GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

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. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.

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30 September, 2020

Is corn ethanol still necessary?

By Rick Manning

With the election around the corner, the D.C. swamp is hard at work. Various special interests are trying to make their pet issue look like an election asset or liability. One interest group working overtime is the biofuel lobby. The federal Renewable Fuel Standard – or RFS – is often falsely labeled as a “pro-farmer” energy policy that helps the Heartland. In reality, the RFS has become a tool for lining the pockets of the global agribusiness complex at the expense of real American farmers. It also puts domestically manufactured fuel supplies at risk. Coupled with their support of open borders immigration policies, the RFS further enables agribusiness giants to profit at the expense of rural Americans and heartland jobs.

Passed in 2005 and greatly expanded in 2007, the RFS was meant to “reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil” and promote rural economic development in the process. The law established increasing mandates for different types of biofuels, culminating in a requirement to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuel into the gasoline and diesel supply in 2022. Of that total, 15 billion gallons can be met via corn based ethanol. Unfortunately, after more than a decade of this law, it has become clear that the unintended negative consequences have outweighed the benefits.

First, the law was passed before America’s energy revolution. Since the U.S. in now the world’s largest oil and gas producer, the law’s energy independence and security justification is no longer relevant. Second, the law has actually worked to the detriment of most farmers. The Clean Air Act and RFS – both of which mandated ethanol in some fashion – have driven up farmland values, which have tripled since the 1990s. However, cash rents have also gone up in concert; rising more than 130 percent in Iowa alone since the mid-90s. Since the majority of actual farmers are tenant farmers – which work over 54 percent of cropland nationally and 57 percent in Iowa – the rise in land values has just meant more money out of the average farmers’ pockets as net farm income has plummeted over the last decade. It is also the sole reason that wealthy landowners see a net return per acre over 300 times that of tenant farmers. The erosion of farm income over the last decade, which has hit tenant farmers the hardest, has occurred despite the fact ethanol use in the fuel supply has increased by over 20 times its 1990 level.

Many of the same interests benefitting from the inflated land values attributable in part to the RFS are giant global and foreign agribusiness. Foreign investors are increasingly buying up American farmland and agribusiness is increasing gobbling up massive swaths of soil. In Iowa alone, the percentage of farmland agribusiness owned grew from 20 to 40 percent between 2002 and 2017. Large, global agribusinesses are the same interests thwarting progress in controlling illegal immigration. They are the same companies that often turn their backs on American workers to pay illegal immigrants substandard wages; giving them an unfair and immoral advantage over the yeoman tenant farmer.

Finally, adding insult to injury, the RFS also advantages global oil companies and foreign biofuel interests over small to mid-sized American refiners. Escalating compliance costs for the RFS contributed to the bankruptcy of a Philadelphia refinery in 2019. With refiners expected to post historic losses for the second quarter, RFS costs could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many other American refiners. The cost for tradable credits needed to comply with the RFS have been skyrocketing all year. Historically, paying for the RFS has often exceeded the payroll of independent American refiners. Additionally, a quirk in the program allows global, integrated oil companies that own fuel retail outlets to generate more credits than they need, which independent American refiners are forced to buy for compliance.

Unfortunately, bankrupting tenant farmers and domestic refiners may not even be the worst part of the program. The true insult lies in the fact that we need foreign biofuel to comply with the RFS. Since the program mandates more ethanol than can be blended into gasoline due to engine and infrastructure constraints, U.S. refiners have had to rely on at least half a billion gallons of FOREIGN BIODIESEL in each of the last three years to meet the programs overly stringent requirements. Such result is the furthest thing from an America First energy policy.

The President promised to protect every manufacturing job and get tough on illegal immigration. Reforming the RFS would help the American farmers that are actually working in the fields and the small US refiners that are disproportionately disadvantaged relative to the global oil giants. Change is necessary to prevent global businesses and foreign interests that are already erecting barriers to sensible immigration controls from imposing additional threats real American farmers and domestic fuel manufacturers.

SOURCE

Offshore Wind Is Really A Pirate Ship on the Sea of Subsidies

The Manhattan Institute does fantastic research and a little over two weeks ago it issued a report by Jonathan Lesser that addresses the fiasco that is wind energy; offshore that is. Titled “Out to Sea: The Dismal Economics of Offshore Wind,” it illustrates the piracy occurring on those seas as wind developers ride a wave of green political correctness and raid the ships of state to steal their booty of government subsidies.

New Jersey and New York and a handful of other Northeast nincompoop states are both currently chasing wind with abandon; the abandon of economic sanity with respect to the interests of ratepayers and taxpayers. It’s one gigantic scam; a new venue for hedge fund types who want maximize government rent as a source of profits, milking consumers for every bit of it, while distorting the economics of every other form of energy. Wind has been just this sort of scam for decades now, but the production tax credits that made the theft possible are slowly be ratcheted backward, so wind energy has blown out to sea. Offshore is the new hedge fund opportunity for the pirate managers who want to empty the pockets of energy consumers.

Here are the following key findings from the report (emphasis added):

Offshore wind is not cost-effective, and the forecasts of rapidly declining costs through increasing economies of scale are unrealistic. Absent continued subsidies—such as state mandates for offshore generation and renewable energy credits, which force electric utilities to sign long-term agreements with offshore wind developers at above-market prices—it is unlikely that any offshore wind facilities will be developed. These subsidies, along with the need for additional transmission infrastructure and backup sources of electricity, will increase the cost of electricity for consumers and reduce economic growth.

The actual costs of offshore wind projects borne by electric ratepayers and taxpayers are likely to be greater than advertised. Experience in Europe over the previous decade demonstrates that the performance of offshore wind turbines degrades rapidly—on average, 4.5% per year. As output declines and maintenance costs increase, project developers will have a growing economic incentive to abandon their projects before the end of their contracts to supply power. In contrast to the strict requirements for nuclear power plants, it is unclear whether offshore wind project owners will be required to set aside sufficient funds to decommission their facilities. This will likely mean that electricity ratepayers and state taxpayers will pay to decommission offshore wind turbines or pay higher prices to keep the projects operating.

The cumulative environmental impacts of multiple offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast—including on fisheries and endangered species—may be significant and irreversible. Also, mining the raw materials of offshore wind turbines, especially rare-earth minerals, has significant environmental impacts because those materials primarily are mined overseas, where environmental regulations are less stringent than in the United States. Dismissing environmental impacts that occur outside the U.S. while championing offshore wind’s alleged worldwide climate-change benefits is hypocritical.

The justification of subsidies for offshore wind based on increased economic growth, new industries, and state job creation is an appeal to “free-lunch” economics. The subsidies will benefit the well-connected few while imposing economic costs on consumers and businesses at large.
Here are the money paragraphs (in more ways than one):

As part of its Annual Energy Outlook, which provides a long-term forecast of U.S. energy demand, EIA publishes an accompanying report on the projected costs of different types of generating resources. In its most recent report, EIA estimated the real LCOE for offshore wind facilities beginning service in 2025 as between $102.68/MWh and $155.55/MWh, with an average price of $122.25/MWh (2019$).[62] EIA estimates that the costs for offshore wind installed in 2040 will be about one-third less, with levelized costs between $74.47/MWh and $105.39/MWh, with an average price of $85.53/MWh (2019$).[63]

By comparison, the levelized cost of gas-fired combined- cycle generating units entering service in 2025 is between $33.35/MWh and $45.31/MWh, with an average price of $38.07/MWh (2019$). For 2040, EIA projects levelized costs for combined-cycle units to range between $34.27/MWh and $72.32/ MWh, with an average levelized cost of $42.89/MWh (2019$). (The higher real levelized costs in 2040 are the result of higher projected prices for natural gas.)

So, even in 2040, EIA projects that the levelized costs of gas-fired combined-cycle units will still be half the levelized cost of offshore wind generation.

There’s much more, so read the whole thing. You’ll find wind energy of the offshore sort is piracy of the worst sort and the victims are the passengers on the good ship “Energy.”

SOURCE

Environmental Disaster: Northern Europe Deforestation Up 49% Due To Effort To Meet “CO2 Targets”!

Environmental Disaster: Northern Europe Deforestation Up 49% Due To Effort To Meet “CO2 Targets”!

Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann calls it “the dumbest energy and environmental policy ever”. Now, finally, after years of being warned, Germany’s mainstream media are finally showing signs of waking up to it.

Germany’s flagship ARD public broadcasting recently presented a report earlier today about how “CO2 neutral” wood burning is leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe – a rather embarrassing development for the Europeans, who recently expressed their condemnation over Brazilian forest policy.

The ARD’s “Das Erste” reports how satellite images show deforestation has risen 49% since 2016 in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries. The reason: “Because of the CO2 targets. That sounds totally crazy but precisely because of the trend to renewable energies is in part responsible for deforestation in Estonia,” says the Das Erste moderator.

Having spent some time working for the EU, Liiana Steinberg explains in the report how she recently returned to her native Estonia and was shocked to see how much deforestation had taken place over the recent years (2:25). “I discovered how the forests no longer exists here left and right.”

For “CO2-neutral” wood pellets

Where once massive hardwoods once stood now grows tiny fir trees. The harvested trees, the report says, were used for wood pellets – a form of renewable green energy. The trees, the pellet industry says, will grow back.

Not only are the forests taking a hit, but so is the wildlife that once inhabited in them. According to Ms. Steinberg, bird life has fallen some 25%. “It’s wasted. Now we have to start all over again.”

Idiots “follow the science”

Climate activists, including the media like ARD, have long insisted that burning trees was good for the climate and environment because the emitted CO2 would simply be recycled back into nature – “follow the science” they insisted again and again. But they failed to understand that trees, depending on their age, acted as sinks and that some 100 years of stored carbon would be unloaded into the atmosphere in just a matter of hours if burned for heat.

It’s sad that they are just waking up to this (maybe).

SOURCE

Democrats want to hand climate science over to the mob

The House of Representatives had an opportunity this week to take meaningful steps toward combating climate change. But instead of proposing bipartisan reforms that would enable new clean energy technologies to flourish, Democrats opted to politicize science and add costly new regulatory hurdles that would do nothing to reduce global emissions.

Inside the new 900-page Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act is a proposal to adopt a new “community-based science” model that allows for “voluntary public participation in the scientific process.” This means that instead of allowing scientists to have the final say in conducting experiments, collecting data, interpreting results, and developing new technologies, the so-called “party of science” would let everyone have a say. They call it the “democratization of science” — and if you’re against it, you’re probably against democracy, too.

In another attempt to politicize science, the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act proposes establishing a new 26-person Environmental Justice Advisory Council to ensure the “fair treatment” of different groups based on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. They would accomplish this by taking the already cumbersome National Environmental Policy Act review process, which is used to approve new energy and infrastructure projects, and require these projects to undergo an “environmental justice” review. This review would need the consultation and meaningful participation of different groups, likely leading to long and costly litigation. Instead of accomplishing net-zero carbon emissions, this proposal would result in net-zero job growth. And instead of more justice, the Environmental Justice Advisory Council would result in fewer clean energy options for underserved communities.
Democrats claim to have the moral high ground when talking about their lofty goals of decarbonizing our economy in the next decade. But by prioritizing complex regulations and woke mandates over innovation and markets, they curtail the causes they claim to support.

Despite the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act featuring some good proposals, Democrats inserted so many social justice poison pills that the legislative package is unworkable. On Monday, the White House issued a veto threat. The Left and the media will use this as evidence to say Republicans don’t care about climate change, but as the White House said in a statement:

The Administration supports clean energy, job development, and the innovation economy and adheres to a bottom-up energy philosophy that promotes free-markets, funds scientific research, and honors the choices of producers and consumers. This bill, however, would implement a top-down approach that would undermine the Administration’s deregulatory agenda and empower the government to select favored solutions while reinstating big-government policies and programs.

Republicans know the regulatory process has to be workable for companies to be able to succeed in not only innovating clean-energy technologies, but actually getting them into communities that need them most. They have already led on a number of bipartisan bills to make technologies such as advanced nuclear energy, carbon capture, and energy storage more viable. And this week, they introduced legislation that would make innovation possible by making the regulatory process more efficient for clean energy companies to build.

Instead of furthering an agenda that’s designed to appease far-Left activist mobs, Democrats should work across the aisle with their Republican colleagues who are offering serious, science-based solutions for a clean energy future.

So, don’t believe the false narrative that Republicans aren’t doing anything to reduce global emissions. Considering the anti-science framework of the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, it’s quite the opposite. Republicans are serious, and it’s time Democrats are, too.

SOURCE

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

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29 September, 2020

Gavin Newsom’s Brilliant Plan to Create More Energy Shortages

California Governor Gavin Newsom had a pretty bad summer. His state is still in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic, he’s had problems with riots and political unrest, and he can’t beg, borrow, or steal enough power to keep the lights on.

Fortunately, he has a plan. Close the beaches to deal with the pandemic, make nice with rioters so they don’t totally burn down the cities, and promise the people that he has a plan to deal with the rolling blackouts.

Will he throw open his state to offshore oil drilling? Will he allow drilling on state lands? Will he expand hydraulic fracturing?

Nothing so mundane, I’m afraid. You see, Gavin is allergic to fossil fuels. To prove it, he ordered that within 15 years, no gasoline-powered cars will be sold within the state. He is also demanding an end to fracking.

Assuming that residents of California haven’t suddenly developed an interest in walking, they are going to have to be driving something. So Newsom wants Californians to use electric vehicles to get around.

As Forbes‘ David Blackmon points out, there’s only one teensy-weensy problem with that plan.

Think about it this way: Newsom contemplates the elimination of millions of cars that generate their energy through the use of gasoline and diesel in just 15 years. He proposes to replace them all with EVs or supposedly hydrogen powered cars as their feasibility continues to advance.

The thing is, those millions of new EVs have to have their batteries charged regularly, just as users of gas-powered cars must fill up their tanks every few hundred miles. The energy needed to power the charging stations which charge those batteries must be generated either by hooking them up to the state’s power grid, or by hooking them up to a generator, most often one that is powered by either gasoline, diesel or natural gas.

Oh.

California’s electrical needs will grow at exactly the same time Newsom is reducing the amount of electricity the state can generate. I’m sure the governor has all sorts of charts and graphs showing that the energy shortfall from the ban on fracking and a massive increase in the use of electrical power can disappear if the state puts up enough windmills and solar panels.

Sort of like the last time someone raised that point when he assured Californians that despite the decline in power-generating plants, the wind and solar industry could make up the difference.

How’d that work out for ya, Gav?

Maybe he could initiate an electrical plant building crash program to make up the difference?

The big complication for Gov. Newsom here is that the policies he and his predecessors have adopted for his state’s power generation sector have rendered the building of substantial new baseload power plants fired by fossil fuels or nuclear economically and environmentally unfeasible. In fact, the state’s final nuclear facility is scheduled to be decommissioned by 2025, eliminating that source of clean energy for California consumers entirely.

What Newsom and his supporters propose to affect here is a massive transfer of energy generation capacity from the state’s transportation sector, in the form of internal combustion engines, to its power sector. They apparently believe that enormous transfer of generation capacity can be handled entirely through the installation of more windmills and solar panels, given that they have basically made the building of any other energy generating source unfeasible, if not illegal.

This seems like energy hubris on an historic scale.

More like stupidity and arrogance.

Newsom blamed the summer power shortages on the industry. His friends in the solar and wind industries had overpromised how much power they could deliver in a crunch. Why should Californians believe them now?

SOURCE

Say No to Biden’s Dim Bulb Energy Schemes

President Donald Trump’s energy policies have created an America that is energy independent for the first time in 60 years. That means we produce more energy than we consume. As a result, the price we pay now at the pump and to heat our homes is relatively affordable.

But Dan Kish, a distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Energy Research said that could all change if Joe Biden is elected president. Kish said Biden’s Green New Deal energy plan would make America wholly reliant on countries like China and Russia.

On his campaign website, Biden touts that his energy policies would “go well beyond the Obama-Biden Administration platform” and even “go much further” than the Paris climate agreement.

Biden even touts that he oversaw the failed 2009 Recovery Act, part of the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus. That’s nothing to be proud of considering that under this program taxpayers lost more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in loans to startups including Fisker Automotive, Abound Solar and Solyndra, which all went bankrupt after receiving large government loans intended to help them bring green technologies to market.

“Trump solves the energy problem and Biden’s proposals cause energy problems,” said Kish, who has more than 25 years of experience in natural resource and energy policy, including as chief of staff for the Republicans on the House Resources Committee.

Kish said Trump and Biden could not be further apart in terms of their energy agendas.

“The entire world depends on concentrated energy sources like oil, natural gas, and coal. But Biden wants to ban anything that produces carbon dioxide by 2035,” Kish said. That means America would have to rely solely on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, which Kish said would put us at the mercy of China because China “controls the supply chain of everything needed for the solar and wind energy infrastructure.”

Kish said that the degree to which the United States would be dependent on China for our energy would be far worse than our past energy reliance on the Middle East.

“At the peak of our dependency, we relied on [the Middle East] for about 20 percent of our oil,” explained Kish. But he says under a Biden green energy plan, we would be relying far more on China.

Kish noted that the new fracking technology which allows energy companies to drill horizontally into veins of oil and gas plays a large role in our new energy independence.

“Trump wants to continue his idea that America should be energy dominant and Joe Biden wants to go down this road of stopping us from using the oil and gas and coal that we have in enormous abundance, all based on climate,” Kish said.

Kish noted that the environmental movement started with the goal to have cleaner air by reducing vehicle pollutants. He said we have achieved that goal.

“We have cleaner air than we’ve ever had,” Kish said. He added that a car today driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour puts out less emissions than a car just sitting in the driveway with its engine turned off did 50 years ago.

While Americans are enjoying affordable, reliable energy now, we should not become complacent in this election. If Biden wins the presidency, his policies would make us energy dependent on China, giving Beijing control of the entire supply chain for the Green New Deal. It’s almost as if we could call it the China New Deal.

SOURCE

Science is now just another wing of politics

When science so readily attaches itself to politics, policies and candidates, it loses all claim to objectivity.

Earlier this month, Scientific American broke with what it claims is its 175-year history of political neutrality to endorse US presidential candidate, Joe Biden. According to the magazine’s editorial: ‘The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the US and its people.’ Strong stuff. But what field of science produced this judgement? Physics, perhaps? Chemistry? Biology? None of them, of course. The truth is that institutional science has willingly politicised itself and prostituted itself to power to such an extent that it no longer understands the difference between politics and science.

SciAm’s editorial, though, is not as much an endorsement of Biden as it is a shrill moral litany of Trump’s crimes: his handling of the pandemic and of healthcare, and his battles with national and global bureaucracies. Biden, by contrast, argued the editorial, ‘is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment’. Really? Are scientists so easily moved by such crass good-vs-evil political framing?

SciAm was not alone in nailing its political colours to the mast. In the journal Science, editor Herbert Holden Thorp wrote recently that ‘Trump lied about science’. But this view, too, requires rather more interpretation than science. Among Trump’s deadly crimes listed by Thorp was ‘the opening of colleges and schools’. The bastard!

The problem for the editorial teams of both publications is that assent to scientific facts and the drafting and execution of policy are different things. In no area is this confusion more clear than climate change. It was President Barack Obama who, in 2013, said:

‘Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.’

Obama’s speech epitomises the problem from the other side. It was not the ‘overwhelming judgement of science’ that extreme weather events on their own or together were more frequent and intense. At best, this remains a matter of controversy. Moreover, extreme events would have to become very many times more frequent and intense to register as greater problems than extreme weather has caused America in the past – let alone become America’s most urgent problems. Obama, who Biden served as vice president, departed from the facts here. But few scientists rushed to condemn him for this.

Put simply, Obama’s speech flattered institutional science and the global political institutions which President Trump has sought to withdraw the US from – namely, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the 2015 Paris Agreement. But neither assent to nor dissent from facts and science have anything to do with the president’s political choices.

After all, it’s not as if the WHO has covered itself in scientific glory during this pandemic. Why wouldn’t a president ask questions about his country’s support for it? And similarly, as I have pointed out many times on spiked, the Paris Agreement is fundamentally anti-democratic. That might lead some to conclude that the basis of such a claim is ‘science denial’, but this would be to repeat the mistake of confusing political and scientific arguments. Climate change can be understood (and dealt with) as a problem without yielding sovereignty to undemocratic global technocracies.

This confusion runs deep in today’s most high-pitched political claims. One reason for this is that science is increasingly expected to carry the moral, economic and political weight for increasingly worthless political campaigns. Scientific authority – institutional science – can easily produce estimates of a political leader’s policy failures in the crude terminology of body counts. But such estimates are not like the isolation of a gene that causes a disease, or the identification of a new particle.

The SciAm editorial, for example, claims that ‘In his ongoing denial of reality, Trump has hobbled US preparations for climate change’, and that the ‘changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths’. But ‘heat-related deaths’ turns out not to be a phenomenon that is as easily detected by science as it is explained by economics. Wealthier people do not drop dead in the heat. Global agreements to cut carbon emissions will arguably make many Americans significantly poorer – destroying industries and hiking up the cost of energy. Poverty increases people’s exposure to extreme weather (climate changing or not). Meanwhile, the curbs these international agreements place on democracy hobble the public’s ability to improve their conditions. Besides, it is a cascade of unsound assumptions – not science – which link extreme-weather events to their putative social consequences. An entirely ideological worldview is required to believe the promise that a global climate institution can make things better for anyone at all, least of all for the poor.

