctions and more than 20 minor mass extinctions of multicellular life, the number of species on Earth has increased. The number of species is still increasing despite frequent extinctions.
Species turnover by extinction is normal whereas conservation of species is not. We humans will join the 99.9 per cent of the other multicellular organisms that have become extinct. The best solution is to mutate now and avoid the rush. Extinction Rebellion will be out of a job, which is not possible as they are unemployable.
The planet has been cooling for the last 50 million years. We have been in an ice age for 34 million years which will end when the continent of Antarctica fragments into micro-continents or moves from the pole. Don’t wait up.
There have been 4 major ice ages over the last 500 million years. Before that, the atmosphere contained 20 per cent carbon dioxide and, during three major ice age events, there were kilometre-thick ice sheets at the equator at sea level. The current and previous ice ages were all initiated when there was far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at present. Carbon dioxide did not drive past global warmings. Why should it now?
Since the appearance of multicellular animals and plants 542 and 470 million years ago respectively, there has been a drawdown and sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide into limey rocks, shells, reefs, organic-rich sediments, oil, gas, and coal.
Over the last 500 million years, the atmosphere has decreased from 0.7 per cent carbon dioxide to 0.04 per cent carbon dioxide. During this decrease, plants tried to adapt and C4 plants such as maize and sugar cane evolved to live in an atmosphere with a lower carbon dioxide content.
If the atmospheric carbon dioxide content halves again during one of the future inevitable orbitally-driven glaciations, there would not be enough carbon dioxide in the air to keep plants alive. Do vegans know this? With no plants, there will be no animals and this future extinction will be greater than the largest mass extinction of multicellular life 251.2 million years ago when 96 per cent of all species became extinct.
Will we see the appearance of yet unknown C5 and C6 plants or the evolution of the Earth’s fourth atmosphere comprising inert nitrogen and argon with little or no carbon dioxide and oxygen? Who knows? The ultimate survivors, bacteria, will live on.
When the major coal deposits formed 300 million years ago, there was a huge decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and, by burning coal, we put carbon dioxide back to where it came from to be recycled again as plant food. This is environmentally responsible.
Another way to put carbon dioxide back into the air is to drink a fermented fluid. I urge Spectator Australia readers to take this plant-assisting environmentally responsible action as many times as possible. Extinction could be just around the corner and there’s no point in shuffling off with a full cellar or drinking heated wine that has suffered climate boiling.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/just-one-look
****************************************************The lithium delusion: a big problem with big batteries
The development of lithium-ion batteries has changed the concept of energy storage. As their use expands, a potential downside is becoming more apparent, with resulting fires proving difficult to control and human lives being put at risk. House fires, car fires, and ship fires emphasise the scale of the problem.
A recent fire on the Japanese cargo ship Fremantle Highway demonstrated the potential threat. The ship, which was carrying 3,793 cars of which 398 are EVs, burst into flames on July 26. One crew member died and 20 of 22 required hospitalisation. The fire, although its source is yet to be confirmed, is suspected to have come from lithium-ion batteries. It burned for 5 days, but fortunately the damage did not extend below the waterline. The stricken vessel has been safely towed to port. Fighting these fires on land is difficult enough, but in the confines of a ship, is hazardous in the extreme.
This is not an isolated example. There were 209 ship fires in 2022, an increase of 17 per cent in 2021, 13 were car carriers although not all had electric vehicles onboard. An estimated 8 ships have sunk recently with battery fires suspected of playing a role, including the Felicity Ace, with 4,000 cars on board, that sank in 2022. These events compare with around 50 ships sinking each year of varied causes. Insurance premiums are rising and specific measures for EV fires being mandated.
We think of batteries as solar or wind renewable energy storage, but these batteries are now incorporated in a range of devices, including mobile phones, computers, power tools, garden tools, domestic appliances, even torches. In 2021, a torch battery fire was suspected of leading to the loss of a house in Australia. The push for electric vehicles means their number is increasing, with hybrids having a similar risk to full electric vehicles. And it is not only cars. There has been a number of E-scooters and electric skateboards, many cheap with unknown quality controls during manufacturing, sparking fires. The reality is that charging equipment should not be left unattended, although that is a demand unlikely to be fulfilled.
The ACCC is currently investigating product standards, with some imported brands recognised as having an increased risk of overheating and catching fire. A survey of 5,000 homes revealed 2,900 contain potentially risky battery brands and other problems with their overcharging. A further 10,000 batteries were found in need of replacement by the manufacturers, many of which were being used for solar storage. The question of their disposal is also uncertain, with landfill fires a risk. Fires have even been reported in the garbage trucks taking them to the tip, and there are concerns we could see special storage facilities catch alight.
Many Australian stores, such as Aldi, Bunnings, OfficeWorks, and Woolworths have collection points for old batteries, but the potential risk is unappreciated. 99 per cent of lead-acid batteries are recycled, the figure for lithium-ion batteries is roughly 10 per cent, with lithium waste growing by 20 per cent each year. This accumulation is expected to reach 136,000 tonnes in Australia alone, with what risk coming from these storage facilities?
In America, where the standard is being set, figures from New York show the number of battery-related injuries from popular e-bikes is increasing, 13 in 2019, rising to 79 in 2021, and already 114 in 2023. There have also this year been 74 injuries and 13 deaths. In Vancouver, a similar tale is emerging, with battery fires increasing 5-fold since 2016.
Australian figures are also on the rise, with lithium-ion batteries being responsible, in 2022, for 180 fires in NSW, 120 in Victoria, 72 in Queensland, and 59 in WA, countrywide over 450 fires in 18 months. The scale of the risk is increasing dramatically, compounded by 75,000 E-scooters sold in 2022, some of dubious quality, with battery contaminants increasing the threat.
The fire risk occurs primarily, but not only, when batteries are recharging. Other risk factors include storage in hot or wet environments – a hot summer or submersion by flood is sufficient – or physical damage, leading to leakage of the pressurised flammable electrolyte. They are also sensitive to salt in the air during sea voyages. The usual predisposition is overcharging, particularly when using so-called fast chargers, with heat leading to thermal runaway and temperatures up to 500C.
Water is much less effective in controlling these blazes, as much as ten times more, around 150,000 litres, is needed to suppress the flames from a car battery, cool the battery, and prevent the spread to adjacent cells and explosion. Having put out the fire, spontaneous re-ignition has occurred, up to 22 hours later. High performance EV cars can keep catching on fire a week after a crash. As explosions from these types of fire throw burning fragments over 10 metres, it is necessary to store the doused battery at least 20 metres away from other flammable materials.
A new, expensive fire extinguisher, which also works on standard fires, is more effective. The F500 model contains an ‘encapsulating agent’ which interrupts the ‘free radical chain reaction’ – it works! For vehicle fires, a Swedish company suggests an ultra-high pressure water lance, penetrating the battery shell, this may prove an effective alternative.
There have also been problems with giant storage batteries being collected from solar and wind farms. Whilst building the Victorian big battery in 2021, coolant leaked out, and the resulting fire destroyed 2 of the 212 energy storage units. There have been fires at AES facilities in Arizona, the first was in 2019 and the second in 2022, lasted for ten days. A few days ago, a fire at a lithium-ion, solar farm storage facility in New York took 4 days to bring under control. With the highest per capita level of battery storage, and 33 large batteries, Australia is technologically well advanced but, as these facilities become the major back-up for electricity grid stabilisation, the fire risk assumes greater importance.
Unsurprisingly, fires are also occurring at lithium battery factories and storage warehouses. In January this year, an explosion took place at a French lithium battery warehouse, containing 8,000 batteries, in Rouen. In Gothenburg, Sweden, a fire in a container containing 9,000 kg of standard lithium batteries took several days to control. In Jacksonville, USA, in May, a fire started by a 9,000 kg mega-battery took several days to extinguish, consuming the factory it powered.
One solution being explored is a lithium/iron/phosphate battery. LFP batteries are less energy dense than lithium-ion, but appear more stable and safer to charge, with less risk of thermal runaway, and fire. They last longer but unfortunately, as they do not contain valuable cobalt, they are even less likely to be recycled.
As was the case with the big battery fire in Victoria, the media’s almost total disregarding of what is an increasing threat to life and property seems to have but one explanation – in the climate ‘crisis’ electric cars are good, battery storage of solar and wind is good; any problem remains unreported. The consequences of increased mining and manufacture exacerbating CO2 emissions, and the lack of recyclability, do not fit the climate agenda and are ignored. We can but hope that the ACCC review shines a spotlight on what is a ticking time bomb, with echoes of the hundreds of fires of the belatedly cancelled Pink Batts fiasco.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-lithium-delusion-a-big-problem-with-big-batteries
********************************************************Why do climate zealots hate debate?
A man goes to the GP for his test results. “Bad news, I’m afraid,” says the doctor, looking at his watch. “You’ve only got three minutes to live.”
