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
31 December, 2021
Shale oil is unprofitable
It's expensive to produce so production can flourish only while producers of conventional oil keep crude oil prices up. Recent drops in crude prices have driven many shale producers out of business so a revival of crude prices may not lead to a revival of shale production any time soon. So its once again producers of conventional oil who are dictating prices at the pump
Donald Trump had to be the most fossil-fuel friendly U.S. president of recent times. When he became president, Trump quickly reversed Obama’s energy policies; the Keystone Pipeline was approved, imports from the Middle East were cut, and the price at the pump came down. It was claimed that America had become “energy independent” and was again a “net exporter” of oil. In 2018, the U.S. oil business even surpassed the record petroleum production peak set in 1970.
Inasmuch as American petroleum production had been sliding downward since 1970, how did this come about? It came about because of “unconventional oil,” e.g. shale oil. But even before the COVID-19 pandemic and the installation of a new president hostile to fossil fuel, shale oil had hit a snag: financiers were losing patience with shale’s profit performance.
In November of 2019, two months before the outbreak of the pandemic in America, NPR ran “As Oil Prices Drop And Money Dries Up, Is The U.S. Shale Boom Going Bust?”
Today, shale accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. oil production and nearly all of the industry's growth, but many of the companies that made that growth possible are now struggling to stay afloat. […]
Without access to new cash, many producers are pulling back on exploration. The number of rigs drilling for new oil is at its lowest point in two years.
That's bad news for people like Ron Fountain, who works on a drilling rig in the Bakken shale of North Dakota. He thinks back to a few years ago, when the price of oil was more than $100 a barrel and companies were drilling with abandon.
In March of 2020, just after the coronavirus began feasting on elderly Americans, “Why This Oil Crash Is Different” ran at both the Center on Global Energy Policy and at Foreign Policy:
With the economic slowdown from the coronavirus outbreak projected to cause the first annual drop in oil demand since the global financial crisis in 2009, oil prices had already plunged 20 percent in the lead up to last week’s meeting of the so-called OPEC+ group, which includes both OPEC members and several other oil-producing countries, most notably Russia.
Russia had made clear its ambivalence about cutting supply, given concerns about whether cuts would be effective in supporting prices, and Russia’s reluctance to throw a lifeline to U.S. shale oil producers struggling under low prices and high debt. […]
Even before this weekend, shale oil production growth was already projected to slow sharply due to lower oil prices and much tighter capital constraints as investors grew skeptical of the sector due to its poor profitability.
In April of 2020, with bodies piling up in makeshift morgues, The Guardian ran “US shale industry expected to shrink sharply as oil price falls”:
US shale was expected to grow by 650,000 barrels a day this year before the coronavirus outbreak wiped out forecasts for global oil demand, triggering one of the steepest oil price declines on record. It is now forecast to shrink by 1.5m barrels a day compared to last year and that may accelerate even further.
Also in April of 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ran “How the Saudi Decision to Launch a Price War Is Reshaping the Global Oil Market”:
Saudi Arabia’s decision [to expand oil production] was a response to the dislocation in the global oil market caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) against the backdrop of an already weak global economy. […]
The resulting drop in the oil price from about $35 to near $20 has further exacerbated the financial stress experienced by U.S. oil producers in Texas, Oklahoma and other oil-producing regions, which were already reeling from sharp reductions in fuel demand caused by the coronavirus.
In July of 2020, as the pandemic was raging throughout America, the Washington Post re-ran Bloomberg’s “Shale’s Bust Shows Basis of Boom: Debt, Debt and Debt”:
What was very visible this spring was the steep drop in the fall of oil, driven first by OPEC actions to increase supply and then by pandemic lockdowns that decimated demand. But a crackdown by creditors alarmed at the industry’s debt levels had begun last year. […]
The pandemic and OPEC’s moves, which were driven by Russia and Saudi Arabia’s market-share war, pushed prices down steeply in March, with some oil futures prices falling into negative territory for the first time. Even when oil is at $35 a barrel, almost a third of U.S. shale producers are technically insolvent, according to a recent study by Deloitte LLP.
In August of 2020, energy investor Kirk Coburn ran “The US Shale Industry: From Boom to Bust”:
For years, the US shale industry was on a boom fueled by junk bonds from Wall Street. The industry was waning in 2019. In 2020, shale oil giants faced the perfect storm -- COVID-19, failed OPEC+ talks, and relentless oil price wars came to a head. Then the US shale industry went from just barely hanging on […] to a definitive bust.
The bust has been a long time coming; COVID-19 just pushed the industry over the edge.
In October of 2020, Forbes ran “As Oil Bankruptcies Surge, Vulture Investors Start Their Long Feast”:
More Chapter 11s are coming, […] it will mean that management teams are finally accepting of the new reality of oil prices stuck at $40/bbl amid a continuing supply glut and pandemic-weakened demand. The world has changed, the debt-fueled fracking binge has come to an end. Many zombie oil companies cannot survive in their current form.
Alarming stuff, I’d say. But pandemic or no, shale oil is a more costly proposition than regular old conventional oil. Because of the complexity of its extraction (fracking), shale oil has a higher break-even price than does conventional oil. It’s been alleged that the Saudis and others have recently been able to pump (conventional) oil out of the ground for $10 a barrel.
In April of 2021, at Oilprice.com, we read that “Oil at $60 is undoubtedly a comfortable price level for U.S. shale.” And since oil has been trading above that price recently, maybe the U.S. oil business can round up new investors and creditors willing to take a chance that shale oil can turn a profit.
But for U.S. oil to be profitable, the federal government needs to get a whole helluva lot smarter. Biden should start by replacing his Energy Secretary with someone who knows something about energy. Jennifer Granholm is unfit for that job. America needs an Energy Secretary with a deep understanding of both fossil fuel and its alternatives. Biden should consider someone like chemical engineer Robert Rapier (a recent article of his).
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/28/killing-keystone-xl-how-biden-destroyed-american-energy-independence
**********************************************‘Sustainable aviation fuel’ is here, but still has miles to go
United Airlines deployed what it called a “game-changing flight” last week. In a global first, a United Boeing 737 carrying more than 100 passengers flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. on a tank of pure “sustainable aviation fuel,” or SAF. But while the stunt demonstrated that flying on pure SAF can be done, it’s unlikely to change the carbon footprint of your next airplane trip.
SAF resembles conventional jet fuel and emits carbon dioxide when it’s burned in a plane’s engine. It’s considered sustainable because it’s refined from material that already exists in the environment, like used cooking fats and plant oils, rather than from fossil fuels that have stored carbon in the earth’s crust for millions of years. That means SAF can potentially have a smaller carbon footprint than crude oil–based fuel when the entire life-cycle emissions of producing it are taken into account.
Neither United nor World Energy, the company that produced the SAF for the flight, has revealed any details about the life-cycle emissions of the fuel used for Wednesday’s flight, but the companies advertise that SAF has the potential to reduce emissions by up to 80 percent compared to conventional jet fuel. The flight also wasn’t fueled entirely by SAF. One of the two engines on the plane ran on conventional jet fuel “to further prove there are no operational differences between the two,” according to United.
The point was less to demonstrate a flight with a lower carbon footprint than to show that SAF technology is now just as good as the fossil-based stuff. Some airlines are already blending SAF into the fuel they use, but the American Society for Testing and Materials, which develops standards for jet fuel, limits blending to 50 percent. Lauren Riley, United’s managing director of global environmental affairs, told Politico that was because of technical problems with earlier generations of SAF. “It’s matured since then, and we are proving that those concerns are no longer relevant,” she said.
SAF isn’t the only early-stage proposal for cutting emissions from flying. Major manufacturers like Airbus are also looking at fueling planes with clean hydrogen, which doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases when it’s burned. Battery technology has not advanced enough to power big planes over long distances yet, but using battery-powered planes for short distances is starting to take off. The shipping company DHL recently announced it was ordering a fleet of 12 battery-powered planes that are expected to be able to carry about 2,600 pounds of cargo over roughly 500 miles on one charge.
In the near term, SAF is one of the few available tools to lower emissions from commercial aviation — but it’s got some serious hurdles to overcome. There are doubts the world could sustainably produce enough SAF to power the entire industry, due to limited supply of the raw materials needed to make it. At the moment, it’s three to four times more expensive than conventional fuel, and there’s hardly any of it on the market. According to the International Air Transport Association, a trade association, about 26 million gallons of SAF will be produced this year. Riley of United said SAF accounts for “far less than 0.1 percent of our total fuel supply in any given year.” United chief executive officer Scott Kirby told Bloomberg Green that converting just 10 percent of the global aviation fuel supply to SAF will require $250 billion in capital. Kirby said the industry couldn’t afford it, and that a “government foundation” was needed.
Experts say another way to cut aviation emissions in the near term, without spending hundreds of billions of dollars, is to issue stronger regulations that require airlines to buy the most efficient planes on the market. The Biden administration recently opted not to develop more effective emissions regulations for aircraft.
But Biden is taking steps to help scale up SAF. In September, the White House announced loan guarantees, research and development funding, and an interagency “Grand Challenge” to increase production of SAF to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030.
The Build Back Better Act, the social spending and climate bill that passed the House last month, also includes $300 million for SAF research, as well as a new tax credit of at least $1.25 per gallon for aviation fuels that achieve at least a 50 percent emission reduction.
The aviation industry supports the measure. Carter Yang, a spokesperson for the lobbying organization Airlines for America, told E&E News, “A tax credit would help build the nascent market for SAF, providing a financial incentive for companies to integrate more SAF into the fuel supply and enabling them to offer it at a price that would allow airlines to use more of it.”
https://grist.org/climate-energy/sustainable-aviation-fuel-is-here-but-still-has-miles-to-go/
***********************************************Australia: Greenie hate on display
Old Parliament House has suffered 'incalculable damage' after a fire ripped through the entrance to the historic landmark, with Scott Morrison branding the destruction 'disgusting' and 'appalling'.
Within hours of the building going up in flames on Thursday, Greens senator Lidia Thorpe posted a tweet - which was hastily deleted - remarking 'the colonial system is burning down'.
The entrance to the building was engulfed in flames after a smoking ceremony demanding Aboriginal Sovereignty in Canberra grew out of control - with some claiming it was spread intentionally.
Emergency crews arrived to douse the flames, but not before the fire had caused extensive damage to its heritage doors, the portico and the building's exterior.
Demonstrators were heard shouting 'let it burn', amid a tense stand-off with police who used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
The smoking ceremony, which was approved by authorities as part of a protest, was to blame for the blaze while police begin to investigate how the chaos escalated.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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30 December, 2021
Hilarious false prophecies
The eco-extremists at the liberal Guardian should realize by now that the internet is forever. The outlet freaked out over 17 years ago about a frosty future thanks to a ridiculously inaccurate Pentagon prediction.
The Guardian published a report in 2004 sounding the alarm bells over a “secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs” and obtained by sister newspaper The Observer. Here was the harrowing message, according to The Guardian: “[M]ajor European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.”
It’s now 2021, and major European cities are still intact and a Reuters report this year flushes The Guardian’s frets about a little ice age in Britain down the toilet. Reuters trumpeted: “Britain's climate getting warmer, sunnier and wetter - Met Office.” Travel website Touropia has an updated report headlined, “25 Best Cities to Visit in Europe.” Even the waterway-dominated Venice, Italy is No. 17 on the list. Ouch.
The liberal Guardian had even gone so far as to propagandize how the world was supposedly going to end up experiencing “nuclear conflict” because of climate change. The report flailed in its lede paragraph: “Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.”
The propaganda spiraled down the whirlpool of insanity:
The [Pentagon] document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
The hilarious bit about The Guardian’s prophecy about total eco-Armageddon was that it said the report’s “findings” would prove “humiliating to [President George W. Bush’s] administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists.” But the only thing “humiliating” about this report was the fact some of the major predictions never panned out, eh Guardian?
The Guardian isn’t the only publication to see major climate scare-porn it peddled go up in flames.
In 1995, The New York Times tried to frighten readers into believing that “most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years,” which would be the year 2020. Newsflash: The East Coast beaches are also still intact. U.S. News & World Report even ran a report in May 2020 headlined: “16 Top East Coast Beaches to Visit.
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UK: Energy crisis talks fail to reach deal as household bills could double
Emergency talks aimed at fixing Britain’s mounting energy crisis are set to continue as the government and suppliers grapple with how to tackle soaring gas prices.
A meeting held on Monday failed to find a solution to what one industry leader has described as an “enormous crisis” as an industry riven by bankruptcies – around two dozen energy suppliers driven out of the market since August – has warned of an “enormous crisis” in 2022.
Still, despite dire statements from industry leaders, no agreement was reached on Monday. The failure to secure a way forward will pile pressure on the government amid fears that another major supplier could topple as wintry weather and limited supplies in the UK and Europe could force gas prices even higher.
A government spokesperson said that the meeting between large energy suppliers and Ofgem concluded with an agreement to keep talking to ensure “UK consumers are protected” against a backdrop of rising gas costs.
Suppliers claim that even with well-hedged portfolios , aimed at insulating themselves from price hikes, they are still partially exposed to the sharp rise in wholesale gas prices.
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How bad is cryptocurrency for the environment?
Cryptocurrency, often just called crypto, is any form of currency that exists digitally or virtually and uses cryptography to secure transactions.
Cryptocurrencies are popular because they don’t have a central issuing or regulating authority, instead using a decentralised system to record transactions and issue new units.
They have soared in popularity – and volatility – over the past few years, but the environmental consequences of the phenomenon has come under scrutiny.
What is cryptocurrency mining and why does it have such a large carbon footprint?
Cryptocurrency mining is the process of generating new units of cryptocurrency by solving complex puzzles.
Critics say the process is environmentally unsound because the process of mining uses a lot of computer equipment and is highly energy-intensive.
According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, this mining consumes about 110 Terawatt Hours of power per year, or 0.55 per cent of the world’s energy production.
The centre estimates a single cryptocurrency transaction uses the same amount of energy that an average American household uses in one month, with an estimated level of global energy usage equivalent to that of the country of Sweden.
The majority of Bitcoin is mined in China and is largely fuelled by cheap coal power in the Xinjiang region, according to reports.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have said almost two-thirds of Bitcoin generation as of April 2020 took place in China, with one-third of that being done in Xinjiang.
Even crypto enthusiast Elon Musk has sounded the alarm bell. In May he tweeted: “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment,” he added.
Are regulators cracking down?
In May, New York state put forward a bill seeking to shut crypto mining down until its impact on the environment has been assessed – which it says will take three years.
The New York State Senate bill, introduced by Senator Kevin Parker, would require a study on the greenhouse gas emissions caused by cryptocurrency mining, as well as its effects on air, water, and wildlife. In the meantime, no mining would be allowed.
“Cryptocurrency mining threatens not only New York’s climate goals, under the CLCPA, but also global energy policy, such as the Paris Agreement,” Senate Bill S6486 says.
Accordingly, “there shall be a three-year moratorium on the operation of cryptocurrency mining centers in the state, including, but not limited to cryptocurrency mining centers located in converted fossil fuel power plants.”
Can crypto be mined ethically?
High energy use does not necessarily mean high greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Harvard Business Review, the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining really depends on which energy sources are used.
Bitcoin miners have embraced renewable energy, often because it is cost-effective.
Iceland, for example, is a cryptocurrency mining hub thanks to its cheap geothermal energy and cold climate, which helps cool the machines.
Meanwhile, hydropower resources in Quebec and British Columbia in Canada and windpower in Texas have also attracted miners.
Miners have even resurrected defunct hydroelectric plants in the US to generate energy to mine cryptocurrency.
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Is solar energy really green?
As the world continues to push towards net zero emissions, more large-scale solar farms will be built in Australia.
But why are they being built on productive agricultural land and are how credible are claims about toxic contamination?
The Clean Energy Council (CEC) is forecasting a massive increase in the number of solar panels in the short term.
The amount of solar power installed in Australia has doubled in the past three to four years, and the CEC is forecasting it will double again in the next couple of years.
Concern is global
Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said solar panels were adding significantly to the world's non-recycled waste mountain.
"But it also poses a growing threat to human health and the environment due to the hazardous elements it contains," Mr Steiner said.
Australia is adding to that mountain by sending 40,000 old panels a year in containers to markets in developing countries.
While that trade provides cheap panels for poorer nations, the UN is concerned that many of them will end up in landfill overseas.
The vast majority of solar panels are made of thin silicon wafers using refined silicon dioxide.
It is the same chemical compound as sand, which is used in making glass, so it is harmless.
The solar cells are connected by thin strips of tin and copper which is sealed and protected under glass.
Almost all of the materials can be recycled and there are several new plants in development that will be able to turn old panels into reusable materials.
There are, however, a small number of panels that were made in the past using cadmium, which is highly toxic and associated with serious health problems.
Some panels are also made with nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a gas that is associated with global warming.
A South Korean study from 2020 raised concerns about contamination from solar panels that are "released into the environment during their disposal or following damage, such as that from natural disasters."
The United States wants to address the problem as well, with a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from March 2021 pointing to a lack of incentives for recycling companies and confusing and conflicting state regulations.
Are solar farms taking over productive farm land?
The NSW government has set up five renewable energy zones in regional areas where it is promoting the development of solar farms close to large populations and the existing electricity grid.
That means productive farming land is sometimes used to build large-scale solar plants, and farmer Bianca Schultz right is in the firing line.
She owns a property next door to the proposed Walla Walla site in the Riverina in south-west NSW, while the Culcairn project borders her other boundary.
"There's been talk of heat island effects and heavy metal leachate, [while] the visual impact is a large concern for us being directly across the road," she said.
Ms Schultz said the property was used in the past for grazing livestock, making hay, and cropping. She thinks that turning it into an industrial-scale solar plant with just a few employees for maintenance will negatively affect the local economy.
"The on-flow effect on the transport companies, the grain merchants, the rural merchants; it's taking away a lot from our community," she said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-12-30/solar-panel-contamination-regional-australia/100559830
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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29 December, 2021
China fires up giant coal power plant in face of calls for cuts
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China, under fire for approving new coal power stations as other countries try to curb greenhouse gases, has completed the first 1,000-megawatt unit of the Shanghaimiao plant, the biggest of its kind under construction in the country.
Its operator, the Guodian Power Shanghaimiao Corporation, a subsidiary of the central government-run China Energy Investment Corporation, said on Tuesday that the plant's technology was the world's most efficient, with the lowest rates of coal and water consumption.
Located in Ordos in the coal-rich northwestern region of Inner Mongolia, the plant will eventually have four generating units, and is designed to deliver power to the eastern coastal Shandong province via a long-distance ultra-high voltage grid.
China is responsible for more than half of global coal-fired power generation and is expected to see a 9% year-on-year increase in 2021, an International Energy Agency report published this month said.
Beijing has pledged to start reducing coal consumption, but will do so only after 2025, giving developers considerable leeway to raise capacity further in the coming four years.
A report published this month by researchers at China's State Grid Corporation said energy security concerns mean the country is likely to build as much as 150 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity over the 2021-2025 period, bringing the total to 1,230 GW.
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Capitalism at work: Cargo ships divert gas from China to Britain
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.
While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.
The UK gas price rocketed to a record 470p per therm last week, up from just 50p in April, but has since fallen to under 270p.
James Huckstepp, managing analyst at S&P Global Platts, said tankers are flocking towards British shores in a move that is “critical to tempering even more extreme prices and demand destruction in Europe”.
He said: “We are seeing cargoes previously destined for Asia now diverting to the UK. This is particularly the case for those cargoes originating in the US, given the journey between the US and Europe is much shorter than that to Asia.”
The number of US tankers heading for European ports jumped by one third last weekend, according to Bloomberg, with 20 vessels bearing American gas heading for Europe and another 14 heading in the general direction of Europe while awaiting final orders.
The number of cargoes travelling to the UK and elsewhere in Europe will raise hopes that new supplies can ease the energy crisis and help lower gas prices, which have declined after soaring to record highs last week. That will bring some relief to UK energy bosses, who met Downing Street officials this week for crunch crisis talks.
Ahead of the meeting, Stephen Fitzpatrick, the boss of Britain’s second-largest supplier Ovo Energy, warned that bills were “almost certain” to double to £2,000 per household.
It is understood that the Government could facilitate a deal that would see the industry given access to a £20bn fund, which they could repay at a rate of £2bn a year over 10 years.
Nathan Piper, head of oil and gas research at Investec, said European and UK prices have surged above Asian liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices, attracting volumes away from China.
The additional supplies will provide some much-needed respite ahead of looming winter shortages. However, one Singapore-based trader told S&P Global Platts earlier this month that they are not sure “how sustainable these diversions to the Atlantic will be”.
The cost of energy in Europe has been soaring this year due to low levels of gas storage, tight supplies from Russia and lower output from clean energy sources, in part because of weak wind speeds. Some 26 retail energy companies have gone bust since August.
The country gets most of its gas via pipes connected to the North Sea, Norway and continental Europe, but in normal times it also gets about 20pc via ships in the global market.
Russia has been accused of withholding extra pipeline gas supplies to mainland Europe in recent months, in an attempt to pressure Germany into starting up its new pipeline, Nord Stream 2.
It comes as new data show that shipments of gas from Russia to the UK increased this year.
As of last week, Russia had sent 29 shipments of LNG to the UK during 2021 – compared to 22 a year earlier – according to data from S&P Global Platts Analytics. It marks the second highest annual figure since the first Russian shipments to the UK in 2017.
Proponents of the North Sea industry argue that the Government could boost Britain’s energy security by granting permission for more domestic oil and gas drilling. About 10 licenced North Sea projects are expected to be up for development approval and final investment decisions in next year, but are likely to draw opposition from climate change activists.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/28/cargo-ships-divert-gas-china-britain/
************************************************CO2’S Role In The Great ‘Climate Change’ Deception
World history is replete with imaginary gods and demons that man has blamed for conditions and events beyond human control.
From 1300 AD to 1880, the Northern Hemisphere experienced a cooling period called the “Little Ice Age.”
During that period, many people irrationally believed that the cold temperatures were caused by witches. During the preceeding Medieval Warm Period, witches had been blamed for ‘cooking the weather’. As a result, many witches were identified, tried, and executed.
One hundred years later, people began to complain that the weather was becoming “too warm.” Man’s imagination then again created a new demon to blame for the warmer weather: anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2).
Demon adherents proclaim that if atmospheric CO2 is not immediately reduced to pre-industrial levels, the glaciers will melt, and our coastal cities will be submerged by rising seas.
Unfortunately, the irrational belief that anthropogenic CO2 will lead to future catastrophe, has become a “mass movement” with all the hallmarks of a religion. See, “The True Believer,” by Eric Hoffer (1951).
Computer “climate models” now blame CO2 for the warmer weather and issue dire predictions of impending doom if CO2 levels are not reduced.
Al Gore, the CO2 oracle, and Greta Thunberg, the child prophet, tell their “true believer” followers that burning fossil fuels is sinful and, if not stopped, will result in future catastrophe.
Those “true believers” have closed their minds to opposing views and refuse to acknowledge any information that does not fit the imaginary climate disaster scenario.
They also ignore the harsh reality that modern world economies are based upon massive infrastructures, completely dependent upon fossil fuels that can never be replaced by windmills and solar panels. (Anyone for a battery-powered aircraft?)
Finally, they treat the thousands of scientists, who inform us that the CO2 molecules now being added to the atmosphere have not had, and will not have, any adverse effect whatsoever on the climate, as though they did not exist.
As a matter of scientific fact, only natural forces beyond human control can increase the average temperature of the Earth.
Modern science teaches us that increases and decreases in global temperatures over decades, centuries, and millennia have been, and still are, solely the result of a combination of natural heating and cooling forces that are all beyond human control:
Changes in the radiation intensity of the Sun (sunspots, mass coronal ejections, etc.).
Changes in the Earth’s orbit and its tilt to the sun.
Changes in the radiation and heating of the oceans and land by the Earth’s molten core.
The aerosol effects of volcanos blocking sunlight.
The albedo effects of constantly changing clouds, ice, and snow (including the volume of cosmic rays that may affect cloudiness).
All of the many heating and cooling periods the Earth has experienced for millions of years – before the industrial revolution – were solely the result of those natural and uncontrollable heating and cooling forces.
The climate models, however, are programmed on the assumption that additional atmospheric CO2 causes global temperatures to increase.
In reality, however, ancient ice-core data demonstrates that rising global temperatures always precede increases in atmospheric CO2 by several hundred years – not vice versa, as the climate models falsely predict.
Consequently, claims that the recent minuscule increase of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere is the sole “cause” of the current warming trend are scientific fraud.
Modern-day climatologists can roughly approximate changes in average global temperatures and have concluded that since 1960, the average temperature of the Earth has increased by about 1-degree Celsius.
During that same period, they have also found that the CO2 content of the atmosphere, as measured at Mona Loa, has increased from 0.031 percent to 0.041 percent.
Or, in terms of additional molecules, the number of CO2 molecules in a cubic meter of air has risen by 100 parts per million (ppm), from 310 in 1960 to 410 ppm today. [The atmosphere is composed of 78 percent nitrogen, 20 percent oxygen, one percent argon, and 0-4 percent water vapor. The remaining one percent of the atmosphere is comprised of “trace gases:” 0.04 percent carbon dioxide, 0.00182 percent neon, and 0.000175 percent methane.]
The correlation of the tiny 0.01 percent increase in CO2 with the modest one-degree increase in temperature over the last 60 years would normally be dismissed as a mere coincidence. Indeed, the scientific method demands that all other possible causes be evaluated and dismissed before designating a simple correlation as a “cause.”
“True believers,” however, including the climate modelers themselves, simply disregard any other more likely natural causes. That total disregard for all other possibilities, probabilities, and contrary views constitutes scientific fraud.
The trace gas CO2 does NOT act as a “blanket” to increase the Earth’s temperature. Many proponents of a CO2 catastrophe liken the effect of the additional 100 ppm CO2 molecules to an insulating blanket that increases the Earth’s temperature.
Those trace CO2 molecules, however, neither form a “blanket,” “trap heat,” nor send heat back to the surface. Only water vapor can “trap latent heat” for a short time until the vapor condenses, and the heat is radiated to space. [“Heat” is defined as the kinetic movement of molecules. “Radiation” is defined as the energy force that causes kinetic movement].
All of the gases comprising the atmosphere are constantly moving the radiant energy emitted by the Earth’s warm surface, per the Second Law of Thermodynamics, up and out to the vacuum space by conduction, convection, and radiation.
In that massive continuous process, the additional 100 ppm of anthropogenic CO2 molecules are only along for the ride like a few new feathers on a bird. While those CO2 molecules do absorb “fingerprint” IR radiation at the narrow IR 15-micron band, that absorption is an integral part of the basic natural cooling process.
It raises the CO2 molecule’s kinetic motion, which is instantaneously transferred to all surrounding molecules by conduction and radiation. Accordingly, the additional 100 ppm CO2 molecules create NO additional “heat” in the atmosphere.
Nor do they “delay” the emission of radiation to space. They merely participate in the constant transfer of kinetic and radiative energy, by atmospheric molecules, from the surface through the atmosphere to outer space.
More here:
https://principia-scientific.com/co2s-role-in-the-great-climate-change-deception/
**********************************************New Australian coal-mne now producing -- to the fury of Greenies
The first coal shipment from central Queensland Carmichael Mine is about to leave Australian shores after years of controversy, international media coverage and environmental campaigning against the facility.
Bravus Mining and Resources, the Australian arm of Adani, today confirmed the shipment had been assembled at the North Queensland Export Terminal in Bowen.
Bravus CEO David Boshoff celebrated the milestone, calling it a "big moment".
"From day one, the objectives of the Carmichael Project were to supply high-quality Queensland coal to nations determined to lift millions of their citizens out of energy poverty and to create local jobs and economic prosperity in Queensland communities in the process" Mr Boshoff said.
"With the support of the people of regional Queensland we have delivered on that promise."
The shipment comes amid continuing protests against the mine and follows years of fierce campaigning from environmental activists.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the mine made "a mockery" of Australia's emissions targets.
And, locally, scuba diving guide and Whitsunday Conservation Council spokesperson Tony Fontes said he felt "despair and anger".
"Both state and federal governments supported Adani in opening the mine,and ensuring that the Great Barrier Reef is not going to survive this century" Mr Fontes said.
"[But] one would hope that in the very near future, there will not be a market for thermal coal.
"And it's unfortunate that people that are working in the industry have been misled by the government suggesting that there's a long-term future in working in thermal coal."
However, Bravus insisted Australian coal would have a role alongside renewables for decades "as part of an energy mix that delivers reliable and affordable power with reduced emissions intensity".
In 2016, the Wangan and Jagalingou people voted 294 to one in favour of an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with Adani. Subsequent challenges against the ILUA were dismissed in court.
Mine opponents now represent a small portion of traditional owners who, since signing the agreement, have been working with Bravus.
Bravus said the first shipment of coal would be loaded and dispatched, subject to the port's shipping schedule. It did not say when the shipment would leave or where it was going.
"The first export shipment is of a commercial scale and is going to a customer, with further details remaining commercial in confidence" it said.
The company plans to produce 10 million tonnes of coal a year from the mine, to be sold to customers in the Asia-Pacific region at 'index adjusted pricing'.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-12-29/adani-ships-first-coal/100729834
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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28 December, 2021
Doughnut economics
The ideas of Doughnut economics are pretty woolly but it seems to be catching on in Greenie circles so I want to note a few things about it. I reproduce below some excerpts from a very sesquipedalian article about it to give us the idea of it.
Although its proponents are very vague about it, Doughnut economics can in fact be summarized very simply: prioritize the environment over money. In other words, do things in a way that is better for the environment rather than in ways that are most economically efficient.
Despite its promotion as a "radical new economic theory" it is in fact a very old feel-good idea, and what it has led to -- as set out below -- shows the lack of understanding of the world that it embodies: When we do things in the most economically efficient way, it is not money we are prioritizing, it is human work and effort. Money is just a marker. It tells us how much effort is required to produce a good or service. The are imperfections in the system but that is basically it. Study economics if you want the detail.
So we see the stupidity of some of the actions that are praised below. Instead of buying new computers, they employ people to fix up old ones -- which is very labour-intensive. And in the end you still have an old and limited computer. In terms of human effort the refurbished computer is in fact very expensive. A lot of valuable human effort has been used to produce an inferior product. If we did everything that way, we would have a much reduced availability of goods and services.
The doughnut economy adds up to a waste of human labour and effort. How is that humane or wise? If the environment really needs saving, there are surely better ways about it
In April 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, Amsterdam’s city government announced it would recover from the crisis, and avoid future ones, by embracing the theory of “doughnut economics.” Laid out by British economist Kate Raworth in a 2017 book, the theory argues that 20th century economic thinking is not equipped to deal with the 21st century reality of a planet teetering on the edge of climate breakdown. Instead of equating a growing GDP with a successful society, our goal should be to fit all of human life into what Raworth calls the “sweet spot” between the “social foundation,” where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the “environmental ceiling.” By and large, people in rich countries are living above the environmental ceiling. Those in poorer countries often fall below the social foundation. The space in between: that’s the doughnut.
In 1990, Raworth, now 50, arrived at Oxford University to study economics. She quickly became frustrated by the content of the lectures, she recalls over Zoom from her home office in Oxford, where she now teaches. She was learning about ideas from decades and sometimes centuries ago: supply and demand, efficiency, rationality and economic growth as the ultimate goal. “The concepts of the 20th century emerged from an era in which humanity saw itself as separated from the web of life,” Raworth says. In this worldview, she adds, environmental issues are relegated to what economists call “externalities.” “It’s just an ultimate absurdity that in the 21st century, when we know we are witnessing the death of the living world unless we utterly transform the way we live, that death of the living world is called ‘an environmental externality.’” Almost two decades after she left university, as the world was reeling from the 2008 financial crash, Raworth struck upon an alternative to the economics she had been taught. She had gone to work in the charity sector and in 2010, sitting in the openplan office of the anti poverty nonprofit Oxfam in Oxford, she came across a diagram. A group of scientists studying the conditions that make life on earth possible had identified nine “planetary boundaries” that would threaten humans’ ability to survive if crossed, like the acidification of the oceans. Inside these boundaries, a circle colored in green showed the safe place for humans.
But if there’s an ecological overshoot for the planet, she thought, there’s also the opposite: shortfalls creating deprivation for humanity. “Kids not in school, not getting decent health care, people facing famine in the Sahel,” she says. “And so I drew a circle within their circle, and it looked like a doughnut.”
Raworth published her theory of the doughnut as a paper in 2012 and later as a 2017 book, which has since been translated into 20 languages. The theory doesn’t lay out specific policies or goals for countries. It requires stakeholders to decide what benchmarks would bring them inside the doughnut— emission limits, for example, or an end to homelessness. The process of setting those benchmarks is the first step to becoming a doughnut economy, she says.
Raworth argues that the goal of getting “into the doughnut” should replace governments’ and economists’ pursuit of never- ending GDP growth. Not only is the primacy of GDP overinflated when we now have many other data sets to measure economic and social well- being, she says, but also, endless growth powered by natural resources and fossil fuels will inevitably push the earth beyond its limits. “When we think in terms of health, and we think of something that tries to grow endlessly within our bodies, we recognize that immediately: that would be a cancer.”
The doughnut can seem abstract, and it has attracted criticism. Some conservatives say the doughnut model can’t compete with capitalism’s proven ability to lift millions out of poverty. Some critics on the left say the doughnut’s apolitical nature means it will fail to tackle ideology and political structures that prevent climate action.
Cities offer a good opportunity to prove that the doughnut can actually work in practice. In 2019, C40, a network of 97 cities focused on climate action, asked Raworth to create reports on three of its members— Amsterdam, Philadelphia and Portland— showing how far they were from living inside the doughnut. Inspired by the process, Amsterdam decided to run with it. The city drew up a “circular strategy” combining the doughnut’s goals with the principles of a “circular economy,” which reduces, reuses and recycles materials across consumer goods, building materials and food. Policies aim to protect the environment and natural resources, reduce social exclusion and guarantee good living standards for all.
The new, doughnut-shaped world Amsterdam wants to build is coming into view on the southeastern side of the city. Rising almost 15 ft. out of placid waters of Lake IJssel lies the city’s latest flagship construction project, Strandeiland (Beach Island). Part of IJburg, an archipelago of six new islands built by city contractors, Beach Island was reclaimed from the waters with sand carried by boats run on low emission fuel. The foundations were laid using processes that don’t hurt local wildlife or expose future residents to sealevel rise. Its future neighborhood is designed to produce zero emissions and to prioritize social housing and access to nature. Beach Island embodies Amsterdam’s new priority: balance, says project manager Alfons Oude Ophuis. “Twenty years ago, everything in the city was focused on production of houses as quickly as possible. It’s still important, but now we take more time to do the right thing.”
The city has introduced standards for sustainability and circular use of materials for contractors in all cityowned buildings. Anyone wanting to build on Beach Island, for example, will need to provide a “materials passport” for their buildings, so whenever they are taken down, the city can reuse the parts.
On the mainland, the pandemic has inspired projects guided by the doughnut’s ethos. When the Netherlands went into lockdown in March, the city realized that thousands of residents didn’t have access to computers that would become increasingly necessary to socialize and take part in society. Rather than buy new devices—which would have been expensive and eventually contribute to the rising problem of ewaste—the city arranged collections of old and broken laptops from residents who could spare them, hired a frm to refurbish them and distributed 3,500 of them to those in need. “It’s a small thing, but to me it’s pure doughnut,” says van Doorninck.
The local government is also pushing the private sector to do its part, starting with the thriving but ecologically harmful fashion industry. Amsterdam claims to have the highest concentration of denim brands in the world, and that the average resident owns fve pairs of jeans. But denim is one of the most resource intensive fabrics in the world, with each pair of jeans requiring thousands of gallons of water and the use of polluting chemicals.
In October, textile suppliers, jeans brands and other links in the denim supply chain signed the “Denim Deal,” agreeing to work together to produce 3 billion garments that include 20% recycled materials by 2023—no small feat given the treatments the fabric undergoes and the mix of materials incorporated into a pair of jeans. The city will organize collections of old denim from Amsterdam residents and eventually create a shared repair shop for the brands, where people can get their jeans fxed rather than throwing them away. “Without that government support and the pressure on the industry, it will not change. Most companies need a push,” says Hans Bon of denim supplier Wieland Textiles.
Doughnut economics may be on the rise in Amsterdam, a relatively wealthy city with a famously liberal outlook, in a democratic country with a robust state. But advocates of the theory face a tough road to effectively replace capitalism. In Nanaimo, Canada, a city councillor who opposed the adoption of the model in December called it “a very left-wing philosophy which basically says that business is bad, growth is bad, development’s bad.”
In fact, the doughnut model doesn’t proscribe all economic growth or development. In her book, Raworth acknowledges that for low- and middleincome countries to climb above the doughnut’s social foundation, “significant GDP growth is very much needed.” But that economic growth needs to be viewed as a means to reach social goals within ecological limits, she says, and not as an indicator of success in itself, or a goal for rich countries. In a doughnut world, the economy would sometimes be growing and sometimes shrinking.
Still, some economists are skeptical of the idealism. In his 2018 review of Raworth’s book, Branko Milanovic, a scholar at CUNY’s Stone Center on Socio -Economic Inequality, says for the doughnut to take off, humans would need to “magically” become “indifferent to how well we do compared to others, and not really care about wealth and income.”
https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/
**********************************************The green year
The last number below is the most striking: Only a 1.09 degree temperature rise in over a century. It's the average you have to look at if you want to make any general statement and it is tiny. No one knows if the warming will continue but anything that gradual will be adapted to just as easily as we have done so far. Weather events come and go but it is the overall stance of human civilization that counts in the end and that has never been better
49.6°C: the record temperature in Lytton, in British Columbia, Canada, on June 29th—hotter than the average for a summer’s day in Dubai. A wildfire promptly burned the village to the ground, making Lytton the tragic poster child of an unprecedented heatwave that affected the entire Pacific Northwest and sent a region better versed in fog scrambling to open cooling centres. Climate modellers declared the heatwave so unusual that it challenged their understanding of the physics of heatwaves, and concluded that it would not have taken place without human greenhouse-gas emissions. The heatwave was by no means the only extreme weather event of the year. Among others, devastating floods in northern Europe also showed that rich countries are not immune to the blunt end of climate impacts.
90%: the proportion of global GDP now covered by a net-zero emissions target, corresponding to 88% of emissions and 85% of global population. Net-zero targets have become all the rage. They should be both celebrated and taken with a fistful of salt. The “net” is key: countries, cities, regions and companies promise to eliminate the bulk of their emissions while leaving themselves room to offset what they can not disappear. Strictly speaking, by the middle of the century these offsets will need to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and tuck them away somewhere for all of eternity, or near enough. There are broadly two ways of doing this: through photosynthesis (in which case the plants must be jealously protected) or technology, which leads neatly on to:
1,200: the estimated tonnes of carbon dioxide that have been extracted from the atmosphere by Orca, the world’s largest carbon-sucking machine, since it was switched on in early September. Orca was built to remove 4,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. The gas is fizzed into water and pumped into Iceland’s volcanic bedrock where it crystallises. Climate models suggest billions of tonnes of CO2-removal will be necessary in the second half of the century to meet the Paris targets. What is less clear is who will pay.
