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
This is a backup copy of the original blog
29 August, 2024
Party Over for Alarmists as Sea Temperatures Plunge Around the World
Surface ocean temperatures are plunging rapidly around the world with scientists reported to be puzzled at the speed of the recent decline. Less puzzlement was to be found when the oceans were ‘boiling’ during the last two years. Plebs flying to Benidorm for an annual holiday and causing ‘global heating’ was a favourite explanation, although mainstream media put it in marginally more polite terms.
For almost two years, this boiling ocean trope has been a reliable standby for every alarmist spiv promoting the Net Zero insanity. But expect the scare to be parked for a while along with coral reefs, polar bears and Arctic sea ice. It is a very good bet that nobody in mainstream media is going to report the oceans are cooling at what are remarkably dramatic rates. Few fear-mongering points will be on offer for drawing attention to this inconvenient news.
Until recently, the surface sea temperature (SST) graph below showing measurements up the Arctic and down to Antarctica was rarely out of the public prints.
This year the temperature shown by the black line flatlined until April compared with the substantial rise in orange for 2023. It then fell more sharply than last year and is now 0.2°C lower.
In the Atlantic, the turnaround has been even more dramatic. Temperatures have cooled quickly since May and in the central equatorial region are up to 1°C colder than average for this time of year. The American weather service NOAA notes that the high SSTs at the start of the year were the strongest warm event since 1982. The rapid transition from warm to cold SST anomalies (current temperatures compared over a longer past trend) was said to be remarkable. “Never before in the observed record has the eastern equatorial Atlantic swung so quickly from one to another extreme event,” observes NOAA.
It is not unusual for waters in these parts of the Atlantic to cool in the summer months as seasonal southern winds drag surface waters away from the equator and expose deeper colder water. The process is called ‘upwelling’, but this year it coincided with a weakening of the trade winds which should have led to warmer anomalies. “As of now, these atmospheric conditions… are quite perplexing.” NOAA says it will need to dig deeper to reveal the exact causes of this “seemingly unusual event”.
These days we must of course welcome any outbreak of scientific head-scratching in the usually ‘settled’ climate business. Temperatures suddenly go down and scientists are seemingly clueless as to why it happens. Yet temperatures go up and it is all due to global warming and humans must return, instanter, to a pre-industrial societal and economic hellhole. In fact, scientists have little idea how a great deal of weather suddenly changes and how the sea and atmosphere warms and cools. Over 100 super-computer models are simply not up to the job of explaining natural variation in a chaotic, non-linear atmosphere. The fact that some scientists are perplexed when temperatures go down, but full of fear-mongering explanations when they go up, says it all.
It is not only in the Atlantic that surface temperatures are plunging. In the Pacific, a strong El Niño natural variation that warms the ocean and affects weather across the planet has dissipated. The higher SST anomalies recorded over the last year have fallen sharply as the latest figures below from NOAA show. The blocks record the anomaly on a rolling three-month basis with the last figure of 0.2°C referring to May, June and July 2024. As the latest figures along with records that go back much further show, recent changes in SSTs due to El Niño are nothing out of the ordinary. It is shameful how the figures have been used incessantly to whip up unnecessary alarm and anxiety around the world. Everyone from UN Secretary General Antonio ‘Global Boiling’ Guterres to GB News climate comedy turn ‘Jim’ Dale should hang their heads in shame.
The recent El Niño was powerful although the natural distortion in the centigrade anomaly record was not as large as those produced by a previous El Niño around 2015-16. Over the last 25 years, all of the global temperature boosts – apart from those retrospectively added by state-funded compilers – have occurred at around the same time as El Niño formations. Strong oscillations have been recorded in 1998, 2016 and 2024. As we have seen, alarmists have taken full advantage of the changes wrought by the latest El Niño effect, particularly the warmer ocean temperatures that have arisen. As with most natural variation, that process is being reversed – what goes up, usually comes down.
According to NOAA, SSTs in three of the four locations around the Pacific used to determine the presence of an El Niño are now below the long term trend. Temperatures have also dropped considerably in many parts of the Pacific down to 300 metres as the graph below for the central and eastern area shows.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for narrative-driven messengers such as the BBC’s Georgina Rannard. Last August she claimed that while scientists have known that the sea surface would continue to warm up because of greenhouse gas emissions, “they are still investigating exactly why temperatures have surged so far above previous years”.
What a difference a few months makes in the climate alarmism business
***********************************************
‘Climate Change’ is Not Causing Anxiety But The Media Is
Evie Magazine, a conservative-leaning women’s publication, recently posted an article titled “Climate Change Anxiety Is A Cause For The Decline In The Birth Rate,” in which the author claims that human-caused global warming is leading to climate anxiety that misdirects its wrath at larger families
This is mostly false.
‘Climate change’ is not producing anxiety so much as false and misleading alarmist media coverage is, and blaming large families for bad weather is equally wrong.
The article begins with writer Carolyn Ferguson claiming that “last year was the hottest year on record for the world,” that the United States is somehow warming faster than the rest of the world, and that “many are feeling the effects of global warming this year.”
This is false.
The idea that any given country is heating up faster than the rest of the world has been done to death, and has been claimed for just about every single country on the planet.
It should be obvious that every place on Earth cannot be warming faster than the rest of the world.
Scientists are selecting regions and comparing them independently over different time frames, using different datasets and methods and whatever time frame is most optimal to show the most warming.
This makes these comparisons worthless.
For the United States, the Climate Reference Network stations record of high-temperature anomalies, e.g., extreme heat, has not shown an increase in those high-temperature events since the best records began in 2005. (See figure below)
According to longer-term data, heat waves in the U.S. today areless frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s, as seen below:
Likewise, as discussed in this Climate Realism post, the change in the number of days with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit has declined for the majority of the country. Only 10 U.S. states show an increasing trend.
Even looking at proxy data globally, which gives an idea of ancient temperatures, does not indicate we are in a period that can be described as ‘the hottest on record’.
Today’s temperatures according to some sources appear similar to that of the Medieval or Roman warm periods, roughly 1,000 to 2,500 years ago, respectively.
Media claims to the contrary are just propaganda.
The majority of the ‘abnormal’ warming from last year occurred in Antarctica, where temperatures remained well below freezing, but were simply “less cold” than normally occurred during certain months, particularly September.
A significant portion of last year’s heat globally was boosted primarily due to the natural El Niño cycle, which is known to bump up average temperatures for much of the globe.
This effect is easily traced in the temperature records.
This is not to say an average warming has not occurred over the past hundred-plus years, but it is not unprecedented nor is it alarming.
The Evie post proceeds to claim that aggression rises amid higher temperatures, writing “one of the most often overlooked corollaries is a rise in communal anger and aggression.”
The “heat makes people crazy” idea has been floated several times over the years, but even the article the Evie post links to admits that it’s likely heat is not the main factor in most of the studies that found aggression.
The social sciences and psychology experiments are riddled with uncontrollable variables.
Without attempting to conduct any studies, the plain fact that places like Florida and Mexico, the Bahamas, and other hot tropical locales are popular relaxation destinations seems to throw cold water on the hypothesis.
Why would anyone go someplace that makes them angrier or more aggressive for a vacation?
Discomfort can be aggravating, certainly, but it’s not just higher temperatures alone. Ferguson then gets to the claim that mental health professionals are “seeing more patients come in with symptoms of climate change anxiety, which is supposedly the root of many activists’ anger when it comes to large families.”
Climate Realism has written extensively about how misleading the ‘climate anxiety’ diagnosis is here, here, and here, for example, often shifting the blame from the true culprits.
Something like “climate anxiety” does exist – but it is a media-driven phenomenon because of the constant drumbeat of impending doom, not from any actual lived experience of warming.
Constant media coverage telling people that we are hurtling towards “global boiling,” that every weather extreme is because of you and your neighbor’s use of gasoline, including from typically conservative publications like Evie Magazine, is what’s causing anxiety in people.
While Evie is right that climate activists should not turn their ire on big, traditional families, they are wrong that climate anxiety is a legitimate phenomenon.
https://principia-scientific.com/climate-change-is-not-causing-anxiety-but-the-media-is/
****************************************************Kamala campaign flip-flops on EV mandates
A campaign official for Kamala Harris said Tuesday that it is a “lie” that the vice president Kamala Harris supports implementing an electric vehicle mandate, even though she cosponsored legislation doing exactly that in 2019.
Harris’s director of rapid response, Ammar Moussa, wrote in a campaign email ahead of Trump running mate J.D. Vance’s remarks on the economy in Michigan that the Ohio senator would “undoubtedly lie, gaslight, and try to run away from the truth.” One such lie, he cautioned, is that “Vice President Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle.”
“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Moussa claimed, before citing several news stories that argued the Biden administration only incentivized, rather than mandated, electric vehicle production by car manufacturers. The administration spent billions to build just a handful of electric vehicle chargers and introduced tax credits for electric vehicle purchases. In addition, however, the Biden administration pushed through a new tailpipe emissions rule through the Environmental Protection Agency that would force car manufacturers to significantly scale back production of gas-powered cars. “The regulation would essentially require automakers to sell more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution,” the New York Times reported in March.
Even more damningly, Harris also supported an electric vehicle mandate when she serves as the junior senator from California. In April 2019, months after announcing her bid to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Harris cosponsored the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019. The bill, which was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Mike Levin, presented “bold plan for transitioning the United States to 100% zero-emission vehicles.”
The original version of the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019 would require 50 percent of new passenger vehicle sales to be automobiles that use zero emissions — electric or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks. The bill would require all new car sales be zero emission vehicles by 2040, according to text of the bill and a press release from Senator Merkley’s office.
The legislation gave authority to the EPA administrator to issue an “injunction on the manufacture of any passenger vehicles other than zero-emission vehicles by a vehicle manufacturer” by 2040.
Harris supported an even more aggressive version of the legislation that would ban non-zero-emission vehicles by 2035, according to an archived page of her 2020 campaign website obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Harris’s campaign has also claimed that she no longer supports a fracking ban and other key policies of her 2020 Democratic primary campaign. Harris herself has not walked back any of these positions or explained why and how she changed her mind so radically in just one election cycle.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/kamala-campaign-flip-flops-on-ev-mandates/
******************************************************Pulling the Plug: State Regulations Force Bankruptcy of California Solar Company
On the one hand, the state of California has decided that it shall become an all-electric, all-renewable power state by, well, for practical purposes, next Thursday.
On the other hand, the state gives utilities a massive break on how much they pay home solar generators for their excess power, leading to the just announced bankruptcy of California-based solar system installer SunPower.
Welcome to schizophrenic Sacramento.
Monday, former industry leader SunPower filed Chapter 11 and said its remaining assets will be purchased by Complete Solaria for $45 million. Complete will also take over an undisclosed amount of SunPower liabilities as part of the deal.
"For nearly 40 years, SunPower has made solar energy more accessible to Americans, driven by our mission to change the way our world is powered,” said Tom Werner, Executive Chairman at SunPower. "In light of the challenges SunPower has faced, the proposed transaction offers a significant opportunity for key parts of our business to continue our legacy under new ownership. We are working to secure long-term solutions for the remaining areas of our business, while maintaining our focus on supporting our valued employees, customers, dealers, builders, and partners."
The failure of SunPower, say industry experts, is directly related to the changes made by the California Public Utilities Commission in December, 2022. Those changes involved, in part, cutting the rate new home solar system owners would be paid for their excess power by 75%, completely eliminating the financial incentive to install new systems (much of the industry’s appeal was the ability to say that household solar would eventually pay for itself.)
That is no longer the case.
Bernadette Del Chiaro, Executive Director of the California Solar & Storage Association, acknowledged that heightened competition and internal SunPower issues played a role in the bankruptcy but that it was California’s regulatory environment that was the main cause for the company’s demise.
The CPUC has “policies that disproportionately favor monopoly utilities like PG&E at the expense of solar businesses, consumers and the environment,” Del Chiaro said.
“SunPower is the largest solar company to fall in the past year, but it is far from the only casualty. Dozens of companies have gone bankrupt or left California since the start of the “net billing tariff” in April 2023,” Del Chiaro said. “In total, 17,000 jobs have been lost, sales are down 60%, and 81% of California solar companies remain concerned about their ability to stay in business.”
The reduction in the reimbursement was made, in theory, to maintain grid reliability as homes with solar, the utilities claim, do not pay their fair share to cover the “fixed costs” of operating the statewide grid.
“All this (was) in the name of a utility lie about a so-called ‘solar cost-shift’ which scapegoats California families and businesses who embrace energy independence and clean energy,” Del Chiaro said. “The truth is, PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric allow their spending to get out of control, ballooning their profits, and driving up electric rates.”
The utilities’ argument was similar to “why give electric cars a tax break when the use the roads as much as regular cars and don’t pay fuel taxes?”
But there is a difference – a big difference: cars do not generate power for the utility to then use and sell – solar systems do.
What the decision was actually like, though, is the incident in late 2022 which involved the state announcing its mandate that every new car sold in the state must be electric by 2025 and then – literally a few days later – asked electric car owners to not charge them because the power grid was too strained.
The millions of rooftop solar systems (including larger systems on commercial buildings and such) in the state provide about 10% of the total electricity used in California.
Considering the various electric/renewable energy mandates the state has imposed, the buckling of SunPower and the wobbliness of the entire industry could make reaching those already absurd goals impossible.
It took ten years to install the first million, five years to install the second million, and now installations are at a ten-year low,” Del Chiaro said.
It should be noted that the execrable Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) – even more so than the other utilities – has a direct pipeline into Sacramento regulators – some even used to work for the company – and politicians – it doles out millions, including money directly to people like First Partner Jennifer Seibel Newsom for her “films.”
PG&E (remember - the company pleaded guilty to actually killing people) to purposefully kick an evil but sadly not dead horse, has been expertly manipulating the levers of power in the capitol for more than a century (too bad they are better at that than manipulating actual power). And they - short of the Second Coming or the actual revolution – are primed to continue to do so for the next 100 years.
“Yes - A convicted felon dictates energy policy for California,” acidly noted Del Chiaro.
So, Go Electric! says the state…just don’t cost the utilities any money or any Sacramento leverage.
We’ll see how that works out.
https://thomas699.substack.com/p/pulling-the-plug
***************************************28 August, 2024
40°C in August? Why is Australia so ridiculously hot right now?
Blaming the heat on global warming is absurd. It is mere unprovable assertion. And note that is was as hot in 1910, long before the modern industrial economy was widespread
It’s winter in Australia, but as you’ve probably noticed, the weather is unusually warm. The top temperatures over large parts of the country this weekend were well above average for this time of year.
The outback town of Oodnadatta in South Australia recorded 38.5°C on Friday and 39.4°C on Saturday — about 16°C above average. Both days were well above the state’s previous winter temperature record. In large parts of Australia, the heat is expected to persist into the coming week.
A high-pressure system is bringing this unusual heat — and it’s hanging around. So temperature records have already fallen and may continue to be broken for some towns in the next few days.
It’s no secret the world is warming. In fact 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. Climate change is upon us. Historical averages are becoming just that: a thing of the past.
That’s why this winter heat is concerning. The warming trend will continue for at least as long as we keep burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere. Remember, this is only August. The heatwaves of spring and summer are only going to be hotter.
The Bureau of Meteorology was expecting many records to be broken over the weekend across several states. On Thursday, bureau meteorologist Angus Hines described:
A scorching end to winter, with widespread heat around the country in coming days, including the chance of winter records across multiple states for maximum temperature.
The amount of heat plunging into central Australia was particularly unusual, Hines said.
On Friday, temperatures across northern South Australia and southern parts of the Northern Territory were as much as 15°C above average.
Temperatures continued to soar across northern parts of Western Australia over the weekend, with over 40°C recorded at Fitzroy Crossing on Sunday. It has been 2–12°C above average from Townsville all the way down to Melbourne for several days in a row.
Bear in mind, it’s only August. As Hines said, the fire weather season hasn’t yet hit most of Australia, but the current conditions — hot, dry and sometimes windy — are bringing moderate to high fire danger across Australia. It may also bring dusty conditions to central Australia.
And for latitudes north of Sydney and Perth, most of the coming week will be warm.
What’s causing the winter warmth?
In recent days a stubborn high pressure system has sat over eastern Australia and the Tasman Sea. It has kept skies clear over much of the continent and brought northerly winds over many areas, transporting warm air to the south.
High pressure promotes warm weather — both through clearer skies that bring more sunshine and by promoting the descent of air that causes heating.
By late August, both the intensity of the sun and the length of the day have increased. So the centre of Australia can really warm up when under the right conditions.
High pressure in June can be associated with cooler conditions, because more heat is lost from the surface during those long winter nights. But that’s already less of an issue by late August.
This kind of weather setup has occurred in the past. Late-winter or early-spring heat does sometimes occur in Australia. However, this warm spell is exceptional, as highlighted by the broken temperature records across the country.
The consequences of humanity’s continued greenhouse gas emissions are clear. Australia’s winters are getting warmer overall. And winter “heatwaves” are becoming warmer.
Australia’s three warmest Augusts on record have all occurred since 2000 — and last August was the second-warmest since * 1910 *. When the right weather conditions occur for winter warmth across Australia, the temperatures are higher than a century ago.
The warmth we are experiencing now comes off the back of a recent run of global temperature records and extreme heat events across the Northern Hemisphere.
This warm spell is set to continue, with temperatures above 30°C forecast from Wednesday through to Sunday in Brisbane. The outlook for spring points to continued above-normal temperatures across the continent, but as always we will likely see both warm and cold spells at times.
Such winter warmth is exceptional and already breaking records. Climate change is already increasing the frequency and intensity of this kind of winter heat — and future warm spells will be hotter still, if humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions continue.
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Kamala Harris Would Destroy Pennsylvania Energy Jobs
For the first time since she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket last month, Kamala Harris is on the defensive. That’s not because members of the media have asked her a single difficult question. They haven’t. It’s not because her running mate, Tim Walz, is a radical. Although, he is. No, the reason that Kamala Harris is coming under fire is because more and more Americans are learning about her radical record, and the more they get to know her, the less they like her.
That’s especially true for Pennsylvanians, particularly those living in the energy-rich northern and western parts of the state. Why? Because Kamala Harris is the most radical anti-energy presidential candidate in American history.
In her failed 2019 presidential campaign, for example, Harris promised to completely ban fracking, telling CNN, “There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking.” As a senator, Kamala Harris was one of the first co-sponsors of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s extreme Green New Deal, which mandates all Americans transition to 100% clean energy within the decade. And most recently, as vice president, Harris’ administration moved to take away Americans’ gas stoves, dishwashers and gas-powered cars.
Now, Harris is running away from her record. Late last month, in a complete reversal from her previous position, the Harris campaign announced that she would not ban fracking if elected. Since then, she has been quiet about her past as a climate crusader on the campaign trail. Her campaign aides say her energy policy is “strategically ambiguous,” which is a euphemism for “flip-flopping.” And, of course, the mainstream media hasn’t bothered to ask her about this complete 180-degree turn.
The Democrats are hoping that this half-hearted pledge will placate Pennsylvania voters just enough for Kamala to squeak by in this critical swing state. But setting aside the fact that Harris’ own record indicates she is lying through her teeth and will reverse course as soon as she enters the White House, don’t voters in the Keystone State deserve more than a meager promise that the president won’t upend an industry that is critical to their economy, culture and livelihoods?
The good news is that President Donald Trump offers a better energy agenda. During his first term, Trump unleashed the power of private industry and restored America’s energy dominance by rolling back unnecessarily burdensome environmental regulations. He made us the No. 1 producer of oil in the world while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He ended Obama’s war on coal, replacing the job-killing Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule. And he led America to energy independence as U.S. energy exports passed imports for the first time in nearly 70 years—including a five-fold increase in exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas, which the Biden administration subsequently attempted to ban.
If he’s re-elected, Trump is likely to restore these policies. One of his top five priorities according to his Agenda 47 platform is to: “MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!” And his past success suggests that he is the man for the job.
That would be welcome, especially in Pennsylvania, which tops the nation in liquified natural gas production, behind only my home state of Texas. In Pennsylvania alone, the natural gas industry powers 50% of homes, contributes $44.5 billion to the economy every year, directly employs 26,000 workers, and supports an additional 300,000-plus jobs across the state, not to mention the benefit that cheap energy has on reducing inflation.
Anyone who has lived in a part of the country where energy production is an essential part of the economy—such as southern Louisiana (where I grew up) or Texas (where I raised my own family)—knows that these numbers represent more than raw economic data. They are evidence of a way of life that has been around for generations. And they are indicative of communities such as Bradford County, Pennsylvania, that represent some of the best of what America has to offer: hard work, resourcefulness and making the most of the bountiful land that God has given us.
Kamala Harris is at war with this way of life found throughout the Rust Belt. Indeed, the vice president and other politicians who begrudgingly pledge not to ban and regulate these communities into oblivion always wind up breaking that promise once they’re in office. And why wouldn’t they? They don’t believe in the dignity of these small towns, and by flip-flopping in the first place, they’ve already compromised their integrity.
By contrast, Trump was and remains a champion for Pennsylvania’s and America’s energy industry. While the media desperately try to defend Harris as she flip-flops on policy and runs away from her previous positions, Trump can simply stand on his record.
https://www.heritage.org/energy/commentary/kamala-harris-would-destroy-pennsylvania-energy-jobs
*************************************************Critiquing the Shifting Narratives in Environmental Discourse
The Yale E360 article titled “As Drylands Greening, Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Are Fueling a Climate Conundrum” offers a clear example of the shifting narratives that have characterized environmental discourse over recent decades
While the dominant concern once centered on desertification—an issue that shaped both environmental policy and public perception—the focus has now shifted to the phenomenon of “greening.”
This greening, attributed largely to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), would seemingly be a positive development, especially in regions historically threatened by desertification.
However, the article frames this development as a new source of anxiety, reflecting a broader trend in climate discourse where any environmental change, regardless of its nature, is often depicted as a potential crisis.
Here, I critique the article’s approach, highlighting its tendency to reframe environmental phenomena to perpetuate a narrative of continuous ecological danger, frequently at the expense of scientific nuance and objectivity.
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The Transformation from Desertification to Greening
Desertification, the process by which fertile land degrades into desert, was long regarded as one of the most significant environmental threats, particularly in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
It was a central concern in environmental science, policy-making, and education, where it was depicted as a looming catastrophe that could displace millions, exacerbate food insecurity, and trigger widespread social upheaval.
Yet, as the Yale E360 article discusses, recent observations indicate that many of these drylands are not succumbing to desertification but are instead experiencing increased vegetation cover—a phenomenon termed “greening.”
This change is primarily driven by the fertilization effect of rising CO2 levels, which enhances plant growth.
Intuitively, this should be welcomed, especially in arid regions where vegetation is crucial for preventing soil erosion, sustaining local agriculture, and supporting biodiversity.
However, rather than embracing this positive shift, the article portrays greening as a double-edged sword, speculating that it could lead to unintended ecological consequences, such as altered precipitation patterns or disrupted ecosystems.
This narrative shift is not merely a rebranding of environmental concerns; it reflects a deeper tendency within climate discourse to reinterpret positive environmental changes through a lens of fear and uncertainty.
The Problematic Framing of Greening as a Crisis
The Yale E360 article’s framing of greening as a “climate conundrum” illustrates a broader issue in environmental journalism and advocacy: the persistent portrayal of environmental changes as threats, regardless of their actual impact.
By casting greening as a potential crisis, the article aligns with a narrative that seems determined to maintain a state of alarm, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
This approach is problematic for several reasons. First, it undermines the opportunity to present a balanced view of environmental changes. Greening in drylands, driven by CO2 fertilization, is not without its complexities, but it also brings undeniable benefits, such as increased agricultural productivity and improved soil stability.
In fact, in 2007 the IPCC claimed that “yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020” in Africa. As usual, they got it exactly backward.
However, these positive aspects are often overshadowed by speculative concerns about potential negative outcomes, which are frequently presented without substantial empirical evidence.
Second, this framing risks alienating the public and eroding trust in science. When every change is framed as a crisis, it creates a “boy who cried wolf” scenario, where genuine environmental threats may be met with skepticism or apathy.
The constant reframing of environmental phenomena to fit a crisis narrative can also stifle scientific debate, as dissenting views or alternative interpretations are marginalized in favor of maintaining a singular, often alarmist, perspective.
https://principia-scientific.com/critiquing-the-shifting-narratives-in-environmental-discourse/
****************************************************Evidence Shows Great Barrier Reef Grew in Waters 4C Warmer 8,000 Years Ago
In February 2022 the green billionaire-funded Carbon Brief reported that a rise of 0.3ºC in the current global temperature would kill off 99.8% of coral with the rest going as a result of another 0.5ºC of warming.
The increasingly unpopular prints are full of similar tosh, despite the fact that sub-tropical corals grow happily between 24ºC-32ºC.
Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC rather than 2ºC would likely be the difference between the complete decline of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), reports the Guardian, quoting a United Nations report.
What decline we might ask following three stonking years of embarrassing record growth? Such great click-bait stories are endemic throughout the mainstream media – it’s just a shame about the facts.
A newly-published science paper reveals massive increases in coral on the GBR from about 8,000 to 6,000 years ago at a time when sea surface temperatures were 4ºC higher.
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The coral story, of course, is an excellent example of the numerous fear-mongering swindles being perpetrated to push the insanities of Net Zero.
Three years of record growth on the GBR – the highest in nearly 40 years of constant observation on the world’s largest Reef system – have simply been ignored by the mainstream media.
Even worse, there were attempts to deflect the excellent news this year by running a nonsense story from Nature that claimed “climate change” posed an “existential threat” to the GBR.
Temperatures at the Reef were said to be at their highest level for 400 years. All of this stuff is published when it is known that gentle and tiny rises in overall sea surface temperature are more likely to benefit coral than cause it long-term harm.
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27 August, 2024
Harris’s New Strategy: Equate Fighting Climate Change With ‘Freedom’
Very reminiscent of Hegel, the founder of Leftism. He had some funny ideas about freedom too
http://jonjayray.com/hegel.html
The Harris campaign isn’t offering details on climate policy but is framing the fight to protect the environment as one of patriotism.
Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned climate change just once in her speech before the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, wrapping it into her larger campaign theme of freedom.
After attacking her Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on abortion, Ms. Harris declared that along with reproductive choice “many other fundamental freedoms are at stake” in the November election. Those include “the freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis,” she said.
It was a novel way of framing climate change for a campaign that has sought to reclaim patriotism after decades of Republicans seeming to own the messaging around freedom. And it was a message echoed by others throughout the night, including Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida, the youngest member of Congress, who declared in a speech earlier in the evening that “fighting the climate crisis is patriotic.”
Ms. Harris has not offered any new policies for addressing climate change.
She also has talked about climate on the campaign trail far less frequently than President Joe Biden did when he ran for president. In his 2020 acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Biden called climate change an “existential threat” and said, “It’s not only a crisis, it’s an enormous opportunity. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.”
In a significant departure from the 2020 presidential campaign, climate groups this year haven’t pressed the Democratic nominee to be more outspoken on the issue. That may be in part because Ms. Harris appears to already have the support of voters who put climate at the top of their election priorities. A new poll of swing state voters from the Environmental Voter Project shows that younger voters, who were appearing to turn away from President Joe Biden, are more energized around Ms. Harris’s campaign.
“We know that the Harris-Walz administration will work tirelessly to ensure that all people in this country are free to breath clean air, drink clean water and live in a healthy climate,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters.
Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group, said in a statement, “We’ve moved beyond simply counting mentions of climate change.” Instead, “we’re seeing climate woven throughout the convention.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/climate/kamala-harris-climate-strategy.html
**************************************************Floating Offshore Wind - A Financial Catastrophe
When it comes to looming financial and environmental catastrophes, nothing can compare to floating offshore wind. It is energy policy at its worst.
In an analysis earlier this year (WC #36), using cost estimates published by a European energy consulting firm, I estimated the total project cost for floating offshore wind off the California coast at, best case, $13.6 million per megawatt of baseload-equivalent capacity. “Capacity” is an often misunderstood word. The “nameplate capacity” of a wind turbine might be 10 megawatts, but that amount of electricity is only going to be generated when the wind is blowing and the system isn’t down for maintenance. With intermittent sources of electricity generating technologies such as wind turbines, the “yield” is what matters, and that is unlikely to ever exceed 40 percent, even offshore.
Taking into account intermittency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates a construction cost of $10 million per megawatt. But that estimate is for the less expensive “fixed bottom offshore wind with monopile foundations,” and not for floating platforms. As economist Jonathan Lesser, author of “The False Promises of Offshore Wind,” shared with me via email last week, “the technology for the cabling needed to secure the turbines to the floor and the cables to carry the electricity are in their infancy. I conclude that the EIA estimate for floating turbines is, in my view, pure fantasy.” Which is to say, more than $10 million per megawatt.
Another expert I was fortunate enough to reach is Gordon Hughes, a professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh. For the last several years he has been analyzing the performance of offshore wind in the North Sea and throughout the world. Here’s what he wrote to me in a recent email:
“I don’t believe the figures given by EIA – they have no basis in actual costs and performance, they are little more than optimistic guesses generated by lobbyists. No-one knows how to build floating wind turbines with a tip height of 220 or 250 meters. The rotational forces in high winds are huge and the only way to stabilize them are to build huge concrete/steel platforms. I have no idea where they would be built on the West Coast and I doubt that towing them across the Pacific from East Asia is viable. Could they transit the Panama Canal? The point is all talk of floating wind farms off California or Oregon seems to me to be ungrounded speculation. You could build ones with a tip height of 150 meters but that would significantly reduce both the nominal capacity and capacity factor for such turbines.”
At that height, still nearly 500 feet, nameplate capacity is only 2.5 megawatts per turbine. We would have to float 10,000 of these monstrosities in order to achieve the currently planned 25 gigawatt capacity off our coast.
As acknowledged in a Cal Matters report from July 2024, “The offshore wind industry must be created almost from scratch: a new manufacturing base for the still-evolving technology; a robust and reliable supply chain; transportation networks on land and sea; specially configured ports to make, assemble and maintain the gargantuan seagoing platforms; finding and training a highly specialized workforce; building a large transmission network where none exists and beefing up those that operate now.”
Compare that to the EIA’s estimates to construct other types of electricity generating plants. A natural gas fueled electricity generating plant with 95 percent carbon capture will only cost $2.4 million per megawatt. Advanced nuclear: $7.8 million per megawatt. Small modular nuclear: $8.9 million per megawatt. Geothermal: $3.9 million per megawatt.
Imagine the scene if this abominable scheme ever comes to full fruition. To produce 25 gigawatts of capacity would require at least 2,500 wind turbines floating approximately 20 miles offshore. To have a capacity per turbine of 10 megawatts, each of them would be approximately 1,000 feet high, and each of them would have at least three tethering cables hooked to the sea floor over 4,000 feet underwater. Each of them would also need an underwater high voltage cable that would somehow connect to the onshore grid.
Offshore wind is a terrible idea. There are plenty of alternatives, including the only slightly less unpalatable option of onshore wind. But the California Energy Commission pushes forward. The rhetorical bludgeon used to silence critics and empower the special interests poised to make a killing is predictable enough. From Cal Matters, here’s a quote from one of the CEC’s five commissioners. “‘I feel the urgency to move forward swiftly,’ said energy commissioner Patty Monahan. ‘The climate crisis is upon us. Offshore wind is a real opportunity for us to move forward with clean energy.'”
Clean energy does not have to require hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies and utility rate increases. Clean energy should not rely on technology that isn’t ready and components that can’t be sourced. And clean energy shouldn’t destroy the environment. Invoking the “urgency” of climate change without addressing the issues of cost, technology, materials, and environmental impact is a vapid and irresponsible but all too common tactic.
Let’s assume that we industrialize some of the most pristine stretches of the California coast and foul our offshore waters with between 2,500 and 10,000 floating wind turbines. We will have 25 gigawatts of new capacity, yielding 10 gigawatts of steady power once sufficient land-based storage assets are available. That equates to 87,600 gigawatt-hours. Even at $10 million per megawatt, which is a best case estimate, the total project cost will be $100 billion. To generate the same amount of power capacity by constructing new, advanced combined cycle natural gas generating plants with sequestration of CO2 emissions would cost $25 billion. That’s four times less expensive.
https://mailchi.mp/calpolicycenter/whats-current-issue-7859004
*************************************************High Costs Delay Denmark’s North Sea Energy Island for Second Time
Denmark has been forced to delay the construction of its planned North Sea Energy Island by at least three more years due to rising costs and high interest rates.
The artificial island was designed as a hub for collecting and distributing electricity generated by offshore wind turbines.
A government minister announced the delay on Wednesday, explaining the project is intended to supply approximately three million European households with renewable energy.
Danish Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told Reuters that the projected cost of investment for the energy island exceeded DKr200bn ($29.81bn), and also required nearly DKr50bn in state funding.
He declined to comment to the US news outlet on the cost increase from the project’s initial cost projections.
In June 2023, the country announced the first delay on the energy island, explaining that the cost of the project was too expensive.
According to Aagaard, rising interest rates and the cost of raw materials led to the project no longer being economically viable.
The project was initially set to be constructed without the use of subsidies, with Denmark and Belgium funding the project due to the positive impact on both countries’ energy landscape.
However, efforts to secure additional funding have been unsuccessful and Belgian authorities have refused to provide any more money.
If the project is redesigned to include a power link to Germany, this could secure additional funding from that country but would delay completion until 2036.
According to Power Technology’s parent company, GlobalData, installed wind power capacity was 827.3GW in 2021 and is expected to achieve a CAGR of more than 9% up to 2030.
https://www.world-energy.org/article/44250.html
****************************************************Wholesale prices surge as wind and solar output falls to zero in South Australia
Wholesale electricity prices surged on Monday morning in the southern states after wind and solar output in South Australia – the grid with the highest average share of the technologies – fell to zero soon after 7am.
According to various data sources, including GPE NEMLog2, the output of wind and solar fell to zero at 7.05am, just before rooftop and large scale solar kicked in to the grid. Wind output remained very low throughout the morning.
It is not the first time wind and solar have hit zero – they did so in June last year for a brief moment, according to GPE NEMLog, but the fossil fuel generators and the growing portfolio took full advantage and pushed the wholesale price towards the newly elevated market cap of $17,500 a megawatt hour in the absence of any competition.
Most of the fossil fuel capacity switched on this morning has been in the system for years, built to back the former coal generators and to provide the balance of power needs.
There are now also four operating big batteries – Torrens Island, Hornsdale, Lake Bonney and Dalrymple North with a combined capacity of around 500 megawatts and an average of one a half hour storage. More big batteries, with longer duration, are now being built.
On Monday morning, even though ample capacity remained in the system – demand was hovering around 2 GW in the early morning compared to the grid’s demand peaks of more than 3 GW – the generators and battery owners were able to bid the wholesale price towards the peak without competition.
The generators have been achieving similar results in other state grids over the past weeks and months, including in South Australia where the state is once again at risk of breaking the cumulative price threshold of $1.57 million, which will result in an automatic price cap being imposed.
The market cap is there to achieve at least some semblance of normality. The cost of generation – even at peaking plants – is likely to be in the order of $300 to $600 a megawatt hour, depending on fossil fuel prices – but the new regulations allow them to bid the price up to more than $17,000/MWh.
This is ostensibly to provide incentives for new peaking plants or storage to be built in the absence of a capacity market. That is designed as reward for the rare events when the supply and demand balance is very tight, but the lack of competition means that these price caps can be manipulated on a regular basis.
Even if just one megawatt is priced at that level, it flows through to all generation. The Australian Energy Regulator has written in great detail how plant availability and ramp rates are often manipulated to push prices into a higher price band.
South Australia is particularly vulnerable because it has little competition. Two of the big batteries are owned or operated by AGL, the dominant player in the market, while the Lake Bonney battery is owned by Iberdrola, which also owns one of the peaking plants. The other is Hornsdale, which is owned by Neoen.
By the middle of the day, prices had subsided towards the marginal cost of gas generation, as rooftop and utility solar provided the bulk of supply. But the fossil fuel generators retained pricing power.
Other states had a similar story to tell. In Victoria, the output of wind and solar fell to just 2.8 MW on Sunday evening, but at 8am the prices were pushed to the market cap of $17,500/MWh, even though demand was a gigawatt short of the peaks over the previous week and the market did not come close to soaking up available supply.
In NSW the story was repeated, with generators pushing the price to $17,000 MWh, even though demand was significantly less than Sunday’s peak when the prices were just $300/MWh.
Again, it was the lack of competition in the market – nothing to do with cost of generation or even long term pricing incentives. The federal government might want to look at the bidding practices of its wholly owned Snowy Hydro, which controls much of the peaking capacity that is deployed at such times.
The one exception was Queensland, where prices remained relatively low at less than $300/MWh, and the onset of solar soon pushed prices into negative territory.
Why were the prices moderate in Queensland?
Firstly because there was enough wind in the market to add some competition – Queensland wind is not correlated to the rest of the grid – and perhaps also because that state government owns the bulk of generation, and may have found other ways of rewarding its easily excitable screen jockeys.
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26 August, 2024
The terrifying scale of the green revolution
Many have been emotionally drawn to the green revolution in the belief that renewable energy will restore our personal and community independence. According to this, by investing in green technology, Britain will gain freedom from coal barons and gouging sheikhs, and deliver a grass-roots, democratic energy system. Ed Miliband played into this on Friday when he blamed the energy price cap being raised on the ‘failed energy policy we inherited, which has left our country at the mercy of international gas markets controlled by dictators.’
Others believe green energy represents the free spirit and harmony with nature. ‘What would you rather have in your neighbourhood?’, I remember being asked in 2005. ‘A little wind turbine swirling gently in the breeze, or a nuclear power station and pylons?’
The low energy density of wind and sun means that extremely large collection devices are needed
As it is turning out, and particularly so now that Ed Miliband is back in charge of energy policy after 14 years in the wilderness, the green transition means armies of gargantuan wind turbines on land and sea; great blue-black mirror of solar panels glazing over thousands of acres of farmland; a neurotic spider’s web of grid cables criss-crossing the country; and dozens and dozens of whining substations and vast Area 51-like compounds of shipping-container sized lithium-ion batteries.
As if that were not bad enough, it transpires that in spite of all this green industrialisation we will still require nuclear and conventional gas turbine power stations. We may not use them as much, but reliability is an issue with wind and solar, and therefore generators are needed to guarantee security of supply at times when the British weather fails to deliver. ‘Who knew, except everyone?’ as the Americans say.
Still, the sheer immensity of low carbon industrialisation is coming as an unwelcome shock to those who only a few years ago would have at least passively supported wind and solar development.
There was clearly a profound misunderstanding about the physical character of renewable energy power systems. But no one should in fact be surprised. The physics of renewable energy are inescapable.
While there is a substantial quantity of energy in the wind, the thermodynamic quality of that energy is very low. It is for this reason that there are no organisms that derive their metabolic energy from wind, an extraordinary fact given its widespread availability at unthreatening temperatures. Wind energy is simply too chaotic to support life.
Solar radiation is somewhat better. Indeed, outside the earth’s atmosphere it is of fairly high quality. But on the surface of the planet and seen from the perspective of a leaf or a photovoltaic cell it is hindered by atmospheric interference, clouds and airborne dust, and critically by the rotation of the earth. Plants do derive energy from sunshine, but they are relatively simple organisms, and they do not move rapidly or have complex nervous systems.
Some aspects of these simple facts about wind and solar energy flows are intuitively obvious but the critical implications tend to escape even those well versed in physics.
The low energy density of wind and sun means that extremely large collection devices are needed – enormous wind turbines with large blades, vast areas of solar panels. It is necessarily a capital-intensive and very expensive system.
A concrete example will make this clear. The 1,400 Megawatts (MW) Sophia Offshore Wind Farm on the Dogger Bank is currently under construction and will cover an area of nearly 600 square kilometres (it would just about fit into Middlesex). It is one of many major wind installations that the government is intending to drive through in its ambition to quadruple offshore capacity. We currently produce about 15 Gigawatts (GW) of operational offshore wind power. To meet this quadrupling of capacity, we would need around 30 more Sophia Offshore wind farms.
The Sophia will use the Siemens Gamesa SG 14-222 DD, one of the largest wind turbines on the market, with a generating capacity of 14 MW. It has three blades 108m in length, each weighing 65 tonnes. The nacelle, the box containing the generator at the top of the tower, weighs 500 tonnes, which Siemens proudly describes as a lightweight machine. Compared to other brands, this may even be true.
The overall height of the turbine is 252m, only 60m short of Britain’s tallest building, the Shard. It foundations will, according to Sophia’s own publicity, be 80 to 90m in length and weigh 1,200 to 1,400 tonnes each. The total weight of each turbine – blades, nacelle, tower and foundations – is likely to be nudging towards 3,000 tonnes.
Sofia will use 100 of these structures, so we can estimate that the wind farm alone accounts for about 300,000 tonnes of industrial equipment, mostly steel, some concrete, and fibre-glass reinforced epoxy in the blades. (For reference, a Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier weighs a mere 65,000 tonnes.) And this is before we have taken into account the offshore substations and the cables connecting each turbine and the shoreline.
Multiply all this by 30 to meet the government’s offshore wind targets, and you arrive at nine million tons of industrial equipment for the additional offshore installations alone. For scale, recall that the UK’s total annual production of steel is only six million tons, and you can begin to appreciate the magnitude of Ed Miliband’s plans for the country. This Wind and Sun King makes Louis XIV lookhumble.
The total manufacturing mass involved in Sophia is difficult for anyone outside the project to calculate, but the order of magnitude is clear: it’s huge, and regardless of your views on its beauty, it’s certainly not going to be cheap. Sophia states that its total capital cost is in the region of £3 billion, a great deal for an asset exposed to the North Sea and likely to have a short economic lifetime.
Onshore wind farms weigh less than Sophia’s marine leviathans but are of broadly similar dimensions. The Vestas V136 4.2 MW, for example, has blades of 76m and hub heights up to 166m, giving a total overall height of over 240m. The Eiffel Tower is only 60 meters taller. These are the sorts of devices that Ed Miliband now thinks acceptable next to rural dwellings.
But relative to their size, these wind farms do not produce much energy. Sophia, for example, will produce around six Terawatt hours (TWh) per year, according to the company’s website. Although this is unlikely to be maintained over the entire lifetime of the windfarm, this is still only equivalent to about 2 per cent of total annual UK demand for electricity. Given the sheer size of Sophia that really isn’t very much – only around 0.01 TWh per square kilometre.
Solar, as predicted from theory, is slightly better, but still abysmal. Mr Miliband recently overruled the recommendations of his own planning inspectors to consent to a 500 MW photovoltaic installation on 2,500 acres (10 square kilometres) of Suffolk farmland near Newmarket. It is about 15 miles long, and comprises around one million solar panels. In spite of the site’s gross magnitude, it will generate only about 0.5 TWh of electrical energy per year. This is a very poor exchange for the energy or food that could be otherwise grown on the land.
For comparison, consider the Sizewell B nuclear power station, also in Suffolk, and running since 1995. The site occupies a land area of about 0.5 square kilometres, less than a thousandth of Sophia’s area. Still, Sizewell B generates more energy, as much as 10 TWh a year. It is, very roughly, 1,500 times more productive than the Sophia wind farm, and 300 times more productive than the Sunnica solar farm when it comes to space. On this land use basis, Sizewell C, now under construction, can plausibly claim to be 1,000 times more productive than solar and 3,000 times more so than onshore wind.
That is typical for conventional power stations: they are small and highly productive compared to renewables. Correcting the severe physical defects of wind and solar generation requires capital equipment on the grandest of scales, and as a result the adoption of renewables results in a low productivity system which is intrinsically expensive and resource hungry compared to the fossil and nuclear alternatives.
Moreover, most of the extraction, conversion and delivery of renewables is at present manufactured by a fossil-fuelled global economy – primarily in Asia and in particular China.
But if, as the government seems to want, green equipment is produced domestically, then the costs will rise dramatically. In this case, is not even clear that there would enough of an energy return to justify the costs of a wind or solar project. The profit margin would be very thin, or even non-existent. At best, the renewable energy sector would not only be the largest consumer of its own energy output, but encompass the bulk of the British economy. Those owning green energy businesses would possess levels of relative wealth and power not seen since the gentry and aristocracy of the pre-coal economies of Europe. One imagines that this would be politically extremely controversial.
So, there is more to the industrial dystopia of wind turbines and solar farms than mere aesthetics and a counterproductive climate policy.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/the-terrifying-scale-of-the-green-revolution/
**************************************************Is there nothing the BBC won’t blame on climate change?
Since global warming first entered the public consciousness, it has been hard to avoid the impression that the BBC is more interested in persuading us to take ‘climate action’, than informing us about what might be happening with the planet.
The corporation’s bias has only worsened over the years. In 2010, the BBC’s governing body, the BBC Trust, launched a review of the ‘impartiality and accuracy of BBC science coverage’. A panel of supposed experts concluded that the science on climate change was now so clear that the state broadcaster no longer needed to grant sceptical voices equal airtime.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC interpreted this advice as meaning that dissenters should be heard very rarely indeed. Today, climate naysaying is all but absent from the BBC’s output. The Beeb has abandoned any pretence that climate is still a complex, hotly debated issue. Where public discussion ought to be, we now have a wave of propaganda.
This was led chiefly by the man at the head of the BBC’s climate output, Roger Harrabin, who was its energy and environment analyst from 2004 to 2022. Harrabin’s only qualification for the role was a fervent faith in the inevitability of climate catastrophe and a Cambridge MA in English.
Needless to say, Harrabin’s lack of actual scientific knowledge led to some less-than-accurate reporting. Harrabin spread wildly misleading information about fracking, and in 2018 criticised the government for not forcing people to stop eating meat. ‘The battle over climate change’, he wrote, ‘will have to get personal’.
Harrabin was gradually replaced by Justin Rowlatt, whose PPE degree makes him marginally more qualified than his predecessor. But he is, if anything, even more fervent in his environmentalist faith. The quality of the BBC’s environment output has, as a result, got even worse.
A flavour of the problem can be had by reading ‘Tall Climate Tales from the BBC’, Paul Homewood’s annual review of the BBC’s climate coverage, published last week by Net Zero Watch, of which I am director. This covers more than 30 of the most egregious errors in the BBC’s climate reporting throughout 2023. Some of which are so absurd as to be comical.
Last year, the BBC bizarrely tried to blame climate change for causing a crocodile to bite a woman in Indonesia. A drought, the story goes, forced the woman to walk to the village watering hole instead of the one outside her home. The crocodile then attacked her en route. The major problem with this, as Homewood points out, is that droughts haven’t really got much worse in Indonesia, regardless of climate change. In fact, rainfall has been increasing there since 1950.
Similarly laughable was the claim that it’ll soon be too hot to grow hops in Kent. According to a 2023 article, climate change is threatening to ‘call time’ on the ‘Great British pint’. The BBC neglects to mention that the world’s main producer of hops, Ethiopia, is a tad bit warmer than Kent.
Examples like these abound. The BBC says that ‘aircraft turbulence is worsening with climate change’. But according to the US National Transportation Safety Board, there has been no increase in severe turbulence accidents since 1989. The BBC claims hurricanes are becoming more powerful. But the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is no evidence that this is the case. The BBC went as far as to argue that a train derailment in Scotland in 2020, which killed three people, was the fault of a landslip caused by climate change. Aberdeen’s High Court subsequently ruled that it was caused by an incorrectly installed and poorly maintained drainage system.
‘Tall Climate Tales from the BBC’ only covers errors related to the climate itself, but the BBC’s coverage of climate policy, Net Zero and the energy transition is just as poor. In particular, the BBC repeatedly fails to question the mantra of ‘cheap renewables’. Remarkably, after years of renewables driving electricity prices ever upwards, the BBC still expects us to believe that deploying some more wind farms will bring them down again.
For two decades, environment correspondents have been able to ignore such awkward questions. But those times are coming to an end. The money to pay for Net Zero has all but run out and those competing demands for what little remains are becoming very insistent indeed. Meanwhile, housing and the welfare system are screaming for funds. Even our roads are in desperate need of repair.
We are hurtling towards an economic precipice. If we do hit rock bottom, people will surely ask how it was that nobody foresaw these problems. Why, they will ask, did nobody say anything? People did, of course. But the BBC, along with most of the mainstream media, has made sure the sceptical voices are never heard. Clearly, activism has almost entirely replaced journalism
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/23/is-there-nothing-the-bbc-wont-blame-on-climate-change/
********************************************A Critical Examination of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) Initiative
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative, a collaborative effort among various research institutions, claims to offer scientifically rigorous assessments of the role human-induced climate change plays in individual weather events.
Their work is often touted as groundbreaking, providing what they assert is concrete evidence linking specific weather phenomena—such as heatwaves, droughts, and storms—to anthropogenic climate change.
However, a closer examination reveals significant flaws in their methodology, conflicts of interest, and an overarching agenda that raises serious questions about the scientific integrity of their work.
The Science Behind Climate Systems: Chaos and Uncertainty
At the heart of any critique of the WWA’s methodology is a fundamental understanding of climate science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, states unequivocally in its 2001 Third Assessment Report.
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
This statement highlights the inherent complexity and unpredictability of the climate system, which is influenced by a myriad of factors, both natural and anthropogenic.
Given this complexity, the notion that any organization can accurately attribute the strength or occurrence of a specific weather event to human activity is, at best, highly speculative and, at worst, pseudoscientific.
The WWA’s attribution studies often involve running climate models with and without human influences, then comparing the results to determine the likelihood that a given event was caused or intensified by anthropogenic factors.
However, this approach fails to account for the chaotic nature of the climate system, where small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes.
Methodological Flaws and Questionable Assumptions
The WWA’s methodology relies heavily on climate models that are notoriously sensitive to initial conditions and often require significant assumptions to function.
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The sun is setting the renewables ‘superpower’ fantasy of the Australian Left
Renewable energy superpower status is supposedly in Australia’s grasp now the government has given Mike Cannon-Brookes the green light to export solar power to Singapore.
Tanya Plibersek announced environmental approval for the tech billionaire’s eccentric proposal last week, taking a swipe at Peter Dutton’s “expensive nuclear fantasy that may never happen”.
By contrast, the Environment Minister would have us believe Cannon-Brookes’s plan to siliconise the NT Outback is a done deal. All that’s left to do is raise $35bn in capital, install 120 square kilometres of solar panels, build a modest 788km transmission line to Darwin, and lay a 4200km high-voltage cable on the seabed, and we’re good to go.
The Sun Cable AAPowerLink project feels like it was stolen from a Heath Robinson cartoon: a convoluted, unnecessarily elaborate, and impractical contraption designed to accomplish a mundane task. It may mark the beginning of the end of the renewable romance, the point at which the transition to wind, solar and hydropower collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
There is increasing evidence the US has reached the point of peak renewables, as the pool of private investors shrinks and winning community approval becomes harder. Research by the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory showed roughly one-third of utility-scale wind and solar applications submitted over the past five years were cancelled, while about half of wind and solar projects experienced significant delays.
Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood says Australia's largest solar farm to date has been given the “green light” by the Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.
The US Department of Energy says the national electricity network needs to grow by 57 per cent by 2035, the equivalent of approximately 21,000 km a year. Last year’s total was around 200 km, down from just over 1000 in 2022.
Meanwhile, the challenges of grid synchronisation and storage remain unresolved, and the technical problems for offshore wind turbines, in particular, are mounting. Last week, turbine manufacturer GE Vernova announced an investigation into a blade failure in the 3.6GW Dogger Bank project in the North Sea off the coast of the UK. It is the third blade failure this year.
In July, a newly installed blade crumbled at the Vineyard Wind offshore plant, creating debris that washed up on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. At 107 metres long and weighing 55 tonnes, they are the most enormous blades deployed commercially. The failure of three in quick succession suggests the quest to increase output by installing ever-larger blades has reached its natural limits.
Yet the imperative of expanding generating capacity is hardening. The principal driving force is not electric vehicles but the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. AI requires at least 10 times the power of conventional computing programs.
In the US, data centres account for about 2.5 per cent of power and demand could rise to 7.5 per cent by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. In Ireland, data processing and storage use 12 per cent of electricity produced, forcing the authorities to limit the number of connections to the grid.
Silicon Valley has long abandoned the notion it can be powered by silicon photovoltaic panels while burying stray emissions in the Amazon forests.
In April, the tech giant Amazon paid the best part of $1bn ($US650m) for a sizeable block of land next to Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power station. It will be the site for a data centre powered by up to 480MW of carbon-free electricity delivered reliably around the clocky.
Shares in US nuclear power companies such as Consolidated Energy, Talem and Vistra have soared by between 80 per cent and 180 per cent in the past year. So-called green energy stocks, on the other hand, are static or falling, while coal is making an unexpected comeback.
In May, the Financial Times reported that the retirement dates for coal-fired power stations are being pushed back as operators become concerned about grid security. Allianz Energy has delayed the conversion of its Wisconsin plant from coal to gas for three years to 2028. Ohio-based FirstEnergy announced in February that it was scrapping its 2030 target to phase out coal, citing “resource adequacy concerns”.
The effect of AI on electricity demand was largely unanticipated at the beginning of the decade. AI chips will undoubtedly become more efficient, but there is no telling how much further the demand for AI will grow since the technology is in its infancy. Nor can we begin to guess what other power-hungry forms of technology might be developed by 2050.
What we do know, however, is that if Australia’s demand for electricity exceeds 313 TWH a year in a 2050, we’re in trouble. That’s the target the Australian Energy Market Operator has set in its updated blueprint for the great electricity transition.
As Chris Bowen points out, that’s going to take a lot solar panels and wind turbines. The Energy Minister says we need 22,000 new solar panels a day and a new 7MW wind turbine every 18 hour s just to meet our 2030 target of a mere 202 TWH. For the record, the speed of the rollout in the first two years of Labor government is less than a tenth of that.
One of the hallmarks of the anointed is an unwavering conviction in the integrity of their analysis and the effectiveness of their proposed solutions. They feel no need to hedge their bets by factoring in contingency arrangements should their predictions turn out to be wrong. Nothing in AEMO’s Integrated System Plan indicates its experts have given any thought to scaling up electricity production in line with actual demand, which may well be considerably higher than they’ve anticipated.
If they had, they would have to acknowledge that there are limits to the renewable energy frontier determined by energy density, the demand for land and the requirement for firming. The silicification of northern Australia cannot continue forever, nor can we expect to rely on China for most of the hardware and pretend there are no geopolitical consequences.