“Three minutes?” the man cries. “Surely there’s something you can do for me?”
“Well I could boil you an egg,” says the doc.
I was put in mind of this delightful old joke last month by the lugubrious face of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (an honorary doctor nine times over) as he introduced the latest increment of climate concern, announcing, with deadpan comic timing, that we have now entered “the era of global boiling”.
It wasn’t immediately apparent what precisely will be boiling if the Earth’s temperature increases by one or two degrees over the next century (the thermal equivalent, by my unscientific calculation, of moving from Sydney to Port Macquarie). The oceans? The planet itself? Molten rock as it flows out of a volcano looks inhospitable enough, but boiling? Ouch, that’s seriously warm. Are you proud of yourself, Antonio? The sight of a grown man spouting such drivel in an attempt to frighten the simpletons among us is as ludicrous as it is contemptible.
The irritating thing is that by pointing out that nonsense, countenancing even the slightest deviation from the alleged consensus, you are damned by the zealots. God forbid you should suggest, with Bjorn Lomborg, that it might be smarter – and cheaper – to adapt to whatever climatic perturbations might inconvenience us (as Alfred Wainwright, who wrote the definitive walking guides to England’s Lake District, used to say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”). Fail to applaud and indulge the grandiose ambition to change the world’s climate and no matter how much you treasure and respect nature, you’re treated as though you’re announcing a plan to pack the throats of loggerhead turtles with plastic bags.
What happened to civilised debate, the tacit agreement that it’s possible for decent, thoughtful people to hold a different view from yours that isn’t motivated by malice? We see the same attitude towards those who question the wisdom of establishing a permanent Constitutional voice as the most effective mechanism to address Indigenous disadvantage. Much easier to dismiss them as racists than engage with their arguments.
Meanwhile, follow the money back to the cynical beneficiaries – ni hao, Xi Jinping! – of our misplaced pieties. In Scotland, it was revealed this month, 16 million trees – you know, the tall, pretty things that soak up the carbon dioxide Antonio is worried about – have been cut down to make way for Chinese-built wind farms. Saving the planet; just not the wooden bits. Or here, where we scythe vast corridors through native bush and across lovingly tended farmland to accommodate transmission lines for “renewable” energy projects. (These are designed to spare us from using the coal and iron ore we’ve just dug up and sent thousands of kilometres so an environmentally irresponsible communist state can turn them into wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars, and sell them back to us at an inflated price; who could fault that logic?)
Sorry Antonio, but it pains me to say I find it increasingly difficult to summon up any respect for politicians and their lemming-like schemes these days. Perhaps it’s a function of a lifetime in this job. One of the downsides of the otherwise amusing trade of journalism is that it can, if your attention slips for a moment, put you in unpleasant proximity to our political class, who, with a few rare exceptions, are deeply unimpressive people, unremarkable for anything beyond their family-size vanity and unwarranted self-belief.
Or maybe this disenchantment is a broader, unadvertised side-effect of growing old, a creeping disappointment as you watch charlatans and liars stuff themselves for decades at the trough of public office, then anoint equally talentless sycophants to replace them on the never-ending carousel of lucrative uselessness.
As for Antonio’s brooding message of doom, it will come true one day, but not just yet. Astrophysicists predict the Earth will be a cinder block, its atmosphere boiled away by a red-giant Sun, in four billion years or so; but even though I’m determined to moderate my drinking, I’m not confident I’ll still be around to see it.
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7 August, 2023
A bit of NYT foot shooting
They claim that global warming is making vacations more difficult and then admit that vacationing is in fact at a record high
Is This the End of the Summer Vacation as We Know It?
This year, everything from scorching heat to fires, floods, tornadoes and hail storms driven by climate change have disrupted the plans of travelers around the world. A summer getaway remains a powerful desire, but it’s at a tipping point.
Record temperatures off the Florida coast have made the ocean feel like bath water in recent weeks.Credit...Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via Shutterstock
You can’t escape the orange. That’s what travelers this summer have been reckoning with — swaths of tangerine, traffic cone and burnt sienna on maps indicating record high temperatures around the globe. Four concurrent heat domes from the southern United States to East Asia descended on millions — Phoenix residents enduring 31 days of 110-degree-plus temperatures. Italians in more than a dozen cities under extreme weather warnings. And in South Korea, at least 125 people were hospitalized for heat-related conditions at the World Scout Jamboree.
In Florida, it got so bad in June that Jacki Barber, 50, a clinical social worker and eighth-generation Floridian, canceled a beach trip to St. Augustine. “The water temperature was like 89 degrees,” Ms. Barber said.
“We’re used to hurricanes ruining plans, tropical storms, even just bad thunderstorms,” she said. “But I don’t recall ever looking at anyone and saying ‘It’s too hot to go to the beach.’”
As the summer travel engine kicked into high gear this year, it wasn’t just the scorching heat affecting carefully laid plans. There were also fires, floods, tornadoes and hail storms. Eight inches of rainfall left parts of Vermont coping with catastrophic floods. Tens of thousands of people, including thousands of tourists, had to evacuate islands in Greece because of wildfires. (Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday offered a free weeklong stay in 2024 to those travelers affected — in spring or fall.) The popular music festival Awakenings canceled a date in the Netherlands because of concern over hail, lightning and thunderstorms.
Increasingly dangerous weather now hits classic summer destinations, with conditions growing more erratic, expensive and deadly. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States has experienced four climate disasters since May, each causing over a billion dollars in damages. The National Park Service estimates that more visitors have died of heat-related causes since June than do in an average year. The indirect toll is almost certainly higher: A recent study found that summer heat waves killed 61,000 people in Europe last year.
Summer trips have long been treasured. Sure, airport lines are longer and hotel rooms go quicker, but school’s out, the sun’s out and beaches beckon. Summer travel cuts across social class; whether you go to a state fair or Sardinia, you cash in precious vacation days. You suntan, you eat more indulgently and reach for your wallet with less angst. Travel helps you hide from reality, or at least pause it for a bit.
But even if the idea of a summer getaway remains culturally resilient, is it still practical? Where to go is certainly less obvious — you can’t hide from reality when reality is 100-degree seawater, or a raging wildfire.
For decades, science has confirmed that unabated climate change will cause more misery, more hardship and cost millions of lives in the years to come. We’re getting a taste of the results this summer. Our relationship to travel has reached a tipping point. What happens when we can’t just vacation through it?
Strong demand, migrating patterns
Despite all the crises, global arrivals — the total number of tourists who cross a border — are projected to be up 30 percent from last year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research division of the media company. The World Tourism Organization reports that travel to Europe is now at 90 percent of prepandemic levels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/travel/summer-travel-climate-change.html
************************************************Are the Greens more interested in trans rights than saving the planet?
July 2023 could soon be declared as the hottest month on record. Few doubt that climate change is real and that it is in our interest to do something about it. So, of all the parties competing for votes next year, you might imagine that the Green party of England and Wales would be single-minded in the goal of championing planet-saving research and promoting ways in which we can all do our bit. This is a golden chance for the party to welcome anyone who shares those objectives.
Alas not. The Greens have swallowed transgender ideology, and purged dissenters with enthusiasm. Deputy leader Zack Polanski has suggested that anyone who takes a contrary view to the party’s policies on trans rights – specifically those members who claim that trans women are men and trans men are women – should not have a place in the Greens. He is unequivocal:
‘I’m really clear that if you want to misgender someone then that is transphobic, and transphobia is not welcome in the Green party.’
No one, it seems, is safe in the Green party if they don’t toe the line on gender. Emma Bateman, the ex co-chair of the party’s women’s committee, is one of those who have fallen foul of the Green party’s trans police. According to Bateman, her decision to question whether trans women are female has landed her in hot water – and led to her ultimately being given the boot.
No one is safe in the Green party if they don’t toe the line on gender
Bateman told The Spectator that, after being suspended several times, the party expelled her in January 2023. She has appealed a second time, but she is realistic in her expectations. She told me:
‘I expect that if my appeal succeeds, and I am un-expelled … there will be other complaints in the queue that will be swiftly be acted upon.’
Few would criticise Bateman for walking away, but she is a campaigner with principles. Today she has put her name to the newly-launched, Green Declaration for Women’s Sex Based Rights. She is not alone in sticking her head above the parapet, risking the wrath of Polanski and his acolytes.
Alison Teal, former Green Sheffield councillor, who is currently on a ‘No Fault Suspension’ from the Greens said: ‘The systemic harassment, discrimination and silencing of advocates for women’s rights within the Party, including via the complaints system, and on social media, is deeply concerning.’
Imogen Makepeace, a Lewes District Green party councillor echoed that view: ‘Committed GPEW members, like Alison Teal and Emma Bateman, passionate and dedicated to action on climate change, are being all too frequently disenfranchised from their party. This is a bizarre, Kafkaesque situation in what’s supposed to be an open and democratic party.’