4.9% (+/-0.8): the projected growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2021, relative to 2020. After a 5.4% drop in 2019, caused by global lockdowns, emissions rebounded.
45%: the emissions cut required of Shell by a Dutch court. In a landmark ruling, a judge said the oil giant’s activities violated its “unwritten standard of care” under Dutch law and asked that it reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to 2019 levels. This was the first time the duty-of-care argument was applied to a private company. It is also notable that the judge’s ruling made Shell responsible for both its own emissions and those of its suppliers. Shell has appealed the decision.
3: the number of “green” members elected to Exxon’s board at a shareholder meeting in late May. For the higher-ups at the oil company, the bête noire of climate activists, this was apparently a bitter pill to swallow.
€88.88: the price of putting a tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere in Europe on December 8th. This marked the first time that the elusive $100-a-tonne mark, which many believe is needed to incentivise net-zero pledges, was reached. It was a fleeting landmark. As December rolled on, prices dropped slightly.
611%: roughly the increase in European gas prices in 2021. The end of the year was marked by a staggering global energy crunch, with Europe (including Britain) particularly badly hit. The leap in prices revealed that the world remains poorly prepared for a transition to an energy system that is primarily powered by renewable sources.
17bn-20bn: the gap, in tonnes of CO2, between the emissions reductions that are built into COP26 climate pledges for the next decade (relative to 2010 levels) and the reductions needed to give the world a good chance of avoiding more than 1.5°C of global warming. This discrepancy highlights the shortcomings of global climate negotiations. Put bluntly: the primary goal of governments headed to COP26 was to find ways of slashing emissions enough by 2030, to put the Paris goals within reach, and on that front they (mostly) failed. The Glasgow Climate Pact requires them to try again, harder, by COP27 in November 2022.
2.4°C: the amount of warming above pre-industrial temperatures that is projected for 2021 if governments deliver on all the promises they made at COP26.
1.09°C: the global mean temperature for 2021, relative to the 1850-1900 average, based on data from January to September.
Email from "The Economist" of December 27TH 2021. climateissue@economist.com
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Tesla owner blows up Model S instead of footing $22,600 repair bill
Warranty periods are usually pretty cleverly chosen. They are just short of the expected life of the item. I once bought an air-conditioner with a warranty of 5 years. I thought that was pretty good. It died after 5 years and six months
When faced with a repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, do you go through with the expensive repair, bring it to the junkyard, or sell it for parts? Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something a little more extreme — but arguably a lot more satisfying — when faced with such a situation: he watched his car go up in flames, as noted in a report from Gizmodo.
Katainen handed his 2013 Tesla Model S over to Pommijätkät, a group of explosion experts on YouTube who loves to make things go “boom,” after he was quoted $22,600 for a battery replacement. “Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1,500km [932 miles] were nice,” Katainen recounted. “Then, error codes hit.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a mechanic, he found out that the only way to fix the car would be to replace the entire battery pack, which would cost him at least 20,000€, or around $22,600.
The group behind Pommijätkät strapped 66 pounds of dynamite to the car and parked it in an old quarry
I think anyone would be pretty frustrated at that point, considering that the base price for a new 2013 Tesla Model S started at $57,400, later increasing to $59,900 when the car first came out. Even a standard used model currently goes for around $30,000 at the lowest. That’s probably why Katainen picked up the Tesla from the shop and told the mechanic that he’s going to “explode the whole car away.”
For context, these cars come with an eight-year (or up to 150,000 miles) battery and drive unit warranty, but the warranties on older models are starting to expire, revealing the potential cost behind a full battery replacement. In September, Electrek reported on a Tesla owner in need of a battery replacement on a Model S that was no longer under warranty. As noted in the report, he was quoted $22,500 from Tesla, but ended up getting a repair for $5,000 from a third-party shop. Katainen’s quote was also from Tesla, and it’s unclear whether he had access to an alternative repair service.
Either way, the group behind Pommijätkät strapped 30kg (66 pounds) of dynamite to the car and parked it in an old quarry in Jaala, Finland. Even Elon Musk was there — well, at least in spirit. A crash test dummy outfitted with a helmet, thick winter jacket, and a picture of Musk’s face was dropped in by helicopter and then stuffed in the driver’s seat.
Katainen triggers the explosion from inside a nearby bunker, and Tesla erupts in a ball of fire, with what seems like thousands of pieces scattering throughout the snowy landscape. The group picks up whatever was left of the car, which amounts to just a pile of scraps. When asked whether he’s ever had this much fun behind the wheel of a Tesla, Katainen replies, “No, never enjoyed this much with Tesla!”
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Plans in England for car chargers in all commercial car parks quietly rolled back
The government has quietly backtracked on proposals to require every shop, office or factory in England to install at least one electric car charger if they have a large car park, prompting criticism by environmental campaigners.
The original plan required every new and existing non-residential building with parking for 20 cars or more to install a charger. However, the Department for Transport (DfT) has now revealed it will only require chargers be installed in new or refurbished commercial premises amid fears over the cost for businesses, according to a response to a consultation.
The move has prompted concern in the car industry and among experts that public charger access will lag behind demand, as sales of electric vehicles accelerate ahead of the 2035 ban on sales of new fossil-fuelled internal combustion engines. A quarter of new cars bought in the UK in November can be plugged in to recharge, according to industry data.
Greg Archer, the UK director of Transport & Environment, a campaign group, said: “Car parks are an ideal place for drivers of electric cars without driveways to charge. By failing to require commercial buildings with car parks to install a small number of charge points, the government has missed a simple opportunity to level up the charging available for less affluent drivers who park overnight on the road.
“It is inexplicable that a government committed to phasing out conventional cars has failed to follow through and implement its own proposals from more than two years ago, and instead say it needs longer to consider the options.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans last month for a charging point to be required for every new or refurbished residential building from next year amid great fanfare, saying the regulations were “world-leading”.
However, the decision to drop the requirement for existing non-residential buildings means the UK could fall behind the EU, which is introducing a rule for existing buildings to install cable routes for chargers after 2025.
The government could still introduce more ambitious requirements for existing car parks – such as mandating a minimum number of chargers per parking space. The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles is considering comments on a separate consultation that closed last month on the future of transport regulations.
The DfT’s consultation response said it wanted to find “a more tailored approach” for existing non-residential buildings. Despite worries over the financial costs, the cost of about £1,500 for installing a charger point can be recouped within a few years by charging users for electricity.
The DfT declined to share the identities of those who objected to the policy on cost grounds. The consultation responses showed the most common objection was a lack of ambition for the number of charging points for larger premises. Only a “small number of respondents raised concerns about who would pay”. The DfT said it would draft an alternative policy.
All the large UK supermarket chains, led by Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, have already started installing electric car chargers to try to lure shoppers – who can top up on energy while they shop.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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27 December, 2021
'Green' Industries The Biggest Corporate Welfare Recipients Ever
How much do solar, wind and electric vehicle companies get in federal handouts and tax loopholes in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill? Well over $100 billion in taxpayer largesse. If all the tax credits are included, that number could reach half a trillion dollars. No other industry in American history has ever received this lucrative a paycheck.
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research calculated that this is on top of the more than $150 billion in subsidies these industries received from Uncle Sam in the last 30 years.
The umbilical cord to taxpayer wallets never gets cut. Yet, laughably, the left says all these subsidies to “green energy” are necessary for an “infant industry.” Really? Does Big Wind or Big Solar ever grow up?
Incidentally, our ancestors were using windmills and solar panels during the Middle Ages.
So why do these renewable energies get so much money from Congress, and why do Democrats want to give them the biggest payday in the history of
the Washington favor factory? Not because renewable has great promise. Thirty years after the handouts started, wind and solar accounted for less than 8% of our total energy production. It’s inconsequential.
If we taxpayers are “investors” in green energy, we’d be wondering where our return is at this point. Wind and solar costs are going down, but not nearly as fast as the cost reductions in natural gas, thanks to the shale revolution.
But now the left is trying to save its latest round of gargantuan welfare checks by arguing that the higher costs of oil and gas at the pump show that these energy sources prove that we can’t rely on fossil fuels.
It is reminiscent of the story of the boy who kills his parents and throws himself at the mercy of the court for being an orphan. Oil and gas prices are rising because Biden and the left have declared war on American fossil fuels. They aren’t allowing drilling. They instead are passing new “methane” taxes and not building pipelines.
Now liberals shake their fingers at the producers and accuse them of gouging consumers as they assault the added American oil and gas supply that would lower the prices to fill up your tank and heat your home. They are now starting a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in Washington, paid for by taxpayers, telling us that the high gas prices the Biden administration wants mean we have to stop using gas.
The irony of all of this is that the reliance on green energy subsidies is one good reason for so little technological progress in renewable energy. We’d perhaps see more innovation if the industry had to fight on a level playing field.
Democrats in Congress keep doling out the dollars because the green energy industry gives 90% of its contributions to Democrats. It is nothing more than a pay-to-play gambit.
If wind and solar are the low-cost energy sources of the future, why do they need so much government aid? Will they ever take the training wheels off?
After three decades, maybe it is time to admit the obvious: Wind and solar are niche energy sources that will not anytime soon, and probably never, provide anywhere near the energy we need for our $22 trillion industrial economy.
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EPA Focused on Gender, Ethnic Diversity to Fill ‘Purged’ Advisory Posts
After the Environmental Protection Agency dumped advisers from regulated industries, the federal agency appears to have prioritized gender and ethnic diversity to replace them, EPA documents show.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Wednesday in the case of Young vs. EPA. The lead plaintiff in the case, Stanley Young, was ousted in March from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board weeks after President Joe Biden took office.
Young’s lawsuit identifies the EPA panels in question as the Science Advisory Board and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
Lawyers argued Wednesday before District Judge Timothy Kelly.
According to an EPA memo from June that emerged through the discovery process in the lawsuit, the clean air committee was to be made up of “three minorities, four non-minorities, five women and four men.”
The EPA memo goes on to say that two of the women “would bring gender diversity” and two would “bring gender and ethnic diversity as well as fresh perspectives.”
After the Biden administration “purged” members from EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the complaint says, it moved to replace them with members who represent entities that get EPA grants.
The plaintiffs say the action violates the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that each board or committee must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.”
Moreover, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration’s conflict-of-interest ban on employees of grant recipients serving on advisory boards.
Gender and racial composition of advisory panels was not part of the law, noted Steve Milloy, senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and author of the book “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
“Gender and race wasn’t part of the complaint originally, but the information became clear during discovery that the EPA was less concerned with diversity of opinion than with diversity [of race and gender],” Milloy told The Daily Signal.
More importantly, Milloy said, advisory committees for federal agencies are not supposed to be made up only of like-minded individuals—particularly those receiving grants from the agency they advise.
“When Congress mandated the EPA take independent advice, they didn’t anticipate the EPA stacking the membership with one point of view,” Milloy said after watching the court hearing. “The depths of the stacking are incredible. So many are grantees.”
EPA Administrator Michael Regan ousted Young and other members of the advisory committees in March.
Young previously worked for pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co., consumer health care company GlaxoSmithKline, and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences.
Regan also booted Tony Cox, who had been chairman of the clean air committee. Cox joined Young as a plaintiff in the suit in late October.
A June memo from Thomas Brennan, director of the Science Advisory Board’s staff office, said: “As part of Administrator Regan’s reset of CASAC [Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee] membership, all seven CASAC members were dismissed on March 31, 2021. A public solicitation of nominations and public comments on prospective candidates have been completed.”
According to EPA’s website, the clean air committee is managed by the Science Advisory Board’s staff.
Brennan’s memo goes on to say: “In this membership package, CASAC has three minorities, four non-minorities, five women and four men. CASAC also has members from six of the agency’s 10 regions.”
Brennan then writes that appointing Elizabeth A. Sheppard, as chair of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee would “bring gender diversity.”
Sheppard is a professor in two departments–environmental and occupational health sciences and biostatistics–at the University of Washington. Brennan also notes her “significant experience” chairing such panels before.
In a declaration to the court, Sheppard wrote: “I do not currently have any grant funding from the EPA,” but added that “EPA grants have paid a portion of my salary through awards made to the University of Washington.”
The EPA panel chair adds: “I cannot imagine any circumstance where receipt of a grant would influence or has influenced in any way my activities on CASAC or any other EPA panels.”
The memo said that Michelle Bell, a professor of environmental health at the Yale University School of the Environment, “Would bring gender diversity.” It also said she has expertise in biostatistics and environmental engineering.
Brennan’s memo also says Judith Chow, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, has expertise in air quality, is a former committee member, and would “bring gender and ethnic diversity.”
Christine H. Fuller, an associate professor of environmental health at Georgia State University, has expertise in epidemiology and the health effects of air pollution, according to the memo.
Brennan says that Fuller would “bring gender and ethnic diversity as well as fresh perspectives,” because she hasn’t served on the clean air panel before.
The EPA staff director’s memo says that Alexandra Ponette-González, an associate professor of geography and the environment at the University of North Texas, has expertise in ecology. She would “bring gender and ethnic diversity as well as fresh perspectives,” he says.
The clean air committee has only seven members and cannot possibly include a representative for every stakeholder that would be affected by any potential regulation, argued John Robinson, a Justice Department trial attorney representing the EPA in court.
“The plaintiffs have not shown the agency abused its discretion to select the committee,” Robinson said, adding: “The plaintiffs would have the court rewrite the statute for a requirement that there be an industry representative when Congress specifically declined to do so. … The plaintiff emphasized a race and sex discrimination claim here. There is no basis in the administrative record for such a claim.”
Biden issued an executive order directing the EPA to take immediate action to address climate change, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Brett Shumate, said in his opening argument Wednesday.
“Rather than follow the science, the EPA purged any dissenting industry voices from an important advisory committee on air pollution,” Shumate said, adding:
What’s worse is that in reconstituting the committee, EPA engaged in discrimination on the basis of race and sex. … The EPA purged from the committee any industry representatives and packed the committee with professors who receive millions of dollars in EPA grants and share EPA’s predetermined goal of strengthening air quality standards.
The plaintiffs asked the judge for a preliminary injunction to stop the clean air committee from moving forward. Shumate stressed that balanced opinions was the only factor EPA was required to consider in appointing members to the advisory committee.
“The EPA ignored this factor and instead reconstituted the committee on the basis of irrelevant and improper fact—the race and sex of the nominee,” he said.
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Tory MPs urge Boris Johnson to rethink green taxes after poll blow
TORY MPs are urging Boris Johnson to rethink green taxes after a poll showed three out of five people don't want to pay higher fuel bills to hit the Government's carbon-cutting targets.
Fifty-eight per cent of voters did not want increased levies on their fuel bills to support the push for Net Zero emissions by 2050.
Nearly half (49 per cent) of Labour and Green Party voters were among those opposed to the tax rise.
And 65 per cent of respondents to the ComRes survey felt they had not been given an adequate say.
Senior backbencher Craig Mackinlay, chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Tory MPs, said: "As I've been saying for some time, I didn't become a Conservative to make my constituents colder and poorer.
"It's clear, looking at these figures, that the British public are not signed up to the Government's plans.
"The majority don't feel that grants for air pumps or electric cars are either relevant to them, or more fundamentally needed to nudge them towards unreliable technologies they don't want, and there is real worry about the ever-increasing costs of energy bills.
"We need to be very careful about just whose shoulders are going to be carrying the very considerable costs of Net Zero."
Tory MP Steve Baker, who heads the steering committee of the scrutiny group, said: "I've warned that the cost of Net Zero could deliver a political crisis greater than the Poll Tax, and these figures show that the Government is heading straight for such an eventuality.
"Grants for air pumps and electric cars are all very well, but how many people can actually afford to pay all the additional costs?"
The poll was commissioned by Net Zero Watch, a pressure group that scrutinises carboncutting policies. It claimed yesterday that the response showed green levies were threatening to become the most unpopular form of taxation since the Poll Tax under Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s.
Board members of the group include the formerTory chancellor Lord Lawson, who has been sceptical about many climate change claims.
Benny Peiser, director of Net Zero Watch, said:
"Whilst these are not shocking figures to us, they should ring alarm bells in Number 10. Millions of families will be struggling to keep their homes warm and their cars running this winter.
"Fuel prices continue to soar and the burden of these energy costs will fall on the elderly and the low paid."
Other findings showed 30 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds felt their voices had been heard on the issue of Net Zero while only 10 per cent of over- 45s felt they'd had sufficient input.
More than 60 per cent of voters quizzed did not believe they would benefit from green subsidies, including grants to replace gas boilers or buy electric vehicles.
Savanta ComRes interviewed 2,176 adults on December 11.
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British politicians should be ashamed of their opposition to fracking. While gas prices are soaring in Europe, in the US they have barely moved thanks to its shale sector
Factories may have to close. Power may need to be rationed. And we may well have to make painful concessions to the Russian president Vladimir Putin on Ukraine simply to keep the lights on. Meanwhile, industrial conglomerates such as Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos, among the biggest manufacturing businesses the UK has left, are facing a huge financial hit. The whole of Europe, and Britain just as much as anywhere, is gripped by a worsening gas crisis with prices soaring by the day.
But hold on. If only there was a plentiful supply of energy close to home, and we didn’t have to rely on a foreign autocrat, or a volatile global market, for supplies. Except, of course, there was. Rewind just a decade and Europe was on the cusp of a fracking boom.
There are vast quantities of shale oil and gas in the North of England, and even more in France and Poland. The trouble is, our political leaders shamefully caved into a handful of environmental extremists, and let it be effectively stopped. We are paying a high price for that now – and the very least we can do is learn the right lessons from that.
It looks set to be a tough winter for the European energy market. In the last week alone, gas prices have jumped by more than 20pc, hitting fresh all-time highs. Power-intensive industries such as chemicals are already feeling the strain. So are domestic consumers, with more suppliers going broke by the week, and with those that remain set to increase prices sharply very soon. We all know the reasons for that.
Supplies of natural gas from Russia have fallen, the market for LNG arriving on tankers from countries such as Qatar has become very tight, and storage facilities have been allowed to run down. The result? A classic bear market squeeze, with prices spiralling. A few hedge funds that called it right will be reporting vast profits very soon. Everyone else will suffer, and there are already calls for yet another expensive government bailout to cover the cost.
Here is something odd, however. While gas prices are soaring in Europe, in the US they have barely moved. Measured by oil barrel equivalent, US gas is at slightly over $70, compared with more than $220 on this side of the Atlantic. The difference? The Americans turn their thermostats down? They put on an extra couple of jumpers? Not exactly. In fact, they use more power than we do. But the US has a huge shale industry, with industrial scale fracking. And we don’t.
That is not because there is any shortage of shale oil and gas. In truth, there is tons of the stuff. The Bowland Shale Reserve that stretches across the North of England is estimated to hold 37 trillion cubic metres of oil and gas. There is plenty more in the Weald Basin in the South, stretching from Tunbridge Wells to Winchester, and even more in Scotland and Northern Ireland. France has vast reserves (an estimated 137 trillion cubic feet) and Poland has even more. In short, there is plenty.
The problem is no one is allowed to extract it. France decided on a total ban in 2017, a decision upheld by President Emmanuel Macron, while in this country it has been put on hold more or less indefinitely, as it has across most of the rest of Europe.
And yet, what was the real harm? The only genuine problem with fracking in the US is that for most of the last few years, prices haven’t been high enough to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, it has been completely successful. The country hasn’t been ravaged by earthquakes, nor has it damaged unborn babies, to take just a couple of the scare stories put out by its opponents. It has been just fine.
In reality, the anti-frackers that dominated the debate make the anti-vaxxers look like pillars of scientific rationality by comparison. They peddled a toxic mixture of alarmism and conspiracy theories that were completely untroubled by evidence or reason. It is even relatively clean.
There is some evidence fracking emits a higher level of methane, which would put it on a par with coal (still mainly used in Germany and Poland) but the mainstream consensus is that it is roughly the same as natural gas. If we had developed it, the only difference would be that it would have created jobs and wealth in this country, instead of Russia, prices would have been stable, and we wouldn’t have to make any concessions to Mr Putin. Would that have been a terrible outcome?
Instead, our political leaders caved in to a handful of extreme environmental activists, dead set against any form of industrial development, and stopped its development right across Europe.
In reality, we have created this whole crisis in a fit of virtue signalling. We need to learn the lessons of what is fast turning into one of the most catastrophic policy mistakes of recent times. Sure, medium-term we want to switch to clean, renewable energy.
Wind and solar power should be providing the bulk of our energy, and the technology is coming on stream to make that both achievable and affordable by the 2030s. And yet, that will take some time. Until then we could have been fracking our way to energy security. The harsh truth is that again and again, a timid policy establishment meekly gives in to extreme views, and sacrifices the medium-term interests of industry and households for a few short-term headlines.
The UK is guilty of that, and so is the whole of Europe. If we do end up sitting in the dark this winter, and the factories do get closed, it will be entirely our own fault.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/26/politicians-should-ashamed-opposition-fracking/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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26 December, 2021
Sitting on massive amounts of untapped oil and gas, Britain faces 'national energy crisis'
Good Energy, EDF and trade body Energy UK are calling on the Government to urgently intervene after the cost of gas in wholesale markets rose by more than 500 per cent in less than a year.
Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, described the situation as a 'nationwide crisis', telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Domestic energy prices are going to go up 45% to 50% in the spring.
Iain Duncan Smith blamed Russian president Vladimir Putin for 'driving up prices' by restricting supply and said Europe was 'in his hands'. He insisted Boris Johnson should be telling 'crusties' objecting to exploiting the UK's resources to 'get lost'.
'The answer is very simple. We should be getting our own gas,' he told MailOnline.
'We are sitting on an island on top of gas and oil. We used to be net exporters, we are now net importers and it's not because we've run out - it's because successive governments stopped exploration and stopped development.
'So the result is now that we are reliant on dodgy regimes like Putin and others for our gas, and that may salve the conscience of a few fanatical environmentalists, who don't want the UK to get gas.
'But we still require gas, otherwise we shut down. And that means we've made ourselves reliant on these dodgy regimes.'
Sir Iain pointed to supplies in the North Sea as well as untapped shale gas on land. 'Why would we allow Putin and these other dangerous leaders to hold us to ransom when we have our own oil and gas?' he said. 'These guys will drive up the price by cutting supply.
'Who the hell wants to be in the hands of that despotic man Putin or in the hands of the Chinese or in the hands of the Belarusians, or in some of the dodgy regimes that exist in other parts of the world where we're having to try and beg borrow or steal gas?'
'Just tell these crusties that spend their time protesting they still live off gas, even if they don't like it,' he added.
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U.S. shale gas to the rescue of fuel-starved Europe
Cold-stricken Europe is drawing a flotilla of U.S. liquefied natural gas cargoes amid an energy crisis that has sent gas prices to record levels.
Facing a winter shortage and little relief from the continent’s main supplier Russia, natural gas in Northwest Europe is trading for about $57.54 per million British thermal units, up almost a third from a week earlier. That’s roughly $24 higher than Asian prices and more than 14 times higher than gas being sold on U.S. benchmark Henry Hub.
More than two dozen U.S. LNG cargoes that are still waiting for their final destination orders appear to be headed to gas-starved Europe.
Out of 76 U.S. LNG cargoes in transit, 10 tankers carrying a combined 1.6 million cubic meters of the heating and power plant fuel have declared destinations in Europe, shipping data compiled by Bloomberg shows. Another 20 tankers carrying an estimated 3.3 million cubic meters appear to be crossing the Atlantic Ocean and are on a path to the continent. Nearly one-third of the cargoes come from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana, the shipping data shows.
U.S. LNG export terminals are operating at or above capacity after reaching record flows on Sunday. Asia is typically the top destination for U.S. LNG cargoes, but that has changed this winter with the significant premium for gas in Europe.
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Germany’s energy surrender
One might expect that a country suffering a generational energy crunch would be trying everything possible to expand supply. Yet Germany is proceeding with the closure of three nuclear power plants—around half of the country’s nuclear power generation—by the end of the year.
Ten years ago 17 nuclear reactors produced about a quarter of Germany’s electricity, but the 2011 Fukushima accident prompted former Chancellor Angela Merkel to phase out nuclear. Six reactors remain: Three will close this month, with the remaining three ceasing operations next year. It’s hard to think of a more self-defeating policy on economic, climate and geopolitical grounds.
The closures have been expected for years, but keeping the reactors open for their previously planned lifetimes could have helped alleviate some of the pain Germans are feeling now as rising global demand drives up the cost of energy. German one-year forward electricity prices have hit €300 per megawatt hour. For comparison, the 2010 to 2020 average was under €50 per megawatt hour.
The antinuclear move has support from many of Germany’s climate-change obsessives, but abandoning carbon-free nuclear power has had predictable results on emissions. Coal was the country’s top energy sources in the first half of 2021, generating more than a quarter of Germany’s electricity. Wind and solar produced 22% and 9%, respectively, as nuclear has fallen to around 12%.
France, which relies heavily on nuclear power, puts out about half as much carbon dioxide per capita as Germany. The French also are coping with high energy prices as a result of nuclear outages and greater exposure to skyrocketing natural gas prices. But Paris is responding by building more nuclear reactors.
Berlin—at the self-made mercy of the sun and wind—is now deepening its reliance on Russian gas to keep the lights on. This is the background explanation for its weak response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Germany’s staunch support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia, despite opposition from allies, undermines the West’s response to Vladimir Putin's designs to dominate Eastern Europe.
Germany is now pushing to keep nuclear power off the European Union’s list of “environmentally sustainable economic activities,” a designation that could lower the cost of financing nuclear projects. It’s bad enough that the Germans have undermined their own energy security, but they shouldn’t foist their self-destructive policy on the rest of the Continent.
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Europe’s Industrial Firms Flash Warning on Energy Costs
Steelmakers, glass manufacturers and other energy-hungry businesses in Europe are calling on governments to take action to stop record gas and electricity prices from hobbling the region’s economy.
Prices for natural gas in Europe shot to all-time highs again this week after flows from Russia, the continent’s main supplier, dropped just as cold weather boosted demand and Électricité de France SA moved to turn off a nuclear-power plant for safety reasons. The moves made the continent the hottest gas market in the world, prompting ships carrying chilled U.S. gas to Asia to change course and head to Europe, where they could fetch more for their cargoes.
The flotilla of tankers helped cool gas prices at the end of the week. Even after tumbling Friday, benchmark Dutch gas futures were still more than six times as high as a year ago at €110 ($124.71) a megawatt hour. Wholesale electricity prices have rocketed across the continent, too.
The rise in power prices led Europe’s largest aluminum smelter, Aluminium Dunkerque, to shut down around 3.7% of its production in early December, the company said. A company representative declined to comment on whether continued increases could lead to further shutdowns.
Zinc operations run by Nyrstar in northern France, meanwhile, plan to close for maintenance in January. The metals company, owned by commodities trader Trafigura Group Pte. Ltd., said it made the decision because French power prices look set to be high and volatile in early 2022.
Executives at industrial firms in France said they shouldn’t pay for electricity at prices that reflect the natural-gas shortage because, unlike Germany or the U.K., France gets most of its electricity from nuclear-power plants. Businesses in Spain are in a particular quandary because fixed-price power contracts are less common than in France or Germany, exposing them to prices in the spot market.
Energy prices in Europe first surged in early fall. Businesses that need ready supplies of gas and power have broadly been able to pass the bill through to customers, quickening the pace of inflation in the U.K. and the eurozone. But isolated cases of disruption will proliferate if prices stay at historically high levels and authorities don’t cushion the blow, according to groups representing the companies.
“The ongoing situation has severely impacted the competitiveness and profitability of energy-intensive sectors,” a group of associations representing Europe’s glass, steel, cement and other industries said in a statement Wednesday. “A prolonged period of unbearably high energy prices could lead to severe losses.”
The associations asked national governments to deploy tools the European Union has said member states can use to blunt the impact of the price surge. For instance, the EU said in October governments could lower taxes or levies on gas and power without violating the bloc’s rules on state aid if all energy consumers benefited.
Prices for carbon permits that utilities and other emitters are required to own under the EU’s emission-trading scheme have also jumped this year. In their statement Wednesday, the industry associations said the market should be changed to prevent sudden jumps in energy prices and stop businesses moving carbon-intensive operations outside the bloc.
A spokesman for the EU’s executive body said it was closely monitoring the rise in energy prices.
Production of zinc—used in construction, autos and goods such as washing machines—is among the industries most exposed to the energy squeeze. Output cuts have already raised prices for the metal and analysts at Citigroup expect many other zinc smelters to follow Nyrstar’s Auby plant in curtailing production or shutting altogether.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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25 December, 2021
End ‘scandal’ of burning wood for energy, British MPs demand
More than 50 Members of Parliament call for meeting with Energy Minister over payments of green subsidies to biomass power plants
The “scandal” of burning wood for energy must end, MPs have warned the Energy Minister in the wake of a Telegraph investigation.
More than 50 MPs from across the political divide are writing to Kwasi Kwarteng on Thursday to demand a meeting over the payments of green subsidies to biomass power plants.
The letter, organised by Sir Peter Bottomley, the Father of the House of Commons, comes in the wake of an investigation by this newspaper which found that Drax, the UK’s biggest biomass plant, is burning the equivalent of 25 million trees a year to supply electricity.
The letter warns that the move to burning wood for energy has been a “grave error of judgment”.
Burning trees ‘makes global warming worse in short term’
“Two years ago Parliament declared a climate emergency. The sacrifices constituents are being asked to make to reach net zero are huge,” they write.
“Neither they nor we can understand why it was decided to give Drax £4 billion of subsidies from electricity bills to create even more carbon dioxide. This scandal demands an immediate response.”
The 52 MPs, including Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party, and SNP leader in Westminster Ian Blackford, point out that the scientific community has warned that burning wood for energy will make global warming worse in the short term.
Warnings about Drax’s green credentials have come from “top think tanks” of Chatham House, EASAC and Ember as well as the WWF, RSPB and Greenpeace, the MPs note.
“It is obvious that chopping down trees in the USA, transporting them across the Atlantic and then burning them is going to increase carbon dioxide levels,” the letter states.
The MPs warn that alongside increased emissions from shipping, felling trees and replacing them with saplings has been estimated by academics to have a “carbon payback” time of 190 years.
Finally, they point out that the burning of wood produces 18 per cent more carbon dioxide than coal, according to the IPCC.
“Together these factors mean that the switch to burning wood has led to huge extra emissions - equivalent to three million more Ford Fiestas on our roads,” the letter says.
International climate accounting rules mean that the biomass is carbon neutral in the UK and helps toward net zero goals.
But the MPs are demanding to meet with Mr Kwarteng claiming that the reality of the environmental impact has been hidden behind “jargon”.
Drax’s biomass ‘heavily regulated’
They state the day that the “last tree will be burnt in our power stations... cannot be soon enough”.
A Drax spokesman said that they play a “critical role generating 12 percent of the UK’s renewable electricity” to keep the lights on and work toward net zero.
“Claims to the contrary deliberately misrepresent the facts and science, as set out by world-leading climate scientists at the UN’s IPCC,” they added.
They insist that their biomass is “heavily regulated” and comes from the waste products from “sustainable forests” which “would otherwise be burned or left to rot”.
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Amazing: Boris Johnson plans to end private ownership of cars to meet his Net Zero target. Communism?
He must not want to win elections
Government transport ministers have backed calls to end private ownership of vehicles in major overhaul.
Instead, they have asked for “greater flexibility” over vehicle use with experts believing “shared transport” is the way forward. Transport minister, Trudy Harrison, said any new proposals would be “fit for the future” of road travel. It could spark the beginning of the end of petrol and diesel car ownership as the pressure rises to meet pollution targets.
She said the country needed to move away from its “20th-century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership”.
She added it was “staggering” almost two-thirds of trips were conducted by lone drivers.
Ms Harrison also added the UK was now at a “tipping point” where shared transport would soon be a “realistic option” for many.
She made the comments to delegates at the Collaborative Mobility UK transport conference.
She said: “[It will soon be a] realistic option for many of us to get around.
“Where mobility hubs become a familiar part of our street architecture, and where all these options will be available to book and pay for at the touch of a smartphone.
“The challenge is to move further and faster to make shared mobility less of a novelty and increasing the norm to make it as easy, as convenient and as accessible as possible.”
She added: “I think the benefits are really significant."
The Government has repeatedly stressed the need to switch from a reliance on cars to other forms of transport.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1535798/private-car-ownership-road-driving-changes-updates
*******************************************Public officials have told climate envoy John Kerry to stop trying to raise energy costs for U.S. consumers
‘The reality is the Biden administration is not standing in the way of increasing domestic oil production to meet today’s energy needs,” Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk asserted at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston last week. Really? He might want to check with John Kerry.
The president’s climate envoy has been pressuring banks and financial institutions to reduce their commitments to U.S. oil and gas companies and join the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which would hobble the ability of oil and gas companies to increase production. Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase signed on to the alliance this year.
Mr. Kerry’s efforts didn’t go unnoticed. In April, members of the Senate Banking Committee sent him a letter expressing concern that he had “been pressuring banks to make extralegal commitments regarding energy-related lending and investment activities” that would result in “higher energy costs for American consumers.”
In May, 15 state treasurers sent a letter to Mr. Kerry observing that he and other members of the Biden administration are “privately pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil, and natural gas companies, as part of a misguided strategy to eliminate the fossil fuel industry in our country.” They urged banks and financial institutions “not to give in to pressure from the Biden Administration.”
It will take more than letters to halt the Biden administration’s war on fossil fuels. Responding to the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the third quarter, one oil-and-gas producer identified “expanding credit” as a major headwind because “the money center banks continue to seek to reduce their commitments to oil and gas borrowers.”
On Nov. 22, another group of 16 state financial officers signed an open letter to the U.S. banking industry with some teeth. The letter states that the signers will take “concrete steps” to “select financial institutions that support a free market and are not engaged in harmful fossil fuel industry boycotts for our states’ financial services contracts.” If these officials follow through, noncompliant banks would lose lucrative state contracts.
According to the letter, these officials are responsible for a combined total of more than $600 billion in assets.
Texas went a step further in June, enacting a law banning state investments in businesses that boycott oil and gas companies and another law that blocks state investments in companies that restrict business with the firearms industry. Since the laws took effect, two of Wall Street’s biggest municipal-bond underwriters—Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase—haven’t managed a single municipal-bond sale in Texas, the second-largest issuer of state and local government debt with some $58 billion sold last year.
The antiboycott approach is a good start, but it fails to address a significant threat. Under the Texas law, state agencies can still do business with financial firms such as BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street that advocate transforming our economy to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 because they own—rather than boycott—oil-company stocks.
That is a problem. Exxon Mobil is the largest energy company in Texas. Climate activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 recently waged a proxy war to put insurgent directors on Exxon’s board. Reuters described it as “the first major shareholder contest to make climate change the leading issue for choosing directors.” Engine No. 1 gained the support of BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors, which voted their combined 21% of Exxon’s shares in favor of two insurgent directors who won election to Exxon’s board. BlackRock supported a third insurgent who was also elected.
The Employees Retirement System of Texas and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas also voted in favor of the three successful insurgent director nominees and a shareholder proposal requiring a report on corporate climate lobbying aligned with the Paris agreement, which passed.
Engine No. 1’s proxy fight was about altering Exxon’s business model away from oil and gas production. By October Exxon’s board was debating whether to continue some major projects despite the world’s oil shortage and rising prices.
A more comprehensive state legislative solution might have produced a different result. The Texas law could have included a provision placing the voting rights for shares purchased by Texas entities, or the financial advisers those entities employ, under a committee that includes individuals answerable to Texas voters, rather than climate-change activists.
The Biden administration will pursue its nonstop war against America’s oil and gas producers for at least the next three years. Unless it meets resistance, prices will increase and the U.S. energy industry will continue to shrink. While state legislatures can’t stop Mr. Biden from pursuing his agenda, they can discourage the financial sector and institutional investors from supporting it.
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GE’s Gas-Fired Plants Could Enable More Wind and Solar Power
The variability of solar power and wind power can play havoc with the grid.
In a political era where California and other states are mandating 20 percent or 33 percent or even 40 percent Renewable Portfolio Standards, the current system is not designed to deal with that level of variability, according to Jim Detmers, former COO of the California Independent Systems Operator (CAISO). "The system is not designed to accept that proportion of renewables."
Increasing penetration of renewables like wind and solar actually require an increase in the amount of natural gas-fired backup. And natural gas plants are at their least efficient when they are are ramped up and down. Natural gas, despite its recent good press for being cleaner than coal and of domestic origin, is still a fossil fuel that pollutes the air when combusted and the water when extracted via fracking. Estimates from the Energy Information Administration suggest that shale gas could make up 45 percent of all natural gas production in the U.S. by 2035 -- up from the current 14 percent.
Any improvement in the efficiency of natural gas-fired plants is going to help the transition to a more renewable-fueled future -- and reduce the amount of natural gas we might use.
General Electric just introduced their new 510-megawatt combined-cycle power plant that offers fuel efficiency greater than 61 percent -- the result of an investment of more than $500 million in R&D by GE.
GE drew from the company’s jet engine expertise to engineer a plant that will ramp up at a rate of more than 50 megawatts per minute.
Detmers' figures differ from that claim. "We can currently ramp generators at 63 megawatts per minute," but "early studies show that we need over 400 megawatts per minute to cope with a 33 percent RPS," according to Detmers. "We need new technology," he concludes.
The GE plant is engineered for flexible operation by integrating a next-generation 9FB Gas Turbine that operates at 50 Hz, a power frequency that is most used in countries around the world; a 109D-14 Steam Turbine, which runs on the waste heat produced by the gas turbine; GE’s W28 Generator; an integrated control system that links all of the technologies; and a heat recovery steam generator.
The International Energy Agency concluded in a report issued yesterday that large shares of variable renewable energy are feasible as long as power systems and markets are properly configured so they can get the best use of their flexible resources. More efficient and flexible natural gas plants are one of the requirements to get more renewables on the grid.
Detmers said that "Germany has some very serious conditions" with its 15,000 megawatts of wind and 17,000 megawatts of distributed solar. "We have a lot to understand about when we transform to a varying supply."
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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24 December, 2021
Global shipping being strangled by Greenie requirements
Ocean freight costs are likely to remain high in 2022 as investors and regulators scramble to accelerate decarbonisation of the shipping industry and companies grapple with green financing, sources say.
Shipping, which transports about 90% of world trade and accounts for nearly 3% of the world's CO2 emissions, is under growing pressure from environmentalists to deliver more concrete action including a carbon levy.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN's specialist shipping agency, has said it has made progress on short-term greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction measures.
But that timeline is not seen as fast enough by environmentalists and a number of the IMO's 175 member countries.