As for our nuclear-phobic Prime Minister’s dream of turning Australia into the Saudi Arabia of green hydrogen, while simultaneously sitting at the cutting edge of quantum computing, forget it. In 2006, as the shadow minister for the environment, Anthony Albanese gave a speech at the Swansea RSL on avoiding dangerous climate change.
“Why on Earth would we want to take the big health and economic risk of nuclear energy when we have a ready-made power source hovering peacefully in the sky every day?” he asked.
If Albanese doesn’t know the answer to that question 18 years later, he probably never will.
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25 August, 2024
Antarctica found to have 138 Underwater Volcanoes
Which accounts for a lot of the melting caused by "global warming"
If you check out images of Antarctica today, it might seem like one long flat sheet of ice (except for the mountains and cliffs, of course). Underneath, though, it’s a whole different story
The ice over the top of everything is an average of 1.4 miles thick, but beneath it are rocky mountains, volcanoes, and canyons that have been trapped there for millions of years.
Satellite data and radar surveys have made it possible to see the topography of the bedrock with startling clarity, and we have a pretty amazing map known as BedMachine Antarctica.
The map was the culmination of years of research by 19 different institutes around the world, including NASA, the National Science Foundation, Australia’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the British Antarctic Survey, to name a few.
Looking at it is like having X-ray vision, and the data from the map is a gold mine for scientific communities around the world.
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One of the biggest surprises the research uncovered was how huge the Denman Glacier is actually – more than 11,500 feet below sea level, making it the deepest point on continental Earth.
Professor Mathieu Morlighem, an associate professor at the University of California Irvine, issued a statement on the finding back in 2019.
“Older maps suggested a shallower canyon, but that wasn’t possibly; something was missing. With conservation of mass, by combining existing radar survey and ice motion data, we know how much ice flows through the canyon – which, by our calculations, reaches 3,500 meters below sea level, the deepest point on land.
Since it’s relatively narrow, it has to be deep to allow that much ice mass to reach the coast.”
The fact that Antarctica has volcanic tendencies also comes as a bit of a surprise to some, even though there are 138 volcanoes in West Antarctica alone.
Most are dormant, but around nine of them remain active to this day. Mount Erebus is 12,448 feet tall and is the southernmost active volcano on the planet.
https://principia-scientific.com/antarctica-found-to-have-138-underwater-volcanoes/
*************************************************Coming Clean on Clean Energy: It’s a Dirty Business
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the massive push to transition to green energy. The goal is to have wind and solar replace coal and natural gas; the electric vehicle (EV) will supposedly replace internal combustion engines. Directives are coming from the highest office in the land; the current administration has made green energy a large part of its agenda.
We are being told that these technologies are clean and will save the planet from climate change. However, these alternative forms of energy being espoused are riddled with their own problems.
Hidden behind the solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries are some dirty secrets that get swept under the rug and ignored by climate enthusiasts. Fossil fuels are constantly put under a microscope and condemned as an evil destructive polluter; green energy is typically put on a pedestal. Green energy, however, is not as perfect and wonderful as we are made to believe. Yet, we are putting a lot of trust into these energy sources, without considering their ramifications.
The American Consumer Institute just released a report detailing many of the environmental impacts associated with the so-called green energy forms being heavily promoted. The life cycle of all three—the wind turbine, solar panel, and EV battery—involve significant environmental consequences that should not be overlooked and need to be part of the discussion when implementing energy policies.
One of the biggest issues involved with these forms is the extraction and manufacturing processes of various critical minerals that are required for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. Many underdeveloped nations, where there’s an abundance of minerals, are at risk. The operations and procedures not only overtake land but contaminate surrounding soil and water sources. In the worst cases, this work is accomplished through slave labor.
Various toxins and other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, where workers and even nearby communities are potentially affected. Landscape is tarnished and various animal habitats are shrinking and/or experiencing stress. The massive amount of land occupied by both wind and solar may never be recoverable.
China dominates the green energy supply chains, but their environmental standards are subpar. CO2 emissions associated with refineries in China are 1.5 times greater than those in the EU or U.S.
All three energy sources are also creating a huge waste problem. Since any kind of recycling is very limited on a large scale, more than 90% wind turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries end up in landfills. By 2050 it is predicted that used turbine blades will exceed 43 million tons of waste worldwide. Solar waste is predicted to be close to 80 million tons. And with the U.S. projecting 33 million EVs on the road by 2030, that is a lot of batteries to end up in landfills.
Ironically, the same folks who want to charge customers for every plastic bag they use at the grocery store, out of fear of single-use plastics ending up in landfills, don’t seem to have a problem with potentially toxic machinery filling that space instead.
In a penchant for trying to solve one crisis, we are creating others.
Some of the environmental impacts and hazards posed by green energy are far more detrimental than fossil fuels, and yet the latter is often dismissed. Such risks associated with green technologies should actually be an argument against vigorous pursuit of them.
Each energy source, including fossil fuels, should be considered as part of an all-of-the-above strategy for supplying the necessary energy to power homes, businesses, and the U.S. economy at large. All of them come with some degree of environmental concerns, and each should be weighed and measured—along with costs, logistics, reliability, and geopolitical factors—when developing public policy. Instead of completely trying to phase out fossil fuels, a robust and healthy energy mix ought to be established; we need a balanced approach that does not breed additional problems.
It is past time to come clean on so-called clean energy. The real-life consequences and detrimental effects of it demand more honest conversations and a thoughtful course of action.
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Renewables will not magically make fossil fuels go away
Bjorn Lomborg
Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn’t happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies turns out to be unaffordably costly. We need to drastically change policy direction.
Globally, we are already spending almost $US2 trillion ($2.9 trillion) annually to try to force an energy transition. Across the past decade, solar and wind energy use has increased to their highest levels. But it hasn’t reduced fossil fuels – across the same time, we have added even more fossil fuels.
Countless studies show that when societies add more renewable energy, most of it never replaces coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of new green energy, less than one unit displaces any fossil fuel. Analysis in the US shows that renewable energy subsidies simply lead to more overall energy being used. In other words, policies meant to boost green energy are leading to more emissions.
None of this should come as a surprise to any student of history. During the transition from wood to coal during the 1800s, overall wood use increased even while coal took over a greater percentage of energy needs. The same thing happened when we shifted from coal to oil: by 1970, oil, coal, gas and wood all delivered more energy than ever.
Humans have an unquenchable thirst for affordable energy, which is required for every aspect of modern life. In the past half-century, the energy we get from oil and coal has again doubled, hydro power has tripled and gas has quadrupled – and we have experienced an explosion in the use of nuclear, solar and wind.
The whole world – and the average person – has never had more energy available.
The grand plan underpinning today’s green energy transition mostly insists that pushing heavily subsidised renewables everywhere will magically make fossil fuels go away. But a recent study concluded that talk of a transition is misleading. During every previous addition of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources”.
What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that have taken place across the past five centuries, such as when farmers went from ploughing fields with animals to fossil fuel-powered tractors. The main driver has always been that the new energy service is better or cheaper.
Solar and wind fail on both counts. They are not better because, unlike fossil fuels that can produce electricity whenever we need it, they can produce energy only according to the vagaries of daylight and weather. This means they are not cheaper, either. At best they are cheaper only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at just the right speed. The rest of the time they are mostly useless and infinitely costly.
When we factor in the cost of just four hours of storage, wind and solar energy solutions become uncompetitive compared with fossil fuels. Achieving a real, sustainable transition to solar or wind would require orders of magnitude more storage, making these options incredibly unaffordable.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government has approved Australia’s “biggest renewable energy project ever”.
Moreover, solar and wind address only a small part of a vast challenge. They are almost entirely deployed in the electricity sector, which makes up just one-fifth of all global energy use. We still struggle to find green solutions for most transport and we haven’t even begun with the vast energy needs of heating, manufacturing or agriculture. We are all but ignoring the hardest and most crucial sectors such as steel, cement, plastics and fertiliser.
Little wonder then that, for all the talk of the world undergoing an energy transition, even the Biden administration finds that while renewable energy sources will increase dramatically worldwide up to 2050, oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.
On this trajectory, we will never achieve an energy transition away from fossil fuels. This would require vastly more subsidies for solar and wind, as well as for batteries and hydrogen, and for us all to accept less efficient technologies for important needs like steel and fertiliser. But on top of that, a true transition also would require politicians to impose heavy taxes on fossil fuels to make them less desirable. McKinsey estimates the direct price tag to achieve a real transition at more than $US5 trillion annually. This splurge would slow economic growth, making the real cost five times higher. Annual costs for people living in rich countries could be higher than $US13,000 a person per year. Voters won’t agree to that pain.
The only realistic way to achieve a transition is to vastly improve green energy alternatives. This means more investment in green energy research and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, but also in storage, nuclear energy and many other possible solutions. Bringing alternative energy costs below the price of fossil fuels is the only way that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not just by the elite in a few climate-concerned, wealthy countries.
When politicians tell you the green transition is here and we need to get on board, they are really just asking voters to support them throwing more good money after bad. We need to be much smarter.
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Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
And LNG is a "Fossil fuel"
Manning Rollerson turned down a $20,000 offer in 2016 for the land he inherited from his grandmother in the East End, a historically Black neighborhood in Freeport, Texas, designated as a “negro district” in 1930.
After Rollerson refused to sell, Port Freeport, the government body responsible for the town’s harbor on the Gulf Coast of the United States, claimed eminent domain and took over his and other people’s land to expand its facilities. This was in part to accommodate the shipping of liquefied natural gas from the Freeport LNG export terminal that opened nearby in 2019.
LNG is a fossil fuel made by cooling natural gas to reduce its volume and make transportation easier and safer. Like giant seaborne camels, formidable ships fitted with bulging tanks depart from Freeport and four other Gulf Coast terminals to bring LNG to the world, including Japan.
Now, empty plots lie where houses and businesses once stood in the East End. “The city’s dead,” as Rollerson puts it.
Until 2016, the U.S. was sending virtually none of the fuel abroad, but a fracking bonanza, a price spike following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and growing demand in Asia are among the factors that have led to a surge in exports. Last year, the U.S. was the biggest supplier of LNG traded internationally, trumping Qatar.
“The value of an LNG cargo trading, say from the U.S. to Asia, went from essentially zero in (mid 2020) to over $200 million” after the start of the Ukraine war, says Sam Reynolds, LNG and gas research lead at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
Critical to the future of gas is a country that has very little of it. For over half a century, Japan has been a constant and sizable buyer of LNG, and its government, banks and energy companies have played a key role in continued investment in related infrastructure, including along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
That comes even as debate grows over just how big a role gas should play in the energy transition — both globally and in Japan — that is needed to avert far worse impacts of climate change than the world has already witnessed. And more immediately, residents of communities around these U.S. LNG facilities — in Freeport and elsewhere — have complained of the negative impact on their health, livelihoods and environment.
That puts a significant responsibility on Japan’s shoulders.
“Japanese companies have signed contracts to buy from six massive U.S. LNG projects,” including Freeport LNG, says Reynolds. “This may not sound like a big number, but they are really key players in getting this U.S. LNG off the ground.”
A Japan-fueled boom
In January, the frantic U.S. LNG expansion prompted the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to temporarily pause new export facilities that have not already been approved, giving the Department of Energy time to update its criteria. Legal battles over the pause are ongoing, but in practice the approval of projects covered by the moratorium are not expected in the near term.
The move has been hailed by climate campaigners and decried by Republicans, industry players and countries like Japan, with economy minister Ken Saito expressing concern that the pause could threaten Japan’s energy security.
Gas accounts for about one-fifth of Japan’s energy supply, making it the third-largest source after oil and coal, and it is used for 33% — the biggest share — of electricity generation. Most of this is imported as LNG.
Indeed, Japan is the world’s second-biggest buyer of LNG — surpassed by China only in recent years — and Jera, Japan’s largest power generator, is one of the companies that imports the most LNG globally. Although Australia is Japan’s No. 1 supplier, reliance on the U.S. is growing.
Japan imported 5.5 million metric tons of American LNG last year — only 8% of total purchases, but 34% more than the previous year — and a lot of Japanese public and private money is flooding into this sector. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC) are the first, second and third biggest financiers of LNG export projects in the U.S., respectively, having each invested anywhere between $10.7 billion and $13.8 billion since 2012.
Furthermore, Japanese companies such as energy firms Jera and Osaka Gas and trading houses Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui own shares in U.S. facilities, including Freeport LNG. They also have agreements to purchase large amounts of future LNG output — for example, Jera has signed on to buy 1 million tons of fuel per year from Calcasieu Pass 2, a planned export terminal in Louisiana where Calcasieu Pass LNG already operates.
But CP2, as the planned facility is known, has been stalled by the U.S. export freeze, as has Lake Charles LNG in the Louisiana town of the same name, in which Kyushu Electric Power is considering buying a 10% stake, potentially using a government loan.
Japanese public agencies have been instrumental in funding American LNG projects, enticing Japanese corporate buyers and investors and providing them with insurance. For example, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance spent billions to fund the construction of Freeport LNG and Cameron LNG in Louisiana.
Jera, MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC all declined to comment for this article.
Gulf Coast LNG is attractive because it offers an alternative to major suppliers like Australia and Qatar and because U.S. deals offer flexibility where others don’t, says Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. American contracts are not bound by destination restrictions, so the LNG can be used or resold anywhere without profit-sharing arrangements.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the economy ministry had requested that Japanese companies transact 100 million tons per year of LNG by the fiscal year beginning April 2030 — a target that has already been met, says Masahiro Naka, deputy director of the Energy Resources Development Division at the ministry’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
However, Finance Ministry data shows domestic demand contracted by 8% last year, while it is expected to shrink by one-third by 2030, according to IEEFA. The economy ministry estimates that Japan will import 56 million tons of LNG per year by fiscal 2030 based on its energy strategy — that is, if the government’s targets for nuclear and renewable energy activation are reached, Naka says, hinting that imports could remain higher.
Japan’s choice to buy more LNG than it uses now and in the future is underpinned by the need for a “flexible amount” to respond to fluctuations, Naka says. The fuel not used at home, currently about one-third of the total, is instead sold to South and Southeast Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Japanese government is strongly promoting gas usage in that region, including through initiatives such as the Asia Zero Emission Community.
“(Japan) have a very large fleet of existing coal and natural gas plants, decades and decades dominating trade in these commodities, technical expertise at all levels,” Reynolds says. “I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that this strategy is designed to maintain dominance in (these) markets.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2024/08/11/japan-us-lng-projects/
***************************************22 August, 2024
UK: Met Office “Dramatic Increase” Temp Claim Is Unprovable
Earlier this month, the Met Office claimed that ‘climate change’ was causing a “dramatic increase in the frequency of temperature extremes and number of temperature records in the U.K.”
Given what we now know from recent freedom of information (FOI) revelations about the state of its nationwide temperature measuring network, it is difficult to see how the Met Office can publish such a statement and keep a straight face.
The claims were the headline findings in the operation’s latest state of the U.K. climate report and are said to be based on “observations from the U.K.’s network of weather stations, using data extending back to the 19th Century to provide long term context”.
That would be the network where nearly eight out of ten stations are deemed by the World Meteorological Organisation to have ‘uncertainties’ – i.e., potential errors – between two and five degrees C.
The same junk stations that provide ‘record’ daily temperatures often in the same places, such as the urban heat furnace that is Heathrow airport. The same junk measurements that the Met Office uses to claim collated measurements down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade.
The WMO rates weather stations by the degree of nearby unnatural or natural temperature corruption.
Classes 4 and 5 have possible corruptions of 2°C and 5°C respectively and these account for the vast majority of the Met Office sites.
The WMO suggests that Class 5 should not be used to provide an accurate measurement of nearby air temperatures, yet nearly a third of the Met Office sites are classified in this super-junk category.
Only classes 1 and 2 have no uncertainties attached and only these should be used for serious scientific observational work. But, inexplicably, the Met Office has very few such uncorrupted sites.
Even more worryingly, it seems to show no sign of significantly increasing the paltry number of pristine sites.
Human-caused and urban heat encroachment are the problems, with extreme cases found at airports, which can add many degrees of warming to the overall record.
But this has been known for some time, and it is a mystery why the Met Office has not done anything about it. Recent FOI disclosures reveal that over eight in 10 of the 113 stations opened in the last 30 years are in junk classes 4 and 5.
Worse still, 81 percent of stations started in the last 10 years are junk, as are eight of the 13 new sites in the last five years.
It’s almost as if the Met Office is actively seeking higher readings to feed into its constant catastrophisation of weather in the interests of ‘Net Zero’ promotion. Whatever the reason – incompetence or political messaging – serious science would appear to be the loser.
As currently set up, the Met Office network is incapable of providing a realistic guide to natural air temperatures across the UK. Using the data to help calculate global temperatures is equally problematic.
Of course, the Met Office can rely on its helpful messengers in the mainstream media not to breath a word about this growing scientific scandal. The central plank of ‘Net Zero’ fear-mongering is rising temperatures and claims that ‘extreme’ weather is increasing as a result.
Temperatures have risen a bit over the last 200 years since the lifting of the mini ice age, the clue to the pleasant bounce being obvious to all. But this is not enough to force the insanity of ‘Net Zero’ on humanity, so fanciful climate models and bloated temperature databases are also required.
The compliant media are uninterested, but the cynicism and outright derision over the Met Office’s temperature antics are growing. The Met Office regularly posts on X and it cannot be unaware that a growing number of replies are less than complimentary.
Last week, it announced the “warmest day of the year” based on measurements taken at Heathrow.
The following are a few of the more polite comments it received:
What is it about LHR that could make it hotter than surrounding areas? I will give you a clue – concrete and hot jet exhausts maybe?
Real temperatures should be taken out in the open away from London.
…manipulating temperatures to fit the climate agenda.
Might as well measure inside an oven.
It’s all made up to fit your agenda.
I have a brighter red highlight in my fonts that I can lend you if you think the one you choose does not does not push the propaganda enough!
Remind us where you were taking temperature recordings in the last century, because it wasn’t on the roasting tarmac of airports.
Urban heat islands should not count and you know it but the grift continues.
In its recent annual report, the Met Office claimed that “our new analysis of these observations really shines a light on the fastest changing aspects of our weather as a consequence of climate change”.
It is not just temperature data that is brought to the ‘Net Zero’ table, but rainfall as well. The indefatigable investigative journalist Paul Homewood took a look at how the Met Office spun precipitation in a recent article in the Daily Sceptic.
He agreed with the Met Office’s claim that rainfall has risen since 1961, but asked why that year was chosen to start the timeline. The graph below shows why.
England and Wales are rainy countries, but their island position in the North Atlantic leads to regular seasonal, yearly and longer-term decadal variations. The year 1961 fell within a drier interlude, and current totals are similar to those around the 1930s, 1880s and 1780s.
Helped by the widespread availability of satellite images and measurements, the Met Office does an excellent job in forecasting short-term weather and is of great benefit to shipping, the military, agriculture and the general population.
But the state body funded by over £100 million a year is clearly riddled with ‘green’ activists who, on the evidence that a number of sceptical journalists have presented, are using unreliable figures, carefully-curated statistics and inaccurate measurements to promote their own attachment to the insanity of hydrocarbon elimination.
https://principia-scientific.com/met-office-dramatic-increase-temp-claim-is-unprovable/
****************************************************Facebook removes pro-nuclear energy content
Dozens of Facebook users promoting pro-nuclear lobby group Nuclear for Australia’s content have had posts removed for being “misleading”, triggering claims some people are trying to “suppress vital information that could change the future of our country”.
Months out from the federal election – in which nuclear will be a key issue – and after anti-nuclear groups had their content blocked or accounts temporarily deleted across social media platforms, Nuclear for Australia has received 44 complaints from supporters who have had posts taken down.
The users had shared a Nuclear for Australia petition to legalise nuclear energy and a video interview between the organisation’s founder, Will Shackel, and businessman Dick Smith supporting the energy source in June and July.
But a Meta spokeswoman played down the issue, denying it had censored the two posts The Australian was able to share with it.
“Based on the information available, we believe the content was removed due to a technical error by our automated systems. The error was identified and fixed in late July and all impacted posts were reinstated,” the spokeswoman said.
Facebook users were told their posts were removed because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way” and “your post goes against our community standards on spam”.
“We want you to share freely with others. We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe,” Meta says in an automated response.
Mr Shackel will email supporters on Wednesday asking for contributions to “help us bypass the roadblocks and bring the truth to light”.
“The truth about nuclear energy could transform Australia’s future but has been blocked from reaching the people who need to hear it most,” he says in a copy of the email.
“This isn’t just a minor inconvenience – it’s a clear indication of the political will of some to suppress vital information that could change the future of our country.”
Mr Smith, whose face and voice have been used in fraudulent ads online, said it was impossible for the government to legislate against removal of material but they needed to step in and treat Meta and other tech giants as publishers, ensuring they were liable for what they put on their platforms.
“You end up with this situation where they let through fraudulent ads run by criminal gangs but at the same time they delete genuine posts,” Mr Smith said.
Renew Economy, which posts clean energy news and analysis, had the same automated response from Meta as Nuclear for Australia did when a post sharing analysis by University of Queensland economist John Quiggin was removed on July 22.
The analysis was headlined “Czech nuclear deal shows CSIRO GenCost is too optimistic, and new nukes are hopelessly uneconomic” and found building two to four megawatt nuclear plants in Australia would “probably cost $50bn-$100bn, and not be complete until well into the 2040s”.
The Climate Council had a TikTok video hitting out at the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy taken down on July 21 for violating community guidelines of “integrity and authenticity”.
The video reappeared a few days later after a staff member appealed, saying the video was science-based and had been reviewed by researchers at the organisation prior to it going live.
The Climate Council says it understands TikTok pulls videos only after users lodge complaints and is investigating how many complaints it takes to get a post removed.
The Australian Conservation Foundation had its account on X suspended on July 22 for violating the social media platform’s rules “against evading suspension” after a user reported them.
The organisation appealed the decision and after the ACF made contact with an Australian-based employee at X, the account was switched back on that night.
ACF’s X profile was suspended for a second time on August 4 with no warning and was down for nearly two days, with the social media platform saying its account had been flagged as spam by mistake.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said at the time he didn’t always agree with the ACF but the suspension was “another outrageous example of social media trying to shut down voices for climate action”.
Mr Shackel posted on X: “Breaking: Australian Conservation Foundation has had its X account suspended. Perhaps the disinformation caught up with them …”
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety was examining the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society, including how digital platforms influenced what Australians saw and heard online.
“Digital platforms have a range of community standards, terms of service and policies to support the integrity of the information and accounts on their platforms,” she said.
“Debate on matters of public interest is a hallmark of our democracy.”
Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said social media platforms should not censor legitimate political debate, noting freedom of expression was fundamental to society.
“The last thing we need are digital giants telling us what we can and cannot say but the Albanese government sees things differently,” he said. “If its deeply flawed misinformation bill had become law, political censorship by big tech would have become rampant.”
Mr Bowen was approached for comment but his office referred The Australian to his previous remarks attacking the removal of Renew Economy’s Facebook post and the ACF’s X account.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said: “Labor and others should not rob Australians of their right to a mature conversation about the role zero-emissions nuclear energy could play in Australia as part of a balanced energy mix.”
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Ford cancels plans for Electric SUV
Ford Motor is cancelling plans for a large electric sport-utility vehicle and expects to take US$1.9 billion in related special charges and writedowns, as automakers continue adjusting their EV plans because of softer-than-expected demand.
The Dearborn, Mich., automaker said it is scrapping plans for an electric three-row SUV, citing tough pricing pressure as automakers resort to aggressive discounts to move their EVs. This spring, Ford had said it would delay plans for that model by two years, to a 2027 release date.
Ford instead will offer hybrid gas-electric versions of future large, three-row SUVs, a popular vehicle category that includes the brand’s Explorer and Expedition nameplates.
The company’s moves are the latest example of automakers unwinding EV-investment plans they made years ago, when it looked like there was big untapped consumer demand for battery-powered models. There has been more hesitancy among car shoppers than auto executives initially expected, with surveys showing concerns about high prices and finding places to charge.
General Motors last month pushed back the timeline on the opening of a suburban Detroit factory that is being renovated to build electric pick-ups and delayed the release of a Buick EV.
Ford also pushed back the launch of a new electric pick-up truck by one year, until 2027, the second time it has pushed back the timeline. In addition, Ford said it would trim its capital spending on fully electric vehicles to about 30% of its budget, from 40%.
“Based on where the market is and where the customer is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions,” Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said.
Ford shares rose 1.5% in midday trading Wednesday. The stock remains down 11% in 2024.
Ford has said its EV business is on pace to lose about $5 billion this year. In the three-month period ended in June, the automaker lost about $44,000 on every electric vehicle that it sold.
Executives have said the company is trying to reduce the losses on its current EV line-up while making sure future offerings turn a profit.
Carmakers are trying to strike a tricky balance on electric vehicles. Tougher tailpipe-emissions rules, along with the rapid rise of Chinese EV makers, are pressuring them to invest in the technology. But consumer interest in EVs has waned after a burst of enthusiasm.
For example, while Ford is recalibrating its plans to include more hybrids, it also is moving ahead with the rollout of several full EVs. It will start making an electric commercial van in 2026 and two new pick-up trucks a year later.
One of the trucks will be a midsize pick-up, built using a new, lower-cost EV system that has been under development for nearly two years by a team of about 100 Ford engineers in Irvine, Calif. Led by former Tesla executive Alan Clarke, that project is designed to produce several electric models that Ford says will be profitable and allow the company to compete with Chinese EV makers.
Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley has said that China’s EV companies have the advantage of a lower-cost supply chain and that Ford needs to find ways to lower its own costs to compete.
“We believe that the fitness of the Chinese in EVs will eventually wash over our entire industry in all regions,” Farley told analysts last month.
Ford said it would take a special, noncash charge of $400 million to write down expenses related to the cancellation of the electric SUV. The move also may result in additional expenses of $1.5 billion, which would be reflected as special items in future quarters, the company said.
GM and other traditional automakers also have pulled back or delayed some EV investments, citing slower-than-expected demand for vehicles that run on batteries alone.
Sales of fully electric models rose 6.8% through the first half of the year, according to Motor Intelligence data, a sharp deceleration from near 50% growth in 2023.
Meanwhile, sales of hybrid vehicles have risen sharply over the past year, and many automakers have said they plan to roll out more of them as an interim step for customers who aren’t ready to make the leap to a fully electric model.
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Huge Increase in Coral Produces Third Year of Record HIGHS on the Great Barrier Reef
Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coral cover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and is said to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reports have been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.
For the first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstream media ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend, something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises. Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature which uses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperatures around the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years. This time period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this is said to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropical corals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmer waters.
Natural bleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur with temporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientific observation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes in water temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose no threat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possible ecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth mass bleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “global heating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with the recent record growth.
A decade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of Net Zero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to have done much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.
Or the central area.
Or even in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.
To read the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story that the reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to the unproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It is claimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, a product no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that these heatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyone can know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperature recordings barely stretch back a few decades.
As is often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message is never far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survive these stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in global greenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development of interventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from the taxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.
Not everyone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbers have “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs in the world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he reports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some scientific organisations”. In his view, the public is being deceived about the reef. “How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintain funding,” he observes.
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20 August, 2024
Energy transition powered by wishful thinking
Changing an energy system is challenging. Governments have to ensure a reliable supply of electricity all day, every day. Ideally, in an orderly transition there would be like for like capacity replacement. The Albanese government has failed to balance the objectives of affordability and reliability as it embarked on its decarbonisation strategy. It legislated a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 that needs renewable energy to reach the 82 per cent target.