So, what is in this declaration? The authors explained that it came in the wake of the Labour Women’s Declaration. Both documents are plain common-sense statements that everyone once took to be self-evident. Maybe they still do, but too few have been willing to risk opprobrium and make it clear that women and girls are subject to discrimination and oppression on the basis of their sex. That is the reason why sex is a protected characteristic in law. The Green Declaration rightly declares that women and girls have the right to organise themselves, as a sex, across a range of cultural, leisure, sporting, educational and political activities. The declaration adds,
‘Women and girls have the right to discuss policies which affect them, without being abused, harassed or intimidated. We reject all attempts to undermine or limit the rights of women to self-organise and we call on, and expect, the [Green party of England and Wales] and the wider green movement to actively support these essential freedoms.’
Well said! The Greens were already on notice that the women are not going away. Bateman is taking the Green party of England and Wales to court over her treatment she has suffered. Legal action has also been launched by Shahrar Ali, a former deputy leader of the Green party, and Dawn Furness, co-chair of the party’s women’s committee.
The Greens need to wake up to reality – and quickly. Let’s hope that sense prevails, and the Greens stop going after women and get back to protecting the environment.
*************************************************
Warren Buffett Shuns ESG, Invests in Fossil Fuels
Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” is a certified genius when it comes to investing. His investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, founded in 1965, has increased in value nearly 3,500,000 percent.
In other words, Buffett’s investing acumen has led to “a compound annual gain of roughly 20.1%. During the same period, the S&P 500 has gained 30,209% including dividends, for an annual gain of 10.5%.”
I think it is safe to say, given his investment record, that Warren Buffett understands macroeconomic trends, the intricacies of the market, and the consequences of government economic policies to a great extent.
Therefore, I also think it is worthwhile to watch what Buffett is doing in terms of his investments, especially as the U.S. economy continues to sputter along and everyday Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet. By viewing Buffett’s investments, we can surmise where he thinks the U.S. economy is headed and which companies he thinks will benefit in the future.
Late last month, Berkshire Hathaway purchased $123 million worth of shares in Occidental Petroleum. Even more interesting, over the past 18 months, Buffett has bought $13 billion worth of Occidental shares, bringing his total investment in the oil-producing giant to more than 25 percent.
Buffett has also been busy gobbling up shares of oil-producer Chevron. Berkshire Hathaway currently holds close to $26 billion in Chevron stock.
At his recent annual meeting, Buffett made it clear that he thinks oil production remains central to U.S. prosperity. “In the United States, we’re lucky to have the ability to produce the kind of oil we’ve got from shale,” he said. He also declared, “We do not think it’s un-American to be producing oil,” and vowed, “We will make rational decisions” in reference to fossil fuel investment.
Moreover, Buffett seems to be suspicious of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, which seeks to divest in fossil fuel companies while promoting nebulous social justice causes, even when these efforts reduce returns for investors.
In fact, Buffett has referred to ESG as “asinine,” and believes it belies Berkshire Hathaway’s sole purpose: increasing returns for clients.
Generally, Buffett opposes ESG because he subscribes to the time-tested view that the primary and overriding objective of any company should be to increase profits.
As he recently said, “This is the shareholders’ money. Many corporate managers deplore governmental allocation of the taxpayers’ dollar, but embrace enthusiastically their own allocation of the shareholder’s dollar.”
However, he also is on record saying that he believes ESG’s obsession with fossil fuel divestment is a misguided decision that will hinder economic development, particularly in the nations where affordable and reliable energy is most needed.
To be fair, Buffett does hold vast investments in so-called green energy companies. Yet, even he has admitted he invests in green energy because of government intervention, not because it is a sound investment. “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit,” Buffett admits.
And, to be clear, Warren Buffett is not a conservative, nor a Republican. He is a longtime Democrat.
But, like so many on the left these days, Buffett believes in some ways, like when it comes to climate change, that many on the left, particularly those on the far-left, have gone too far.
Buffett describes progressives pushing ESG as “unrealistic visionaries desiring an instantly new world.”
Make no mistake, his assessment of these people, from Larry Fink to Janet Yellen, is perfectly fitting.
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Green madness, UK style
Judith Sloan
It’s a bit hard to take the recent utterances of Michael Gove, UK’s Minister of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (I’m not making that up) too seriously. He’s now telling everyone that tackling climate change should not be treated as a religious crusade and that the UK has gone a bit too far with the net-zero dogma. Let’s not forget that he was the man who convinced the then prime minister, Theresa May, to legislate the net-zero target in the dying days of her leadership.
And just recently, Gove refused to approve the demolition of the Marks and Spencer store on Oxford Street to be replaced with a new, state-of-the-art edifice, on environmental grounds! That’s right, repurposing the existing building would be better for the planet.
The stand-out feature of the list of extreme and zany green measures in the UK I am about to provide is that they have largely been undertaken by a conservative government. To say that it beggars belief is to understate the astonishment we should all feel.
It’s hard to know quite how this collective insanity gripped so many conservative politicians, including Boris. After all, the UK’s emissions are trivial and anything it does won’t have the slightest impact on the world’s climate. It’s not as if the UK stands so tall in the global pecking order that other countries would take any notice of what its government gets up to.
After the surprise retention of Boris’s seat in north London, there is no doubt that some Tories are now thinking that the way to win the next election is to campaign against any extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to the middle and outer suburbs of London as well as walk back from the net-zero commitment.
The true believers within the Conservative party will quote meaningless survey results that point to the public’s continued support for net zero. That’s until they are asked a question about bearing the cost of measures undertaken in the name of net zero. At that point, support falls off a cliff.
But let me run through some of the lunatic policies that litter the net-zero landscape in the UK. Getting rid of gas/oil boilers to heat homes is top of the list. By 2025, the plan is that it will be illegal for any new boilers to be installed. The alternative is expensive heat pumps, which run on electricity but don’t actually work well when the temperature is too low. This is complete insanity, particularly as a number of rural folk must continue to rely on oil boilers for many years to come. In any case, there are not enough installers for the heat pumps and given the cost-of-living pressures that UK householders are facing, it’s hardly surprising that the pace of new installation has been snail-like.
(I did read a priceless story about a bloke with a heritage-listed house – several hundred years old – looking into the option of installing a heat pump only to have it knocked back by the heritage authorities as being incompatible with the historical characteristics of the house, which must be preserved!)
Then there is the crazy idea of rating properties according to their emissions and then insisting that all rental properties meet an EPC of at least C. What you ask is an EPC? It’s an Energy Performance Certificate which necessarily involves paid certifiers. Even at the moment, landlords who wish to rent out a property with an EPC of E, F or G have to apply for a specific exemption.
The current plan is that from 2025, all new tenancies can only be signed for properties with an EPC of at least C and from 2028, for existing tenancies. Needless to say, achieving a ‘better’ EPC requires considerable outlays by the owner which will necessarily translate into higher rents.
In light of the housing affordability crisis affecting many parts of the UK, the policy looks particularly cack-handed and that’s being kind. There are also plans afoot to restrict the sale of homes to those with an EPC less than C, but the timing of this move is still uncertain.
Then there’s the UK government’s continued support for wind and solar power. Solar in the UK? Surely, you’ve got that one wrong, Judith. But, no, a relatively large solar installation is planned for the Thames estuary. Because the wholesale price being offered is so high, it doesn’t really matter that no power will be generated for great slabs of the year. The eye-watering guaranteed price is 100 pounds per megawatt hour or around 190 in real Aussie dollars. That’s close to double the current wholesale price here and that’s highway robbery.
Having decided that the political angst generated from onshore wind turbines was not worth the candle, the Tories decided a while ago that the way forward was to locate these expanding turbines off the coast in windy places. Of course, the investors in these monstrous towers, that can be clearly seen from the coast, needed to be ‘incentivised’ with guaranteed cash flows courtesy of electricity customers and the compulsory green levies.
But as they say, all good things come to an end at some stage, and a large project off the coast of Norfolk operated by Swedish company, Vattenfall, has now been pulled because of rapidly rising costs. According to the company spokesman, ‘the incentives offered no longer reflected the current market conditions. It simply doesn’t make sense to continue with this project’. The Swedish government this week also turned down another Vattenfall wind farm proposal off its own coast because it is ‘against the national interest’ and will ‘damage the environment’!
The new renewable energy requires new transmission lines. And like in Australia, there is fierce opposition to the construction of huge pylons through England’s pristine countryside. The government’s latest wheeze is simply to compel landowners to provide the required easements, which is a very strange way of gathering voters for the conservative side of politics.
There is also the proposed banning of petrol/diesel cars – timing now a bit uncertain – and the ongoing subsidies being thrown at electric vehicles. Did I mention the piles of taxpayer money being thrown at batteries and the development of hydrogen?
And then along comes Sir Tony Blair, former Labour PM, who weirdly has started telling everyone that the burden of net zero shouldn’t be shouldered by households and that anything that the UK does won’t be shifting any climate dial given what China is up to. It’s pretty clear that this message hasn’t been received by the current leader of the opposition, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer. (Even Labour types can’t get enough of the Sir thingy.)