"At the MEPC (IMO committee) meeting in June next year there will be a lot of heat and pressure on regulators to ensure that they come prepared to negotiate a solution rather than kicking the can down the road because of misalignment or negotiation tactics. It is really not acceptable," said Christian Michael Ingerslev, chief executive of Maersk Tankers.
Last month countries including the United States at the COP 26 climate summit pushed for the IMO to adopt a zero emissions target by 2050.
So far, its goal is to reduce overall GHG emissions from ships by 50% from 2008 levels by 2050.
"As far as the IMO is concerned, the negotiations process in 2022 will likely be very slow and onerous," said Faig Abbasov with green group Transport & Environment.
"The problem is in the very belief that a U.N. organisation with 175 members can come together and take tough decisions to decarbonise an entire economic sector."
The IMO said concrete progress was made in 2021 on combating climate change including new regulations to improve the energy efficiency of the world fleet, adding that it would "work very hard" next year on the development of a revised GHG strategy, which will be finalised in 2023.
"Where this is willingness to act, then processes can move faster," said Roel Hoenders, head, air pollution and energy efficiency with the IMO.
A proposal submitted at the IMO to create a $5 billion research and development fund to find the right technology to meet the targets is still under discussion with further talks kicked forward to next year.
Underscoring the challenges ahead will be the impact on poorer countries such as Pakistan.
While the country was a small carbon emitter, climate change had "directly impacted us hard", Pakistan's Federal Minister of Maritime Affairs Ali Haider Zaidi said.
"Developing countries cannot afford to spend on the type of infrastructure needed and therefore, developed countries must support the process at the IMO," he told Reuters referring to the R&D fund.
FINANCING STRAIN
Financing the path ahead is another hurdle. Shipping will need $2.4 trillion to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with around $500 billion required by 2030, according analyst estimates.
"Certainly, the European banks at least and not far behind the American banks will have to meet criteria that satisfy sustainable finance," said Tony Foster, chief executive of specialist asset manager Marine Capital.
"When it comes to new assets it is going to be increasingly difficult to fund anything that does not quite qualify and the same will be true, perhaps even more so, with existing assets."
Darren Maupin, founder of leading fund manager Pilgrim Global, said companies in the shipping sector were grappling with how to secure finance with more ESG pressure.
"Capital is afraid - how do you invest in a 25-year asset when you have no idea what the IMO is going to do in five years," Maupin said.
"The industry has a far reduced ability to build ships and limited capital available to do so. Simple supply-demand suggests rates are going to be higher and the industry is going to have to generate more capital to fund itself."
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Germany is closing down half of its nuclear power plants in the midst of energy crisis
Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region’s history.
The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country’s nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise.
After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany vowed to ditch all of its reactors. At the time, the country was a leader in renewables, but the phaseout has left it more reliant on coal and lignite for electricity generation. The nation fell behind in the net-zero race after making major concessions to the coal lobby, to protesters against wind farms and to manufacturers, particularly carmakers.
“From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants have reached the end of their lifetime,” said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. “It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions.”
Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It’s one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.
The timing could hardly be worse. Power prices are near record levels across Europe, and Germany will need to rely on generation from costly gas and coal for another 20 years or so -- before they too are phased out. Keeping the nuclear stations open any longer isn’t an option since that would require hundreds of millions of euros of investment, Koenig said.
Increased reliance on fossil fuels will boost emissions further, and Germany is not alone. A number of countries in Europe have ramped up coal-fired power production in recent months as gas supplies failed to meet rebounding demand and wind generation fell short.
Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038, with the lignite power-plant fleet reduced almost 16% by 2024. By that year, high carbon prices and an expansion of renewable power will have cut Germany’s coal production “strongly,” according to the International Energy Agency.
And that trend is set to be replicated, with much of Europe deciding to “get out of coal,” leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term, said Sabrina Kernbichler, an analyst at S&P Global Platts.
Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. One German utility, Uniper SE, has postponed the planned decommissioning of its Scholven-B coal plant beyond the end of 2022 following delays in building a replacement gas unit at the site.
That’ll provide some relief as market tightness persists. But it won’t help Germany meet net-zero goals.
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Coal instead of gas? How the EU is frustrating Germany's energy transition
Renewable energy production is weakening. And now Brussels is forging a gas plan that will put coal back on the table. Otherwise there is a risk of a power shortage. A coal exit would be a long way off. German municipalities are now making a counter-proposal.
The new federal government would like to "ideally" bring the coal phase-out in Germany forward from 2038 to 2030. But the traffic light coalition partners are encounting immense problems right at the beginning of their plan. In addition to the declining generation of renewable energy, new specifications from Brussels threaten to make it more difficult to achieve the targets.
The starting position for the planned energy transition of the new federal government deteriorated considerably on Wednesday: According to the latest figures from the German Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW), the goal of achieving 80 percent renewable electricity in Germany by 2030 has become more unrealistic. Accordingly, the share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption has even shrunk from 46 percent to 42 percent this year. The main reason for this was poor wind conditions.
According to experts renewable energy cannot therefore replace the capacities of coal and nuclear power that will be lost in the near future. Almost every study on the achievement of the German energy transition targets assumes that gas-fired power plants will have to be built to a considerable extent by 2030 in order to be able to temporarily close the electricity gap.
It is a huge order of magnitude. Depending on the assessment, energy institutes consider the need for new gas power of over 15 gigawatts (German Energy Agency), 30 to 40 gigawatts (EPICO think tank) or even 43 gigawatts (Boston Consulting Group) to be necessary to secure the electricity supply by 2030.
Within just eight years, Germany would have to build at least 50, maybe even 140 new gas-fired power plants of the 300-megawatt class from scratch. With planning and construction times of at least six years, this can only succeed if it is started immediately.
But at the moment when Germany is desperately looking for investors for new gas-fired power plants, the EU Commission is making the conditions for this much more difficult. According to a proposal by France, Brussels only wants to award the rating "sustainable" in the so-called taxonomy regulation to those gas-fired power plants that produce less than 100 grams of CO? per kilowatt hour. However, such gas-fired power plants are not even on the market yet. The most modern gas-fired power plants today emit three times as much, around 300 grams of CO? per kilowatt hour.
No investor would be prepared to invest in gas-fired power plants if they do not receive the EU seal of approval for "sustainable" electricity generation. Because the risk would be too great that climate policy pressure would soon lead to an early shutdown of the expensive systems.
The roughly 900 municipal electricity suppliers in Germany in particular are facing a dilemma: "If the limit of 100 grams of CO? becomes part of the EU taxonomy, no one in Germany will probably build gas-fired power plants for years," says Ingbert Liebing, General Manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU ). The result: "For reasons of security of supply, there would then be no other choice than to let coal-fired power plants run longer or to import nuclear power from France." Moving forward the coal phase-out to 2030 under such conditions would, according to Liebing, be "illusory".
As a municipal supplier with particularly close customer loyalty, the municipal utilities, which operate a considerable part of the gas-fired power plants in Germany, do not want to let things get that far. A compromise proposal that the VKU is now feeding into the Brussels taxonomy negotiations is intended to keep investors in line and at the same time reduce emissions from gas-fired power plants over time.
The Stadtwerke-Verband advocates a change from a rigid limit to a budget. New gas-fired power plants are to be allocated 820 kilograms of CO? per kilowatt and year of installed capacity, which they can use flexibly over the term. "This budget is also extremely ambitious and acts like a CO2 brake that has an increasingly strong effect over time," Liebing promotes the proposal: "The budget approach ensures that the operator of the power plant pursues a decarbonisation strategy at an early stage by switched to hydrogen, for example. "
Brussels could not find out whether the compromise formula still has a chance of being taken into account in the taxonomy decision. There is not much time left: the EU Commission wants to reach a final decision on the so-called delegated legal acts on this topic by the end of the year.
Die Welt, 17 December 2021
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Climate, the far-Left and the devilish problem facing the Australian Green Party
Rachel Griffiths, the Golden Globe-winning Australian actress, is no stranger to prompting public debate through outrageous stunts.
In 1997 the Muriel’s Wedding star famously paraded semi-naked outside Melbourne’s Crown Casino in protest of a state government she claimed was “raping” the city of its dignity, compassion and sense of community. When asked by a journalist why she felt the need to be topless, Griffiths replied: “If I didn’t flash my tits, you wouldn’t have put me in the paper.”
It’s what makes Griffiths’ most recent political commentary all the more interesting.
When the Australian Greens party announced a proposal to ban horse racing and impose a 1 per cent levy on all bets to fund a transition, Griffiths was outraged.
“When the planet is melting this will not help you save it. Focus on carbon emissions/boosting infrastructure and you might make a difference,” she wrote on Instagram this week.
She said a ban on the nags would only alienate any Greens voter who was over 40 living outside all but six inner-city postcodes and “help re-elect a government you won’t have a voice in”. Griffiths, who coincidentally now plays a crossbench MP in ABC political drama Total Control, neatly highlights the challenge the Greens have in the coming months.
It is an increasingly contested space for minor parties to find relevance, cut-through and, importantly, air-time. It will be even harder as the election looms with several climate-focused, progressive, independent candidates stealing their limelight as they fight for seats that not so long ago the Greens had hoped they might one day win.
In Melbourne the Greens vote in both Higgins and Kooyong leapfrogged Labor in recent years and put them both firmly in the targets of Adam Bandt’s party. But the independent push is now costing them members, donors and likely volunteers at voting booths on election day.
And so once again chances of winning any of the 10 or so lower house seats identified on the party’s regular triennial hit list are already looking bleak.
The Greens vote has for more than 15 years now been highly influenced by the wider context of the public debate and the issues which voters perceive the election to be about. Loyalty levels of its voters are well below those of the major parties, but if issues which are strongly associated with the Greens are front-and-centre then they can be assured of some success. If not, things go backwards.
While the Greens have often targeted “soft” Labor voters, they’ve found there are equally a lot of “soft” Greens voters that they can - and often do - lose at each election.
Which begs the question, what is the relevance of the Greens at the next federal election? Can they ever again match the almost 12 per cent of the vote achieved under Bob Brown in 2010 or has their influence peaked?
On Sunday this masthead reported that businessman Graeme Wood, who has poured more than $2 million into their campaigns over the past decade, had grown frustrated with the party. The founder of online travel company Wotif said they needed a “shot in the arm” because the party’s support had not increased in the past decade.
Wood isn’t the only big donor over the Greens. David Rothfield, an environmental campaigner and philanthropist who donated half a million dollars to the Greens, Labor, and activist group Get Up, has quit the party. He’s joined the “Voices of” movement to oust incumbent Liberal MP Tim Wilson in the seat of Goldstein.
Former Wallaby [Rugby footballer] David Pocock, who is tight with a number of Greens figures, is standing as an independent for the Senate in the ACT. Those close with him say he stands a better chance of being elected without the baggage of the party and is assured of their preferences in a jurisdiction where the Greens vote is north of 17 per cent.
Pocock, outspoken on social justice issues and was once arrested after chaining himself to a digger at a NSW coal mine protest in Leard State Forest, says he is open to receiving money from businessman Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 fund, a war chest of as much as $20 million to bankroll candidates who are cutting the Greens lunch.
The party can take credit for consolidating its 10 per cent of the vote over a decade but has all but dealt itself out of negotiations by regularly ruling out deals with the Coalition. The handful of times it was prepared to reach deals with a conservative government it was torn apart with bitter internal feuding.
So, why would Anthony Albanese agree to a power-sharing deal if he can’t win a majority at the next election? He knows Bandt would always back a Labor government on supply.
Bandt hopes to make the Greens the biggest third party in the Senate’s history by adding two seats at the next election. But when he promises he’ll win extra lower house seats and influence government policy, that’s what he will be judged on.
The Greens’ long-term issue is that they’ve become the natural home of anyone who is concerned about climate, but also of the far left. And when their broader policies alienate those who care about the climate but aren’t of the far left, that’s when a Climate 200-backed independent might be a more appealing choice.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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23 December, 2021
Coal surge defies push for net-zero emissions
Global demand for coal is forecast to reach record levels next year, driven by huge growth in China and India, defying global efforts to tackle climate change.
The International Energy Agency is predicting at least three years of surging demand for coal, just weeks after world leaders failed to agree on a phase-out of the fossil fuel source at climate change talks in Glasgow.
“All evidence indicates a widening gap between political ambitions and targets on one side and the realities of the current energy system on the other,” the IEA said on Friday.
“This disconnect has two clear implications: climate targets are getting further out of reach, and energy security is at risk.”
Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the IAE projections showed strong messages and targets alone would not address climate change. “Report after report points out the yawning gap between ambition and achievement,” he said. “That’s why a real plan to deliver on commitments is so important.”
Mr Taylor said technology was central to making net-zero emissions practically achievable for all countries.
China and India led the push against phasing out coal in Glasgow, opting to phase down coal use instead. Both countries are leading the surge in global coal consumption and continue to build new coal power stations.
“Global coal trends will be shaped largely by China and India, who account for two-thirds of global coal consumption, despite their efforts to increase renewables and other low-carbon energy sources,” the agency said.
While Asia is leading the way with higher coal consumption, the IEA says coal use has also jumped sharply in the US, UK and Europe as power generators switch out of high-priced gas.
The IEA report shows that a fall in demand for coal because of the pandemic was a temporary blip rather than a structural retreat. It underscores the gulf that exists between the targets being set to tackle climate change and the actions being taken.
Keisuke Sadamori, director of energy markets and security at the IEA, said: “The pledges to reach net-zero emissions made by many countries, including China and India, should have very strong implications for coal – but these are not yet visible in our near-term forecast, reflecting the major gap between ambitions and action.”
After falling in 2019 and 2020, global power generation from coal is expected to jump by 9 per cent in 2021 to a record high of 10,350 terawatt-hours.
Coal demand worldwide – including uses beyond power generation, such as cement and steel production – is forecast to grow by 6 per cent in 2021. That increase will not take it above the record levels it reached in 2013 and 2014.
But, depending on weather patterns and economic growth, the IEA said overall coal demand could reach a record high of 8.025 billion tonnes as soon as 2022 and then 8.031 billion tonnes by 2024.
Australia will retain its crown as the biggest global producer of metallurgical coal, used for steelmaking, with exports to lift 11 million tonnes by 2024 as producers continue to sidestep China’s import ban by selling supplies to rival buyers such as India and South Korea.
Consumption of thermal coal, used for power generation, will rise 7 per cent in 2021 although growth will remain constrained over the next three years amid environmental pressures and difficulty attracting financing to the sector.
The IEA says Australia’s thermal-coal industry is expected to shrink slowly as mine closures outpace capacity additions.
The agency expects Australia to produce 287Mt of thermal coal in 2024, about 31Mt less than in 2019, with lower demand for coal for domestic power generation contributing to the decline.
However, metallurgical coal production in Australia is expected to increase 11Mt by 2024.
The government’s commodity forecaster predicts thermal and metallurgical coal exports will contribute $57bn to export earnings in the 2022 financial year, up 46 per cent.
The IEA has previously said global coal use would have to plummet by 55 per cent by 2030 under a net-zero pathway to 2050 and declared no new coalmines or oil or gas fields should be opened.
Instead, demand for the polluting fossil fuel has lifted across the board in a blow for global ambitions to cut emissions.
IEA executive director Fatih Birol said: “Coal is the single largest source of global carbon emissions, and this year’s historically high level of coal-power generation is a worrying sign of how far off track the world is in its efforts to put emissions into decline towards net zero. Without strong and immediate actions by governments to tackle coal emissions – in a way that is fair, affordable and secure for those affected – we will have little chance, if any at all, of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.”
China, where half of all global coal-fired electricity generation occurs, will see generation for power use lift by more than 9 per cent in 2021 while India is expected to end this year with growth of 12 per cent.
Even the EU and the US, both aggressively making plans to push coal out of their system, are set to record a 20 per cent gain in coal power generation this year although those levels will remain below 2019 numbers.
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Fracking companies are threatening to sue the British Government over its ban on the practice amid complaints they have been left out of the country's energy revolution
The onshore shale gas industry has exchanged "pre-action correspondence" with Whitehall after it was barred from drilling following concern over earthquakes in 2019, before any gas was produced.
It raises the prospect that taxpayers could be forced to shell out compensation to an industry which came under sustained attack from campaigners over environmental concerns.
The potential legal action also raises questions for Cornwall's clean energy revival.
Fracking companies were riled after testing to extract heat, power and lithium from deep geothermal waters in the county last year triggered mini-earthquakes similar to those caused by fracking, but different regulations meant the work did not have to regularly pause as a result.
The billionaire industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe was among those who spent millions of pounds on fracking projects that had to be ditched following the ban. His company Ineos wrote off £63m in 2019.
It comes as the Government faces questions over whether its policies are deterring investment in energy that would help Britain secure independence from Russia and producers in the Middle East.
Charles McAllister, policy manager at UK Onshore Oil and Gas, the trade body, said: "We support the continued development of geothermal energy in the UK, however we would ask the Government to look again at lifting the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in light of its approach to the regulation of seismicity from deep geothermal projects.
"Whether our members will legally pursue compensation for the £500m they have invested in the Midlands and the North of England is a question for each company.
"We would of course prefer the Government to look at the science, apply regulation fairly and allow our members to proceed in producing a much-needed source of domestic natural gas."
Widely used around the world, fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to release natural gas trapped between rocks.
Former prime minister David Cameron backed efforts to develop the first onshore fracking projects in the UK under a "dash for gas" bid to secure domestic energy supplies.
But tremors triggered during tests by leading player Cuadrilla in Lancashire led to the industry being placed under tight restrictions. It was then banned after the Oil and Gas Authority said it was not "possible to accurately predict the probability or magnitude of earthquakes linked to fracking."
Cuadrilla, which said it is not part of any potential legal action or correspondence, wrote separately to the Government early this year highlighting that more "red-light" seismic events have been recorded from geothermal work in Cornwall than at its own wells.
Private company Geothermal Engineering has been testing water flows ahead of plans to develop geothermal power stations using hot water flowing up to 5km underground, from which lithium, used in electric car batteries, would also be extracted.
Producing energy from geothermal waters is a very different process to fracking as it involves pumping hot water that already flows naturally through rocks, rather than creating fractures.
Its seismic activity is generally regulated by local authorities based on the vibrations caused at the surface. Frackers, on the other hand, faced strict limits on earthquake magnitude regardless of what was felt at ground level.
Cuadrilla argues this difference is unfair, since both risk causing earthquakes even if small.
In its letter to the Government in February, the company said: "It is clear that resolving and lifting the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing should happen in parallel with defining and appropriately mitigating and regulating the risks of induced seismicity associated with comparable operations."
This week, the company added that its questions had not been satisfactorily resolved.
The push from frackers comes as soaring global gas prices trigger a debate about domestic energy supplies.
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U.S. reverses Trump effort to quash California vehicle emissions rules
The Biden administration on Tuesday finalized a reversal of a rule issued under then-U.S. President Donald Trump that sought to pre-empt California's vehicle emissions regulations.
The Department of Transportation said it was issuing final rules rescinding the Trump action, which sought to bar the most populous state in the nation from setting vehicle rules that might conflict with the federal government's authority to set Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements.
The program, in place since 1975, sets vehicle fuel efficiency requirements.
"States can now actively pursue solutions to address the climate crisis and environmental challenges in their communities," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
About two dozen U.S. states sued to block a pair of Trump actions that sought to remove California from vehicle emissions regulations, while major automakers had backed the effort. The Republican president often clashed with California.
Soon after Democrat Joe Biden was elected president in November 2020, General Motors Co reversed course and opted to no longer back the Trump administration’s effort to bar California from setting its own emissions rules.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) separately has moved to reverse the Trump administration's 2019 decision to withdraw California's legal authority to set vehicle emissions rules and set zero-emission vehicle mandates.
The EPA in 2013 granted California a waiver for its tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions and zero-emission vehicle regulations.
A total of 14 states have adopted California's vehicle-emission rules and 11 have adopted its zero-emission vehicle mandates.
On Monday, the EPA finalized new vehicle emissions requirements through 2026 that reverse Trump's rollback of car pollution cuts and will speed a U.S. shift to more electric vehicles (EVs). The rule will reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 15% through 2050, the EPA said, or more than 440 million barrels.
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The Great Barrier Reef is thriving -- despite all the Greenie gloom
Peter Ridd:
The Australian Institute of Marine Science recently released its annual survey of coral on the Great Barrier Reef. It shows spectacularly good results. For all three major regions of the reef, once data uncertainties are considered, there has never been more coral since records began in the mid-1980s.
This despite three supposedly catastrophic and unprecedented hot water bleaching events in the past five years.
This great news about the reef poses only a minor problem for those science and management institutions that have convinced the world that the reef is on its last legs. They use three strategies: first, ignore the data and hope nobody points out the great news; second, discredit the good news with “fact checks”; and finally, contrive a spurious but apparently plausible reason that the good news is actually bad news.
Ignoring the good news was on display last month in the latest reef-doom story when the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian all quoted an eminent reef scientist who stated that only 2 per cent of the reef had not bleached in the past few decades.
The implication was that bleaching was unprecedented and had destroyed almost the entire reef. The fabulous coral statistics this year were not mentioned by any of those articles.
Bleaching, cyclones and starfish plagues, which all occasionally kill parts of the reef, are akin to bushfires on land. They are completely natural and reset the ecosystem, which rapidly recovers, and are a necessary and important feature of many Australian ecosystems. I could guess that roughly 2 per cent of western Queensland was not affected by a bushfire in the past half century. That would be a good thing, certainly not worthy of concern. Neither should it be for the reef.
To counter the latest good news about the reef, as reported in The Australian, the fact-check gods of Facebook also swung into action. They deemed that the coral has actually declined in the past decade. So what does the AIMS data, which was cited in the fact check, actually show about the change in coral since 2011?
For the northern region, the amount of coral this year is excellent and about the same today as in 2011; for the central region, it has roughly doubled; and for the southern region it has almost tripled. There is a significant uncertainty in the data because of the difficulty of measuring such a vast system, and the measurements are partly subjective in nature, but there is absolutely no doubt that the fact-checkers are extraordinarily wrong.
They appear to be incapable of reading simple graphs.
The final strategy is to turn good news into bad. AIMS and other reef science institutions such as James Cook University Coral Reef Centre dismiss the obviously fabulous coral statistics by arguing that it is only the fast-growing corals that have regrown.
But they ignore that it is the fast-growing corals, the delicate staghorn and plate corals, that were killed in the first place by cyclones, bleaching and starfish plagues. So of course it is the fast-growing corals that have recovered.
In 2012, when the reef hit record lows of coral after a couple of very destructive cyclones, these institutions did not say: “Don’t worry, it is only the fast-growing corals – they will be back.” Instead, AIMS published a paper stating that, without intervention, the reef would likely crash much further by 2022. This is yet another failed prediction of the imminent death of the reef in the past 50 years.
Back in the early ’70s, scientists were claiming that plagues of crown-of-thorns starfish, a native Australian species, not an introduced pest, would totally destroy the reef. The plagues came and went, and we now know from geological evidence that the plagues have occurred across millennia.
The amount of coral on the reef fluctuates dramatically with time. The one thing that remains the same are the dire predictions of the loss of the reef. The other thing that remains the same is the reality that the reef is one of the most pristine, best protected, and brilliant ecosystems on Earth.
Early next year Environment Minister Sussan Ley must prepare an updated report on why UNESCO should not declare the Great Barrier Reef as endangered. She will be up against activist scientists, environmental groups and public servants. And in the background the false gods of big tech turn a huge increase in the amount of coral into a decline. Institutions such as AIMS and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority that downplay the excellent condition of the reef will be a further problem.
After 50 years of doomsaying about the reef, and its stubborn refusal to die, how much longer will we have to wait before a government will audit the science institutions that have been scaring our children?
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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22 December, 2021
Copernicus tracks the ozone hole closure of 2021 – one of the longest lived Antarctic ozone holes on record
That pesky hole is getting bigger, not smaller -- and lasting longer
Scientists from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service confirm that the 2021 Antarctic ozone hole has almost reached its end, following a season with a considerably large and prolonged ozone hole. Its closure will occur only a few days earlier than in 2020, which was the longest lived since 1979.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission with funding from the European Union, reports that the Antarctic ozone hole has almost reached its end. Similar to last year’s season, the ozone hole in 2021 will be one of the largest and longest-living ones on record, coming to a close later than 95% of all tracked ozone holes since 1979.
Vincent-Henri Peuch, Director of Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service at ECMWF, comments: “Both the 2020 and 2021 Antarctic ozone holes have been rather large and exceptionally long-lived.
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Snowfall EVERY DAY Atop Kilimanjaro – Where Is Al Gore?
In his 2006 Hollywood movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore solemnly warns that “Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.” A decade and a half later, Al Gore’s glum prediction is not aging well. In fact, a look at today’s 7-day forecast for Kilimanjaro shows snow falling atop the mountain every day for the next week. Moreover, high temperatures atop the mountain will remain at least 10 degrees below zero every day atop the mountain.
Abundant snow atop Kilimanjaro is nothing unusual. Not only does snow still fall atop Kilimanjaro, the mountain has had snow cover every single day since Gore made his movie. In fact, so much snow fell in 2018 that there were record increases in snow depth on the mountain.
The author of the Just Kilimanjaro website recently reported that the entire mountain peak is covered with snow:
“The writer of this article observed during this week’s flight closer to the mountain, recovering snow piled up, covering the whole mountain peak.”
If Facebook and Big Tech are going to censor and ban global warming videos that they claim contain misinformation and factual errors, then Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” should be banned from the Internet.
https://climaterealism.com/2021/12/snowfall-every-day-atop-kilimanjaro-where-is-al-gore/
*********************************************Indian PM Modi speaks out against Western climate goals
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s explosive comments are not surprising to anyone who has been closely observing the opposition of India and China to western pressure for adopting climate polices contrary to the two countries’ economic objectives.
“The colonial mindset hasn’t gone,” said Modi at a Constitution Day event. “We are seeing from developed nations that the path that made them developed is being closed for developing nations… If we talk about absolute cumulative (carbon) emissions, rich nations have emitted 15 times more from 1850 till now… The per capita emission is also 11 times more in the U.S. and the EU.”
Senior ministers in the past have called out the colonial nature of climate politics. However, this is the first that Modi has publicly recalled in this context, the colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries when Western countries denied basic rights and autonomy to India and other colonies.
Carbon imperialism is no myth. The economic success of modern western society is a fruit of the industrial era driven by fossil fuels. Even in the 21st century, all the major developed economies rely on these fuels for primary energy needs. To deny the same growth for developing countries is hypocrisy tinged with the colonialism under which fates of billions were decided by leaders of the industrialized West.
“Attempts are made to shut the path and resources for developing nations through which developed nations reached where they are today,” said Modi. “In past decades, a web of different terminologies was spun for this. But the aim has always been one to stop the progress of developing nations. The issue of environment is also being attempted to be hijacked for this purpose. We saw an example of this in the recent COP26 Summit…. Today no nation exists as a colony to any other nation. (That) doesn’t mean that (the) colonial mindset ended… Still, India is lectured on environmental conservation.”
Modi also called out Indian activists, policy makers and organizations espousing an anti-fossil stance. Blaming them for hindering progress, he said, “Sadly, we also have such people in our country who stall the development of the nation in the name of freedom of expression without understanding the aspirations of the nation. Such people don’t bear the brunt, but those mothers who get no electricity for their children bear it.”
Modi is right. Hundreds of millions in India have no access to uninterrupted electricity. What people in the developed nations take for granted is still a luxury for millions here. Mothers do manual work for hours, children lack electricity to study for their exams, and industries lose millions of dollars in damaged equipment from unreliable power. Electricity disruption even impedes medical procedures in rural hospitals. Without reliable electricity, India cannot achieve fast-paced economic growth necessary for raising 300 million people out of poverty.
Meanwhile, Indians have some of the lowest levels of per capita carbon emissions. India’s per capita emission was measured at just 1.91 tons a year (2016) while that of the U.S. was 15.52 and Canada’s, 18.58.
Besides, there is no evidence that global CO2 emissions can cause catastrophic warming. Apocalyptic predictions are projections from computer models that have proven to be faulty. These models (used by U.N. climate alarmists and others) exaggerate warming by many times as they are designed to be ultra-sensitive to human CO2 emissions. So, there is no good reason for India to give in to climate pressure from the West.
It took a long time for the leader of 1.3 billion people to call out the reeking hypocrisy of Western elites and their never-ending attempts to dictate energy policy to countries in which they are not elected. Nevertheless, Modi’s bold step to tag western leaders with a “colonialist mindset” marks an important turn in global climate politics.
https://co2coalition.org/2021/12/17/the-east-slams-the-wests-climate-colonialism/
*********************************************Gutless North Sea oil rules will destroy Britain’s energy independence
Say what you like about this government but they have become world leaders in saying one thing and doing another: lockdown by stealth, covert cheese and wine parties while the rest of us stay at home or are prevented from seeing loved ones, and now the latest thing: a gutless plan to wind down the North Sea oil industry and another nail in the coffin of what remains of Britain’s energy security.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, energy minister Greg Hands is attempting to dress the whole thing up as a climate-friendly scheme to help the sector with some nonsense about how it is evidence that the government remains pro-oil and gas. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The clue is in the name: a new “climate change compatibility checkpoint” that all new applications to explore for fossil fuels in the North Sea will be subjected to before approval is, or isn’t, granted. How precisely this will “open the door” to a flurry of new fields being developed, as Hands protests, is anyone’s guess.
If the government doesn’t want further development in the North Sea then it should have the courage to say so, instead of introducing yet more hurdles that will either discourage investment, or worse, simply prevent it because they are impossible to clear.
But the very notion that net-zero-obsessed ministers are about to pave the way for a new era of exploration in the region is in itself laughable. Recent evidence alone would tell you that is emphatically not the case.
First the regulator rejected Shell’s plans to develop the Jackdaw field east of Aberdeen, which is estimated to hold gas resources equivalent to between 120m and 250m barrels, on the basis of environmental grounds yet to be made public.
Then Shell was also forced to pull out of plans to extract oil from the Cambo field off the coast of Shetland after fierce opposition from green campaigners, and even the threat of legal action from Greenpeace against the government if exploration went ahead.
Hands says he is “aware” that “homegrown oil and gas is more climate-friendly than imports” as if that alone is proof of the government’s support for North Sea producers but this is little more than an attempt to spin away the reality.
Shell’s difficulties tell us everything there is to know about the direction of travel and there’s nothing positive about it for the people employed there, for the Scottish economy, or indeed the UK’s energy security.
There are two give away lines in the white paper proposal: future licences will be granted “only on the basis that they are compatible with the UK’s climate change objectives”, which means any found to “undermine the UK’s climate goals or ability to reach net zero” will be blocked.
As the Department for Business itself acknowledges, this means that “an additional layer of scrutiny” will be applied to future licences, alongside an “environmental assessment” carried out by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommission, and a “net zero impact assessment” undertaken by the Oil and Gas Authority as part of the consent process for new drilling.
How that is proof that the government is “supporting the industry in the transition to a lower carbon future, while also working to achieve the UK’s net zero commitment” is anyone’s guess.
On the contrary, the likelihood is that any steps to wind down the North Sea by stealth will rob Britain of its energy independence. Furthermore, by making us even more reliant on imports from unsavoury foreign regimes like Russia and Saudi Arabia, it will do nothing to help us reach net zero.
In short, yet another spectacular own goal from Westminster as it barrels blindly ahead with a green agenda with scant regard for the economic and social consequences.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 December, 2021
Europe: Lack of wind sparks new fears over green energy revolution
Lulls trigger questions over the long-term predictability of wind patterns amid escalating climate change
A lull in wind speeds over the summer was felt in boardrooms across Europe. As it blew at its weakest for around 60 years, major energy companies lost millions of pounds in electricity sales.
By September, households started to feel the pain. Coal and gas-fired plants were switched on to make up for loss of wind, compounding a global shortage of gas and pushing electricity prices to record levels.
“It’s very serious,” Mads Nipper, chief executive of Danish oil-turned-wind giant Orsted, told the Financial Times in August, as he warned shareholders of a hit to profits. “It is like you’re a farmer and it doesn’t rain.”
Countries are relying more on wind to meet their energy needs in the rush to slash carbon emissions. The technology accounts for more than 6pc of global electricity, and is set to grow as fossil fuels are muscled out of the way by cleaner sources.
In the UK, turbines on land and dotted around the coast generate about a quarter of domestic electricity over the year. Boris Johnson wants to make wind the backbone of the energy system, with a huge increase in offshore turbines, as part of the legally binding push to net zero.
But events like the wind lull have triggered questions over whether it was a sign of things to come, and how predictable wind patterns are in the long term amid climate change.
It’s an area of growing corporate and scientific research, with huge consequences for energy security and business investment. But much remains unknown.
“Given what we saw in 2021, I think we will see and we need studies to understand [wind trends] better, especially given our increased reliance on wind as an energy source,” says Paul Williams, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading.
Scientists have identified a pattern of declining average wind speeds globally, averaging about one mile an hour every thirty years, based on wind speeds since the 1970s.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/18/lack-wind-sparks-new-fears-green-energy-revolution/
************************************************Youngkin plans to withdraw Virginia from interstate climate pact
Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has signaled his intention to pull the state out of a climate compact that many small businesses there are glad to see go.
Youngkin has made clear his intention to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The interstate compact places penalties on entities that exceed emission regulations set by an organization representing all member states.
"Virginia’s small businesses are managing several obstacles such as the labor shortage and supply chain disruptions. Small business owners need lawmakers to enact policies that promote job growth, not deter it, as they work on recovering their businesses to pre-crisis levels," state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses Nicole Riley said in a statement.
The NFIB is one of the largest associations for small businesses in the United States.
She continued, "By removing Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin is sparing small business owners from an increased cost in their electric bills and other expenses they simply cannot afford right now."
The RGGI currently boasts eleven member states in the initiative, all from the northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.
The RGGI is currently being courted by Pennsylvania for membership. It boasts itself as the "first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States."
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Biden uses tornado tragedy to push climate agenda
President Biden on Saturday addressed the fatal weather that ravaged parts of the South and Midwest and used the tragedy to further his own beliefs on climate change.
While speaking to reporters and virtually assessing the tornado damage from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden was asked whether he "could conclude that these storms and the intensity have to do with climate change."
"All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change," Biden said. "The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point."
"I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that," Biden added. "The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a quantitative read on that."
Biden’s remarks follow a series of deadly storms and tornadoes which swept across Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri overnight and resulted in multiple injuries and the deaths of nearly 100 Americans.
Comment:
No Joe, it is not “fact” that everything is more intense, nor that it has some impact here.
Provisional data from the NWS indicates that the tornadoes which hit Mayfield, Kentucky and Edwardsville, Illinois were both EF-3s.
Although most tornadoes occur in spring and early summer, strong tornadoes are not unheard of in winter. Indeed, on average since 1950 there have been five tornadoes every winter of EF3 and greater strength. And the official data shows that these winter storms are not becoming more frequent:
I find it utterly contemptible that Biden should use this tragedy to further his climate agenda, without even bothering to wait for the facts to emerge.
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Himalayan glaciers are melting at an 'exceptional rate' - but NO MENTION of climate change this time
Himalayan glaciers are melting at an 'exceptional rate' and could threaten the supply of water for hundreds of millions of people in Asia, a new study warns.
Researchers have found that Himalayan glaciers have lost ice 10 times more quickly over the last few decades – predominantly since the year 2000 – than on average since the Little Ice Age hundreds of years ago.
The Little Ice Age was a period of major mountain-glacier expansion that spanned from around the early 14th century through to the mid-19th century, when rivers froze over and crops were decimated.
* Himalayan glaciers are also now shrinking far more rapidly than glaciers in other parts of the world *, which is raising sea levels, the study also found.
This accelerating melting has implications for hundreds of millions of residents who depend on Asia's major rivers for food and energy – including the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus.
Around the 17th century, Earth experienced a prolonged cooling period that brought chillier-than-average temperatures to much of the Northern Hemisphere.
It's said to have lasted from the 16th through 19th century, though some argue it began even earlier.
It was not a true Ice Age, but brought cold temperatures in three intervals from the mid-1600s to the 1800s.
In Europe and North America, this meant colder winters which in some cases destroyed farms and villages with encroaching glaciers.
Rivers also froze over in many locations, and 'frost fairs' were held along the River Thames.
Changes in sea ice disrupted travel and shipping around Iceland, and crop devastation led to years of famine in some parts of Europe.
The Himalayan mountain range – often referred to as ‘the Third Pole' – is home to the world’s third-largest amount of glacier ice after Antarctica and the Arctic.
Study author Dr Simon Cook, a senior lecturer in geography and environmental science at the University of Dundee, said people in the Himalayan region are 'already seeing changes that are beyond anything witnessed for centuries'.
'This research is just the latest confirmation that those changes are accelerating and that they will have a significant impact on entire nations and regions,' Dr Cook said.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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20 December, 2021
Epic sea level rise drove Vikings out of Greenland
This is ridiculous. Expanding ice sheets should have locked up more water and LOWERED sea levels. The claim that they raised sea levels is therefore illogical and the proffered explanation is far-fetched. It is normally accepted that the wintry conditions wiped out the settlers' crops and it was therefore starvation that drove them out
The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century.
The Vikings first established a foothold in southern Greenland around A.D. 985 with the arrival of Erik Thorvaldsson, also known as "Erik the Red," a Norwegian-born explorer who sailed to Greenland after being exiled from Iceland. Other Viking settlers soon followed, forming communities in Eystribyggð (Eastern Settlement) and Vestribyggð (Western Settlement) that thrived for centuries. (At the time of the Vikings' arrival, Greenland was already inhabited by people of the Dorset Culture, an Indigenous group that preceded the arrival of the Inuit people in the Arctic, according to the University of California Riverside).
Around the 15th century, signs of Norse habitation in the region vanished from the archaeological record. Researchers previously suggested that factors such as climate change and economic shifts likely led the Vikings to abandon Greenland. Now, new findings show that rising seas played a key role, by submerging miles of coastline, according to data presented Wednesday (Dec. 15) at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), held this week in New Orleans and online.
Between the 14th and 19th centuries, Europe and North America experienced a period of significantly cooler temperatures, known as the Little Ice Age. Under these chilly conditions, the Greenland Ice Sheet — a vast blanket of ice covering most of Greenland — would have become even bigger, Marisa Julia Borreggine, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, said in a presentation at the AGU conference.
As the ice sheet advanced, its increasing heaviness weighed down the substrate underneath, making coastal areas more prone to flooding, Borreggine said. At the same time, the increased gravitational attraction between the expanding ice sheet and large masses of sea ice pushed more seawater over Greenland's coast. These two processes could have driven widespread flooding along the coastline — "exactly where the Vikings were settled," Borreggine said.
The scientists tested their hypothesis by modeling estimated ice growth in southwestern Greenland over the 400-year period of Norse occupation and adding those calculations to a model showing sea level rise during that time. Then, they analyzed maps of known Viking sites to see how their findings lined up with archaeological evidence marking the end of a Viking presence in Greenland.