The government’s focus has centred on meeting these targets regardless of costs to households, the economy and our national interest. Legitimate concerns are described as the actions of “bad-faith actors” using “mistruths and outright misinformation”. Such comments may find favour in a speech to a sympathetic audience but do nothing to advance an important debate about our country’s future.
Any serious analysis of the energy transition should be grounded in fact, not wishful thinking. Let the facts speak for themselves.
Anticipating the loss of 90 per cent of our coal-fired generation in the next decade and with looming gas shortages, we need to ensure reliable baseload power into the future. The evidence shows the unreliability of intermittent, weather-dependent renewables. In July, the penetration of renewables in the grid fell to a low 10.2 per cent. It would be folly to believe you could rely on a predominantly renewables grid to power the economy.
Neither can there be any certainty about power prices with weather-dependent renewables. Across the past few months increased demand for heating has driven huge price volatility. Together with the lack of wind generation and a small number of unplanned forced outages, spot prices spiked to record levels.
On July 29 all the national electricity market regions registered simultaneous spot prices hikes at 18:00. The figures, expressed in megawatt hours, ranged from $3500 in Tasmania to $4092 in South Australia. The next evening at that time, prices rose between $15,600 in Tasmania and $17,377 in Victoria. At 20:15 the SA price reached $17,499.94 a megawatt hour. SA, with the highest penetration of renewables, took the prize for the highest prices.
So much for Energy Minister Chris Bowen trumpeting that wholesale power prices were falling. In the June quarter wholesale prices averaged $133 a megawatt hour, 23 per cent higher than the corresponding quarter last year. Far from receiving a cut of $275, prices have risen by 22 per cent, up to $1000, and will continue on this upward trajectory. Our power prices are among the world’s highest.
Energy poverty will continue growing as the costs of 10,000km of new transmission are still to be passed on in our power bills.
Last year, with falling investment in renewables, calls for greater government support grew louder. Bowen came to the rescue with yet another subsidy. His capacity investment scheme is based on taxpayers underwriting a vast expansion of 32 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Future risk will be transferred from investors in renewables to the taxpayer in secret contracts for difference. If revenues fall below the floor, taxpayers will fund the difference. Gas critical for firming and the viability of manufacturing was excluded from the scheme. We’re still in the dark about the total system costs of the transition, with estimates ranging from hundreds of billions into the trillions.
What are the aggregate costs from the public purse? Labor’s promise of transparency and accountability is undermined by non-disclosure and secrecy. Hopefully the Senate can pursue the public’s right to know.
There’s little progress to date in meeting the 2030 emissions and renewables targets. In Labor’s first year emissions grew by four million tonnes, a 0.8 per cent increase to June last year. Emissions across last year fell by a mere 0.5 per cent, registering a 29 per cent reduction below the 2005 base level. The Climate Change Authority’s 2023 report said the government “was not yet on track to meet its 2030 targets” and its policy agenda had “not yet translated into the emissions reductions we need”. Any claim the government is on track to reach a 42 per cent reduction, just falling short of target, is not based on fact, just wishful thinking.
Renewables have reached the halfway point at 40 per cent, with six years left to meet the target. The minister previously advised the 82 per cent target required installing 40 7MW wind turbines every month and 22,000 solar panels every day to 2030 as well as the transmission links. That won’t happen. Opposition in the regions is growing, even in Labor’s heartland seats, while social licence declines. Every transmission project is well over time, storage capacity is inadequate, Snowy 2.0 is delayed for years and battery storage limited to two to four hours.
There’s a lot at stake in this energy transition, so it’s necessary to see through the spin. According to reputable experts, the 2030 targets won’t be met. Despite this, the government is considering raising the 2035 emissions target to between 65 per cent and 75 per cent.
If we’re to avoid the pathway to economic calamity it’s surely time for a plan B informed by independent energy experts. The country needs an orderly energy transition plan that’s grounded in reality, not wishful thinking.
************************************************
Yet More Calls To Make Climate Skepticism Illegal
Given how rigid the official orthodoxy is when it comes to the public health ‘crises’, the ‘climate emergency’ and the supposed moral defects of Western civilization, it’s no surprise that the slur words of choice today are “anti-vaxxer”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “far right” and, not least, “climate denier”
The “climate denier” epithet is used to shut down rational debate on the climate with specious claims about “settled science”.
As the physicist Steve Koonin says:
“I find it particularly abhorrent to have a call for open scientific discussion [on climate change] equated with Holocaust denial, especially since the Nazis killed more than two hundred of my relatives in Eastern Europe.”
The scurrilous epithet resurfaced last week in an article in the Guardian entitled – cue shock, horror – “Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of U.S. Congress.”
How much longer will this heresy be tolerated?
In an interview on GB News with Andrew Doyle, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded the criminalisation of climate denialism. He said that “climate deniers” are “dangerous” for society and their scepticism about Net Zero “pollutes the discourse”.
Mr. Dale demurred in spelling out just exactly what sanctions should be applied to “illegal” opinions about ‘climate change’, stating that it would be up to politicians like Sir Keir Starmer.
That interview took place three months ago, and Starmer is now Prime Minister. Having moved from his previous role as the Director of Public Prosecutions to Parliament and then to the highest political office in the U.K., his response to last week’s riots has been to push for quick and harsh sentences, threatening freedom of speech.
Sky News reported on Thursday that a woman was arrested over a social media post on the Southport stabbing attack that killed three little girls and injured several others. Evidently, her media post was considered “dangerous” as she publicly shared a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the Southport killings.
The question of her intentions did not seem to be an issue in that arrest, although she still hasn’t been charged.
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the legal threshold from protected to unprotected speech is crossed when the words in question are “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and they’re “likely to incite or produce such action”.
Both those tests have to be met for the words to lose their protected status under the First Amendment, something known as the Brandenburg test.
In the U.K., the land of the Magna Carta, recent court cases suggest that no such test is necessary for criminal conviction for “stirring up violence” online or indeed even for believing in “forms of toxic ideology which has [sic] the potential to threaten public safety and security”.
The blurring of the line between “criminal thought” and criminal conduct is a sad reflection of jurisprudence in the U.K.
One day before the arrest of the woman who posted inaccurate information about the Southport killer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, warned:
“We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests…
You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false.”
UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a reporter in response to a question about Elon Musk supposedly “whipping up hatred” on X:
“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”
The purpose of blaming the riots on social media, of course, is that it deflects from the real issue: a great many Britons disapprove of the government’s complicity in the scale of the mass immigration of the past two decades.
That ‘thoughtcrime’ has fueled the riots in the country is reflected in the deluge of mainstream media headlines singing from the same hymn sheet:
Reuters: “Misinformation fuels riots”
BBC News: “Social media misinformation ‘fanned riot flames’ in North East”
CNBC: “Online disinformation sparked a wave of far-right violence”
Sky News: “Southport attack misinformation fuels far-right discourse on social media”
CNN: “U.K. riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm. It’s only getting worse”
Time: “Misinformation Stoked Anti-Migrant Riots”
In an Orwellian world where the carrying of machetes on the streets of British cities may more easily escape prosecution than the “far right thuggery” of “keyboard warriors”, Mr. Dale’s wish to criminalise “misinformation” about ‘climate change’ may come true.
Dis- or misinformation is whatever the state says it is. The moral crusade is the war over disinformation with little discussion of underlying policy issues. Policy choices supportive of a ‘Net Zero’ ‘fossil fuel’-free electric grid by 2030 are non-partisan “givens” – with little debate in or out of parliament – as the Covid lockdowns were when they were imposed.
Thus it is no surprise that the Counter Disinformation Unit which targeted dissent during Covid has been rebooted by the Starmer government as the National Security Online Information Team to monitor social media in the wake of the riots.
Will the reborn secretive Covid-era spy agency start ‘flagging’ social media posts that question Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State at the oxymoronically named Department of Energy Security and Net Zero?
Never mind that a ‘fossil fuel’-free electricity grid in Britain by 2030 – the interim goal enroute to a fully Net Zero Britain by 2050 – “is as likely as the second coming of Christ”, as David Starkey said in a recent interview.
Removal of climate contrarian posts on social media is bad enough on its own, but will it eventually become a prosecutable offense in the UK to point out the tension between ‘Net Zero’ and energy security, or to assert that ‘Net Zero’ policy targets constitute an onslaught on people’s standards of living and a denial of reality?
Will some future Britain sport an unelected offshoot of the judiciary, paid to hunt down, prosecute and jail those who dare to dispute the climate scam?
https://principia-scientific.com/yet-more-calls-to-make-climate-skepticism-illegal/
*******************************************Australia: Activists ‘stand in way of Indigenous economic empowerment’, says Roy Ah-See
Green activists are abusing land rights acts at the cost of economic empowerment and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is failing to listen to the Aboriginal authority on the lands of a vetoed $1bn gold mine, one of the most respected leaders of the Wiradjuri nation warns.
Despite her own department originally approving the project and the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council challenging the grounds of her decision, Ms Plibersek has said she declared an Indigenous protection order over a Regis Resources goldmining project near Blayney because of its importance to the Wiradjuri people of central NSW.
Ms Plibersek was holding firm on Monday as she came under attack from both the Business Council of Australia and the Coalition for her decision. BCA chief executive Bran Black warned of an investment drain and opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called the veto a “serious threat to economic development for Indigenous Australians”.
Last Friday, Ms Plibersek said: “Because I accept that the headwaters of the Belubula River are of particular significance to the Wiradjuri/Wiradyuri people in accordance with their tradition, I have decided to protect them.”
Roy Ah-See – one of the most senior Wiradjuri leaders on the national stage and the former chair of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council – said the Labor frontbencher was wrong to prefer the views of opponents over the written advice of the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Mr Ah-See said he was not speaking on behalf of the group, but wanted to speak up for the recognised cultural authority of the local land council.
“If it’s got the support of the local Aboriginal land council that should be enough for the minister to listen to the recognised Aboriginal party,” he said.
“If you don’t have that structure, you have chaos … We can have anyone ringing up saying they’re Wiradjuri and it doesn’t feel right to me. That’s why the land council is so important because in order to become a member there are certain requirements and restrictions. They are the statutory authority.”
Mr Ah-See said environmentalists believed Aboriginal lands should be locked up.
But economic empowerment for Aboriginal people in Blayney should come first, he added.
“The green attitude is that all our land should be locked up for environmental national parks and that wasn’t the intent of the NSW land rights legislation,“ the Wiradjuri leader said.
“The environmental view is that Aboriginal people should be environmentalists, that’s not true. That shoe doesn’t fit. We are balanced. It is about economic empowerment for us.
“We want to create economic opportunities for the future generations and we are not going to do that by locking up our land and using them as environmental corridors or offsets for other developers. That’s crazy.”
The BCA predicted an investment drain due to unwieldy planning and regulation in the wake of the Albanese government’s eleventh-hour decision to stop the $1bn goldmine.
? Orange Land Council’s own heritage committee “truth tested” claims about the impact of the McPhillamys project, finding “they could not be substantiated”.
“The proposed development would not impact any known sites or artefacts of high significance,” the land council wrote to the NSW Independent Planning Commission last year.
Mr Black said that if projects were approved under federal and state law they shouldn’t then be put at risk by activist inspired lawfare. This followed an extraordinary statement to the Australian Stock Exchange by Regis Resources on Monday, criticising Ms Plibersek’s decision to declare an Indigenous protection order over the project, despite the minister having approved it under commonwealth environmental laws.
The resources sector has warned of a dangerous precedent set by Ms Plibersek’s intervention last week to accept a section 10 application under the 1984 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Heritage Protection Act to protect the land on which a tailings dam for the mine had already been approved by the NSW and federal government.
“I constantly hear from CEOs that Australia is missing out on major investments because our planning and regulation systems are difficult to navigate, duplicative and cumbersome,” Mr Black said.
Sky News host Chris Kenny says resource projects being blocked because of “Indigenous heritage claims” has the mining industry “worried” about the sovereign risk of trying to invest in Australia.
“We need an approval system which balances economic, environmental and social benefits of projects and provides transparent decisions.
“If projects are supported by communities and meet all the approval requirements, they should not be put at risk by activist actions or lawfare.”
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No, Evie Magazine, Climate Change is Not Causing Anxiety
Evie Magazine, a conservative-leaning women’s publication, recently posted an article titled “Climate Change Anxiety Is A Cause For The Decline In The Birth Rate,” in which the author claims that human-caused global warming is leading to climate anxiety which misdirects its wrath at larger families. This is mostly false. Climate change is not producing anxiety so much as false and misleading alarmist media coverage is, but it is true that blaming large families for bad weather is equally wrong.
The article begins with writer Carolyn Ferguson claiming that “last year was the hottest year on record for the world,” and that the United States is somehow warming faster than the rest of the world, and that “many are feeling the effects of global warming this year.” This is false.
The idea that any given country is heating up faster than the rest of the world has been done to death, and has been claimed for just about every single country on the planet. It should be obvious that every place on earth cannot be warming faster than the rest of the world. Scientists are selecting regions and comparing them independently over different timeframes, using different datasets and methods, whatever timeframe is most optimal to show the most warming. This makes these comparisons basically worthless.
The fact for the United States is that the record of high temperature anomalies, that is, extreme heat, has not shown an increase in those high temperature events since the best records begin in 2005.
Likewise, as discussed in this Climate Realism post, the change in the number of days with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit has actually declined for the majority of the country. Only 10 U.S. states show an increasing trend.
Even looking at proxy data globally which give an idea of ancient temperatures do not indicate we are in a period that can be described as “the hottest on record.” Today’s temperatures according to some sources appear similar to that of the Medieval or Roman warm periods, roughly 1000 to 2500 years ago, respectively. Media claims to the contrary are just propaganda.
The majority of the abnormal warming from last year occurred in Antarctica, where temperatures remained well below freezing, but was simply “less cold” than normally occurred during certain months, particularly September. A significant portion of last year’s heat globally was boosted primarily due to the natural El Niño cycle, which is known to bump up average temperatures for much of the globe. This effect is easily traced in the temperature records.
This is not to say an average warming has not occurred over the past hundred-plus years, but it is not unprecedented nor is it alarming.
The Evie post proceeds to claim that aggression rises amid higher temperatures, writing “one of the most often overlooked corollaries is a rise in communal anger and aggression.”
The “heat makes people crazy” idea has been floated several times over the years, but even the article the Evie post links to admits that it’s likely heat is not the main factor in most of the studies that found aggression. The social sciences and psychology experiments are rifle with uncontrollable variables. Without attempting to conduct any studies, the plain fact that places like Florida and Mexico, the Bahamas, and other hot tropical locales are popular relaxation destinations seems to throw cold water on the hypothesis. Why would anyone go someplace that makes them angrier or more aggressive for vacation?
Discomfort can be aggravating, certainly, but it’s not just higher temperatures alone. Ferguson then gets to the claim that mental health professionals are “seeing more patients come in with symptoms of climate change anxiety, which is supposedly the root of many activists’ anger when it comes to large families.”
Climate Realism has written extensively about how misleading the climate anxiety diagnosis is, here, here, and here, for examples, often shifting the blame from the true culprits. Something like “climate anxiety” does exist – but it is a media-driven phenomenon because of the constant drumbeat of impending doom, not from actual lived experience of warming. Constant media coverage telling people that we are hurtling towards “global boiling,” that every weather extreme is because of you and your neighbor’s use of gasoline, including from typically conservative publications like Evie Magazine, is what is causing anxiety in people.
While Evie is right that climate activists should not turn their ire on big, traditional families, they are wrong that climate anxiety is a legitimate phenomenon.
As Ferguson correctly concludes in her piece, if someone decides not to have kids, “that’s their prerogative, but they should know this decision will likely have little impact on saving our planet.”
https://climaterealism.com/2024/08/no-evie-magazine-climate-change-is-not-causing-anxiety/
****************************************************18 August, 2024
Guardian Hypes Miniscule Amount Of Drax ‘Carbon’ Emissions
Last week, that bastion of accurate reporting; The Guardian, made a big deal about how much ‘carbon’ emissions the Drax power station produced
The article carried the headline ‘Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report’
It is not a long article, so I reproduce it in full:
The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report.
The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.
The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly three percent of the UK’s total carbon emissions.
Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report.
According to the Coal Countdown website, Ratcliffe is ‘fully compliant with current emissions regulations’, yet it is still being closed next month.
Issued in October 2001, the Large Combustion Plant Directive aimed to reduce ‘carbon’ emissions throughout Europe. The deadline of 1st January 2008 allowed plants that did not comply with the strict emission limits to opt-out, whereby they could operate for a further 20,000 hours or until 2015 at which point they had to close.
Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”
The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.
The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade.
Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant.
The company plans to fit ‘carbon-capture’ technology at Drax using more subsidies, to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) project and become the first “carbon-negative” power plant in the world by the end of the decade.
A spokesperson for the company dismissed the thinktank’s findings as “flawed” and accused its authors of ignoring its “widely accepted and internationally recognised approach to carbon accounting”.
“The technology that underpins BECCS is proven, and it is the only credible large-scale way of generating secure renewable power and delivering carbon removals,” the spokesperson added.
A government spokesperson said the report “fundamentally misrepresents” how biomass emissions are measured.
“The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is clear that biomass sourced in line with strict sustainability criteria can be used as a low-carbon source of energy. We will continue to monitor biomass electricity generation to ensure it meets required standards,” the spokesman said.
Climate authorities, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which provides official advice to ministers, have included BECCS in their long-term forecasts for how governments can meet their climate targets.
The government’s own spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that ministers have handed a total of £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards.
Mayo said: “Burning wood for power is an expensive risk that limits UK energy independence and has no place in the journey to net zero. True energy security comes from homegrown wind and solar, a healthy grid and robust planning for how to make the power system flexible and efficient.”
The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.
The article concludes with the usual Guardian guff about the planet never being hotter, and how only alarmist propaganda is ‘science’.
It should not be forgotten that human activity only produces four percent (39 billion tons annually) of the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 96 percent of it (920 billion tons annually) comes from natural processes, which we have no control over.
Achieving global ‘net zero’ would do two things. First, it would reduce the amount of CO2 by four percent, and second, it would destroy our civilisation, with the survivors eking out a subsistence-level existence without electricity, akin to where we were three or four hundred years ago.
If we did actually achieve ‘net zero’, nine out of ten people wouldn’t survive the first winter, but it seems this is what the powers that be wish to be our fate.
https://principia-scientific.com/guardian-hypes-miniscule-amount-of-drax-carbon-emissions/
*************************************************UK Leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch was in the north-east to hear where the Conservative government had "gone wrong"
Conservative leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch claims she didn’t back her party’s decision to extend the windfall tax on oil and gas firms – and accused Labour of “doubling down” on their “mistake”.
The former business secretary was in Aberdeen on Thursday as part of a UK-wide “listening tour” to hear where the Conservative government had “gone wrong”.
Speaking to the P&J, she warned Labour’s plan to increase and extend the energy profits levy will be “catastrophic”.
The MP admitted her former Tory government had made a mistake by extending the windfall tax by an extra year.
She said: “I think Labour is doubling down on one of the mistakes we made. “Where we got things right, Labour is not doing those things. Where we got things wrong, Labour is doubling down.”
She added: “I think Labour is operating on a mindset from the 1970s and 1980s, that if you just tax things, the money will come in freely. “They don’t understand that sometimes businesses will go elsewhere.”
The Conservative MP said she was keen to meet industries such as the oil and gas sector because she had a “different view when I was in government”.
On Thursday, she took part in talks with trade body OEUK, followed by a visit to Hunting Energy Services in Portlethen, and an event with members.
Badenoch hits out at GB Energy
Mrs Badenoch also dismissed Labour’s plans for GB Energy, a new publicly-owned clean energy company, which will be headquartered in Scotland.
Labour says it will own, manage and operate clean power projects up and down the country, backed by £8.3 billion over the new parliament.
“I have no idea what exactly it is they’re setting up,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Tory MP was also asked about comments by Scottish Tory leadership contender Murdo Fraser who took a brutal swipe at outgoing leader Douglas Ross.
He said the party had been failed by him and by the last three Conservative prime ministers.
Mrs Badenoch said: “It is clear that we are not in government anymore and that must be because we got some things wrong.
“Whether it’s specific individuals or specific policies, we should have a debate about that.”
The former business secretary is an early frontrunner in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/6553387/kemi-badenoch-windfall-tax-aberdeen/
***********************************************Extremist Special advisers on energy policy in Britain
Labour SpAd teams are coming together and beginning normal operation
Miliband is retaining his long-term advisers. Guiding the UK’s energy policy operation will be climate activist Tobias Garnett, the former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion’s legal strategy team who represented the road-gluing activists in court.
Garnett believes our trajectory is currently “descending swiftly into a politics of ecofascism forged in the crucible of scarce resources, droughts, floods, climate wars and forced migration.” Doesn’t quite sound like politics that will “tread lightly on people’s lives”…
Also on the team is Jonty Leibowitz, whose passion is arguing for socialist reforms to football that include:
A 100% tax “imposed on transfers from abroad“. Just like China’s…
Extra 2% tax on all transfer fees with higher rates from Premier League clubs.
To fix “the deep wealth inequalities between the men’s and women’s games“, introduce a “mandatory wealth tax or levy for all clubs which do not promote equal resource and pay for both games“. An own goal against your own national sport…
When it comes to his energy brief Leibowitz’ contribution is a policy paper which argues that “regional banking” should be forcibly re-oriented to “financing the energy transition“. Ideas shared by radical Corbynite and “green” bank devotee Miatta Fahnbulleh – recently appointed energy minister…
SpAd Eleanor Salter’s focus is “integrating nature into the climate offer“. Salter thinks a “fundamental shift” is required to deal with the “climate breakdown“, which includes “taking many cars off the roads altogether.”
Her other “nature” proposals include allowing anyone to traipse across private property to make “the countryside open to all” but especially to gypsies, whose “access rights are already under threat from the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which seeks to criminalise trespass.”
And who would have guessed that Salter once said our “best sources of hope” come from Jeremy Corbyn, and that Extinction Rebellion has been “hugely successful… a great accelerator for activism”…
SpAds are often relied on to temper the barmy ideas of their Cabinet Minister. No chance of that in Ed’s team…
https://order-order.com/2024/08/12/revealed-milibands-extreme-left-policy-team/
**********************************************Outrage as Aussies are slugged with "Sun tax"
A hidden 'sun' tax slugging Aussies who have made the switch to solar has been slammed by energy advocates as 'madness' and a 'rip-off', accusing energy companies of 'wanting to charge people' making energy from sunlight.
Distributors in some Australian states have moved in the sneaky tariff, known colloquially as a sun or solar tax, as households begin to embrace the shift to renewables in the hopes of power bill relief.
But the new measures will result in those households being slugged for sending the solar energy they generate back to the electricity grid during peak times - something providers hope will encourage households to store their self-generated power and use it, rather than hoping for a credit if it is exported back to the grid.
Renewable energy advocate Heidi Lee Douglas has been highly critical of the plan, saying it was 'not a bright idea' to penalise people for 'taking control of their power bills with cheaper, cleaner solar' during a cost of living crisis.
'Energy companies want to charge people with solar panels to make energy from sunlight, and that's simply not fair,' Ms Douglas, the chief executive of renewable advocacy organisation Solar Citizens, said.
'The new two-way tariff is a blunt instrument that charges people with solar panels for feeding their energy into the grid during the day, rather than supporting them to store their energy or feed it back into the grid at another time.
'Rather than stick people with penalties for not having batteries they can't afford in a cost of living crisis, households need more support to access the benefits of battery storage.
'People in NSW were absolutely furious, and Queenslanders will be livid when they find out more about the big tariff rip-off planned for households with solar panels.'
A sun tax refers to a new export tariff for customers using solar, part of a two-way pricing structure where users are effectively penalised for exporting solar-generated energy when the network is overloaded - such as in the middle of the day.
According to Canstar, the tariff also rewards people who export the energy produced by their solar panels back to the electricity grid during times of high demand.
Energy providers mostly pay households for electricity fed back into the grid in the form of rates called solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs).
Canstar states the tax is designed to prevent gridlock on electricity networks, encouraging households to use their own solar energy first, rather than sending it back to the grid.
Ms Douglas said one of the biggest impact of the sun tax was the message it sent to households thinking about installing solar.
She explained it would discourage them from doing so, saying: 'It's madness to charge people for sunlight.'
'What we really need to do in a cost of living crisis is accelerate the rate of rooftop solar installations by providing access to solar for those who have so far missed out - like renters, social housing, and apartments,' Ms Douglas said.
While the tariffs came into place in mid-2022, most households and businesses won't see any major change until next year.
This is due to distributors needing to submit a price proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to demonstrate why they need it.
Some distributors in NSW and the ACT have already outlined the changes and how the costs would look for the average household or small business.
Ausgrid, the largest energy provider on Australia's east coast, revealed they were imposing such a two-way tariff in July - charging customers 1.2c/kWh for the electricity they produce during the peak export period of 10am-3pm.
The company said customers would receive a payment of 2.3c/kWh for electricity exported to the grid during peak demand hours between 4pm-9pm each day.
In a statement, Ausgrid said they wanted to encourage customers to use their self-generated electricity while providing a 'safe, reliable supply' to everyone.
Solar batteries are widely viewed as a way to store the unused energy generated from solar panels - so it can be used at another time.
But the measure is costly, setting households back anywhere from $8750 to more than $20,000 depending on the scale of the battery and the provider.
The NSW State Government has said it will introduce a rebate starting at $1600 for battery storage systems from November 1.
Queenslanders will not be slugged with a sun tax until 2025 but the state government rolled out a rebate on home solar battery systems allowing people to offset the cost of purchase and installation.
However, it closed in May.
'The Queensland government must find ways of getting more households powered by solar and create the incentives to shift people into having solar and batteries,' Ms Douglas said.
'About 60 per cent of the community is currently locked out of the benefits of solar, including renters and people living in apartments or social housing, and they have among the most to gain from reduced energy bills.
It comes as data from the clean energy regulator reveals many of Sydney's outer suburbs are embracing solar and battery storage.
In Marsden Park, in Sydney's west, households are 87 per cent more likely to have these systems in place, followed by Tumbulgum and Tweed Heads at an uptake rate of 71 per cent.
But in more established suburbs across the state, those rates were far lower.
Only 2.9 per cent of dwellings in Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point, Rushcutters Bay and Woolloomooloo had solar energy and battery storage in place.
In Ultimo, only 4.8 per cent of households had embraced the new technology while Darlinghurst and Surry Hills had 5.3 per cent of dwellings taking up solar.
David Sedighi, chief operating officer of power solutions provider VoltX Energy, said these figures could be put down to government mandates for new home constructions.
'Energy savings aside, solar has made these new homes more energy efficient, enabling people to meet compliance for a Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) certificate,' he said.
'We know having solar makes a new home more attractive to prospective buyers in the future too, as the cost of energy increases.
'The so-called sun-tax where energy providers charge customers a tariff for rooftop solar exported to its network will also drive demand for batteries.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13753959/Sun-tax-solar-panel-green-energy.html
***************************************15 August, 2024
Climate Deniers of the World, Unite!
You have nothing to lose but your freedom
Given how rigid the official orthodoxy is when it comes to the public health ‘crises’, the ‘climate emergency’ and the supposed moral defects of Western civilization, it’s no surprise that the slur words of choice today are “anti-vaxxer”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “far right” and, not least, “climate denier”.