But the real tragedy is that Blair’s message has never sunk into the thick skulls of very many Tory politicians, including its chain of recent leaders. Perhaps the ULEZ extension will be a wake-up call: fining Mrs Postlethwaite over ten quid for driving to church each Sunday won’t be a good look.
The fear with all these hare-brained, freedom-sapping and highly regressive schemes is that some federal or state politicians in Australia will decide to copy them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/green-madness-uk-style/
***************************************6 August, 2023
1.5 Degree Temperature Rise Poses No 'Existential Threat to Humanity,' Says New UN Climate Change Chief
Climate change activists consistently warning of a doomsday in the near future are harming efforts to tackle the current situation, warned Prof. Jim Skea, the newly elected head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Mr. Skea made the comments during interviews with major German news outlets over the weekend, just days after he was elected to the new role at the international panel, which monitors and assesses the science related to climate change.
"If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change," he told German news agency DPA on July 29.
Elsewhere, Mr. Skea, who has more than 40 years of experience in climate science, stressed that global temperatures increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era doesn't pose an "existential threat to humanity."
Under the Paris Climate Agreement—adopted in 2015 and formally ratified in 2016—hundreds of nations agreed to pursue efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius in an effort to "significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change."
However, estimates suggest that global emissions mean we are currently tracking above that goal.
'We Will Not Die Out'
Mr. Skea also told Der Spiegel magazine that "we should not despair and fall into a state of shock" if global temperatures increase by this amount and that "the world won't end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees."
"It will, however, be a more dangerous world," Mr. Skea said, noting that social tensions may rise but "we will not die out."
He did say that "man-made" climate change exists and that we can no longer deny it.
**************************************
Greenie versus Greenie in New Zealand
A power company with mana whenua backing is hoping to revive a West Coast hydro scheme already turned down by the Government
It’s clean and blue-green and it could power half the homes on the West Coast.
But a revamped proposal for a modest hydro scheme on the Waitaha River is still in limbo 14 months after it was filed – possibly blown there by the draught from a revolving door of successive conservation ministers.
Greymouth-based electricity company Westpower and local iwi asked then-minister Kiri Allan in May last year to reconsider the Waitaha project three years after it was controversially declined by Environment Minister David Parker.
The consumer-owned company says it’s made significant changes to the design in consultation with the Department of Conservation but has had no luck persuading Allan or her two successors to take another look at it.
Chief executive Peter Armstrong says his efforts to follow up on the application with the minister’s office have been rebuffed.
“We’ve had letters from them acknowledging receipt of it and when I’ve contacted them with updates and offering to re-engage we just get politely declined.”
The turnover in conservation ministers would not have helped, Armstrong says, but there are strong and urgent reasons the project should be reconsidered.
One is the growing effect of climate change.
“In the four years since this project was declined, the Government’s declared a climate emergency and the goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.”
Armstrong says when the country is going to need all the hydroelectricity it can get, such a well designed project should be a priority.
The Waitaha hydro scheme could power 12,000 homes on the Coast, reduce demand on the national grid and make the region more resilient to storms and earthquakes, Westpower says.
The run-of-the-river project would divert some of the Waitaha above the Morgan Gorge and channel it through a 1.5m tunnel to a powerhouse, returning the water to the river downstream.
By 2019, DoC had granted approval in principle for the lease and concessions the company needed to build the $100 million scheme on conservation land.
But the proposal attracted 3000 submissions, many from Green Party and Forest and Bird supporters and kayakers who said the hydro scheme would spoil one of the few wild, scenic and pristine rivers left on the planet.
The job of making the final decision on Waitaha was delegated to Parker. The conservation minister at the time, Eugenie Sage, was seen as conflicted as a Green Party MP and veteran Forest and Bird campaigner.
In rejecting the hydro scheme, Parker said it would have “significant impacts” on the natural character of the area and undermined the “intrinsic values” that trampers and kayakers experience there.
The reaction on the coast was bitter disappointment.
And the decision raised the ire of mana whenua, Poutini Ng?i Tahu, who backed the scheme and had hoped to invest in it.
It triggered the implosion of the region’s conservation board: members with strong conservation credentials appointed by Sage resigned in the face of a boycott by iwi members of the board.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters takes a similar view.
The Waitaha is the sort of energy project the Government should be backing, not blocking, he says.
“People go on about wind power but the costs are rocketing compared to hydro schemes like this – it’s a sensible use of a natural resource and one we’d support.”
The Greens remain implacably opposed, saying the wild Waitaha is too precious to be altered.
There are 10 existing hydro schemes in the Westpower region, three of which can continue to supply power during outages.
The company’s Amethyst Hydro – also on conservation land – can power the South Westland area on its own and the privately owned Fox Hydro Scheme can power the Fox Glacier area.
If the Waitaha hydro scheme goes ahead, locally generated power together with the Amethyst would be sufficient to run all of South Westland, Hokitika and Greymouth, Westpower says.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/sustainable-future/renewed-calls-to-undam-hydro-plan
************************************************Push for more North Sea oil and gas ‘right thing for planet’, says British minister
Jeremy Hunt has defended the Government’s push to maximise the production of oil and gas, arguing it is “the right thing to do” for UK energy security and the planet.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced plans to grant more than 100 new oil and sea gas licences in the UK - sparking backlash from environmental campaigners.
Chancellor Mr Hunt was on Thursday challenged over his support for the continued licensing of new North Sea developments, after he strongly opposed a gas drilling project in his Surrey constituency on environmental grounds.
The South West Surrey MP in 2022 blasted a Government decision to allow an exploratory gas well to be dug near the village of Dunsfold as “bitterly disappointing and wrong both economically and environmentally”.
Asked why he then backed oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, Mr Hunt told Channel 4 News on Thursday: “Because these are totally different situations.
“As a constituency MP, I do my job and stand up for constituents who are worried about environmental impact.
“But when it comes to the North Sea, something very profound and important has changed in the last 18 months, which is that we realised that what matters is not just the transition to net zero, but also energy security, and it happens to be a lot more carbon-intensive to import gas than to use our own supply.”
It was put to Mr Hunt that with the private companies that own the North Sea fields selling the oil and gas on the international market, there is no guarantee the supplies will end up in the UK.
He replied: “But we’re far more likely to get them if we’re extracting that gas than if we’re not extracting it.”
Mr Hunt also told Sky News that the UK will remain “a bigger importer of gas” and that while “we’re importing it, it uses three times less carbon to use our own gas (than) to import it from the other side of the world.
“And that’s why this is the right thing to do for the planet as well as for our energy security.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced plans to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new oil and sea gas licences alongside a new carbon capture scheme in north-east Scotland.
He also hinted that the UK’s largest untapped oil field, Rosebank, to the west of Shetland, could be approved despite fierce opposition from environmental campaigners.
Climate-conscious Conservatives have joined campaigners to warn against the move, amid concerns it will hinder efforts to reach net-zero by 2050.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt echoed Mr Sunak in reaffirming the Government’s commitment to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
“I think that deadline is important because it encourages a lot of investment,” the Chancellor told GB News.
“But what the Prime Minister has said is that as we transition to electric vehicles, we need to do so in a way that is proportionate and sensible and takes account of the people who will still be driving vehicles that aren’t electric.
“We’re sticking with 2030, but we’re going to do it in a pragmatic way.”
https://news.yahoo.com/push-more-north-sea-oil-183339286.html
******************************************LA Times sensationalizes heat to make a bogus political statement
The Los Angeles Times embarrassed itself Sunday publishing an editorial presenting unsubstantiated climate myths while trying to put a hit on a recent, factual Fox News article. The op-ed, “Dying from the heat is not a political statement” by Times columnist Robin Abcarian, is a master class on how to ignore facts while presenting propaganda.
Abcarian’s editorial begins by telling the urban myth that, “This month looks to be the hottest ever on record for the entire planet.” However, scientists have long documented, and even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has acknowledged, that temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period, 6,000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, and indeed during most of the time period for which human civilization has existed. Moreover, scientists know temperatures were warmer than today during the vast majority of the planet’s existence.
Abcarian then singles out my colleague, The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center Director Justin Haskins, as being “anti-science” for writing in a Fox News column that wildfires are not getting worse due to climate change. “Who you gonna believe? The guy who wrote a book called ‘Socialism Is Evil’ or the entire climate science community?” Abcarian asks.
We’ll discuss Abcarian’s love for socialism in a moment. For now, we can look at objective scientific data and discover for ourselves whether “the entire scientific community” believes climate change is making wildfires worse.
Since 1998, NASA has been using satellite instruments to precisely measure the world’s total acreage burned by wildfires. NASA’s website reports a relatively steady and consistent decline in global wildfires since 1998. Meanwhile, since 1998, there has been a 24 percent decline in lands burned by wildfires.