The idea that policies can be ‘fact-based’ or ‘science-based’ is itself an ideological claim, no matter how hard we wish for it to be otherwise. Scientists making such claims try to pass themselves off as honest brokers. But they fail to ask scientific questions that might cause them to see ‘heat-related deaths’ as an economic problem, rather than a meteorological problem. The idea that a global bureaucracy established to enforce a ban on combustion will do more for poor people than making them wealthier is a demonstration of the cynical contempt that today’s champions of ‘science’ hold for ordinary people. They think that poverty is a function of weather. Trump might appeal to voters who know and can see for themselves that it is not.

The notion of the Green New Deal was established on the US left to overcome the obvious green indifference to people’s living standards. ‘Biden’, says the SciAm editorial, ‘wants to spend $2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035’, and this agenda ‘will produce two million jobs for US workers’. It sounds fantastic. But it is a fantasy. Simple arithmetic reveals that each job will cost a million dollars to ‘create’, whereas the green infrastructure will yield no net benefit to Americans, who will have to pay the extra in increased costs of living.

The thing that has typically restrained such absurd political advocacy in the past has been the idea that science could see past the petty world of politics and ideology. Scientific authority comes from the scientific method, which aims to weed out the influence of ideology and other interests. But there is science as a process, and science as an institution. As democratic processes have been emptied of competing political visions, scientific authority has been increasingly sought in lieu of political vision to give a seemingly objective purpose to politics. But the idea that institutional science, by virtue of the scientific method, escapes political ideology is equivalent to the idea that clergymen can commit no evil, by virtue of their membership of the church.

This political expectation of science both precedes the science and precludes scientific and democratic debate. In 2014, Obama’s then science adviser, John Holdren, attacked Professor Roger Pielke Jr, whose work, claimed Holdren, lay outside the ‘scientific mainstream’. Pielke, despite being consistently and categorically ‘pro-climate’, has upset ambitious climate policymakers for pointing out that alarmism, rather than science, underpins the urgent case for such policies. ‘When a political appointee uses his position not just to disagree on science or policy but to seek to delegitimise a colleague, he has gone too far’, wrote Pielke in reply to Holdren’s poorly conceived smear campaign.

The Democrats’ war on scientific dissenters intensified the following year, when Representative Raúl Grijalva, now chair but then a member of the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, launched an investigation into seven academics. Grijalva demanded university authorities provide disclosure of the researchers’ (including Pielke’s) funding sources and all private correspondence relating to testimony they had given to congressional meetings. The investigation was roundly condemned as an attack on academic freedom and yielded nothing except harassment and smears.

In the mid-2000s, author Chris Mooney made a name for himself documenting what he called a ‘Republican war on science’. This framing led ultimately to Mooney believing, on no more a scientific footing, that the brains of Republicans and Democrats had different structures – meaning that the former had less aptitude for science than the latter. This pathological view of politics and science is clearly more than science can bear. Yet complaints about this burden put on it by political advocates from science are few and far between.

Similarly, calls to ‘unite behind the science’ come from campaigners across the world, all of a similar political bent. Yet asking what ‘the science’ actually is or says typically yields accusations of ‘science denial’, rather than explanation. ‘Unite behind the science’, but don’t question it. Because only Republicans, climate-change deniers, creationists and Brexiteers might have the sort of dysfunctional mental hardware that dares to question science, right?

Science has nothing to do with it. There is nothing that any Democratic-supporting scientist, journal editor or campaigner can say about their opposite numbers’ candidates that is not true of their own. It turns out that politicians lie, and take liberties with facts, even when they hide behind science. And now scientific journal editors not only seem to be confused about where science ends and politics begins, but they also mistake their own political outlooks for science itself. The only logic of it is that to challenge the party that had declared itself the champion of (institutional) science would be to declare hostility to science.

That academia has become dominated by a political tendency is hardly news. The shameless advocacy for political candidates by seemingly reputable journals is a new development, but it merely formalises entrenched positions. Behind it is not, as they like to think, arguments from scientific objectivity, but arguments that are as questionable and take as many liberties with facts as any presidential candidate’s. They depend on a whitewashed role of institutional science during the Covid-19 crisis, and on extremely alarmist interpretations of climate change and on other things that may well only count as ‘science’ because increasingly politicised institutional science has excluded challengers from its ranks – just as Grijalva’s witch hunt, Holdren’s censure, and Mooney’s slander intended.

When institutional science attaches itself to politics, to support candidates, it loses any claim to objectivity, and any ability to speak truth to power. Science and SciAm will be unable to say anything about either president’s claims without bringing their own conflicted positions to the spotlight. If Biden wins, scientific institutions like important journals will become mere cronies. And if Trump wins, they will look like bitter losers. Scientists risk creating a situation in which society will no longer trust in the objectivity of institutional science. They have squandered scientific authority on a political gamble. Perhaps if scientists had been more questioning of both Obama and the Democrats they might have spared themselves the ordeal of Trump.

SOURCE

Jacinda Ardern vows to ban plastic cutlery, straws and single-use coffee cups as part of her new waste policy

This is crazy. Single use things are a major help in avoiding virus infections

Jacinda Ardern has vowed to ban plastic cutlery, single-use coffee cups and fruit stickers if she wins the election.

The New Zealand prime minister announced her new zero waste police on Sunday and pledged $50million to research plastic alternatives, pending ballot results on October 17.

Businesses will have five years to find substitutes to everyday plastic items, such as disposable cups and lids, straws and drink stirrers.

‘By 2025 we will phase out single use and hard to recycle plastic items such as drink stirrers, cutlery, some cups and lids, produce bags, straws, cotton buds and stickers on produce,’ Ms Ardern said, according to Stuff.

‘All of these items currently have non-plastic alternatives, and some we will be able to phase out before 2025.’

The Labour leader accelerated the policy after she received a series of letters from children who expressed concern over waste. ‘The letters really made a mark on me,’ she said

It is expected to be welcomed by businesses and generate employment opportunities for plastic alternative manufacturers.

About $3million was previously given to packaging company Pact to develop a range of recycled food packaging for deli foods, meats and bakery trays at its Auckland location.

While Labour previously announced an intention to ban single-use plastics, it did not include a time frame.

The announcement comes as the nation is plunged into a recession for the first time in a decade following the draconian lockdowns enforced to curb the spread of COVID-19.

New Zealand saw its economy shrink by a record 12.2 per cent in the June quarter.

The eye-watering figures, released in September by Statistics New Zealand, are significantly more severe than Australia’s record seven per cent plummet during the same period.

The nation went into a strict lockdown on March 25 and emerged from it on June 8 as part of an elimination strategy.

Residents were ordered to stay home to prevent the deadly virus from spreading.

Figures showed construction activity was down 26 per cent, manufacturing fell by 13 per cent, and household spending was down by 12 per cent when compared with the previous quarter.

Stats NZ spokesman Paul Pascoe said the closure of New Zealand’s borders since March 19 had also had a huge effect of some sectors of the economy.

‘Industries like retail, accommodation and restaurants, and transport saw significant declines in production because they were most directly affected by the international travel ban and strict nationwide lockdown,’ he said.

‘Other industries, like food and beverage manufacturing, were essential services and fell much less.’

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the lockdown was necessary to save thousands of lives and get on top of the virus so the economy could bounce back faster.

SOURCE

28 September, 2020

Conservative groups rally to save Pebble Mine

Americans for Limited Government, along with 65 other conservative groups, sent a letter to President Trump this week urging him not to allow political meddling in the permitting process for the Pebble Mine in Alaska.

Just hours after sending the letter of support for the embattled project, Tom Collier, CEO for the Pebble Limited Partnership, which is owned by Canada-based Northern Dynasty, resigned following the release of recorded comments in which it says he “embellished” relationships with elected and regulatory officials.

A Pebble spokesman says Collier will be replaced on an interim basis by the company’s former CEO John Shively.

“John Shively is the exact kind of steady hand that Pebble Mine needs to steer it to completion,” said Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government, a long-time supporter of the project. “His reputation as a lowkey executive who gets things done will serve the company and our nation well as this mine is developed and we take a giant step towards rare earth mineral independence.”

The upheaval comes amidst concerns of high-level political interference in the mine. Insiders believe White House meddling has resulted in further regulatory delays aimed at killing the project which would be the largest gold and copper mine in North America. Pebble Mine also has a large deposit of rhenium used in military aircraft and is a key component in aircraft engines.

The letter, spearheaded by the Conservative Action Project, said these delay tactics harken back to “the bad old days when the Obama administration misused its Clean Water Act authority and used bogus science to veto the project before an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) had even been submitted.”

In July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its final environmental impact statement (E.I.S.) for the Pebble Mine project by concluding that the project would not lead to “long-term changes in the health of the commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay,” under normal conditions.

The E.I.S. noted that the mine would provide significant tax revenue to Alaska, create well-paying jobs in an increasingly poverty-stricken region, and “provide a domestic resource of raw materials lowering the United States reliance on foreign sources.”

However, before the Corps made its final record of decision, old claims were again raised that the mine would threaten the salmon and destroy hunting and fishing opportunities for wealthy sportsmen. All of these claims were fully considered by the Army Corps in the E.I.S. process and dismissed on the basis of overwhelming scientific evidence.

As a result of this meddling, in August, the Army Corps of Engineers wrote that Pebble Mine would “cause unavoidable adverse impacts to aquatic resources” in the area and is requiring the mine “in-kind compensatory mitigation within the Koktuli River Watershed … [to] compensate for all direct and indirect impacts caused by discharges into aquatic resources at the mine site.”

In short, the Corps reversed itself by throwing up a roadblock in the mine’s progress, just one month after issuing a favorable environmental impact report.

“As conservatives, we applaud the progress President Trump has made toward achieving energy independence for the first time in 60 years,” noted Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government. “We support his administration’s broad regulatory reform agenda and his continuing push to remove obstacles to environmental permitting of natural resource and infrastructure projects. But this regulatory delay appears to be a clear case of political interference. It was inappropriate when President Obama did it and it’s still inappropriate today.”

So, while the Pebble Mine prepares to submit its mitigation plan, Americans for Limited Government is hopeful the regulatory process will move forward in strict accordance with the law and without further delays based on groundless claims.

Were political meddling to kill the mine, it would undermine one of President Trump’s campaign promises, to create jobs by rolling back burdensome and onerous federal regulations. It would also discourage the mining industry, which is at a low ebb in the United States as the result of decades of regulatory suffocation, from making other multi-billion-dollar investments to take advantage of America’s vast mineral potential.

Pebble Mine is vital to the economic future for the people living in the Bristol Bay watershed (an area the size of Ohio) and for the State of Alaska. It is located in a remote area where there are few jobs for native villagers and where endemic poverty has fostered serious social dislocations. The recent collapse in oil prices is a painful reminder that Alaska’s economy is overly dependent on oil production and must diversify if it is to flourish in the future.

The mine’s economic benefits go far beyond the jobs in Alaska. The Pebble ore body contains colossal quantities of copper, gold, and molybdenum, as well other strategic minerals like rhenium used in aircraft engines. The mine will provide minerals that are critical to high-tech industries in America and the world and create tens of billions of dollars of economic activity across the country.

SOURCE

A Century of Wrong Federal Forest Policy

I live in Klamath Falls, Oregon which is a wonderful community. Klamath Falls is in southern Oregon just 20 miles North of the California border. Klamath County has large private and public forests, many large cattle ranches, and beautiful marshes and lakes, which attract thousands of migratory birds throughout the year.

When I started writing this blog, I was looking at the mountains that surround the magnificent Crater Lake. Now eight days later, I have not seen the mountains surrounding Crater Lake and have quit taking my morning walk. There are fires all around Klamath Falls. Fires that have been reoccurring for the last few summers. Most disturbing is that a very high percentage of these fires should have been prevented.

Two years ago, then California Governor Jerry Brown said the fires were a “new normal” because of global warming. This claim was refuted by University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass, who told the Daily Caller, “Global warming may contribute slightly, but the key factors are mismanaged forests, years of fire suppression, increased population, people living where they should not, invasive flammable species, and the fact that California has always had fire.”

This post will focus on the history of forest fires, mismanagement, and suppression and how that impacted the people and industries living near the forests’ fires.

California has Always had Fires

As Professor Mass stated, California has throughout history had naturally caused fires. Scientists estimate that before Europeans arrived, 4.4 million acres of California burned annually, which is 16 times larger than the amount that burned in 2019.

California has two separate fire problems. There are the coastal scrub brush fires that include the notorious Santa Ana fires spread by devastating winds. The Sierra Nevada fires are the high-altitude pine forests that are now burning in California and Oregon mountains.

Mismanaging the Forest

The mismanagement occurred from decisions made during President Clinton’s administration. A combination of listing the Northern Spotted Owl on the endangered specifies list and strong pressure for saving old growth timber by numerous environmental organizations reduced the timber harvest substantially. Worse, it also greatly reduced active management of the forest – thinning, prescribed burns and clearing underbrush. As a comparison, the amount of timber harvested from Forest Service land from 1960 until 1990 was an average of 10 million feet each year. Between 1991 and 2000 the harvest was purposely reduced. From 2000 to 2013 the decline was a precipitous – 80 percent.

Two years ago, in The Daily Caller interview, Bob Zybach, an experienced forester with a Ph.D. in environmental science, described the Forest Service practices up to 1990, “Mostly fuels were removed through logging, active management — which they stopped — and grazing. You take away logging, grazing and maintenance, and you get firebombs.”

While bad fires still happen on state and private lands, most of the massive blazes happen on or around lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies, Zybach said. Poor management has turned western forests into “slow-motion time bombs.”

Years of Fire Suppression

For over a century in the West, the general procedure was to stop a forest fire as quickly as possible. “We have put out fires for 100 years. Now we are paying the price,” said Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley. “It will take a while to make these forests healthy again. But it’s absolutely possible.” Stephen noted that the Sierra mountains typically had about 40 trees per acre in the early 1800s. Now they have 400 or more, creating heavy brush and thick forests, which explode when ignited.

Incompetent Federal Government

The federal government has created dangerous and deadly fires. A century of wrong policies and mismanagement has caused enormous economic damage to hundreds of small lumber producing towns. It has also harmed America by denying the beneficial use of the timber.

Now, former Governor Jerry Brown and many environmentalists are attempting to connect the fires to climate change, which will greatly exacerbate the government made fire disaster which plagues much of the American West.

Solution: Sell Most of the Government Lands

Unfortunately, after a century of incompetent policy and mismanagement, mostly caused by the contradictory demands of environmentalists, it is difficult to believe the federal government will properly pass beneficial legislation that will substantially increase logging, properly thin forests and wisely activate prescribed burns. Therefore, I proffer to sell much of the forest lands for two reasons. First, those of us living in the timber communities of the rural West know which lands are owned by private citizens and which are owned by the Forest Service. Private owners manage and protect their assets by harvesting, thinning and prescribed burns. Second, the federal government with enormous and dangerous debt augmented by the pandemic and lockdowns needs the revenue.

Selling government-owned forests is a win-win. I will gladly assist any organization that wants to promote selling government forests.

SOURCE

Global climate goals ‘virtually impossible’ without carbon capture, IEA says

Trees do that, using thermonuclear power

A growing number of countries and companies are targeting net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by around the middle of the century in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

To reach that, the amount of CO2 captured must rocket to 800 million tonnes in 2030 from around 40 million tonnes today, the IEA, which advises industrialised nations on energy policies, said in a report.

Up to $160 billion needs to be invested in the technology by 2030, a ten-fold increase from the previous decade, it added.

“Without it, our energy and climate goals will become virtually impossible to reach,” the IEA head Fatih Birol said in a statement.

The global economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic risks delaying or cancelling projects dependent on public support, the IEA said.

An oil price slide had also reduced revenues for existing CCUS facilities selling CO2 for so-called enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

However, the IEA added: “Economic recovery packages are a unique window of opportunity for governments to support CCUS alongside other clean energy technologies.”

Referring to a major investment to build two carbon capture plants and an offshore CO2 storage facility, Birol said: “Norway showed its leadership in Europe by making a major funding commitment to the Longship project.”Nonetheless, the story of CCUS has largely been “one of unmet expectations”, marred by lack of commercial incentives, large capital costs and public opposition to storage, especially onshore, the IEA said.

In 2009, the IEA called for 100 large-scale CCUS projects to be built by 2020 to store around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year. To date, just 20 commercial projects are in operation, capturing around 40 million tonnes per year

SOURCE

Bad Policies Fuel Fires

“The debate is over around climate change!” says California Governor Gavin Newsom, smirking, strangely.

They’re eager to blame climate change for the wildfires in their state. I’m surprised they didn’t say it causes COVID-19, too.

Newsom, ridiculously, says wildfires are another reason to get more electric cars on the road. I wonder if he even knows that electricity for such cars comes from natural gas.

“This catastrophizing around climate change is just a huge distraction,” says environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, author of the new bestseller, “Apocalypse Never,”

Shellenberger says: “Climate change is real, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not our most serious environmental problem.”

California warmed 3 degrees over the past 50 years, but that’s not the main cause of California’s fires, no matter how often politicians and the media say it is.

Why do they keep saying it?

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” says Shellenberger. “Every weather event you blame on climate change.”

What actually is to blame, as usual, is stupid government policies.

Forests are supposed to burn. If there aren’t small fires, debris from dead trees and plants accumulate. That provides fuel for big, deadlier fires, that are more likely to burn out of control.

But for years, governments and environmentalists put out every small fire they could, while also fighting logging.

Megafires could have been avoided if forests had just been better managed.

An example is Shaver Lake forest, managed by Southern California Edison. The company thinned that forest, creating fire breaks with selective logging. When the wildfires reached Shaver Lake, they diminished into low intensity “surface fire.” That protected the bigger, older trees.

Forests in America’s west were supposed to burn more often, says Shellenberger. “When Europeans came, they reported California being very smoky and on fire during the summers. And Native Americans burned huge amounts of land.”

“So, for the past years, it’s been unnaturally un-smoky?” I ask.

“It’s what a lot of forest ecosystems require,” answers Shellenberger. “We haven’t had enough fires for maybe 100 years.”

But it’s hard to convince governments to allow small fires when politicians demand that every fire be put out, and the media call every fire a disaster.

Recently, wildfire hit the ancient redwoods in Big Basin State Park. Politicians and East Coast environmental reporters worried about the redwoods disappearing.

But of course, they didn’t.

“Redwood trees and other old growth, the bark is very thick, it’s fire-resistant,” says Shellenberger.

The politicians didn’t know that. “They’re still standing!” giggled an astonished Newsom after the fire passed.

But “it was exactly what you would expect,” says Shellenberger. “Journalists go, ‘Wow. What a surprise! The ancient redwoods didn’t burn down!’ Nobody’s more alienated from the natural environment, and nobody’s more apocalyptic than environmental journalists.”

Well, maybe politicians.

For years, they and environmentalists increased the risk of big fires by opposing the thinning of forests.

The town of Berry Creek, California, tried to get permits to legally clear their forest. For two years, regulators delayed approval. This year, fire destroyed the town.

Forest Service ecologist Hugh Safford wishes they would “get away from the tree-hugging mentality. It’s the classic ‘not seeing the forest for the trees.'”

This year’s wildfires finally persuaded politicians to allow more people to cut trees down.

“There’s actually widespread agreement on this, says Shellenberger. “The governor of California and President Trump recently signed an agreement to clear much more area. Even the Sierra Club, which opposed the thinning of forests, has now changed its tune.”

It’s about time.

Politicians and environmentalists, eager to raise money, cite climate change and blame fossil fuels for problem after problem.

While climate change is a problem, Shellenberger points out, “the number of deaths from natural disasters declined 90% over the last hundred years. A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe.”

SOURCE

27 September, 2020

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday ordered all passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035 to fight climate change and smog-fouled air

The transportation sector causes more than half of California’s carbon pollution, and parts of the state are vexed by some of the most toxic air in the country, according to the governor’s office.

“For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe,” Newsom said in a release.

“Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse — and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.”

The order was described as an aggressive effort to move the state further away from reliance on climate changing fossil fuels.

Regulations will be developed to mandate that all in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks be zero-emission by the year 2035, and that all medium- and heavy-duty trucks be emission-free by 2045 “where feasible.”

The order won’t prevent California residents from owning gasoline-powered cars or selling used models, according to the governor’s office.

It does call for partnerships with private businesses to speed up creation of charging networks for electric cars and stations for non-polluting fuels such as hydrogen.

California is a major car market, but devastating wildfires have become frequent occurences as climate change leaves trees and brush tinder-dry.

Infernos across California, Oregon and Washington states have burned more than five million acres (two million hectares) this year, killed dozens of people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

California-based Tesla on Tuesday said it is slashing battery costs to speed a global shift to renewable energy, and could have a $25,000 self-driving model available in three years or so.

SOURCE

The long-running debate over greening the land

The BBC has learned that cash could be diverted away from funding ambitious conservation projects in the UK and towards protecting farm businesses. But how should farmers be rewarded for tending the land?

The EU’s farm policy has been no stranger to controversy.

Under this system, farmers have been collecting taxpayers’ money according to the amount of land they own.

The government promised that after Brexit, farmers would only be rewarded if they tend the land in a way that’s good for society.

But that’s proving a challenge. How does one assess the relative value of, for example, reducing water pollution vs connecting fragmented habitats?

To understand the background to the current debate over farm payments, it’s useful to go back in time to World War Two.