The “climate denier” epithet is used to shut down rational debate on climate change with specious claims about “settled science”. As the physicist Steve Koonin says: “I find it particularly abhorrent to have a call for open scientific discussion [on climate change] equated with Holocaust denial, especially since the Nazis killed more than two hundred of my relatives in Eastern Europe.”
The scurrilous epithet resurfaced last week in an article in the Guardian entitled – cue shock, horror – “Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of U.S. Congress.”
How much longer will this heresy be tolerated?
In an interview on GB News with Andrew Doyle, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded the criminalisation of climate denialism. He said that “climate deniers” are “dangerous” for society and their scepticism about Net Zero “pollutes the discourse”. Mr. Dale demurred in spelling out just exactly what sanctions should be applied to “illegal” opinions about climate change, stating that it would be up to politicians like Sir Keir Starmer.
That interview took place three months ago, and Starmer is now Prime Minister. Having moved from his previous role as the Director of Public Prosecutions to Parliament and then to the highest political office in the U.K., his response to last week’s riots has been to push for quick and harsh sentences, threatening freedom of speech.
Sky News reported on Thursday that a woman was arrested over a social media post on the Southport stabbing attack that killed three little girls and injured several others. Evidently, her media post was considered “dangerous” as she publicly shared a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the Southport killings. The question of her intentions did not seem to be an issue in that arrest, although she still hasn’t been charged.
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the legal threshold from protected to unprotected speech is crossed when the words in question are “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and they’re “likely to incite or produce such action”. Both those tests have to be met for the words to lose their protected status under the First Amendment, something known as the Brandenburg test. In the U.K., the land of the Magna Carta, recent court cases suggest that no such test is necessary for criminal conviction for “stirring up violence” online or indeed even for believing in “forms of toxic ideology which has [sic] the potential to threaten public safety and security”. The blurring of the line between “criminal thought” and criminal conduct is a sad reflection of jurisprudence in the U.K.
One day before the arrest of the woman who posted inaccurate information about the Southport killer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, warned: “We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests… You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false.” UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a reporter in response to a question about Elon Musk supposedly “whipping up hatred” on X: “Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”
The purpose of blaming the riots on social media, of course, is that it deflects from the real issue: a great many Britons disapprove of the government’s complicity in the scale of the mass immigration of the past two decades. That ‘thoughtcrime’ has fueled the riots in the country is reflected in the deluge of mainstream media headlines singing from the same hymn sheet:
Reuters: “Misinformation fuels riots”
BBC News: “Social media misinformation ‘fanned riot flames’ in North East”
CNBC: “Online disinformation sparked a wave of far-right violence”
Sky News: “Southport attack misinformation fuels far-right discourse on social media”
CNN: “U.K. riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm. It’s only getting worse”
Time: “Misinformation Stoked Anti-Migrant Riots”
In an Orwellian world where the carrying of machetes on the streets of British cities may more easily escape prosecution than the “far right thuggery” of “keyboard warriors”, Mr. Dale’s wish to criminalise “misinformation” about climate change may come true.
Dis- or misinformation is whatever the state says it is. The moral crusade is the war over disinformation with little discussion of underlying policy issues. Policy choices supportive of a Net Zero fossil fuel-free electric grid by 2030 are non-partisan “givens” – with little debate in or out of parliament – as the Covid lockdowns were when they were imposed. Thus it is no surprise that the Counter Disinformation Unit which targeted dissent during Covid has been rebooted by the Starmer government as the National Security Online Information Team to monitor social media in the wake of the riots.
Will the reborn secretive Covid-era spy agency start ‘flagging’ social media posts that question Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State at the oxymoronically named Department of Energy Security and Net Zero? Never mind that a fossil fuel-free electricity grid in Britain by 2030 – the interim goal enroute to a fully Net Zero Britain by 2050 – “is as likely as the second coming of Christ”, as David Starkey said in a recent interview.
Removal of climate contrarian posts on social media will be one thing. But will it eventually become a prosecutable offense in the UK to point out the tension between Net Zero and energy security, or to assert that Net Zero policy targets constitute an onslaught on people’s standards of living and a denial of reality? Will some future Britain sport an unelected Climate Change Committee sitting in judgement, Star Chambers-like, over climate deniers that congregate in secretive forums at 55 Tufton Street, that bastion of libertarian and right wing organizations?
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/13/climate-deniers-of-the-world-unite/
***************************************New UK government bets on green energy. Companies are wary
As Britain’s oil and gas giants scale back their global green-energy ambitions, the UK’s newly elected government is launching a multibillion-dollar effort to regain the country’s place as a global pacesetter for clean energy.
A new state-backed company, funded by increased taxes on oil and gas production, will invest in many renewable-energy projects around the country. Industry executives are split on whether the plan can meet the government’s ambitious goals.
Great British Energy has about GBP8.3bn, or around $US11bn, to invest in renewable projects over the next five years. Its mandate is to speed up the adoption of green energy to help the government hit its target of decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030.
That would require an enormous build-out of renewables across Britain. More than double the existing capacity of onshore wind, triple the solar power and nearly quadruple the offshore wind would be needed to hit the target, according to consulting firm Oxford Economics.
Britain’s dependence on energy imports has left it vulnerable to supply shocks in recent years. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a surge in prices, it prompted calls in the UK for the country to wean itself off foreign supplies, including by accelerating its green-energy plans. Britain generated 46 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources last year, government figures show.
“In an unstable world, the only way to guarantee our energy security and protect bill payers … is to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and towards homegrown clean energy,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a July statement that set out GB Energy’s plans.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has advocated a speedier shift toward homegrown clean energy.Picture: James Glossop/Getty Images
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has advocated a speedier shift toward homegrown clean energy.Picture: James Glossop/Getty Images
Since taking office, the new Labour government has ended a longstanding de facto ban on onshore wind power in England, approved the construction of three new solar farms and raised the amount of subsidies available for renewable energy this year by more than 50 per cent to a record GBP1.5bn.
Meanwhile, some companies are pulling in the opposite direction. Under pressure from shareholders, London-based oil giants BP and Shell have dialled back their green transition plans to maintain the typically higher returns that come from oil and gas production and trading.
In June, BP scaled back its plans for biofuels production in the U.S. and Germany. In July, Shell said it would pause construction work at a Dutch biofuels plant, casting doubt on the future of a facility the company had said would be one of Europe’s largest, churning out sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.
Executives of both companies have said they would continue to invest in low-carbon energy, but will steer away from capital-intensive projects that lack a clear path to the kind of profits that investors have come to expect from oil and gas.
Oil-industry executives have also voiced scepticism about Britain’s energy plans, which include increasing and extending a so-called windfall tax on oil and gas production to fund GB Energy. Companies have criticised the UK’s shifting tax regime, saying it hinders their ability to forecast returns on long-term investments.
“However this is played, the stability is key. More changes at the goalposts just undermines the element of stability that we would advocate for,” Shell chief executive Wael Sawan said in a recent interview.
Renewable-energy executives say they are hopeful that the government’s plan can help accelerate funding for low-carbon projects, the way the US Inflation Reduction Act spurred investment in renewable-power plants and battery production. Much of the incentive driving IRA-related spending comes from tax credits.
In Britain, direct government investment in low-carbon projects should reduce risks for investors and pull in more funds, proponents say. “We’ve already seen interest from discussions we’ve had with some of our investors,” said Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, a London-based renewable-power provider.
GB Energy’s first move was a deal with the Crown Estate, an entity that oversees most of the seabed around Britain’s coastline, to undertake early development work for offshore wind projects.
Efforts to reduce planning timelines for projects might be “a bit boring and gnarly,” but they are key to getting major renewable developments online, said Alistair Phillips-Davies, CEO of British power generator SSE.
For instance, a proposal to expand what SSE says will eventually be the world’s largest offshore wind farm has been held up over the past three years by snags in the permitting process. SSE is currently leading the development of the project in the North Sea.
While state-owned energy companies are relatively common in Europe, Britain already has a growing, well-funded renewables sector.
The UK has long had levers to stimulate funding in renewables, including a mechanism that offers companies a guaranteed rate for electricity, said Rob Gross, director of the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent institute that receives government funding. That mechanism is widely credited for propelling Britain’s offshore wind market to the second-largest in the world.
Renewable markets such as offshore wind and solar already have plentiful funding as well, said Michael Liebreich, CEO of consulting firm Liebreich Associates. GB Energy could be better utilised if it narrowed its focus on nascent technologies such as long-duration battery storage and floating offshore wind to signal the government’s commitment to those markets, he added.
Another concern is that GB Energy’s cash pile is too small to tackle the costly challenge of connecting green-energy projects to the UK’s electricity grid. More than 700 gigawatts of renewable projects are waiting for a connection, according to the UK energy regulator, around 12 times what the country currently has in renewable capacity.
The UK grid was initially built to deliver power from coal-fired plants to cities and industry. To hit the government’s green-power target, some 2,500 miles of new and upgraded transmission lines would be needed, according to data provider Aurora Energy Research. That would cost several times GB Energy’s budget.
Meanwhile, proponents of continued oil and gas drilling warn against potential new limits to production in the North Sea. The Labour Party had pledged in its election campaign to end new drilling licenses there, though it is yet to confirm its plans. The UK still sources around half its gas from the region.
“Their manifesto says oil and gas production in the North Sea will be with us for decades to come, so we’ll be reminding of that,” BP CEO Murray Auchincloss said.
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Dumb Head Girl Eco-Activist Explains How Best to Deal With Your “Climate Feelings” in Perhaps the Stupidest Climate Change Essay of all Time
Many valued readers advised against wading more deeply into Unlearn CO2, that doubtful and ridiculous tome of climate lunacy that first came to my notice a week-and-a-half ago. Why should we waste our attention on the ravings of crazy people, they asked? Surely, our time is better spent pondering what the well-informed, the measured and the mature have to say.
I understand the objection, but I must reluctantly disagree. Climatism is a political programme bound to a broad social movement. Most of its momentum comes not from The Science or The Experts, but from diffuse cultural forces that we should probably try to understand, if only because they are driving our entire civilisation straight into the ground. Against all advice, I will therefore steer the plague chronicle into this ridiculous quagmire of leftoid green babble, with a look at our first lesson in Unlearnings, namely ‘Unlearn Repression’.
This superficial and disorganised essay is the work of an infuriating young woman named Katharina van Bronswijk. She’s a psychotherapist best known for her 2022 book, Climate in Our Heads. Fear, Anger, Hope: What the Ecological Crisis is Doing to Us. It belongs to that genre of inevitably unreadable monographs in which the author herself appears on the cover, looking windswept, pioneering and undaunted:
“Climate feelings” are van Bronswijk’s niche in the extremely crowded enterprise of CO2-bothering. In ‘Unlearn Repression’ she argues that we should not suppress our negative feelings about climate change, but rather embrace them in constructive ways on behalf of the planet.
Now, van Bronswijk is the kind of deeply unoriginal person who just says the same things over and over. Everything she writes in ‘Unlearn Repression’ flows directly from Climate in our Heads; she’s been digesting, reheating and reworking this same overboiled intellectual artichoke for almost two years now, through various media interviews and even in this English-language TEDx Talk. Throughout this woman’s work is the vague anxiety that the climatists have perhaps overdone it with doom and gloom, and that a lot of people have had enough of hearing about a climate apocalypse that never quite happens.
Van Bronswijk is naturally very dumb, but more than that she is painfully condescending, oblivious, verbose and just awash in litres of estrogen. I defy anyone to read her work and not come away from it a raging misogynist. This odious overpromoted schoolmarm belongs out of sight in a childcare centre teaching young children the alphabet. Perhaps she should also be in a choir, or part of a local environmental club dedicated to collecting litter in parks. That our society has denied van Bronswijk and so many others like her these proper outlets for their instincts and instead pushed them into public activism and intellectual production itself explains a great deal of what is wrong with the world.
‘Unlearn Repression’ opens with some autobiographical details, because of course everything van Bronswijk talks about is all about van Bronswijk. Like so many Germans of her generation, she was radicalised by school climate propaganda – specifically, by her teacher’s fateful screening of that classic propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth:
Back then… I was happy for the welcome distraction of watching a film instead of doing normal lessons. But afterwards I was shocked and asked my mum for answers to all the questions and challenges. She didn’t have any solutions for me, how could she? I was alarmed and started to think about the impending consequences of climate change and what could be done about it. I found approaches in newsletters from NGOs and by reading up on animal and environmental protection… That was when my dream bubble burst and I realised: the world is unfair and, unlike all the Disney stories of my childhood, there will be no single heroine who saves the world. And there is no magical or technical miracle solution either.
Al Gore’s film so terrified the young van Bronswijk, that for a while she retreated into conspiratorial theories about why climate change is not happening, which qualifies our crayon psychotherapist to pronounce upon the psychology of those who deny the climate. This deeply evil and irrational movement is driven primarily by “white men” because they “still enjoy most of the privileges in our society, and therefore have the most to lose”.
The necessary change in our way of life and the upheavals of recent decades are threatening these privileges. We’re questioning the role of “men”, we’re questioning social narratives of superiority through gender, through academic attainment, through professional success, through the burning of fossil fuels… through the over-consumption of luxury goods. This is understandably unsettling and can trigger feelings ranging from anger to a sense of threat… for those who will have to give up their privileges in the future.
We are only on the third page of this abomination and already van Bronswijk is laying bare her ulterior motives. At first, she thought climate change was terrifying and she sought after reasons to doubt it was happening, but then she realised it was just great for sticking it to old white men, and so once again she was fully on board. Before even mentioning one single, concrete negative consequence of carbon emissions, van Bronswijk is deploring male “privilege,” and those advantages of the wealthy and the well-educated that climatism must sooner or later spell the end of. All of these villains will have to give up their “fancy cars”, they will have to go without their precious “status symbols” and those things they “consider especially masculine”. It is the standard, shopworn ressentiment of leftism in general, presenting merely a different matrix of justification.
This is a political programme that naturally inspires anger in people, and in this way we come to our first Climate Emotion. Sometimes, van Bronswijk writes, “our biographical background means that we tend to repress certain emotions and overcompensate with others”. Those “angry citizens” (“Wutbürger”) who vote for AfD are in fact dealing with feelings of “fear” or “insecurity”, which they repress by expressing “Anger at the Greens, at people who eat a vegan diet, who live in big cities, who are young, who have a refugee background, and so on and so forth”.
While this airtight pop-psychological analysis shows that the anger of the climate denialists is illegitimate, there is another kind of anger that we must embrace, if reluctantly. This is Climate Anger:
Climate anger makes us aware of the injustices of the world out there and our own limitations. For many, fairness and justice are extremely important values – and when there is a lack of inter-generational, social or global justice, this makes many people angry. A large part of the local population sees climate change as a threat and also the need for a transformation of our lives, and many want this transformation to be fair.
The problem, as van Bronswijk sees it, is that nobody can agree on what amounts to “fairness”, which opens “a great potential for conflict…. if people can’t regulate their anger and channel it constructively”. A lot of leftists really, really love anger; Antifa are some of the most murderously enraged people I’ve ever encountered. Alas, van Bronswijk’s schoolmarmery warns her against this more entertaining approach. She would prefer to “regulate our anger” and use it as a motivation to “sign up for projects in social justice, go to protests and support petitions”. That’s right, you might be angry that the earth is melting before your eyes, but the best thing to do about that is to self-soothe by… attending Friday lunch hour demonstrations, volunteering and signing things. It’s at least some comfort that if the climatists are ever out of power, their crack schoolmarm brigades will fight rearguard actions in favour of destroying the economy and our lives in the most tepid and ineffectual ways imaginable.
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Bumper crop of stories of BBC climate bias
Net Zero Watch has just published its annual review of the state of the BBC’s climate reporting. The author, climate and energy writer Paul Homewood, has had plenty of material to choose from, and his paper outlines more than 30 of the most egregious misrepresentations of the facts, with climate change spuriously blamed for everything from hot weather in Spain, sighting of rare bird species in England, to potholes in the roads.
Paul Homewood said:
The BBC produces so many ludicrous climate stories, the only difficulty is deciding what to leave out of the report.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
If the BBC wants to reverse the ongoing decline in its audience share, and the decline in its reputation as a reliable news source, it is going to have to start taking climate and energy seriously. Employing correspondents who are fanatical environmentalists, and then giving them a free hand, leads to coverage that is superficial at best and misleading at worst. Paul Homewood’s report shows just how bad things have become.
Tall Climate Tales from the BBC, 2023 can be downloaded from the Net Zero Watch website.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/campaigns/view-email/fVNtrUH0XuW0nNL3M_BYEwRYVPEMGN1ztR-EZEPNdogjlHOagY89WEAk8q-UN-NgKs5ppHc4pzRjZLxWcSsBtAk21bk1-wWQB9-z_vY4yYOO5haJZhpVY-9tmeQHJ28YkYkZX9EZa-q9GGKBgTDaiXmaT8Hh0yqxYKki_w== ?
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14 August, 2024
The Incestuous Green Blob
Introduction
Back in March, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee produced a report on long-duration energy storage (LDES). This report urged the Government to “get on with it.” Among its key recommendations were to ask the Government to “support no-regrets investments for hydrogen.”
However, some of the members of the committee have significant conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships that call into question the objectivity of the report and the integrity of Government.
What did the Lords LDES Report Say?
The Executive Summary of the report talks about “cheap” renewables and insists the prize for investing in storage is that the electricity system will be cheaper. We do not need to rehearse all the arguments against this statement again. It is sufficient to note that all existing renewables, whether funded by Contracts for Difference (CfDs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) or Feed-In-Tariffs (FiTs) are currently more expensive than gas-fired electricity, as most recently discussed here.
A grid that is solely or mostly powered by renewables will therefore be more expensive than a gas-fired grid. However, as wind and solar power are intermittent in nature, they require some sort of backup or storage to ensure that the grid can always meet demand. Adding storage adds extra capital costs to the system but does not increase the amount of electricity generated. This extra expenditure must therefore increase the full system costs of electricity. So, the opening premise of their report is wrong, calling into question the rest of their analysis.
They then go on to quote extensively from the Royal Society report on long term storage (dismantled here) which farcically suggested the system cost of a renewables plus hydrogen storage grid would be ~£60/MWh. However, this cost is less than half what we pay for renewables alone today and much lower than the prices being offered in AR6. The required electrolysers, storage caverns and generators will not come cheap and will further increase the system cost of electricity. It is likely that the true costs of a renewables plus hydrogen grid will be three or four times that suggested.
How Did the Lords Get it so Wrong?
It is worrying that such an eminent committee should get things so wrong. To understand how and why they made such a glaring error, we need to look at the composition of the committee.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge chairs the Lords Science and Technology Committee. Her register of interests shows she is also the chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). By pure coincidence, Baroness Brown is also a non-executive director of Ceres Power Holdings which describes itself as a leading developer of “electrolysis for the creation of green hydrogen and fuel cells for power generation”. Baroness Brown’s other interests include chairing the Carbon Trust and she is also a non-executive director of wind farm operator and developer Ørsted.
Seen in this context, it becomes easier to see why the LDES report is so enthusiastic about renewables and securing spending on hydrogen storage.
However, the web of relationships runs even wider. Professor Keith Bell acted as Specialist Advisor to the committee in the production of the LDES report. Professor Bell is also a member of the CCC having taken up the position of power sector specialist in 2019 and recently had his contract extended to April 2025.
Incestuous Links to Government
Baroness Brown also has strong links to the new Head of Mission Control at DESNZ, Chris Stark. After leaving his position as Chief Executive of the CCC, Stark was appointed as Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, which is chaired by Baroness Brown. Mr. Stark is also listed as Baroness Brown’s staffer on the House of Lords website.
One wonders if it is appropriate for one of the most senior people responsible for decarbonising the grid by 2030 should be a staffer for a Baroness and have such a close relationship with someone with such obvious vested interests in wind power and hydrogen.
We can see that the tentacles of the green blob have extended deep into the heart of the establishment and Government. One might term this situation a two-tier system of ethics. The extensive web of commercial interests and personal relationships makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the recommendations of the Lords Science and Technology Committee report on long term energy storage are tainted. It is also difficult to take seriously any recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee and the new Head of Mission Control. It’s so incestuous, seriously someone should check their hands and feet for extra digits.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-144503629
***************************************************The Economic Folly of a ‘Carbon’ Tax
The push for a ‘carbon’ tax has regained popularity as the fiscal storm in 2025 and ‘climate change’ debates intensify
Advocates claim it’s a solution to pay for spending excesses while reducing ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions. But a ‘carbon’ tax is a misguided, costly policy that must be rejected.
A ‘carbon’ tax functions more like an income tax than a consumption tax, capturing all forms of work, including capital goods production and building construction.
These sectors are heavy on ‘carbon’ emissions, meaning the tax disproportionately burdens them, stifling investment and innovation — much like a progressive income tax, but with broader economic repercussions.
For example, in the US, the construction sector alone accounts for about 40 percent of ‘carbon’ emissions. A ‘carbon’ tax would heavily penalize this industry, reducing its capacity to grow, generate new housing, and create jobs.
Moreover, implementing a ‘carbon’ tax involves massive administrative costs. The federal tax code is already complex and costly; a ‘carbon’ tax would exacerbate these issues.
Determining net ‘carbon’ emissions is a nuanced process subject to ever-changing and arbitrary federal definitions, increasing compliance costs for businesses and consumers.
A study by the Tax Foundation found that a ‘carbon’ tax would cost billions of dollars annually in administrative costs, a burden that would ultimately fall on consumers through higher prices, less economic activity, and fewer jobs.
The US economy is already suffering from regulatory costs of $3 trillion annually, including many energy-related restrictions, and the Biden administration has added more than $1.6 trillion in regulatory costs since taking office.
One core principle of free-market capitalism is that it comes with limited government. A ‘carbon’ tax contradicts this principle by expanding governmental regulation of everyday economic activities.
The tax revenues would also enable further overspending, though that’s questionable given the supposed purpose of the tax is to reduce ‘carbon’ emissions and, therefore, the taxes collected.
Furthermore, a ‘carbon’ tax could favor certain production methods over others, disrupting the level playing field that free markets thrive on and leading to inefficiencies and market distortions.
The government picks winners and losers by favoring specific methods, undermining competition and economic growth. ‘Renewable’ energy projects are likely to receive preferential political treatment, skewing investments away from the market’s more efficient, practical technologies.
Pigouvian taxes, aimed at correcting negative externalities, are often cited to support a ‘carbon’ tax. These taxes are named after economist Arthur Pigou and are designed to correct the negative effects of externalities by imposing costs equivalent to the external damage.
But they can be counterproductive as they are bound to be the wrong tax rate, distorting economic activity.
‘Carbon’ taxes fail to account for complex economic interactions and unintended consequences. The PROVE It Act, for instance, proposes a new ‘carbon’ tax framework but lacks a clear, consistent, and scientifically sound basis for implementation.
This uncertainty raises the stakes for economic disruption and consumer cost increases.
Another critical issue in the ‘carbon’ tax debate is ‘who decides?’
Climate science is ever evolving, and economic models predicting the outcomes of ‘carbon’ taxes are fraught with uncertainties. Placing high costs on consumers based on unsettled science and unpredictable economic impacts is not a prudent policy approach.
We should promote voluntary measures and technological advancements that naturally reduce emissions through market activity.
Importantly, the EPA does not consider carbon dioxide a harmful pollutant in the traditional sense, as it is essential for life.
We need carbon dioxide to breathe and enjoy a fulfilling life. This further questions the rationale behind taxing ‘carbon’ emissions, as it imposes undue economic strain in an attempt to regulate a naturally occurring and necessary element.
Even if America hadn’t been doing better than other countries that joined the Paris Treaty for goals on ‘carbon’ emissions, China (and India) aren’t interested, thereby putting more of the unnecessary cost of reducing these emissions on Americans.
Moreover, the cost of ‘carbon’ taxes can be significant. Increasing production costs leads to higher prices for goods and services, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income households — especially when they already suffer from high inflation.
This regressive nature undermines its purported environmental benefits, placing a heavier burden on those least able to afford it. For example, a $50-per-ton ‘carbon’ tax could increase household energy costs by up to $300 annually, hitting hardest those who can least afford it.
Countries implementing ‘carbon’ taxes, like some in Europe, have seen mixed results. Emissions reductions have been minimal, while economic growth has been hampered.
These policies often result in job losses and decreased global competitiveness, showcasing the unintended consequences of such interventions. For instance, France’s ‘carbon’ tax led to widespread protests and economic disruption, illustrating such policies’ social and economic challenges.
While the intention behind a ‘carbon’ tax — to reduce American ‘GHG’ emissions in an effort to combat global ‘climate change’ — is questionable in itself, the economic realities and principles of free-market economics prove it is a flawed approach.
With the fiscal storm likely coming next year, Congress should just say no to the PROVE It Act and the ‘carbon’ tax in general.
The bottom line is that increasing the government’s footprint through such a tax is neither conservative nor market-oriented. Instead, we should focus on market-driven solutions that encourage innovation and efficiency without imposing heavy-handed regulations.
https://principia-scientific.com/the-economic-folly-of-a-carbon-tax/
*******************************************************Who Is Directing the War on Agriculture and Nutrition?
By Paul Driessen
Elite billionaire organizations and foundations, government agencies and activist pressure groups are funding and coordinating a global war on modern agriculture, nutrition, and Earth’s poorest, hungriest people. Instead of helping more families get nutritious food, better healthcare and higher living standards, they’re doing the opposite, and harming biodiversity in the process.
The World Economic Forum wants to reimagine, reinvent and transform the global food system, to eliminate greenhouse gases from food production. Central to its plan is alternatives to animal protein: meal worm potato chips, bug burgers instead of beef patties, and meat loaves and sausages made from lake flies, for instance. Fixing the WEF’s toxic workplace is apparently a low priority.
A UN Food and Agriculture Organization report advises that turning “edible insects” into “tasty” food products can create thriving local businesses and even promote “inclusion of women.”
Created to alleviate global poverty, the World Bank has decided the “manmade climate crisis” is a far greater threat to impoverished families than contaminated water, malaria and other killer diseases, hunger, or even two billion people still burning wood and dung because they don’t have reliable, affordable electricity. It has unilaterally decreed that 45% of its funds – an extra $9 billion in FY2024 – will be shifted to helping the poor “better withstand the devastation of climate change.”
(The Bank has also decided that even more of its taxpayer funding – $300-million instead of “only” $70-million – should be gifted to the Palestinian Authority, which pays terrorists to murder Israelis.)
Of course, most of the better and lesser-known environmental pressure groups are also deeply involved in food, agriculture and energy policy campaigns: Greenpeace, Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Friends of the Earth, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way), Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and countless others.
Like the rest of the “agro-ecology” movement, they deride and malign modern agriculture as a scourge inflicted by greedy mega-corporations. They oppose fossil fuels, pesticides, herbicides and biotechnology. They extol “food sovereignty” and the “right to choose.” But their policies reflect top-down tyranny and bullying, with little room for poor farmers to embrace modern agricultural technologies and practices.
In addition to WEF, FAO and World Bank support, these hard-green organizations have the ideological, organizational and financial backing of the US Agency for International Development, EU agencies, and a host of progressive and far-left American, European and other foundations.