The significant decline in wildfires since 1998 continues a trend that has been occurring throughout the era of modest global warming. In the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists report, “a notable declining rate of burned area globally” during the period from 1901 to 2007.
The same holds true in the United States. National Interagency Fire Center data show more than twice as much U.S. land burned on average each year prior to 1950 than in any wildfire year in recent decades.
So, who you gonna believe? The guy who makes observations based on objective scientific data or the columnist who is appalled that someone at The Heartland Institute isn’t enthralled with freedom-depriving socialism and its real-world embodiments in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela?
https://www.thecentersquare.com/opinion/article_634267f0-3230-11ee-8ba0-0fa57aa4c1fe.html
***************************************3 August, 2023
'We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience’: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist on Climate Agenda
Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Clauser isn’t afraid to go against the flow.
In a July 26 interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Clauser explained that he carried out his early research on quantum mechanics against opposition from some in the field.
As a young man, he conducted the first experiment to demonstrate the reality of nonlocal quantum entanglement—the linkage between multiple particles across any physical distance. Many years later, that groundbreaking work earned him one-third of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Today, the 80-year-old scientist is up against another establishment. This time, though, he isn’t violating a prediction so as to rule out an alternative explanation to quantum mechanics. He’s violating a taboo that has slowly but surely become one of the biggest in science and politics.
“I am, I guess, what you would call a ‘climate change denialist,'” Mr. Clauser told The Epoch Times.
His training in science makes him “a little bit different” from some others, he said.
The physicist, who also won a third of the Wolf Prize for his quantum mechanics contributions, shared some of his views on climate during a recent speech in South Korea soon after his election to the CO2 Coalition’s board of directors.
‘Dangerous Misinformation’
“I believe that climate change is not a crisis,” Mr. Clauser told the audience at Quantum Korea 2023.
He also described the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation.”
Mr. Clauser elaborated further on his views in his interview with The Epoch Times.
Contra the IPCC and other major institutions, he argues that climate is primarily set by what he refers to as the “cloud cover thermostat,” a self-regulating process whereby more clouds start to enshroud the Earth when the temperature is too high and vice-versa. Although he accepts observations showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, he said he believes that gas’s effect on heat transfer is swamped by a great natural cloud cycle.
“[The carbon dioxide] may or may not be made by human beings,” Mr. Clauser said. “It doesn’t really matter where it comes from.”
The physicist said he believes that objective science on climate has been sacrificed to politics. The preeminence of politics is all the worse, he said, because so much money has already gone to climate initiatives.
“We’re talking about trillions of dollars,” he said, adding that powerful people don’t want to hear that they’ve made “trillion-dollar mistakes.”
Concerns about such mistakes may have been relevant after Mr. Clauser was slated to speak before the U.N.’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 25.
In recent years, the international economic and monetary agency has focused heavily on the climate. Officials have laid particular stress on international carbon taxes.
“The latest IMF analysis finds that large emitting countries need to introduce a carbon tax that rises quickly to $75 a ton in 2030,” the agency’s website on climate mitigation states.
Just days before his talk was to take place, the Nobel laureate received alarming news.
Mr. Clauser told The Epoch Times he had received an email indicating that the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) director, Pablo Moreno, didn’t want the talk to go forward that day.
In an email, an IEO senior official told The Epoch Times that Mr. Clauser’s speech “has been postponed to reorganize it into a panel discussion.”
“We are working to reschedule it after the summer,” the official wrote.
No New Date Set
For now, a new date hasn’t been set.
Mr. Clauser pointed out that a past attempt at a vigorous, transparent debate over climate change—namely, the “red team, blue team” exercise proposed by Obama administration veteran Steve Koonin in 2017—was ultimately scuttled during the Trump administration. When Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt sought to carry out the exercise, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly shot the idea down.
In the eyes of some observers, the stated postponement looks more like a straightforward cancellation.
“Dr. John Clauser, Nobel Prize Recipient for Physics, 2022, & Board Member of the CO2 Coalition, has been summarily canceled as a confirmed speaker on July 25 at the International Monetary Fund. They say his speech is ‘postponed’. Don’t hold your breath!” Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and now a high-profile climate skeptic, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Mr. Moore is a former chair of the CO2 Coalition.
“Whatever you do anon, you must not question ‘The Science,’ even if you are a nobel laureate,” Joshua Steinman, a cybersecurity entrepreneur who served on the Trump administration’s National Security Council, wrote on X.
If the IMF’s IEO re-invites Mr. Clauser, his remarks could make a bigger splash than his initially scheduled talk.
Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, Mr. Clauser may find it hard to get his message out there if the opposition remains sufficiently entrenched.
For now, the physicist doesn’t sound likely to yield. “We are totally awash in pseudoscience,” he told The Epoch Times.
**************************************************
Boston mayor bans 'fossil fuels' in new city-owned buildings to advance 'racial and economic justice'
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced that she has banned "fossil fuels" in new city-owned buildings after teaming up with the city's director of the Green New Deal.
The goal is "accelerating climate action by requiring that all new municipal buildings and major renovations operate without fossil fuels." The press release also claimed the move would reduce "emissions from Boston’s building sector while creating high-quality jobs, improving public health and quality of life, and advancing racial and economic justice."
All new buildings in the city must be planned, designed, and constructed using non-combustion for cooking (stoves/ovens), HVAC, and hot water apparatuses.
The mayor claimed that recent weather means that there isn't much time to make quick political changes.
“Week after week, we see the signs of extreme heat, storms, and flooding that remind us of a closing window to take climate action,” said Wu. “The benefits of embracing fossil fuel-free infrastructure in our City hold no boundary across industries and communities, and Boston will continue using every possible tool to build the green, clean, healthy, and prosperous future our city deserves.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/boston-wu-bans-fossilfuels-govt
****************************************************The sinister truth about the war on cars
Like so much about ecology, there seems a feudal impulse about the encroaching motoring puritanism, be it ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) or LTN (Low Traffic Neighbourhood), which sound like sexy new forms of electronic dance music but which are decidedly anti-fun.
What we are witnessing now is not a war on cars per se; it’s a war on the poor who dare to drive. Those who are rich can pay to pollute with the Mayor’s blessing, just as wealthy Just Stop Oil protestors will continue to have Instagram feeds which make Around The World In Eighty Days look like a stroll in the park.
The shameful squeezing out of the London proletariat from the city they built, into suburbs and satellite towns – despite still largely working in the centre – is being repeated in most cities across the country, so obviously many of those people will need their cars more than ever. But the post-Covid working from home boom has allowed a huge chunk of the middle-class workforce to opt out of having to travel to work; and as they already live near all the shops and doctors and schools they need, they’re more than happy to give up their cars and get on with the important business of virtue-signalling.
In Brighton we’ve just got rid of a Green council after twelve years. I really would advise anyone who thinks that the Greens are ‘good’ — even after the criticism they’ve subjected poor Shahrar Ali to for daring to stand up for women’s rights — or left-wing, come to that, when their disregard for the well-being of working-class people makes Debrett’s look democratic, to consider what happened here. It really seemed that they wanted no one from outside Brighton to ever visit Brighton – apart from all the over-privileged students who kept voting them in, of course. They did everything they could to make people stay home, from threatening to close down public toilets to making the pavements imperilled with overgrown weeds, but their main attack was through the war on cars.
Bella Sankey, the new Labour leader of the council, estimates that parking fees imposed by the Green council cost us more than £1 million in day-tripper revenue over three years. She blames the ‘incompetence’ of Green policies for a £3 million black hole in the city’s finances in which the loss in parking revenue makes up a significant part.
It would be a shame if our anhedonia grew so all-consuming that the simple pleasure of driving towards somewhere nice on a sunny day with someone you love was also put beyond the pale.
The plan to introduce Brighton’s first LTN in the Green stronghold of Hanover is thought to be what gave Labour their first council majority in more than two decades. Pleasingly, with poetic justice, the new council have pledged to re-allocate the £1 million set aside for LTN to refurbishing the city’s public conveniences — literally flushing the LTN fantasy down the toilet.
Let’s hope that more follows — we have long needed a new peasants’ revolt against this creeping Green feudalism. I’m so pleased that the Prime Minister has declared himself an unapologetic motor-lover; he may be the first PM to be richer than the actual king, but as the child of immigrants he understands the literal and metaphorical importance of mobility — of not being condemned to life in the place you just happened to be born in. Because make no mistake, the war against the car is a war against mobility, modernity and freedom.
‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?’ asked billboards beside the roads of Britain during the war and after, encouraging drivers not to waste petrol — but do we want a life only of necessity? They’ll be taking away the weekend next — after all, nobody had one before capitalism. I’d love to see a motoring culture in which driving is done as a pleasure, every drive a wanted drive. It would be a shame if our anhedonia grew so all-consuming that the simple pleasure of driving towards somewhere nice on a sunny day with someone you love was also put beyond the pale.