The UK’s farm subsidies system started after the war, which had cruelly exposed the vulnerability of Europe’s food supplies to German U-boats.

Those subsidies paid farmers to increase food production, so that’s what they did. And in the EU, an aggressive farmers’ lobby fought to keep them that way.

Farmers, being business folk, followed the money. Production of crops and livestock soared, but before long food production outstripped demand.

Huge quantities of produce had to be stored in so-called wine lakes and butter mountains.

The EU off-loaded cut-price food to countries in the global south – but farmers there complained they were undercut by Europe’s subsidised food.

How did the subsidies affect the countryside?

Subsidies transformed the countryside. Wetlands were drained, rivers polluted with fertiliser and fields expanded as hedges disappeared.

Insects were wiped out by pesticides, and this contributed to a 57% decline, on average, in the farmland birds index between 1970 and 2018.

The EU changed the system of payments. Instead of being encouraged to grow extra food, farmers were paid directly according to how much land they manage. So, the bigger the farm, the bigger the subsidy.

What is the government’s plan to improve the countryside?

The former Environment Secretary Michael Gove said farmers should only get paid if they provided a public service. He coined the phrase “public money for public goods”.

Those goods would include helping wildlife, catching flood waters on fields, planting woods to soak up carbon emissions and improving the soil.

The reform will be delivered through the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) – and pilot projects are due to start next year.

But ministers are also drawing up a parallel grants scheme called the Sustainable Farming Incentive to reward farmers for basic activities like conserving their soil.

This scheme has proven controversial with environmentalists, who argue that improving farmland soil makes good business sense and so shouldn’t be funded by the taxpayer.

How will the improvements be delivered?

Three tiers of grants are planned through ELMS, according to the level of ambition. Tier One will improve air quality by curbing gas from livestock, reducing water pollution and tending to hedges and grassland.

Tier Two will pay for new ponds and woodlands. Tier Three will deliver landscape changes by connecting fragmented habitats and planting new forests – or re-wilding.

Is it all going smoothly?

Of course not. This is a problem of mind-numbing complexity.

How, for instance, will ministers strike the right balance between payments for re-introducing grey partridge, or capturing heavy rainfall, or increasing organic matter in the soil?

What is the value of a tonne of stored carbon versus an increase in the number of rare small blue butterflies? And how many butterflies are enough, anyway?

Does that mean it’s getting delayed?

Farmers and environmentalists alike are frustrated that the scheme is held up with the environment department, Defra. Farmers need clarity to plan for the future.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, fear that the department is leaning too far to please farmers in Tier One of the scheme.

They say it’s looking as though farmers may be paid for basic activities like improving soil health which, they argue, are good business practice anyway.

SOURCE

Protecting Wetlands: Environmental Federalism and Grassroots Conservation in the Prairie Pothole Region

Abstract

Wetlands provide a multitude of benefits including flood protection, clean water, carbon sequestration, and critical species habitat. Given that wetlands are valuable natural resources, it is important to better understand the extent to which federal regulation impacts optimal wetlands conservation.

Where federal regulation under the 2015 Clean Water Rule abrogated the ability of the states to make certain regulatory decisions over their waters, the recently promulgated Navigable Waters Protection Rule—that narrows the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS)—may create new opportunities for alternative wetlands conservation strategies.

This Article examines five states in the Prairie Pothole Region to evaluate the integral roles the federal government, state governments, and private organizations have in wetlands conservation. Environmental federalism considers the optimal balance of federal and state regulation in achieving complementary environmental protection.

Insofar as scaling back federal regulation over isolated wetlands reduces conflict between federal regulators and private landowners, private organizations can more effectively align economic incentives with voluntary conservation objectives.

This Article concludes with an examination of Ducks Unlimited, the world’s largest waterfowl and wetlands conservation organization, as a case study for private conservation and public-private action in the region.

SOURCE

Australia: Leftist State government suppports copper miner

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday scored a trifecta — a high-vis jacket, a hard hat and a marginal seat.

The setting was a copper refinery in southern Townsville, and the announcement was an undisclosed “one-off incentive” payment to global resources company Glencore.

The 2020 state election campaign is indeed ramping up.

The reason for handing over taxpayers’ money to a global company is to “secure the jobs of more than 1,000 people”, but the public is given no opportunity to scrutinise this.

In effect, we’re being asked to accept Glencore’s assertion it needs the money to continue its Australian copper operations and to accept the Government’s word it has secured the best deal possible.

But in the context of the looming election, the Government’s bargaining position doesn’t look strong, with hundreds of jobs at stake in some of the state’s most marginal seats.

Glencore has been threatening to shut down its Mount Isa copper smelter and Townsville copper refinery for the best part of a decade.

A planned closure in 2016 was staved off when the Queensland Government agreed to amend environmental-licensing conditions — a deal which ensured the smelter and refinery would stay open until at least 2022.

With that deadline approaching, Glencore this year announced its copper operations were again under review, with a final decision to be made just before the state election.

The Glencore refinery is smack bang in the middle of the electorate of Mundingburra, and a short drive to the nearby electorates of Townsville and Thuringowa.

All three seats are held by Labor by the smallest of margins, and given Labor only has a majority of two seats in Parliament, it’s impossible to underestimate the refinery’s political importance.

Government ‘leaving Queenslanders in the dark’
At a media conference on Tuesday, the Premier said the “investment” in the copper operations was “commercial in confidence”.

Ms Palaszczuk argued it was about “securing the jobs of more than 1,000 people in Mount Isa and Townsville for the next three years”.

Treasurer Cameron Dick would only go as far as revealing it was a “multi-million-dollar” deal.

“We enter into a number of arrangements with corporations and companies which support jobs, and we don’t make any apologies for that,” Mr Dick said.

Glencore Australia provided more detail in its public statement, describing the Government’s contribution as a “one-off incentive”.

“In addition to this incentive, Glencore will invest more than $500 million for the continued operation of the copper smelter and refinery,” the statement said.

“This incentive will partially mitigate the negative cost of continuing these assets which face high costs and struggle to compete internationally.”

Professor of economics at the University of Queensland John Quiggin said it was “pretty striking” this deal was announced as global copper prices had surged.

The business news service Bloomberg reported the global copper market could be “on the cusp of a historical supply squeeze as Chinese demand runs red hot”.

Professor Quiggin said the Mount Isa smelter had repeatedly been on the brink of closure since 2011.

“So, this decision isn’t really related to the pandemic or the global market,” he said.

Economist Fabrizio Carmignani from Griffith University said a subsidy from the Government made sense if the operation was facing some temporary difficulty.

“[However] from the statement of Glencore, it would look like their problems are structural — high fixed costs, unable to compete,” he said.

While he understood the need to protect jobs, Professor Carmignani said structural problems needed to be tackled by longer-term plans.

SOURCE

25 September, 2020

The Observer [Leftist] view on Boris Johnson’s environmentalism

Boris is pretty sane so he can be expected to do mostly tokenistic things. He relies on Northern seats for his government and they are a rather cynical lot. Greenie righteousness is probably one of the things that put them off the Labour party

But Boris does seem to have been damaged by his encounter with the Coronavirus, which may explain why his leadership has been weaker than expected. And that could also make him less able to resist the constant pressures to be “Green”

Much has been made of Boris Johnson’s purported green credentials. They are in his blood, it is claimed. His father is an environmentalist, he says, while his brother Leo is a sustainability expert. At Oxford he even introduced himself as “a green Tory”, it was alleged in the Times last week. It sounds impressive, though it remains to be seen how well Johnson’s passion for protecting the environment and for combatting climate change will serve him over the next few weeks. His green badge of honour faces a testing time.

First on this agenda is the setting fire to British peatlands, an issue that we highlight in today’s Observer. Peat bogs are burned to encourage the growth of new heather shoots and so maximise the availability of food for grouse. It is good for the grouse (until the shooting starts) but bad for the environment. Our peatlands hold about 400m tonnes of carbon, according to the RSPB, and burning these reserves releases plumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It also destroys lichens and mosses and plays havoc with the habitats of waders and otters. The government’s Committee on Climate Change says peat burning should be halted and the environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, agrees. However, the move is being blocked by the environment secretary, George Eustice, who is keen to protect grouse estates that would otherwise have fewer birds to shoot and so lose business.

It is an unedifying spectacle in which privilege, as exemplified by the owners of shooting estates and by those who pay to kill grouse there, has used its influence to help halt action urgently needed to help the UK cut its carbon emission. It is only one of many other environmental headaches that lie ahead for our prime minister, however.

Next year, Britain will host one of the most important international summits ever staged. In November, in Glasgow, delegates will gather for the Cop26 climate meeting to debate how different nations will introduce strict emission cuts in order to implement the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to keep global warming at a relatively safe level. That concordant has been under constant attack by Donald Trump who claims it is “ridiculous and extremely expensive” and harmful to industry. Johnson has uttered not a single word of defence against this invective despite the fact it is intended to undermine the summit Britain will be hosting. Johnson has a duty to do all he can to ensure Cop26 succeeds. His silence is an ominous warning that he does not accept such responsibility and is more interested in appeasing Trump.

The government’s position over environmental concerns has been further undermined by the recent decision to appoint the Australian climate sceptic Tony Abbott as a UK trade ambassador. The move has provoked a furious reaction with the UK’s former climate chief Claire O’Neill – who was sacked by Johnson earlier this year – describing the move as “a particularly bad decision” that erodes government claims to support green causes.

Last week, the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi announced it was abandoning plans to build a new £20bn nuclear power station at Wylfa in Anglesey. The reactor would have supplied 6% of Britain’s electricity and should have played a key role in replacing the nation’s network of ageing atom plants without building new oil or gas power stations. Britain once planned to build up to six new nuclear plants to provide the nation with electricity – alongside wind and solar power plants – in the 21st century. Today only one is under construction, Hinckley Point C, which is currently running almost £3bn over budget.

Johnson is expected to unveil a vision of how to ‘build back green’ after the coronavirus crisis has abated

Nuclear power plants are expensive, with high front-end construction costs, and that often leads to projects being axed. Nevertheless, the shrinkage of UK nuclear aspirations has not arrived abruptly. Plant cancellations have been accruing over the past decade with little sign that the government appreciates the impending crisis. Now it has arrived. It remains to be seen how Johnson will deal with it.

These grim tidings arrive at a time when it has become very clear we face a real chance of having to live with an unstable, overheated climate. Last week five separate tropical cyclones developed over the Atlantic for only the second time in history; wildfires continued to devastate Oregon and California; while summer Arctic sea ice coverage has reached its second-lowest level on record. All these events are linked to global heating caused by continued increases in fossil fuel consumption. We urgently need to end this addiction.

In the past, Britain has played a key role in the battle against climate change but our influence has waned and we look increasingly isolated and ineffective as an international player. This point was underlined last week when the EU and China concluded a leaders’ conference at which they agreed to establish a high-level environment and climate dialogue to pursue ambitious joint commitments to help combat global warming. Thanks to Brexit – which was so energetically pursued by Johnson – the UK was not involved in those talks.

Government sources say Johnson is planning to make a major speech on the environment in the next few weeks and is expected to unveil a vision of how to “build back green” after the coronavirus crisis has abated. Given the catalogue of green bungles and lost opportunities that have unfolded during his premiership, his words should make interesting reading.

SOURCE

Tesla hit with complete network outage locking some owners out

Tesla is experiencing a complete network outage that has hit its internal service and customer mobile app a day after the company lost $50 billion in its market value due to its failed ‘Battery Day.’

The mobile app holds a digital key and and only owners who have a physical version have been able to access and drive their vehicle – leaving those without stranded.

Sources told Electrek that Tesla’s internal systems are also down, making it impossible for staff to process deliveries and orders.

According to Down Detector, the outage is stretching across the US and over into parts of Europe.

Frank Lambert, a Twitter user and Tesla owner, was the first to sound the alarm about the outage. ‘Tesla is currently having a complete network outage. Internal systems are down according to sources. On the customer side, I can’t connect to any of my cars and website is not working,’ Lambert shared in a tweet.

Lambert, who has three Tesla vehicles, said on the social media site that he was unable to connect to the cars using the mobile app.

Other users chimed in shortly after, stating they were experiencing the same issue.

The Tesla mobile app holds a number of features for owners, including GPS Location to find their vehicle, Range Status to check the car’s charge status and a section to schedule services.

One of the connectivity features on the customer side that has been affected is the digital key, but owners with a physical version have been able to access and drive their vehicles.

However, some owner have been locked out of their vehicles.

Megan McChesney shared: ‘Can’t unlock my 3.. app is down.. can’t log into the website either… been on hold for an hour and wait time still says over an hour. This is what I get for trying to save the planet.’

Down Detector, a website that monitors outages online, shows most of outage is being felt in the US and in major cities like San Francisco, Boston, New York City and Chicago.

The outage has cross over the Atlantic, hitting parts of the UK, Germany and as far as Russia.

Tesla’s website is also showing errors beyond the main page, with problems hitting the firm’s energy products and leaving owners unable to monitor their systems, Electrek reports.

SOURCE

Founder of electric truck maker resigns after fraud allegations

The Phoenix-based company said in a statement that it had accepted Trevor Milton’s resignation and that he would be replaced by Stephen Girsky, a Nikola board member and former vice-chairman at General Motors (GM).

Founded by Milton in 2015 to develop trucks and pick-ups powered by electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells, Nikola has not yet built anything, but caught attention by signing strategic partnerships with such renowned groups as GM and German engineering giant Bosch.

The announcement of the GM partnership on September 8 caused shares to leap 41 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

But two days later, investment company Hindenburg Research published a report accusing the startup of “intricate fraud” based on multiple lies by Milton, who it said “misled partners into signing agreements by falsely claiming to have extensive proprietary technology.”

That announcement triggered a plummet in share value, with stock diving 36 percent in three days.

It also sparked an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.

In a statement announcing his resignation, Milton said: “The focus should be on the Company and its world-changing mission, not me. I intend to defend myself against false allegations leveled against me by outside detractors.”

Nikola had rejected most of the claims in the Hindenburg report.

But it did not deny that it staged a 2017 video of one of its prototypes apparently in action.

According to Hindenburg, “Nikola had the truck towed to the top of a hill on a remote stretch of road and simply filmed it rolling down the hill.”

Nikola responded that it had “never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video” but had simply said that it had been “in motion.”

SOURCE

Green efforts that raise energy costs disproportionately hurt black people and poor people

If you try to find this article via Google using the headline above, you will fail. I note that on the search I did, there was a message “Some results have been removed”. Censorship of an unwelcome truth

“Black, Hispanic, and Native American households spend a much larger portion of their income on energy bills than non-Hispanic white households on average,” a new study finds.

And the differences aren’t small. For black households, energy’s share is nearly 50% higher than for white households.

Why is that? There are plenty of reasons, but mostly, it has to do with poverty.

African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans tend to be poorer than whites, and as the new study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy points out, energy costs as a percentage of income are 3 times larger for low-income families than they are for the average family.

That’s largely basic economics. When your income is low, a greater portion of your income goes to necessities: food, health, housing, heat, and electricity. For rich people, even though their energy costs are higher in dollar amounts given larger houses, more gadgets, multiple cars, et cetera, energy takes up a smaller slice of their income since much of their money goes to services, savings, vacations, and expensive stuff.

ACEEE and the liberal environmentalist website Grist point out other reasons energy costs for the poor are higher proportionately: Low-cost housing is less likely to have good insulation and weatherization, and energy-saving appliances and systems are expensive.

So this ought to inform our debates about climate and pollution policies.

Most environmental regulations impose economic costs in exchange for purported environmental gain. Often, those costs fall on the consumer. Your stuff becomes more expensive, your energy bills go up, your taxes go up, etc. Think of a carbon tax. The point is to make it more expensive to consume natural gas, gasoline, and coal, which is most of what powers the average person’s life.

At Grist, the website reporting on the ACEEE study, writers regularly point out that we need to pay more for energy to fight the climate fight. “Are we willing to accept global warming in exchange for cheap energy?”

Now, there are ways to transfer the higher costs away from the poor and onto society as a whole. The smartest involve efficiency. One of the cruelties of being poor is that it can be so darned expensive — poor people don’t have the capital to invest in things that will save them money in the long term. This applies to energy efficiency, too.

Better windows can pay for themselves with lower heating bills, but not if you can’t afford them upfront. Publicly funded weatherization for poor people will save poor people money, prevent energy waste, reduce pollution, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet most environmentalist policies on the national level aim for moonshots, major climate programs that big business can sign on to because big guys shape the regulations and pocket the subsidies.

The Left doesn’t ignore the dynamic that simply increasing energy costs will punish the poor and minorities. They also sometimes perceive that bigger government historically is a home game for big business.

Hence the latest iteration of liberal environmentalism, the Green New Deal. A climate crisis, the logic goes, justifies a complete rewriting of society. You could see the logic of the Green New Deal this way:

1) We need to raise the cost of fossil fuels to make people use less.
2) This will fall disproportionately on poor people, so maybe we need to move away from the price system altogether.
3) In fact, to make our plan work, we need to rewrite society and the economy, which is great because we have some ideas about how things would run if we could restart at Year Zero.

In the end, you have some conservatives denying anything should be done, standard liberals teaming up with big business for inefficient handouts, and left-wing ideologues fighting for a new world that will rise up like the sun.

Meanwhile, poor people just want lower bills and some windows that will actually keep out the cold.

SOURCE

24 September, 2020

Climate Hustle 2 premieres this Thursday

Ignore the Climate Alarm, Clean Energy and Cancel Culture Industry con artists. See the movie.

Paul Driessen

Weekly, daily, even hourly, we are told that global temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, and hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and droughts are all getting more frequent, intense and destructive because of climate change. Not just climate change, of course, but manmade climate change, due to humanity’s use of fossil fuels – which provide 80% of all the energy that powers America and the world.

The claims assume Earth’s climate and weather were unchanged and unchanging until recent decades. That presumption is belied of course by multiple glacial and interglacial periods; the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods; the Little Ice Age; the Dust Bowl, Anasazi and Mayan droughts; the Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900 and Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935; the 1925 Tri-State Tornado; and countless other climate eras and extreme weather events throughout history.

But all would be vastly better, we are further misinformed, if the world simply stopped using those fuels, and switched to “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” wind, solar, biofuel and battery technologies.

Climate alarm messages are conveyed repeatedly in classrooms, newspapers, television and radio news programs, social media, movies and other media – while contrarian voices and evidence are routinely and vigorously suppressed by an increasingly powerful Big Tech, political and academic Cancel Culture.

These messages, and green energy agendas justified by them, are likely to gain far more influence under a Harris-Biden Administration, especially one pushed further and further to the left by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her vocal, often violent “progressive” allies.

In 2016, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) released its documentary film Climate Hustle. The factual, often hilarious movie featured scientists, weather forecasters and other experts who challenged claims that our cars, factories and farms are causing catastrophic climate. It was featured in 400 U.S. movie theaters, where it made a persuasive case that the climate apocalypse is “an overheated environmental con job.”

Now, this Thursday, September 24, CFACT is releasing Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy. The worldwide streaming event will go live at 8:00 pm local time, in every time zone on Earth, wherever you live.

You can get your tickets here to watch the online world premiere – with unlimited replay viewing through September 27, in case you miss the opening.

For those who missed it or want a refresher, CFACT is also offering a re-broadcast of Climate Hustle 1 for instant viewing. You can get combined tickets for both events here.

Climate Hustle 2 is masterfully hosted and narrated by Hollywood’s Kevin Sorbo, who played Hercules in the television movie. Like CH1, it features a superb lineup of experts who challenge claims of “climate tipping points” and “extreme weather cataclysms.” Equally important, they also expose, debunk and demolish the tricks, lies and hidden agendas of global warming and green energy campaigners.

CH2 exposes the campaigners’ and politicians’ real agendas. Not surprisingly, as Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs demonstrate in their Planet of the Humans documentary, those real agendas are money, power, ideology and control. Especially, control over our energy, economy, industries, living standards and personal choices. The campaigners and politicians also have little regard for the ecological, health and human rights consequences that inevitably accompany the ever-widening adoption of wind, solar, biofuel and battery technologies.

Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy hits hard. As CFACT says, “Lies will be smashed. Names will be named. Hypocrites unmasked. Grifters defrocked. Would-be tyrants brought low.”

Accompanying Sorbo is CFACT and Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, who hosted Climate Hustle 1. The journal Nature Communications has called Morano the world’s most effective climate communicator. He is also the person climate alarmists most want blacklisted and banned from public discourse.

Meteorologist and WattsUpWithThat.com host Anthony Watts says CH2 highlights numerous instances of “hypocrisy, financial corruption, media bias, classroom indoctrination, political correctness and other troubling matters surrounding the global warming issue.” It offers a true perspective of just how hard the media and climate alarmists are pushing an agenda, and how equally hard climate skeptics are pushing back.” Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presents rhetoric, doom and misinformation. But “if you want a practical and sensible view of what is really happening with climate, watch Climate Hustle 2.”

The Wall Street Journal cites scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., who points out that hurricanes hitting the U.S. have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1900. The Journal also notes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said “it is premature to conclude that human activities – and particularly greenhouse gas emissions … have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.” And let’s not forget the record twelve-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes making landfall in the United States. (Was that due to more atmospheric carbon dioxide?)

As to tornadoes, a Washington Post article clearly shows that many more violent F4 and F5 tornadoes hit the United States between 1950 and 1985, than during the next 35 years, 1986-2020. Even more amazing, in 2018, for the first year in recorded history, not one violent tornado struck the U.S.