The US-based AgroEcology Fund was created by the Christensen Fund, New Fields Foundation and Swift Foundation. Its funding and programs are overseen by the New Venture Fund, which helps “charitable” and “educational” organizations direct funds to programs that align with what many characterize as neo-colonialist and eco-imperialist goals.
Other major players include the Schmidt Family Foundation, Packard Foundation, Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Ben and Jerry Foundation.
This is serious money – hundreds of millions of dollars per year in food, agriculture and climate change funding. It completely overshadows the piddling $9,000 that Kenyan farmer Jusper Machogu raised via donations to his “climate realism” website – much of it given to neighbors, so they could drill water wells, buy tanks of propane or get connected to the local grid.
And yet Mr. Machogu incurred the wrath of the BBC’s “Climate Disinformation Officer.” (Yes, the Beeb actually has such a position.) The CDO attacked him for “tweeting false and misleading claims” about climate change and saying Africa should develop its oil, gas and coal reserves – instead of relying entirely on intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar. Even worse, the farmer had the temerity to accept donations from non-Africans, including “individuals with links to the fossil fuel industry and groups known for promoting climate change denial.”
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is another major donor to agro-ecology outfits. It’s part of the legacy of guilt-ridden oil money from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. corporate trust – an inheritance that includes nearly 1,000 climate-related institutions, foundations and activist organizations.
As Canada’s Frontier Centre put it, “Every time you hear a ‘climate change’ scare story, [the person writing it] was PAID. He is a Rockefeller stooge. He may not know it, but his profession has been entirely corrupted.” Far worse, I would add, the writer and his (or her) organization are complicit in perpetuating global poverty, energy deprivation, hunger, disease and death – because the fearmongering drives destructive energy and food production policies.
Alone or collectively, these policy corrupters must not be underestimated in this war to preserve and expand modern energy, agriculture and global nutrition. Thankfully, there is increasing pushback. Many families simply do not want to be trapped in poverty, disease, mud-and-thatch huts, an absence of educational opportunities for their children, and a future of backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk labor in little subsistence-farming fields.
That’s especially so when films, news stories and cell phones present American and European farming equipment and practices – and the crop yields, wealth, health, homes, leisure time and opportunities that accompany those modern agricultural systems.
Poor farmers also see China, India, Indonesia and other countries rapidly industrializing and modernizing by using oil, gas and coal. They see rumblings of change in many countries that are intent on charting their own courses, with fossil fuels as the energy foundation for that growth. They’re rejecting the eco-colonialism and eco-imperialism that wealthy Westerners seek to impose on them.
They are getting the message that humanity has faced climate fluctuations and extreme weather events throughout history … and survived them, dealt with them, adapted to them, prospered. That there is no real-world evidence that manmade greenhouse gas emissions – especially the trivial amounts generated by agriculture – have replaced the powerful natural forces that caused past climate changes.
They increasingly realize that organic and subsistence farming requires vastly more land – which would otherwise be wildlife habitats – than modern mechanized farming, to get the same yields. Plowing those habitats would decimate plant and animal diversity.
That locking up fossil fuels, and relying instead on biofuels and plant-based feed stocks for thousands of essential products, would require even more acreage. So would mining for massive amounts of metals and minerals to manufacture wind, solar and battery technologies.
Most importantly, they understand that humanity today has far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies and resources than any past generations.
To suggest that we cannot adapt to climate changes, or survive and recover from extreme weather events, is simply absurd. To suggest that farmers should revert to … or remain stuck in … ancient farming practices and technologies – to save the world from computer-generated manmade climate disasters – is eco-imperialism at its most lethal.
South Africa’s electricity minister recently said his country will not be “turned into a guinea pig for a worldwide Green New Deal.” Hopefully, all developing countries will soon apply that same attitude to anarchists who would use the world’s poor as guinea pigs in global agricultural and nutrition experiments.
https://heartland.org/opinion/who-is-directing-the-war-on-agriculture-and-nutrition/
*****************************************************Australian Greenie antisemitism
Police were called to a Sydney council chambers on Tuesday night after a Greens-led pro-Palestine protest turned ugly, forcing the abandonment of the meeting amid safety concerns after Jewish speakers were targeted, before officers escorted out staff and councillors.
The protest, co-organised by Inner West Greens councillor Dylan Griffiths, had been weeks in the making and designed to whip up frenzied support for his Boycott, Divest, Sanction motion, described previously as a “campaign ploy” before September’s local government elections.
It comes after Anthony Albanese’s criticism of the party’s inflammatory rhetoric, and The Australian’s special report, ‘Greens Extremes’ which revealed how its grassroots members had prioritised “revolution” over rates, roads and rubbish at a council level.
About 100 protesters took to the Inner West council’s final pre-election meeting on Tuesday in Ashfield, which was adjourned three times due to the partisan crowd, before eventually being abandoned.
Decked in keffiyehs, speakers – all of whom were allowed to speak by Labor mayor Darcy Byrne, a break in protocol in an olive-branch move – included those behind the Prime Minister’s electorate office picket, and hurled epithets including “baby killers” and “Nazis” toward Labor councillors, and claimed that they were paid “blood money” and had “sold their soul to Zionists”.
The mayor was forced to abandon the five-hour-long meeting about 11pm after the motion, which sought to investigate cutting council’s ties companies or products associated with Israel, was voted down, prompting pro-Palestine chanting of “river to the sea”, shouts of “shame”, and swear words.
Labor’s eight councillors, including the mayor, who voted against the motion, were forced to stay in chambers – as were council staff and elected colleagues – before the police arrived and escorted them out to their cars, given safety concerns with the large and angry crowd.
One pro-Palestine activist rubbished concerns and the experience of anti-Semitism described by one Jewish resident who spoke against the motion, before she then evoked the mayor’s deceased parents, which drew an emotional call to order by a taken aback Mr Byrne.
The few speakers who spoke against the motion, understood to all be Jewish residents, were booed by members of the gallery and one was called “Ms Netanyahu” for saying that while she supported Palestine she felt a BDS policy would worsen local social cohesion.
Others waved Palestine flags in the faces of Jewish residents speaking against the motion while some gallery members made a triangle symbol with their hands, eyewitnesses alleged, which is often associated with Hamas’ inverted triangle symbol.
On Wednesday, Mr Byrne said the actions and behaviour of the gallery, and organising group Inner West 4 Palestine, were “extreme”.
“The intimidating and abusive conduct of this group was unsafe, dangerous and undemocratic,” he said.
“The harassment and abuse of Jewish citizens who attended the meeting was appalling and completely unacceptable.
“There is no place for racism or religious vilification of any group in the Inner West.
“Overrunning the council chamber and preventing democratic decision making from taking place is not a political tactic that should be normalised in Australia.”
It had been the longest public gallery in the history of the council and the BDS motion meant council’s anti-racism strategy was unable to be discussed or voted on.
The Greens’ new slate of candidates for September’s election were also involved, pictured seated in the front row as activists hurled abuse at councillors.
ALP insiders have previously said the Greens would routinely stoke tensions and encourage targeting of electorate offices and other forums, like seen at Inner West Council, before wiping their hands clean of any responsibility.
“They go ‘That’s nothing to do with us, we had no idea’,” one Labor source said.
It was a full-circle moment for the Inner West after Marrickville Council, which now makes up part of the Local Government Area, introduced its own BDS policy in 2011, but later revoked it after uproar.
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12 August, 2024
Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Battle: Seize Land for Green Energy?
A battle is underway in five Midwest states over construction of carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines as part of the green energy transition. Opposition to wide-area pipeline networks is rising from farms and communities. But utilities and state governments intend to seize land over landowner protests.
On June 25, the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) granted the petition of Summit Carbon Solutions (Summit) for a permit to build a CO2 pipeline across Iowa. The IUB determined that the pipeline was for “public use,” and granted Summit the right to seize land from Iowa landowners using eminent domain. Eminent domain has typically been used to take private land for government projects that serve a public good, but not for private industry.
Summit plans to build pipelines across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota to transport captured CO2 to deep underground storage sites in North Dakota. The cost of the 2,500-mile project is about $5.5 billion.
Summit seeks billions of dollars from the federal government. If the pipeline network becomes operational, the company will receive up to $85 per metric ton in tax credits under Section 45Q of the Internal Revenue Code. The firm intends to sequester up to 18 million tons of CO2 each year, to annually receive tax credits of over $1.5 billion. Summit claims to have signed agreements with over 2,700 landowners to build the pipeline.
Ethanol producers in the five states are interested in participating in the project. Captured CO2 from 57 ethanol plants would be sold to Summit, providing a revenue stream for producers. Billions in federal funds may also be available to ethanol plants that capture CO2. In addition, reducing CO2 emissions may allow ethanol producers to qualify their product as Sustainable Aviation Fuel for commercial airlines.
Supporters claim the project will deliver environmental benefits in the fight against climate change. Summit says the annual CO2 emissions savings will be equal to removing 3.9 million vehicles from our roads. But the project is fraught with feasibility and cost, environmental, and safety problems.
The feasibility and cost track record of CO2 capture is poor. There are 47 major carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) plants operating in the world today, and most are money losers even with heavy subsidies. Ethanol plants that pursue CCS will likely lose money, along with the taxpayers who provide the subsidies.
For example, the Quest CCS project operated by Shell in Alberta, Canada captures only 35% of the CO2 emitted from a chemical process to upgrade bitumen from oil sands. The capital cost of the project is $811 million, entirely paid for with C$865 million in grants from the Canadian and Alberta governments. The Quest CCS operation will cost $41 million a year to run with only $27 million per year offset in payments from carbon credit subsidies.
The environmental benefits from the Summit project will be tiny. CO2 captured from Midwest ethanol plants will do little to affect global temperatures. Today, all of the world’s operating CCS facilities capture only 0.1% of industrial emissions. Even the Sierra Club opposes the Summit pipeline and calls CCS efforts “false climate solutions.”
CO2 pipelines come with huge safety issues. Only about 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines exist in the U.S., compared to 84,000 miles of crude oil pipelines and three million miles for natural gas. Most CO2 pipelines transport liquified CO2 short distances to oil fields where it is pumped underground to force oil and gas to the surface.
CO2 in pipelines is a liquid under high pressure. If it leaks, it turns to gas as it rushes out. Since it is heavier than air, it stays close to the ground and can cover wide areas. CO2 is harmless in small quantities, but in large amounts, it is an asphyxiate, can force oxygen out of people’s lungs, and can cause headaches, dizziness, serious injuries, and death.
On February 22, 2020, a CO2 pipeline ruptured in Sartaria, Mississippi. The rupture occurred on a Saturday and spewed CO2 for about four hours. An invisible cloud of CO2 moved through the rural community forcing more than 200 people to evacuate and at least 45 to be hospitalized. Victims were unable to breathe and suffered unconsciousness and fits of shaking. No one died during the incident, but some victims continue to suffer ongoing physical problems.
As a result of feasibility and safety concerns, opposition to the pipeline is growing. Proponents and opponents battle in state legislatures and at public utility meetings. Counties in all five states have recently passed bans or restrictions on CO2 pipelines.
North Dakota regulators denied Summit’s application last August but have agreed to reconsider. Last month, Illinois passed a bill putting CO2 pipeline construction on hold until 2026. South Dakota regulators denied Summit’s application last September, but the legislature passed a package of regulations earlier this year that may aid approval of the pipeline network. South Dakota voters will have an opportunity to reject that package of regulations on this year’s November 5 ballot.
The Summit pipeline project would not exist without vast federal subsidies for CCS. We have plenty of CO2 for soft drinks and other uses. Huge subsidies, driven by the fear of human-caused global warming, are the only reason to try to seize land from farmers in Midwest states.
Even if this huge pipeline system is built and CO2 is captured at 57 ethanol plants, the effect on global emissions will be insignificant and the effect on global temperatures will not be measurable.
Land for pipelines is not the only case where land is being seized to promote green energy. The US Department of Energy recently announced plans to use eminent domain to seize land across wide areas to build transmission towers for new wind and solar systems. Illinois and Michigan passed laws blocking restrictions and outright bans by local communities on deployment of wind and solar systems. Governments consider the fight against human-caused climate change more important than the property rights of citizens.
https://heartland.org/opinion/carbon-dioxide-pipeline-battle-seize-land-for-green-energy/
********************************************British Labour go-ahead for march of the pylons promises to spark conflict
Amazing waste of resources
Within weeks, work is expected to begin on a 121-mile (195-kilometre) clean energy “superhighway” designed to channel green electricity from Scotland’s rich renewable resources to the north of England.
The industry regulator Ofgem is expected to give the green light for work to begin on the first section of the multibillion-pound high-voltage cable project, Eastern Green Link (EGL), in the coming days. Ofgem’s approval for a second section is expected to follow within weeks.
By the autumn, construction is expected to begin on what will be one of Britain’s biggest power grid projects, carrying enough green electricity along the east coast of Britain, mostly under the sea, to power 4m homes by 2029.
The first section to gain approval – officially phase 2 of EGL – will be built by National Grid in partnership with the energy company SSE and run from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, to Wilsthorpe on the Yorkshire coast near Bridlington. The second project expected to be greenlit – EGL phase 1 – will link the Torness area in East Lothian to the Hawthorn Pit in County Durham, constructed by National Grid and Scottish Power.
The scale of the project is expected to double in the years to come as EGL’s third and fourth phases form the electrical backbone of Britain’s future green electricity system.
“The scale of these projects is absolutely massive,” said one industry source.
The size of EGL matches the scale of the challenge ahead in creating an electricity system fit for a net-zero future. It is one of 26 critical energy infrastructure schemes, worth an estimated £20bn, being fast-tracked by the regulator to meet Britain’s ambitious green energy targets.
Under the new Labour government these targets are even more pressing: to create a net-zero electricity system by 2030, ministers plan to double the UK’s onshore wind, triple its solar power and quadruple its offshore wind capacity. This clean energy boom will require a big change in the UK’s approach to energy infrastructure, both in the speed and scale of the work and how it affects local communities. National Grid estimates that the UK will need to build five times more electricity infrastructure by 2030 than it has in the past three decades. But not everyone welcomes the change.
The EGL undersea cables will require substations, converter stations and miles of overhead lines on land to connect the projects to Britain’s existing electricity grid. The energy companies have undertaken some of the most in-depth public consultation exercises ever seen in the sector to address concerns over the sharp increase in energy infrastructure across rural areas.
People don’t seem prepared for the fact that this infrastructure is both very necessary and very visible
Industry source
“As a country we are trying to put as much of this new transmission as possible out at sea,” said an industry source. “But these cables do need to come ashore somewhere, and there needs to be the infrastructure in place to carry the power from the coast into people’s homes. This means substations, pylons and cables. It means more power lines and poles. And people don’t seem prepared for the fact that this infrastructure is both very necessary and very visible.”
For SSE the green link project is one of four new critical national transmission schemes across the north of Scotland that will enable the supply of clean energy to homes and businesses around Great Britain. It believes that its public consultation on the projects amounts to “one of the biggest listening exercises in Scotland’s history”. The company has directly contacted nearly 300,000 people within six miles of the proposed projects to have their say in more than 220 consultation events and public meetings. It estimates that more than 10,000 people attended and it has received more than 12,000 written responses.
Lesley Dow, SSE’s head of community engagement, said the company was working to balance “the clear need for these projects to deliver energy security and net zero” with community concerns and technical and environmental constraints.
“This balance is by no means easily reached, but by listening closely to communities we have already made significant changes to project plans, including moving substation locations and altering overhead line routes,” she said.
This level of public engagement will need to be replicated across the major infrastructure projects needed across the country as the UK moves towards becoming a net-zero economy by 2050. “Most people in the UK are not used to seeing where their electricity comes from,” the source added. “In the past it was possible to keep a few giant power plants from view by basing them far from the most populated areas. But in a low-carbon world we’ll need a lot more electricity, and we’ll rely on a lot more energy projects to get it. This won’t be inconspicuous.”
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British Local authority to challenge solar farm approval
A council has criticised the government’s decision to approve a £600m energy farm and said it is beginning judicial review proceedings against it.
Suffolk County Council said it has written a pre-action protocol letter to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, after he approved the Sunnica solar farm on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border last month.
The council believes Mr Miliband ignored its funding arguments and said this will amount to "considerable" additional work and costs for the Conservative-led authority.
The department for energy security and net zero said it would not comment on a live planning case.
A decision on the plans for the 2,500-acre solar farm has been delayed several times, most recently due to the UK general election.
Mr Miliband had previously said solar power was "crucial to achieving net zero".
Councillor Richard Rout, deputy cabinet member for nationally significant infrastructure projects, said that Mr Miliband had "waved through the Sunnica application with reckless abandon".
He added: “In doing so, he has shown scant regard for the communities affected, and for the local authorities who must pick up considerable amounts of additional work as a result of the project going ahead."
Nick Timothy, the Conservative MP for West Suffolk, called Mr Miliband’s decision “inappropriate” and said he is backing the council’s decision to legally challenge the approval.
"Mr Miliband made clear in his answer to my question in Parliament that he did not properly consider all the evidence in his rush to approve the application," he added.
"There are likely to be other legal challenges, and we must hope that the courts see there has been a clear failure of process."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74j8zdzy1eo
************************************************Austria’s Last Generation to dissolve over ‘fossil ignorance’
The Austrian climate activists organisation Last Generation has announced it will disband over a lack of success.
The organisation has been responsible for many disruptive protests — including blocking roadways and paint attacks on objects of interest –with its activities resulting in it being put under investigation by the Austrian judiciary.
On August 6, Last Generation issued a statement announcing its members would end their protests and dissolve as an organisation, saying they “no longer see a perspective for success” as Austria’s population had opted for “fossil ignorance”.
Their remaining financial assets would be used to finance the costs of “criminalisation and investigations”, likely alluding to the group’s mounting legal issues.
Since 2021, Last Generation has launched several protests against climate change. Usually, that centres on blocking rush-hour traffic in Vienna and other Austrian cities and throwing paint at artworks.
In April 2024, the group disrupted the Vienna Marathon by throwing paint onto the track. In May, the group marched through a residential area of Vienna at 4:30 am, waking residents with bells and bullhorns.
Last Generation’s actions have generally resonated poorly with Austrians. In a 2023 poll, 75 per cent of respondents said they had no sympathy for the climate activists’ protests.
In June, three activists were jailed for about two weeks for throwing paint at a painting by Gustav Klimt. In July, Last Generation said the Ministry of Justice (led by Green Party politician Alma Zadic) had instructed the Attorney General of Vienna to prosecute it as a criminal organisation.
The Ministry denied these allegations but confirmed that investigations for some potential violations were ongoing.
Last Generation receives support from the US non-profit organisation Climate Emergency Fund, which has been bankrolled by several US millionaires including Aileen Getty, heiress to the Getty family’s wealth.
The announcement of Last Generation’s dissolution has been welcomed by many. Christian Hafenecker, Secretary General of the right-wing Freedom Party, said hundreds of thousands of commuters could now breathe a sigh of relief.
It remains unclear as to whether the group’s decision to dissolve will end protests in Austria. A group spokesperson said there would be “new projects for resistance”.
Last Generation’s German sister organisation of the same name said it will continue its efforts — which have included shutting down Frankfurt airport at the end of July.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/08/austrias-last-generation-to-dissolve-over-fossil-ignorance/
***************************************11 August, 2024
The sun is in control of our oceans
In recent years, there has been observed an increase in ocean temperature. Those who adhere to the Climate Change version of events say that the oceans are getting warmer because of trapped carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere causing a massive greenhouse effect leading to boiling oceans.
Well, anyone who has a brain knows that the oceans are not boiling, but let’s assume that is just hyperbole. When actual research – when actual measurements were taken – reality turns out to be the exact opposite.
New research shows that the temperature of our oceans are controlled by incident radiation from the Sun. Who would have guessed?
And as a consequence of the oceans warming, dissolved carbon dioxide gas is released due to reduced is solubility in ocean water. This means the warming of the oceans would lead (or cause) an increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
One of the researchers in the study wrote on X.com:
The recent warming was caused by a decrease in Earth’s cloud cover and albedo [reflectivity], not an increase in CO2. That’s the bottom line!
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. @NikolovScience
A decrease in cloud cover and albedo means more short wavelength (SW) solar radiation reaches the oceans. Albedo is the reflectivity of the Earth. Lower albedo means more sunlight reaching the oceans and more warming by the Sun.
This is a figure from their research paper which shows a strong correlation (R2= 0.80) between rising ocean temperature, down to 100 m, and global absorbed short wave (SW) radiation as measured by instruments on CERES spacecraft.
I mean to say that this is so obvious. The Sun heats the oceans! Basic physics!
When research is carried out and real world evidence gathered, what do we find? This myth is not even plausible. I am using the language of the MythBusters!
The energy from the Sun powers all life on the planet and causes all Earth changes. Every second, the Earth receives the equivalent energy of 42 megatons of TNT in radiation from the Sun. That cannot be ignored. Read Starship Earth.
Climate Change, the ideological movement which I prefer to call a cult, views all evidence through the lens of their religious belief that the Earth is warmed by human activity. That activity releases carbon dioxide gas, which has been observed to be increasing. Their belief is that CO2 traps heat in a giant greenhouse effect. That is the dogma anyway. And I must add, we all are the carbon they want to eliminate.
But how much of that observed increase in CO2 is actually from natural causes and not from human activity? At least 94 per cent is. This new evidence now suggests it could be even more than that.
If the oceans emit CO2 gas following changes in the water temperature, which this research shows is due to the amount (flux) of solar radiation reaching the surface, then more CO2 comes from natural causes.
It is basic physics that as you heat water the dissolved gases are released due to a decrease in gas solubility. This means as the solar flux increases CO2 gas is released from the warmer ocean water.
Thus an ocean temperature increase leads to an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, and not the other way around.
Another Climate Cult myth busted!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/the-sun-is-in-control-of-our-oceans/
*************************************************The economic Folly of a Carbon Tax
The push for a carbon tax has regained popularity as the fiscal storm in 2025 and climate change debates intensify. Advocates claim it’s a solution to pay for spending excesses while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But a carbon tax is a misguided, costly policy that must be rejected.
A carbon tax functions more like an income tax than a consumption tax, capturing all forms of work, including capital goods production and building construction. These sectors are heavy on carbon emissions, meaning the tax disproportionately burdens them, stifling investment and innovation — much like a progressive income tax, but with broader economic repercussions.
For example, in the US, the construction sector alone accounts for about 40 percent of carbon emissions. A carbon tax would heavily penalize this industry, reducing its capacity to grow, generate new housing, and create jobs. Moreover, implementing a carbon tax involves massive administrative costs. The federal tax code is already complex and costly; a carbon tax would exacerbate these issues.
Determining net carbon emissions is a nuanced process subject to ever-changing and arbitrary federal definitions, increasing compliance costs for businesses and consumers.
A study by the Tax Foundation found that a carbon tax would cost billions of dollars annually in administrative costs, a burden that would ultimately fall on consumers through higher prices, less economic activity, and fewer jobs.
The US economy is already suffering from regulatory costs of $3 trillion annually, including many energy-related restrictions, and the Biden administration has added more than $1.6 trillion in regulatory costs since taking office.
One core principle of free-market capitalism is that it comes with limited government. A carbon tax contradicts this principle by expanding governmental regulation of everyday economic activities. The tax revenues would also enable further overspending, though that’s questionable given the supposed purpose of the tax is to reduce carbon emissions and, therefore, the taxes collected.
Furthermore, a carbon tax could favor certain production methods over others, disrupting the level playing field that free markets thrive on and leading to inefficiencies and market distortions. The government picks winners and losers by favoring specific methods, undermining competition and economic growth. Renewable energy projects are likely to receive preferential political treatment, skewing investments away from the market’s more efficient, practical technologies.
Pigouvian taxes, aimed at correcting negative externalities, are often cited to support a carbon tax. These taxes are named after economist Arthur Pigou and are designed to correct the negative effects of externalities by imposing costs equivalent to the external damage. But they can be counterproductive as they are bound to be the wrong tax rate, distorting economic activity.
Carbon taxes fail to account for complex economic interactions and unintended consequences. The PROVE It Act, for instance, proposes a new carbon tax framework but lacks a clear, consistent, and scientifically sound basis for implementation. This uncertainty raises the stakes for economic disruption and consumer cost increases.
Another critical issue in the carbon tax debate is ‘who decides?’
Climate science is ever evolving, and economic models predicting the outcomes of carbon taxes are fraught with uncertainties. Placing high costs on consumers based on unsettled science and unpredictable economic impacts is not a prudent policy approach. We should promote voluntary measures and technological advancements that naturally reduce emissions through market activity.
Importantly, the EPA does not consider carbon dioxide a harmful pollutant in the traditional sense, as it is essential for life. We need carbon dioxide to breathe and enjoy a fulfilling life. This further questions the rationale behind taxing carbon emissions, as it imposes undue economic strain in an attempt to regulate a naturally occurring and necessary element.
Even if America hadn’t been doing better than other countries that joined the Paris Treaty for goals on carbon emissions, China (and India) aren’t interested, thereby putting more of the unnecessary cost of reducing these emissions on Americans.
Moreover, the cost of carbon taxes can be significant. Increasing production costs leads to higher prices for goods and services, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income households — especially when they already suffer from high inflation. This regressive nature undermines its purported environmental benefits, placing a heavier burden on those least able to afford it. For example, a $50-per-ton carbon tax could increase household energy costs by up to $300 annually, hitting hardest those who can least afford it.
Countries implementing carbon taxes, like some in Europe, have seen mixed results. Emissions reductions have been minimal, while economic growth has been hampered. These policies often result in job losses and decreased global competitiveness, showcasing the unintended consequences of such interventions. For instance, France’s carbon tax led to widespread protests and economic disruption, illustrating such policies’ social and economic challenges.
While the intention behind a carbon tax — to reduce American GHG emissions in an effort to combat global climate change — is questionable in itself, the economic realities and principles of free-market economics prove it is a flawed approach. With the fiscal storm likely coming next year, Congress should just say no to the PROVE It Act and the carbon tax in general.
The bottom line is that increasing the government’s footprint through such a tax is neither conservative nor market-oriented. Instead, we should focus on market-driven solutions that encourage innovation and efficiency without imposing heavy-handed regulations.
https://cornwallalliance.org/2024/07/the-economic-folly-of-a-carbon-tax/
****************************************Beyond Climate Hysteria: Embracing Practical Environmentalism
Written by Dr. Matthew Wielicki
In the early 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt championed a form of environmentalism that led to the creation of national parks, wildlife refuges, and protected forests.
His vision of preserving vast swaths of land for future generations was driven by a deep respect for nature and a desire to maintain its beauty and resources.
The contemporary climate movement, characterized by alarming predictions and costly technological solutions, contrasts sharply with Roosevelt’s pragmatic and preservationist approach.
Here, I advocate for a return to traditional environmentalism, emphasizing land conservation and practical stewardship over the current climate hysteria.
The climate movement today is marked by a relentless push to reduce CO2 emissions through drastic measures, in the failed belief that these would translate into surface temperature changes.
However, these efforts have shown minimal results in reversing GHG concentration trends. In fact, more CO2 is being added this decade than in any previous decade as reported by NOAA.
Historical climatic variations, such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, are often downplayed or ignored in contemporary climate discourse.
These natural fluctuations, which occurred long before industrialization, challenge the narrative that current climate changes are solely human-induced, as shown by the original temperature reconstruction from the IPCC below.