Until then, cars are essential to the ever-dwindling allotment of ease and convenience the working-class have left. Bringing in ever more limitations on them won’t save your children’s lives; but it will, unless you’re rich, severely curtail the places they can go and the things they can do. If you want your children to have far more boring and limited lives than yours, carry on demonising the car.
I’ve only voted Tory once in my life, and that was for Brexit; I was aiming to do so again next time until Starmer remembered what a woman is — since when I’ve wavered. But if Sunak stands by his claim to turn the tide in this sinister crusade to turn us into serfs on bikes, pedalling humbly into some drab future in which only the wealthy enjoy themselves, he’s got my vote. And I still can’t drive.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-sinister-truth-about-the-war-on-cars/
************************************************Global boiling. Ouch!
It’s been quite the week for overblown climate hyperbole and preposterous exaggerations, so we thought we may as well join in the fun: ‘New Ice Age to arrive by summer 2023. Australia prepares for a White Christmas.’ In reality, our own far-fetched prediction is probably more credible than the nonsensical ‘the era of global boiling has begun’ trotted out by the clownish and increasingly toad-like Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Every politician rightly dreads the moment the public stops fearing them or taking them seriously and instead starts laughing at them, and Senhor Guterres certainly toppled over that particular tipping point this week. Sadly, however, his is not a democratically elected position, so it is unlikely he will disappear from our TV screens any time soon. Thus, we must take his prediction seriously, not so much for what damage our ‘boiling’ planet may do to us all, but rather, the incredible damage such asinine rhetoric is doing and will carry on doing to our economic outlook and future prosperity.
You didn’t have to be a climate-denier or even a climate-sceptic to find the Guterres rant risible. But the problem is that such inflammatory climate language is then regurgitated through all channels of the media and fed directly into our schoolchildren’s daily diet of woke disinformation. Most well-meaning but less-politically engaged people and hard-pressed parents tend to presume that the truth about subjects like climate change ‘lies somewhere in the middle’ and are quite happy for others invested in the culture wars to battle it out. However, by constantly ramping up the extremist language, the left wilfully and deceptively shifted the ‘sensible centre’ further and further away from reality. Even one of the head honchos at the IPCC was forced to admit that Guterres’ ‘global boiling’ was wide of the mark. But of course such cautionary notes gain nowhere near the publicity of hysterical fear-mongering.
Full marks as always to Speccie contributor and South Australian Senator Alex Antic for his suggested future alarmist expressions for the UN to excitedly promote when ‘global boiling’ loses its scare factor, which it shall, including ‘Global Climate Inferno’, ‘Mega Universe Heat Death’ and ‘Super Global Spine Chillingly Hot’.
Equally absurd, and linked, was the claim by both Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that their government had ‘saved’ the Great Barrier Reef. Hilaire Belloc would have adored the twisted logic that has the United Nations not declaring the Great Barrier Reef to be in mortal danger as they had been feverishly plotting to thanks entirely to the one-and-a-bit-year-old Labor government having increased the cost of your electricity bills. Or something like that. Here’s a wildly radical and heretical thought: perhaps it was never in danger to begin with. Because maybe the oceans aren’t actually boiling.
In this week’s magazine, Michael Baume exposes just one tiny but incredibly disturbing aspect of where all this madness is leading us to. It was Alan Jones who used to speak of the ‘national suicide note’ that is net zero. But our foolish Energy Minister seems hell-bent on living up to that promise, as he jeopardises our critical relationship with Japan courtesy of his climate dogma and renewables fantasies. As Michael writes, ‘[Our new emissions laws] are of such major concern that not only have Japanese senior ministers already requested flexible measures under the safeguard mechanism for LNG projects supplying Japan, but PM Kishida has made a similar approach to PM Albanese.’
At the same time, Rebecca Weisser reveals that even the net-zero luvvies have added up the carbon numbers and come to the conclusion that offshore wind farms in NSW are a flat no-no.
No hyperbole there.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/global-boiling-ouch/
***************************************2 August, 2023
Top climate scientists rubbish claims July was the hottest month ever
Two of America’s top climate scientists have rubbished claims July was the hottest month on record, deploring a “stunning amount of exaggeration and hype” surrounding the UN Secretary-General’s statement last week that “the era of global boiling [had] arrived.”
Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Washington, said the public was being “misinformed on a massive scale” following a deluge of news reports that summer heatwaves in the US and Europe had pushed July’s average temperature above 17 degrees, and allegedly to the highest level in 120,000 years. UN
“It‘s terrible. I think it’s a disaster. There’s a stunning amount of exaggeration and hype of extreme weather and heatwaves, and it’s very counter-productive,” he told The Australian in an interview.
“I’m not a contrarian. I‘m pretty mainstream in a very large [academic] department, and I think most of these claims are unfounded and problematic”.
John Christy, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, said heatwaves in the first half of the 20th century were at least as intense as those of more recent decades based on consistent, long-term weather stations going back over a century.
“I haven‘t seen anything yet this summer that’s an all time record for these long term stations, 1936 still holds by far the record for the most number of stations with the hottest ever temperatures,” he told The Australian, referring to the year of a great heatwave in North America that killed thousands.
Professor Christy said an explosion of the number of weather stations in the US and around the world had made historical comparisons difficult because some stations only went back a few years; meanwhile, creeping urbanisation had subjected existing weather stations to additional heat.
“In Houston, for example, in the centre it is now between 6 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding countryside,” he explained in an interview with The Australian.
Major newspapers from the Washington Post to the London Times have reported July as the hottest month on record after the average global daily temperature last month surpassed 17 C – around 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels – based on satellite data compiled by the University of Maine.
“We’re just really starting to see climate change kick in,” Nathan Lenssen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, told the Washington Post last month.
Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University, told the Times that July was “outrageously warm” and may have been the warmest month since the Eemian interglacial period, about 120,000 years ago.
Growing concern about higher temperatures caused by humans has underpinned a global push to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 by phasing out fossil fuels in favour of solar and wind power, fuelling major political and scientific debates.
“Hot enough for you? Thank a MAGA Republican. Or better yet, vote them out of office,” tweeted former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last week.
The IMF cancelled a scheduled talk by Nobel prize winner John Clauser last week after he publicly stated: “I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis, and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events.”
Professor Christy, conceding a slight warming trend over the last 45 years, said July could be the warmest month on record based on global temperatures measured by satellites – “just edging out 1998” – but such measures only went back to 1979.
Professor Mass said the climate was “radically warmer” around 1000 years ago during what’s known as the Medieval Warm Period, when agriculture thrived in parts of now ice-covered Greenland.
“If you really go back far enough there were swamps near the North Pole, and the other thing to keep in mind is that we‘re coming out of a cold period, a Little Ice Age from roughly 1600 to 1850”.
“Global warming, it‘s a serious issue, but it’s a slow issue, it’s not an existential threat,” he added, suggesting human activities may have added up to one degree Celsius to average temperatures since the 1980s.
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They So Want Climate Change to Be a Thing
Oh my goodness, it was warm during the summer! Not just warm, but the warmest warm that ever was! Yes, it’s an emergency, a crisis, the mostest baddest hotness that ever happened in the history of ever. Time to give up plastic straws and cars and hot water heaters – that’s the latest one – because Professional Licensed Scientists™ tell us we must, or else the penguins will burst into flames. Or something.
Climate change is #Science, and you know that because the very same people who lied to you about literally everything else, from Wall Street to Iraq to the Wuhan Flu, told you so. By the way, they are now grudgingly sort of admitting it was from the Wuhan lab after denying it for years and calling you a racist for thinking that a bat-virus respiratory disease that happened to originate within a few blocks of a major Chinese lab doing bat-virus respiratory disease might have something to do with the major Chinese lab doing bat-virus respiratory disease instead of with people nibbling on whatever pangolins are.
Now, hurry up and forget the unbroken track record of lies our institutions have told us and quickly sign over your money and freedom to the same people who have lied to you non-stop for decades. Remember, it’s #Science, although the application of the scientific method, as it was understood before it became a political bludgeon to pummel you into submission and serfdom, would call for us to look at the data, and all the data tells us that everything the people pushing climate change have told us about everything else is a lie and a scam. Accordingly, Occam’s razor – not the thing Hunter uses to line up his yeyo on the mirror but the principle that the simplest answer is probably the right answer – would indicate that this is yet another lie designed to steal our freedom and money.
By the way, the Venn diagram of institutional actors telling you that we have to make all sorts of sacrifices because of climate change RIGHT NOW, NO TIME TO WAIT OR DEBATE, and telling you that Hunter’s laptop was disinformation is a circle.
Understand what we are talking about. It is not whether the climate changes. It does. It has been hotter and colder because it goes in cycles. When we say climate change is a hoax – and it is one of the most pernicious hoaxes in the history of humanity, right up there with socialism – we are referring to the claim and attendant actions based on the lie that climate change is essentially manmade and that these changes require the immediate transformation of society into a form that just happens to match the form of society these people wanted long before they started talking about global warming, and even before they were trying to do exactly the same things because of alleged global cooling.