Their models showed that from about 1000 to 1400, rising seas around Greenland would have flooded Viking settlements by as much as 16 feet (5 meters), affecting about 54 square miles (140 square kilometers) of coastal land, Borreggine said. This flooding would have submerged land that the Vikings used for farming and as grazing pastures for their cattle, according to the models.
However, sea level rise was probably not the only reason the Vikings left Greenland. Other types of challenges can cause even long-standing communities to collapse, and a perfect storm of external pressures — such as climate change, social unrest and resource depletion — may have spurred the Vikings to abandon their settlements for good, Borreggine said.
"A combination of climate and environmental change, the shifting resource landscape, the flux of supply and demand of exclusive products for the foreign market, and interactions with Inuit in the North all could have contributed to this out-migration," she said. "Likely a combination of these factors led to the Norse migration out of Greenland and further west."
https://www.livescience.com/agu-floods-drove-vikings-from-greenland
*********************************************EU supply chain crisis looms as HGV drivers blow top over green taxes
Industry leaders have reacted furiously at the EU as it plans to increase carbon taxes on commercial road transport in the next few years. They argue that it is unjust to increase carbon taxes before clean low carbon solutions for road freight and coaches are widely affordable.
While zero-emission electric and hydrogen fuel-cell heavy-duty vehicles are available, these tend to be prohibitively expensive for most companies.
Part of the reason for the higher price tag is the fact that they are not yet produced at the same level of scale as heavy-duty fossil fuel-based vehicles.
Furthermore, many in the industry are sceptical about these electric vehicles. They are particularly hesitant about whether the technology is suitable for long-distance journeys, especially given Europe’s limited charging infrastructure for alternative fuels.
For these reasons, HGV drivers are reluctant to make the shift to greener vehicles.
At a conference organised by the International Road Transport Union (IRU), Alexander Klacska, the CEO of Austrian logistics company Klacska Group criticised the EU’s plans.
She said: “The European economy is based on competitiveness, and to be penalised without having alternatives just demolishes that competitiveness.”
Jos Sales of the Luxembourg Federation of Bus and Coach Operators (FLEAA) agreed with this sentiment, saying that there must be green options available prior to implementing punitive taxes.
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EU leaders battle over carbon price as energy costs soar
A group of EU leaders have demanded that Brussels intervene to help curb the record price of CO2, arguing that potential market manipulation is raising energy costs and exacerbating Europe’s winter gas crisis.
European member states led by France and including Spain, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, and the Czech Republic objected to the European Commission’s assertion that there were no irregularities in the EU carbon market as they come under pressure to cushion consumers from the rising cost of energy.
The complaints were raised at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, where leaders ultimately failed to bridge divisions and abandoned attempts to agree common language on the energy crisis.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council who chaired the meeting, described the issue as “difficult” after Poland and the Czech Republic demanded references to the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and forthcoming EU rules on its green “taxonomy” in the summit conclusions. The requests were resisted by Germany’s new chancellor Olaf Scholz, along with Austria and Luxembourg.
European gas prices hit their highest level since October earlier this week on the back of concerns about Russia’s new Nord Stream 2 pipeline to deliver natural gas to Europe.
The gas supply crunch has provided an incentive to energy producers to switch to cheaper but more polluting coal — raising demand for carbon allowances under the EU’s cap-and-trade system. The carbon price as reflected in the ETS surged to more than €90 per tonne of CO2 last week.
Heavy polluters are obliged to buy ETS allowances to cover their carbon emissions, in an effort to place a cost on the dirty fuel and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
EU diplomats told the FT that a number of leaders demanded the commission carry out more rigorous scrutiny of the price dynamics in the ETS. Some suggested direct political intervention in the market for allowances which is effectively controlled by the commission.
Leaders also clashed over Brussels’ much-anticipated rules on green finance, known as the taxonomy. The commission is due to publish a legal bill next week that will decide whether nuclear power and natural gas can be awarded a “green” label in the classification system, designed to help investors stamp out so-called “greenwashing”.
A large majority of EU member states, including France, the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary, support the inclusion of nuclear power in the rules — arguing that it is a low-emission technology that is crucial to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This has been resisted by environmental groups who says nuclear power produces toxic waste.
“It is no secret that there are different positions [on the taxonomy] . . . and it was not possible to have an agreement” said Michel.
The spats over energy and green policy will cast a shadow over the EU’s attempts to agree more than a dozen pieces of legislation designed to drastically cut CO2 emissions over the next three decades.
At the heart of the EU’s net zero plan is a an extension of the ETS to cover sectors such as cars and housing. The proposal is opposed by France, Spain, Portugal and eastern European countries who say it will impose a direct tax on consumers who cannot afford to switch vehicles or domestic goods to those with lower emissions.
https://www.ft.com/content/eefea72d-0441-4edf-9d56-2e4d835cd4dc
***********************************************Australia: Greenie thugs protected by Leftist Qld. government
Protesters are hurling sex slurs at female miners, chasing staff in cars and even flying in booze at Adani’s Carmichael coal site.
Cashed-up activists are hurling sex slurs at female mine workers, chasing staff in cars and even flying in booze as part of an almost daily confrontation of abuse and intimidation at Adani’s Carmichael coal site
The tension created by environmental protesters is putting lives at risk, CEO Lucas Dow said, with staff forced to wear body-worn cameras and the mine company forced to spend $9000 a day on security to keep workers safe.
The “outrageous” display of abuse included one female worker being called a “slut” by activists, merely for going to work.
Protesters also chartered a helicopter stocked with beer and wine to their camp.
In another shocking act, activists drove a 4WD at a female staffer as conflicts become more aggressive in what Mr Dow describes as attempts to “create a confrontation with our people for their PR cameras”.
With protest activity dragging into its fourth month, Mr Dow said it was “outrageous” the Queensland Police Service and state government were valuing the sensitivities of activists above worker safety.
“They’ve verbally abused and threatened our employees, often targeting women, they recently chased one of our female workers in a four-wheel-drive, and flew a helicopter onto the mine to deliver supplies including alcohol to their camp,” he said.
“We’ve made several complaints to the Queensland Police Service about the presence of the activists and their behaviour, however, after nearly four months, police refuse to move them on.
“This is outrageous given the camp is within 200m of our operational open-cut mining pit.”
A spokesman for Queensland police acknowledged they had received several complaints relating to incidents involving people associated with the camp.
“The Queensland Police Service continues to investigate these complaints as part of an overall engagement and negotiation strategy,” he said.
The spokesman said the service would ensure public safety while working towards an appropriate resolution.
“The QPS also acknowledges the response to these issues are complex, we have and will continue to engage with all relevant stakeholders,” he said.
About 10 million tonnes of coal will be extracted each year from Adani’s $2bn Carmichael Mine in central Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
Following a decade of controversy and rigorous approvals construction of the mammoth mine, which will employ 2000 workers, started in June 2019.
Mr Dow questioned why protesters were exempt from strict site rules imposed on workers, and called for the government to step in and protect miners.
“It’s the behaviour of the professional activists using it that makes a mockery of the workplace health and safety laws the tens of thousands of people who make up the resources industry abide by every day,” he said.
“Like any other business in Queensland that operates within the law and within its approvals and conditions we expect our government to enforce the rule of law and protect our operations and our people from premeditated activist intimidation, harassment, or sabotage – that shouldn’t be too much to ask.”
Queensland Resources Council chief executive officer Ian Macfarlane called for tougher penalties for protesters who illegally disrupt mining activities and abuse and harass workers.
“It’s no exaggeration to say people’s lives are being placed in danger – not only the lives of protesters, but that of honest, hardworking people whose workplace safety is being threatened on a regular basis,” he said.
“Protesters are entitled to lawfully express their views, but they’re not entitled to abuse or harass people or to disrupt our workplaces and make them unsafe just because they don’t like our industry.
“The constant harassment, abuse and law-breaking happening on Queensland mine sites and at port and rail facilities has got to stop.”
Resources Minister Scott Stewart said Adani could apply to the Land Court for an order to have people removed from their lease. “Those people then have to show why they shouldn’t be removed, Bravus have been informed of this multiple times,” he said.
Mr Dow argued Mr Stewart’s proposal to file proceedings in the Land Court was an abrogation of responsibility.
“The failure of the Queensland Government to propose an immediate and effective solution shows a lack of leadership by politicians who are more worried about protecting inner-city seats from the Greens than protecting hard working people in Queensland’s coal communities,” he said.
Police Minister Mark Ryan declared he would not order the Queensland Police Service to act, but acknowledged investigations into the protest activity were ongoing.
“While people have the right to protest, they don’t have the right to do so in such a manner that impinges upon the rights of others to go about their lawful business,” he said.
“The fact is Queensland has some of the toughest laws in the nation and protesters who damage certain types of infrastructure could go to jail for 14 years and face substantial fines.
“I am advised the Queensland Police Service is continuing to investigate this matter.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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19 December, 2021
Climate change affects the ability of fish to form tight, defensive schools, leaving them more vulnerable to predators, scientists say
Professor Nagelkerken, corresponding author of the study referred to below, is a real go-getting Dutchman. He has had half a dozen papers published already this year.
And it is amusing that one of those publications contradicts the paper referred to below. In the paper below we are told that acidification is bad for fish. But another paper under his name says the opposite, I refer to:
Nagelkerken, I., Alemany, T., Anquetin, J. M., Ferreira, C. M., Ludwig, K. E., Sasaki, M., & Connell, S. D. (2021). Ocean acidification boosts reproduction in fish via indirect effects. PLoS Biology, 19(1), e3001033-1-e3001033-21.
The abstract for the present paper is here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16022
So how come the contradiction? I am afraid that Nagelkerken seems to get his numbers up by doing "quick and dirty" research. In the case of the work below he studied fish in the laboratory. But the probability of any laboratory setting representing accurately a real-life oceanic environment would seem to be small.Additionally, instead of having one treatment that mirrors real-life as accurately as possible, he subjected his fish to many combinations of acidity and temperature, some fairly extreme. And he then seems to have sought a trend in all his data. So the extreme conditions would appear to have gone into the trend found, which is absurd. His findings tell us nothing about probable conditions
The journal editors should look at his work more critically
They're also less able to dart quickly in the same direction, giving whatever is chasing them a better chance of a bigger meal.
University of Adelaide Professor Ivan Nagelkerken led a new study that used tanks to simulate two primary effects of climate change - warmer seas and ocean acidification.
He and his team then studied how those simulated conditions affect schooling behaviour - the main defensive mechanism for many species including tuna, sardines and anchovies.
The results aren't good news.
Schools were less cohesive and less compact under future conditions, and showed slower escape responses from potential threats.
"A school that is more compact has better protection than a school that has fish with a bigger distance between each other," Prof Nagelkerken said.
"What we found, under a future climate, is that schools of mixed species are much less compact. We also found these schools allow predators to approach to a closer distance before they would try to swim away."
Ocean acidification also appears to affect a natural tendency for fleeing schools to move towards the right.
Typically schools will head right most of the time but will also throw in a handful of leftwards manoeuvres to keep whatever's chasing them guessing.
"We found that under ocean acidification, the tendency to deviate to the right was much more diminished. That means the school, as a whole, functions differently compared to evolutionary times," Prof Nagelkerken said.
The study indicates schooling fish will face increased mortality from predators as the climate continues to change.
"It doesn't mean that all fish will die, but predators will likely be able to capture more fish," said the professor from Adelaide University's Environment Institute and Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories.
"When you combine that with the other impacts on the ocean, like destruction of habitat, overfishing, pollution, then less effective schooling behaviour is yet another thing fish will need to cope with in the bigger scheme of things."
The study looked at both single-species schools, and mixed-species schools, with the latter of particular interest due to the southern migration of tropical fish into temperate waters now warm enough to sustain them.
The research has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/study-reveals-new-climate-threat-for-fish/ar-AARUnkU
******************************************Tories' costly policy failures lie at the root of election defeat
Net Zero Watch has warned that the Tories’ latest election fiasco is only a taste of things to come unless the Government halts and reverses the dramatic rise in the cost of energy and the cost of living.
The startling defeat in the Shropshire by-election is clearly due to a strong protest vote, indicating deep dissatisfaction with the general policy direction taken by the Conservatives.
In essence, the party is reaping the whirlwind of years of poor policymaking, which has driven up the cost of living and has disillusioned their core base to such a degree that they will actually vote Liberal Democrat in order to make their feelings known.
Conservatives should not delude themselves that a change of leader will be sufficient to remedy their difficulties.
Charities and analysts are warning that the cost of energy for households and businesses are likely to rise by up to 70% next year, while the Ofgem is threatening to increase the price cap for energy bills every three months.
Root and branch reform of environmental policy units and incompetent and unbalanced energy regulators and climate committees that are driving utopian agendas will also be necessary.
In recent years, the party has pursued a radical green “out-reach” policy, where it has taken its core vote for granted while abandoning most of its key principles. This has backfired badly, not only with core voters but also with the centre-ground that it was seeking to attract.
Dr John Constable, Net Zero Watch energy editor, said:
“The Conservatives have an underlying and general reputational problem. Energy and environment policy is one mess amongst many, but it is highly significant.
Decades of bad ideas, many adopted from the Labour Party, such as the subsidies to wind power and other renewables, now adding over £10 billion a year to consumer bills, the foolish and counterproductive introduction of an energy bill price cap, botched attempts to introduce heat pumps, and to ban internal combustion engines, amongst many other errors, are having a cumulative effect, undermining confidence in the party’s intellectual capacity. Party-gate is just the straw that broke the camel’s back."
Dr Benny Peiser, Net Zero director said:
“Unless the government begins to realise that the astronomical cost of its Net Zero plans will bring it down at the next election, key voters will eventually lose confidence in the Conservative Party. The cost of Net Zero and the cost of living continue to rise relentlessly as a direct result of government policies. The Shropshire election fiasco is a grim warning of things to come.”
Contact Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Net Zero Watch, e: benny.peiser@netzerowatch.com
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Now peat is bad for the climate
Once a major source of energy in Ireland
The sale of peat to gardeners in England and Wales is to be banned by 2024 under plans published by the government on Saturday. Ministers said they also aimed to end peat use in the professional horticulture sector by 2028.
The government set a voluntary target in 2011 for compost retailers to end sales of peat by 2020. But peat use fell by only 25% from 2011-2019 and increased by 9% in 2020 as Covid lockdowns boosted gardening as a hobby.
Peat is the UK’s largest carbon store, trapping as much as tropical rainforests per hectare, but is routinely dug up for horticulture. This releases carbon dioxide, adding to the climate crisis. Peatlands are also vital habitats for rare species of wildlife, and help filter water and reduce flooding.
However, the government consultation also contains measures that fall short of an outright ban, instead including an additional charge on the price of peat compost, or the provision of information on the environmental impact of peat at the point of sale. The government said it did not intend to ban the sale of plants in pots that contained peat and that its plans would not affect current licences for peat extraction.
The environment minister Rebecca Pow said: “We are committed to bring forward the ban [on the sale of peat to gardeners] by the end of this parliament – that’s an absolute commitment.”
“Our peatlands are an incredibly valuable natural resource,” she said. “There are now more sustainable and good quality peat-free alternatives available than at any other time, so I am confident now is the right time to make the shift permanent.” Sustainable alternatives to peat include compost made from wood fibre and bark, wool, coir, and other plants.
Pow said the weaker measures were included because “in a consultation, it is best to be fully informed with as much evidence and data as we can have, and some people in the industry are still pressing for other potential routes”.
Craig Bennett, of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “The government has been dithering over this crucial issue for decades and the consultation on the use of peat by gardeners is long overdue. But it’s a damp squib.
“It refers to the damaging effects of peat extraction, but this activity is still allowed in England, which is absurd. We need an immediate ban on the use of peat by individuals and the wider horticulture industry and an immediate end to extracting peat.”
Prof Dave Goulson, from the University of Sussex, said: “We need to stop kicking the can down the road. The government acknowledges we are in a climate emergency, but isn’t even prepared to stop depletion of a vital carbon store for needless ornamental use in our gardens. We need to stop peat use now.” Pow said “historic” licences allowing the extraction of peat were being reviewed.
Alan Titchmarsh, Kate Bradbury and James Wong are among the high-profile gardeners who have backed a ban, and Monty Don has called peat in compost “environmental vandalism”.
Peat may become harder to buy in the UK in any case because most is imported from bogs in Ireland, where the state-backed company Bord na Móna ended all peat extraction in 2020, although its reserves are still being sold. Some big retailers of peat have implemented their own bans, including Dobbies and the Co-op in 2021, and B&Q by 2023.
About 70% of peat is sold to gardeners and 30% is used by professional growers. The government estimates a ban on both uses would cut CO2 emissions by 4m tonnes in the next two decades.
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Australia: China-made wind turbines crack sparking outrage they weren't made locally
Chinese-made wind turbines on Australia's biggest wind farm have cracked, sparking outrage that the project didn't use locally made machinery.
Nineteen of 40 turbines inspected at the Stockyard Hill wind farm, in Victoria's central highlands, are defective and will take months to fix, according to the Australian Manufacturing Worker's Union.
Another 109 turbines were yet to be inspected and it was feared they could also be damaged.
The massive wind farm, which is Australia's biggest, was operating for less than five months.
The AMWU, which found the damage in inspections, savaged the federal government for not forcing the project's developers to buy Australian-made turbines.
'The federal government sat on it's hands while our largest wind farm imported towers from China instead of supporting local jobs,' it said. 'Shame on the federal government for not mandating local content.'
The project was started by Windpower Australia, then sold to Origin Energy, which sold it to Xinjiang Goldwind, a Chinese-owned company, for $110 million.
Goldwind, which owns or operates nine wind and solar farms in Australia, is part of Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co, the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturer, based in Beijing.
Goldwind is listed on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges, but 40 per cent of its top 10 investors are owned by the ruling Chinese Communist Party
Origin is contracted to buy 530MW of power from Goldwind until 2030 for up to 425,000 Victorian homes from the wind farm.
It was completed in 2020 and only began operation in July this year.
The union insisted Australian manufacturers should be 'front and centre' in green energy projects.
'Earlier this year workers from local wind tower manufacturer Keppel Prince met with local member [Trade Minister] Dan Tehan to urge him to mandate local content in major projects like wind farms. 'He did nothing.'
The union found the damage, which is on the 'top cover housing key mechanics' behind the blades, when it inspected the turbines.
It claims repairs will take up to 76 weeks 'and they still haven't inspected all of the towers'.
A further 109 turbines are yet to be inspected.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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17 December, 2021
Scientists discover ‘surprising’ cause of Europe’s little ice age in late medieval era
An amusing article from a skeptical viewpoint below. Just a few centuries ago, a warm period was followed by a bitterly cold period. Might that not happen to us? There are clearly large forces at work that are way beyond our control.
And what was the big influence involved? Solar output, not atmospheric CO2
Following an era known as the medieval warm period, temperatures in Europe in the early 15th century fell sharply in what has become known as the little ice age.
This remarkable cold period brought increased glaciation in mountains, expansion of some areas of sea ice, crop failures, famines and disease across Europe.
Undependable summers were followed by harsh winters, during which rivers and canals routinely froze over. In the UK, the first River Thames “frost fair” was held in 1608, and was an almost annual occurrence until the last one in 1814.
The little ice age was not believed to have been due to a global period of glaciation, but its exact cause has remained uncertain.
There are numerous explanations, including heightened levels of volcanic activity, reduced solar activity, the impact of the black death reducing the human population, and the impact of European diseases on South American populations, which in turn affected deforestation and reforestation rates.
But scientists at the University of Massachusetts now believe they have found a new key factor in why temperatures plunged to their coldest in 10,000 years.
“Surprisingly, the cooling appears to have been triggered by an unusually warm episode,” the researchers said.
The discovery came after Lead author Francois Lapointe, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, and Raymond Bradley, distinguished professor in geosciences, also at the University of Massachusetts, came across new data suggesting a rapid change in sea temperatures.
Their previous work, which built a 3,000-year reconstruction of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, revealed a sudden change from very warm conditions in the late 1300s to unprecedented cold conditions in the early 1400s, only 20 years later.
Using various sources to obtain detailed marine records, Dr Lapointe and Professor Bradley discovered there had been an abnormally strong northward transfer of warm water in the late 1300s which peaked around 1380.
As a result, the waters south of Greenland and the Nordic Seas became much warmer than usual. “No one has recognised this before,” said Dr Lapointe.
The researchers said that usually there is always a transfer of warm water from the tropics to the arctic.
It’s a well-recognised process called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is like a planetary conveyor belt.
When it is functioning normally, warm water from the tropics flows north along the coast of Northern Europe, and when it reaches higher latitudes and meets colder arctic waters, it loses heat and becomes denser, causing the water to sink at the bottom of the ocean.
This deep-water formation then flows south along the coast of North America and continues on to circulate around the world.
But in the late 1300s, the AMOC strengthened significantly, which meant that far more warm water than usual was moving north, which in turn caused rapid arctic ice loss.
Over the course of a few decades in the late 1300s and 1400s, vast amounts of ice were flushed out into the North Atlantic. This additional ice not only cooled the North Atlantic waters, but also diluted their saltiness, ultimately causing AMOC to collapse. It is this collapse of the conveyor belt which triggered substantial cooling, the researchers said.
Furthermore, a similar process could now be underway.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, we have also seen a rapid strengthening of AMOC, which has been linked with persistently high pressure in the atmosphere over Greenland.
Dr Lapointe and Professor Bradley believe the same atmospheric situation occurred just prior to the little ice age – but what could have set off that persistent high-pressure event in the 1380s? The answer, Dr Lapointe suggested, can be found in trees.
The researchers compared their findings to a new record of solar activity revealed by radiocarbon isotopes preserved in tree rings, and discovered that unusually high solar activity was recorded in the late 1300s.
They said such solar activity tends to lead to high atmospheric pressure over Greenland.
At the same time, fewer volcanic eruptions were happening on earth, which means that there was less ash in the air. A “cleaner” atmosphere meant that the planet was more responsive to changes in solar output.
“Hence the effect of high solar activity on the atmospheric circulation in the North-Atlantic was particularly strong,” said Dr Lapointe.
On the question of whether a second little ice age could now emerge, Dr Lapointe and Professor Bradley said there is now much less arctic sea ice due to the climate crisis, so an event like that in the early 1400s, involving sea ice transport, is unlikely.
“However, we do have to keep an eye on the build-up of freshwater in the Beaufort Sea (north of Alaska) which has increased by 40 per cent in the past two decades,“ said Dr Lapointe.
”Its export to the subpolar North Atlantic could have a strong impact on oceanic circulation. Also, persistent periods of high pressure over Greenland in summer have been much more frequent over the past decade and are linked with record-breaking ice melt.
“Climate models do not capture these events reliably and so we may be underestimating future ice loss from the ice sheet, with more freshwater entering the North Atlantic, potentially leading to a weakening or collapse of the AMOC.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/little-ice-age-ocean-currents-b1976776.html
****************************************************Tesla defends Model 3 taxi after fatal accident in Paris
This COULD be a driver error but the French obviously suspect not. There have been problems with Tesla's autopilot facility
Paris taxi company G7 suspended the use of the 37 Model 3 cars in its fleet after the accident on Saturday evening, which involved one of its drivers.
One person was killed in the crash and 20 injured, three of them seriously.
"We have been in contact, of course, with Tesla's management and they tell us that there is no technical problem to flag on their vehicles," government spokesman Gabriel Attal told reporters on Wednesday.
He added that the government was waiting for the outcome of the ongoing judicial investigation.
Still in shock four days after the accident, witnesses said the car ploughed through metal posts, a row of pay-to-ride bicycles, a recycling bin full of glass and hit pedestrians and a van before finally coming to a halt.
"I thought it was an attack. There was glass, dust … it was as if there had been a blast," said Tillard Diomande, who was serving clients from behind his bar in a nearby restaurant.
The vehicle, which had stopped at a red traffic light, suddenly sped forward, hitting and dragging with it a cyclist who later died, a police source said, citing the driver's own version of events, witnesses and video surveillance.
The driver tested negative in an alcohol test, the police source said.
It was not clear whether the car was operating in Tesla's autopilot mode, which handles some driving tasks.
Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari told RMC radio that he had spoken with the chief executive of Tesla Europe, who told him there had been no safety alerts about the Model 3.
Mr Musk has repeatedly defended autopilot and in April tweeted that "Tesla with autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle".
Tesla advises drivers they must keep their hands on the steering wheel and pay attention while using the autopilot function.
G7 Deputy Chief Executive Yann Ricordel told Reuters the accident occurred while an off-duty taxi driver was taking his family to a restaurant.
The driver tried to brake but the car accelerated instead, Mr Ricordel said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-16/tesla-fatal-crash-in-paris/100704400
****************************************************UK: Plug-in Car Grant for electric cars cut AGAIN
The Plug-in Car Grant to help make electric cars more affordable has been cut by further £1,000 in a surprise announcement that will infuriate electric car buyers and manufacturers alike.
Previously £2,500, the Plug-in Car Grant is now just £1,500 as of 7am today (15 December 2021).
What’s more, the qualifying maximum price of an electric car has been reduced, from under £35,000 down to less than £32,000.
Both cuts are effective immediately.
The government argues that its approach to Plug-in Car Grant cuts “is clearly working – whilst the grant has slowly reduced over time, the sales of electric vehicles has soared”.
Transport minister Trudy Harrison said the government is “refocusing our vehicle grants on the most affordable vehicles and reducing grant rates to allow more people to benefit, and enable taxpayers’ money to go further”.
Any motorists who placed orders between 8 December and 14 December will still qualify for the old £2,500 grant, on cars costing up to £35,000.
The Plug-in Van Grant has also dropped, to £2,500 for vans under 2.5 tonnes and £5,000 for vans between 2.5 tonnes and 5.0 tonnes.
The Plug-in Car Grant was previously cut in March 2021, from £3,000 to £2,500.
A larger reduction in the maximum qualifying price of vehicles, from £50,000 to £35,000 was also announced – and immediately criticised by car manufacturers.
At the time, the government argued the changes were made to ensure the funding lasts longer.
With the recent acceleration in electric car sales – last month, they comprised almost 1 in 5 new car sales – it is likely to make the same arguments again.
‘Counterintuitive’ and ‘disappointing’
RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes said “this disappointing cut means that only around 20 EV models are now eligible for the grant, which doesn’t leave a great deal of choice for consumers.
He pointed to research that showed motorists already feel that new electric cars are too expensive. “This has to be seen as a step in the wrong direction.
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Just two in 10 Australian motorists plan to buy electric vehicles
Australia’s efforts to reduce transport emissions are in jeopardy, as new data reveals just 16 per cent of motorists intend to make their next car purchase an electric vehicle.
Despite earlier research finding Australia must phase out petrol cars by 2035 to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, a new survey by Compare The Market finds more than half of motorists may buy another one.
The comparison firm asked 1000 Australians when they plan to replace their current vehicle and found 70 per cent will be in the market for a new car by 2025.
But fewer than two in 10 said they would buy an EV, and a further 49 per cent said they were still undecided.
Those findings are ominous because new cars last 14 years on average, meaning the vehicles motorists buy today will affect Australia’s carbon budget as the nation moves towards net-zero emissions by 2050.
That was a major conclusion from a Grattan Institute report earlier this year, which said Australia must make EVs cheaper to speed up the transition away from petrol and diesel cars.
“Electric vehicles will become more accessible to more people in the future, but with many Australians planning their next car purchase during the next few years, we might not see improved prices in time,” Compare The Market’s Stephen Zeller said of the new survey data on Wednesday.
“It would seem that for the majority of Australians, an electric vehicle might still be one more car purchase away, but their next petrol car might well be their last.”
Worryingly, more than a third of survey respondents in New South Wales and Victoria (Australia’s largest states) said their next purchase will not be an electric vehicle. That’s more than twice the number who said they would buy an EV.
Jake Whitehead, research fellow at the University of Queensland and an expert on EV policies, said he was unsurprised by the survey’s findings. Dr Whitehead said inadequate government policies mean EVs are still too expensive in Australia to entice more buyers to make the switch.
“We shouldn’t read too much into just one survey, but the undecided group is a big opportunity,” he told The New Daily.
Dr Whitehead said his research shows the majority of Australians are interested in buying an EV. But a lack of choice is discouraging many from making the leap.
“The policy settings aren’t in place to encourage that undecided group to definitively purchase an electric vehicle,” he said.
Though growing quickly, electric vehicle sales accounted for less than 2 per cent of total light vehicle sales in the first half of 2021, according to data from the Electric Vehicle Council.
The global average is 4.2 per cent, while other comparable economies like the UK have achieved rates above 10 per cent in the past year.
One reason for that is choice. Australians can choose between just over 30 EV models right now, but Britons can choose between more than 130.
Dr Whitehead said Australia needs a national EV sales target to encourage manufacturers to sell more models Down Under.
He said the current patchwork of state government policies isn’t enough to bridge the gap and ensure Australia sells its last petrol car by 2035.
“It’s a major risk for all states as well as the country in achieving [emissions] reduction targets,” he said. “We need a major transition and the longer you delay, the more disruptive it becomes.”
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2021/12/15/electric-vehicles-buying/
*************************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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16 December, 2021
Microbes in oceans and soils are evolving to eat PLASTIC
Researchers in Sweden measured samples of DNA at hundreds of locations around the world, taken from both soil and water.
They found 30,000 enzymes in these DNA samples that have the potential to degrade 10 different types of commonly used plastic, including the widely-used polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
What's more, there appears to be a higher concentration of plastic-eating microbes where there is more plastic waste for them to break down.
It's thought the soaring use of plastic for packaging over the last 70 years has given 'sufficient evolutionary time' for various microbes present in the environment to respond to these compounds.
PET, short for polyethylene terephthalate, is the most common thermoplastic polymer in the world.
PET is a clear, strong, and lightweight plastic that is widely used for packaging foods and beverages, especially convenience-sized soft drinks, juices and water.
Virtually all single-serving and 2-litre bottles of carbonated soft drinks and water sold in the US are made from PET.
Global warming caused by CO2 emissions, and environmental pollution caused by waste PET disposal, are considered as two urgent environmental issues.
Mass-production of plastic has exploded from around 2 million tonnes per year in 1950 to around 380 million, according to Our World in Data.
Some of the locations that contained the highest amounts were notoriously highly polluted areas, including the Mediterranean Sea and South Pacific Ocean.
The new study was led by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology (CUT), and published in the journal mBIO.
'Using our models, we found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome's plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution,' said author Aleksej Zelezniak.
This is 'a significant demonstration' of how the environment is 'responding to the pressures we are placing on it', he said.
Using synthetic biology – redesigning organisms for useful purposes – is of crucial importance in the battle against waste, as natural plastic degradation processes are very slow, the researchers say.
For instance, the predicted lifetime of a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle under ambient conditions ranges from 16 to 48 years.
The US produced 42 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2016, making it 'by far' the biggest contributor to plastic waste, a recent report reveals.
About 1 million tonnes [2%] of this total ended up in the world's oceans, according to the report from the National Academy of Sciences.
At 42 million tonnes, the US contribution to the world's plastic waste is over twice as much as China, and more than the 28 countries of the EU (including the UK) combined.
The US should create a national strategy by the end of 2022 to reduce its contribution to plastic waste, National Academies of Sciences says.
It's already known that different enzymes have the ability to degrade different plastics. In 2016, researchers in Japan discovered a bacterium that was feeding on the widely-used PET.
The bacterium, called Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, is able to use PET as its source of energy, they reported.
The Japanese team's further investigation identified enzymes that work with water to break down PET into its simpler monomer building blocks.
For the new study, the researchers took soil and water samples from 169 locations in 38 countries, including the US, India, China, Australia, and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Among the samples, researchers used computer modelling to search for microbial enzymes with plastic-degrading potential.
This information was then cross-referenced with the official numbers for plastic waste pollution across countries and oceans.
The researchers controlled for any 'false positives' using data from the human microbiome – the collective genomes of microorganisms in our gut, which is not thought to contain plastic-eating enzymes.
In total, over 30,000 enzyme 'homologues' were found with the potential to degrade 10 different types of commonly used plastic.
Homologues are members of protein sequences sharing similar properties.
'This is a surprising discovery that really illustrates the scale of the issue,' said author Jan Zrimec at the National Institute of Biology in Slovenia.
'Currently, very little is known about these plastic-degrading enzymes, and we did not expect to find such a large number of them across so many different microbes and environmental habitats.'
The researchers believe that their results could potentially be used to discover and adapt enzymes for novel recycling processes.
'The next step would be to test the most promising enzyme candidates in the lab to closely investigate their properties and the rate of plastic degradation they can achieve,' said Zelezniak.
'From there you could engineer microbial communities with targeted degrading functions for specific polymer types.'
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How Carbon Dioxide Regs Could Actually Hurt Renewables
GE is telling the White House that if the Environmental Protection Agency sets too stringent greenhouse gas regulations for existing power plants, it could have the unintended consequence of limiting the amount of renewable energy the grid can handle.
The EPA is proposing rules for power plants that would limit their carbon dioxide emissions. The rules would make life hard for coal plants, but are supposed to allow natural gas power plants to keep running—since they emit much less carbon dioxide.
But the rules could actually shut down (or limit the operation of) a certain kind of natural gas power plant—a type of plant that’s essential for incorporating renewable energy into the power grid. These are natural gas plants designed to quickly change power output to accommodate fluctuations in electricity production from wind farms and solar power plants. When they ramp up and down, they operate less efficiently, so they emit more carbon dioxide.The plants might not be able to ramp up and down fast enough to accommodate renewables, while still meeting stringent regulations.
GE argues that by making it harder to use renewable energy, a rule that shut down these natural gas power plants could actually lead to increased total carbon dioxide emissions.
The problem highlights how hard it will be to get off fossil fuels. We’re going to need major innovations in energy storage technologiesto allow utilities to compensate for renewable energy intermittency without relying on natural gas plants. Right now, batteries are too expensive to replace natural gas power (see “Cheap Batteries for Backup Renewable Energy”).
We’ll also need large amounts of low-carbon electricity that isn’t intermittent, such as geothermal power, nuclear power, and fossil fuel power where the carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored (see “Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price”).
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Solar pandas are nice but coal is power
“The Chinese government can put in these fabulous looking solar panels on the sides of mountains that are in the shape of pandas and it’s all very very attractive, but the reality is, they need fossil fuels.” ~ Patricia Adams
China climate expert, and author of China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet, Judith Shapiro believes the Chinese Communist Party is serious about climate change and views it as a national security risk and a possible new threat to its hold on power.
Shapiro points out the CCP is “well aware” that sea levels are rising on its coastlines, glaciers are melting on the Tibetan Plateau and extreme weather events across the country have become increasingly common. Why wouldn’t they be serious about curbing C02 emissions?
The future of the CCP is tied to C02 emissions says Patricia Adams, China monitor for five decades and author of The Red and the Green: China’s Useful Idiots. Emissions, says Adams, are indicators that factories are running, car purchases are high and standards of living are improving.
Get off coal? Coal is needed for conversion to gas or liquid form as a means to reduce China’s urban smog, says Adams. That conversion produces twice as much C02 but citizens, she says, don’t care about that. They care about “the real killer pollutants” and it’s those killers the CCP has to curb to ensure its legitimacy.
Other countries can pursue net-zero targets and undermine their economies, says Adams. The CCP won’t be doing that.
https://journal.probeinternational.org/2021/11/18/solar-pandas-are-nice-but-coal-is-power/
*********************************************Australia: Chairman of major bank says the bank won’t pull the plug on fossil fuel projects anytime soon
At the bank’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, Westpac chairman John McFarlane ruled out pulling the plug on fossil fuels projects, which he said will continue to be around for “some time”, despite saying it would become easier to cut them off.
“But given this is Australia, it’s not the right answer. This country does need us to finance various sectors, including electricity generation,” he said.
“We know gas will be with us for some time for base load [power]. We’re not going to be able to deal with renewables immediately.”
In a set of prepared remarks, McFarlane defended the bank’s performance on climate change, reminding shareholders that the bank has “the greatest exposure to greenfield renewables and the least to fossil fuel extraction” of the four major banks.
But that didn’t stop shareholders peppering the chairman with demands for a wind-down on fossil fuels lending, which they said flies in the face of the bank’s commitment to support net-zero emissions by 2050.
As it stands, Westpac has committed to winding down all fossil fuel financing by 2030, but has yet to outline a plan for getting there. Until then, McFarlane said, the bank is trying to straddle a “middle ground”.
“In all honesty, we are doing a reasonable job, and we are doing a better job than some of our competitors,” he said.
McFarlane said formal criteria for reducing fossil fuel funding, which could include a new set of targets, will not come until at least 2023.
“Further research is underway to develop Paris-aligned sector financing strategies and portfolio targets for six of our most climate-exposed sectors representing most of our emissions,” he said.
“Our analysis will consider the latest developments from the International Energy Agency and the IPCC.”
Analysts over at the environmental banking lobby group Market Forces, however, said the bank is having it both ways.
The group, which was responsible for one of two resolutions calling for better disclosure of fossil fuel lending, said Westpac has failed to square up its policies and practices, with its commitments to the Paris Agreement, and net-zero emissions by 2050.
Early last year, Westpac opened its chequebook to Whitehaven Coal, which secured $110 million from the bank. Come November, went back to the sector, this time to the major oil and gas company, Santos, which was able to secure $US25 million in funding.
Shareholders questioned McFarlane on the issue, which has been made worse by the fact that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and ANZ have each wound down funding for new coal and gas projects like Whitehaven.
But that doesn’t mean they’re beyond reproach on the issue. Both ANZ and NAB are expected to face similar questions when their annual general meetings take place on Friday.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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15 December, 2021
Catastrophic December tornadoes slam Mid-Mississippi Valley
More than 100 people may have died, and one tornadic storm traveled more than 200 miles
A severe weather outbreak in the mid-Mississippi Valley more than lived up to its well-predicted potential for strong tornadoes on Friday, December 10, taking lives and raking landscapes from Arkansas to Illinois. The worst toll was in Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear estimated on Saturday morning that at least 70 people had been killed, perhaps more than 100. Many of those deaths were in the devastated town of Mayfield (pop. 10,000), located about 20 miles east of the Mississippi River.
Friday’s tornadoes may be the nation’s deadliest and most destructive in more than a decade, since the catastrophic EF5 in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011.
At least 33 tornado reports had been catalogued by the NOAA Storm Prediction Center through Saturday morning. That number could drop over time, as some of the reports came from what may have been a single tornado – perhaps a tornado family – affecting four states, including western Kentucky. If that tornado’s death toll exceeds 100, it would put it among the nation’s 15 deadliest on record (see image below, produced by Jeff Masters).
No U.S. tornado is known to have killed more than 80 people outside the core tornado season from March to June.
The vast bulk of Friday night’s destruction came from just two tornadic storms. One swept across northern parts of the St. Louis metropolitan area in Missouri and Illinois. The first tornado from this cell was given a preliminary rating of at least EF3, severely damaged part of a huge Amazon fulfillment center located in Edwardsville, Illinois. Heavy equipment was deployed in a prolonged rescue operation at the scene, where as many as 100 employees had been reported trapped. As of Saturday morning, at least one death at the Amazon facility had been confirmed by local police, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
About 100 miles to the south, an exceptionally intense and long-lived tornadic supercell thunderstorm spawned one or more tornadoes along most of a track extending more than 200 miles. The event is already being informally called the Quad-State storm, as it appears the supercell tracked from northeast Arkansas across the bootheel of far southeast Missouri into far northwest Tennessee and western Kentucky, moving across Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley.