Canada’s Friends of Science says, once you see Climate Hustle 2, “you can’t unsee the damage the climate monarchy is doing to every aspect of scientific inquiry, to freedom and to democratic society.”

CFACT president Craig Rucker says “Politicians have abandoned any semblance of scientific reality and are instead regurgitating talking points from radical pressure groups to a media that has little interest in vetting their credibility.” In fact, the Cancel Culture is actively suppressing any climate skeptic views.

Twitter actively banned Climate Hustle 2 and froze CFACT’s Twitter account. On appeal the account was unfrozen, but the ban adversely affected thousands of CFACT Twitter followers.

Amazon Prime Video has removed Climate Hustle 1 from its website. CFACT tried to appeal, but Amazon didn’t respond. You can watch the trailer, but the actual film is now “unavailable in your area.”

Amazon only lets people buy new DVDs through the film’s producer, CDR Communications ($19.95) – while also processing fulfillment for third party vendors who sell used DVDs (for over $45).

Wikipedia claims Climate Hustle is “a 2016 film rejecting the existence and cause of climate change, narrated by climate change denialist Marc Morano … and funded by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a free market pressure group funded by the fossil fuel lobby.” (CFACT has received no fossil fuel money for over a decade, and got only small amounts before that.)

Newspapers, TV and radio news programs, social media sites, schools and other arenas should present all the news and foster open discussion and debate. But many refuse to do so. Instead, they function as thought police, actively and constantly finding and suppressing what you can see, read, hear and say, because it goes against their narratives and the agendas they support.

Climate and energy are high on that list. That makes Climate Hustle 1 and 2 especially important this year – and makes it essential that every concerned voter and energy user watch and promote this film.

Via email

Former EPA heads, Democrats and Republicans, rebuke Trump environment record

This is all just assertion. Threre is no detailed reasoning given. It’s not even a consensus, just an agreement among some self-selected wonderful people

Four former heads of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Democrats and Republicans, on Monday issued a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s record on the environment after the current administrator said the agency is focused on “work that has been neglected for years.”

Former EPA administrators for Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Republicans George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush criticized the administration of President Donald Trump for rolling back regulations on methane, vehicle emissions and power plants.

“If you need any more proof of how strongly this is felt by people you have it today in four former administrators… we’ve all come to the same conclusion,” Carol Browner, who ran the EPA under Clinton, told reporters in a call organized by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Two Republican former administrators, William Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman, endorsed Biden on the call, saying the Trump administration’s actions on the environment had been an “aberration.”

“There has been nothing like an administration, on the environment, in the last 50 years to compare with the dereliction that characterizes this administration,” Reilly, who served under George H.W. Bush, said on the call.

Earlier on Monday, Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, that the environment has improved during his tenure as the agency focused on what he called its core work, such as cleaning up Superfund sites.

“We have done more in the first four years of the Trump Administration to improve the environment than probably any administration except perhaps during the very first years of EPA,” he said, accusing his predecessors of focusing too much on climate change and “virtue signaling” to foreign capitals.

In the coming weeks Wheeler said EPA will propose rules to limit lead in drinking water.

Whitman, who served under George W. Bush, was asked to react to Wheeler’s claim that the environment had improved under Trump.

“If we could substitute ‘destroy’ for the word ‘improve’ he’d be right on,” she said.

SOURCE

Joe Biden Promises Fewer Fires, Floods, and Hurricanes if He Wins in November

He’s nuts. Obama promised something similar, with no apparent success

On Monday, Democratic nominee Joe Biden condemned President Donald Trump as a “climate arsonist,” predicting that if the president wins reelection in November, America will witness more “hellish” events like fires in the West, flooding in the Midwest, and hurricanes on the East Coast. He effectively promised that if he wins, America will suffer from fewer fires, fewer floods, and fewer hurricanes.

Although Biden excoriated Trump for “ignoring the facts” and “denying reality,” he focused his remarks on the wildfires ravaging California, Oregon, and Washington State — fires exacerbated by bad forest management more than any sort of climate change.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is under water?” Biden asked.

“Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly,” the Democrat insisted.

“Meanwhile, Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s attack on Biden’s plan to federalize local zoning (which poses a serious threat to local control of neighborhoods in the name of racial integration). “It’s ridiculous. But you know what is actually threatening our suburbs?”

“Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West, floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest, hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coast,” Biden said. “If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned from wildfires? How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?”

SOURCE

Australia: Shifting Leftist climate policies

If you don’t like Labor’s climate policies, just wait a few months. They’re bound to change.

They’ve been changing since 2007, when Kevin Rudd identified global warming as “the great moral challenge” of our generation. Labor threw him out just three years later. Rudd as Prime Minister was a challenge too great even for his own Labor colleagues.

Replacement PM Julia Gillard’s flexible climate policies doomed her from the start. Just days before the 2010 election, Gillard famously declared there would be “no carbon tax” under her leadership.

To a certain extent, Gillard kept that promise. It’s just that Labor outsourced leadership and climate policy to the Greens, with whom Labor briefly formed a ruinous partnership.

“It was the Greens who put this on the table after the election,” then-Greens leader Christine Milne said in 2011, referring to the carbon tax. “It’s part of our agreement with the Prime Minister.”

Labor was noticeably quiet on climate change in 2016. Running against PM Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten found other issues more compelling. So did voters, as results showed.

Barely half a per cent of Shorten’s campaign launch speech that year covered climate concerns, and even then only in generalities (“we want real action on climate change”, “we choose renewable energy”).

It almost worked. Shorten missed out by a single seat, leading to Turnbull’s celebrated Night of the Long Sulk and the saddest victory speech in Australian political history.

Labor should have learned from that outcome. Instead, Shorten in 2019 went full rapture. “Ignoring climate change is simply not an answer,” the then-Labor leader declared.

But it might be if the question is: “How do we win a federal election?”

“Labor is committed to reducing Australia’s [carbon dioxide] pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero pollution by 2050,” Shorten continued.

His campaign speech that year was loaded with climate talk, up to 6.6 per cent from .5 in the previous campaign.

“I promise all of those Australians who want action on climate change, and I promise the young people in particular, all Australians: Labor will stand its ground,” Shorten said. “No retreat on real action on climate change.”

Shorten dismissed as “dumb” any questions about the cost of his climate promises and otherwise carried on like Greta Thunberg with slightly fewer personality disorders. And Labor lost big time.

A funny thing happened recently to Labor’s commitment to a 45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. It’s completely disappeared from the party’s draft policy platform.

The ground upon which Labor stands has shifted once more. A climate change retreat is underway.

“It’s all about the jobs after COVID. It’s all about the jobs,” Shorten, now the former leader, told Nine this month. “In all seriousness, that’s what I think.”

Current Labor leader Anthony Albanese would be wise to adopt “it’s all about the jobs” as a party directive. He’d find a receptive audience among voters who’d appreciate a viable non-Coalition option.

The suburbs and regions are loaded with swing voters who no longer swing because Labor isn’t swingworthy. That’s why Labor’s primary vote in 2019 looked like Joe Biden’s score in a Sudoku tournament.

Those same voters are increasingly wary of squishy Libs who agree with the global climate agenda. If Albanese wants to become a John Curtin figure rather than bring down the curtains on Labor, he’ll find that path in pro-jobs, pro-manufacturing policies.

Of course, that will mean surrendering the inner-city vote to the Greens. But so what? The Liberals don’t win inner-city seats, yet they keep winning elections.

Besides, on current trends our inner city areas are probably only a few years away from turning into our own versions of leftist-ransacked Portland, Oregon. Smart residents should escape now while their houses can still be sold with intact windows and at least one floor that isn’t ablaze.

“Our world is on fire, the Liberals are pouring fuel on the flames and Labor is egging them on,” Greens leader Adam Bandt claims. “Under Anthony Albanese, Labor risks becoming just as bad for the climate as the Liberals.”

Translation: Under Anthony Albanese, Labor risks becoming electable. Some within Labor remember what happened when their party last followed Greens instructions.

Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, among quite a few of his less-public colleagues, would prefer to win. Labor can do so by shunning the Greens and wedging the Coalition.

The coronavirus gives Labor some cover here. As Shorten put it: “It’s all about the jobs after COVID.”

Labor can justify throwing out all of its climate nonsense — not just the 2030 target, but everything — because the extreme demands of a post-COVID recovery demand it be so.

The Coalition’s enviro faction, and party heavyweights who give that faction credibility, would be absolutely stumped by a vote-scoring populist jobs-over-climate push by Labor.

They’d be blindsided. And, after 2022, they’d be gone.

Imagine a party founded on the ideals of working-class advancement actually committing itself to … working-class advancement. It’s an idea so crazy that it might actually work

SOURCE

23 September, 2020

Joe Rogan apologises for saying lefties were arrested for lighting the bushfires in Portland, Oregon

A prison psychologist I know comments as follows:

“Having worked with hundreds of crims and prisoners of all sorts, including arsonists, in my experience all of them are lefties.

They are emotionally focused, resentful, begrudging, envious, self righteous people who hate society, have an external locus of control, and a one-way sense of respect — that is that respect should be from others towards themselves. And if they vote at all, they vote left. And that goes for drug users and most teenagers, and, interestingly, counsellors, youth workers, social workers and most psychologists.

So I doubt Joe Rogan was wrong in saying the arsonists are lefties. Based on my own experience with crims, I would bet that an arsonist would be a low IQ leftist”

In a recent chat with controversial political commentator Douglas Murray, Rogan casually stated:

“They’ve arrested left-wing people for lighting these forest fires. You know, air-quote, ‘activists.’ This is also something that’s not widely being reported.”

Indeed, Rogan’s claim has not been “widely reported,” because it is false, according to the FBI and local law enforcement. The terrifying wildfires, which, in some areas, changed the color of the sky into a tone resembling dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049, has sparked numerous conspiracy theories, as most disasters do.

Quickly, Rogan was chastised by CNN, and faced an internet backlash for spreading dangerous misinformation. After all, it’s not as though he lacks the resources to look into these things – fact checking might disrupt the flow of conversation, but it’s better than spreading baseless conspiracies.

Thankfully, Rogan actually addressed the mistake and apologized profusely, an uncharacteristic action that might just mark the beginning of a new era of social responsibility.

SOURCE

Israel fish deaths linked to rapid warming of seas

This is a big stretch. How can slowly rising CO2 levels be responsible for a sudden spike in East Mediterranean water temperatures?

High temperatures and the persistent warming of oceans have triggered profound changes in marine ecosystems, but a new study suggests that the rate of onset of warming – rather than the peak – could also play a key role in the damage fuelled by climate change.

In early July 2017, researchers were drawn to the coast of Eilat, Israel, following sightings of fish carcasses, a rare occurrence in the region’s coral reefs.

“The fish were absolutely fresh … their gills were still red,” said the lead author, Amatzia Genin of the Interuniversity Institute of Marine Sciences in Eilat.

Soon after, a citizen-science campaign was initiated and by early September, 427 carcasses belonging to at least 42 species were collected. Necropsies were performed on 14 freshly dead and moribund fish from eight different species. In 13 cases, severe infection directly caused by a pathogenic bacterium, Streptococcus iniae, was observed.

a close up of a pond: Fish in the Red Sea off the Israeli city of Eilat, where water temperatures rose 4.2C over only 2.5 days in July 2017.© Photograph: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images Fish in the Red Sea off the Israeli city of Eilat, where water temperatures rose 4.2C over only 2.5 days in July 2017.

Although this pathogen is ubiquitous in fish in warm waters, a healthy immune system usually prevents debilitating infections. So, what caused the mass casualties?

Typically, mass fish mortality events in the aftermath of marine heat waves are chalked up to factors such as toxic algal bloom or oxygen deprivation (hypoxia).

“It was not marine heat waves because the water temperature was not exceptionally high,” Genin said.

But further examination revealed that the rate of warming – a rise of 4.2C over 2.5 days in early July – was the steepest recorded since daily measurements were registered 32 years ago. In August, the water warmed by 3.4C in 2.5 days.

The same pattern emerged in two earlier documented mass coral reef fish deaths in Kuwait Bay in 2001 and western Australia in 2011. Both were immediately preceded by rapid warming spikes, suggesting that the rapid onset of warming, regardless of the final temperature, might trigger widespread mortality, the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This study isn’t quite the loud canary in a coal mine, but it’s part of the canary chorus, announcing that that the ocean has changed, and ecosystems are degrading … declining in both robustness and ability for organisms to survive,” said Dr Brad de Young from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, who was not involved in the study.

“Ocean systems are being stressed out in many different ways – and like the background stress of Covid-19 on people, it makes everything else in life just that much more difficult,” he said.

When you add events such as sudden warming to overfishing, pollutants, changes in ocean acidity and oxygen levels – the abruptness of it can be devastating because fish are already metabolically and physiologically stressed, he suggested.

It is unlikely coral reef fish will swim to cooler water to escape, given their shallow habitat, he added. “There’s no food there, no grocery stores for them in deep water.”

A key question is whether the rapid warming weakened the fish immune system or provided an environment for the offending bacteria to proliferate.

“What you have here is one biotic (bacterial infection) and one abiotic (increase in temperature) challenge that occurred at the same time. It is possible that the infection lowered the thermal tolerance of the fish, and this resulted in the number of mortalities … but it certainly is very unlikely that it was temperature alone,” said Dr Kurt Gamperl from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, who was not involved in the study.

The authors did not make any direct connection between the mortality and the rapid warming, he cautioned. “The evidence is all circumstantial.”

SOURCE

Green bonds don’t achieve much

Companies that issue green debt aren’t necessarily reducing their carbon emissions, underscoring the need for firms to have an environmental rating, according to a report from the Bank for International Settlements.

The median change in carbon intensity — the ratio of carbon emissions to revenue — of green bond issuers has been minimal over time, according to the global forum for central banks. That’s because green bonds are issued to finance specific projects without impacting a firm’s environmental credentials as a whole.

“Overall, there is no strong evidence that green bond issuance is associated with any reduction in carbon intensities over time at the firm level,” authors including senior economist Torsten Ehlers wrote in a report released on Monday. “Because green labels apply to standalone projects rather than to the firm’s overall activities, projects promising carbon reductions could be offset by carbon increases of the same firm elsewhere.”

Debuting more than a decade ago, the green bond market has exploded to about $1 trillion, according to BloombergNEF data, as investors demand more sustainable investment options. With that growth has come worries about greenwashing — misleading claims about environmental responsibility.

“Naive investors might expect firms with very high carbon intensities to be disqualified as issuers of green bonds,” the researchers said.

Concern about standards in the green bond market were raised when Spanish oil company Repsol SA in 2017 became the first major refiner to sell the securities. Royal Schiphol Group NV in Amsterdam set a precedent for other airports this month when it sold green debt.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, issued bonds to finance environmentally-friendly projects for the first time this month, while Saudi Electricity Co. sold the first green bond from the world’s largest oil-exporting nation, the latest milestone in the expansion of environment-friendly debt instruments.

The vast majority of green bonds are defined by “use of proceeds,” meaning the company must spend the money on environmental projects although there is no obligation to achieve group-wide compliance with environmental criteria, said Richard O’Callaghan, partner at Linklaters LLP in London.

“Any step on an environmental journey has to start somewhere,” he said.

The BIS says a rating system that ranks a company’s so-called greenness would help investors who don’t have the resources to do their own due diligence. It would also provide firms with an incentive to lower their carbon intensity.

SOURCE

La Nina summer expected as ‘inland seas’ form in Queensland outback

What happened to global warming? Global warming caused by increasing levels of CO2 was said to explain the droughts. So have CO2 levels dropped? They have continued to rise – so can they cause opposite effects? In the dream world of the Greenies maybe they can. But nobody can say how

The old truth that Australia is a place where “droughts and flooding rains” naturally alternate is what is really going on but the Greenies don’t want to know that

Minor flood warnings have been issued for the Bulloo, Thomson and Barcoo, and Diamantina rivers.

It comes as Australia braces for a La Nina summer, the same weather event that brought drenching conditions to Queensland between 2010 and 2012.

Graziers Andrea Curro and Peter Magoffin said over 80mm of rain has fallen on their property southwest of Longreach since Friday, forming vast flooded areas. Aerial pictures show vast areas of their property now inundated.

It’s the most rain they’ve seen in over a year, and is potentially drought-breaking for them. “It went from literally being a barren wasteland to 3.5 inches of rain,” Ms Curro said. “We’ve had nothing since January.”

“For a couple of days it just looks like an ocean,” she said. “It sets you up for summer,” she said.

It comes as the Bureau of Meteorology predicts a La Nina for Australia’s east coast over summer, bringing the possibility of rainfall well above average.

Bureau of Meteorology mapping shows rainfall totals of between 50 and 100mm of rain fell across vast areas of Queensland’s interior, with the system expected to impact the state’s southeast corner later today.

Longreach resident Jenna Goodman said the rain was “quite heavy at times.” “I think outside of town got more than we did in town which is nice,” Ms Goodman said. “Not a flood by any means, but hopefully we get some good follow up rain!”

SOURCE

22 September, 2020

Charleston aims to force fossil fuel companies to pay $2bn to combat climate crisis

This is deliberate deception. Most Charleston residents would be aware that their problem is land subsidence, not rising seas. If they are not aware of it, the oil companies will soon make them aware of it. The lawsuit has zero merit

Charleston, the architectural jewel of the US south, has survived the ravages of revolutionary wars, an earthquake and even a siege waged by the notorious pirate Blackbeard. But the city now needs saving from its largest existential threat yet – the climate crisis.

Flooding has, in recent years, become a regular menace to streets lined with colonial and Georgian buildings. Protecting the historic core of South Carolina’s largest city from being consumed by the rising seas now comes with such a hefty price tag – around $2b – that Charleston is pinning its hopes on a bold gambit to force fossil fuel companies to foot the bill.

Charleston recently became the first city in the US south to sue large oil firms for damages, claiming they concealed knowledge that their product would heat up the planet and cause the sort of inundation that now bedevils many coastal cities around the world.

A trove of internal documents show oil companies knew from at least the 1960s that burning oil and other fossil fuels would cause the global temperature to rise, triggering heatwaves and causing the seas to rise due to rapidly melting glaciers. Charleston’s lawsuit claims that by obscuring these findings and funding a campaign of misinformation, the oil companies are liable for damage caused due to deception.

“It’s tragic, just imagine what we could’ve done to avoid all this if they didn’t deceive everyone,” said John Tecklenburg, Charleston’s mayor, who said the world hasn’t seen such flooding “since Noah built the Ark”.

Flooding was a rare occurrence when Tecklenburg, who is 65, was growing up in Charleston but it now blights the city. Each of his five years as mayor has seen a major flood, with Hurricane Matthew, in 2016, and Hurricane Irma, in 2017, causing vast volumes of water to pour over the Battery, a historic seawall and tourist drawcard.

“Our city and harbor became one,” he said. “It’s now an annual occurrence. People’s homes have been damaged, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims. It’s a major threat to our city.”

Even regular high tides now drench downtown Charleston, which is perched on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water. Half a century ago, water flowed onto the streets around four days a year. By 2019, this had increased to around 89 days a year on average. Within 30 years, Charleston faces its downtown streets being underwater every other day of the year.

Several people have had their homes inundated multiple times, others have fled the city while some with the means to do so have made the costly decision to elevate their stately abodes beyond the reach of the floodwater, 16ft or more above the mean sea level.

“You’ve got these multimillion dollar homes that are historic, so what can you do?” said Buz Morris, an architect who has overseen the raising of seven homes in the last few years. “On a rainy day here you can a foot or two of water in the street. We are helping protect the historic fabric of Charleston.”

The majority of residents can’t afford such expensive fixes, however, so the city is looking to make a huge investment to fend off the encroaching Atlantic ocean. A new seawall, fortifying the aging Battery, and a new network of drainage tunnels will, Charleston hopes, buy it some time. “This is a treasure of a city, a gem of American history and elegance,” said Tecklenburg. “I’m not going to be the mayor that raises the white flag of surrender and evacuates.”

The Charleston lawsuit – which targets a clutch of oil companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron – is the latest in a flurry of court actions aimed at forcing fossil fuel giants to meet the mounting costs of the climate crisis they helped stoke. Since 2017, nearly two dozen cities, counties and states, including San Francisco, New York and Massachusetts, have attempted to recover billions of dollars from the industry.

Over the past week this number has swelled further, with Hoboken in New Jersey, the state of Delaware and Charleston entering the fray. “We are seeking accountability from some of the world’s most powerful businesses to pay for the mess they’ve made,” said Kathy Jennings, Delaware’s attorney general.

These efforts have yet to garner a significant breakthrough, with a number of cases dismissed by judges, as the oil companies have argued the moves are a frivolous waste of time. “There is no merit to the claims,” said a Chevron spokesman in response to the Charleston lawsuit. “They are not a serious solution to a serious problem. There is no evidence Chevron misled the public about climate change. Those claims are false.”

Climate activists have retained hope, however, that the courts will start to swing behind the cases and have been further buoyed by promises made by Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for US president, that his administration would pursue fossil fuel companies for climate damages.

The best sign the legal strategy is working is that “these cases are proceeding through the court system”, according to Ama Francis, a fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

“The public is ready to hold this corrupt industry accountable for causing and lying about climate change, and officials across the country are stepping up to take action,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity.

“As climate change floods cities like Charleston, Big Oil is now knee-deep in lawsuits seeking justice for decades of the industry’s lying about their central role in causing the problem.”