The climate change hoax is a vehicle for change they cannot impose any other way, and if you notice, these people are trying to get this change done in every way except the democratic one. They cannot win and, therefore, do not try to even bother with votes on the myriad horrible things they want to do to us in the name of controlling the weather. Most of it is regulatory, behind-the-scenes crap like bans on toilets that flush and light bulbs that light. Or it is executive orders – anything but flat-out democratic processes because they would have to face questions. Questions they cannot answer because their whole garbage movement is based on a lie.
So, what is the right temperature for the Earth? Like, in specific degrees? I mean, if it’s getting “too hot” or “too cold” – again, I was alive in the seventies when that was #Science – then what degrees are “just right,” Goldilocks?
So, is man’s activity the primary factor controlling the rate and direction of climate change? What was when the Earth got cooler and warmer, and why are those non-factors now?
If it gets a couple of degrees warmer, so what? Instead of making major changes to society – again, Marxist ones that you want anyway – what is the dollar figure for amelioration as opposed to the dollar figure for transformative societal change?
China’s bringing on a coal plant every week or so – why again is my water heater going to cause the Earth to burst into flames?
So, meat is now bad, and we’re constantly told that the future is delicious bugs. We’re told that our cars and trucks are bad and we need to take public transportation. We’re told that our vacations are Earth murder. But I am kind of thinking that these sacrifices are only to come from us. Hey, if rising sea levels are so scary, why did the Obamas buy a beach house? Why do Leonardo DiCaprio and Frankenstein Kerry fly private jests to their climate summits? Why are normal Americans the ones who need to carry this burden instead of rich people or the damn Chi-Coms?
I know, I know – shut up and listen to the scientists. Those would be the ones who demanded we shut down our schools and wear masks? The same ones who swore to us the vaxx would prevent transmission? I’ve noticed a distinct lack of accountability for all the errors and lies they told us, so why again should I believe that if the scientists are wrong about #Science needing us to turn our country into a socialist green feudal nightmare there will be no accountability for that either? You know, maybe it’s not #Science, but I’ve noticed how people who lie and get away with it tend to lie again because they think they can get away with it.
So, save your climate idiocy. You get nothing except me idling my engine some more, even though your lies have resulted in gas being $5 a gallon. We need a president who will not play, which means a Republican one. Add “defeating the climate change hoax” to the list of reasons why we must get serious about nominating the strongest Republican in the general election. That is unless you want to eat bugs and ride buses with hobos.
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Kerry ripped for demanding agriculture emission cuts: ‘Bankrupt every farmer in America’
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was blasted on social media over the weekend by critics who accused him of trying to destroy the agriculture industry in order to achieve "net zero" emissions.
"Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world, depending a little bit on how you count it, but it’s anywhere from 26 to 33, and we can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution," Kerry told a climate change summit in May.
"You just can’t continue to both warm the planet while also expecting to feed it," Kerry added. "It doesn’t work. So, we have to reduce emissions from the food system."
That clip was widely shared over the weekend after being posted by the Twitter account Wide Awake Media, which led to a new wave of criticism against the Biden administration's top climate envoy. Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois called them an "attack on American farmers."
"Nothing to see here," Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted. "Just hypocritical Dems wanting to bankrupt every farmer in America…."
"These people are sick bastards," GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas tweeted. "I introduced legislation to defund this clown. But that’s just for show unless Republicans as a whole decide to fight instead of laying down while the very freedom they campaign on is under assault."
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Australia: A Greenie who puts his trust in hysteria
He's certainly drunk the Kool-Aid. He really seems to think that one degree of warming over the last century is dangerous change
A Greens senator unleashed on a climate sceptic Liberal National Party rival with a no-holds-barred attack in the Senate on Tuesday night.
In a wild night in Canberra, Nick McKim told Matt Canavan: 'Shut your mouth - people are dying because of... sociopaths like you.'
The angry exchange of views came during a speech where Mr McKim noted: 'This planet has just experienced the three hottest days on record.'
The Tasmanian senator said: 'I'm usually an optimistic person but I just want to say...' - prompting Queenslander Mr Canavan to interject, quipping: 'You hide it well'.
That outraged Mr McKim, who lashed out with an extraordinary verbal assault, erupting: 'Mate, you can shut your mouth.'
That earned Senator McKim a rebuke from Senator Jess Walsh, the acting deputy president of the Senate.
'Senator McKim,' she shouted, as Mr Canavan also interjected using words not clearly picked up by microphones in the chamber.
But Mr McKim was not deterred, and repeated his call for his rival to keep quiet.
'You can shut your mouth... People are dying because of you and sociopaths like you.'
At this point, the chamber exploded into a cacophony of sound, with Dr Walsh struggling to keep control.
'Senator McKim! Order. I have a number of senators on their feet. I don't really need you to be on your feet for me to say that you,' she said, before the ruckus drowned her out.
Moments later, she tried again, saying: 'Senator Canavan! Senator McKim! Order! This is disgraceful behaviour in the chamber. It is disgraceful.
'Now, Senator McKim, I ask you to withdraw your comments about Senator Canavan and resume your speech and, Senator Canavan, I ask that you cease interjecting across the chamber.'
The Greens senator withdrew his initial comments - but then doubled down.
He said: 'I withdraw, and I'm not going to cop interjections from sociopaths like Senator Canavan. I will not cop it and I won't...'
His halfhearted withdrawal earned him another slapdown from Dr Walsh, who told him 'resume your seat' and then asked him again to withdraw his comments.
'I will withdraw, and I will say... that the sociopaths who run fossil fuel corporations on this planet who are literally destroying the lives and the futures of billions of people,' Mr McKim said.
He added that people on both houses of parliament 'have got a lot to answer for (including) death, disease, displacement, starvation, people dying of thirst'.
'Arable farming lands turning into desert and, most likely, billions of people dead by the end of this century and the collapse of the ecosystems that actually support all human life on this planet,' he said.
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1 August, 2023
Why climate change activists have failed to score public support
We are hearing even more than usual about climate change this summer and that is not surprising — not with dog-days news cycles driven by record-setting heat waves, torrential rains and widespread Canadian wildfires.
Some climate activists think we are not hearing enough about the issue: Writing in The Guardian, columnist Jonathan Freedland insists that the problem is one of marketing. “The climate movement has devoted relatively few resources to reaching or persuading the public,” he writes, preposterously.
He quotes progressive p.r. man David Fenton — “We’re in a propaganda war, but only one side is on the battlefield” — and cites former United Nations climate grandee Christiana Figueres, who claims “the climate community has recoiled from marketing.” Why? Because, Figueres says, it is “sort of tainted. It’s icky. You know, ‘We’re too good for marketing. We’re too righteous’. . . Hopefully we’re getting over it.”
Of all the dumb and dishonest things that have been written and said in the climate debate, the notion that climate-change activists just can’t get their message out — that they won’t stoop to marketing — may be the very dumbest and most dishonest.
Billions of dollars have been spent on climate-change advocacy, to say nothing of money devoted to actual climate policies. The government leaders of practically every democratic country speak about the issue constantly.
In the intergovernmental sector, you have everybody from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund ringing the climate alarm bells, while in the private sector you can count on the likes of BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and other corporate titans to do the same.
ESG rules have pushed the climate issue onto the corporate agenda in a big way—companies are spending billions in total (as much as $1.4 million per company) on climate-reporting costs alone.
Even the supposed villains in the story — big energy companies such as ExxonMobil — spend billions of dollars a year advertising the green agenda. “In the past ten years we have reduced greenhouse gas emissions in our operations by more than 7 million metric tons,” ExxonMobil boasts, “which is the equivalent of taking about 1.4 million cars off the road.” You may not think they are sincere, but they are far from silent about the issue.
Climate activists have the commanding heights. What do the so-called deniers have? A few of my cranky libertarian friends.
And voters.
The real issue with climate policy isn’t that voters don’t know about the issue — it is that they disagree. Climate policy touches everything from big tech to farming to economic growth, everything from the homes we live in to the cars we drive, and, as such, an ambitious climate program will necessarily impose big costs.
The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world can pretend that green policies will pay for themselves, but no serious person believes that.
Sure, Guardian headline writers can straight-up declare “The beauty of a Green New Deal is that it would pay for itself” — this is nothing more than that “marketing” to which our green friends supposedly are so averse.
American voters do care about climate issues, but not as intensely as activists would like. Climate routinely polls in the single digits when it comes to voters’ top concerns, far behind (surprise!) the economy and health care.
Independents rate immigration a more pressing issue than climate change.
Maybe you think the US government is under the heel of the oil barons, but no democratic country has undertaken the kind of economic transformation climate activists advocate.