A nursing home in Monette, Arkansas, was heavily damaged, killing at least one resident. In Mayfield, a number of deaths appear to have occurred at a candle factory that was in operational swing-shift mode when the tornado struck, with an estimated 110 employees inside, according to Business Insider. NBC News reported that a survivor had indicated that employees were in the process of taking cover when the tornado struck.
The Quad-State event was extremely well predicted and warned, going back to a enhanced risk area issued by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) a day in advance, warning of the potential for strong tornadoes on Friday. A tornado watch was issued for western Kentucky at 3 p.m. CST Friday, extending to 11 p.m. The localized threat of strong, long-lived tornadoes in far western Kentucky was highlighted by SPC at 6:22 p.m. CST.
The NWS office in Paducah, about 27 miles from Mayfield, issued a “particularly dangerous situation” tornado warning for the Mayfield area at 9:04 p.m., roughly 20 minutes before the tornado reached Mayfield, noting that a “confirmed large and extremely dangerous” tornado was in progress. That warning was upgraded to a tornado emergency at 9:26 p.m., as the twister was passing through Mayfield.
An exceptionally strong and prolonged tornado
On radar, the Quad-State supercell thunderstorm exhibited some of the most violent tornadic fingerprints ever seen by meteorologists. This included debris vaulted as high as 37,000 feet and a pixel-to-pixel wind contrast possibly among the largest ever recorded in the history of National Weather Service Doppler radar.
The storm’s tornado vortex signature was virtually continuous for more than 200 miles and more than four hours. Although that signature by itself does not guarantee a continuous tornado path, it implies one or more very long-lived twisters likely occurred.
Based on the radar clues and the initial damage reports, especially from Mayfield, it seems very likely that EF4 damage occurred. It will likely take several days for National Weather Service storm survey crews to fully assess the complex track(s) left by this high-end tornado or tornado family. One of the markers of EF5 damage is a well-constructed home being destroyed and swept clean from its foundation. Naked slabs have already been found in Mayfield, but storm surveyors will need to assess whether the destroyed buildings were well built and well anchored in order to confirm EF5 damage.
On average, about one of the nation’s 1,000-plus tornadoes per year is rated EF5, the highest category on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. However, many years go without a single EF5. In fact, the most recent confirmed EF5 struck Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013. The subsequent EF5 “drought” of more than eight years has been the longest in U.S. tornado history, going back officially to at least 1950 and perhaps to the late 1800s.
A horrific multi-state analog
The Quad-State label alludes to the infamous Tri-State Tornado, an F5 tornado that killed 695 people (still the U.S. record for a single tornado) on a rampage from southeast Missouri to southern Indiana on March 18, 1925. Although the Tri-State Tornado was long considered to have a 219-mile path, a subsequent analysis identified many gaps in the damage path. That study concluded that a single tornado might have covered at least 174 miles of the path.
The month of December averages about two dozen U.S. twisters per year. On December 16-17, 2019, a swarm of 40 tornadoes tore across the Deep South, taking three lives. However, it’s quite uncommon for intense tornadoes to strike as far north as Illinois and Kentucky in early winter. According to Harold Brooks, of NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, the longest continuous path in meteorological winter (December to February) ripped across 122 miles of northern Arkansas on February 8, 2008.
The closest recent analog to Friday’s long-track tornado(es) in the month of December occurred on December 23, 2015. An EF3 that tracked for 63 miles across northwest Mississippi, killing two, was succeeded within a few miles by an EF4 that covered 75 miles, killing nine.
It’s truly shocking to see U.S. tornadoes this catastrophic in December, and yet this is a month that’s so far produced more than 3,000 daily record highs and just 11 record lows. That said, as discussed in a recent Climate Explained post, the links between tornadoes and climate change are more nuanced than for phenomena such as heat waves or extreme rainfall.
* Fortunately, there is no sign that the number or intensity of the most violent tornadoes (EF3+) is increasing. *
However, tornadoes are becoming more tightly packed within outbreaks, and there are longer stretches in between, leading to more variability from quiet to violent periods and vice versa. Prior to Friday, the U.S. tornado death toll for 2021 was only 14, the third lowest in data going back to 1875. (The lowest on record was 10, set in 2018.)
There’s also been a distinct multi-decadal trend for recent outbreaks to shift into and east of the Mississippi Valley, particularly over the Mid-South, as opposed to the more traditional territory of the southern and central Great Plains.
Rural areas are typically more populous in the Mid-South than in the Plains, and this area is also more prone to tornadoes developing and striking after dark, a key factor in the Quad-State disaster.
As for seasonal timing, it’s never been impossible to get a violent tornado in December, even as far north as Illinois. At least two F5/EF5 tornadoes are on the record books for December: one in Vicksburg, Mississippi on Dec. 5, 1953, that killed 38 (the deadliest December tornado on record up to this year), and one on Dec. 18, 1957, that struck Sunfield, Illinois, as part of the state’s most severe outbreak on record so late in the year.
This December has been strikingly mild across most of the United States, and warm, moist surface air streamed into Friday’s tornadic storms, fueling their power. It’s not hard to imagine the springtime peak and the autumn second-season peak of tornado season edging closer to winter as greenhouse gases continue to warm our climate globally, nationally, and regionally. Such a shift in tornado timing has been difficult to confirm thus far, though.
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No, Science Doesn't Confirm Climate Change Causes Tornado Carnage
In the wake of a devastating and deadly tornado outbreak in Kentucky and a handful of other states, Democrats and mainstream media figures have returned to their old trick of standing atop life-altering tragedy to advance their partisan political agenda.
As Rebecca reported, President Biden was asked about the storms and — despite admitting he couldn't give "a quantitative read" on what role climate change may have played — said "the fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming — everything. And, obviously, it has some impact here," he added. Except it's not obvious and it's not a settled fact.
As an Associated Press report explained, "Attributing a specific storm like Friday's to the effects of climate change remains very challenging" because "Less than 10% of severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, which makes drawing conclusions about climate change and the processes leading up to them tricky," according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory's Harold Brooks.
USA Today also published an op-ed on the topic of whether the recent outbreak of tornadoes qualifies as "unprecedented" or a new development due that's attributable to climate change: "Historically, tornado outbreaks have occurred on nearly every day of the year – if the conditions are right, any day can produce devastating tornadoes," USA Today's report says. "We know that long-track tornadoes have occurred in the past with path lengths exceeding 100 miles," it adds. As for whether climate change played a role, USA Today is blunt in its denial that such a conclusion can be easily surmised:
Event-based attribution for climate change is still in development, particularly for tornadoes that need fine scales to model. Given the historical precedent, it would be misleading to definitively state a relationship to climate change without further assessment.
Also chiming in: The New York Post Editorial Board with a piece warning against "pseudo-scientific hype" concluding that tornado outbreaks are tied to climate change. "The fact is that tornados are not becoming more frequent; the average remains about 1,200 observed each year, ranging from 900 to 1,600 or so," writes The New York Post. "Warming might change when 'tornado season' hits, but no scientific studies have yet shown any such link."
Steve Milloy brought receipts in a Twitter thread to make a similar point: while tragic, this weekend's tornado outbreak is not unprecedented, nor is there a definitive or provable link between climate change or global warming and tornado frequency.
As, albeit more reluctantly, even The Washington Post admitted, "scientists say link between climate change, storms unclear."
What's more, available data suggests that there hasn't been an uptick in the frequency of tornadoes in recent years, nor has an increase in greenhouse gas emissions made tornadoes worse, at least according to the data Milloy included in his thread.
The data and expert insight shows that the science of climate change's impact on tornadic activity is far from settled. But don't hold your breath hoping Democrats and liberal media will stop using the death and destruction across the South to advocate for more government-expanding Green New Deal policies.
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Joe Biden spins tornado misinformation
Gregory Wrightstone
President Joe Biden wasted no time in politicizing the recent tornado tragedy that claimed nearly 100 lives in Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri. Speaking less than 24 hours after the devastation of communities and lives, Biden linked the storms to man-made climate change.
“All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden said. “The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously it has some impact here.”
Is that really the case? Have violent tornadoes been increasing? The answer to that question is clear, but you won’t find the answer at the agency most responsible for monitoring such things. It appears that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is playing games with tornado data. In 2017, while researching tornado data, I archived the NOAA site’s page on tornadoes and data. At the time, NOAA specifically warned that pre-Doppler radar records of tornadoes (before 1995) are unreliable:
“One of the main difficulties with tornado records is that a tornado, or evidence of a tornado, must have been observed. Unlike rainfall or temperature, which may be measured by a fixed instrument, tornadoes are short-lived and very unpredictable. A tornado in a largely unoccupied region is not likely to be documented. Many significant tornadoes may not have made it into the historical record since Tornado Alley was very sparsely populated during the early 20th Century.”
Because of this, NOAA recommended (at the time) only using the strongest tornadoes as a measure of pre-Doppler numbers and provided this chart that documented an overall decrease in the number of strong and violent storms that were categorized as EF3
Accessing the very same link for NOAA today takes one to their latest iteration, which showcases a chart of ALL tornadoes dating back to 1950 and shows a steady and significant rise in the number of tornadoes from 1950 to the late 1990s. Bear in mind, that just a few years ago, NOAA specifically warned against using exactly this data because it would under-count the numbers before 1995.
Updated data on tornadoes through 2020 is available at ustornadoes.com and showcases just why using pre-Doppler data is misleading. Figure 3 shows the pre-Doppler numbers of tornadoes reported. Importantly, this is not capturing increasing actual numbers of tornadoes that occurred, but rather increased reporting.
All of this begs the question: Why would a government agency promote flawed data? The answer is simple: It “confirms” their preconceived notion of increasing severe weather and provides support for alarming claims of ever-increasing death and destruction.
You can be sure that Joe Biden will not be the last to use these deaths and this tornado deception to spread fear and alarm to support their plans to spend trillions of dollars to solve a non-existent climate crisis. The Biden administration should “follow the science” and get to the business of helping the victims and stop spreading misinformation.
https://co2coalition.org/2021/12/12/joe-biden-spins-tornado-misinformation/
******************************************There’s a Massive Gas Tax in Biden’s Spending Bill
President Joe Biden is desperately trying to get his multi-trillion dollar spending package passed on Capitol Hill before Christmas, but according to the Wall Street Journal, Build Back Better includes a significant tax on natural gas.
"It could be a rough winter for energy prices across the U.S., and the Democratic spending plan will make it worse. The House passed what it calls a 'fee' on methane that amounts to a stealth tax on natural gas and everyone who uses it," the Editorial Board writes. "The bill slaps an escalating tax on methane emissions by oil and gas producers that will reach $1,500 per ton by 2025. The fee is meant to be President Biden’s contribution to the recent Glasgow vow to reduce global methane emissions 30% by 2030. The tax is estimated to raise $8 billion over 10 years."
"Producers will naturally pass the cost of the tax along to customers. Some 180 million Americans use natural gas to heat homes and run appliances, while some 5.5 million businesses use it to run their workplaces and manufacturing facilities," they continue.
As I wrote in my VIP column last week, the pain of Biden's energy plan is the point. The administration is punishing Americans for using traditional energy sources in order to transition the country to a Green New Deal utopia of wind and solar.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill and shows it will add $3 trillion to the deficit.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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14 December, 2021
Ice shelf connected to Antarctic's doomsday glacier is CRACKING: Eastern part that is the size of Florida will likely break free within five years and trigger 25 INCH rise in sea levels
A refreshing aspect of the article below is that it gives coverage to the subsurface vulcanism that is very influential in West Antarctic melting. I have been noting it for years but it would seem that even Greenies now feel obliged to mention it.
There is no way of quantifying any global influence or any volcanic influence on the melting so any claim that global warming is involved is mere speculation
The front portion of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica has an 'alarming crack' that could lead to it breaking off in just five years.
Part of the Thwaites Glacier, it is the size of Florida and its melting accounts for about four percent of the global sea level rise.
New data, released on Monday, shows warming oceans is causing the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) to lose its grip on the submarine shoal, or bank, that acts as a pinning point to hold it to the rest of the glacier – which is also causing cracks across its surface.
Satellite images presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union show several large, diagonal cracks extending across TEIS.
'If this floating ice shelf breaks apart, the Thwaites Glacier will accelerate and its contribution to sea level rise will increase by as much as 25%,' the researchers shared during the presentation.
'There is going to be dramatic change in the front of the glacier, probably in less than a decade,' glaciologist Prof Ted Scambos, US lead coordinator for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), told BBC. 'Both published and unpublished studies point in that direction.
'This will accelerate the pace (of Thwaites) and widen, effectively, the dangerous part of the glacier.'
Lead author of the study, Erin Pettit from Oregon State University, compares the growing crack to that seen in a windshield – one small bump to the car and the windshield could break into hundreds of pieces.
When the shelf fails, the eastern third of Thwaites Glacier will melt at an even more rapid pace. Pettit told Science Magazine this would triple the speed and increase the glacier's contribution to global sea level in the short term to five percent.
'We have mapped out weaker and stronger areas of the ice shelf and suggest a 'zig-zag' pathway the fractures might take through the ice, ultimately leading to break up of the shelf in as little as 5 years, which result in more ice flowing off the continent,' the team wrote in the abstract for its presentation.
'The central part of TEIS has no obvious surface crevasses and smooth surface topography, except for the surface expression of a pronounced basal channel aligned parallel to ice flow. Despite this smooth surface, ground-penetrating radar shows a weak zone of thin ice and complex basal topography, including numerous basal crevasses, that is not in local hydrostatic equilibrium.
'This local disequilibrium suggests the presence of elevated vertical shear stresses that further weaken this critical part of the ice shelf.'
Climate change is not the only culprit here, but a study in August found that Thwaites Glacier is also melting because of the heat from Earth itself.
The Thwaites Glacier — which has been called the 'Doomsday Glacier' due to its impact on sea level rise — is being hit with heat from the Earth's crust, as it is only 10 to 15 miles deep below West Antarctica, compared to around 25 miles in East Antarctica.
This results in an a 'geothermal heat flow of up to 150 milliwatts per square meter,' the study's lead author, Dr Ricarda Dziadek, said in a statement.
Since 1980, it has lost at least 600 billion tons of ice, according to a 2017 analysis done by the New York Times, using data from NASA JPL.
'The temperature on the underside of the glacier is dependent on a number of factors – for example whether the ground consists of compact, solid rock, or of meters of water-saturated sediment,' explained co-author and AWI geophysicist Dr Karsten Gohl.
'Water conducts the rising heat very efficiently. But it can also transport heat energy away before it can reach the bottom of the glacier.'
The Thwaites glacier is slightly smaller than the total size of the UK, approximately the same size as the state of Washington, and is located in the Amundsen Sea.
It is up to 4,000 metres (13,100 feet thick) and is considered a key in making projections of global sea level rise.
The glacier is retreating in the face of the warming ocean and is thought to be unstable because its interior lies more than two kilometres (1.2 miles) below sea level while, at the coast, the bottom of the glacier is quite shallow.
The Thwaites glacier has experienced significant flow acceleration since the 1970s. From 1992 to 2011, the centre of the Thwaites grounding line retreated by nearly 14 kilometres (nine miles). Annual ice discharge from this region as a whole has increased 77 percent since 1973.
Because its interior connects to the vast portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that lies deeply below sea level, the glacier is considered a gateway to the majority of West Antarctica’s potential sea level contribution.
The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would cause an increase of global sea level of between one and two metres (three and six feet), with the potential for more than twice that from the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
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Problems of charging electric vehicles
Look beyond the glamorous, hightech filled automobiles that most obviously embody the ev revolution and a merciless bottleneck appears. Not even those eyeing a new ev are sufficiently aware of it. Governments are only waking up to the problem. Put simply: how will all the electric cars get charged?
The current number of public chargers—1.3m—cannot begin to satisfy the demands of the world’s rapidly expanding electric fleet. According to an estimate by the International Energy Agency (iea), a forecaster, by the end of this decade 40m public charging points will be needed, requiring an annual investment of $90bn a year as 2030 approaches. If netzero goals are to be met, by 2050 the world will need five times as many.
Governments’ current pledges to phase out ice cars and shift to evs are, it is true, not quite consistent with netzero. Even if roads turn electric less speedily than they should, though, the sums the world needs to spend on charging infrastructure are still stupendous. In a slower scenario envisaged by Bloombergnef (bnef), a research firm, in which ev sales keep rising as battery prices fall but reach just under a third of all vehicles sold by 2030, roughly $600bn of investment would still be needed by 2040. That would pay for fewer chargers than the iea foresees—24m public points alone by 2040 (and 309m in total). If netzero is to be achieved by 2050, bnef puts the cumulative charging investment required at a whopping $1.6trn.
Besides installing too few public chargers, the charging industry’s operational record is poor. The official number currently exceeds what some authorities reckon is needed. The European Commission, for example, thinks every ten evs require one public charger. According to the Boston Consulting Group (bcg), there are now five evs per charging point in the eu and China, and nine in America.
That is in theory. In practice, a survey of chargers in China by Volkswagen (vw) found many inoperable or “iced” chargers (those blocked inadvertently or deliberately by fossil-fuelled cars). Only 30-40% of China’s 1m public points were available at any time. It is safe to assume some inoperability in the eu and America. This summer Herbert Diess, vw’s boss, complained on Linkedin, a social network, that his holiday had gone less than smoothly because Ionity, a European charging network, provided too few points on the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. “Anything but a premium charging experience,” Mr Diess wrote. That vw part-owns Ionity made the criticism sting more.
Drivers can smell trouble ahead. Range anxiety and the availability of public charging is a huge issue (see chart 1). In a recent survey by Alixpartners, a consultancy, in the seven countries that make up 85% of global ev sales the cars’ high prices came third on the list of top five reasons not to switch to battery power; the four others were all worries related to charging.
To assess the scale of the challenge start with the basics. A big advantage of evs is that they can be charged at home—or at workplaces, if employers install chargers. In America 70% of homes have offstreet parking where a charger can be installed (the equivalent figure is lower in Europe and China). bcg estimates that in 2020 home and workplace charging accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total charging energy use in America, seventenths in Europe and three-fifths in China.
Current ev models typically have batteries with ranges of around 400km. Some go over 650km. The average American drives 50km a day, according to Bank of America. Europeans and Chinese drive less. Two types of charger are good enough to top up vehicles, or give them a boost overnight at home or during the working day. The slowest, providing up to 8km of range an hour, can do the job. So do “level 2” chargers that provide 1632km. Both are easy on the wallet. Drivers can use dedicated sockets that cost a few hundred dollars (and are often subsidised by governments) to tap the cheapest electricity tariffs.
Nonetheless, home and workplace charging only gets you so far. As ev ownership spreads from wealthier households to people living in flats or dwellings without the ability to plug in, a public network becomes vital. In America, Europe and China demand for public charging is expected to increase (see chart 2). Public chargers come in three varieties. A common kind is kerbside charging, via converted lampposts or other dedicated points, where cars might park overnight. Then there is “destination” charging, of the sort that is becoming more widely available in car parks at shopping centres, restaurants, cinemas and the like. Both kinds are level2, with installation costs usually between $2,000 and $10,000 per point....
Governments will act. America’s new infrastructure law sets aside $7.5bn for the installation of 500,000 public points by 2030. Mandates such as that recently announced in Britain requiring new homes, workplaces and retail sites to have charging points, adding 145,000 every year, are likely to become more common. A reason for optimism is that improvements in batteries should continue to offer ever longer ranges, and so less need for frequent charging. Newer batteries will be replenished more rapidly than today’s are, and chargers will provide current more swiftly.
Doubts about the ramp-up nevertheless persist. The numbers are still small relative to the vast scale of charging networks the world needs. More money will be required to update electricity grids to distribute power to the new source of demand. bcg forecasts that America, Europe and China, home to most of the world’s evs, will have only 6.5m public chargers between them by 2030—not enough to meet the iea’s global target of 40m. More cars will vie for each charger. Drivers may need to seek patience as well as thrills.
https://blendle.com/i/the-economist/current-situation/bnl-economist-20211210-09b36da6b99
*********************************************Fossil fuels for China: Decarbonisation for everyone else
A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) warns that China has no intention of decarbonising. Although it says it will reduce CO2 emissions, in reality the Communists’ hold on power will slip without the constant economic growth that only fossil fuels can bring.
The paper’s author, China expert Patricia Adams, says that China is intent on becoming the world’s sole superpower and is using every means at its disposal to secure fossil fuels to drive its growth.
Ms Adams said:
"Beijing revealed its hand at COP26, ensuring that the text was watered down to the point of being meaningless."
But Adams warns that China’s insistence that it will reduce CO2 emissions in future hides a dangerous agenda:
"For President Xi, the decarbonisation agenda is just a very easy way to get the West to weaken itself. He will make all the right noises, but nothing more."
As far as China’s Communist Party is concerned, carbon dioxide reductions only make sense for those Beijing wishes to harm and supplant.
patricia.adams@probeinternational.org
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NY Times Claims Brazil Is Turning Into Desert, As Foliage Growth in fact surges
The New York Times published an article Friday titled, “A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land.” The article claims global warming is causing drought in northeastern Brazil, turning the region into a desert. Objective satellite measurements of vegetation, however, show increasing vegetation in northeast Brazil and throughout Brazil as a whole, not the other way around. The Times article is merely another example of agenda-driven fake climate news.
In its subtitle, the article claims, “Brazil’s northeast, long a victim of droughts, is now effectively turning into desert. The cause? Climate change and the landowners who are most affected.” The article adds, “Climate change is intensifying droughts in Brazil’s northeast, leaving the land barren. The phenomenon, called desertification, is happening across the planet.”
NASA satellite instruments have precisely measured the amount of vegetation throughout the Earth since the early 1980s. NASA reported its findings in an article titled “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.” According to NASA, “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Most of the rest of the land shows little change one way or the other, while a very small amount of land shows a decline in vegetation.
As a whole, “The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States,” NASA reports.
In the chart below, provided by NASA, you can see that nearly all of Brazil, including nearly all of northeast Brazil, is enjoying a significant increase in vegetation. Only a few, very small areas of Brazil and northeast Brazil are seeing a decline in vegetation.
The Times is right that where farmers or ranchers are deliberately removing rainforest and replacing it with farms or rangeland, vegetation declines. But that is not due to climate change, and those are about the only places in Brazil where vegetation is not increasing as the Earth modestly warms.
The simple, undeniable truth is that vegetation is increasing virtually everywhere in Brazil. The New York Times, in order to promote a fictitious climate crisis, is telling provably wrong lies to sell newspapers and to sell alarm.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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13 December, 2021
Biden's war on US fracking has tied his hands with sanctions against Russia
Under Trump, the USA achieved energy independence, neutering any need for Russian energy. Biden has promptly destroyed that independence with his war on fracking and other "green" measures
(CNN)The Biden administration is drafting options for multiple rounds of harsh sanctions on Russia if it moves to invade Ukraine, but energy sanctions could be a last resort given the impact they could have on the global economy and domestic gasoline prices, three US officials tell CNN.
Some administration officials believe there is a clear correlation between President Joe Biden's approval ratings and the prices at the pump and don't want to rock the boat, the officials explained. But after this story was first published, the National Security Council said it won't factor in domestic political considerations when sanctions options are presented to Biden.
As conversations continue about these sanctions packages, experts warn that avoiding hard-hitting measures targeting Russia's energy sector -- which could affect global oil markets and prices at the pump -- could mean the sanctions would not be strong enough to deter Putin. National security adviser Jake Sullivan has suggested the sanctions would be severe.
"It will be very difficult to impose severe economic harm on Russia without affecting energy markets," said Edward Fishman, a former State Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "Oil and gas account for 40 percent of Russia's federal budget. The United States and Europe can take steps in advance to contain spillovers, but if they plan to impose serious economic sanctions on Russia, they cannot avoid the energy sector entirely."
Further, the Biden administration's relationship with its European allies could dissuade the White House from targeting Russian energy companies. That is because Russia is the largest exporter of oil and natural gas to the European Union and inflicting harm on that supply could have major consequences heading into the winter.
Among the options is to bar Russian energy producers from debt markets if Moscow moves to invade, an action applied to some Russian energy producers in 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded and then annexed Crimea. But there is also a fear that Russia could retaliate against any sanctions by holding back its oil production and wreaking havoc on markets, an official noted.
"I think the risks with oil prices and gas prices being loosely pegged to oil, that would be a tough thing to sell domestically," said Julia Friedlander of the Atlantic Council when asked about potential sanctions on Russia's energy markets.
"Because it is a publicly traded commodity, right? It's not a direct supply and demand question," she added. "I would foresee that being something that could blow back in our faces, but you know, never say never.
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Methane controversy
Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the likely deciding vote for Democrats’ massive spending package, expressed concerns with the bill’s central climate provision on Wednesday.
The West Virginia senator suggested that a proposed methane fee that would fine companies emitting more than a predetermined limit was unnecessary given existing environmental protections, The Washington Post reported. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled regulations that it said would cut methane emissions by 41 million tons.
“If they’re basically complying with the regulations, then they shouldn’t be subject to the fee,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday evening.
Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, holds a key role in determining what is ultimately included in the bill, the Build Back Better Act, given the Senate’s 50-50 split and his moderate views. He previously delivered the death knell for a carbon tax provision and a sweeping $150 billion clean energy program included in past versions of the package.
On Tuesday, Manchin insisted that he is “not a liberal” when asked about the Democratic Party’s move to the left at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. Manchin also suggested that the federal government should be careful before pushing forward with large spending.
“The unknown we’re facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we’re looking at,” Manchin said in the interview with the WSJ. “We’ve gotta make sure we get this right. We just can’t continue to flood the market, as we’ve done.”
“We’ve done so many good things in the last 10 months, and no one is taking a breath,” Manchin said. (RELATED: Biden Climate Pact Hobbles US Manufacturing And Agriculture But Gives China, India, Russia A Pass)
Leading energy industry groups, meanwhile, have come out in stark opposition to the methane fee in the House-approved version of the bill. In September, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and American Gas Association wrote a letter to Congress along with several other groups, advocating against the methane fee’s inclusion in the legislation.
“New fees or taxes on energy companies will raise costs for customers, creating a burden that will fall most heavily on lower-income Americans,” the letter said. “These major new costs most likely will result in higher bills for natural gas customers, including families, small businesses, and power generators.”
https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/09/climate-change-joe-manchin-democratic-spending-package/
***********************************************Youngkin wants Virginia out of carbon-reduction initiative
Republican Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday that he would seek to use his executive powers to withdraw the commonwealth from a multistate carbon cap-and-trade program he said has overburdened ratepayers and businesses.
Environmental attorneys and other advocates quickly shot back that Virginia’s participation, approved through legislation last year, could not be undone by the governor alone.
Youngkin’s remarks about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program between 11 mid-Atlantic and northeast states designed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, came during a speech he gave to the Hampton Roads Chamber.
Youngkin, who will take office in January, pledged to withdraw Virginia from the initiative through “executive action.”
“RGGI describes itself as a regional market for carbon. But it is really a carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers. It’s a bad deal for Virginians. It’s a bad deal for Virginia businesses,” he said.
Virginia spent years moving toward participation in RGGI (pronounced “Reggie”). The initiative requires power plants to purchase an allowance to emit a certain amount of carbon, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, which scientists say is already accelerating sea-level rise and worsening extremes such as heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms.
Advocates say RGGI gives power plants an incentive to lower their emissions while making non-emitting power generators more cost competitive.
In 2020, with Democrats in full control of state government, lawmakers approved a measure that is now law-making Virginia a full participant. The program recently brought in about $228 million in its first full year.
Under the law, the vast majority of that revenue goes toward assisting localities affected by recurrent flooding and sea-level rise, and a state-administered account to support energy efficiency programs for low-income individuals.
“RGGI has brought in more than $220 million this year alone - money already being deployed across the Commonwealth to help communities deal with flooding and lower energy bills for Virginians who need it most,” Nate Benforado, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a statement. “This was bipartisan legislation that followed a multi-year regulatory process to create a comprehensive program that cannot be undone with a simple pen stroke.”
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A Different Perspective on Global Warming
We have grown accustomed to climate change being talked about in a certain way. Usually, it involves words and phrases like “dangerous,” “catastrophe,” “red zone,” and “one minute to midnight.”
Equally dramatic are the policies proposed by many in Washington, D.C., to force a transition away from conventional energy to more politically preferred options. These admittedly painful changes, we are told, are urgently needed “for the common good.”
However, climate trends don’t support rapid economy-altering responses, and areas of uncertainty in our scientific understanding caution for humility in policymaking.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently reported that the earth has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1850. It noted increasing trends in heat waves, heavy precipitation, and some kinds of drought.
Sea level has been rising at roughly 16 inches per century. It also found downward or no trends for hurricanes, winter storms and extreme cold, floods, tornadoes, or thunderstorms. So, Florida may be dealing with flooding, but not necessarily from global warming.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most extreme scenario for emissions and warming—the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5, which has fueled the media’s apocalyptic “code red” reporting—was downgraded to “low likelihood.”
That was good news for scientific integrity more than anything else, as this alarmist scenario assumed such implausibilities as coal consumption per capita increasing sixfold by 2100.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report begs a number of fundamental questions that should be the focus of meaningful scientific and political debate.
For example, what is the nature of global warming—is it a net positive change, negative, or some mix in between? What is the pace of future warming, and do we have trustworthy tools to make educated guesses?
Why is the climate pre-1850 so preferred such that policies by global warming catastrophists point to it as a target for policy? What is the “ideal” temperature?
Too many politicians, with a helping hand from media eager to sell bad news, have assumed the answers and ignored nuance. The reality is, there is considerable uncertainty. Just three, broad examples:
Climate models thus far have run “too hot” and been unable to faithfully replicate observed historical temperatures. There remains great uncertainty about just how much warming an increase in greenhouse gas emissions induces (called the “equilibrium climate sensitivity”). This reduces confidence that these computer models can accurately project future conditions.
Climate emissions scenarios have misframed policy discussions about how to respond. Far too many politicians, academics, financial institutions, and nonprofits continue to base their work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst and most unrealistic scenario (the RCP8.5 mentioned earlier).
Third, our understanding of an incredibly complex, dynamic climate is always changing and busting previous notions of scientific “consensus” (which is itself more a political term than a scientific one).
For example, a recent review by 23 scientists, who themselves have diverse opinions, expressed concern that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s low-ball assumptions about the sun’s impact on global surface temperatures were “prematurely concluded” by forcing a consensus voice.
The answer to that question alone will have major implications for policymakers, whose efforts to tamp down man-made greenhouse gas emissions might be as good as spitting in the wind.
Noting deficiencies in our understanding of climate is not to dismiss science, but rather to illustrate how much more work needs to be done.
As scientific debates continue, history provides an interesting perspective even if it can’t answer questions about the future.
What happened in this past century of warming?
Extreme poverty—the norm for most of human history—plummeted 80%, thanks to economic growth and access to energy. Global crop yields of grains increased over 200%. Deaths from climate-related disasters decreased 96%.
As a percent of global gross domestic product, damages from natural disasters have actually declined since 1990. Air pollution in the U.S. (not to be confused with greenhouse gases) has declined 73% since 1980.
It’s important to acknowledge that many are concerned about global warming because they are concerned for their grandchildren and for the beautiful places we enjoy today. But history is riddled with stories of great harm done in the name of good intentions.
As we continue to improve our scientific understanding of climate, skepticism about climate policy is merited and serves as an antibody to flawed assumptions and preconceptions.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/09/a-different-perspective-on-global-warming
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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12 December, 2021
Native Americans’ farming practices may help feed a warming world
The elevated structures look very expensive to build so the economics of using them as farms would have to be very dubious
Indigenous peoples have known for millennia to plant under the shade of the mesquite and paloverde trees that mark the Sonoran Desert here, shielding their crops from the intense sun and reducing the amount of water needed.
The modern-day version of this can be seen in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, where a canopy of elevated solar panels helps to protect rows of squash, tomatoes and onions. Even on a November afternoon, with the temperature climbing into the 80s, the air under the panels stays comfortably cool.
Such adaptation is central to the research underway at Biosphere 2, a unique center affiliated with the University of Arizona that’s part of a movement aimed at reimagining and remaking agriculture in a warming world. In the Southwest, projects are looking to plants and farming practices that Native Americans have long used as potential solutions to growing worries over future food supplies. At the same time, they are seeking to build energy resilience.
“We’re taking Indigenous knowledge,” said Greg Barron-Gafford, a professor who studies the intersection of plant biology and environmental and human factors. But instead of relying on tree shade, “we’re underneath an energy producer that’s not competing for water.”
On both sides of the Arizona border with Mexico, scientists are planting experimental gardens and pushing the potential of an “agrivoltaic” approach. Thirsty crops such as fruits, nuts and leafy greens — which require elaborate irrigation systems that have pulled vast quantities of water from underground aquifers and the Colorado and other rivers — are nowhere to be found.
“We’ve had 5,000 years of farmers trying out different strategies for dealing with heat, drought and water scarcity,” said Gary Nabhan, an ethnobotanist and agrarian activist who focuses on plants and cultures of the Southwest. “We need to begin to translate that.”
The University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill will break ground next spring on Tumamoc Resilience Gardens, an initiative to be located at the base of a saguaro-studded hill within an 860-acre ecological preserve in the heart of Tucson. It will show how people can feed themselves in a much hotter, drier future.
The core of the project’s design will be passive rainwater harvesting to support a variety of edible, arid-adapted plants. Some of those will be planted under solar panels, while others will benefit from centuries-old strategies such as rock berms and rock piles to increase moisture, according to Benjamin Wilder, the lab’s director.
Southern Arizona is an epicenter of the movement not just because of the intense environmental pressures that the region faces but because of the presence of the Tohono O’odham Nation southwest of Tucson.
Since the early 1970s, a group of Nation members have run the San Xavier Cooperative Farm and grown “traditional desert cultivars” in accordance with their ancestral values — particularly respect for land, water and plants.
“We’re all about using what is out there,” Sajovec said. Among the center’s heirloom varieties: 60-day corn, a fast-maturing desert-adapted vegetable, and the tepary bean, a high-protein legume particularly suited to the climate because of leaves that can fold to withstand direct sunlight during the peak of summer.
Johnson captures precipitation during the Arizona monsoon season to sustain crops on his field in the desert lowlands. “It’s using the rainwater,” he explained, “using the contour lines, using your environment and nature to grow food.”
Perhaps even more daunting than the rising temperatures of climate change are the water shortages that many parts of the world will confront. In Tucson, the Santa Cruz River is now dry because of too much diversion and burgeoning demand, according to Brad Lancaster, an expert on rainwater harvesting.
“The majority of the water that irrigates landscapes and Tucson and Arizona is not local water” but tapped from the Colorado River, Lancaster said. Unless severe drought conditions reverse and the river level improves, mandatory federal cutbacks mean farmers will lose a significant amount of that critical resource starting next year.
“The goal is how can we use rainwater and storm water, passively captured, to be the primary irrigator,” said Lancaster, who lives in a local neighborhood that has been transformed through passive water harvesting into an “urban forest,” with wild edible plants such as chiltepin pepper and desert hackberry lining the sidewalks.
He is planning a similar system at Tumamoc Resilience Gardens, using basins and earthen structures to spread water across the landscape and reduce channelized flows. Nabhan, who also is involved in the site’s design, sees it as replicable and, more importantly, scalable.
“We hope [planting] these gardens will be the same as planting an apple orchard,” Nabhan said, walking around his own creation at his home in Patagonia, a small town about 18 miles north of the Mexico border. The fenced space holds 40 species of agave, three species of sotol, prickly pear and other varieties of cactuses and succulents.
“The key concept,” he said, “is that we’re trying to fit the crops to the environment rather than remaking the environment.”
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U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming
Weather has grown more severe, seas are measurably higher, and mountain glaciers and polar ice have shrunk sharply. And after years of limited action, many countries, pushed by a concerned public and corporations, seem willing to curb their carbon emissions.
But as climate scientists face this alarming reality, the climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist. Many of the world's leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the modelmakers themselves, believe are implausibly fast. In advance of the U.N. report, scientists have scrambled to understand what went wrong and how to turn the models, which in other respects are more powerful and trustworthy than their predecessors, into useful guidance for policymakers. "It's become clear over the last year or so that we can't avoid this," says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Ahead of each major IPCC report, the world's climate modeling centers run a set of scenarios for the future, calculating how different global emissions paths will alter the climate. These raw results, compiled in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), then feed directly into the IPCC report. The results live on as other scientists use them to assess the impacts of climate change, insurance companies and financial institutions forecast effects on economies and infrastructure, and economists calculate the true cost of carbon emissions, says Jean-François Lamarque, a lead climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and CMIP's new director. "This is not an ivory tower type of exercise."
In the past, most models projected a "climate sensitivity"—the warming expected when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is doubled over preindustrial times—of between 2°C and 4.5°C. Last year, a landmark paper that largely eschewed models and instead used documented factors including ongoing warming trends calculated a likely climate sensitivity of between 2.6°C and 3.9°C. But many of the new models from leading centers showed warming of more than 5°C—uncomfortably outside these bounds.
The models were also out of step with records of past climate. For example, scientists used the new model from NCAR to simulate the coldest point of the most recent ice age, 20,000 years ago. Extensive paleoclimate records suggest Earth cooled nearly 6°C compared with preindustrial times, but the model, fed with low ice age CO2 levels, had temperatures plummeting by nearly twice that much, suggesting it was far too sensitive to the ups and downs of CO2. "That is clearly outside the range of what the geological data indicate," says Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the work, which appeared in Geophysical Research Letters. "It's totally out there."
To find out why, modelers probed the guts of the simulations, focusing on their representation of clouds, long the wild card of climate change. The models can't simulate clouds directly, so they rely on known physics and observations to estimate cloud properties and behavior.
In previous models ice crystals made up more of the low clouds in the midlatitudes of the southern Pacific Ocean and elsewhere than satellite observations seemed to justify. Ice crystals reflect less sunlight than water droplets, so as these clouds heated and the ice melted, they became more reflective and caused cooling. The new models start with more realistic clouds containing more supercooled water, which allows other dynamics driven by warming—the penetration of dry air from above and a subduing of turbulence—to thin the clouds.
But that fix has allowed scientists to spy another bias previously countered by the faulty cooling trend. In both the old and new climate models, the patchy cumulus clouds that form in the tropics thin out in response to warming, allowing in more heat than satellite observations suggest, according to a study by Timothy Myers, a cloud scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "Even though one feature of the climate is now more realistic, another that's persistently biased has been revealed," Myers says.
By the time modelers exposed that bias, the supercomputing runs were already done and the IPCC report was nearing completion. And many of the hot models otherwise simulate the climate extremely well overall, doing a better job than their predecessors at capturing atmospheric connections between remote ocean basins and the distribution of rainfall. "You want a way you can use those models for what they have without getting stuck with their climate sensitivity," Schmidt says.