SOURCE

‘Climate arson’ and other wildfire nonsense

Real goal is to avoid responsibility for policies, and increase control over energy, lives, property

Paul Driessen

In what has become an annual summer tragedy, wildfires are again destroying western US forests. Millions of acres and millions of animals have been incinerated, hundreds of homes reduced to ash and rubble, dozens of parents and children killed, and many more people left missing, injured or burned.

Air quality across wide regions and entire states is so bad people are told to stay indoors, where many have hibernated for months because of the coronavirus, but indoor air is also contaminated. Acrid smoke and soot have been carried to Chicago and beyond. Firefighters are profiles in courage, as they battle the blazes for days on end, while all too many politicians are displaying profiles in opportunism.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?” Joe Biden thundered. “Mother Earth is angry,” Nancy Pelosi pontificated. “She’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, that the climate crisis is real.”

Despite finally starting to thin out overgrown forests, California Governor Gavin Newsome resorted to the longstanding party line about his state’s wildfires: Manmade “climate change is real. If you don’t believe in science, come to California and observe it with your own eyes.” Washington Governor Jay Inslee agreed. “These are climate fires,” he said. “And we cannot, and we will not, surrender our state and expose people to have their homes burned down and their lives lost because of climate fires,”

It’s ideological nonsense, intended to deflect blame and avoid responsibility for decades of public policy errors and forest mismanagement – and to justify new laws that would multiply government control over energy, industries, jobs, living standards, lives, property, and freedom to choose where and how we live.

One could argue that people shouldn’t have built homes in and near these forests. That they should have been persuaded or compelled to live in crowded urban areas, where crime, riots and Covid run rampant. But they do live in rural areas – and our politicians, land managers and judges have a duty to implement policies and practices that protect their homes, communities and lives, as well indigenous wildlife.

Perhaps slightly warmer or drier summers have made the wildfires slightly more likely or frequent. But decades of laws, lawsuits, fire suppression policies and forest mismanagement practices have guaranteed the buildup of massive amounts of dead and diseased trees, dry brush and grass, and decaying leaves, needles and debris. With every wet spring spurring plant growth that dries up every dry summer, just one lightning strike, careless camper, gender-revealing pyrotechnic or angry arsonist can ignite an inferno.

Because timber harvesting and thinning have been banned for decades, thousands of scrawny trees grow on acreage that should have just a few hundred full-sized mature trees. As of 2017, tens of billions of scrawny trees mix with 6.3 billion dead trees in 11 Western states; state and federal forests in California alone had over 129 million dead trees. Those numbers have most assuredly skyrocketed since 2017, while steadily increasing dry brush and debris now provide even more tinder for super-heated conflagrations.

Flames in average fires along the ground in managed forests might reach several feet in height and temperatures of 1,472° F (800° C), says Wildfire Today. But under conditions now found in western tinderboxes, flame heights can reach 165 feet (50 meters) or more, and crown fires can generate critter-roasting, soil-baking temperatures that exceed 2192 degrees F (1200 C). Wood bursts into flame at 572 F. Aluminum melts at 1220, silver at 1762, and gold at 1943 degrees F (1064 C)! 2192 degrees is hellish.

Most of this heat goes upward, but super-high temperatures incinerate endangered wildlife – as well as organisms and organic matter in thin western soils that for decades afterward can support only weeds, grass and stunted, spindly trees. Western conflagrations jump fire breaks because these ferocious fires are fueled by the unprecedented increase in combustibles that radical environmentalist policies have created.

These monstrous fires generate their own high winds and even mini tornados that carry burning branches high into the air, to be deposited hundreds of feet away, igniting new fires.

None of this has a thing to do with climate change. To say a 0.1, 0.5 or even 1.0 degree change in average global temperatures would alter these forest fire dynamics defies credibility. To say the monumental fuel buildups in our forests are irrelevant is like claiming a minimally furnished home will burn as easily and ferociously as one filled to the brim with furniture, books, old newspapers and cans of gasoline.

The solution is simple, though expensive and time-consuming at this point. Cut the red tape. Remove some of that fuel, so that fires don’t get so big, hot, powerful, and destructive. Clear wider areas around buildings, homes and communities. Create more, wider fire breaks. Build more roads that let people escape the flames. Send the timber to sawmills, to create jobs and tax revenues, and American lumber for affordable homes. Clear out brush and grass under transmission lines – and upgrade the transmission lines. Bolster rapid-response airborne and ground-based firefighting capabilities.

Up to now, all this has been prohibited, litigated and shut down in states that now have horrific fires. Radical Greens have even blocked cattle grazing that would control grass and brush in national forests.

Still not convinced? Look at recent major fires that petered out when they reached managed forests.

For years, San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation foresters chain-sawed overgrown trees, harvested better timber, improved timber stands, and used controlled, prescribed burns, weed killer and other measures to keep their forests healthy, protect sacred sites, and preserve jobs and wildlife. They even turn scrubby trash trees into particle board and sell it for furniture, as part the tribe’s timber business.

In 2017, the Wallow Fire, the most destructive wildfire in Arizona history, burned 538,000 acres – but fizzled out when it reached the reservation’s well-managed forest. A year later, the Rattlesnake Fire torched more than 20,000 acres in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest – but likewise faded out when it reached the neighboring White Mountain Apache timberlands, which had also been managed responsibly and proactively, using the same management practices that guide San Carlos Apache foresters.

Similar success stories can be found in the most unlikely place: California. For decades, the Southern California Edison electric utility employed selective logging, prescribed burns and other management strategies in its Shaver Lake Forest. This year’s Creek Fire raged through treetops and several hundred thousand acres in the Sierra National Forest. But when it reached the SoCalEd timberlands, it dwindled into a low-intensity surface or ground fire – which doesn’t incinerate big trees and wildlife.

Back in August 2013, the monstrous high-intensity Rim Fire immolated 180,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest. Thankfully the National Park Service (NPS) had been employing prescribed burning and other proactive management practices for years in Yosemite National Park next door. When the wildfire reached the park, it turned into a far less destructive surface fire.

The ferocious Rough Fire of 2015 roared through California’s Sequoia and Sierra National Forests, totally torching 150,000 acres. But it too became a ground fire when it reached Sequoia National Park, where the NPS had also used prescribed burns and other good management practices for decades.

A final point. The raging fires in our long mismanaged forests are not natural. They are not what used to burn with regularity through America’s forests. A century of fire suppression and fuel accumulation means they turn into superheated infernos. Manage them properly first. Then let nature work again.

The lesson? Regardless of what Earth’s climate may do – regardless of who or what may be responsible for any fluctuations – we must take responsible, appropriate, effective measures now. Doing so will save habitats, wildlife, homes and human lives today, and tomorrow.

We cannot and must let more megafires incinerate forests and people for decades to come, under an hubristic, misguided, ideological belief that we can eventually end global fossil fuel use and control planetary climate and weather conditions, thereby somehow making monster wildfires a dim memory.

Via email

Blaming Trump for climate change is ‘ironic’ given two per cent emissions reduction

Environmental policy expert Michael Shellenberger says it is completely unscientific and “crazy talk” to suggest temperatures rise and forests burn because Donald Trump is the president.

Mr Shellenberger said it’s ironic how climate activists level blame upon President Donald Trump for climate change when emissions are “lower now than when he took office”.

“They declined two per cent last year”.

He said it’s a crazy notion to suggest Donald Trump is responsible for the current Californian wildfires given it takes “30 years or more for the carbon dioxide to translate to warming”.

“It’s so unscientific and yet it’s clearly been given a pass because the media has been so bias on this because they hate Trump so much,” Mr Shellenberger said.

“They basically want to ascribe every natural disaster, every fire on him.

“It’s really the state’s fault that you have this huge accumulation of wood fuel, Donald Trump doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

SOURCE

The most infuriating protest ever: Climate activist pests bring peak-hour traffic in Brisbane to a standstill by deliberately cycling as slowly as possible on a busy major road

Interesting that I had an easier than usual drive from Woolloongabba to the Valley this morning

Climate change activists have brought Brisbane’s peak hour traffic to a crawl by cycling as slow as possible on a major road.

Up to 45 demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion are riding bicycles through the city in a slow-moving blockade on Monday.

Kicking off at Kurilpa Park, South Brisbane, at 7.30am the two-hour-long protest is part of a push for Australia to sign on to a binding target of zero net carbon emissions by 2025, overseen by a citizen’s assembly.

‘We will be riding as slowly as possible to disrupt peak hour traffic to bring attention to the climate and ecological crisis,’ organisers said in a Facebook post.

‘We are headed for complete annihilation. The amount of warming we are on track for, will literally mean the death of billions of people.’

‘Scientists say that at 4 or 5 degrees of warming, the earth could sustain a billion people. Our governments could push us to 7 degrees of warming.’

Rally organisers have told demonstrators to be COVID-19 safe by travelling in small groups of 10, social distancing and donning masks as they cycle towards King George Square.

Organisers listed ‘legal tips’ in a Facebook post advising attendees not to communicate with police.

‘There will be police liaisons at this protest, they will communicate between the police and activists,’ the post read.

‘If the police approach you please direct them to the designated police liaisons.’

‘In the past they have not arrested anybody for cycling slowly at similar events …’

Protesters live streamed the disruptive ride over Facebook, with footage showing them chanting ‘climate justice’ and blasting anthems, such as John Farnham’s ‘You’re the Voice’.

SOURCE

21 September, 2020

The Facts About Climate Change and California Fires

The article below is generally sensible but at one point the author did not feel safe to deny global warming orthodoxy. He writes:

“It stands to reason that as the planet warms, the American West will become drier and states’ wildfire seasons will be longer. “

That does NOT stand to reason It is often asserted but ignores basic physics. The oceans in a warmer would evaporate off more water vapor and that would come down as more rain. A warmer world would be a WETTER world

Despite some progress made by heroic firefighters, wildfires continue to tear through the West. Tragically, the fires have taken more than 30 lives (with many more missing), destroyed thousands of structures, and burned millions of acres.

Here are answers to some of the commonly asked questions on causes for the wildfires and obstacles that stand in the way of solutions.

What caused the wildfires?

At least several factors. At the end of August, a storm with a lot of lightning and little rain struck. An estimated 11,000 lightning strikes hit California over a three-day span, sparking fires throughout the state.

More recently, two of the fires started because of hot soot from a car tailpipe and a family using a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” for a gender reveal party. One man in Oregon has been charged with arson.

Investigations continue into the causes of some of the fires. In the past, campfires, discarded cigarettes, fallen power lines, and arson have been the culprit.

Despite accusations that extremists on both the left and right set certain wildfires, neither has been the case. In fact, false rumors have served only to spread resources thinner and detract from serious investigations.

The more than 3.2 million acres burned thus far in California are the most in recorded history.

According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, data over the past 30 years shows that the number of fires is on a downward trend while the number of acres burned is on an upward trend.

However, as Mother Jones reports, ecologists and fire scientists estimate that prehistoric fires were worse, burning between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres per year.

On a national scale, data from the National Interagency Fire Center shows a downward trend for both fires and acres burned from 1926 through 2019, though reporting methods differed before 1983.

California is a hot and dry place. The winds can be fierce this time of year and the steep slopes of the topography can make them practically unstoppable. Although the winds come every year, they’re also unpredictable.

Alexandra Syphard, an ecologist at the Conservation Biology Institute, noted that “wind-driven fires are the ones most associated with catastrophic losses” because of their difficulty to contain and propensity to reach places where people live.

Then there’s the fuel load. Without proper management, whether prescribed burns or timber harvesting, California is a tinder box comprised of dry trees, grass, and shrubs. Invasive species, including grasses and shrubs, also contribute to worse wildfires because they dry out and have a higher likelihood of burning than native plants.

Better land management long has been understood as a necessity to reduce the severity of fires. Malcolm North, of the U.S. Forest Survey, says: “Climate dries the [wood] fuels out and extends the fire season from four to six months to nearly year-round. [B]ut it’s not the cause of the intensity of the fires. The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel.”

Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director for Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, told ProPublica: “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”

If controlled burns and thinning forests are effective, why are they so hard to do?
California’s fuel load has been a long-standing, worsening problem and a top priority for ecologists and land managers who want to reduce the severity of wildfires.

Jon Keeley, senior scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center, said: “We ought to be much more concerned with ignition sources than a 1- to 2-degree change in temperature.”

Prescribed burns (see photos here) are an effective, non-controversial way to reduce the fuel load and consequently reduce the destruction caused by a wildfire. Fires also help to control pests, to remove non-native plants, and to provide nutrients to trees and other vegetation.

As the narrator says in this National Geographic video: “Giant sequoias depend on fire to reproduce. The heat opens their seed cones, their seeds are released, the flames clear the earth for their germination. While lesser trees blaze around them, the giant sequoias stand virtually unscathed by the flames.”

Studies have shown that these prescribed burns do not harm the ecology of the forest. California has implemented controlled burns for an average of 13,000 acres from 1997 to 2017. But a February article in the journal Nature Sustainability suggests that California needs about 20 million acres burned.

Controlled burns are by no means a silver bullet, but an overwhelming consensus exists among land managers that such burns are the most immediate and effective action to take.

As for why that hasn’t happened, the same article in Nature Sustainability breaks it down to three categories: risk, resources, and regulation.

Some have concerns about the smoke from controlled burns, and that the fires may get out of control; others have concerns over liability should that occur. Even so, the practice largely has won public acceptance.

Another barrier is presented by weather and location. Controlled burns take into account ideal humidity ranges, as well as wind direction and speed. Some controlled burns occur where there are power lines or pipelines, which require additional attention. COVID-19 postponed many of the prescribed burns.

Regulation presents a major obstacle. Prescribed burns go through a lengthy approval process. Securing a permit can take up to 18 months. These burns are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act and must meet federal, state, and local air quality standards.

Of course, the pollution and air quality is much worse from the wildfires than from a controlled burn. Even when a plan seemingly checks all the necessary boxes, it still may be held up in the courts. Although some progress has occurred to expedite the process, more needs to be done.

Another solution is timber harvesting, which helps thin the landscape and put those resources to productive use.

What is the role of climate change?

It stands to reason that as the planet warms, the American West will become drier and states’ wildfire seasons will be longer. The planet has been in a warming period for the past 160 years, and part of that warming is a result of human activity.

One study out of UCLA estimates that the number of days with extreme fire weather in the fall has more than doubled over the past 40 years. Another study in Earth’s Future found similar results for warming’s effect on fuel drying, but noted that a changing climate has not affected wind or precipitation patterns:

In fall, wind events and delayed onset of winter precipitation are the dominant promoters of wildfire. While these variables did not change much over the past century, background warming and consequent fuel drying is increasingly enhancing the potential for large fall wildfires.

Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, emphasizes that even without the warming that is occurring, fuels are “plenty dry enough to burn already.”

Soil moisture is another factor that can determine how severe a wildfire might be. Last year, in a very mild season, soil moisture in California was 40% above average for most of the state and even higher in some parts.

Droughts can be both bad and good. Droughts obviously create a dry climate for vegetation to burn, but extended droughts can result in less fire because, as NASA’s Ben Cook points out, “the vegetation will not grow back as vigorously, and you may run out of fuel to burn.”

Some parts of California, such as the area where the Camp Fire wildfire occurred in 2018, saw no discernible trend in fuel moisture or precipitation, but the winds were strong enough to dry out the vegetation anyway.

Which brings us to another point of the discussion: how climate change affects wind patterns. California is known for intense winds, such as the Diablo winds in the north and the Santa Ana winds in the south.

Several studies show that warming actually could reduce the frequency of the Santa Ana winds and potentially weaken the pressure of Diablo winds. If precipitation patterns change, however, that merely might push the wildfire season from the fall into the winter.

That’s to say that the link between climate change and wildfires exists, but it also is quite complex.

What about where we live, and housing policies?
Residents of the West are moving to more fire-prone areas. The New York Times podcast “The Daily” explains that this is called the Wildland Urban Interface, where development meets wild vegetation.

People choose to live in more rural areas for a host of reasons. They may want to be closer to nature and where houses are more affordable. The higher number of homes and businesses in these areas also increases the likelihood of a human-induced fire and puts more lives and structures at risk. These threats as they pertain to the Wildland Urban Interface are not specific to California, but exist in many places around the country.

Housing policies also contribute to the decision by some to move to the Wildland Urban Interface. A homelessness problem plagues California and home prices are high, particularly in the cities.

The combination of the difficulty in expanding housing in the cities, the ease of building on green space, and state and local incentives to build in more remote locations encourages development in places that are at higher risk for wildfires.

Both state-subsidized housing (140,000 units in the Wildland Urban Interface) and local subsidies result in more houses than otherwise might be there. Also, because subsidies for building are still there, not to mention that a town’s budget and operations are paid for through property taxes, a strong incentive exists to rebuild.

And yet another piece of this puzzle is insurance. Insurance prices can be the great arbiter of accepting a certain amount of risk, whether that’s accepting the insurance premium of a sports car or purchasing a home in a flood- or fire-prone area.

A major part of the problem, however, is that the government can distort that risk by socializing it among taxpayers, or, in the case of California, banning insurers from refusing to renew fire insurance policies they deemed too risky. At the same time, some of the state’s housing policies encouraged expansion of homes and businesses to these more remote areas.

It’s understandable why homeowners are frustrated at the prospects of not being able to have insurance, but these policies skew the actual risk of living in these areas.

Alternative, market-based risk models are cropping up in parts of the country to better assess the risk and deploy fire- suppression resources where they’re needed most.

When the risk is accurately assessed, it should incentivize more prescribed burns, timber harvesting, and installation of fire- resistant materials on homes and other buildings. But even then, it is challenging because most often reducing the fuel load is out of the hands of the home or business owner.

The Western wildfires are tragic and devastating. A nearly universal consensus exists that prescribed burns can measurably reduce the risk of future fires.

Now is the time for the political will to make it happen, so we’re not writing and reading the same story a year from now.

SOURCE

A Successful Solution to Attack Wildfire

Here are two ideas that can make a difference and save lives.

First, create, fund and deploy a true Fire Attack Air Force to attack the inferno the way our military attacks an enemy: use overwhelming force, agile and adaptable tactics, amass the right resources, mobilize allies and deploy them strategically. Air attack cannot single-handedly stop a fire. But using water and retardants, it can help contain a fire if deployed as soon as a fire breaks out, slow its movement, and help open a corridor of escape for trapped residents. They can build a fire-line around flames. Planes can reach areas too hot and dangerous for fire crews to work in. It is critical to have this overwhelming force applied immediately on a fire before it builds into an uncontrollable inferno.

California boasts some of the best, most seasoned firefighters in the country. That goes for pilots. View footage of a helicopter dropping water or fixed wing aircraft like a DC-10 tanker soaring low over the landscape and emptying a bellyful of 12,000 gallons of water or retardant in eight seconds. It’s hard to quantify the impact, but sensible people agree that it helps.

What’s frustrating is watching only a single helicopter or plane dropping their loads. Imagine the impact if we deployed an air armada of 60 craft over a targeted area. They might not put out a fire, but massive bombardment would make a difference and certainly would slow progress enough for firefighters on the ground to succeed. It could contain damage and protect escape routes.

This idea is no pipe dream. California boasts some of the best. These firefighters are incredibly brave. Yet CalFire is today under-staffed and under-budgeted. That’s the product of unimaginative, incompetent leadership.

Some complain that an air attack force is expensive. What value do they place on a human life? A family or a community destroyed? Let’s shift priorities. We’re wasting over $100 billion dollars on a high-speed train of limited value whose costs keep ballooning. Why tolerate that? We need to be agile, flexible and adaptable.

Let’s also get aircraft into the air earlier. Current policy allows aircraft to launch after 10:00 a.m. But experts tell us that fires are more effectively attacked very early in the morning. We must balance pilot safety and effectiveness. But our pilots are capable. We owe them our deepest thanks.

Such action may or may not save a Camp Okizu or Big Creek, but it would improve their chances, and may well save future lives.

A second idea is understanding what is plausible. Battling California’s wildfires is not question of resources alone. We need good “generals” and smart strategy. Land and homeowners have done everything they can to prepare, but fire does not respect property lines. Roughly 129 million trees died on California’s federal, state and private lands between 2010 and 2017, according to one analysis. And yet state and federal authorities failed to devote the resources to address this unprecedented die-off. The ill-conceived policies that undermine sound forest management policies to safeguard land, property and above all, lives, should be swept away like deadwood.

Wildfire requires military-minded resolve and attack. Assembling a modern, dedicated California Fire Air Attack Force is a key to winning this war. We can win the battle and the war. That starts with demanding and having the right leadership.

SOURCE

Doubling down on climate change and censorship

A year ago, we showed in a Washington Examiner op-ed that the mathematical computer models used to promote global warming fears had been, for years, systematically overpredicting the rate of warming in the tropical lower atmosphere, typically by a factor of three. This touched off a hysterical response, starting with censorship.

Facebook “fact-checker” Climate Feedback labeled our opinion piece “false,” which blocked its distribution on the social media giant. Tech mogul Eric Michelman has for over a decade funded efforts to end debate on climate change, saying that “the science is settled.” In 2015, he founded and funded Climate Feedback and staffed it with the very climate modelers whose work we criticized in our op-ed.

We and the Washington Examiner appealed to Facebook, providing a detailed basis for our opinion, and Facebook removed the label, which again allowed our piece to be viewed and advertised.