By focusing exclusively on anthropogenic factors, the climate movement ignores the complexity of Earth’s climate system and the role of natural variability. Many articles on my Substack delve into these overlooked historical climate events, highlighting the need for a more balanced understanding.
The Flaws and Assumptions in Climate Models
Climate models, which predict future climate scenarios, are fraught with assumptions and uncertainties. These models often fail to account for the full range of natural climatic processes, leading to exaggerated predictions of future warming.
The assumptions built into these models, such as feedback mechanisms and sensitivity to CO2, are often based on incomplete or biased data.
The errors within these models can lead to misguided policies that prioritize reducing CO2 emissions at all costs.
In contrast, Roosevelt’s environmental policies were grounded in observable realities and practical measures. He focused on preserving land and resources for their intrinsic value and future utility, rather than speculative future scenarios.
Catastrophizing Natural Weather Events
The climate movement has a tendency to catastrophize natural weather events, attributing every hurricane, flood, or drought to climate change.
This alarmism not only distorts public perception but also undermines the resilience of communities. Natural disasters have always been part of Earth’s dynamic system, and attributing them solely to climate change overlooks the need for effective disaster management and preparedness.
Roosevelt’s approach was different; he recognized the power of nature and the importance of working with it rather than against it. He promoted sustainable land use and conservation practices that enhanced the resilience of natural systems.
The Failure to Reduce Global CO2 Levels
Despite decades of climate activism and international agreements, global CO2 levels continue to rise. This failure underscores the ineffectiveness of current climate policies, which often focus on symbolic actions rather than substantive change.
https://principia-scientific.com/beyond-climate-hysteria-embracing-practical-environmentalism/
***********************************************Australian government retreats on solar panels as China fires up
It took less than six months for the Albanese government and some of Australia’s biggest climate investors to change their mind on a solar panel manufacturing plunge.
The government and the project backers discovered the enormous costs in challenging China in the areas where it dominates the market and slashes prices to keep others out.
Given the base facts were known six months ago, the speed of the reversal of the decision to make solar panels in Australia has shocked those who believed that the “Made in Australia” plan can be based around climate investing.
Already, BHP has mothballed its nickel plans because the nickel market is being flooded with low cost Indonesian nickel funded by the Chinese.
China has vowed to further increase investment in manufacturing products such solar panels batteries and electric cars, despite the losses that are being incurred because of the low prices. If Donald Trump is elected president, he will take on China and use tariffs to thwart the Chinese. What Kamala Harris will do if she wins is not clear.
I will describe below China is also set to make the “Made in Australia” investment in rare earths costly and has announced a big rise in Chinese funded rare earths production.
“Made in Australia” is also in trouble on another front.
As I set out on Wednesday, the nation is set for a substantial fall in Australian manufacturing as the Victorian government hits the manufacturing base by starving the manufacturers of assured gas (by stopping gas developments) and imposing high taxes. The Commonwealth also lands blows on manufacturing via its industrial relations legislation.
The Victoria, Premier Jacinta Allan, has been fully briefed on the impacts of what she is doing but has other priorities.
The Albanese government decision to direct its controversial $1bn Solar Sunshot incentives program towards taking solar panel technology group SunDrive into panel manufacturing was high risk given what is happening in the global solar market.
The announcement was made by Anthony Albanese, Industry Minister Ed Husic and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, but it was Bowen who set out the strategy most clearly.
“A lot of people ask me why don’t we make more solar panels in Australia, and we should”, he said.
“And so Solar Sunshot will support making solar panels and solar cells in Australia and as a result a great Australian company called Sun Drive, that makes the most efficient solar panels in the world, have now said they will move to open a new factory on the site of the old Liddell power station in Muswellbrook and that new factory will employ more people than used to be employed at the Liddell power station.
“So there is a lot more to do, but we are going to bring back solar panel manufacturing to Australia and Solar Sunshot is going to the policy that gets it done for us”, Bowen declared.
The announcement surprised the solar panel world because of the strong group backing SunDrive, including Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, venture capital groups, Blackbird and Main Sequence, Canva founder Cameron Adams, former PM Malcolm Turnbull, and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm, plus the federal government-backed Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Clean Energy Finance Corporation,
SunDrive this week announced a “strategic review” to focus on developing technology to transform panel manufacture rather than producing the physical panels.
Significant retrenchments took place as a result of the reversal. It was a very sensible decision, and I suspect the wiser heads among the shareholders prevailed.
In rare earths, China is planning to maintain its domination of supply and treatment by expanding in Africa in association with Australia’s Peak Rare Earths company.
China’s Shenghe group has acquired half of Peak Rare Earth’s $US300m Tanzania project, and China effectively finances the project. The Chinese cover most or all of Peak Rare Earth’s capital outlays.
This year, the Chinese have stepped up production of rare earths and the prices have plunged, sending many rare earth company shares lower and making it difficult for new developments – exactly what the Chinese are aiming to do.
The Australian government’s investment in rare earths will face similar hazards to those it encountered in solar panels, but in rare earths we are clearly supported by the US, which is determined to be independent of the Chinese.
The economics of each project only make sense if the United States and/or other buyers are prepared to pay above the market for the materials they require to ensure independence from the Chinese.
In just the same way, the solar panel manufacturing plunge only made sense if buyers were prepared to pay above the market for the SunDrive solar panel technology that was unique and produced better panels than those made by the Chinese.
But once again, buyers must be prepared to pay for the better technology to justify the manufacturing investment.
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8 August, 2024
Another climate myth busted
What I like to call ‘climate cult’ wind farms expose the myth that wind can replace hydrocarbon fuels for power generation. The following story is typical of the problems associated with using wind turbines to generate electricity in a cold environment.
Apparently, diesel-fuelled generators are being used to power some wind turbines as a way of de-icing them in cold weather, that is, to keep them rotating. Also, it appears that the wind turbines have been drawing electric power directly from the grid instead of supplying it to the grid.
Scotland’s wind turbines have been secretly using fossil fuels.
The revelation is now fueling environmental, health and safety concerns, especially since the diesel-generated turbines were running for up to six hours a day.
Scottish Power said the company was forced to hook up 71 windmills to the fossil fuel supply after a fault on its grid. The move was an attempt to keep the turbines warm and working during the cold month of December.
South Scotland Labor MSP Colin Smyth said regardless of the reasons, using diesel to deice faulty turbines is “environmental madness”.
Source: Straight Arrow News
I don’t agree that diesel is a ‘fossil’ fuel. It is not. Read Abiogenic Deep Origin of Hydrocarbons: Not Fossils But Primordial.
Nevertheless, those pushing these technologies are so blind to the physical realities of the world that they are prepared to ignore failures while pretending to efficiently generate electricity. I say ‘failures’ because wind energy was put out of service the day the Industrial Revolution was fired up (pun intended) with carbon-based fuels, from petroleum and coal. And in the case of modern wind turbines, they do not always generate electricity; they sometimes consume it from the grid.
Green energy needs the hydrocarbon-based fuel it claims to replace.
Hydrocarbon-based fuels were provided providentially by the Creator of this planet for our use. That includes coal, which has been demonised in the Western press as some sort of evil. But those who run that line must have forgotten to tell China, because they build two coal-fired power stations every other week. No other source of non-nuclear power is as reliable for baseload generation.
How will wind turbines work in a globally cooling climate as Earth heads into a grand solar minimum and temperatures plummet? This case from Scotland may give us a hint. As cloud cover increases with cooler weather, and more precipitation occurs, how will solar perform? It won’t.
The two worst choices for electricity generation in cold, wet, and stormy environments are solar and wind. Solar is obvious. No sun means no power generation. But you might think wind is a much better choice under those conditions.
However, wind turbine rotors have to be shut down if the wind becomes too strong and/or rapidly changes in strength. They are shut down when too much ice forms or when there is insufficient wind. And now we have learned in Scotland they just turn on the diesel generators when that happens or they draw power directly from the grid.
Where are all the real engineers? Were they fired?
In regards to wind turbines going forward, once their presence in the market has destroyed all the coal or natural gas electricity generators, how are they going to keep the rotors turning and the lights on?
These devices are based on a rotating shaft with a massive bearing, that suffers massive frictional forces. In this case, only a high-quality heavy-duty oil can lubricate this system and I am sure it would need to be regularly replaced.
Massive amounts of carbon-based oil are needed for the lubrication of all gears and bearings in a wind turbine system, which is mechanical in its nature. In 2019, wind turbine applications were estimated to consume around 80 per cent of the total supply of synthetic lubricants. Synthetic lubricants are manufactured using chemically modified petroleum components rather than whole crude oil. These are used in the wind turbine gearboxes, generator bearings, and open gear systems such as pitch and yaw gears.
Now we also know that icing causes the rotors to stop turning so diesel power has to be used to keep the bearings warm during cold weather. The diesel generator is needed to get the blades turning on start-up to overcome the limiting friction of the bearing or when the speed of the rotor drops too low.
In this case in Scotland, 71 windmills on the farm were supplied with diesel power. Each windmill has its own diesel generator. Just think of that.
What about the manufacturing of these windmills?
The blades are made from tons of fibreglass. Manufacturing fibreglass requires the mining of silica sand, limestone, kaolin clay, dolomite, and other minerals, which requires diesel-driven machines. These minerals are melted in a furnace at high temperatures (around 1,400°C) to produce the glass. Where does that heat come from? Not solar or wind power, that is for sure. The resin in the fibreglass comes from alcohol or petroleum-based manufacturing processes.
The metal structure is made from steel that requires tons of coking coal (carbon) essential to make pig iron, which is made from iron ore in a blast furnace at temperatures up to 2,200°C. The coal and iron ore is mined from the ground with giant diesel-powered machines and trucks. The steel is made with pig iron and added carbon in another furnace powered by massive electric currents. Carbon is a critical element in steel making, as it reacts with iron to form the desired steel alloy. None of this comes from wind and solar power.
Wind turbine power generation is inherently intermittent and unreliable. It can hardly called green as the wind turbines require enormous amounts of hydrocarbons in their manufacture and continued operation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/another-climate-myth-busted/
*************************************************Japanese Scientist Concludes IPCC Is Using “Erroneous” Parameters And Climate Sensitivities
The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scare was created in part by Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe using a one dimensional radiative-convective model (1DRCM) having no ocean (1964/1967).
He obtained a no-feedback climate sensitivity of 1.3°C for doubling of CO2 using the fixed lapse rate assumption of 6.5°C/km and a radiative forcing of 4(W/m2) at the tropopause, which was further enlarged to 2.4°C with a water vapor feedback.
Eminent meteorologist R. Newell from MIT criticized Manabe’s model lacking in ocean cooling. He obtained a No-feedback climate sensitivity of 0.03°C for a doubling of CO2 with a thermal inertia of 30 (W/m2) per 1°C for the surface waters of the ocean using a surface radiative forcing of 1(W/m2) to incorporate the IR spectra overlap between CO2 and water vapor.
The department of Energy & Dr. R. Cess, however, killed Newell’s ideas to promote nuclear reactors in a difficult time due to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
Manabe continued his model studies to enlarge climate sensitivity (CS) for a doubling of CO2 with introducing various feed backs (FBs) as follows, which is the theoretical basis of IPCC’s AGW narrative.
He obtained a Planck feedback parameter0 of -3.3(W/m2)/C with equation (2), giving a No-feedback CS of 1.2°C using a radiative forcing of 4W/m2 for a doubling of CO2 at the tropopause as follows:
Cess’s Planck feedback parameter is used in all GCMs for the IPCC ARs with a slight decrease of the radiative forcing from 4 (W/m2) to 3.7 (W/m2) for a doubling of CO2 by IPCC TAR (2000).
Cess’s equation (1) is physically wrong
Conclusion
All green policy is nonsense because it depends on IPCC’s claim that the surface temperature Ts is increased as much as 3°C for CO2 doubling utilizing an erroneous Plank feedback parameter0 of -3.21(W/m2)/C from Cess’s mathematical error.
The Paris climate agreement reads as follows: “To keep the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit the increase to 1.5°C.”
This is based on IPCC’s erroneous climate sensitivity of 3°C for doubling of CO2 discussed above. Therefore the Paris climate agreement is nonsense, though it governs the world politics now.
More here:
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18 Republicans Ask Mike Johnson To Save Biden’s Green Energy Subsidy Deluge
A group of 18 House Republicans asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to not pursue a wholesale repeal of subsidies contained in President Joe Biden’s signature climate law on Wednesday.
The lawmakers wrote to Johnson to urge him to not repeal energy sector-wide tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), especially those that have already spurred ongoing development across the country. The IRA became law in 2022 without a single Republican vote, and while the lawmakers said they believe the law is “deeply flawed,” they do not want to see the repeal of all tax credits because “we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return” for that spending.
“Today, many U.S. companies are already using sector-wide energy tax credits – many of which have enjoyed bipartisan support historically – to make major investments in new U.S. energy infrastructure. We hear from industry and our constituents who fear the energy tax regime will once again be turned on its head due to Republican repeal efforts,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Johnson. “Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”
“We must reverse the policies which harm American families while protecting and refining those that are making our country more energy independent and Americans more energy secure,” the letter says. “As Republicans, we support an all-of-the-above approach to energy development and tax credits that incentivize domestic production, innovation, and delivery from all sources.”
Republican Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Buddy Carter of Georgia and John Curtis of Utah — who is running for the Senate — signed the letter. Other signatories of the letter include Republican Reps. Andrew Garbarino of New York, David Valadao of California, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, Marc Molinaro of New York, Young Kim of California, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Erin Houchin of Indiana.
“The IRA was a bad bill that needs to be reformed, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The energy tax credits have led to immense investment in American energy production, created good-paying jobs, and spurred innovation,” Garbarino said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We need to be engaging in discussions around this and give it due consideration, rather than prematurely jumping to a wholesale repeal.”
All told, Goldman Sachs projects that the true cost of the IRA’s energy subsidies could ultimately reach $1.2 trillion by 2032. IRA subsidies and projects supported by the bill have found their way to GOP districts across the country, posing potential political problems for lawmakers whose districts are the site of development spurred by a bill they initially opposed, according to Bloomberg News.
The offices of Miller-Meeks, Carter, Curtis, Valadao, Chavez-DeRemer, Molinaro, Kim, Kiggans, Bacon and Houchin did not respond immediately to requests for comment. The offices of their fellow signatories Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York, Anthony D’Esposito of New York, Nick LaLota of New York, Thomas Kean of New Jersey, David Joyce of Ohio, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona and Mark Amodei of Nevada did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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Big coal miner retreating from "Green" policies
Glencore chief executive Gary Nagle will test the ESG purists as he reverses plans to jettison coal and instead focus on harvesting the rivers of cash it generates.
Some of Australia’s biggest investors, including super funds will be quietly cheering him on.
For now Glencore’s own investors are happy to let yield win out over green investing, but that also marks a decisive shift in how big money is approaching ESG.
Big investors including Australian super funds have shown they have a higher threshold for energy pragmatism over green investing than their European counterparts.
Through its history as a commodities trader dating back to pugnacious long-time boss Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore, the world’s biggest thermal coal miner, has long resisted pressure to shun coal and was a reluctant mover on ESG conventions.
Despite taking the green hits, Glencore stuck with it and now the investors are moving in Glencore’s favour. Nagle has broken ranks with the mining pack on coal and in doing so has given his investors cover.
It’s been a twisted path for Glencore to get to this position.
Last year’s $US7bn ($10.7bn) buyout of Elk Valley Resources from Canada’s Teck was pitched to help the Anglo-Swiss Glencore bulk up on steelmaking coal to give its existing operations scale and more investor appeal to be spun out.
However, Nagle had a change of heart after citing overwhelming feedback from Glencore’s own shareholders that “supported the retention” of the thermal and met coal businesses. Shortly after the November deal he started getting approaches from big shareholders, but it was Australian activist investor Tribeca that led the charge urging Glencore to stick with coal.
Tribeca also pushed for Glencore to move its primary listing from London to the ASX where super investors were prepared to run a wider lens over coal’s role through the energy transition.
Think of the model of AGL or Origin Energy, where big super has been prepared to back the profits of today’s dirty coal-fired power plants in order to harvest the cash to fund the transition to a renewable energy future.
In AGL’s case, the giant Loy Yang brown coal plant will stay open for another decade.
Last year Macquarie Group made more profit from oil and gas trading and storage than it did green investing, yet it kept pushing record highs.
Glencore says keeping the coal operations “should enhance Glencore’s cash-generating capacity” to fund opportunities to buy greener friendly metals such as copper.
The coal operations where prices have remained elevated will also “accelerate and optimise” the return of excess cash back to shareholders.
So too the long-mooted coal exit was inconsistent with ESG principals, Glencore added, given its stated plan to run down its thermal coal mines over their life. This policy replaced a Glasenberg-era climate pledge of keeping an annual cap on coal production at 150 million tonnes annually.
Glencore’s move will certainly clear the path to put investor pressure on other diversified miners looking to exit coal. BHP has already sold off its lower-quality met coal operations to Whitehaven. Its Mt Arthur thermal coal mine is slated to close by 2030.
Elsewhere, Anglo American is in the process of selling its met coal operations for a mooted $5bn, which includes Australian mines. BHP’s since-shelved takeover of Anglo spurred on the exit. Other names such as Rio Tinto and South 32 have already exited coal.
To show the mood is changing among investors, even New York-based BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager that has been at the front of ESG push, is quietly curbing some of its green animal spirits.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s full-throated approach to ESG investing in the past has seen him subject of political attacks which was impacting the $US10 trillion ($15 trillion) investor as some US state governments cut pension plan mandates.
This year has been one of transition for Fink. He has pulled back from ESG advocacy to acknowledge there is a balance that needs to be struck between energy transition and the need for energy security, particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Where gas was once shunned, it is now a key plank in the transition, Fink says.
Glencore is now adding coal to the mix.
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7 August, 2024
New Peer Reviewed Study: CO2 has Zero Impact on Climate Change
A powerful peer-reviewed scientific study delivers substantial evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the atmosphere have zero impact on the Earth’s global temperatures. The study concludes that even though most publications attempt to depict a catastrophic future for our planet due to an increase in CO2, there is serious doubt that this is, in fact, the case. Instead, the study authors deduced that their research unequivocally means that the officially presented narrative that human activity is causing a detrimental CO2 increase on Earth’s climate is merely a hypothesis rather than a substantiated reality.
The study, published in Science Direct in March 2024, confirms that the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is naturally limited, with the limit having been reached decades ago. The study also confirms what climatologist Dr. Judith Curry has stated, which is that the “manufactured consensus of scientists at the request of policymakers” regarding climate change is all a ruse to push an agenda that has nothing to do with climate change. She insists that “Earth has survived far bigger insults that what human beings are doing.”
In a 2022 interview, Curry remarked that the basic facts of the climate situation are clear—global temperatures have been warming, humans emit CO2 into the atmosphere, and CO2 has an infrared emission spectra that, overall, acts to warm the planet. However, after that, there is much disagreement over the most consequential issues propagated to fuel the climate change narrative, such as how much of the warming has been caused by humans and how significant is human-caused warming relative to solar-variability, ocean circulation patterns, and so on?
Why are politically active scientists exaggerating the truth for political objectives? Many are now certain that, like the COVID-19 pandemic, the massive climate change scheme is about greed, power, and control. Curry, Professor Emeritus and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has become known as an outspoken scientist who doubts the “scientific consensus” on climate change. Unsurprisingly, akin to the doctors who dared speak up about the deadly mRNA COVID-19 shots, Curry was “academically, pretty much finished off” and “essentially unhirable.” But that has not stopped her from speaking up. When asked how far from reality the picture of doom and gloom painted by those pushing the climate agenda really is, Curry stated:
“It’s very far from gloom and doom. People are being sued left and right over bad weather. Governments, oil companies, and everything because they’re not doing enough.
People who think that they can control the climate… It’s just a pipe dream. Even if we went to net zero, we would barely notice. It would be hard to detect any change in the climate. The climate is going to do what the climate’s going to do. And there’s a lot of inertia in the system.
If the carbon dioxide that we’ve put in is as important, as bad as some people seem to think, those effects are going to be with us for a very, very long time. And stopping now isn’t going to change that trajectory very much.
So, we must look forward and try to understand what’s happened. But thinking that we’re going to control the climate by going to net zero very quickly is not good.”
Curry remarked that even when you look more recently at the weather in the United States, for example, it was much worse in the 1930s by any measure than it is now. When you look at the data, she insists that period was inundated with forest fires, droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes. It makes no sense to rapidly revamp our entire energy infrastructure to rely on wind turbines and solar energy, which require a massive land and water footprint.
According to Curry, the most significant danger is if “we do really stupid stuff like destroy our energy infrastructure before we have something better to replace it with.” She believes the biggest climate risk right now is a so-called transition risk, the risk of rapidly getting rid of fossil fuels. Dr. Curry is right. Even if society transitions to all wind and solar, massive amounts of fossil fuels will be needed to do all the mining, establish the supply chains, transport, and everything else. So, in the near term, even if the plan is to use all renewable wind and solar energy, we will need large amounts of fossil fuels to get there. “People just repeat these mantras without any thought,” Curry said, adding, “It’s not a good place.”
And now, following Dr. Curry’s sound advice and insight, we have the Science Direct study reaffirming the madness bestowed upon humanity by a despicable cohort of greedy souls. Conducted by researchers from the Institute of Optoelectronics, Military University of Technology in Warsaw, Poland, the study authors found that even if we dug up all the world’s coal, extracted all the world’s oil, and burned it in one giant pyre, the CO2 emissions from that endeavor would not heat up planet Earth. Indeed, this is because carbon dioxide does not cause the Earth to warm up indefinitely.
As reported by Slay News, much like a sponge, the Earth’s atmosphere can only hold so much, meaning that carbon dioxide cannot increase temperatures anymore since the saturation point was reached a long time ago. The study uses a hypothetical concept of a fire inside a greenhouse consistently emitting heat. The glass walls and ceiling can contain only so much heat before emitting it outside. CO2 in the atmosphere is very similar in that it can act as a “greenhouse” gas, but all the CO2 together can only contain so much heat, much like the hypothetical greenhouse. The CO2 Coalition agrees with this conclusion as well. Thus, amidst all the fearmongering around climate change—and the knowledge that many things, including changes in solar activity heavily influence Earth’s weather—Dr. Curry believes even if the Earth is warming, it is not a dangerous thing, commenting:
“This whole issue of “dangerous” is the weakest part of the whole argument. What is dangerous? Everybody has a different idea of what’s good. The only harm from warming is rising sea levels. And that’s a slow creep unless something catastrophic happens, say, to the West Antarctic ice sheet. And if something catastrophic happens there, that’s as likely to be associated with under-ice volcanoes as it is to be with global warming.”
https://thehighwire.com/editorial/new-peer-reviewed-study-co2-has-zero-impact-on-climate-change/
***********************************************Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions
Whatever happened to polar bears? They used to be all climate campaigners could talk about, but now they’re essentially absent from headlines. Over the past 20 years, climate activists have elevated various stories of climate catastrophe, then quietly dropped them without apology when the opposing evidence becomes overwhelming. The only constant is the scare tactics.
Protesters used to dress up as polar bears. Al Gore’s 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” depicted a sad cartoon polar bear floating away to its death. The Washington Post warned in 2004 that the species could face extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund’s chief scientist claimed some polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce by 2012.
Then in the 2010s, campaigners stopped talking about them. After years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible to ignore the mountain of evidence showing that the global polar-bear population has increased substantially. Whatever negative effect climate change had was swamped by the reduction in hunting of polar bears. The population has risen from around 12,000 in the 1960s to about 26,000.
The same thing has happened with activists’ outcry about Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. For years, they shouted that the reef was being killed off by rising sea temperatures. After a hurricane extensively damaged the reef in 2009, official Australian estimates of the percent of reef covered in coral reached a record low in 2012. The media overflowed with stories about the great reef catastrophe, and scientists predicted the coral cover would be reduced by another half by 2022. The Guardian even published an obituary in 2014.
The latest official statistics show a completely different picture. For the past three years the Great Barrier Reef has had more coral cover than at any point since records began in 1986, with 2024 setting a new record. This good news gets a fraction of the coverage that the panicked predictions did.
More recently, green campaigners were warning that small Pacific islands would drown as sea levels rose. In 2019 United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres flew all the way to Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, for a Time magazine cover shot. Wearing a suit, he stood up to his thighs in the water behind the headline “Our Sinking Planet.” The accompanying article warned the island—and others like it—would be struck “off the map entirely” by rising sea levels.
About a month ago, the New York Times finally shared what it called “surprising” climate news: Almost all atoll islands are stable or increasing in size. In fact, scientific literature has documented this for more than a decade. While rising sea levels do erode land, additional sand from old coral is washed up on low-lying shores. Extensive studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-caused erosion, meaning the land area of Tuvalu and many other small islands is increasing.
Today, killer heat waves are the new climate horror story. In July President Biden claimed “extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States.”
He is wrong by a factor of 25. While extreme heat kills nearly 6,000 Americans each year, cold kills 152,000, of which 12,000 die from extreme cold. Even including deaths from moderate heat, the toll comes to less than 10,000. Despite rising temperatures, age-standardized extreme-heat deaths have actually declined in the U.S. by almost 10% a decade and globally by even more, largely because the world is growing more prosperous. That allows more people to afford air-conditioners and other technology that protects them from the heat.
The petrified tone of heat-wave coverage twists policy illogically. Whether from heat or cold, the most sensible way to save people from temperature-related deaths would be to ensure access to cheap, reliable electricity. That way, it wouldn’t be only the rich who could afford to keep safe from blistering or frigid weather. Unfortunately, much of climate policy makes affordable energy all the harder to obtain.
Activists do the world a massive disservice by refusing to acknowledge facts that challenge their intensely doom-ridden worldview. There is ample evidence that man-made emissions cause changes in climate, and climate economics generally finds that the costs of these effects outweigh the benefits. But the net result is nowhere near catastrophic. The costs of all the extreme policies campaigners push for are much worse. All told, politicians across the world are now spending more than $2 trillion annually—far more than the estimated cost from climate change that these policies prevent each year.
Scare tactics leave everyone—especially young people—distressed and despondent. Fear leads to poor policy choices that further frustrate the public. And the ever-changing narrative of disasters erodes public trust.
Telling half-truths while piously pretending to “follow the science” benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps climate-concerned politicians rally their bases. But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/polar-bears-dead-coral-and-other-climate-fictions-528b18ea
********************************************Australian Solar industry sees first projects put on ice as nuclear proposal sows doubt among investors
Political turbulence around the renewable energy debate is making some clean energy investors nervous.
Despite reassurances from the federal government, the opposition's nuclear policy has sown some doubt over whether the renewable industry will continue to have Commonwealth policy support over the next several decades.
One Australian solar manufacturing business said it had already seen an impact.
Dr Methuen Morgan, head of solar farm installers Meralli Projects, said he had already seen an increase in hesitancy from investors.
"They're concerned about which way a potential future government is going to go," he told the ABC.
"It's slowing the business down, projects that were meant to be going ahead are being slowed down and there's a wait-and-see attitude being adopted by some."
Meralli Projects head Methuen Morgan previously sought to establish a regional challenger to the Nationals at a NSW state election.
He said it had already resulted in one of their projects being put on hold indefinitely.
"There's a project that's up to be invested in, a small solar project, and they're just literally wanting to see what the [parliament] does in this space."
At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Energy Minister Chris Bowen echoed those concerns.