So the IPCC team will probably use reality—the actual warming of the world over the past few decades—to constrain the CMIP projections. Several papers have shown how doing so can reduce the uncertainty of the model projections by half, and lower their most extreme projections. For 2100, in a worst-case scenario, that would reduce a raw 5°C of projected warming over preindustrial levels to 4.2°C. It's good news for the modelers—but also a clear, and dismaying, sign that global warming has gone on long enough to help chart its own path, says Aurélien Ribes, a climate scientist at France's National Centre for Meteorological Research. "Observations now provide a clear view for what climate change will be."
The IPCC report is also likely to present the spatial impacts of different amounts of warming—2°C, 3°C, 4°C—rather than saying how quickly those impacts will be felt. That heat-based technique worked well in an interim IPCC report in 2018, on the impacts of 1.5°C of warming, and would preserve good information from the hot models, even if they suggest these thresholds will come too soon.
The modelers hope to do better next time around. Lamarque says they may test new simulations against recent paleoclimates, not just historical warming, while building them. He also suggests that the development process could benefit from more time, with updates every decade or so rather than the current report interval of every 7 years. And it could be helpful to divide the modeling process in two, with one track focused on scientific experimentation—when a large range of climate sensitivities is helpful—and the other on providing a best estimate to policymakers. "It's not easy to reconcile these two approaches under a single entity," Lamarque says.
A cadre of researchers dedicated to the task of translating the models into useful projections could also help, says Angeline Pendergrass, a climate scientist at Cornell University who helped develop one technique for weighting the model results by their accuracy and independence. "It's an actual job to go between the basic science and the tools I'm messing around with," she says.
For now, policymakers and other researchers need to avoid putting too much stock in the unconstrained extreme warming the latest models predict, says Claudia Tebaldi, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the leaders of CMIP's climate projections. Getting that message out will be a challenge. "These issues don't translate very well in practice," she says. "It's going to be hard for people looking to make some projection of a water basin in the West to make sense of it."
Already scientific papers are appearing using CMIP's unconstrained worst-case scenarios for 2100, adding fire to what are already well-justified fears. But that practice needs to change, Schmidt says. "You end up with numbers for even the near-term that are insanely scary—and wrong."
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EPA proposes to hammer oil and natural gas with crazy new climate rules
EPA has posted a massive proposed rule making targeting the oil and natural gas industry, calling it a “climate review”.
The full title is “Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review”
EPA has included a lot of tricky stuff in how the proposal is made. First, this is what is called a “holiday rule making” which EPA is famous for. The comment period is just 60 days long and it spans the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays.
Second, most major proposals consist of just a few documents. Typically just the proposal itself plus a technical support document or two. In this case there are a whopping 184 different documents, with no time to read them all.
Also while the webpage says that as of this writing about 16,000 comments have been received only 30 have been posted. However it may well be that the others are the junk duplicate green emails that often plague EPA commenting.
A serious early comment from the American Petroleum Institute speaks to the complexity of the proposal. API says this:
“The proposal includes substantial changes from current regulations and includes multiple areas where EPA is requesting comments. We note the need for additional time to review and respond to the proposed rules. Considerable effort will be required to analyze and understand rule implications, and to develop constructive comments. Further, EPA has explicitly solicited feedback on over 200 specific items, all of which will require time to analyze, collect any necessary data, and develop thoughtful responses. A minimum 30-day extension to the comment period will be necessary to respond to the proposed rules.”
API also says:
“With respect to rule implementation, we urge EPA to carefully consider the availability and cost of equipment, labor and other required resources needed to comply with the proposed standards. These aspects are especially critical in setting workable implementation timelines, given the hundreds of thousands of existing sources that may require retrofit, and current well-documented supply chain shortages.”
Why is EPA hammering the oil and natural gas industry, which will cost all of us dearly when these costs hit consumers? Here is their goofy rationale:
“This proposed rulemaking takes a significant step forward in mitigating climate-destabilizing pollution and protecting human health by reducing GHG and VOC emissions from the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, specifically the Crude Oil and Natural Gas source category.
The Oil and Natural Gas Industry is the United States’ largest industrial emitter of methane, a highly potent GHG. Human activity-related emissions of methane are responsible for about one third of the warming due to well-mixed GHGs and constitute the second most important warming agent arising from human activity after carbon dioxide (a well-mixed gas is one with an atmospheric lifetime longer than a year or two, which allows the gas to be mixed around the world, meaning that the location of emission of the gas has little importance in terms of its impacts).
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), strong, rapid, and sustained methane reductions are critical to reducing near-term disruption of the climate system and are a vital complement to reductions in other GHGs that are needed to limit the long-term extent of climate change and its destructive impacts.”
Note the nonsensical alarmist rhetoric: “climate-destabilizing pollution” and “disruption of the climate system” and “destructive impacts”. I earlier wrote about this methane pseudo-problem.
See https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/04/cop-26-methane-madness/ .
Recent research by Happer and van Wijngaarden finds that increasing methane will have negligible impact on global temperatures, so not on climate either. Methane is harmless.
See https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Methane-and-Climate.pdf
In short EPA is proposing to hammer our basic energy system with no scientific justification. As API explains: “Our members produce, process, and distribute most of the nation’s energy. The industry supports more than 10 million U.S. jobs and nearly 8% of the U.S. economy.”
This is truly methane madness.
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Australia: Warmists versus conservationists in North Queensland
Wind farms wrecking the natural environment
While environmental campaigners like Steve Nowakowski remain committed to renewable energy, a Background Briefing investigation has found growing community backlash over the locations chosen for projects in North Queensland.
Local conservation groups and peak climate bodies are sounding the alarm over plans to build green energy projects in forests that predate white settlement, along corridors bordering World Heritage Areas, and on properties previously targeted for conservation protection, rather than on cleared and degraded land.
If all current proposals were to be approved, an estimated 13,332 hectares of remnant vegetation would be cleared statewide. Around 90 per cent of the land clearing will be in North Queensland.
There are currently 48, large-scale renewable energy projects that have been completed, commenced or slated for Queensland, with some of the largest facilities to be built along the electricity transmission networks that traverse the Coral Sea coast.
These transmission lines provide convenient access to the national energy grid but sometimes cut through ecologically valuable land.
“We’ve got this big wall of steel coming through along the transmission line along the western side of the Great Dividing Range, hugging the western side of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area,” Steve says.
According to James Cook University adjunct professor and evolutionary biologist, Dr Tim Nevard, Far North Queensland is one of Australia’s most biodiverse regions and many of the sites chosen for wind farms are “wholly inappropriate”.
“Biodiversity is the buffer at the end of the tracks that stops the runaway train of climate change from bursting through,” Dr Nevard says.
“Destroying biodiversity in order to have greater amounts of wind energy is a complete oxymoron. It’s ridiculous. So we shouldn’t be doing it.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/queensland-wind-farms-clearing-bushland/100683198
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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10 December, 2021
Hydrocarbon based fuels are here to stay
Alberta’s future is threatened by a national campaign to dramatically reduce the production of hydrocarbons.
The political and media elite repeatedly assure everyone that such fuels can be replaced by new “green” energy sources such as wind and solar power. People currently employed in the oil and gas industry will supposedly transition into green energy production and life will continue on as before, except with fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Indeed, Justin Trudeau’s federal government has committed to transitioning Canada’s economy to producing net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
Trudeau’s scheme is a fairy tale. Hydrocarbons are going to be required for a very long time because current green energy technology is nowhere near where it needs to be to replace them. Currently, there are no realistic alternatives to oil and gas, so reducing their production will only lead to energy shortages.
As Dr. Henry Geraedts put it recently in the Financial Post, “The ultimate goal of net-zero politics is to impose a radical energy transition that demands a top-to-bottom physical and social-economic restructuring of society, with no credible road map in sight. Think of it as telling people to step out of a perfectly serviceable airplane without a parachute, with assurances that politicians will work out alternatives on the way down.”
Geraedts’ Financial Post column is a brief description of a policy report he produced in June 2021, and how it was ignored because its conclusions contradict the ideological perspective that university professors are expected to support. He didn’t toe the party line, in other words, and therefore got the cold shoulder.
Geraedts’ report, Net Zero 2050: Rhetoric and Realities, is available online at the website of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy which is affiliated with both the University of Saskatchewan and University of Regina. It’s a very credible piece of work.
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons and Geraedts points out “hydrocarbons are nature’s most efficient embodiment of primary energy: the combination of high energy density, abundance, stability, safety, portability and affordability is unmatched by any other source of energy.”
Currently, hydrocarbons comprise about 80% of global primary energy. This is essentially the same percentage as 30 years ago, when the global warming craze began. Despite years of favourable government policies and billions of dollars in government subsidies, green technology such as wind and solar energy remain relatively small contributors to the world’s energy supply.
Geraedts also describes the negative environmental impacts caused by so-called green energy technology. Among the most interesting details he mentions is: “Neither turbine blades nor solar panels nor lithium-ion batteries are physically or economically recyclable. They are instead, at an alarming rate, ending up in landfills leaching toxic chemicals — an estimated 10 million tons/year of batteries by 2030 alone.” So much for protecting the environment.
Geraedts is not a so-called “denier.” He points to data from reliable sources indicating global temperatures have increased by one degree Celsius since 1900. But he also explains “the projections used to justify net zero policies and the Paris Accord, are based on fundamentally flawed computer climate models that overstate warming by some 200%.”
Not only that, but “observational, empirical evidence remains agnostic as to what, with requisite confidence levels, is attributable to anthropogenic influences vs. natural variability.” In other words, it cannot be determined with certainty to what degree the gradual temperature increase is the result of human activities.
But climate change worries aside, there is still a fatal lack of realistic alternatives to hydrocarbons. The International Energy Agency forecasts that even if all countries fulfill their Paris Accord commitments — an unlikely prospect — hydrocarbons will still account for 60% of primary energy in 2040. With accelerating energy demand in Africa and Asia, Geraedts expects hydrocarbons will remain the dominant energy source for decades to come.
This is what it all means: If we put progressive ideology aside and take a hard, honest look at the energy situation, hydrocarbons are here to stay for quite a while. Knowing the ingenuity of human beings in a free society, the discovery of new energy sources is likely at some point in the future. For now, though, we need oil and gas, and Alberta has lots of both.
With strong international demand for hydrocarbons forecast to last for decades, there is no reason why these resources cannot continue to provide the foundation of economic prosperity for the province. The biggest obstacle to such prosperity, of course, is the federal government. Due to its determination to prevent the development of hydrocarbons, independence may be the only way to maintain and increase the resource-based wealth that is Alberta’s birthright.
An independent Alberta could implement policies maximizing economic growth and avoid the suffocating policies of Canada’s central government. A free Alberta would be a prosperous Alberta.
https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/12/wagner-hydrocarbon-based-fuels-are-here-to-stay/
******************************************Suzuki is a superspreader of alarmism
By actively denigrating people who hold rational, dissenting views on climate change, Suzuki and his fellow travelers have created a very dangerous situation today
In 2015, Reader’s Digest counted David Suzuki as the number one most trusted influencer in Canada. He had already lost his shine with the oil patch working people of the West thanks to his performance in the appalling 2011 CBC co-production shlockumentary, “The Tipping Point: Age of the Oil Sands.” Others recoiled at the equally dreadful, “Where Will Santa Live?” fundraiser which suggested to kids Santa will drown unless your parents send cash. Yet for many, he still resonates as a kind of wise elder.
People of influence should be very careful about what they say.
For decades, Suzuki has been calling scientists and scholars who challenge his climate catastrophe narrative ‘deniers.’ He’s called for them to be silenced and censored, despite the fact when interviewed in Australia on television, the self-styled king of climate change was unable to understand a question from the audience that referred to the commonly known temperature data sets used in climate science. It seems he’d never heard of them.
By actively denigrating people who hold rational, dissenting views on climate change, Suzuki and his fellow travelers created a very dangerous situation today. There are many people who are genuinely frightened there might be only “10 years left” as Suzuki claims and they are like a tinderbox looking for a flame. Suzuki lit a spark for them a couple of weeks ago with his irresponsible musing about pipelines being blown up. His tepid apology will not put that genie back in the bottle.
Imagine if we had had open, civil debate on climate change in the media for the past 20 years. Imagine if, when Suzuki claimed there was a climate crisis, an atmospheric scientist like Dr. Richard Lindzen could show him why this is imaginary and how claims of a climate emergency are just a means for renewables promoters to push their wares.
Imagine if when Suzuki claimed Santa would drown and take the polar bears with him, an expert like geoscientist Dr. Ian Clark, who actually hikes the Arctic for his research, could show him that during the Holocene Hypsithermal of about 8,000 years ago, the Arctic was ice-free, rather balmy, and the polar bears were all fine.
Imagine if when Suzuki invokes “consensus,” (which forms the basis of the Toronto Star’s refusal to run any report that conflicts with the alleged 97% consensus), if someone like astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv could have been invited to explain that science is not a democracy, it’s about evidence. While all scientists agree climate does change, they disagree on what ratio is human-caused versus natural influences like the sun and oceans. Scientists don’t all agree that taxing people will stop climate change, and most scientists are not convinced anymore that carbon dioxide is the control knob on climate.
This kind of open, civil debate, based on facts and evidence rather than emotional hyperbole would take society a long way toward more rational responses on climate and energy policies.
Unfortunately, it looks like things will get much worse as “The Climate Coverage in Canada Report” has run a consensus survey of its own, and Canadian journalists concluded that “large majorities … somewhat or strongly agree there is a climate crisis and the news media should report on it that way.”
In the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (AR6), the word “crisis” is only used once, and only in reference to media coverage on climate. Otherwise, there’s no crisis stated in that 4,000-page science report.
The mainstream media in Canada has been parroting Suzuki’s hyperbolic words, republishing his op-eds posted by the David Suzuki Foundation and obligingly blocking any dissenting views for decades.
Canadian media have made his incendiary words go viral — making him a super spreader of a contagious social disease called anarchy. Suzuki began this soft incitement years ago asking people if they were “radically Canadian” or not.
It’s time the media and Suzuki stopped the spread of alarmism and incitement and asked people to be rational instead.
https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/12/wagner-hydrocarbon-based-fuels-are-here-to-stay/
**********************************************The Cost of Net Zero is sure to shock investors (and voters)
Like any major economic event, getting to net-zero emissions will bring investment opportunities. But as is often the case, initial enthusiasm may soon give way to disappointment.
The goal of net-zero carbon by 2050 is almost certain to be drastically curtailed by its costs and lack of feasibility.
The International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental body, estimates that the world needs to invest $115 trillion in clean technologies such as solar and wind power and electric vehicles to limit global warming since 1900 to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement that was signed by 195 countries.
Much of the reduction would have to come in India and China, which would need to invest $21 trillion to overhaul transportation and construction while building nuclear, wind and solar facilities to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2060, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But 57% of China’s energy consumption in 2020 was supplied by coal, and its consumption of that commodity is forecast to rise 6% from 2020 to 2025. With coal-mining a big employer in China, coal power plants heavily indebted and electric power needed for economic growth, the nation is reluctant to phase out coal before the 2040s. Coal supplies half of India’s energy needs and its share of world coal consumption is expected to rise from 11% to 14% in 2030.
With tightening restrictions on coal mining in China, the politically-inspired ban on coal imports from Australia and worldwide economic recovery, the Newcastle thermal coal price, a global benchmark, has tripled since the end of 2019. Low coal inventories at power plants portend even higher prices this winter. This encourages the resulting switch from coal to fossil fuels, and U.S. gasoline prices are up 92% since the spring, causing consumers much pain when they fill up their vehicles.
Also, natural gas costs have leaped 273%, further distressing consumers since half of American houses are heated by gas. The Energy Information Administration forecasts 30% higher fuel bills this winter compared with last year and 50% more if the weather is 10% colder than normal.
A harbinger of U.S. consumer reaction to higher energy costs was the French nationwide “gilets jaunes,” or yellow shirts, protests in 2018 in response to a proposed fuel tax hike. President Emmanuel Macron was humiliated and forced to rescind the plan.
The total cost of fulfilling the Paris climate agreement alone would be $50 trillion in 2030, or $140 per American. Yet a recent Washington Post survey found that the majority would vote against even a $24 annual climate tax added to their energy bills. Still, the $140 per American per year investment, if sustained through 2100, would only reduce global temperatures by a minuscule 0.03 degrees Celsius. Everyone’s for emissions reductions unless they have to pay for it.
President Joe Biden’s goal of 100% net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 would cost $11,279 per American annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That would equal 11.9% of gross domestic product, more than the 11.6% costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined. The annual cost of the plan would rise to $4.4 trillion in 2030.
At the Glasgow COP26 climate summit, poorer countries demanded that wealthy nations channel at least $1.3 trillion in climate financing to them annually, starting in 2030. But developed countries fell $20 billion short of their $100 billion aid target for 2020 and aren’t likely to meet it until 2023, climate negotiators wrote in a report in October, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Big polluters such as China, India and Russia have pledged emissions cuts, but not to the levels that Western nations have insisted are necessary to limit global warming. Saudi Arabia plans to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, although that doesn’t include carbon from the oil it exports. The kingdom produces about 10 million barrels of crude oil per day and has been installing solar panels in the sun-drenched desert to save hydrocarbon for sale abroad. Meanwhile, a recent survey of big companies by Boston Consulting Group found that only 11% had met their emissions-reduction goals over the past five years.
The surging costs of carbon reduction raises the important question of the bang-per-buck. Damage due to climate change as a percentage of global GDP has dropped from 0.25% in 1990 to 0.18% in 2020, according to the CFDA/CRED International Disaster Database. And the trend has been down in rich and poor countries alike.
Also, more disasters are made known today due to better reporting and higher minimum levels of damage that’s recorded. Climate-related deaths worldwide have plunged from almost 500,000 in 1920 to 14,000 in 2020 and 5,500 in 2021, and will probably reach 6,600 by year’s end. That’s a 99% lower death toll than a century ago, even though global population has quadrupled.
Economist William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his work on effective climate solutions, developed models calculating the cost of global warming but also the cost of climate-control policies and the reductions in economic growth they cause. Nordhaus’s models indicate that without any regulations to slow climate change, the average temperature in 2200 would be 4.1 degrees Celsius higher than in 1900 and cost $140 trillion in today’s dollars.
Stringent climate policies would reduce the temperature rise to 2.2 degrees Celsius but cost $177 trillion to reduce climate change-related damage from $140 trillion to $38 trillion. That would raise the total cost to $215 trillion. His optimal solution, with a temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius, would cost $21 trillion and reduce the climate-related damage cost by $53 trillion for a total cost of $108 trillion.
Even though a cleaner atmosphere promotes better health, malnutrition death rates in 2050 would be barely lower without climate change. With better nutrition, they’ve dropped from seven per million per year in 1990 to 2.78 per million in 2020 and are forecast by the World Health Organization to drop to 0.64 per million in 2050 with continuing climate change. If huge costs keep the global temperature flat, the 2020 number is the same, 2.78, and 0.56 per million in 2050, a tiny 0.08 percentage point lower.
The United Nations estimates that even if no country does anything to slow global warming, the annual damage in 2100 would be the equivalent of a 2.6% cut in global GDP. Since the UN expects the average person to be 450% richer in 2100 than today, the average falls only to 434% if the temperature continues to rise unimpeded. Relative to better health and economic growth, the effects of climate change are minimal.
Like any major economic event, the pursuit of carbon-cutting opens investment opportunities. But as is often the case, initial enthusiasm will probably soon give way to disappointment as soaring costs are revealed and hopes for net-zero carbon emissions fade. The prudent investor will probably be better off waiting for the retreat from current exuberance over climate investments and then buying cheaper.
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Cars running on e-fuels emit as much poisonous nitrogen oxides (NOx) as vehicles using conventional fossil fuels
E-fuels have been touted as a potential solution to keep internal combustion engine cars on sale beyond the Government's 2030 ban with claims they can cut carbon emissions by as much as 85 per cent.
However, tests conducted on behalf of think tank Transport & Environment found that motors running on this 'greener' type of petrol emit equally high levels of toxic NOx fumes as standard E10 unleaded sold at filling stations today - and much more carbon monoxide and ammonia - despite having a lower CO2 impact.
It concludes that e-fuels 'will do little to alleviate the air quality problems in our cities' that have been linked to thousands of premature deaths each year.
Porsche is one of the headline-grabbing car firms known to be pumping huge funding into the development of e-fuels.
The German manufacturer has invested around $24million into a project in a bid to keep models like its iconic 911 on sale after petrol and diesel cars are banned from showrooms across Europe around the end of the decade.
Bosch is also known to be investigating the possibility of creating synthetic fuels while Mazda earlier this year became the first automotive manufacturer to join the 'eFuel Alliance'.
However, assessments carried out by French research organisation IFP Energies Nouvelles and Transport & Environment has found they have little benefits in terms of emissions that could be harmful for our health.
Measurements taken in a lab from a Mercedes-Benz A-Class running on three different e-fuel mixes.
With no e-fuels currently on sale, the French lab produced 100 litres of e-petrol itself with different blends.
The same test cycles were repeated using the Mercedes running on conventional E10 petrol and found that NOx levels were almost identical.
And while particle emissions are considerably reduced, more than two billion particles are still emitted for every kilometre driven in an e-petrol powered vehicle.
When burned, synthetic petrol causes almost three times more carbon monoxide – which deprives the heart and brain of oxygen – compared to petrol.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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9 December, 2021
Biden signs executive order to make federal government carbon neutral by 2050: Will spend billions on fleet of electric vehicles and upgrade buildings
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order putting the United States government on a path toward being carbon neutral by 2050.
The order would leverage the government's buying power to spend billions of dollars cutting carbon emissions by 65 percent by 2030, among other reforms to make the federal vehicle fleet and government-owned properties more energy efficient.
'As the single largest land owner, energy consumer, and employer in the Nation, the Federal Government can catalyze private sector investment and expand the economy and American industry by transforming how we build, buy, and manage electricity, vehicles, buildings, and other operations to be clean and sustainable,' Biden stated in his executive order memorandum.
It expands on an executive order signed by former President Barack Obama in 2015 that set a goal of cutting the federal government's carbon emissions by 40 percent over a decade.
The order directs that government buildings use 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030; that the U.S. fleet of cars and trucks become all-electric by 2035; and that federal contracts for goods and services be carbon-free by 2050.
The federal government's portfolio includes roughly 600,000 vehicles and 300,000 leased or owned properties.
By 2027: All 'light duty' government vehicles to be electric
By 2032: Half of all US facilities and properties to have net-zero emissions
By 2030: Slash government's greenhouse gas emissions by 65%; 100% carbon-pollution free electricity
By 2035: 100% of federally-owned vehicles to be electric; Entire US electricity sector to be carbon-free
By 2045: All 300,000 leased or owned federal properties to have net-zero emissions
By 2050: Net-zero emissions from all federal operations including contracts for goods and services
To help generate locally-sourced clean electricity, Biden ordered federal agencies to use their existing property assets - roofs, parking garages, extra land - as space to build renewable energy sources.
The executive order also appears to account for delays in EV rollout caused by computer chip shortages, the time it takes to install more charging stations and creation of specialized government vehicles - Biden calls for the US government to stop buying passenger cars that run on gas by 2027 but gives the entire federal vehicle fleet eight more years to catch up.
Money could also cause some delay - while Biden allocated $7.5 billion toward expanding electric vehicle infrastructure in his $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill last month, federal agencies will have to figure out how to maneuver their budgets for the rest.
And with negotiations between the government and prospective sellers sure to move slowly, Biden runs the risk of spending federal dollars on technology that will be obsolete by the time a deal is completed.
The White House said the order shows how the government will 'leverage its scale and procurement power to lead by example in tackling the climate crisis.'
'It doesn't tell the private sector entities what to do, but to some extent it will demand a certain kind of good and service so companies can shift what's being made,' Duke University Law Professor Sarah Bloom Raskin explained to the Washington Post.
Biden is also ordering the government to drastically overhaul the 300,000 properties owned or leased by Washington and make them carbon-neutral by 2045.
That includes a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2032.
The government would renovate existing buildings to increase water and energy efficiency, reduce waste and work to find sustainable locations for all future federally owned and managed properties 'to strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in which federal facilities are located,' the White House stated.
The president also directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality to create the first-ever federal standard to ensure both old and new properties are on a path toward carbon neutrality.
For new buildings, the government would begin weighing them against a Buy Clean standard to encourage green construction.
The executive action is a part of Biden's commitment to support the growth of clean energy and clean technology industries, while accelerating US progress toward achieving a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035, the White House said.
'The United States government will lead by example to provide a strong foundation for American businesses to compete and win globally in the clean energy economy while creating well-paying, union jobs at home,' the White House said in a statement.
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Fossil Fuel Restriction Dam Starting To Break
Somewhere a couple of decades or so ago, the rich parts of the world embarked on a program of replacing energy from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) with energy from intermittent “renewables” (mainly wind and solar). In trendy academic, journalistic, and otherwise progressive circles, the idea took hold that this was the way to “save the planet.” This program was undertaken without any detailed engineering study of how or whether it might actually work, or how much it might cost to fully implement. In the trendy circles, there took hold a blind faith in the complete ability of the government, by dispensing taxpayer funds, to order up whatever innovation might be needed to move us forward to this energy utopia.
The latest UN-orchestrated effort to implement the renewable energy program, known as COP 26, has just broken up. To read the verbiage emanating from the affair, all is on track, if a bit slower than one might have hoped.
But I have long predicted that this program would come to an end when (absent some miraculous innovation that nobody has yet conceived) the usage of the renewables got to a sufficient level that their costs and unworkability could not be covered up any longer. Until very recently the pressure of elite groupthink has been able to maintain a united front of lip service to the cause. But consider a few developments from the past few weeks, just since the end of COP 26:
Japan
Japan tends to keep its head down in international affairs, and at COP 26 signed on to the happy talk group communiqués without raising any particular issues. But there is no getting around that Japan has the third largest economy in the world — after the U.S. and China, and larger than any European country — so its actions in energy policy are inherently significant. Also, Japan has relatively little energy production of its own, is heavily dependent on imports, has harsh winters, and has a growing Chinese military and economic threat right on its doorstep. Is Japan really going to trust its fate to intermittent wind and solar energy?
On December 1 Bloomberg reported: “Japan Is Backing Oil and Gas Even After COP26 Climate Talks.” It seems that this rather significant country may be seriously re-thinking the move away from fossil fuels. Excerpt:
Government officials have been quietly urging trading houses, refiners and utilities to slow down their move away from fossil fuels, and even encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to people within the Japanese government and industry, who requested anonymity as the talks are private.
What is motivating Japan to break from the world groupthink? According to the Bloomberg piece, the main motivator is security of energy supply — which wind and solar obviously cannot provide:
The officials are concerned about the long-term supply of traditional fuels as the world doubles down on renewable energy, the people said. The import-dependent nation wants to avoid a potential shortage of fuel this winter, as well as during future cold spells, after a deficit last year sparked fears of nationwide blackouts. . . . Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry declined to comment directly on whether it is encouraging industries to boost investment in upstream energy supply, and instead pointed to a strategic energy plan approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s cabinet on October 22. That plan says “no compromise is acceptable to ensure energy security, and it is the obligation of a nation to continue securing necessary resources.”
Well, if “no compromise is acceptable” on “energy security,” that pretty much rules out principal reliance on wind and solar for powering the Japanese economy, at least until some magical new inventions come along.
United States
In the U.S., Republicans have only very gradually caught on to the idea that fossil fuel restrictions in the name of “climate” are becoming a political liability for the Democrats. Up to now, there have been some politicians willing to speak out in opposition to such restrictions, but little in the way of concrete steps taken in opposition. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to move forward with initiatives at the SEC, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to pressure banks and other financial institutions to reduce their participation in the fossil fuel industries.
So this is a big development: On November 22, a coalition of state treasurers sent a letter to large financial institutions threatening to end relationships, including the deposit of state and pension funds, with institutions that cut off financing for the coal, oil and natural gas industries. National Review reports in a November 22 piece headlined “Fifteen States Respond to ‘Woke Capitalism,’ Threaten to Cut Off Banks That Refuse to Service Coal, Oil Industries.” Excerpt:
A coalition of financial officers from 15 states sent a letter to the U.S. banking industry on Monday warning they plan to take “collective action” against banks that adopt corporate policies to cut off financing for the coal, oil, and natural gas industries. . . . The letter puts the financial institutions that have “adopted policies aimed at diminishing a large portion of our states’ revenue” on notice, saying the banks have “a major conflict of interest against holding, maintaining, or managing those funds.”
According to the NR piece, the state treasurers signing on to the letter include those from West Virginia, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Alabama, Texas and Kentucky. Recipients of the letter included JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. Between the states’ own accounts and their pension funds, the amounts at issue would be well into the multiple hundreds of billions of dollars, if not approaching a trillion.
Meanwhile, over in Europe . . .
Another Bloomberg piece, this one from November 28, describes the sense of impending doom hanging over Europe with the combination of low natural gas supplies, price spikes, and complete inability to coax more production out of proliferating and essentially useless wind and solar generators. The headline is “Europe’s energy crisis is about to get worse as winter arrives.” Excerpt:
The situation is already so dire this early in the winter season because of a blistering rally in natural gas prices. Stores of the fuel, used to heat homes and to generate electricity, are lower than usual and are being depleted quickly. Analysts have warned that gas stores could drop to zero this winter if cold weather boosts demand. Rolling blackouts are a possibility, warned Jeremy Weir, chief executive officer of Trafigura Group, a Swiss commodity trading house on Nov. 16.
And then there’s this comment:
“If the weather gets cold in Europe there’s not going to be an easy supply solution, it’s going to need a demand solution,” said Adam Lewis, partner at trading house Hartree Partners LP.
I think that a “demand solution” means some combination of either blackouts or intentionally cutting people off and, I guess, leaving them to freeze. The “supply solution” mentioned by Lewis would be allowing fracking in the extensive shale formations underlying Western Europe. Such fracking is currently banned. Even if those bans were lifted today, it would be way too late for this winter.
Predicting the date when the Europeans will wake up to their ridiculous energy folly is a lot like predicting the date of the demise of the regimes in North Korea or Venezuela. You know that it has to happen eventually, but this can go on for a long time. But enough blackouts and heat cutoffs could turn things around fairly quickly.
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Recent European droughts are not unprecedented, new study finds
The 2003 European heatwave and drought has a special place in the history of the study of our changing climate. It was the first event that scientists attributed to human-induced climate change. A paper by Stott et al published in Nature concluded, “Human influence has at least doubled the risk of a regional heatwave like the European Summer of 2003.” This was later strengthened and the event was said to be directly caused by humans.
Alongside the increasing attribution of such events to human-influence has been the assertion that the incidence of droughts is on the rise, along with their human toll. Looking back at 2004 Peter Stott of the UK Met Office has written that at that time “heatwaves, floods and droughts were on the rise.
This was a view that was at odds with the science, in 2004 and for many years afterwards. In 2013 the IPCC AR5 report said there was low confidence that droughts had increased. But by AR6, just eight years later, the situation had changed. AR6 said that there was now medium confidence that droughts had increased, but then it goes on to say, “there is low confidence that human influence has affected meteorological droughts in most regions but medium confidence that they have contributed to the severity of some specific events. It add that there is medium confidence that human-induced climate change has contributed to increasing trends in the probability or intensity of recent agricultural and ecological droughts.” So, AR6 has a set of contradictory stances.
Some, however, exhibit no such equivocation. In the epilogue to his book “Hot Air,” Peter Stott says, “The global toll from floods, droughts and heatwaves continues to rise at a startling rate, their increasing intensity attributable, our research shows, to human-induced climate change.”
Europe in the 21st Century has experienced a series of long-lasting dry and hot summers. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was also considered the culprit behind a heatwave and drought in Russia in 2010, and again in Europe in 2013, 2015 and 2018. There is no doubt, according to a group of scientists studying the attribution of such weather events to AGW, that they are unusual enough to have been the specific result of AGW. The website Carbon Brief labelled recent droughts as unprecedented.
But are they? Writing in the journal Nature Monica Ionita from the Alfred Wegner Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany. Along with colleagues from the Faculty of Physics, Bucharest University, the Faculty of Forestry, ?tefan cel Mare University, Suceava, Romania, and Bremen University ask if the data is really good enough to determine if these recent events are all that unusual. They use several independent datasets, observations, paleo data reanalysis, historical evidence and climate/weather proxies, to gather a picture of changes over the past thousand years or so.
Droughts in the past thousand years.
They find that between 1901 -2012 the driest years in Europe were 1921 and 1976 and in the past thousand years they were 1102, 1503, 1865 and 1921. During the past millennium there were two megadroughts in Central Europe, in 1400-1480 and 1770-1840.
They conclude that when placed into a long-term context recent drought events are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium. Their conclusion that recent drought events are nothing unusual stands on its own, the researchers however go further and consider their climatic influences. They note that the two megadroughts appear to be linked with a cold state of the North Atlantic Ocean and increased frontal blocking activity over the British Isles and the western part of Europe. They also note that they are also coincident with the Sporer and Dalton minima of solar activity.
The researchers add that future climate projections indicate that Europe will face substantial drying, even for the least aggressive emission pathways scenarios. They say that although the greenhouse gases and their associate global warming will contribute to future drought risk their study indicates that future drought variations will also be strongly influenced by natural variations. In particular a possible decrease in total solar irradiance over the next few decades and its concomitant effects on the earth could result in a higher frequency of drought events in central Europe, which could add to the drying induced by AGW. They recommend further work on how the combined effect of natural and anthropogenic factors will shape the drought magnitude and frequency.
The conclusions of this research should be considered alongside claims about droughts made by some scientists involved in climate attribution studies. Some will dismiss it as being “just one paper,” but that would be unscientific. Perhaps we don’t appreciate just how variable climate is or consider too short a timescale when deciding that heatwaves, floods and droughts are on the rise?
There are statistical and philosophical questions surrounding the process of climate attribution. How does one assess what would have happened in the absence of rising greenhouse gas influence? How does one compare our planet today, with a hypothetical planet B? It’s an approach enthusiastically supported by some but not by everyone. At the recent GWPF annual lecture Professor Steven Koonin of New York University said climate attribution studies were the scientific equivalent of being told you had won the lottery, after you had won the lottery.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/recent-european-droughts-are-not-unprecedented-new-study-finds/
**********************************************Energy poverty in Europe is linked to expensive renewables
With the recent rise in the price of natural gas in Europe to five times where it was in early 2021, expect to see many more Europeans and those in United Kingdom plunged into what’s known as “energy poverty.”
From Greece to Great Britain and everywhere in between, the European electricity grid has increasingly been delinked from reliable affordable fossil fuels and hooked up to more expensive and intermittent wind and solar projects.
One result is Europeans pay twice for generated electricity: once for the existing sunk costs of existing fossil fuel (and nuclear in some countries) projects and again for renewable-based electricity projects. Another result is when wind and solar are not available, multiple nations in Europe and elsewhere are chasing the same available oil, natural gas and coal, pushing those fuel prices dramatically higher.
Stephen Bouzarovski, a University of Manchester professor and chair of an energy poverty working group, estimated pre-pandemic, 80 million Europeans were already struggling to adequately heat their homes. Meanwhile, at least 12 million European households were in arrears on their utility bills.
The European Union attempted to provide an objective measurement of the problem, but its best data is six years old. The EU Energy Poverty Observatory’s most recent estimate from 2015 showed 16% of EU consumers faced a “high” share of energy costs. “High” was defined as the proportion of European households whose energy expenditures relative to income was more than twice the national median share (of energy expenditures relative to income).
To get a better sense of the challenge faced by European households and energy poverty, we used 2008 as a start year and then compared the rise in household median incomes (with the full set of data ending in 2019) with the rise in electricity prices (ending in 2020) in 30 European countries.
We found for lower-income European countries that have seen strong growth in incomes since 2008 (mainly ex-communist states such as Estonia, Bulgaria and Poland as examples), most such states could handle the rise in power prices because median incomes rose faster.
This was not the case in mature countries where median incomes were already relatively high in 2008, but barely grew in the ensuing years, this while power prices zoomed up. For example, electricity prices jumped by 61% in France between 2008 and 2020 with median household income rising by just 19% (using 2019 as our end date given the limited data). The United Kingdom and Ireland saw a 51% and 48% rise in electricity prices in that period while incomes rose by just 14% and 11% respectively.
Worst off was Spain, where median household income was below more prosperous European states in 2008 (at €13,963 that year) and has barely grown since (to just €15,015 in 2019). Median household income thus rose by just 8% in the years available for comparison but electricity prices soared by 68%.
The response of some European governments to this has been to subsidize utility bills. But as with Ontario which does the same to mask the expense of past government policy which drove the province’s electricity prices dramatically higher, all that does is shift the burden of high power costs from the “consumer pocket” to the “taxpayer pocket.” Of course, it’s the same household that bears the cost, or their children and grandchildren if present-day utility bills are subsidized through government borrowing.
The source of high-cost electricity can be found in European Union and United Kingdom policy. Governments there have attempted to “transition” from fossil fuels despite their superior energy density (their “power punch” as Vaclav Smil, retired environment professor at the University of Manitoba characterizes it) vis-à-vis renewables.
The result can be seen in the declining share of fossil fuels in EU electricity production from about 50% in 2000 to 38% as of 2019, with nuclear-generated electricity also discouraged and declining from 32% in 2000 to just over 26% in 2019.
Meanwhile, renewables as a share of EU electricity production more than doubled, from just over 16% in 2000 to over 34% in 2019. That would be fine, except solar and wind are not inexpensive. They are also not as reliable as fossil fuels, something Brits just noticed again when wind power dropped and coal was again used to prop up that country’s electricity grid.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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8 December, 2021
Why the Climate Panic About Africa Is Wrong
Africa is bigger than you think:
Instead, the focus of attention has now shifted to Africa, where energy use is still very low—and where rich countries see an opportunity to apply pressure by leveraging development aid and cutting off finance. This is already leading to harmful policies that will hurt millions of poor Africans by slowing down their continent’s economic development while doing little, if anything, to help fight climate change.
Fears of a fossil fuel boom in low-income but fast-growing regions such as Africa are cited as the rationale for imposing new bans on financing for such investments. At this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP26, the United States, Britain, and other countries pledged to end international financing of fossil fuel projects. The key word here is “international.” While barring public finance for oil and gas projects in other countries, Britain continues to subsidize its own fossil industry, while the United States—already the world’s biggest oil producer—plans to increase its own domestic production. But even if we ignore Western hypocrisy and take their promises of rapid carbon reduction at face value, is there any rational reason to worry about African nations blowing up the world’s carbon budget? A closer look suggests no.
Scaremongering about Africa points to a disturbing undertone in rich-world debates. On climate change, as on so many other issues, many in the West seem to see Africans as a mass of passive victims lacking agency and requiring charity—the quintessential “white man’s burden”—or a looming threat to civilization. To save the planet, this thinking goes, Africans can’t enjoy a high-energy future that people in rich countries take for granted. The climate just can’t afford Africans to be prosperous.