We were referring to the tranche of climate models that formed much of the basis for the most recent U.N. “Assessment” of the state of climate science from 2014. The next one, due out in 2021, features a new generation of models. According to Ross McKitrick at the University of Guelph and John Christy at the University of Alabama, all of the new models that were available to review are now overpredicting globally, and they are even warmer than the last batch. Their article will soon be published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Space Science.

The new set of models keeps growing, and the Department of Energy now lists 40 centers worldwide running their own models. Each one costs a fortune. If “the science is settled,” then why do we need so many models solving the same problem (and getting different solutions)?

Further, a landmark encyclopedia-length study of the climate’s “sensitivity” to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, just published in Reviews of Geophysics, repeatedly notes that these new models aren’t reproducing the observed geographic patterns of warming. For example, they predict substantial warming to be occurring in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. It’s not; in fact, many parts of it are cooling. The lead author, Australian Steven Sherwood, wrote that the warming of that ocean will “likely [take] hundreds of years or more” to appear and that the models’ behavior “may call into question their ability to accurately simulate the long-term pattern of warming.”

Nonetheless, the study raised the lowest expected warming for doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide from the United Nation’s current value of 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2.3 degrees. This change would roughly equal the total warming from the year 1900 to 2100, though ascribing the earliest warming, 1910-1945, to carbon dioxide is debatable because emissions had barely risen by the time it began. Sherwood also noted discrepancies between the new climate models and the early warming.

It remains to be seen, given the public’s new understanding of how incorrect assumptions drove COVID-19 modeling to scary heights, whether the U.N., in its upcoming report, will accept this raising of the floor.

Consider that many of the new models, about 15, depending upon where you look, predict more warming for this century than their predecessors. However, when run as historical simulations, all of these hot models predict more, sometimes much more warming to have occurred in recent decades than what has actually been observed.

As the alarmist E&E News has candidly admitted, “climate models … are the foundation for policies used to craft many carbon regulations.” It appears that the newest latest-greatest ones not only get the magnitude of observed warming wrong but that they also put it in the wrong places.

It’s hard to figure how Facebook’s climate squad is going to come down on us for merely opining on the new models and the Sherwood opus. But bigger names and tons of money have joined the censorship bandwagon. Now, we have Tom Steyer, Stacey Abrams, the heads of 17 of the biggest green lobby groups, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and three of her colleagues all calling on Facebook to ban us and our alliance of 55 climate scientists and energy economists.

Newer models that have increased errors shouldn’t be the basis for jettisoning the health and environmental benefits of our fossil-fueled energy or for censoring informed scientific opinion.

SOURCE

Australian miner declares victory over Greenie activists

Resources giant Adani has declared victory over environmental activists who tried to stop its $2 billion coal mine in central Queensland.

The Indian-owned company’s chief executive David Boshoff says the Carmichael project in the Galilee Basin has already created 1500 jobs, despite sustained opposition from green and Indigenous groups.

“The Stop Adani movement said our project would never go ahead and would never create a single job. We have proved our opponents wrong,” Mr Boshoff said in a statement on Friday.

His comments come a week after the Supreme Court in Brisbane ordered chief activist Ben Pennings to remove posts on social media from 2017 and 2018 encouraging people to get jobs at Adani to obtain information about the coal project to use aganist the company.

Mr Pennings, who runs the Galilee Blockade, was also ordered to stop asking others to disclose information to him about the project or using confidential information he obtains in his campaigns.

Mr Boshoff said Adani had helped prop up the resources sector and the state’s economy during the pandemic with 88 per cent of its contracts being delivered in Queensland.

He said with 1500 jobs already, more permanent roles will be created when the mine and rail line are operating.

“We are looking forward to the day next year when we can celebrate our success with our Queensland partners and employees, while watching the first shipment of coal being exported. Until then, it remains full speed ahead on construction,” Mr Boshoff said.

Meanwhile, the miner says it has managed to protect a traditional cultural heritage site after workers clearing grass for the railway found it last weekend.

The Jangga people, the area’s Traditional Owners, told the company the site is believed to be a women’s quarry, which was used to create tools and may be thousands of years old.

Mr Boschoff said with Jangga consent the company moved a vehicle access track to the railway, which will protect the site.

“This is a great outcome for both the Jangga People and Adani,” he said.

“The delivery of the Carmichael Project has enabled the Jangga People to do further exploration of their Country and discover more about their own rich history and culture.”

SOURCE

20 September, 2020

Solar panels generate mountains of waste

They also heat the planet, blanket wildlife habitats and cause other ecological damage

Duggan Flanakin

The problem of solar panel waste is now becoming evident. As environmental journalist Emily Folk admits in Renewable Energy Magazine, “when talking about renewable energy, the topic of waste does not often appear.” She attributes this to the supposed “pressures of climate change” and alleged “urgency to find alternative energy sources,” saying people may thus be hesitant to discuss “possible negative impacts of renewable energy.”

Ms. Folk admits that sustainability requires proper e-waste management. Yet she laments, “Solar presents a particular problem. There is growing evidence that broken panels release toxic pollutants … [and] increasing concern regarding what happens with these materials when they are no longer viable, especially since they are difficult to recycle.”

This is the likely reason that (except in Washington state), there are no U.S. mandates for solar recycling. A recent article in Grist reports that most used solar panels are shipped to developing countries that have little electricity and weak environmental protections, to be reused or landfilled.

The near-total absence of end-of-life procedures for solar panels is likely a byproduct of the belief (and repeated, unsupported assertion) that renewable energy is “clean” and “green.” Indeed, Mississippi Sierra Club state director Louie Miller recently claimed that unlike fossil fuels and nuclear energy, “Sunshine is a free fuel.” Well, sunshine is certainly free and clean. However, there is a monumental caveat.

Harnessing sunshine (and wind) to serve humanity is not free – or clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act mandates that new surface coal mines include plans and set aside funds for full reclamation of mine properties. The law also sets standards for restoring abandoned mine lands. There is nothing akin to this for solar facilities and wastes.

Similarly, the 1980 Superfund law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) created a tax and trust fund to pay for preventing and fixing actual or threatened releases of hazardous substances that could endanger public health or the environment. Again, still nothing for solar.

The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act prioritizes deep geologic repositories for safe storage and/or disposal of radioactive waste. Unfortunately, 25 years after being designated as the disposal site, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has never opened, because of conflicts among politicians, locals, anti-nuclear activists, government officials and the nuclear industry. The U.S. still stores its nuclear waste at 75 scattered sites, including some near New York City, New Orleans and Chicago. For solar no steps have been taken.

While coal, nuclear, and petrochemical companies must come up with detailed, costly plans for dealing with real or potential negative consequences of their operations, solar (and wind) companies have been rewarded with massive subsidies and absolutely no disposal standards or requirements.

No government grants require that solar companies set aside money to dispose of, store or recycle wastes generated during manufacturing or after massive solar “farms” have ceased functioning and been torn down. Solar (and wind) customers are likewise not charged for waste cleanup, disposal, or reuse and recycling. This and the massive subsidies distort and hide the true costs of solar power.

But reality is starting to catch up. Disposal (or recycling) costs will have to be paid, ultimately by consumers. The more solar panels we have (likely billions within a few years), the higher those costs will be. Consumers in states like California that have committed to heavy reliance on solar (and wind) energy (and already have the nation’s highest energy bills) will have to pay even more.

California is also facing a secondary problem from the proliferation of subsidized industrial solar installations. A 2015 study by Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science found that nearly a third of the state’s solar development is occurring on former cropland, where many farmers are shifting from growing crops to using their land to generate electricity – rather than letting it become wildlife habitat. As Big Solar also moves into natural areas, California is losing even more habitat and scenic land, while the integrity of state and national parks suffers from the nearby glare of countless solar panels and towering transmission lines to distant cities.

The Stanford study highlights another problem: localized higher temperatures. It found it will take an area the size of South Carolina filled with solar arrays to meet California’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. [It would take at least eight South Carolinas if the California mandate were extended nationwide.]

Other research has found that these large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a significant solar heat island effect. Temperatures around one solar power plant were 5.4o-7.2 °F (3o-4°C) warmer than nearby wildlands. Imagine such manmade “global warming” across 20 million acres (South Carolina) or 160 million acres (Texas), to meet California or U.S. greenhouse gas reduction goals!

Australia is already coping with this unwelcome reality. Not until 2018 did Aussie environment ministers mandate fast-track development of new product stewardship schemes for photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, like those television and computer manufacturers and retailers have had to comply with since 2011.

Total Environment Centre director Jeff Angel admitted that setting standards for life-of-product management for solar panels was “long overdue,” and that the 30-year delay in imposing standards revealed a “fundamental weakness” in Australia’s waste policies. He further noted that while solar panels contain hazardous substances, Aussies are “sending hundreds of thousands of e-waste items to landfills” and creating significant pollution problems. And Australia has less than a tenth of the U.S. population!

Since 2002, the European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive has required that original producers of e-wastes guarantee and pay for taking back and recycling their wastes, so that end-user consumers aren’t surprised by additional disposal costs.

However, PV solar panel waste was not included in this mandate until July 2012 – and “some uncertainty remains” about the cutoff date for such wastes, because the directive has yet to be implemented in national laws. Producer financing of PV waste treatment thus cannot be applied to older solar panels. So who will pay? And how much?

Ms. Folk and others look to waste-to-energy plants, and indeed the EU does send much of its solar panel waste to incinerators – which many environmentalists oppose. Landfilling is not a viable option in the U.S., because toxins could leach out. Unscrupulous companies ship solar panel waste to developing nations, but that is a stopgap solution that is environmentally irresponsible.

Tao Meng, lead author of a new study, says “the big blind spot in the U.S. for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue” – by nearly 10-to-1, especially when including transportation costs. Chemicals must be used to remove silver and lead from silicon modules before they can be safely placed in landfills, Meng notes.

The problem of solar panel waste will continue to grow as more panels reach their end of life. Four years ago the International Renewable Energy Agency estimated there were already about 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste worldwide – and that total will explode to 78 million metric tons by 2050!

So when you read that solar energy is already cheaper than natural gas, don’t be fooled. They are omitting the pollution and disposal costs, as well as habitat losses, solar heat islands, and the need for backup power generation or batteries – to lowball the true costs of intermittent, season, latitude and [weather]weather-dependent solar. We need some honest math now, before it’s too late to turn back.

Via email

UK: Metaldehyde slug pellets to be banned from spring 2022

A ban on the outdoor use of metaldehyde slug pellets is to be introduced across Great Britain from spring 2022.

Defra farm minister Victoria Prentis said the decision to ban the use of the pesticide on farms and in gardens, except in permanent greenhouses, was being taken “in order to better protect wildlife and the environment”.

It follows advice from the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides and the Health and Safety Executive about the risks that metaldehyde poses to birds and mammals, especially birds, toads and hedgehogs. ?

Ms Prentis said: “The scientific evidence is clear – the risks metaldehyde pose to the environment and to wildlife are too great.

“The government is committed to building back greener and the restrictions on the use of metaldehyde are another step towards building a cleaner and greener country for the next generation.”

Metaldehyde will be phased out by 31 March 2022 to give growers and gardeners appropriate time to switch to alternative slug control measures.

It will be legal to sell metaldehyde products until 31 March 2021, with use of the products then allowed for a further 12 months.

Slugs are a significant pest for agricultural and horticultural crops such as oilseed rape, cereals and potatoes, which, if left unchecked, can cause significant damage.

SOURCE

One Democrat Governor Already Looking for a Way Out of Biden’s Suffocating Energy Proposal

Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has quietly been trying to find a way to evade an energy proclamation by a potential Joe Biden administration.

Lujan Grisham has been a vocal supporter of Biden throughout his campaign, even making the shortlist of potential vice presidential picks. She also had the distinction of announcing her state’s commitment to supporting Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate during the virtual roll call of the Democratic National Convention. Lujan Grisham has also been named to Biden’s potential transition team.

But while the governor appears to be all in for Biden on the surface, his energy proposals seem to have her spooked and looking for a way to be exempt should new laws come to New Mexico.

Earlier this month, a study suggested that Biden’s current stance on fracking, a position he has flip-flopped over and left supporters and critics scratching their heads, would be “devastating” for New Mexico.

“Restricting oil and gas development on federal lands will rob New Mexico of opportunities for economic growth and hollow our schools of critical resources that put teachers in classrooms and help our young children learn,” said New Mexico Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Ryan Flynn. Currently, New Mexico accounts for more than 30 percent of onshore natural gas production in the United States and nearly 60 percent of all onshore oil production.

Though the prospective Biden administration has been less than clear about their policies on fracking in general, they have been crystal clear that leasing of federal land or waters for the purpose of fracking or any production of natural energy would be strictly banned.

This is a huge problem for states like New Mexico, whose recent years of economic achievement have been due to investments in the future of energy in the state.

“An affordable and reliable energy supply is essential to a strong America and banning energy development on federal lands and in offshore waters not only threatens thousands of the best paying jobs but needlessly erases much needed revenue that helps pay for schools and other essential services,” Texas Oil and Gas Association President Todd Staples told the Carlsbad Current-Argus.

“American oil and natural gas is safe, clean and abundant, and misguided policies will only stifle our nation’s energy progress,” Staples continued.

The American Petroleum Institute estimated that the banning of new federal leases for energy production in New Mexico would lead to the loss of approximately 22,000 jobs in the state, a $1.1 billion loss in state revenue, and the reduction of oil and gas production by nearly 50 percent.

“Banning federal leasing and development on federal lands and waters would derail decades of U.S. energy progress and return us to the days of relying on foreign energy sources hostile to American interests,” said API director Mike Sommers.

A spokesperson for Lujan Grisham said the governor has not officially committed to seeking a waiver from the Biden-Harris policy vows.

“I would say it’s premature to be indicating anything about waivers for federal policies that don’t exist yet,” said spokesperson Nora Meyers Sackett. “If we are fortunate enough to have a President Biden, the governor knows that will require a close working relationship to both protect our environment and rebuild our state’s economy, and we look forward to those discussions and that work.

But Lujan Grisham has already faced tremendous pressure from residents and officials in New Mexico who see only disaster if Biden is voted across the finish line in November.

“No doubt Biden’s energy plans would spell disaster for our state and that’s why it’s critical for New Mexicans to know where their leaders stand,” said Western States Director of Power the Future Larry Behrens.

“Biden has spent the last weeks tripping over his position on fracking, so it’s no surprise some New Mexico leaders would rather stay silent. However, thousands of energy jobs and billions of dollars are at stake and we deserve answers.”

SOURCE

Australia: Much of Queensland’s legislation against farmers was ‘completely unnecessary’

Marine scientist and physicist Professor Peter Ridd says data showing pesticides bear a a negligible impact on the Great Barrier Reef means much of the Queensland government’s new legislation against farmers were “completely unnecessary”.

Professor Ridd said it was recently revealed by the director of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, that only 3 per cent of the whole Great Barrier Reef, the ‘inshore reefs’, was affected by farm pesticides.

He said it was revealed even for the affected 3 per cent, pesticides were a low to negligible risk.

“It’s only 3 per cent of the whole Great Barrier Reef, and even when you look at the data on that … even on that 3 per cent, pesticides are a low to negligible risk,” Professor Ridd told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

“(Which) basically means a lot of this new legislation the Queensland government is bringing on against farmers is completely unnecessary.”

SOURCE

18 September, 2020

Large gaps in climate data

NOAA’s global and US temperature estimates have become highly controversial. The core issue is accuracy. These estimates are made by very complex statistical models which are sensitive to a large number of factors, but the magnitude of sensitivity for each factor is unknown. NOAA’s present practice of stating temperatures with precision is clearly untenable, because it ignores these significant uncertainties.

Thus NOAA needs a focused research program to try to determine the accuracy range of these controversial temperature estimates. Below is a brief outline of the factors to be explored. The research goal is to systematically explore the uncertainty each factor contributes to the temperature estimates.

The urban heat island effect (UHI). This is known to exist but its specific effect on the temperature recording stations at any given time and place is uncertain.
Local heat contamination of temperature readings. Extensive investigation has shown that this is a widespread problem. Its overall extent and effect is highly uncertain.
The limited accuracy of individual thermometer readings. The average temperature cannot be more accurate than the individual readings that go into it. It has been suggested that in some cases this inaccuracy is an entire degree.
Other temperature recording station factors, to be identified and explored. Several have been discussed in the literature.
Adjustments to temperature data, to be systematically identified and explored. There are numerous adjustments made to the raw temperature data. These need to be cataloged, and then analyzed for uncertainty.
Homogenization, which assumes that temperature change is uniform over large areas, is a particularly troubling adjustment deserving of special attention.
The use of sea surface temperature (SST) proxies in global temperature estimates. Proxies always add significant uncertainty. In the global case the majority of the surface is oceanic.
The use of an availability or convenience sample rather than a random sample. It is a canon of statistical sampling theory that convenience samples are unreliable. How much uncertainty this creates in the temperature estimates is a major issue.
Area averaging. This is the basic method used in the surface temperature estimating model and it is a nonstandard statistical method, which creates its own uncertainties. For example, different thermometers are in effect given very different weights. Plus the global average is an average of averages.
Interpolation or in-filling. Many of the area averaging grid cells do not have good temperature data, so interpolation is used to fill them in. This can be done in many different ways, which creates another major uncertainty.

Other factors are likely to be identified and explored as this research proceeds. To the extent that the uncertainty range contributed by each factor can be quantified, these ranges can then be combined and added into the statistical temperature model. How to do this is itself a research need.

Note that it is not a matter of adjusting the estimate, which is what is presently done. One cannot adjust away an uncertainty. The resulting temperature estimates will at best be in the form of a likely range, not a specific value as is now done. This range may be large. For example, if each of the ten uncertainty factors listed above were to be about 0.1 degrees, then the sum might be a whole degree or more.

Note also that most of this research will also be applicable to the other surface temperature estimation models, such as GISS, HadCRU and BEST. All of these models use roughly the same data and methods, with many differences in detail.

SOURCE

NOAA Hires Climate Realist, Media Strokes Out

By statistician Briggs

Dear Men of the Right, you might complain that you have not got all you wanted from President Trump. But you will not be able to deny he has the unparalleled ability to send his enemies into shivering bat-guano fits of drooling insanity. It is a beautiful thing to see. The entertainment value alone of his presidency makes his re-election imperative.

Trump has done his signal service for us again by hiring a friend of ours, David Legates, for a top science position at NOAA.

Long-time readers will remember Legates. He allowed me to tag along on a few papers on the climate (example). The most infamous of which caused—I’m guessing—at least seven TIAs, three full strokes, seventeen angina attacks, and four fatal myocardial infarctions. This was “Why Models Run Hot: Results From An Irreducibly Simple Climate Model“, with lead author Christopher Monckton.

This peer-reviewed sensation made a simple claim: man, like all creatures, influences the climate; he is influencing this one, likely to the tune of a 1 degree C or so global temperature increase with a doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Now, with all the worry, angst, consternation, fretting, wailing, lamentations, and just plain unhappiness about global-warming-of-doom, you’d think a paper like ours would be greeted with cheers and sighs of relief! Here was hope! We thought we were all going to die of heat death, but here was evidence saying maybe it will be okay. Isn’t that wonderful!

Alas, no.

Word is that that MSNBC reporter lady’s hair caught on fire when reading our story. Environmentalist activists lit torches. Members of Congress—and here I do not jest—launched investigations. Willie Soon, one of the other authors, was hounded, harassed, and hectored. Monkton was disparaged in many foreign languages. My old site was hacked. All of us were called names that I hadn’t even learned in the military.

It was strange. It was almost as if the left did not want good news about the climate! It was as if the left hated the idea that their services to cure this non-problem were not necessary. But how could this be? They loved Science! Yet when science said “Calm yourselves”, that love evaporated.

It’s true. The left became science deniers. A sad thing to see.

Well, five years have passed and we have all grown in maturity and sobriety. We have come to appreciate the massive and unseen uncertainties that lurk in scientific models. We’ve seen how many forecasts have failed, we’ve seen that our fears were exaggerated. Our well-funded scientists, now abashed, have switched from temerity to timidity.

Strange, then, that NPR said “Longtime Climate Science Denier Hired At NOAA“. They said Legates, “a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science”.

Younger readers won’t recall that it used be the job of scientists to question basic, and even not-so-basic, tenets of science. That was how, in the old days, mistakes were recognized and progress made. All that has, of course, changed for the better. Tenets are now supplied by political agencies and are, as is proper, unquestionable.

One has to admit that this change makes doing science much easier. Used to take years, even decades, of gruesome and mostly vain toil to ferret out flubs in theories, and even longer to discover fixes. Now all we have to do is check with the press and we know all the right answers.

This is where the term denier originates. Anybody who questions the official line is called one. Anybody who can prove the parts of the official line are false are not only called deniers, but names I’m not allowed to print (my mother reads this blog). Truth and accuracy are not wanted. Compliance is all that counts.

CNN sent plaintive emails to people asking for dirt on Legates. That MSNBC’s lady’s hair caught fire again. Science magazine, an international journal of politics, not realizing the pun, called Legates’s hiring an “escalation”.

The most devastating critique of all came from the ex-head of the American Society of Interior Designers, Randy Fiser. He said Legates’s use of throw pillows and afghan carpet combination was sure to spell disaster for the country.

Kidding! No, Fiser was hired by The American Geophysical Union, which is evidently an organization devoted to settle the scientific debate of wood floors versus tile. Fiser demanded Legates’s position be revoked. It’s not clear, but Fiser may be holding his breath until he turns blue to show earnest he is.