Government urged to combat 'material distrust' in green energy projects
Poor engagement and consultation has led to "material distrust" of renewable energy developers in regional communities, according to a much-anticipated review.
He revealed he had been approached by renewable energy investors questioning the long-term reliability of the industry.
"Has it been raised with me as a concern by renewable energy investors? Have they paid attention and are they worried about it? Yes," he said.
Labor wants to increase the share of renewables in the electricity grid to 82 per cent by 2030 — which it needs to do to have any chance of meeting its emissions reduction promise.
Project delays are likely to put that timeline at risk, and the energy minister has blamed the Coalition for introducing doubt.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said: "After 10 years of delay, denial and dysfunction under the former Coalition government, the Albanese government has secured investment confidence and certainty with the right policy settings to capitalise on the huge opportunities for Australia in the clean energy transformation.
"The Opposition's anti-renewables nuclear plan is about stopping this progress.
"They would have years of discussions about nuclear, drafting laws and planning.
"There won't be electricity generated under their own plans before 2035. Even that is unrealistic — based on what we're seeing overseas, it would be 2040s at least.
"In the meantime, we miss this massive clean energy opportunity for our country."
********************************************
Welcome the Warmth, it’s good not dangerous
By Viv Forbes in Northern Australia
At dawn today (30th July) mid-winter in sunny Queensland, it was zero degrees on the lawn outside our kitchen and the small water tub for our chooks was iced over
Every morning, as soon as it gets light, Judy puts a winter coat over her jamas, adds gloves, glasses, rubber boots, a beanie and a walking stick (icy grass is very slippery).
She then trudges down the hill to check any new-born lambs and then lets the sheep out of their dingo-proof night-camp into their paddock for the day.
As soon as they are let out, they dribble into a long line and, led by the wisest old ewe, they wend their way across the frosty flat and then make their way up the hill to the highest point facing the morning sun.
Unlike Green politicians, sheep are not stupid. They know that warm air rises so in winter they camp at the highest point they can find. And in cold mornings, they try to catch the early rising sun.
Our house was not built by stupid people – we call it “Hilltop” and it faces North – it usually stays above the frost line in winter. And not all residents of Victoria are stupid either – in winter hundreds of them clog up our highways, heading north to follow the sun.
Maybe they are like cattle caught in a snow storm – just drifting north before that cold southerly wind blowing icy air up from the Antarctic?
Al Gore and his Green disciples bleat about the imaginary “dangers of global warming”. They should check where life flourishes – is it in the equatorial zones or at the icy poles? Are there more people in Nome, Alaska or in Mexico City?
And if atmospheric CO2 controls temperature, both places should be about equally warm? Maybe it is the amount of heat received from the sun and not CO2 that is the main driver of global temperatures?
And even if they fear global warming, they do not need to cripple our electricity generators here with their green energy nonsense – they should just move South to the Snowy Mountains; or buy a house facing the Roaring Forties at Cape Grim in Tasmania; or even slip down to Invercargill in New Zealand for a permanent cure for those with a chronic dose of global warming syndrome.
Green Pied Pipers and the lemmings who follow them started the ‘”Global Warming Scare”. These foolish politicians and their alarmist media mates know more about political science than they know about climate science.
As each of their forecasts fail, they change their chant – “global warming” becomes “climate change” then it becomes “wild weather” – all promoted, not by meteorologists, but by propagandists in government media units.
Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about Earth history knows that the Mammoths did not die of heat stroke – they were entombed rapidly in ice. And even Saint Greta should know that the real danger to life on Earth is not global warming but global cooling and the inevitable return of the suffocating ice sheets.
Here is what an ancient Scandinavian legend says:
A long time ago
the universe was made of ice.
Then one day the ice began to melt,
and a mist rose into the sky.
Out of the mist
came a giant made of frost,
And the Earth and the heavens
were made from his body.
This is how the world began
and that is how the world will end,
not by fire
but by ice.
The seas will freeze,
and winters will never end.
Geologic evidence shows there have been many ice ages. However, as the above legend shows, only rare tribal memories go back further than the last ice age. Despite the shrill forecasts of dangerous global warming from Al Gore’s Gang, there are many signs that we are past the peak of the Holocene Warming.
It is the next cycle of global cooling we have to fear.
For example, in Greenland, “The Lost Squadron” travelling from USA to Britain in 1942 was forced to land on the Greenland Ice sheet. Two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightnings ran out of fuel and crash-landed on the Greenland ice sheet.
The crews abandoned the planes. The planes were rediscovered 50 years later using steam boring machines. They were buried under 268 feet of ice. (In 2002 a recovered and restored P-38 flew again.)
Our family ancestors learned about weather.
Mine came from Britain and Denmark. Some went to Dunedin in far south New Zealand. There they started to die out and decided to move again – to sunny Queensland.
Judy’s ancestors started living around Armidale in NSW but also found it too cold and migrated north to Sarina in North Queensland (every winter her sheep wish she had stayed in the warmth of north Queensland.)
https://principia-scientific.com/welcome-the-warmth-its-good-not-dangerous/
***************************************4 August, 2024
$3 Trillion a Year for Nonexistent ‘Climate Crisis’? Seriously?
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says governments will need to spend $3 trillion every year to fight climate change.
Bend over and open that wallet wide, here it comes again.
Meanwhile, a new peer-reviewed study finds that carbon dioxide emissions now has zero impact on global warming because new CO2 falls out into more plants, because it’s what plants crave.
In other words, burning fossil fuels simply converts toxic sludge—petroleum—into beautiful forests.
Meaning, we’d spend $3 trillion a year for … fewer trees.
Yellen’s $3 trillion hustle came at the Group of 20 finance leaders meeting in Brazil, where she’s currently spending your tax dollars promoting a Soviet-style takeover of the global economy in the name of climate.
Hilariously, she frames that tax as the “biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”
If $3 trillion a year to dig holes and fill them with broken wind turbines and solar panels is the economic opportunity of the century, I’m having what Yellen is smoking.
For perspective, $3 trillion is roughly 30 times what’s already being spent on crony handouts to green billionaires and activists—40% of which comes from so-called multilateral development banks that are funded by your tax dollars going through a Rube Goldberg machine so you can’t see it.
Alas, Yellen is just a cog in a much bigger machine. The U.N. is demanding $150 trillion for the imaginary climate crisis—the most ambitious taxpayer fleecing since the Federal Reserve.
That $150 trillion, it’s worth noting, is roughly half the accumulated wealth of the human race going back to Babylonia—whizzed away so we have less trees.
So what’s next? Like most government programs, climate change has nothing to do with the alleged crisis. If it did, that CO2 study would be on every front page—after all, it means we’re out of the woods, the planet’s not doomed after all. Worth a headline or two.
Instead, of course, crickets.
That’s because climate is just the excuse. The actual goal is that $150 trillion Soviet takeover. They’ll do it with climate. They’ll do it with COVID-19. They’ll do it with war, if that’s what it takes.
Of course, this is nothing new; the granddaddy of fake crises was World War I, fought allegedly over … Serbia. And even today it’s painted as just one big misunderstanding.
In fact, the Deep State engineers of that war on both sides openly saw it as a way to install what they called “wartime socialism.”
Murray Rothbard writes about this in “WWI as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals” at Mises.org.
Then, as now, the left-wing media was only too happy to play along, ginning up a crisis to scare the plebs into handing over their liberties, their life savings and, of course, their lives measured in the millions.
More than 100 years later, the excuses change, but the goal remains the same: the eternal battle between liberty and the monopolies of violence we call governments.
Given former President Donald Trump’s skepticism toward global warming, this next election will be a stark choice on climate. But given the profits involved—half of humanity’s wealth—the battle will, alas, be permanent.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/02/3-trillion-year-climate-crisis-seriously/
*****************************************************NY State Misses Climate Goals But Sues Companies For Not Meeting Theirs
If it weren’t for double standards, Albany Democrats wouldn’t have any standards at all—especially regarding “green” energy.
As new reporting shows, New York’s renewable energy plans have been decimated, highlighting a disconnect between radical policy proposals and real-world execution.
In 2019, New York State set a whimsical goal of reaching a renewables target of 70% by 2030.
But in a new report that serves as a devastating blow to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s agenda, the state now admits they are on track to massively miss that target — and not by a small margin.
New York will reach just a 44% renewables target by 2030.
Hochul’s administration now wants to push the renewables deadline to 2033. Three additional years won’t get them there either.
But New York realizing (and admitting) they’re not on track to meet their “green” goals has not stopped them from trying to enforce those same goals on private companies.
Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James [pictured above] filed a lawsuit against a beef producer, JBS USA, for allegedly misrepresenting the environmental impact of their production and misleading consumers by claiming that the company would “achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.”
It’s the height of hypocrisy that the state is now targeting JBS for allegedly misleading consumers for coming up short of that 2040 trajectory while the state is also failing to meet its own unattainable goals.
Instead of admitting that the state is guilty of misleading New Yorkers, New York is now coming up with its own excuses as to why it’s failing to meet its objectives.
They’re blaming a variety of factors like “supply chain disruptions” and “geopolitical developments.” Another attempted excuse from the state is that developers backed out of contracts amid record-high “Bidenflation” and rising costs.
The state expects private companies to meet standards [it] will not achieve. And instead of recognizing the flaws in the Hochul plan and abandoning the unattainable goals and counterproductive net zero targets, they are doubling down by attempting to enforce them on private companies.
They should be embarrassed by their rank hypocrisy.
Further, their failures undermine their credibility to sue others for similar shortcomings, but it also calls into question the practicality of these renewable energy and net zero targets.
If Hochul wants to present a serious energy plan for New Yorkers, it should be based on energy abundance, affordability, choice, innovation, reliability, and common sense — not on unattainable, counterproductive goals pushed by radical environmentalists that don’t work in the real world and ultimately hurt New Yorkers.
All of this only underscores the need for reliable energy and the need to reverse the state’s ban on the safe extraction of natural gas.
Not only would reversing the ban on natural gas extraction help create more jobs in the Southern Tier, but it would also revitalize communities, drive down energy costs, and provide an abundant source of reliable energy for the entire country.
As these renewable deadlines approach, we can expect Hochul’s administration to continue to move the goalposts rather than address the underlying problems.
New York policymakers failed to foresee the economic conditions impacting renewable energy’s viability. Ultimately, New York’s shifting timelines reflect poorly on the state.
The bottom line: New York’s lofty climate goals are little more than political posturing and an embrace of a “rules for thee, but not for me” mindset.
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Wind turbine debris washes up on Nantucket shores closing beaches
Large chunks of a damaged wind turbine from Vineyard Wind continue to wash up on Nantucket's south shore beaches this week after a failure over the weekend.
Vineyard Wind said in a statement that a blade was damaged on a wind turbine on Saturday evening. The company announced a cleanup effort on Tuesday for the southern-facing shores of the island as hundreds of pieces of large and small debris continue to wash up.
On Tuesday, the Nantucket Harbormaster closed all south shore beaches because of the debris.
Multiple photos show fiberglass pieces from Vinyard Wind turbines washing up on the southern shores of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
"All south shore beaches are closed to swimming, due to large floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards. Please go to the North shore to swim, there are lifeguards there ready to help," the Nantucket Harbormaster said.
The town of Nantucket said walking is permitted but "we advise that you use caution, wear appropriate footwear, and leave pets at home."
Video and photos shared with FOX Weather show pieces of green and white fiberglass in large pieces and small chunks washing up with the waves and lining the beaches. Fiberglass is a type of plastic that is not biodegradable.
Vineyard Wind deployed two teams to Nantucket to remove debris. The company said the pieces are "not hazardous to people or the environment" but recommends that the public not touch them.
Beginning Tuesday, patrol teams will be walking Miacomet Beach, Nobadeer Beach, Madequecham Beach, Pebble Beach, Tom Nevers Beach, Low Beach, and Sconset Beach as they pick up debris.
Anyone who finds debris can find contact information to report it to Vineyard Winds here.
It's unclear how long the cleanup efforts will continue.
Vineyard Wind, the country's largest commercial offshore wind farm, began construction in January 2023 and started operating in January.
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/wind-turbine-debris-nantucket-beaches-closed
***************************************************Virginia’s Risk of Offshore Wind Turbine Blade Failure Is Serious
On July 26, CFACT’s President Craig Rucker sent Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin a letter warning him about the serious risk of blade failure in the giant offshore wind facility being built off Virginia. The warning builds on the recent blade failure off of Nantucket, which has littered the beaches with fiberglass fragments. Virginia is also at risk.
In this article, I present some technical background on that risk. The facility will be one of the world’s biggest, with 176 enormous turbines. It is just getting started with pile driving, so no turbine blades have been installed to date. This is an opportune time to undertake caution.
The Nantucket turbines are made by GE, and they are the world’s largest in operation today at 13 MW, each driven by three huge 107-meter-long blades. That is 351 feet for those of us who do not speak metric. The Virginia turbines will be even bigger at 14 MW with 108 meters (154+ feet) long. They are made by Siemens Gamesa, or SG for short.
The GE turbines and blades have been in production for going on two years, so have some operational experience. The SG turbines and blades just came into production so there is no experience with them. One could say they are being beta tested off Virginia.
This newness in itself is a great concern. At three blades each, there are an incredible 528 blades with a combined length of over 57,000 meters (187,000 feet or 35 miles) of blades. To take first production blades to these huge lengths is surely very risky.
Multiple or even systemic failures are certainly possible. A sound engineering approach would be to build a few and see how they did over time. Note, too, that the prototypes were in Europe, so these blades have never been tested in a hurricane, which offshore Virginia is prone to get.
Now let’s look at the blade stress physics just a bit, as it is amazing. SG has a quick look on their website, saying this:
“The rotational forces found in offshore wind turbines in operation put IMMENSE STRAIN ON THE BLADES and the rest of the wind turbine structure. (Emphasis added) At a tip speed of approximately 90 meters per second – equivalent to 324 kilometers per hour! (201 mph!) – and a projected lifetime of more than 25 years, high-quality and innovative design is imperative. For a 108-meter-long blade, the rotational forces are around a staggering 80 million newton meters, and the strain on the blades and the structure is intense! To put this into perspective, the force pulling on a human shoulder while spinning a 1 kg object around in an outstretched arm is only about 10 newton meters!”
(80 million newton meters is about 59 million pound-feet of torque).
Given these immense, intense strains, the novelty of the SG blades becomes even more of an issue.
To begin with, they are constructed in an unusual way. GE and other major manufacturers build half a lengthwise blade at a time, then glue the two halves together. Building half a tube is relatively simple, just lining a trough-like mold with fiberglass. Gravity is your friend, and inspection is easy.
In contrast, SG builds the entire tubular blade at once. I have no idea how, but it cannot be simple. Gravity wants to distort the tube, and inspection must be difficult. In addition, while SG has built a lot of smaller blades this full tube way, their giant blades are of a different composition. Because of the extreme stresses, they have added carbon fibers.
In summary, we have a newly huge blade, subject to immense stresses, made for the first time in an unusual way with a new composition and never tested in a hurricane. The high novelty risk to Virginia is obvious.
But there is another big risk issue as well, a business issue if you like. SG no longer exists as a corporation. It was absorbed by its majority stockholder to keep it from going under. The reason, as Reuters puts it, is “quality issues and ramp-up problems caused a 4.6 billion euro (5 billion dollar) annual net loss.”
In Virginia, we are looking at the biggest wind turbine ramp-up in history, where high quality is imperative. One has to wonder if SG is capable of this prodigious task at this time, and that wonder signals a big risk. Not only does SG have a deep history of problems, they are undergoing restructuring.
Given these novelty-laden circumstances, it surely is unwise to try to throw up 35 miles of untested blades without further consideration. Hence Craig Rucker’s letter to Governor Youngkin.
https://heartland.org/opinion/virginias-risk-of-offshore-wind-turbine-blade-failure-is-serious/
***************************************1 August, 2024
On Energy Policy, Kamala Harris Is Clueless
Now that it seems that Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be a lock for the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination, Americans should become familiar with Harris’ stance on energy policy.
Although energy policy is not as exciting and politically intriguing as some of the other issues on the table in the 2024 election, it certainly has a profound effect on the lifestyle and budget of every American.
During the Biden-Harris administration, the price of energy has increased across the board. In fact, according to a new report by The Heartland Institute, the Biden-Harris administration’s energy policies have directly cost U.S. households $2,548 since 2021.
Specifically, over the past three-and-half years, residential electricity prices have increased 23 percent, industrial electricity prices have increased 19 percent, home heating oil prices have increased 69 percent, oil prices have increased 52 percent, natural gas prices have increased 32 percent, and gasoline has increased $0.97 per gallon, or 42 percent.
In short, the sudden spike in energy prices under the Biden-Harris administration is largely due to the fact that President Biden nixed the Keystone XL Pipeline project; delayed new leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands; implemented a slew of new regulations on fossil fuel production; embraces environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing metrics; and supports so-called renewable energy with massive subsidies.
While those policies have resulted in a steep rise in the price of energy over the past few years, they absolutely pale in comparison to what Kamala Harris would have in store should she become the next president of the United States.
Like most of her Democrat colleagues, Kamala Harris clearly believes that climate change is an “existential threat.” However, her policy agenda to combat climate change makes her far more radical than President Biden, and most other Democrats.
For starters, Kamala Harris wants to ban fracking nationwide. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris declared at a CNN town hall when she was seeking the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination. Of course, banning fracking would cripple U.S. production of natural gas, sending the price of this baseload energy source through the roof. What’s more, it would decimate an entire industry, leaving thousands of Americans jobless, while simultaneously undermining our allies abroad and enriching adversarial nations like Russia.
Kamala Harris was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, which would transition the U.S. economy to “100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization of the economy by 2050.” According to The Heritage Foundation, the Green New Deal would result in energy prices skyrocketing by 30 percent per year over the foreseeable future. Moreover, it would reduce household incomes substantially, to the tune of $7,964 per year for a family of four.
Kamala Harris firmly supports practically all federal government efforts to enact “environmental justice,” which is nothing more than a huge wealth redistribution ploy under the guise of social justice.
During her ill-fated run for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination, Harris also endorsed a plan that included $10 trillion in new initiatives to fight climate change as well as a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
The timing of Harris’ unflinching support for unaffordable and unreliable renewable energy coupled with her antipathy towards abundant, affordable, and reliable fossil fuels could not come at a worse time for the American people or the U.S. economy at large.
As previously stated, the American people are already struggling with higher energy prices across the board. Almost assuredly, under a Harris administration, energy prices would continue to climb.
However, at a more macro level, Harris’ energy policies could potentially doom the future of the U.S. economy. The rise of data processing centers, AI, quantum computing, and other associated developing technologies will require unprecedented amounts of dependable and affordable baseload energy. As of now, the anti-fossil fuel, pro-renewable energy agenda advocated by Kamala Harris is not compatible with the huge demand for constant energy flow that the technologies of the future will inevitably need.
Kamala Harris is all-in on intermittent wind and solar power undergirding the grid as proposed under the Green New Deal and abhors the use of oil, coal, and natural gas as baseload energy sources. Because of this fundamental flaw in logic and lack of commonsense, it is extremely apparent that Kamala Harris is totally clueless on energy policy.
https://heartland.org/opinion/on-energy-policy-kamala-harris-is-clueless/
******************************************New Study: ‘Extreme COLD Events In Antarctica’ Shattered Records In July, Aug 2023
The Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the Antarctic cold spells shattered records amid global heat waves in late winter 2023, something we never heard from the mainstream media.
In a report appearing in the online Phys.org journal, 2023 “brought an unexpected twist with extreme cold events in Antarctica” – according to a new study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
“Record cold temperatures were observed in our Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) network as well as other locations around the region,” said Matthew A. Lazzara of the Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison).
“These phases were marked by new record low temperatures recorded at both staffed and automatic weather stations, spanning East Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf, and West Antarctica to the Antarctic Peninsula.”
Kunlun Station recorded its lowest temperature ever observed at -79.4°C, nearly 5°C colder than the old record.
“These extreme cold events were unprecedented and had significant operational impacts,” said David E. Mikolajczyk, the corresponding author of the study.
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Buildings – The Achilles Heel of Net Zero
No matter the pious pleas for more action to achieve a net-zero emissions economy for 2050, the world is simply not going to get there. Indeed, it is going to fall far short.
In some areas, people overstate the progress that has been made, proclaiming, for example, the few minutes at a time when wind (mainly) and solar provide for our electricity needs. No-one caveats such claims with the highly restricted conditions, or notes that electricity is less than a quarter of our total energy use.
Gas provides the bulk of our electricity at times – the majority – when the wind is not blowing sufficiently, or at all. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Electricity storage, the carbon-free alternative pushed by Net Zero advocates, is currently a pipedream because it is far too expensive. Most serious analysts think we will still rely on gas for much of our electricity in 2050.
Even if we retain gas-fired power for when the wind isn’t blowing, Net Zero looks unachievable. So far we have partially decarbonised the grid and little else. If the whole economy – heat and transport and all the rest – is to be weaned off fossil fuels, the generation capacity of the grid will need to triple. Investment in generation capacity from 2030 to 2050 will need to be twelve times higher than over 1990–2020. Investment in grid infrastructure will need to grow almost as much.
In other words, the decarbonisation spending spree, which is already causing severe pain across the economy, will have to be hugely expanded.
If there was enough green electricity to go round, we would not have to worry much about energy efficiency. But it is precisely because of the green electricity shortage and its high costs that we have to worry about the efficient use of energy in buildings.
Buildings are, and have always been, major sources of carbon dioxide emissions. In 2020, they represented about 44% of UK emissions, almost unchanged since 1990.[1] However, over that period the volume of emissions has halved, from 600 to 300 MtCO2e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent).[2] If we were to continue to improve the energy efficiency of buildings at the same rate, we would just about reach the target.
But that is a big if. All the easy things have been done: industry has almost all gone offshore, a decade of austerity and steep rises in energy prices the last few years have resulted in sharp demand reduction. This has been painful: industrial and public services output have both been constrained, the economy is less healthy and, as a result, there is less money available for investment in the energy transition.
The amount of money that will be required to complete the task of decarbonising the building stock is extraordinary. Consider first what is needed for retrofits. A major pilot project, focusing on 45 social (smaller than average) houses during 2009–2012, achieved a 60% average reduction in CO2 emissions at an average expenditure of £85,000 each. Achieving a 100% reduction in all 26 million homes and also all the other buildings in the country (offices, hospitals, hotels, warehouses etc) might therefore cost over £4 trillion. Efficiencies and learning might – optimistically – half that figure.
However, the limiting factor is not actually money, but human resources. Based on 100 person-days per house, we would need of order 300,000 retrofitters for the next 30 years. The requirements for related manpower in the supply chain and design teams might take the number towards 500,000 – as many as work in the whole education sector.
In spite of 20 years of warning, there has been no substantial recruitment into the retrofit sector needed to get the job done. The national retrofit project has been much talked about, but is not being undertaken at the scale needed to achieve Net Zero.
New buildings must also be considered; demand for housing is already very high, creating an urgent requirement for extra resources that is in direct competition with the Net Zero project.[3]
These new buildings either replace old ones or expand the housing stock. Replacing 1% of the homes more than a century old, and 0.5% of those built in the interwar years suggests we need to replace nearly 300,000 new homes per year just to stand still. But the annual increase in population is about 1%. If we are to maintain the UK average household at around 2.35 people, we must build another 300,000 homes per year, for a total of 650,000 homes per year. for the next decade. The average rebuild or replacement cost for a house (excluding land and utilities) is about £290,000 for a two- bedroom house or £340,000 for a three-bedroom one. That means that 650,000 homes, at current prices) will cost over £160 billion per annum up to 2035, or 6–7% of GDP. If these are to be Net Zero homes, they may be around 20% more expensive.
Currently we spend less than £60 billion per year on new homes!
And even if the finance could be found, the 1.5 million workers required will not be. This is equivalent to the numbers working in the NHS. All this has to be found within existing resources.
When the whole housing sector is taken together, retrofit and new build, it is impossible on four grounds, finance, human resources, materials and public buy-in, that a Net Zero target will be achieved by 2050. Even a command economy will not be enough, as the training of the required professional and skilled trade engineers will take far too long starting from now.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/buildings-the-achilles-heel-of-net-zero
******************************************No, Governor Inslee: Repeal of Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act Won’t Hurt the Climate
Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) faces the possibility of repeal this fall. Governor Jay Inslee and others claim the CCA will reduce pollution and help stop climate change. But the CCA isn’t having the slightest effect on the climate, while it is boosting the cost of living for Washington residents.
Washington’s Climate Commitment Act passed in 2021, implementing a cap and invest program designed to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. Businesses with emissions of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year must purchase allowances equal to their emissions and turn them in to state agencies. The act also established CO2 auctions, encouraging companies to trade allowances and reduce emissions.
But the CCA has helped to raise Washington State’s cost of living to amongst the highest in the nation. Gasoline and diesel prices now rank as the third highest behind Hawaii and California. The cost of emissions allowances to businesses drives up fuel, food, and utility prices for residents.
On January 16 of this year, the Washington Secretary of State certified Initiative 2117 for the ballot on November 5, 2024, having received more than 400,000 supporting signatures. Initiative 2117 would repeal the Climate Commitment Act and prevent the state from implementing cap and trade or cap and tax carbon trading programs. Governor Inslee is concerned that his signature climate change program may be struck down by the people.
When speaking in Spokane recently in defense of the Climate Commitment Act, Governor Inslee said, “ … families in Washington State are against pollution. They are against smoke coming into their neighborhoods where they can’t go out, their kids can’t go out and play. They’re against early death caused by pollution and they don’t want to remove our protection against pollution.”
However, the governor’s statements are wrong. The Climate Commitment Act strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is an odorless, invisible gas that does not produce smoke. Nor does breathing of CO2 cause early death.
We inhale only a trace of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but continuously produce CO2 as we burn sugars in our bodies. Every time we exhale, we exhale 100 times the concentration of the CO2 that we inhaled. The governor is mistakenly talking about the effects of breathing in real pollutants such as carbon monoxide or smoke particles, which can cause people harm, and instead wrongly attributes harmful health effects to carbon dioxide.
In fact, carbon dioxide should not be called a pollutant. Along with water and oxygen, CO2 is one of the three substances essential for life. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers show that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 help the world’s food crops grow bigger and yield more food. Carbon dioxide is one compound we can put into the environment that is great for the biosphere.
The human emissions of carbon dioxide from Washington are estimated to be about 100 million metric tons per year. World CO2 human emissions are estimated at 37,000 million metric tons per year. This means that global emissions are 370 times as large as the emissions from Washington State.
In addition, human emissions of CO2 are small compared to the CO2 naturally exhausted from oceans and the biosphere. Every day, nature puts about twenty times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as human industry and removes about the same amount. Washington emissions are less than insignificant as part Earth’s climate. The Climate Commitment Act will have a negligible effect on the climate, but if not repealed, it will continue to significantly raise fuel, food, and utility prices in Washington.
Why is it that climate policies never have a measurable goal? None of our leaders can say that a given policy will reduce temperatures by so many degrees, or reduce sea level rise by so many inches, or reduce the number of storms by a tangible amount, even if added to other policies. Fighting climate change is like raising an army and never taking a hill or building a hospital and never serving a patient. Yet more and more money must be endlessly spent to serve the ideology of Climatism.
This fall, the citizens of Washington State should reject Climatism and vote in favor of the resolution to strike down the Climate Commitment Act.
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All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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