Blaming Africa takes several classic forms. The first is to rattle off big scary numbers without background or context. Bill McKibben—one of the world’s most prominent climate activists—recently declared that the world can’t fight climate change if it doesn’t stop Uganda from building an oil pipeline, citing the project’s planned transport of 210,000 barrels per day, which sounds like a lot. McKibben never mentions that Uganda is one of the world’s poorest countries, that its people suffer from severe energy shortages, that it emitted a mere 0.01 percent of global carbon dioxide last year, and that the pipeline’s capacity will be equivalent to only 1.8 percent of crude oil output in the United States, where McKibben is based.
The second form of activist fearmongering about Africa is to brandish frightful but improbable scenarios. In a recent report from the Wilson Center with the headline “The Battle for Earth’s Climate Will Be Fought in Africa,” the author rightly wrote that Africa’s energy needs must be considered in future energy planning. But then he speculates wildly: If, in 2060, every African were to emit at the same level as Indians or Egyptians today, it would wipe out many of the gains from reductions elsewhere. But is such a scenario even plausible? Almost certainly, no. Africa is starting from such a low-energy base that even rapid increases in oil and gas use could not possibly have much global impact. We calculate that if the 1 billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa tripled electricity consumption using natural gas—the most widely available fossil fuel in Africa—the additional emissions would equal just 0.62 percent of global carbon dioxide today. And of course, no country is remotely planning an all-fossil-fuel future. As in most emissions projections, the scenario makes worst-case assumptions and ignores future changes in technology.
A third factor has been alarm over planned and potential projects to extract fossil fuels and generate electricity in Africa. A widely cited recent study in Nature Energy predicts more than 30 gigawatts of new power capacity from coal and 85 gigawatts from natural gas in Africa by 2030. But the authors’ suggestion of a gargantuan, continentwide buildout of coal and gas does not stand up to a simple smell test. Rather than 30 GW of new coal, our analysis of every potential coal project on the continent suggests only one 0.3 GW project will likely reach completion. If Africa’s pipeline of coal projects was already all but dead, China’s recent pledge to halt support for overseas coal projects is the final nail in the coffin. Similarly, the gas predictions are wildly high. For instance, the study authors’ forecast for new gas generation in West Africa by 2030 is five times the region’s total gas potential as identified by the U.S. government’s Power Africa team.
A final source of unjustified fear is when experts cherry-pick a single example to create the false appearance of a coal-heavy future: South Africa. The country skews all views on African emissions because it accounts for nearly half of Africa’s total power capacity and nearly all the continent’s coal use. A model from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for example, predicts steep increases in African coal and gas use. The problem: The study assumes the continent is an integrated power market (it’s not) and thus greatly overstates fossil fuel growth based on the far-fetched theory that South Africa will be Africa’s main electricity provider via coal-fired power exports. In reality, South Africa’s coal is already on its way to being phased out, and any power exports will likely come from renewables. South Africa’s past is not the continent’s future.
Naturally, all these apocalyptic narratives promoted by experts and activists are irresistible to the media. The Nature Energy study generated dramatic headlines, including “Africa Could Be Locked Into Fossil Fuel Future” (Forbes), “Renewables Need ‘Shock’ to Push Ahead of Fossil Fuels in Africa” (Bloomberg), and “Climate change: Africa’s green energy transition ‘unlikely’ this decade” (BBC).
More importantly, rich countries’ concerns about a carbon-intensive future for Africa have encouraged drastic policy decisions. Britain, Canada, France, Italy, the United States, and others signed a pledge at COP26 to end public support for overseas fossil fuel projects, including natural gas. The U.S. Development Finance Corp. (DFC), a new $60 billion agency created to support infrastructure in low-income countries, will soon halt all investment in natural gas projects. The World Bank, a leading financier of infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries, has stopped all investment in coal, oil, and gas exploration and production, leaving only narrow space for some downstream uses of existing gas supplies. European shareholders are already pressing the World Bank to end even this limited exception.
The principal justification for banning finance for all fossil fuels—including gas for cooking, heating, fertilizer, and electricity—is the potential for future emissions and the desire to encourage a “climate-friendly” future. The DFC justifies its exit from gas on the grounds of avoiding future emissions. The agency’s alternative is to invest only in renewables, a position already taken by the European Investment Bank and nearly every institution financing African infrastructure.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/06/africa-climate-emissions-energy-renewable-gas-oil-coal/
*************************************************Shell pulls out of a U.K. oil field targeted by climate activists
Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday that it had decided not to invest in a British oil development off the coast of Scotland that has become a test of the government’s environmental credentials.
The field, known as Cambo, is in deep water northwest of the Shetland Islands. It is seen as a bellwether for the future of Britain’s declining but still large North Sea oil industry.
The British government is considering whether to approve the project, which environmental groups and some politicians have said should be rejected because it would produce carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change.
Shell, which owns 30 percent of Cambo, said it had “concluded the economic case for investment in this project is not strong enough at this time.”
The company also said there was “potential for delays,” apparently referring to the possibility that the drilling would draw protests from environmental groups and possibly legal actions trying to stop it. Shell said recently that it planned to move its headquarters from the Netherlands to Britain.
Shell’s decision to decline to invest in developing Cambo is a serious blow to the project. Siccar Point Energy, a private equity-backed firm that is Cambo’s main owner and developer, said that while “disappointed” by Shell’s decision, it remained “confident about the qualities” of the project, saying it would create 1,000 jobs.
Siccar Point has said that it plans to invest $2.6 billion in Cambo and that it has already spent $190 million in the four years since it acquired the rights to the field, which was discovered in 2002.
The oil industry argues that as long as Britain consumes more oil and natural gas than it produces, it is preferable for those fuels to come from the North Sea, where emissions regulations can be set, instead of from places with potentially fewer controls.
The environmental group Greenpeace UK said letting Cambo go ahead “would be a disaster for our climate and would leave the U.K. consumer vulnerable to volatile fossil fuel markets.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/business/shell-cambo-oil.html
*************************************************Coming to Terms With the Labyrinthine World of Climate Change
As the Glasgow Conference of Parties (COP26)—countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1994—fades into history, it is timely to assess the success, or lack of it, of this intergovernmental summit.
Delegates at the Glasgow summit reviewed the progress made by 196 countries that embraced the legally binding and enforceable Paris Agreement, a multilateral agreement adopted in 2015 that entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016. The Paris Agreement claimed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels—a rather ambitious aspiration.
The member countries of UNFCCC are expected to produce “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) that indicate their proposals to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere—yet there is no empirical proof that this drives the temperature.
In this context, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, committed his government to the achievement of net-zero emissions by 2050.
By then, the coal, fossil fuel, and gas industries would have been decimated, electric cars would have taken over the Australian highways, and the high priests of climate change would govern the world.
Cynics will claim that it is easy for the prime minister to make such a promise of net-zero emissions because he will not be Australia’s prime minister in 2050 and, therefore, he will not be accountable for the consequences of the pursuit of this commitment.
But a governmental commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 does not satisfy the powerful climate change lobby.
This lobby agitates in favour of a significant reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2030, which, according to present government predictions, would be around 25 to 28 percent below 2005 levels.
There is no doubt that people are responsible for local environmental degradation. We only must visit our cities to see the debris, the plastic containers and cartons, some factory chimneys that poison the air we inhale, the deforestation, and the degradation of the environment.
Even in fashionable suburbs, people have illegally removed trees from their properties if they threaten the integrity of a house or block a view. Also, in some parts of the world, notably Brazil and Indonesia, there is an excessive amount of deforestation, fuelled by tree burning, to create agricultural land.
The list of environmental ravages wrought by people could be lengthened ad infinitum, as is the list of environmental improvements—well-managed forests, flood mitigation.
While environmental degradation is a serious concern, it does not lead to the conclusion that, therefore, climate change is entirely man-made and that it is already too late to save the planet.
It is useful to remind readers of the cyclical nature of climate change: warming and cooling cycles have always followed each other in history. For example, the Medieval Warm Period, which occurred in the 11th and 12th centuries, recorded temperatures in the North Atlantic region, not unlike those experienced today. At present, Antarctica experiences a cold period.
A perceptive climate change observer, a civil engineer with port design experience, John McRobert, has followed the climate change debate for a long time. In addressing the labyrinthine climate change maze, he states that mass hysteria, media hype, and indoctrination demean solid science.
He refers to a report published by the respected Mauna Loa Observatory, located in Hawaii. This observatory has concluded that “There is no statistical evidence for the claim by the U.N. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that a rise in CO2 concentration causes a rise in the temperature of the lower troposphere, but there is highly significant evidence that the temperature determines the rate of change of CO2 concentration.”
The report further states confidently that “an important factor in the Earth’s climate change arises from the continually changing position of the moon and the planets relative to the Earth and the sun, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as this is a consequence of the climate change.”
Nevertheless, invariably, the assumed high concentration of carbon dioxide is blamed for increased global warming.
But McRobert points out that carbon dioxide, together with methane, are insignificant greenhouse gases. Indeed, carbon dioxide only accounts for 0.04 percent of all the gases in the atmosphere.
The principal greenhouse gas is water vapour, namely those clouds that stop the sun from reaching our solar panels.
McRobert concludes that “Humans, animals, and plants simply recycle the gases of life, and to pretend we can regulate the climate by holding our collective breaths is fantasy land.”
Although there have been annual climate change conferences since 1994, the parties have achieved little progress in their commitment to reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is because major economic powers, such as the People’s Republic of China, India, and Russia, fail to participate enthusiastically in these conferences.
It is no wonder that, in the labyrinthine world of climate change, individual businesses have taken over the baton from governments to achieve the goals of the climate change gurus.
Indeed, businesses have now taken over the mantle of achieving measurable results, replacing governments in the pursuit of carbon neutrality.
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Australian Labor party sets up a clash with the Greens on climate change
Labor has set up a clash with the Greens on climate change in a bid to assure voters it will not change its 43 per cent target to cut greenhouse gas emissions if it wins the election, insisting the Parliament would have to pass the goal or vote it down.
Anxious to quash a scare campaign about a higher target, Labor climate spokesman Chris Bowen ruled out a negotiation with the Greens on the figure in the event of a hung Parliament despite Coalition claims he would have to overhaul his policy.
Mr Bowen also rebuffed calls from the Greens to close coal-fired power stations and phase out coal exports by arguing nothing in the Labor policy would bring forward closures or hurt exporters who were exposed to competition from overseas.
The Labor pledge is to introduce a bill to Parliament that specifies the 43 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 on the levels of 2005 and to refuse to accept changes by the Greens, with the lower house rejecting amendments to the target in the Senate.
The Labor stance seeks to avoid repeating the party’s deal with the Greens in 2010, when the Gillard government legislated a price on carbon after ruling out a carbon tax before the election, and challenges the Greens to avoid a repeat of a pivotal vote in 2009 when the minor party vetoed an emissions trading scheme because it wanted a more ambitious policy.
Asked if Labor would negotiate on the target to secure support from the Greens, Mr Bowen said: “No.”
Labor is promising to make its target a formal commitment to the United Nations if it wins power, saying it is willing to legislate the goal while the Coalition could not do the same because conservatives would block a bill that cemented increasing the government’s 26 to 28 per cent target to its forecast 35 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.
But with Greens leader Adam Bandt calling for a 75 per cent cut in emissions by that year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed a Labor government would have to give in to the Greens on climate.
“For Labor to legislate if they were to form government they would have to do that with the support of the Greens,” he said, while campaigning in the seat of Wentworth in eastern Sydney.
“So 43 per cent is just the opening bid for Labor. And you know what the Greens’ target is, it’s 75 per cent. So vote Labor, you vote Greens and you vote for the Greens targets.”
Mr Morrison was reminded of the disagreements within his backbench, however, when a journalist asked if he backed a call from Dave Sharma, the Liberal member for Wentworth, to cut emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2035.
“That’s not the government’s policy. I respect Dave’s commitment to this area,” Mr Morrison said.
In the first lengthy explanation of the Labor plan since it was announced last Friday, Mr Bowen said the modelling for the policy assumed the government could only achieve a 30 per cent reduction by 2030 and the additional Labor measures would take the figure to 43 per cent and no further.
Mr Bowen rejected speculation the Labor target would rise to 48 per cent in the event the government was able to reach the upper range of its stated 30 to 35 per cent forecast.
While Greenpeace and the Greens have dismissed the goal as too low, Australian National University professor Mark Howden said the number was in line with the agreement at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow last month to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 on the levels of 2010.
Professor Howden, the director of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, said the 43 per cent reduction against the 2005 numbers meant a total reduction of 267.84 million tonnes since 2005. The UN goal meant a total reduction of 269.59 million tonnes from 2010.
“So the amount of reduction in emissions in absolute terms that these two policies/goals require is almost identical, and so it is fair to say that the Labor Party emission reduction policy is in accord with the Glasgow Pact of 45 per cent reductions against 2010 emissions by 2030,” he said.
The modelling for the Labor policy, conducted by economics firm RepuTex, says the policy would create 64,000 direct and 540,000 indirect jobs by 2030 and triggered a claim from former ACTU president Jennie George in The Australian that the figure was “so high as to make it unbelievable” because the multiplier effect was too great.
Mr Bowen rejected that complaint and said the modelling applied a multiplier in each sector of the economy rather than across the board.
“There’s direct jobs, there’s indirect jobs and of course there’s job impacts from just the improved energy supply,” he said. “But that modelling stands up to scrutiny from anyone.”
Asked how many jobs would be lost, Mr Bowen said the modelling showed a total gain.
“As a result of Labor’s policies, not one,” he said. “The modelling makes clear Labor’s policies create jobs. The modelling also accepts the government’s modelling that global decarbonisation is going to have an impact on Australia.”
Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the difference in the two goals, from the government’s 35 per cent forecast to Labor’s 43 per cent target, required “very significant” policies including a carbon tax on industry. Labor has ruled out a carbon tax.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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7 December, 2021
A liquid hydrogen-powered plane is being developed in an attempt to operate non-stop zero carbon transatlantic flights
This is a pipe dream. Weight is a huge issue with aircraft and hydrogen requires a massive pressure vessel to contain it. Even with new materials that would be very heavy and risk explosions
The midsize aircraft is being designed to carry 279 passengers at the same speed and comfort as today’s airliners.
It is hoped it could fly from London to San Francisco on the west coast of the US without stopping, or from London to New Zealand with one refuelling stop.
Our midsize concept sets out a truly revolutionary vision for the future of global air travel
The plane is being developed through the £15 million Government-funded FlyZero project led by the Aerospace Technology Institute, based in Cranfield, Bedfordshire.
The initiative’s director Chris Gear said: “At a time of global focus on tackling climate change, our midsize concept sets out a truly revolutionary vision for the future of global air travel keeping families, businesses and nations connected without the carbon footprint.
“This new dawn for aviation brings with it real opportunities for the UK aerospace sector to secure market share, highly skilled jobs and inward investment, while helping to meet the UK’s commitments to fight climate change.”
Designs of the aircraft have been unveiled ahead of the fourth meeting of the Jet Zero Council, which is chaired by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and features ministers and aviation leaders working together with the aim of reducing the sector’s carbon emissions.
Mr Shapps said: “As we build back greener, it’s crucial that we place sustainability at the heart of the aviation industry’s recovery from Covid-19.
“This pioneering design for a liquid hydrogen-powered aircraft, led by a British organisation, brings us one step closer to a future where people can continue to travel and connect, but without the carbon footprint.
“I will continue to work closely with the Jet Zero Council to support the UK’s world-leading research in this sector, which will create green jobs, help us meet our ambitious net zero targets and lead the global transition to net zero aviation.”
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The comic cries of climate apocalypse — 50 years of spurious scaremongering
By Bjorn Lomborg
The recent UN climate summit in Glasgow was predictably branded our “last chance” to tackle the “climate catastrophe” and “save humanity.” Like many others, US climate envoy John Kerry warned us that we have only nine years left to avert most of “catastrophic” global warming.
But almost every climate summit has been branded the last chance. Setting artificial deadlines to get attention is one of the most common environmental tactics. We have actually been told for the past half-century that time has just about run out.
This message is not only spectacularly wrong but leads to panic and poor policies.
Two years ago, Britain’s Prince Charles announced that we had just 18 months left to fix climate change. This wasn’t his first attempt at deadline-setting. Ten years earlier, he told an audience that he “had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world.”
In 2004, a major UK newspaper told us that without drastic action, climate change would destroy civilization by 2020. By that time, it foretold, major European cities would be sunk beneath rising seas, Britain would be plunged into a “Siberian” climate as the Gulf Stream shut down and mega-droughts and famines would lead to widespread rioting and nuclear war. Not quite what happened last year.
And these predictions have been failing for decades. In 1989, the head of the UN’s Environment Program declared we had just three years to “win — or lose — the climate struggle.” In 1982, the UN was predicting planetary “devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust” by the year 2000. Indeed, at the very first UN environment summit in Stockholm in 1972, almost 50 years ago, the organizer and later first UN Environment Program director warned that we had just 10 years to avoid catastrophe.
In 1972, the world was also rocked by the first global environmental scare, the so-called “Limits to Growth” report. The authors predicted with great confidence that most natural resources would run out within a few decades while pollution would overpower humanity. At the time, Time magazine described the future as a desolate world with few gaunt survivors tilling freeway center strips, hoping to raise a subsistence crop. Life magazine expected “urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution” by the mid-1980s.
The scares were, of course, spectacularly misguided on both counts. They got it wrong because they overlooked the greatest resource of all, human ingenuity. We don’t just use up resources but innovate ever-smarter ways of making resources more available. At the same time, technology solves many of the most persistent pollution problems, as did the catalytic converter. This is why air pollution in rich countries has been declining for decades.
Nonetheless, after 50 years of stunningly incorrect predictions, climate campaigners, journalists and politicians still hawk an immediate apocalypse to great acclaim.
They do so by repeatedly ignoring adaptation. Headlines telling you that sea-level rise could drown 187 million people by the end of the century are foolishly ignorant. They imagine that hundreds of millions of people will remain stationary while the waters lap over their calves, hips, chests and eventually mouths. More seriously, they absurdly assume that no nation will build any sea defenses. In the real world, ever-wealthier nations will adapt and protect their citizens ever better, leading to less flooding, while surprisingly spending an ever-lower share of their GDP on flood and protection costs.
Likewise, when activists tell you that climate change will make children face twice as much fire, they rely on computer models that include temperature but ignore humans. Real societies adapt and reduce fire because fires are costly. That is why global fire statistics show less burned area, not more, over the past 120 years. Perhaps not too surprisingly, the activists’ models even get the past wrong, but when has that ever stopped the righteous?
These unsubstantiated scares have real-world consequences. An academic study of young people around the world found that most suffer from “eco-anxiety,” with two-thirds scared and sad, while almost half say their worries affect their daily lives. It is irresponsible to scare youths witless when in reality the UN Climate Panel finds that even if we do nothing to mitigate climate change, the impact by the end of the century will be a reduction of an average income increase from 450 percent to 438 percent — a problem but hardly the end of the world.
Moreover, panic is a terrible policy-adviser. Activist politicians in the rich world are tinkering around the edges of addressing climate change, showering subsidies over expensive vanity projects such as electric cars, solar and wind, while the UN finds that it can’t identify an actual impact on emissions from the last decade of climate promulgations. Despite their grandiose statements of saving the world, 78 percent of rich countries’ energy still comes from fossil fuels. And as the Glasgow climate summit showed (for the 26th time), developing nations — whose emissions over the rest of this century matter most — cannot afford to similarly spend trillions on ineffective climate policies as they help their populations escape poverty.
Fifty years of panic clearly haven’t brought us anywhere near solving climate change. We need a smarter approach: one that stops scaring everyone and focuses on realistic solutions such as adaptation and innovation. Adaptation won’t make the entire cost of climate change vanish, but it will reduce it dramatically. And by funding the innovation needed to eventually make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels, we can allow everyone — including developing countries — to sustainably go green.
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Ocean garbage GOOD for life
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a 'raft of life' for animals in the open ocean
Every year, at least 14 million tons of plastic garbage enter the world’s oceans and cause all kinds of problems for the wildlife that eat, suffocate on, or become entangled within it. There’s also another consequence of all this trash for marine habitats that’s been mostly overlooked until now, scientists reported this week.
Feather-like coastal animals called hydroids join an open-ocean crab and gooseneck barnacles on a piece of floating debris.© Smithsonian Institution Feather-like coastal animals called hydroids join an open-ocean crab and gooseneck barnacles on a piece of floating debris.
It turns out that coastal plants and animals are hitching a ride on the ever-growing deluge of plastic debris and traveling hundreds of miles from shore to create a new kind of ecosystem in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest accumulation of moving plastic debris in the ocean.
Researchers identified a host of anemones and other species living within the rubbish, which allows the little creatures to thrive in an otherwise inhospitable environment. The coastal organisms may compete with local species and journey across the sea or be carried to the shore to invade new coastlines, the team wrote on December 2 in Nature Communications.
“There are so many questions at this point about what the ecological impacts are,” says Linsey E. Haram, a research associate at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and coauthor of the study. “If this is a common phenomenon across oceans, then we’re looking at an avenue for invasive species transport that’s really difficult to manage.”
Researchers have long understood that marine detritus such as floating logs and seaweed can ferry coastal organisms to islands and distant shores. But these rafts were generally rare and short-lived before the advent of durable, buoyant plastics. It was thought that coastal plants and animals would struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of the open ocean, where there’s often little food and shelter.
However, the glut of plastic that’s accumulated in the ocean since the mid 20th century has given enterprising critters new and more enduring opportunities to colonize the high seas, Haram and her team wrote. The massive East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 offered a striking example of how this can happen. Hundreds of coastal Japanese marine species rode the debris released by the destruction over 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) to North America’s west coast and the Hawaiian Islands.
“We're still finding examples of tsunami debris landing even in 2020 and 2021,” Haram says. “It really opened our eyes to the fact that plastics in particular can be really long-lived as floating debris, which opens up opportunities for some of these rafting species to be out in the open ocean for extended periods of time.”
Much of the waste washed out to sea by the tsunami ended up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, better known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The gyre, which lies between Hawaii and California, is formed by rotating ocean currents and has, over the past 50 plus years, become a reservoir for plastic litter of all sizes.
Haram and her colleagues wanted to find out whether any coastal marine life from the tsunami was still clinging to this trash. They worked with the Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit that cleans up plastic pollution, and volunteers to collect debris larger than 5 centimeters (about 2 inches). The researchers then combed through samples of the garbage—which included buoys, derelict fishing gear, and household items such as hangers and toothbrushes—for signs of life.
They found coastal species attached to well over half of the plastic pieces they examined, and many were species that typically thrive in eastern Asia. Among them were anemones, brittle stars, barnacles, shrimp-like crustaceans called isopods, seaweeds, and even coastal fish that were “corralling around or on these floating plastics,” Haram says. “It really creates a little raft of life.”
Alongside the coastal creatures were organisms that have evolved to settle on marine floating debris or animals. These open ocean dwellers included gooseneck barnacles, crabs, and filter-feeding animals called bryozoans. Intriguingly, Haram says, these native rafters were actually less diverse than the array of coastal species her team identified.
The findings suggest that the blend of lifeforms thriving on plastic rafts in the middle of the ocean are a community in their own right, says Henry S. Carson, a marine ecologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who wasn’t involved with the research.
“You’ve got this mix of species that are evolved to be [in the] open ocean and evolved to be coastal, and now they’re mixing on this new kind of habitat,” he says. “I couldn’t predict what will happen, but it's fascinating.”
The two groups do seem to be competing for space, but beyond that it’s not clear yet how the coastal species interact with their neighbors or what they’re eating, Haram says. She and her colleagues are also investigating whether the new arrivals can actually reproduce and sustain their populations in the open ocean.
“To figure out how much of this community is persisting on its own and how much is being constantly imported from the coast…would be a natural and very interesting place to go,” Carson says.
Another key question is whether these communities form in other oceans. It’s also important to investigate the extent to which plastic rafts carry invasive species to new habitats, points out Carson, who has previously identified organisms that cause disease in corals on plastic debris from the Pacific Ocean.
It’s likely that these rafting communities will only become more prevalent in the future as the amount of plastic dumped into the sea continues to grow, and flooding and destruction along coastlines worsens due to increased storminess driven by climate change, Haram and her colleagues concluded.
“We’re looking at more opportunities for inoculation of plastics into our oceans, and what that will mean for open ocean communities time will tell,” Haram says. “But we can expect to see more and more plastic ending up in the middle of the ocean and if our research is any indication that may mean more coastal species as well.”
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Tesla To Pay $14,000 To Owners In Norway For Charging, Range Drop
The automaker admitted to lowering charging speed and range in the 85 kWh Model S in order to protect the battery.
Tesla has been ordered by a Norwegian local court to pay the equivalent of $14,000 to owners of older Model S sedans equipped with the 85 kWh battery pack. This decision came after a retrial prompted by the fact that Tesla claimed it was unaware of the problem, but now even after the retrial, it has still been ordered to compensate owners of affected cars.
This didn’t just happen in Norway, since it affects cars with the 85 kWh battery sold all around the world. The problem was observed after 2019.16.1 and 2019.16.2 updates were installed; immediately after, owners noted a sharp decrease in their vehicle’s range, as well as lower charging speeds when using a Supercharger.
Some owners even noted that their range had dropped by over 10 percent (between 20 and 50 km / 12 to 30 miles) soon after the update was installed. Regarding the issue, Tesla admitted to limiting battery voltage and told Norwegian media that its goal with the problematic updates was to protect the battery and increase its longevity and it added that only a small number of vehicles had seen large range or charging speed reductions.
Tesla has since released another update that brings back the range in affected vehicles, but owners are still reporting lower-than-normal charging speeds when hooked up to a Supercharger.
The manufacturer’s point of view on the matter was that while it did admit to making the changes that owners noticed, it did not consider they were entitled to any kind of compensation. It is worth noting that in the United States, the automaker reached an agreement with owners over the same issue, but it ended up paying them a lot less, $625 per affected vehicle. Dagens Næringsliv says Tesla is looking to appeal the decision at the district court level.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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6 December, 2021
Back to firewood
As Greenie attacks make our energy supply less reliable, some people are returning to the 19th century
Americans are feeling the burn of home-heating costs like never before this holiday season.
But rather than watch their dollars go up in smoke paying for oil or propane, many are stocking up on firewood to stay warm during the winter months.
At AZ Wood Farmer in Apache Junction, Arizona, owner Doug Trapp said there’s definitely been a steady rise in demand for firewood this year, as more people choose to stay at home.
“People are cooking at home. People are staying home more, because the cost of food has gone through the roof,” Trapp said. “Everybody is worried. Everybody is concerned.”
And with the increased demand for firewood comes higher prices. A 4-by-16-foot bundle of season mixed local firewood currently sells for $490 at AZ Wood Farmer—$575 for shaggy juniper, and $775 for pecan.
At Firewood by Jerry in New River, Arizona, a full cord of seasoned firewood now goes for $300—up $45 from last year. Each cord contains 112 cubic feet of firewood, 650 to 725 pieces, said owner Jerome Gosiak.
“The more people stay at home, the more they are burning the stuff,” Gosiak told The Epoch Times.
“There’s no question there’s been a boom,” said Kelly Olsen, spokesman for the National Firewood Association in Minnesota. “The industry has been very busy.”
Olsen said that COVID-19 created further demand for firewood this year as many people looked to heat their homes for less during lockdown.
The rising cost of labor and firewood production equipment, combined with higher transportation costs, have also driven up wood prices.
The Texas power outage in early 2021 served as a wake-up call for many Americans, who don’t want to be caught off guard this winter. This, in turn, has helped spur the demand for firewood, Olsen said.
“It’s the whole self-sufficiency aspect of it,” Olsen told The Epoch Times.
Olsen said the demand for “bundled” firewood at retail stores is also seeing a sharp rise for meeting short-term heating needs. “I see the industry ramping up,” he said.
In Pennsylvania, the nonprofit Professional Forestry Industry Association (ProFIA) is helping several families heat their homes with firewood this season.
“A lot more people are looking to burn wood” since it costs less than oil or propane, said ProFIA president Matt Carney.
This season, the organization plans to donate cords of firewood to at least five or six homes, although the demand “ebbs and flows.”
Ohio based “My Free Firewood,” on the other hand, is a collaboration between Keep It Green Tree Service and the JRG Agency.
“We saw the confluence between homeowners needing an inexpensive year-round supply of firewood and the excess wood many tree services and landscape companies have. So, we launched My Free Firewood in 2018 with the intent to solve both of these problems by providing a service that facilitates connecting firewood customers to wood providers,” according to the organization’s website.
The National Park Service provides firewood for personal use, both on a free-use permit and a paid-permit basis.
“The cost of a permit varies according to the type of wood to be harvested, and the definition of a ‘cord’ of wood is a well-stacked pile 8 feet long by 4 feet wide by 4 feet high,” according to the NPS.
A maximum of five cords per household per year is allowed under free use and a maximum of 12 cords per household per year is allowed under paid permits.
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Biden, not “Big Oil”, is to Blame for Energy Price Spikes
“President Calls for Inquiry into the Price of Gas” reads a frontpage headline in November 18’s Wall Street Journal. President Biden apparently wants Americans to believe that the major producers and distributors of fossil fuel energy (“Big Oil”) are responsible for recent price increases at the pump and looming sticker shock on home heating bills.
As President Reagan might have said, “there he goes again”. Seeking to duck responsibility for his own policy actions, Biden has asked Federal Trade Commission chairperson Lina Kahn, appointed for her relentless hostility to Big Tech, to launch an investigation into whether U.S. energy companies have conspired or engaged in other unlawful behavior to profit at the expense of consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil.
We’ve seen the same headlines before. Every time energy prices rise sharply—during OPEC’s oil embargoes of the 1970s, wars in the Middle East, and hurricanes on the Gulf or East Coasts that disrupt the industry’s drilling, refining, or distribution operations—the White House or Congress predictably reacts by pointing fingers at Big Oil, asking for reasons other than the normal workings of global energy markets. Over time, the FTC has subpoenaed and amassed hundreds of thousands of documents from the major oil-and-gas companies, by no means cheaply either for taxpayers or the companies themselves. Those investigations never have produced evidence of anticompetitive behavior justifying further legal action.
This time around, the Biden administration thinks that something nefarious must be going on because of an “unexplained gap” between the price of “unfinished gasoline” (before blending with ethanol and other additives) and prices at the pump, which have risen by three percent in one month. But, as every consumer knows, all prices have been rising recently (at more than a six percent annual clip) as the economy struggles to absorb significant expansions of the money supply, profligate federal spending, and cope with the supply-side bottlenecks caused by lockdowns and other counterproductive Sars-Cov-2 pandemic policies. Energy is the most volatile component of consumer price indexes.
The “unexplained gap”, which varies along with the supplies of and demands for gasoline and ethanol, is not a mystery. Washington’s ethanol mandate or renewable fuel standard (intended to buy votes from Corn Belt states) itself largely is responsible for it.
If he wants to explain why energy prices have been snowballing, President Biden should look in the mirror. Since taking office, he has cancelled the XL pipeline, which would have lowered the cost of moving crude extracted from shale oil deposits in Canada and the Dakotas to Gulf Coast refineries, banned further exploration and drilling on federal lands, and cancelled offshore oil leases. The president’s failed attempt to lessen the pain of his green energy policies by encouraging OPEC to expand production is laughable.
So, too, is his announcement a few days later (joined by other western leaders) that crude oil will be released from national stockpiles of so-called strategic petroleum reserves. If that action is taken, the effects on fuel price will be only transient.
It is expedient to shift blame to “monopoly” or “market power” for economic effects that damage politicians’ reelection hopes. After all, “big is bad”, isn’t it? However, the first place to look for culprits to explain price increases for energy or any other good or service should be government.
As Edmund Burke once wrote, “The thing itself is the abuse!”
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Rising energy bills in UK: Cruel to the poor
When she goes in to check on him at night, Sandy Birtles says she can hardly see her teenage son for all the layers on his bed.
The single mother of two says that the family do all they can to keep warm as the bills continue to rise.
"I do not have the heating on when the kids are at school," she said.
"If I'm not running around and clearing up, then I'm wrapping up in a coat."
She said that financial pressures mean she had been "penny-pinching all the time", but she said rising energy bills have added to the strain.
They have to be careful not to use too much hot water, she said, and when her 15-year-old son wanted to add to his bedding she got him a double duvet.
She is worried that these bills will continue to rise, and a charity has predicted that she - and millions of others - will face a particularly difficult bill shock early next year.
National Energy Action has predicted that when domestic energy prices rise in April, it will mean that the typical domestic gas bill will have doubled in 18 months.
The charity, which campaigns for warm, dry homes, used industry data and forecasts to predict that the typical gas bill, for those on standard tariffs, is likely to have gone up from £466 a year in October 2020, to £944 in April 2022.
"The cost of living in the UK is at its highest level in a decade with household energy bills the biggest driver. When the costs of essential services go up, those on lowest incomes get hit hardest," said Adam Scorer, the charity's chief executive.
"For people already on a budgetary knife-edge, the cost of keeping a family warm has exploded while budgets have collapsed. No amount of useful tips or savvy shopping can cope with that."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59483411
********************************************Australia: NSW government overturns decision to block coal mine expansion
The New South Wales government has been accused of being “captured” by the coal industry after it overturned a planning commission decision to block a mine expansion that it found could cause irreversible damage to drinking water and release significant heat-trapping gas.
The deputy premier, Paul Toole, and planning minister, Rob Stokes, declared on Saturday the Dendrobium mine expansion near Wollongong – proposed by BHP spin-off South32 – was “state significant infrastructure” due to its role providing coal for the Port Kembla steelworks.
It reversed a planning commission decision in February to reject the proposal, which would have allowed the company to extract an extra 78m tonnes of coal from two areas near the Avon and Cordeaux dams. The dams supply water to metropolitan Sydney and the Macarthur, Illawarra and Wollondilly regions.
The state government did not mention the water supply or emissions in its statement about the mine expansion. Toole said Dendrobium was a critical source of coking coal for the Port Kembla steelworks and declaring it significant infrastructure would “provide thousands of workers with greater certainty on the future of their jobs”. He said the mine contributed $1.9bn to the state’s economy each year.
The NSW government also confirmed it had ruled out future coal exploration in the Hawkins and Rumker areas in the state’s central west, a step flagged by Guardian Australia last month.
South32 said it welcomed the government’s decision. A company spokesperson said it “marks an important step” and would allow a submission for an alternate mine plan to that rejected by the planning commission.
“We continue to consider our options to determine the best path forward for Illawarra Metallurgical Coal, to continue to supply metallurgical coal for local steel production and support local jobs and investment,” it said.
The Dendrobium declaration means South32 can submit an environmental impact statement for community feedback and assessment by the planning department. The department previously recommended the independent planning commission approve the project as its benefits would “significantly outweigh its residual costs, and that it is in the public interest”.
It has been supported by Bluescope Steel, which claimed “green steel” – made using hydrogen and renewable energy – was decades away and it wanted to use an existing blend of coking coal until 2048.
Dan Gocher, director of climate and environment at shareholder activist organisation the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said the Dendrobium decision “reeks of state capture”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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5 December, 2021
Europe’s Climate Target for 2050: An Assessment
Richard S. J. Tol has done a scientific study of the costs of European climate policy. It is heavy with numbers, graphics and references so is much more careful and objective than the sort of handwaving we usually get. Because of the great detail in it, it is a very long article. So I reproduce below just the beginning and the end of it. His finding is that the cost is much greater than the benefit
The European Union has set ambitious targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction. Net emissions should fall to 45% of their 1990 levels by 2030, and to zero by 2050. What are the costs and benefits of this? Do the benefits exceed the costs?
The European Commission has not answered this question. This is unfortunate, as the decision has been made to pursue these goals. The European Commission (2020) has published an Inception Impact Assessment, which is largely qualitative.1 The in-depth analysis accompanying the Communication for the earlier, less ambitious targets does not report a cost-benefit analysis either (European Commission, 2018), even though the European Commission (2014) has continuously promoted its use. Studies by independent academics find that EU climate policy does not pass the cost-benefit test (Pearce, 2004; Tol, 2007; 2012). However, these studies do not assess the latest plans. This paper fills that gap.
Cost-benefit analysis should not dictate policy. It should inform policy along with other concerns. Yet, economic efficiency is an important criterion. If the costs exceed the benefits, all other policy demands would be harder to meet as there is less money to go around.
This paper reviews the targets set by the European Union, discusses the costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction as well as some political claims about those costs, surveys the benefits of avoided climate change and concludes by comparing costs and benefits, in total and at the margin.
Discussion and conclusion
The numbers reviewed above are sobering. The total cost of greenhouse gas emission reduction could be 3% or more of GDP. The benefits would be only 0.3% of GDP, a benefit-cost ratio of one in ten. The marginal costs and benefits give the same message. The marginal costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction would reach €500/tCO2 by 2050 while the marginal benefits would be less than €150/tCO2, a benefit-cost ratio of three in ten.
It is often argued that the impacts of climate change are underestimated. Impact estimates are certainly incomplete (Arent et al., 2014). However, arguing that the impacts are off by a factor of ten or even a factor of three is quite a stretch. In fact, the percentage above is the global average; a rich region such as Europe would be less vulnerable (Tol, 2018). The social cost of carbon is the global social cost of carbon; the EU social cost of carbon would be a fraction of this (Tol, 2019).
Besides, the costs of climate policy are underestimated too, based on the rather unrealistic assumptions of a first-best implementation in an economy without other distortions. In reality, we observe a jumble of policies, uncoordinated not just between countries but within countries as well, and sharp shifts over time as political whims and electoral fortunes come and go.
That said, the above estimates assume stringent climate policy outside the EU too. If climate policy elsewhere were more lenient, then the costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction in Europe would be lower as there would be less competition on the markets for renewables and offsets. At the same time, the benefits of climate policy would be larger. While this would improve the benefit-cost ratio, it is unlikely to make a factor of three, let alone ten difference.
It is therefore safe to conclude that the benefits of the European Union’s climate policy do not outweigh its costs. There are no immediate political implications of this finding. The European Union has put stringent emission targets front and centre of its entire policy agenda. There is little political opposition. However, in the longer term, the stringent targets are vulnerable as the costs and other implications of meeting them become apparent to a growing number of people. As climate continues to change, it will also become clear that the weather disasters foretold will not have materialised. At that point, public and political support for the EU’s climate policy will likely crumble, and result in a tax revolution as predicted by Dowlatabadi (2000) and observed with the gilets jaunes in France in 2018.