Then came the hate calls. I have permission for you to delight in this mad woman’s ravings. She apparently believes “climate change”, and not admitted and caught arsonists, are responsible the wildfires out west (how many times have we been reminded that propaganda works?). I have removed all identifying information, so there are a few quiet spots.

SOURCE

Data Falsifies Alarmist Claims ‘Climate Migrants’ Are Heading North

Theory versus facts

At the top of Google News searches today for “climate change,” an article published by the website Pro Publica claims global warming during the next few decades will force millions of Americans from warm southern states to cooler states.

A look at state population patterns, however, shows exactly the opposite is happening. Even with our modest recent warming, more Americans prefer to move to warmer southern states than colder northern states.

The Pro Publica article, “Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration,” claims:

“[One] in 12 Americans in the Southern half of the country will move toward California, the Mountain West or the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences alone. … It will eat away at prosperity, dealing repeated economic blows to coastal, rural, and Southern regions, which could in turn push entire communities to the brink of collapse. This process has already begun in rural Louisiana and coastal Georgia…”

So, according to the article, people moving from one part of the country to another to seek a better climate is disastrous and puts whole communities on the brink of collapse. If that is indeed the case, perhaps we should do something about it.

A map published, ironically, by the climate-alarmist website Daily Kos illustrates how Americans are reacting to climate by seeking warmer, not colder, temperatures.

As shown in the Daily Kos map below, U.S. Census Bureau data show Texas will gain the most congressional seats in the 2020 Census update. Florida will gain the second-most seats.

Texas and Florida are the two southernmost states in the contiguous 48 states. Other states expected to gain seats are hot-weather Arizona, warm-weather North Carolina, climate-neutral Colorado, climate-neutral Oregon, and cold-weather Montana (largely due to people fleeing liberal California).

By contrast, eight of the 10 states expected to lose seats are cold, northern states. One of the others is California, where people are fleeing liberal state government.

Alabama is the only warm-weather state expected to lose a congressional seat. Contrary to the Pro Publica article, Louisiana and Georgia will not lose any seats.

As the population data clearly show, if global warming will have any impact on U.S. interstate migration – which climate alarmists claim is inherently harmful – it will be to slow the existing migration flood from cold northern states to warm southern states.

Yet another objective clear benefit of our ongoing modest warming.

SOURCE

California likely would have had these wildfires ‘even without any global warming’

Environmental policy expert Michael Shellenberger says scientists agree high intensity fires can be moderated by managing the forests, but the fact is obscured by “this hyper politicisation around this climate apocalypse”.

Nearly 5,000 buildings have been destroyed and 20 people killed as more than 7,000 fires burned across the state of California.

Mr Shellenberger said the fires had been “catastrophic”.

Mr Shellenberger said before Europeans arrived in California, between four to 12 million acres annually would burn with low intensity fires, burning only the ground of the forest.

“What we’re dealing with today are these high intensity fires that reach into the tops of the trees,” he said.

“These fires are so intense because there is about five times more fuel wood, fuel debris in the forest than there was before we started fire suppression over a century ago.

“We have badly managed our forests, and the main reason for it is ideology.”

He said there were some well managed forests in the state and fires, burning around them with high intensity, would drop to low intensity upon reaching the well managed areas.

“What that proves is that we are not doomed to high intensity fires and the determining factor is forest management, not climate change,” Mr Shellenberger said.

Mr Shellenberger said the top forest scientists in the state said the determining factor for the spread of the fires was the accumulation of wood fuel.

“We’re obviously seeing that, we’re seeing that well managed forests are surviving climate change and they’re even surviving these mega fires, these high intensity fires,” he said.

“You are seeing more agreement that we do need to manage our forests well, and that’s at risk of being destroyed by this hyper politicisation around this climate apocalypse.

“You would probably have had these high intense fires without any global warming, and we know that even with this global warming that we’ve had, that well managed forests can survive.”

SOURCE

Australia singled out for mammal extinction in UN’s dire global biodiversity report

LOL. The good ol’ Bramble cay melomys again: A small rodent that has actually gone extinct in recent years. The Greenies love it so we keep hearing about it.

The whole thing is a beat up. It is only the Melomys on Bramble cay that has gone extinct. There are tons of them on the nearby mainland.

And their extinction has NOTHING to do with global warming. One of the cyclones that bedevil the far North blew most of the vegetation and a lot of the sand away that formed its habitat. Any that survived the big blow died of starvation, not of any temperature rise

The Greenies will of course say that the big blow was caused by global warming but that is nonsense. Big blows have always been a frequent occurrence in the Far North. Where they hit is random however. Bramble cay and its inhabitants just got unlucky on one occasion

The extinction of Australia’s Bramble Cay melomys has been singled out for criticism in a United Nation’s report on the state of biodiversity across the world.

The fifth Global Biodiversity Outlook, released last night, warned that biodiversity is declining “at an unprecedented rate [while] the pressures driving this decline are intensifying”.

Australia was named alongside Cameroon, the Galapagos and Brazil as countries having suffered at least one extinction in the last decade.

The Bramble Cay melomys — a native rodent found on a coral cay in the northern Great Barrier Reef — was officially declared extinct by the Australian Government in 2019, although it was last seen in 2009.

It is believed to be the world’s first mammal extinction due to climate change.

Today’s report is an update on the world’s progress with the Aichi biodiversity targets — a set of 20 conservation targets set out in 2010 to be achieved by 2020, and signed off on by 194 countries including Australia.

Those targets include the elimination of “incentives, including subsidies harmful to biodiversity”, and halving “the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests”.

“At the global level, none of the 20 targets have been fully achieved,” the report stated, “though six targets have been partially achieved.”

Strengthening and enforcing environmental protection laws is outlined as a key lever to help stop the loss of biodiversity — a warning that Australian Conservation Foundation spokesperson Basha Stasak said the Government needs to pay attention to.

“The Australian Government’s own report to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in March 2020 revealed the Government failed to meet or measure the majority of its [Aichi] targets,” Ms Stasak said.

“Yet the Morrison Government is trying to further weaken nature protection in rushed changes to the national environment law due to be debated in the Senate next month.”

Australia’s environment laws have come under scrutiny since the interim report into the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, released in July, found that the Act is failing to curb our loss of habitat and species.

The report’s recommendation for an independent “cop” to oversee the enforcement of environment protection laws was rejected by the Government.

Instead the Government is moving to introduce changes to the EPBC Act which would shift environmental assessments for major development projects to the states — a move critics say will further weaken an already failing system.

In a statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment said that the Government was aiming to strengthen environmental protection.

“The Government continues to work on delivering both short- and long-term change that will make the Act more efficient and result in clearer, stronger protection for the environment,” the spokesperson said.

Australian species at risk of extinction without change
Australia currently has 21 species listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list — a globally recognised database of flora and fauna conservation status.

A further 24 Australian animals are listed as endangered, with 19 of those having decreasing populations.

One of the biggest failings of our environment protection laws is the self-assessment criteria, according to David Chapple, who heads up Monash University’s Evolutionary Ecology of Environmental Change Laboratory.

Under the self-assessment guidelines, people are required to decide for themselves whether they think their activity needs to be referred to the Federal Government for approval.

Yet, researchers have found that 93 per cent of the over 7 million hectares of threatened species habitat cleared since 1999 (when the EPBC Act came into effect) were not referred for assessment.

More than 3 million of that 7 million hectares was koala habitat.

“Self assessment and whether you actually refer yourself to the Act in the first place is an area where there’s a lot of improvement to be made,” Dr Chapple said.

“The [EPBC report] recommendation for an independent panel to oversee the Act is one thing that most conservation biologists think is a key element to [improve] it.”

In research published earlier this month, Dr Chapple and colleague’s assessed the conservation trajectory of just lizards and snakes in Australia.

They found that there are at least 11 species of lizard and snake at significant risk of extinction by 2040.

The biggest driver of species loss in Australia and globally is habitat loss, according to Associate Professor Chapple.

He said he wasn’t surprised by the poor outcomes in the UN’s report today.

“There wasn’t anything in there that surprised me. It’s a reinforcement of what we already know,” he said.

“In terms of the Samuel’s review of the EPBC Act, it’s very timely. It remains to be seen how many of those things [the Government] do take on.”

A Department spokesperson told the ABC the Government has made “significant progress” across its Aichi targets.

“The Australian Government is investing in dedicated threatened species strategies, national environmental science programs, practical on ground action to reduce threats from feral predators and pests and $200 million in bushfire wildlife and habitat recovery strategies that focus heavily on threatened species impacts.”

SOURCE

17 September, 2020

Reply to the WaPo on the Legates appointment

Joseph Bast

The Washington Post’s coverage of David Legates’ appointment to a position with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is hopelessly biased and inaccurate, par for the course for the Post’s coverage of environmental issues.

The lead sentences say Prof. Legates has “long questioned the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global warming.” In fact, Prof. Legates has long questioned whether there is a scientific consensus, and his writing (including in peer reviewed science journals) shows there is not. He is not alone. Most scientists disagree with the exaggerated claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The reporters say, disapprovingly, that Prof. Legates was “forced out of his role as [Delaware’s] state climatologist” by a Democrat governor who objected to his views on climate change. Yet later in the article, the reporters strenuously object to the idea that Prof. Legates may have been hired by the Trump administration because of his views. The reporters’ hypocrisy destroys their credibility.

NOAA, according to the reporters, “has until now continued its climate research and communication activities unfettered by political influence.” No source is given for that claim. What they mean is that after President Obama thoroughly politicized and weaponized the agency in his war against coal, his administration’s hold-overs have done all they can to obstruct the current administration’s efforts to correct the situation. The Deep State is firmly in control of NOAA.

The reporters quote an anonymous source inside NOAA calling the appointment a “midnight hire” and saying “the need for any new talent coming into this organization at this point is really not needed” (sic). Right. Why would any reporter use this ridiculous and transparently self-serving comment by an anonymous source in a “news” story?

The reporters define The Heartland Institute as “funded in part by the fossil fuel industry.” How much? They don’t say. (They never say.) The truth is that less than 10% of the organization’s budget comes from companies in the energy industry, and this has always been the case. Heartland receives less funding from energy companies than nearly any of the environmental organizations in the country who are on the other side of the global warming debate. Haven’t you heard? Exxon-Mobil supports a carbon tax. This smear is just a Democrat Party talking point with no basis in fact. Five minutes on Heartland’s website would have revealed this.

The reporters obviously spent less than five minutes on Heartland’s website because they go on to say Prof. Legates is lead author of a “Heartland-funded, non-peer-reviewed rebuttal to the IPCC, called “The IPCC Reconsidered.” Really? Heartland has published a series of reports (five volumes so far, each about 1,000 pages long composed of reviews of peer-reviewed scientific research) titled “Climate Change Reconsidered.” Those reports are produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC); Heartland only publishes them. They are peer reviewed; as a lead editor, I know this first hand.

According to the reporters, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is “a research and advocacy group” and its staffer is a “watchdog.” Right. And Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a charity that operates soup kitchens in low-income neighborhoods. In fact, the UCS is a hard-left advocacy group that uses scientific controversies to advance its anti-free enterprise, anti-America agenda. Of course it could be counted on to attack a scientist who refuses to go along with its propaganda efforts. No real reporter would go to such a source for a comment on Prof. Legates’ appointment.

The article ends with some long quotations from a “marine scientist” and former Obama political appointee attacking Prof. Legates. They couldn’t find a climate scientist willing to criticize the appointment? Or someone who isn’t an Obama legacy? Was Michael Mann, the usual go-to character assassin of the liberal media, too busy blogging about his support for BLM? (Mann who, incidentally, is viewed by his peers as “an embarrassment to the profession.” A whole book with that title has been written about him.) Oh, check that, Mann was the first person interviewed by PBS when Prof. Legates’ appointment became known.

The Washington Post continues to make a fool of itself by playing stenographer to the most radical fringe of the environmental movement. Prof. Legates is a fine man with a distinguished academic career, his appointment at NOAA may be a long-overdue attempt to inject new talent into an organization that lost its independence and integrity a long time ago.

SOURCE

Biden’s Wildfire Gaslighting

Forest mismanagement, not climate change, is most responsible for massive wildfires.

President Donald Trump is a “climate arsonist,” Joe Biden ridiculously asserted Monday in a speech about the deadly wildfires raging across much of the Pacific Northwest. Biden, of course, blames Trump’s lack of action on climate change. In what can best be described as apocalyptically unhinged remarks totally devoid of genuine scientific truth, Biden insisted that if Trump has “four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?” In what fantasy land is Biden living? He is blatantly and bizarrely politicizing environmental disasters as if Trump were some mythical Greek god capable of capriciously controlling the elements.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Trump was in California Monday viewing some of the fire damage when he was asked by a reporter what role he believes climate change had in causing the fires. “Well, I think this is more of a management situation,” Trump responded. “If you look at other countries, if you go to other countries in Europe, Austria, Finland … they’re forest nations. They’re in forests and they don’t have problems like this.” This answer had the Leftmedia crying foul, with CNN, for example, declaring, “Trump baselessly questions climate science during California wildfire briefing.” (Clearly, the folks at CNN are living in the same fantasy land and may be reading the same teleprompter as Biden.)

Yet Trump isn’t the one denying scientific reality, as the Left’s fake “fact-checkers” falsely claim. Trump’s assertion that forest mismanagement is the primary problem producing these massive wildfires is not “scapegoating,” as Biden spuriously asserts; it is sound opinion supported by forestry and ecology experts.

Bob Zybach, a forester with 20 years of experience and a PhD in environmental science, has long argued that it all started with Bill Clinton’s forest management change. “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they are still ignoring it,” Zybach argued. “They’ve gone and left hundreds of thousands of acres of burnt timber, a fire bomb waiting to happen, standing in place because the black back woodpecker prefers that habitat.” Zybach further observed, “It’s great for lawyers, but it’s bad for people who breathe air or work in the woods. The prescribed burns are an ancient form of management for keeping the fuels down so these events don’t happen.”

Career fire ecologist Tim Ingalsbee advises that the way to solve the problem is “to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.” Ingalsbee laments, “It’s just … horrible to see this happening when the science is so clear and has been clear for years. … Every year I warn people: Disaster is coming. We’ve got to change. And no one listens. And then it happens.”

Finally, ecofascists do have a roundabout point that the vast majority of these wildfires are caused by people. The National Park Service reports, “Nearly 85 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson.” But this fact shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Smokey Bear, who has long admonished, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Indeed, maybe people should quit lighting fires in the Pacific Northwest — and in American cities — and set about to fix the problem.

SOURCE

The doomsday lies of climate activists never stop

India flooding

Photos and videos are extremely useful tools in storytelling and even in conveying news to the masses. Be they simple photographs of people or videos of people marching through a street, they help us relate to the actual events and stories.

In the past decade, climate-change enthusiasts and activists have utilized this aspect to the utmost to highlight natural disasters and propagate the idea that climate change has aggravated them.

But often this grim and devastating image of natural calamities does not reveal the complete picture. In fact, climate activists exaggerate weather events (short-term and local) as climate events (long-term and global to regional) and misrepresent regular incidents as unprecedented ones.

Last month, I came across a retweet by Greta Thunberg, a globally recognized climate activist. She retweeted a tweet showing recent flooding in India. The tweet was preceded and followed by a series of tweets that highlighted allegedly climate-driven natural disasters in an attempt to drive home the need for climate action.

It was surprising for me to learn that Greta and others portrayed the regular summer rainfall downpour in India as something unprecedented and use it as an arsenal to promote their climate doomsday narrative.

India is in the midst of its summer rainfall season. Also known as the monsoon, these rains are the lifeline for India’s 1.3 billion people. They are a boon, not a disaster as Greta and other activists claim.

The excess rainfall has brought much joy to the majority of the Indian people, who depend on rain for agriculture. Farmers have already begun sowing, and a historic food crop output is expected in 2021, topping already record-high levels.

As for the flooding Greta retweeted, the flooding in the state of Bihar is unrelated to long-term climate change. With increasing population, more people have been prone to be impacted by flood waters than before.

Flooding in that region has been a regular event, and not something new and unprecedented. The rainfall data since 1871 reveal that the annual precipitation levels have always been erratic, with no significant trend.

There have been no significant changes in rainfall pattern, according to scientists at the Indian Meteorological Department. To claim otherwise reveals ignorance of the real climate in the region.

This methodology – of portraying natural disasters as a consequence of climate change and claiming it as unprecedented – has become a common practice among climate activists.

SOURCE

Scientific cancel culture exposed

An inquiry into Great Barrier Reef farming yields remarkable confessions as institutions are challenged by evidence.

By PETER RIDD

The Senate committee inquiry into the regulation of farm practices impacting water quality on the Great Barrier Reef has yielded some remarkable confessions by science institutions about the state of the reef. It has been the first time many of the scientists have been asked difficult questions and publicly challenged by hard evidence. They have been forced out of their bubble.

It was revealed by Paul Hardisty, boss of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, that only 3 per cent of the reef, the “inshore reefs”, is affected by farm pesticides and sediment. He also stated that pesticides, are a “low to negligible risk”, even for that 3 per cent.

The other 97 per cent, the true offshore Great Barrier Reef, mostly 50km to 100km from the coast, is effectively totally unharmed by pesticides and sediment.

This has been evident in the data for decades but it is nice to see an honest appraisal of the situation.

Why has this fact not been brought to the public’s attention in major documents such as the GBR Outlook Report produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority? Why has everybody been deceived about the true extent of the problem?

AIMS was also forthcoming on other important points. Records of coral growth rates show no impact from agriculture. Large corals live centuries, and have annual growth rings like trees. They record their own rate of growth. If farming, which started about 100 years ago on the reef coast, was damaging it, there should be a slowing of the growth rate. The records show no slowing when agriculture started a century ago, or when large-scale use of fertiliser and pesticides began in the 1950s.

I have written previously that AIMS has been negligent in not updating the GBR-average coral growth data for the past 15 years. We have the scandalous situation that there is data going back centuries – but nothing since 2005. AIMS claimed coral growth rates collapsed between 1990 and 2005, due to climate change; however, there is considerable doubt about this result because AIMS changed the methodology for the data between 1990 and 2005. At the Senate inquiry, under some duress, AIMS agreed it would be a good idea to update this data if the government will fund the project.

Updating the coral growth rate data will be a major step forward. It will prove or disprove the doubtful decline between 1990 and 2005. It will also give the complete record of how the GBR has fared in the past 15 years, a period when scientists have become more strident in their claims that it is on its last legs.

Hardisty, to his credit, has recently implemented red-blue teams within his organisation to help with quality assurance of the work that AIMS produces. A red team is a group of scientists that takes a deliberately antagonist approach to check, test and replicate scientific evidence. A genuine red team is a far more rigorous quality assurance approach than the present system used in science – peer review – which is often little more than a quick read of the work by the scientist’s mates. What AIMS has done internally is similar to what I have been proposing – an Office of Science Quality Assurance that would check, test, and replicate scientific evidence used for public policy.

Unfortunately, Hardisty’s commitment to quality in science was not reflected by many other important witnesses at the Senate inquiry. Many are in denial and resorted to shooting the messengers. An extract from a letter signed by Professor Ian Chubb, a former Australian chief scientist, was read out by Senator Kim Carr.

Disputing the conventional wisdom on the reef was likened to denying that tobacco causes cancer, or that lead in petrol is a health risk. Worse still, the reason sceptics do this, apparently, is “usually money”. Scientists such as Dr Piers Larcombe, the pre-eminent expert on the movement of sediment on the reef, with decades of experience, is thus written off as a corrupt charlatan.

It is scientific “cancel culture”. It is easier than confronting Larcombe’s evidence that farming has very limited impact on the GBR.

It is customary to be very cynical of our politicians, but it was senators Roberts, Rennick, Canavan and McDonald who forced some truth from our generally untrustworthy science institutions. Only our politicians can save us from them.

The evidence about the reef will not be buried forever. All the data indicates agriculture is having a negligible impact on the reef, and recent draconian Queensland legislation against farmers is unwarranted. And this issue will be influential come the Queensland state election on October 31.

SOURCE

16 September, 2020

Longtime Climate Science Denier Hired At NOAA

And NPR is frantic

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Legates confirmed to NPR that he was recently hired as NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. The position suggests that he reports directly to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency that is in charge of the federal government's sprawling weather and climate prediction work.

Neither Legates nor NOAA representatives responded to questions about Legates' specific responsibilities or why he was hired. The White House also declined to comment.

Legates has a long history of using his position as an academic scientist to publicly cast doubt on climate science. His appointment to NOAA comes as Americans face profound threats stoked by climate change, from the vast, deadly wildfires in the West to an unusually active hurricane season in the South and East.

Global temperatures have already risen nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Warming is happening the fastest at the Earth's poles, where sea ice is melting, permafrost is thawing and ocean temperatures are heating up, with devastating effects on animals and humans alike.

In 2007, Legates was one of the authors of a paper that questioned previous findings about the role of climate change in destroying the habitat of polar bears. That research was partially funded by grants from Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute lobbying group and ExxonMobil, according to InsideClimate News.

The same year, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner sent a letter to Legates expressing concern about his opinions on climate change, given that he was the state climatologist at the time. Minner asked him to refrain from casting doubt on climate science when he was acting in his official role. Legates stepped down in 2011.

Legates also appeared in a video pushing the discredited theory that the sun is the cause of global warming. In testimony before the U.S. Senate in 2014, Legates argued that a climate science report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change erroneously stated that humans are causing global warming.