The signatories of the Paris Agreement are far from meeting their climate obligations; the $100 billion a year in climate-finance commitments promised at the UN climate summit in Glasgow have not been fully funded; even in the European Union, the leaders of which take a much stronger climate line than their US counterparts, there has been no radical change.
Germany responded to Russia’s recent energy blackmail by reopening coal plants.
European voters rank climate a higher priority than Americans do, but it typically polls behind economic growth and immediate issues such as the invasion of Ukraine.
That is not oil-drenched propaganda at work— that is, for better and for worse, democratic politics at work.
While there has been piecemeal progress, countries across the globe are moving at a glacial pace when it comes to the one policy that can reliably reduce greenhouse-gas emissions at a reasonable cost: rapidly expanding nuclear power, which has an operational carbon footprint of approximately zero.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/22/climate-change-activists-have-failed-to-score-public-support/
**************************************************The big eco lie: Solar panels produce five TIMES more carbon dioxide than previously thought, report claims
Solar panels release five times more carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to a new report.
An Italian researcher made the claims after finding a database that world institutions use to calculate global carbon footprint projections omits emissions from China, which produces 80 percent of solar panels worldwide.
China is known to use coal-burning plants in manufacturing, which has dropped the price of technology for Americans and other Western countries.
Without data from China, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry emissions are 48 gCO2/kWh.
However, the new analysis suggests that the number is closer to 170 and 250 gCO2/kWh - 62.5 percent as much carbon dioxide emissions as natural gas electricity generation.
Robbie Andrew, a researcher at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, told the Wall Street Journal in 2021: 'If China didn't have access to coal, then solar power wouldn't be cheap now.
'Is it OK that we've had this huge bulge of carbon emissions from China because it allowed them to develop all these technologies really cheaply?'
Most solar cells comprise silicon semiconductors, glass, and metals like silver, copper, indium and tellurium.
However, some are designed with battery storage, which includes the use of lithium.
Gathering silicon and glass has no environmental impact, but mining metals create greenhouse gas emissions and lead to soil, water and air pollution, EcoWatch reports.
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) set a target for solar energy to account for 30 percent of energy generation in the US by 2030.
If the target is met, more than one billion solar panels will be spread across the US - and a majority will come from China.
The report was prepared by Italian researcher Enrico Mariuttim, who identified a discrepancy in Ecoinvent's data two years ago.
'[The data] showed how much solar photovoltaic systems used in terms of raw materials: silicon, aluminum, copper, glass, steel and silver. Then I saw the carbon footprint. It just seemed way too small,' he told Environmental Progress.
Environmental Progress is a California-based environmental group founded by Michael Shellenberger, who was a Democratic candidate for governor in the 2018 California gubernatorial election.
'According to Mariutti's findings, the carbon intensity of solar panels manufactured in China and installed in European countries like Italy was off by an order of magnitude,' according to Environmental Progress.
A 2022 study by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado determined that emissions per module produced were twice as high in China than in the US for crystalline silicon modules and some four times as high for Cadmium Telluride thin-film modules - a type of solar cell.
A Clean Energy Buyers Institute report also shared a stark warning about China gaining dominance in the PV industry.
Solar panels have become cheaper not because of improvements in technology, which were tiny, but because they are made by slave labor, Shellenberger said in 2022.
Research determined that if the nation grows in solar manufacturing, the world will see up to 18 billion tons more carbon emissions by 2040, which would all be related to the PV industry.
And the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that 'the world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of key building blocks for solar panel production through 2025.'
The US, Japan and Germany once dominated the solar panel manufacturing industry.
However, regulations on coal use pushed the three powerhouses behind, letting China, which does not have guidelines take the top spot.
Chinese firms rely on coal-powered electricity in Xinjiang to manufacture critical raw materials like polysilicon, a high-purity form of silicon.
Mariutti found a major issue with solar data is that those compiling research have 'been slow to recognize the displacement of the industry to China.'
The nation did not pick up speed in the industry until around 2016, but data collectors could only use estimates and models of emissions rather than concrete numbers.
'In 2014, they calculated the carbon intensity of PV energy as if the panels were made in Europe, with low-carbon energy,' Mariutti told Environmental Progress, referring to data compilers.
'By 2016 calculations started to appear as if the panels were made in China, i.e. supposedly with carbon-intensive energy.'
Mariutti found that calculations always sat around 20 to 40 gCO2/kWh, but the specific model or source was not revealed.
'Had they done the math right, it would come out at around 80 to 106 gCO2/kWh, and that's with important factors still left out,' claimed Mariutti.
The IEA told Environmental Progress that carbon footprint calculations for solar panel manufacturing do not account for silicon mining, toxic panel waste and the albedo effect.
The Albedo effect is when the highly reflective properties of dark-colored solar panels increase the greenhouse effect.
'According to the IEA, when taken into proper account, the first two factors alone could more than triple the 'payback period' for panels, i.e., the time before they become carbon neutral after installation,' Environmental Progress reports.
'Why is the IEA not being transparent about its sources and the gaps in the data?' asked Mariutti.
'A hasty transition to solar and other renewables without cast-iron proof of the benefits, all the while handing control to China, could be a huge error.'
Mariutti has been met with criticism about his claims.
Dr Marco Raugei, a leading researcher of emissions from renewable technologies at Oxford Brookes University, tweeted: 'We all used Chinese electricity mixes for c-Si PV. And we still got results nowhere near as high as you imply one would. So something is clearly off in your back-of-the envelope calculations.'
Among Maritutt's claims of carbon emissions, China has also come under fire for using slave labor in manufacturing plants.
The reason the Chinese have been able to make solar panels so cheaply is because they use Uighur Muslims that are housed in concentration camps, Shellenberger told the right-wing at a 2022 CPAC gathering in Australia.
In September, Shellenberger also told a congressional hearing in Washington that the US had a 'moral imperative' to stop importing solar panels from China.
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Ron DeSantis says even HE can't afford a Tesla and blasts Biden's push to put more EVs on the road
Ron DeSantis claimed during a speech unveiling his economic policies on Monday that he couldn't afford – and doesn't want – one of Elon Musk's Teslas.
The Florida Governor told supporters in New Hampshire that he wants to reverse President Joe Biden's policies that will force car companies to produce electric vehicles as part of a path toward green energy.
DeSantis claims that Biden's policies aimed at eliminating vehicle emissions only make the U.S. more reliant on China, which is where components required for these cars are coming from.
'Forcing people to do EVs, you know, I think it's a big mistake,' DeSantis said. 'First of all, a lot of Americans – they just don't want it. And I think that Tesla creates a really good product.'
He added: 'It's not necessarily something that I would be able to afford or want. But I get people like it.'
With a net worth of $1.17 million, according to 2022 state disclosures from June, a salary of more than $130,000 as Florida's governor and a lucrative book deal, it's very likely that DeSantis could, in theory, afford to purchase a Tesla.
Vehicles on Tesla's own website range from around $40,000 to upwards of $100,000 depending on model and customizations.
During his remarks on Monday, DeSantis praised Musk by claiming the CEO of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX wants to look toward using more natural resources in the U.S. and other friendly countries as an alternative to sourcing it from China.
When asked about Musk using the resources from China for his vehicles, DeSantis defended the man who hosted his campaign launch on Twitter earlier this year.
'Well, look, I think that if you ask him [Elon], I think he's acknowledged that we need to do more of the rare earth minerals here in the United States, or at least in countries that are not as adverse to us,' DeSantis claimed.
'So I certainly recognize that and I think that that's something that our China policy is going to look to address,' he added. 'That will take time, that's not going to happen tomorrow.'
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Mike O’Connor: I’ve had a gutful of being told by governments what’s good for me
Australia:
As a child, I would sit for hours with my grandmother on the wooden bench seats circling the main arena at the Ekka [agricultural show] and watch the sheepdog trials.
Occasionally, an errant sheep would prop and stubbornly refuse to be intimidated by the dog’s constant urging and cajoling, but in the end, the dog always won and the flock would allow itself to be herded into the pen.
We’ve become like the sheep at the Ekka – constantly herded, urged and cajoled into accepting positions that governments tell us are good for us without bothering to ask us what we think.
The latest victims of herding are Victorians, who with Dodgy Dan Andrews snapping at their heels, have been told that they can’t have a gas stove in their new house.
Anyone with an IQ exceeding their shoe size knows that this will have zero effect on the world’s environment – but don’t argue. Just do as you are told.
Farmers throughout the eastern states are being herded into submission by power companies threatening to compulsorily acquire sections of their land holdings to allow the construction of giant transmission towers on their properties.
The lines could be run underground but this would be more expensive, so sorry, we’re going to trash the value of your property because it’s cheaper for us that way.
Don’t argue. Just get out of the way as we march towards net zero.
Net zero will never happen in the lifetime of anyone reading this but the sheepdogs have worked themselves into an absolute frenzy, racing from one side of the paddock to the other as they herd us into the belief that we can attain the unattainable.
All that is required is a blind acceptance of the absurd.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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