Further research is needed on all aspects of climate policy. I do not expect much progress on the economic impacts of climate change, not until the literature gets itself out of the rabbit hole of confusing weather shocks and climate change, despite previous warnings not to (e.g. Dell et al., 2014). More progress can be expected from the new empirical literature on the costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction, the somewhat belated realisation by economists that climate policy started in 1991 and can be studied ex post as well as the more common ex ante. The resulting papers suggest that climate policy is more difficult and expensive than is commonly assumed (Leahy and Tol, 2012; Fowlie et al., 2018; Lin and Wesseh, 2020; Runst and Thonipara, 2020). Yet more progress lies in the study of second-best climate policy, with studies revealing again higher policy costs (Barrage, 2020; Tol, 2020b).
Until research has progressed, the conclusion remains that the costs of EU climate policy far exceed the benefits.
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Contrary to what you've been reading, the massive new IPCC report offers grounds for optimism on climate science and policy
Roger Pielke Jr.
The current IPCC report is notable because it has stated that among the 5 “illustrative” scenarios that it emphasizes, it assigns no likelihood to any of them.
That is important because it represents a 180-degree turn from the previous IPCC assessment, which identified one scenario as most likely, called a “reference scenario.” Because the 2021 IPCC has decline to attach a likelihood to its scenarios, that means that in order to properly interpret the new IPCC report, you and I have to assess the likelihoods of different scenarios.
That’s a big ask. But you are in luck because I and my colleagues have spent years studying the plausibility of IPCC scenarios. Our peer-reviewed work, along with other relevant studies, put us in a very good position to help you to understand the significance of scenarios in the current report.
Much to its credit (and seemingly at odds with its claim to assign no likelihoods to scenarios), the IPCC has concluded — just as we have in our research — that several of its scenarios are of low likelihood. This is very good news because these implausible scenarios are the report’s most extreme scenarios.
For my technical readers, the scenarios judged unlikely by the IPCC are high emission (“such as RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5”) and the scenarios “in line” with current policies are intermediate scenarios (“RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and SSP2-4.5”).
This is huge news. Fantastic in fact. Why? The extreme scenario RCP8.5 was in the most recent IPCC report identified as our most likely future. Now IPCC has completely reversed that, and it is now considered low likelihood. There could not be a more profound change in the scenario foundation of climate science.
Instead of apocalyptic warnings about “immediate risk” a top line message of this report should be: Great News! The Extreme Scenario that IPCC Saw as Most Likely in 2013 is Now Judged Low Likelihood. I am actually floored that this incredible change in such a short time apparently hasn’t even been noticed, much less broadcast around the world.
For its part, the IPCC claims to be “neutral” with respect to scenario assumptions, despite also, seemingly contradictorily, identifying certain scenarios as low likelihood and others more in line with current policies. Here is where the IPCC gets into some trouble.
Despite acknowledging the low likelihood of the most extreme scenarios RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, which were the dominant focus of the 2013 IPCC report, the extreme scenarios dominate the current report as well.
The phrase “extreme scenario” might be a little difficult to understand in the abstract. So let me explain what an extreme scenario looks like, and why it is obviously, undeniably implausible. All of RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 assume that the world is going to massively increase consumption of coal in the future. The scenarios project that we will replace natural gas with coal, we will replace nuclear with coal, we will replace wind and solar, we will even chose to abandon gasoline for cars and use coal-to-liquid as fuel. If that sound ridiculous — it is!
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report
***********************************************The Global Average Temperature Dropped 0.29C Last Month — Now Sits At Just 0.08C Above The 30-Year Baseline
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for November, 2021 has come in at 0.08 deg. C above the 30-year baseline. This is down quite a bit (0.29 deg. C) from the October, 2021 value of 0.037 deg. C, and down substantially (0.51C deg. C) from where we were at the beginning of 2020.
A continuation of this downward trend is expected in the coming months/years as La Nina conditions/low solar activity persist.
Saying that, this recent drop has come as somewhat of a surprise — even for me.
For those who check in daily with climatereanalyzer.org (a dataset maintained by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine), you likely would have expected November’s LT to have held near its October reading of 0.37C–due to daily readings of between 0.4C – 0.7C above the mulitidecadal base prevailing throughout all of November. However, worth remembering here is that Climate Reanalyzer is just a forecast, it relies on models (the GFS) for its predictions, and we all know the trouble relying solely on models can get you into; whereas the UAH uses real-world data collated by satellites to paint its picture.
The far more reliable UAH has spoken, and according to those 15x NASA/NOAA AMSU satellites that measure every square inch of the lower troposphere (where us humans reside), Earth’s temperature cooled quite drastically in November (note also that the satellite data is preferable to ground measurements, with the latter susceptible to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect — see here, too).
A drop of 0.29C takes us to just 0.08C above the baseline and continues the downward trend from 2016. As it stands, Earth’s temperature was actually warmer back in the early-1990s and late-1987.
Moreover, since its 2016 peak, Earth’s average temperature is down 0.62C. However, irrefutable contradictions to the so-called ‘consensus’, such as this, won’t stop AGW Party members from pursuing their end goal of ‘total climate misinformation’. Stories of linearly-rising global temperatures and rapidly-melting polar sea ice are still being published by a corrupt MSM, stories which are veering ever-further away from our changing climatic reality:
https://electroverse.net/global-temp-dropped-0-29c-last-month/
*******************************************We are entering a new phase in the climate debate
Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, gave a talk for the Irish Climate Science Forum and CLINTEL. His online presentation was titled: After COP26, with a looming energy crisis, is there a realistic alternative to Net Zero?
The GWPF recently rebranded the name of their campaigning arm to Net Zero Watch. So it was not surprising the focus of his talk was the obsession current western leaders, like Biden and Johnson have with Net Zero.
The reason of this obsession is the 1.5 target that was now the main focus of the COP26 conference in Glasgow. Remember, in 2015 in Paris countries agreed they would try to stay below 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial and preferably even below 1.5 degrees. The IPCC then published a special report in 2018 about this 1.5 C threshold. In this report they calculated the remaining carbon budget to stay below 1.5 and 2 degrees. Since then these carbon budgets play a key role in international climate negotiations. You get messages like “we have only 12 years to save the planet”.
In practice staying below 1.5 C means Net Zero for the whole world in 2050. Peiser showed with graphs from the recent past and projections from the EIA that such ambitious goals are totally unrealistic.
At the top what is needed (according to models) to stay below certain targets. Under projections by the EIA. From the presentation by Benny Peiser.
The US Energy Information Administration projects that the energy production from renewables will increase in the coming decades but so will the contributions from coal, oil and gas. Peiser called a quick change to Net Zero totally unrealistic and an “utopian change”. He reminded us though that groups like Exctinction Rebellion really seem to believe that we will go exctinct if we cross the magic 1.5 C barrier. He showed a google search term for “climate emergency” indicating the term came up pretty quickly in 2019 when governments around the world were announcing this “climate emergency”. We live in an era of climate hysteria.
Boris Johnson and Biden wanted countries to acceleratie the phase-out of coal altogether. However during the conference they had to water down the formulation until at the end a meaningless promise by countries like India and China remained. Peiser showed the different formulations.
Literally minutes before closing the conference China forced the western countries to water it down to the “phase down” of coal power (whatever that means) and even make it conditional to “targeted support” which means in practice that India is asking for one trillion dollar if the west really wants India to quit coal any time soon. So as the skeptics predicted the conference ended in a huge deception. Targets are not binding and remain conditional on a huge wealth transfer.
Issue Attention Cycle
Peiser called this 1972 figure about the issue attention cycle the key graph of his presentation. According to him we are just entering – at least in the UK – phase 3 of this cycle in which people start to realise the cost of the policies. In phase 1 scientists try to get the issue on the agenda. This was the fifties to the eighties. Since the start of the IPCC we are in phase two in which there is “alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm”. The media is helping a lot to hype the issue. Peiser told that in this phase public discussion is all about the science (is it really CO2? Is it really bad?) leading to the science is settled and we have to do something. On the policy side people were told climate policies will improve the climate and the environment and at the same time it will benefit the economy (green jobs).
However now mitigation policies are implemented people are starting to feel it in their pocket. And this hurts. In England this winter, especially when it will be a cold one, lots of people will literally sit in the dark and cold in their houses, unable to pay the bills. People begin to realise climate policies make them poorer and colder. Peiser sees a new movement coming up, including tenths of MP’s who want to scrutinize the costs of going to Net Zero. Peiser also noticed that he is approached much more by the media than a few years ago. The media is picking it up, they have to.
How long the third phase of the issue attention cycle will last is impossible to predict. It could definitely take ten years at least. So skeptics who hope for a sudden change in the atmosphere surrounding climate change will need to be patient.
https://clintel.org/benny-peiser-we-are-entering-a-new-phase-in-the-climate-debate/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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3 December, 2021
How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?
Kristian S. Blickle | Sarah N. Hamerling | Donald P. Morgan
Abstract
Not very. We find that weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banksí performance. This stability seems endogenous rather than a mere reflection of federal aid. Disasters increase loan demand, which offsets losses and actually boosts profits at larger banks. Local banks tend to avoid mortgage lending where fknowledge loods are more common than official flood maps would predict, suggesting that local knowledge may also mitigate disaster impacts. Key words: hurricanes, wildfires, floods, climate change, weather disasters, FEMA, banks, financial stability, local
Introduction
Policymakers around the globe are seriously considering the risks that climate change could pose to banks and the financial systems they anchor. Increasingly extreme weather is one possible channel (NASA (2005), Van Aalst (2006), Harvey (2018)). The destruction and economic disruptions caused by hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters may spillover to banks, particularly small, local banks square in the "eye" of the storm. If loan losses spike, or if customers move away over the longer run, bank solvency could be threatened. Indeed, the banking panic of 1907 was triggered by the earthquake and fire that ravaged San Francisco in 1906 (Odell and Weidenmier, 2005). We size up this disaster channel by studying how banks fared against disasters past. We study FEMA-level disasters over 1995-2018 and county-level property damage estimates from SHELDUS (Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States).
Bank exposure to damages in a county is proxied by its branch presence there. We look at hyper-local banks operating in just one county and at more diversified banks operating across multiple counties. We estimate regression models relating disaster exposure to standard bank performance and stability measures - loan losses, income, return on assets, capital strength, and default risk (Z-score) over the short and medium run (up to five-years).
To account for correlations in areas prone to disasters and bank performance, we saturate the models with fixed effects and control for time-varying county characteristics. When we consider all FEMA disasters, we find generally insignificant or small effects on bank performance and stability. In particular, loan losses and default risk at local banks do not increase significantly. Charge-offs at multi-county banks increase but the impact is very small.
Moreover, not all effects are bad; income of multi-county banks increase significantly with disaster exposure. Extreme weather is expected to become more extreme as the globe warms, so we also look separately at the most damaging (90th percentile) of disasters. We again find that losses at larger (multi-county) banks are barely affected and their income increases significantly with exposure. For local banks, we do find more negative stability effects from extreme disasters. However, even these are not sufficiently large to threaten bank solvency.
In part this may be due to offsetting effects. Local banksí income also increases after these more severe disasters. The modest effects we find may be surprising, so we explore three factors that might account for banksí resilience.
The first and most obvious candidate is FEMA disaster aid. That aid, which can be substantially, primarily flows to households to help cover uninsured losses but it could buttress banks 1 indirectly by supporting borrowers and the local economy. FEMA aid to individuals and households by county is not public, so we investigate any mitigating effects indirectly using two strategies. In the first, we expand our disaster set to include destructive weather events that did not trigger a FEMA declaration and compare the impact of such ordinary disasters to those of FEMA disasters. We find that, for given damages, non-FEMA disasters are not notably worse for local banks, suggesting FEMA aid does not explain their resilience. We find similar results in the second test where we exploit discontinuities in FEMA declaration coverage (for a given disaster) along state borders.
A second, endogenous, factor that might mitigate disaster effects on banks is increased demand for loans. Households and businesses may need credit for rebuilding or to smooth out temporary income disruptions. In addition to alleviate the disaster impacts on borrowers, new "recovery" lending may help offset losses on loans already on the books. Consistent with that premise, we find that lending increases significantly after disasters, though only at multi-county banks.
Local knowledge is a third possible mitigating factor. Banks located closer to their borrowers have been found to harbor knowledge of both borrowers and local risk that more distant lenders may lack. We extend that idea by investigating if local banks superior geographic knowledge helps them avoid areas where disaster risks are more frequent than expected based on common knowledge. To that end, we digitize all FEMA flood zone risk maps for 2019 and merge them with HMDA (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) data. We find that local banks reallocate mortgage lending from census tracts where flood risks seem understated relative to the FEMA maps (given recent flooding experience). We do not observe such behavior at multi-county banks.
Our main findings are generally consistent with the few papers that study the bank stability effects of disaster
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr990.pdf
*********************************************Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct
Another unfalsifiable prophecy
Cast your mind back, if you will, to 1965, when Tom Lehrer recorded his live album That Was the Year That Was. Lehrer prefaced a song called “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)” by saying that “if there's going to be any songs coming out of World War III, we’d better start writing them now.” Another preoccupation of the 1960s, apart from nuclear annihilation, was overpopulation. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb was published in 1968, a year when the rate of world population growth was more than 2 percent—the highest in recorded history.
Half a century on, the threat of nuclear annihilation has lost its imminence. As for overpopulation, more than twice as many people live on the earth now as in 1968, and they do so (in very broad-brush terms) in greater comfort and affluence than anyone suspected. Although the population is still increasing, the rate of increase has halved since 1968. Current population predictions vary. But the general consensus is that it’ll top out sometime midcentury and start to fall sharply. As soon as 2100, the global population size could be less than it is now. In most countries—including poorer ones—the birth rate is now well below the death rate. In some countries, the population will soon be half the current value. People are now becoming worried about underpopulation.
As a paleontologist, I take the long view. Mammal species tend to come and go rather rapidly, appearing, flourishing and disappearing in a million years or so. The fossil record indicates that Homo sapiens has been around for 315,000 years or so, but for most of that time, the species was rare—so rare, in fact, that it came close to extinction, perhaps more than once. Thus were sown the seeds of humanity’s doom: the current population has grown, very rapidly, from something much smaller. The result is that, as a species, H. sapiens is extraordinarily samey. There is more genetic variation in a few troupes of wild chimpanzees than in the entire human population. Lack of genetic variation is never good for species survival.
What is more, over the past few decades, the quality of human sperm has declined massively, possibly leading to lower birth rates, for reasons nobody is really sure about. Pollution—a by-product of human degradation of the environment—is one possible factor. Another might be stress, which, I suggest, could be triggered by living in close proximity to other people for a long period. For most of human evolution, people rode light on the land, living in scattered bands. The habit of living in cities, practically on top of one another (literally so, in an apartment block) is a very recent habit.
Another reason for the downturn in population growth is economic. Politicians strive for relentless economic growth, but this is not sustainable in a world where resources are finite. H. sapiens already sequesters between 25 and 40 percent of net primary productivity—that is, the organic matter that plants create out of air, water and sunshine. As well as being bad news for the millions of other species on our planet that rely on this matter, such sequestration might be having deleterious effects on human economic prospects. People nowadays have to work harder and longer to maintain the standards of living enjoyed by their parents, if such standards are even obtainable. Indeed, there is growing evidence that economic productivity has stalled or even declined globally in the past 20 years. One result could be that people are putting off having children, perhaps so long that their own fertility starts to decline.
An additional factor in the shrinking rate of population growth is something that can only be regarded as entirely welcome and long overdue: the economic, reproductive and political emancipation of women. It began hardly more than a century ago but has already doubled the workforce and improved the educational attainment, longevity and economic potential of human beings generally. With improved contraception and better health care, women need not bear as many children to ensure that at least some survive the perils of early infancy. But having fewer children, and doing so later, means that populations are likely to shrink.
The most insidious threat to humankind is something called “extinction debt.” There comes a time in the progress of any species, even ones that seem to be thriving, when extinction will be inevitable, no matter what they might do to avert it. The cause of extinction is usually a delayed reaction to habitat loss. The species most at risk are those that dominate particular habitat patches at the expense of others, who tend to migrate elsewhere, and are therefore spread more thinly. Humans occupy more or less the whole planet, and with our sequestration of a large wedge of the productivity of this planetwide habitat patch, we are dominant within it. H. sapiens might therefore already be a dead species walking.
The signs are already there for those willing to see them. When the habitat becomes degraded such that there are fewer resources to go around; when fertility starts to decline; when the birth rate sinks below the death rate; and when genetic resources are limited—the only way is down. The question is “How fast?”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/
**********************************************U.S. EPA allocates billions in water funding from infrastructure law to states
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released over $7 billion to state governments and tribes to upgrade drinking and waste water systems, the first allotment of clean water funds that was approved in the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law last month.
The installment is part of $44 billion in clean water funds that will be dispersed over five years through a federal-state partnership program. The Biden administration has touted the benefits for states that will flow from the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which President Joe Biden signed on Nov. 15 after months of congressional negotiations.
The $1 trillion in infrastructure spending features what the EPA describes as the "single-largest investment in U.S. water infrastructure ever."
Over half of the $7.4 billion in state revolving funds (SRFs) that the agency will allocate to states for 2022 will be available as grants or principal forgiveness loans that are meant to make it easier for underserved urban and rural communities to access.
"Billions of dollars are about to start flowing to states and it is critical that EPA partners with states, Tribes, and territories to ensure the benefits of these investments are delivered in the most equitable way,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
He urged that the money be used to "correct longstanding environmental and economic injustices across America."
EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox will soon issue national program guidance from the EPA’s Office of Water to help agencies best use the billions that will become available.
SRFs, which provide low-cost federal financing, have been used for decades by states to invest in their water infrastructure but many vulnerable and poor communities facing water challenges have not historically accessed their fair share of funds. Regan said he wants the new flow of money from the infrastructure bill will correct the disparities.
California, Texas and New York - the biggest states - will receive the largest share of SRF funds.
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South Australian environment minister says he wants to quit because he's sick of dealing with 'crazy lefty activists' and 'Greta Thunbergs' who spout 'myths and nonsense'
I sympathize. The total lack of reality contact among the Green/Left gets very wearing
The South Australian environment minister wants out of his portfolio because he's sick of dealing with 'crazy leftie activists' and 'Greta Thunbergs'.
David Speirs told a private Liberal Party fundraiser on Monday night that he liked his portfolio but needed a 'refresh' because he was worn down by climate activists.
The 36-year-old lost a deputy leadership vote last week but asked those attending the fundraiser to 'lobby' Premier Steven Marshall on his behalf for another post.
'The crazy leftie activists, they do wear you down after a while so I think every few years you need to see a bit of a refresh because there's only so many times you can deal with the Greta Thunbergs of South Australia,' he said, according to the Adelaide Advertiser.
He said the SA Government was doing positive, concrete work on climate change such as moving to renewable energy, but activists tended to spout 'nonsense'.
'I think there's a lot of noise and crap around climate change because all the ills of the world are put in the climate change basket by the left of politics. There are a lot of myths and nonsense,' he said.
He said while countries like India and China needed to vastly reduce their emissions, Australia - which emits comparatively little pollution - could still show leadership in practical ways.
Shadow environment minister Susan Close said Mr Speirs comments were unfit for someone running the environment portfolio and his 'disparaging comments proves' he should not be minister.
Mr Speirs responded in parliament on Tuesday when questioned about the fundraiser speech. 'I may have said something like that, absolutely,' he said.
'But I believe I was making a comparison between the practical response to the great challenges of climate change and the poster-waving activism which doesn't lead to outcomes, such as gluing oneself to Flinders Street.'
In October, eight Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested after gluing themselves to Adelaide CBD streets during peak hour.
'I'm not sure you get your message across when you disrupt and inconvenience so many people who potentially support your cause,' SA police commissioner Grant Stevens said of the protest
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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2 December, 2021
Quit Worrying About Uncertainty in Sea Level Projections
Don't ask questions. Have faith. That seems to be the message of this article. Even the IPCC acknowledges sea level projections are associated with deep uncertainty.
As ice sheets lose mass at increasing rates, scientists are growing increasingly concerned that portions of these massive reservoirs of frozen water are poised to begin irreversibly retreating [Cornford et al., 2015; DeConto et al., 2021]. To adapt to the ensuing changes along shorelines, authorities responsible for coastal planning and climate mitigation efforts need actionable sea level rise projections. However, recent studies using climate and ice sheet models are, more and more often, coming to very different conclusions about future rates of sea level rise and even about the sensitivity of ice sheets to future warming [DeConto et al., 2021; Edwards et al., 2021].
Focusing on uncertainty in model projections of long-term sea level rise is a trap we must avoid.
How can climate scientists help decisionmakers navigate vague or conflicting information to develop practical response strategies in the face of large uncertainties? One solution that may provide needed clarity is to change our emphasis from what we do not know to what we do know.
Large discrepancies among model projections of long-term sea level rise have spawned calls among the scientific community for scientists to work on reducing uncertainty. However, focusing on uncertainty is a trap we must avoid. Instead, we should focus on the adaptation decisions we can already make on the basis of current models and communicating and building confidence in models for longer-term decisions.
The Folly of Focusing on Uncertainty
Emphasizing uncertainty is misguided for two main reasons. First, a growing body of research shows that providing uncertainty estimates to decisionmakers actually decreases the usability of climate projections [Lemos and Rood, 2010]. This is partly because it isn’t always clear how best to incorporate uncertainty into planning. Do we plan for the most likely projection of sea level rise, knowing the protections we put in place may be inadequate, or do we plan for the most extreme sea level projection despite the additional cost to do so?
The planning process is complex, with uncertainty in global sea level projections being just one of many factors decisionmakers must consider. For example, investing in protections against sea levels that won’t be experienced for 70 years may not seem pressing when people can’t leave their homes because of air quality concerns or can’t drink tap water because it is contaminated. Furthermore, future planning and infrastructure decisions must directly confront the inequitable practices that have long disadvantaged vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Planning for shorter-term sea level rise doesn’t mean ignoring the specter of more substantial sea level rise farther down the road.
Second, although models provide a murky picture of the magnitude of sea level rise that will occur by the end of the century, estimates of what will happen in the next few decades are much clearer. This clarity is important because the most pressing adaptation decisions facing communities now—related to addressing both climate vulnerabilities and historical inequities—primarily reflect needs on decadal, not centennial, timescales. So rather than stressing distant targets that are elusive and evolving, communities need help to be successful in adapting to near-term climate risks.
Planning for shorter-term sea level rise doesn’t mean ignoring the specter of more substantial sea level rise farther down the road, and there is still a need for longer-term climate and sea level projections. For example, adaptation decisions such as where to place infrastructure designed to last more than a century (e.g., new sewer lines) call for information about long-term as well as short-term change and require significant immediate costs.
But committing to adaptation measures across the board on the basis of unclear long-term projections is like planning a dinner party years in advance: It’s good to think ahead, but it might be premature to buy the groceries. Moreover, sea level rise is not like a tsunami that will suddenly inundate coastlines (although it may seem that way when sea level rise conspires with storm surges to flood communities). Rates of sea level rise, even at the extremely high end, are measured in centimeters per year. Given the reality that sea levels will rise in the near term, plans today can focus on changes expected over the next decade or two and can then be adapted as more nebulous longer-term changes come into focus.
https://eos.org/opinions/quit-worrying-about-uncertainty-in-sea-level-projections
**************************************************BBC’s Roger Harrabin Promotes More Lies About Greenland
You may have noticed that the BBC’s barrage of climate propaganda continued after the gavel came down at COP26. Most of it had, of course, been rehashed anyway.
Roger Harrabin, the corporation’s Environment Analyst, was forced to console himself with his alarmist chums, who he laughingly refers to as ‘experts’.
First up was the utterly discredited Sir David King, one-time Chief Scientific Adviser to Tony Blair. King told our Roger that ‘heating is already at a dangerous level, with Greenland sitting in blue sea for three months, losing ice.’
For some reason, Harrabin failed to point out that this is what Greenland does every year – it is called SUMMER. In WINTER, it snows and the ice is replaced again.
King would of course like you to believe that Greenland summers are now wall-to-wall heatwaves.
However, summer temperatures in Greenland now are no higher than they were a century ago.
King’s track record on climate is hardly one to write home about.
It was he who famously forecast back in 2004 that Antarctica was likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remained unchecked.
He also grossly misled a Parliamentary select committee in the same year, when he claimed that the South Pole ice cap was 40 percent as thick as it used to be. (Most estimates suggest that the ice there is actually getting thicker).
He also told the same committee that the Greenland ice cap might disappear within 50 to 200 years. At the current rate of melt, it would take 25,000 years!
If that was not bad enough, he also gave false evidence to the Energy Select Committee in 2014, claiming that Hurricane Sandy was the first to hit so far north in America.
In fact, since 1950 alone there have been nine hurricanes that made landfall further north than Sandy.
Put simply, the man is a clown.
Harrabin then turned to Piers Forster, an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) lead author. He claimed that ‘people are already dying with current temperatures’.
This is another grossly misleading statement. Many more people die from the cold every year than die from extreme heat. This is even the case in countries such as India.
Meanwhile, the official data shows that deaths caused by all kinds of extreme weather, such as floods, storms, extreme temperatures, and drought, are now at record lows:
https://principia-scientific.com/bbcs-roger-harrabin-promotes-more-lies-about-greenland/
******************************************Covid/Climate Prigs Are Out to Spoil Your Days
Enamoured by lockdown, the puritans wish for a perma-pandemic in which no-one, nowhere, will be happy.
Not content with dying their hair green and punching steel through their nostrils, progressives here in Great Britain have proposed something rather more exquisitely demented than their usual fare.
The Independent, a kind of Guardian for actors manqué and Cluster B personalities, those who suffer from fictitious ailments of which ‘the doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong,’ asks, ‘Should Everyone Have a Personal Carbon Quota?’
Helpfully, the newspaper lays out exactly what a Carbon Quota would entail.
It begins: “Your home, sometime in the next decade. You click the heating on and receive an app notification telling you how much of your carbon allowance you’ve used today.
“Outside in the drive, your car’s fuel is linked to the same account. In the fridge, the New Zealand lamb you’ve bought has cost not just pounds and pence but a chunk of this monthly emissions budget too.
“Welcome to the world of personal carbon allowances – a concept that is increasingly gaining traction among experts as a possible response to the climate crisis.”
Curiously, this all sounds like one’s entire life would be recorded and regulated and monitored and meddled with by politicians who’ll punish or praise, all in pursuit of a vague utopia. Sounds familiar.
According to my Carbon Quota, I could live happily and healthily, provided I die next Tuesday at noon.
If I were to stay on this planet and offend Mother Nature with my presence, I’d have to limit myself to half a cigarette per day, a slither of ribeye per week, and one soupçon of red wine per month. Such a paltry regimen would dissolve around 90% of my personality.
Besides, Tuesday is no day to die. Especially before the 4 p.m. happy hour.
Perhaps, I could time it just right. I’ll prop up a stool in my favourite dive bar, and impart everything I’d like to say but avoid saying in fear of social ostracization.
I could say that there is a biological reason why women aren’t funny. I could say that, on balance, the British Empire was a good thing, and that anyone whinging about ‘cultural appropriation’ seldom has any culture worth appropriating. I could say, with conviction, that the Jews obviously don’t secretly run the world because if they did, the world would be far closer to utopia than it is now. I could suggest that those who play music on public transport, indeed—in public—should be hung, drawn, and quartered for the benefit of the gene pool. I could say all this before shuffling off into the light.
(If my girlfriend—whose people have won a fifth of all Nobel Prizes despite being 0.2% of the world population—objects, then I’m sorry… I’m saving the planet, darling.)
You can define the confidence of a culture by the pettiness of its laws.
I’d rather shuffle off than live in a world in which one’s social status is tied to one’s ability to pretend falafel is edible, to one’s withering body. I’d rather that than live in a world in which the prigs and puritans, those weird kids from school with ‘Free Da Weed’ Sharpied on their hemp rucksacks, have won the final victory over everyone else. A world in which every consideration is now suffixed with ‘to save the planet.’
We shouldn’t feign surprise. A stubborn one-third of any population harbours latent authoritarian tendencies. All they need is a little nudge and a wink from someone in a lab coat or a pinstripe suit.
Over the last twenty months, we’ve given them plenty to chew on. We’ve sacralised Crab Mentality—that depressingly human tendency to pull down others into the soup of conformity. For many, this pandemic has been the time of their lives. They’ve enjoyed grassing on neighbours, posting their vaccine statuses, their three-mask chic. Don’t mention that sensible Sweden got it right. Don’t mention that lockdown only delays the inevitable, to great human cost. Don’t mention the fatal link between obesity and Covid deaths.
They’d love life in Austria, where the government has mandated a Western first—forcible vaccination for every citizen.
What a time to be alive. This pandemic has valorised negative personality traits. Back in the Old Normal, high neuroticism combined with high agreeableness meant you’d spend your days siphoning your biography for ‘trauma’ to weaponize against the world. Now, it’s a plus. Like Woke intellectuals, the neurotics mistake their personal problems for societal problems.
I assumed a majority of Britons would, like me, rather chew on a glass vial labelled ‘Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ than consider medical apartheid. Nope.
According to YouGov, six in ten Britons support the introduction of a ‘papers, please’ society—vaccine passports.
That’s despite vaccines blunting Covid’s ability to hospitalise and kill, but not its ability to spread—rendering vaccine passports both pointless and poisonous.
Of course, the usual disclaimer applies just in case anyone of a progressive bent is reading: I’m not saying it’s Nazi Germany, but it’s quite clear how totalitarian regimes slip into power with little resistance.
A recent survey in The Economist made for terrifying reading: forty percent wanted masks forever; a quarter wanted to shut down nightclubs and casinos; another third wanted socially-distanced pubs and clubs and theatres; a hefty rump wanted a 10 p.m. curfew, and one-third said anyone coming into this country should be quarantined, like a dog, for ten days. And they wanted all this lunacy indefinitely, Covid or not.
Perhaps that explains why the eco-loons can air with confidence the drudgery they wish to impose upon everyone else. Not a day goes by without some middle-class Insulate Britain bobo blocking the motorway or making ‘demands’ upon the government to act on the ‘climate crisis’.
What nobody asks is how any of this nonsense would make any difference given that Great Britain contributes less than one percent of global carbon emissions. Those who follow The Science don’t cotton on when last week’s gospel morphs into this week’s heresy.
What happens when we reach Net Zero and the weather doesn’t change? I can only guess… ‘That wasn’t real Net-Zero. Real Net-Zero has never been tried.’
They don’t ask such obvious questions because the answer is obvious: they don’t care about all that. As Mencken wrote, they’re governed by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
That’s the problem with do-gooding. There’s always more good to do.
https://rclutz.com/2021/12/01/covid-climate-prigs-are-out-to-spoil-your-days/
************************************************Australian Labor party to dump fuel emissions plan in next step on climate
Labor will dump a contentious plan to set new fuel standards for millions of motorists in a bid to neutralise a growing political attack from Prime Minister Scott Morrison ahead of a bigger fight on climate change.
The vehicle emission standard will be formally dropped when Labor leader Anthony Albanese signs off on the party’s climate policy with shadow ministers, as they prepare for a caucus briefing this Friday on the coming election campaign.
Mr Albanese will launch Labor’s bid for power at a campaign rally in Sydney this weekend to start a blitz through marginal electorates before Christmas, readying the party for the official election contest early next year.
The climate policy, including Labor’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, is being restricted to a small group of shadow cabinet members before climate spokesman Chris Bowen speaks at the National Press Club on Monday.
While some caucus members are pressing for a target that trumps Mr Morrison’s forecast to cut emissions by 35 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels, others warn against an ambitious goal that exposes the party to attack over the impact on household costs.
The Labor policy on fuel standards was part of a package in the 2019 election campaign to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles so they would make up 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030, a target that triggered a war of words with Mr Morrison.
The Prime Minister claimed at the time the Labor policy sought to “end the weekend” and said last month the policy tried to “force” customers to switch to electric vehicles, misrepresenting the plan, which set only an aspirational target.
Mr Morrison said on November 11 Labor wanted to “put up your petrol prices” although the policy only called for consultation on changes and did not name a timetable for the new standard.
Even so, Labor will drop this element of its policy package to blunt the Coalition scare campaign.
While the most recent Resolve Political Monitor in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age found Labor’s primary vote was 32 per cent, slightly down from 33.3 per cent at the last election, the party’s internal polling suggests it is doing much better.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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1 December, 2021
Joe Biden's Dirty Little Secret: He Wants Higher Gasoline Prices
When he announced last week that he would release more oil from the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Joe Biden told the American people he is doing everything possible to bring down gas prices at the pump.
That's a lie. This administration and the climate change crazies have declared war on American energy.
They want high oil and gas prices. The Biden master plan is for American oil and gas production and consumption to go to zero over the next 15 to 20 years. How do you achieve that goal? By making oil and gas so expensive and so unavailable that Americans are forced to use alternatives.
In other words, the fact that gasoline is roughly $1.25 more expensive per gallon today under Biden than it was a year ago under former President Donald Trump didn't happen by accident. This was not a result of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, that could knock out our oil facilities. This was by design.
The left believes that they can change the temperature of the planet by forcing American energy companies to produce less oil and to force Americans to use less of it. How do you get people to buy less of something? You raise its price. This is basic high-school introductory economics.
Some on the Biden team have inadvertently admitted this. Cornell University professor Saule Omarova, a high-ranking Biden nominee for one of the country's leading regulatory agencies, said she wants to "bankrupt" U.S. oil, gas and coal companies -- and apparently has no problem putting roughly five million Americans into unemployment lines. Biden's appointee to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Lael Brainard, was asked at a congressional hearing recently if she thought high gas prices were a problem. She hemmed and hawed and refused to answer with a simple "yes." Instead, she explained that this is a "complicated" issue. How is this complicated?
U.S. oil production is down roughly two million barrels a day from the peak production under Trump prior to COVID, yet Biden recently blamed high oil prices on the Saudis and the OPEC nations for holding back supply. Hello! That is exactly what cartels do. They use their market power to jack up the prices so they can maximize their profits.
Trump broke the back of OPEC by making the U.S. the dominant energy-producing nation in the world. Biden has handed back that power to the Arab oil sheikhs and Vladimir Putin in Russia. Now they are gouging us. What a shock!
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said it well in August that Texas "can easily produce that oil" if Biden "will just stay out of the way."
He won't.
The Biden administration's strategy is to force-feed the American economy expensive, unreliable and made-in-China wind and solar energy. His $3 trillion Build Back Better bill would dole out more than $500 billion of taxpayer dollars to the wind, solar and electric vehicle industry to break the back of oil and gas production. If this energy source is so efficient, why does it need a half-trillion dollars of your and my money?
Meanwhile, nearly every Biden policy has been deliberately aimed at killing U.S. oil and gas production -- from killing the Keystone XL pipeline to trying to shut down other existing natural gas pipelines in the Midwest (Home heating costs are going way up this winter.) to shutting down much of Alaska oil production to new Environmental Protection Agency rules making it very difficult and expensive to drill here in America. He is also preventing the mining of American coal, which is still one of the dominant sources of electric power around the world. He also wants to raise taxes on the oil and gas industry.
Now, let's be honest. Do any of these policies suggest that Biden and his liberal friends in the green-energy movement want to keep oil and gas prices low? If you answer yes to that, you probably believe that Al Gore invented the internet.
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Buttigieg Tries to Make Families Feel Better About Gas Prices By Offering an Unaffordable Alternative
As the Biden Administration continues to push American families into alternative energy sources by maintaining pain at the pump, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is attempting to explain away high gas prices.
During an interview with MSNBC over the weekend, Buttigieg reassured Americans they won't have to worry about an increase in gas prices ever again, so long as they buy an electric vehicle.
"Families who own that vehicle will never have to worry about gas prices again," Buttigieg said. "The people who stand to benefit most from owning an EV are often rural residents who have the most distances to drive, who burn the most gas, and underserved urban residents in areas where there are higher gas prices and lower income."
"They would gain the most by having that vehicle. These are the very residents who have not always been connected to electric vehicles that are viewed as kind of a luxury item," he continued."If we can make the electric vehicle less expensive for everybody, more people can take advantage, and we'll be selling more American-made EVs, which means in time they'll become less expensive to make and to buy for everybody."
Rural residents who need to drive long distances are the worst candidates for electric vehicles, which only charge for a certain number of miles. Outside of major cities, electric charging stations don't exist.
According to Cox Automotive, the average electric vehicle costs at least $55,000. President Biden has embraced the Green New Deal plan to eliminate most oil and gas use by 2030
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Ending gas financing for Africa will be a fatal blow, says Senegal
Plans by some nations to end the financing of gas exploration will prove a "fatal cost" for several emerging African economies, Senegal President Macky Sall said at the start of theChina-Africa Summit in Dakar on Monday.
Senegal, like several other African countries, is sitting on billions of cubic metres of gas reserves and is expected to become a major gas producer in the region which will not only boost power supply but potentially spur double-digit economic growth from 2023.
"A few days after the end of COP26, I must also draw the attention to the decision taken by certain countries to stop foreign financing of fossil fuels, including the gas sector, even as the use of other more polluting energy sources continues," Sall told the summit, referring to this month's climate conference in Glasgow.
"At a time when several African countries are preparing to exploit their significant gas resources, the end of funding for the gas sector, under the pretext that gas is a fossil energy, would bear a fatal cost to our emerging economies," Sall said.
He urged African countries to work together to maintain financing for gas as a transitional energy, adding that blocking funding will add to the climate injustice Africa is already suffering.
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Yippee! Power crisis forces China to buy Aussie coal for first time in a YEAR
Crippling power shortages in China have forced the communist regime to back down from their ban on Australian coal.
Beijing blocked the commodity in November last to punish Canberra for suggesting and international inquiry should be held into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Chinese campaign of economic coercion - which also saw similar bans on key export sectors like barley, wine, cotton, seafood, timbre and copper - was meant to punish Australia for speaking out.
But the economic threat spectacularly back-fired on the authoritarian nation leaving China with widespread blackouts heading into winter, as it generates more than half of it's electricity through coal.
Tough-talking Wolf Warrior diplomats quietly softened their stance with tens-of-millions shivering and in the dark - allowing in 2.8 million tonnes of Australian coal in last month.
Commonwealth Bank Global Markets Research analyst Vivek Dhar on Tuesday said it 'looks to be a pragmatic move by Chinese policymakers'.
'Australian coal that was sitting at port stockpiles were cleared by Chinese customs last month to address an acute shortage in China's coal and power sector,' he said.
As well as being a concern for residents, financial firm Goldman Sachs estimated about 44 per cent of industrial activity was affected by power shortages.
The Chinese economy was hit with a perfect storm that compounded the energy crisis after it blocked dozens of coal ship from entering Chinese ports, leaving sailors stranded for months.
President Xi Jinping recently imposed price caps and restrictions on energy suppliers just before the cost of coal skyrocketed.
Metallurgical coal jumped from about $100 a tonne when the ban was introduced to $274 a tonne in October.
'Every million tonnes of coal has recently been costing China's steel mills more than US$400 million, compared with around US$250 million paid by steel mills everywhere else,' David Uren wrote last month in a paper for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
'The difference is entirely explained by China's embargo on Australian coal.
'Since China's mills use almost two million tonnes of coal every day, the premium it pays above coal costs in the rest of the world adds up to about US$2 billion a week.'
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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