Legates is a professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. He is also affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has poured money into convincing Americans that climate change is not happening and that the scientific evidence — including evidence published by the agency that now employs Legates — is uncertain or untrustworthy.

Advocates who reject mainstream climate science, such as those at Heartland, have had a leading role in shaping the Trump administration's response to global warming, including the decision to exit the Paris climate accord.

Steve Milloy, a Heartland board member and part of Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team, says he welcomes the Legates appointment. "David Legates is a true climate scientist and will bring a great deal of much-needed science to NOAA," Milloy writes in an email to NPR.

But climate researchers slammed NOAA's decision to appoint Legates to a key scientific position.

"He's not just in left field — he's not even near the ballpark," says Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and head of NOAA under President Barack Obama.

Contrarians in science are welcome, Lubchenco says, but their claims have to be scientifically defensible. That's why official groups like the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change review the entire range of scientific research before reaching a conclusion.

Over the last 20 years, in his work and public statements, Legates has rejected the overwhelming peer-reviewed research that shows human activity is the main driver of a dangerously changing climate.

Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, says in an email to NPR that Legates has, throughout his career, "misrepresented the science of climate change, serving as an advocate for polluting interests as he dismisses and downplays the impacts of climate change."

Mann adds: "At a time when those impacts are playing out before our very eyes in the form of unprecedented wildfires out West and super-storms back East, I cannot imagine a more misguided decision than to appoint someone like Legates to a position of leadership at an agency that is tasked with assessing the risks we face from extreme weather events."

SOURCE

The Social Cost of Carbon Fantasy

The climate activists’ frustration with something called the social cost of carbon (SCC) reached a breaking point recently. In their recent article in Nature Climate Change, Kaufman et al. admit that the estimates for the SCC are so divergent as to be useless for policy making. They overcame their frustration by, in essence, simply assuming the SCC is infinity.

My coauthors and I found also found SCC estimates to be useless for policy making, years ago. (For example, see here, here, and here.) It is fine to not use it, but it isn’t fine to not use it and act like you did.   In the Kaufman et al. world, the economics start after you have already decided to zero-out all CO2 emissions by 2040 (or 2050 or 2060).

A little history can help explain what games are going on, here. For a century, economists have made a living finding examples where one person’s activity has some impact on other people. They call the impacts “externalities” and they think they can fix them with taxes or subsidies that exactly offset the value of these other-people impacts. Pigouvian (named after the early-Twentieth-Century economist, Arthur Pigou) taxes or subsidies are imposed to correct “market failures.”

The SCC is the purported measure of one such externality. It is the estimate of the negative impact on others per ton (actually, usually tonne) of CO2 emissions. This negative impact takes many forms—impacts from incrementally higher storm surges, incrementally worse storms, floods, tornadoes, other adverse weather impacts, and anything else they can think of. The calculators of damage are undeterred by the lack of increases in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts, so far. You see, they are looking into the future—way into the future. The models used for these calculations sum up the estimated damage per ton of CO2, which is assumed to persist for years or centuries or, even millennia. However, let us look backward about a decade.

Early in its mission to “slow the rise of the oceans,” the Obama Administration was intent on using regulation (in lieu of a Pigouvian tax) to correct the alleged market failure in energy markets. Their tool would be the SCC. In what is best interpreted as an attempt to sneak the novel use of SCC into the regulatory cost-benefit world, the maiden case for SCC was in the August 31, 2009 edition of the Federal Register with this rule: “Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Refrigerated Bottled or Canned Beverage Vending Machines.” Yes, the Department of Energy regulatory juggernaut did not miss anything. New standards for the efficiency of compressors in soda pop vending machines was the tip of the green spear that would save us from another degree of global warming.

It turns out this regulation did, indeed, fall pretty much under the radar. After all, it was a rule to regulate the efficiency of compressors in Coke machines, but it was also a disappointment for the climate crusaders. The $19 most-likely estimate for the SCC would not justify killing energy jobs fast enough or drive up energy prices high enough. It was no fun.

A couple of years later, while ignoring their previous rule to use only publications cited in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report, the believers in science at the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon were able to juice the SCC to $41/ton. It was duly integrated into the Department of Energy’s regulatory tool kit with another below-the-radar regulation. This rule, “Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Standby Mode and Off Mode for Microwave Ovens,” set tough new standards on the amount of energy a microwave oven can use when it is not being used.

That was not a joke, at least not beyond the normal self-parody that is DC. Untold hours of analysis, tests, comments and responses were devoted to mandating which technologies would be allowed for the digital displays on microwave ovens. All of it to save an average of two watts. According to the numbers, the avoided climate damage, summed for every year between 2013 and 2300 (yes, nearly three centuries in total), by using the more efficient digital display worked out to $0.50 per year per for the lifetime of an oven. That is about $5 total per microwave for avoiding 300 years of theoretical damage. Go, here, for a more thorough expose of this tragic comedy. (Spoiler alert: The DoE buried the fact that half of the new efficient-tech displays failed in testing.)

This SCC of $41/ton was eventually used in more substantial energy regulations, but it was never enough to justify any of them. The climate regulations required co-benefits (of dubious legitimacy) to make them pass cost-benefit tests.

Those who want to look like rational and data-driven Cassandras as they make ten-years-to-act proclamations are totally frustrated by the economics. Even the SCC calculations from Nobel Laureate, William Nordhaus, cannot justify 1.5- or 2.0-degree caps that are the de rigeur targets of the climate establishment.

So, what can you do? Assume the answer (the SCC is whatever it takes to totally eliminate CO2 emissions by whatever year sounds good) and then work the regulations and taxes backwards from there. When you are done, pretend it is economically justified.

SOURCE

Upstate Forests Being Sacrificed on An Altar of Solar Fiction

Right down the bottom of my road is an 80+ acre property that used to be Murphy’s Campground and Diner. There were woods and fields and a place to park your camper for the weekend or season. It had a babbling brook and a restaurant where campers could get a hot breakfast. There was also a great hall for dancing, weddings and parties of most sorts. It’s all over now and the land is being converted into a solar facility that is destroying numerous acres of our Upstate forests; sacrificing them on an altar of solar fiction.

Like many other businesses in Upstate New York, though, the owner confessed to me over 20 years ago that campers couldn’t afford the cost increases he was forced to impose due to ever rising taxes and ever-growing New York State fees and regulations. He went out of business and the property sold in 2008 to a speculator on natural gas development. It has been 12 years and now a land investor has made good on his investment by leasing to a solar company who is busy denuding our Upstate forests. Who can blame him after New York absconded with all our mineral rights via its moratorium?

It starts with cutting a road, but let me word this as if it were Sandra Steingraber narrating as I adopt her voice:

Mother Nature, unsuspecting, lay peacefully amongst her children, ever so young. From 10 to 80 years old they stood tall, each one worshiped the mother by removing up to 40 lbs of carbon from the air. The deer roamed freely eating the acorn harvest from under the oaks and the walnuts and hickory, too. Sweet were the apples providing nourishment to beast and man alike.

Taller trees found by the once peaceful brook, now filled with broken hydraulic hoses, empty cans, broken branches and other debris. Man has entered this Upstate forest home to birds and beast. With machines bigger than dump trucks, tires as tall as two men, the saws cut through the flesh of old growth trees as they fell by the dozen. You can hear them scream as the trees crashed to the ground, now dead, not as they were found; Upstate forests sacrificed on an altar of solar fiction and making all so very sad; sad to the knowing, the educated, the beast and the bird —the Earth forever scarred by in the name of solar dreams that turned out to be nightmares.

As the deforestation moves forward and with each day, trucks coming in and out, carrying the remains of 80 acres of trees, they can not keep up with the chain saws, funded by subsidies and taxes we pay to abort these children of mother nature. All this in the name of “clean energy,” the lie the left spins as green romance, promising to save the planet they themselves are destroying.

Where once deer fed, turkey gobbled, and the American Eagle nested, there is now only barren land to populated by hundreds of metallic solar panels no one knows what to do with once they stop producing electricity. Some 80-100 years of nature destroyed for 15-20 years of uneconomical solar energy that requires ever higher electricity prices, all to make a tribute to Governor Cuomo.

Our Upstate forests are falling for this and I can hear the sound, can’t you? Visit the project site, where this rape of wooded life and its inhabitants is taking place, and you’ll search in vain for posted permits or any documentation of approvals, approvals or anything else. There are no NO TRESPASSING signs and no DANGER KEEP OUT signs. I thought of New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and his concern for his non-existent kids. I thought of how Cuomo said he wouldn’t want a kid falling down a 4 inch pipe. As I left to write this I looked back at the piled logs 20 feet high and thought…. KIDS.

That’s the truth of what’s happening; New York State is picking winners and losers and choosing poorly, very poorly. Taxpayers are being cheated, ratepayers are being robbed and our Upstate forests are being obliterated.

SOURCE

PM claims Australia will hit 2030 emissions targets in 'canter'

Mr Morrison made the claim during a national energy address, where he encouraged accelerated development of gas fields and the continued use of coal for decades to come.

Under the Paris Agreement, Australia has committed to reducing emissions by 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Despite further investment into gas and coal, a move which environmentalists will likely criticise, Mr Morrison said his government was committed to reducing emissions.

Mr Morrison said $30 billion invested in renewables between 2017 and mid-2020 would help Australia hit its 2030 targets. "We remain committed to (the 2030 target) and we will meet it in a canter."

"In Australia, you cannot talk about electricity generation and ignore coal," Mr Morrison said. "Coal will continue to play an important part of our economy for decades to come."

Some environmental groups have complained Australia will need controversial "carry-over" credits from previous agreements to meet the 2030 target.

Mr Morrison also announced Australia was boosting its national fuel storage capacity to protect against "low probability, high impact events". At a minimum, this means the national stockpile of petrol and jet fuel will cover 24 days, and diesel stocks to increase from 20 to 28 days.

The COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted supply chain threats, Mr Morrison said. Mr Morrison used his address to call on the gas industry to supply energy to Australia customers at cheaper prices.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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15 September, 2020

BBC One viewers left 'terrified' by Sir David Attenborough's new documentary Extinction: The Facts

Sir David is a talented entertainer and he is good at using that to worry people. The loss of species to extinction is his big concern, particularly furry species that we can relate to. Most of our pets are furry and it seems likely that in our recent evolutionary past we too were furry

To my knowledge he has never shown concern about species such as cockroaches. Yet cockroaches are an important lesson in extinctions. Mankind has attacked them furiously yet they thrive. So a species can be very hardy. Modernity and mankind generally   may have little effect on a species.

So the science in the Attenborough show is slight. The basic scientific fact is that species differentiate and go extinct all the time. On some estimates over 98% of all the species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct. You do not see dinosaurs wandering around these days.

It is of course sensible and congenial to make efforts to conserve species we admire but nature has its own way in these things, so we are unlikely to do much that will change its trajectory. The fittest will survive. Others will not.

Sir David claims that species loss is higher now than it once was. But that is unknowable. To prove that you would need to have good data on species numbers over a long period of time. Yet we have no firm numbers on how many species there are right now. It is entirely possible that human conservation efforts have SLOWED the rate of extinction. So Sir David's claims are pure propaganda with no basis in science

And as for his claim that global warming has been detrimental to species abundance, the reality is likely to be the opposite. Warmth is generally helpful to life.

My favourite example of that is Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a reef that stretches over a thousand miles North to South along the Australian East coast -- from cool subtropical waters in the South to near equatorial temperatures in the Torres Strait (Yes. Strait, not straight). So where on the reef are species (fish, corals, algae, invertebrates etc.) most abundant along that stretch? In the cool South or the equatorial North? I think you know the answer. Warmth is GOOD for life

Sir David is a likeable character but in the end he is just another bullsh*tter

BBC One viewers have been left 'terrified' and 'angry' by Sir David Attenborough's new documentary Extinction: The Facts.

The hour-long programme, which aired tonight (September 13), saw the legendary natural historian and fellow experts investigate the devastating effects of climate change and habitat loss on wildlife and plant life, and how it's also impacting humanity and the planet.

Disturbing scenes saw Attenborough detail how a million different species are at risk of extinction due to the biodiversity crisis, which is also putting us at greater risk of pandemic diseases like COVID-19.

While it all might seem like doom and gloom, the documentary did end on a hopeful note, as we revisited the forest slopes of the Virunga Volcanoes in Rwanda, where Attenborough had a memorable encounter with a group endangered mountain gorillas over four decades ago.

Back in 1978, there were just 250 of the gorillas left, but thanks to the conservation and protection of their habitat over the last forty years, their population now exceeds 1000.

"It just shows what we can achieve when we put our minds to it," said Attenborough.

"I do truly believe that, together, we can create a better future. I might not be here to see it, but if we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planet's ecosystems, its extraordinary biodiversity and all its inhabitants.

SOURCE

Why I rebelled against Extinction Rebellion... and went nuclear: In an astonishing and brave volte-face, the eco-group's ex-spokesperson ZION LIGHTS reveals why she has changed tack over the future of energy

By ZION LIGHTS

Like many people, I’m planning a small gathering this weekend while government rules still allow, heading to a stretch of beach for a picnic.

My choice of venue is arguably a little less orthodox, however: I’ll be camping out on the precise stretch of shingle in Suffolk over which the Sizewell nuclear plant looms.

It’s not an obvious spot, especially for someone who has long prided herself on being a passionate and committed environmentalist and who until earlier this year was spokesperson for the direct action group Extinction Rebellion, or XR.

Certainly there are several people in that organisation who will be horrified by the very notion of going anywhere near Sizewell — but unlike me, many of them refuse to confront what I believe is an undeniable truth: that a pivot to nuclear power is the only thing that can truly rescue us from our burgeoning energy and climate crisis.

Former Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Zion Lights appears on Good Morning Britain in October last year    +3
Former Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Zion Lights appears on Good Morning Britain in October last year

Doomsday

Yet like so many lobby groups, my old colleagues peddle messages of doomsday gloom that alienate as much as they motivate, offering little in the way of positive solutions. It is scaremongering rather than inspiring, and while for a time I aligned myself with their world view — and their tactics — in recent months I have come to see things differently.

In fact, after years as a member of one campaigning group or another, I now believe passionately that environmentalism — that umbrella term for the loose collection of organisations that have existed for decades trying to bring about an end to climate change — has failed.

By that I mean that for all the picketing, and the direct action, and the exhortations to use less fuel, fly less and conserve water, nothing has really made a difference to how we choose to live. Day after day, we still hear of energy crises around the world, increasing drought and wildfires, and species facing extinction.

Turn the clock back 30 years, and I was hearing much the same messages in the classroom at my Birmingham comprehensive school. Some of the words and the numbers may have changed, but not much else.

It certainly lit a fire in me: growing up in a working-class, inner-city area, the daughter of immigrants from the Punjab who worked punishing hours in factories to make ends meet, I was an unlikely budding environmental campaigner.

But by the time I went to university I helped found a green organisation and later joined the Green Party.

From there I joined another small climate action group, but when it died out I stayed out of activism for a while to concentrate on my own freelance writing, taking a Masters in science communication because, unlike the slightly ‘crazy hippy’ connotations my unusual name may conjure, I’ve always been a firm believer in following the science.

Disorder

It’s one reason I was first attracted to XR. Their mantra — initially anyway — was ‘listen to the scientists’. So when they gave me the role of a spokesperson, it felt like I had a platform to talk about what I truly felt mattered.

That is, until in early October last year, when I appeared on current affairs programme the Andrew Neil Show on behalf of the organisation.

I was fully briefed and confident, my mind whirling with rubber-stamped facts and figures — until he confronted me with one figure I couldn’t defend. It was co-founder Roger Hallam’s claim that unless climate change was halted, six billion people would die this century.

It’s a headline-grabbing assertion — but unfortunately, it’s also not true, or certainly not backed up by any evidence. As was obvious to anyone who knows me — and even to the casual viewer — I was plunged into a PR nightmare.

I could not defend the number, but as the official spokesperson nor could I be seen to condemn it.

All I could do, instead, was flounder under the hot glare of the studio lights for what felt like an eternity.

Even now, the memory of it makes me shiver.

It proved to be the beginning of the end of my relationship with XR: whether it was hate mail from XR supporters accusing me of letting the organisation down, or more measured messages from colleagues saying we could ‘get’ scientists to back up Hallam’s claim, it was clear that my world view and theirs were parting ways.

Then, less than two weeks later, XR members caused sizeable disorder at an East London Tube station, preventing commuters from getting to work.

The ploy made me deeply uneasy — while XR’s entire strategy is based on disruption, targeting London’s public transport network at rush hour felt beyond the pale.

I made it plain that it shouldn’t have been done, a sentiment that, in fairness, many other members came to acknowledge.

Running parallel to this was my sense that like so many other environmental lobby groups before them, XR seem to have fallen into the trap of telling people what not to do, while also peddling the notion that the solution to the climate crisis was to ‘turn back the clock’ to a simpler time.

It’s something that has long infuriated me: try telling that to the people living in poverty in the Punjab. They want clean water, but they also want laptops. In short, they want what we here in the West have had for a long time — and it is rank hypocrisy for those of us who have benefited from the comfortable advances in technology in recent years to suggest they can’t have it.

For that, of course, you need energy. But while renewable energy can and should be part of the mix in supplying energy to the UK and the rest of the world, the reality is that there is only one reliable, low-carbon energy source that we can invest in now.

Barricade

It’s why, in June, I resigned from XR and took a new role overseeing British campaign group Environmental Progress UK, which is campaigning in particular for the creation of the mooted Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk.

It’s a decision that led to some abusive messages from a small cohort of my old colleagues, wedded to the ancient image of atom bombs and weapons instead of life-changing electricity and a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions. Yet the reality remains, if we are going to service our ever-burgeoning energy needs, then the only way forward is nuclear.

It’s one reason that instead of trying to barricade the gates of a newspaper plants or chaining myself to a barrier outside the Houses of Parliament I will be proudly holding a banner at my picnic this weekend, proclaiming something I believe to be true: Nuclear Saves Lives.

SOURCE

Combating the Tyranny, Waste, and Economic Devastation of ‘Green’ Agenda With Free Enterprise

Since publication of the last Mandate for Leadership, the Trump administration has taken productive steps to open access to energy development and reduce the regulatory burdens that have driven up energy costs while producing minimal to no environmental benefits.

Withdrawing the signature pieces of the Obama administration’s climate legacy—the Clean Power Plan and the New Source Performance Standards for new power plants—provided much-needed regulatory relief. The president also announced the intent of the U.S. to withdraw from the costly and ineffective Paris climate agreement.

The administration’s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule provided modifications to Obama-era corporate average fuel economy standards with a “preferred alternative” for model years 2021 through 2026. The administration’s revision is a welcome victory both for consumers’ wallets and for consumer choice.

The president approved the Keystone XL pipeline, and his executive orders on the National Environmental Policy Act and energy infrastructure wisely called for modernization, improved efficiency, and good-governance measures for clarity and consistency across agencies in key permitting and regulatory activities.

The Department of Energy took action to expedite small-scale natural gas exports and relieve the permitting backlog facing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act opened Alaska’s coastal plain (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) for energy exploration and production.

The energy potential of the section now open is enormous, and will provide much-needed economic opportunity for remote communities, in addition to which the environmental footprint is minimal.

In other instances, not doing anything at all was a win for energy consumers.

So far, the current administration has backed off from subsidizing specific coal and nuclear power plants. The plan would not have had any measurable impact on grid resilience and reliability but would have significantly disrupted competitive electricity markets, hurting consumers and choking off opportunities for new market entries.

President Donald Trump’s budget routinely proposed reduced spending for energy subsidies and also activities that are not legitimate functions of the federal government.

The news is not all good, however. Under this administration, the Environmental Protection Agency continues to ramp up volumetric requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The mandate requires that refiners blend costly biofuels into America’s fuel supply, and the administration has catered to the special interests of the biofuels lobby at the expense of consumers.

Moreover, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on solar technology imports in 2018, and its steel and aluminum tariffs increase the cost of energy projects domestically. Borders should not mean that individuals are forced to pay artificially higher prices for energy.

Cronyism also is still prevalent in the energy sector, and the government allocates special benefits to the well-connected instead of fostering a playing field that provides opportunity for all to compete.

These subsidies obstruct the long-term success and viability of the technologies and energy sources that they are intended to promote by distorting the actual costs of energy production and interfering with the price signals by which businesses monitor supply and demand.

When the government plays favorites, valuable resources shift to less productive uses.

Removing the cronyism and corporate welfare that are pervasive in energy markets is no easy feat. The Trump administration’s attempt to rescind unused funds in the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program provides a good case study.

In handing out only five loans, the program has wasted taxpayer dollars by subsidizing economic losers (Fisker) and has promoted corporate welfare by subsidizing well-off companies (Nissan and Ford). The program has $4.3 billion remaining but has been idle for more than eight years without a new loan administered by the department.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 authorizes the president to rescind funding previously enacted into law, and the White House appropriately offered a $15 billion rescissions package that included the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program.

Special interests prevailed, however, and the program remains in place.

SOURCE

Australian coal miner wins bid for injunction against activist

Environmental activist Benjamin Penning will be forced to cease his public attacks against mining giant Adani after the company won a Supreme Court injunction against him.

Adani and its Carmichael Rail Network claim Pennings’ ongoing campaign of harassment has cost millions of dollars, forced its insurance to skyrocket by 400 per cent, blown out its $1 million security bill to $5 million and cost millions of dollars in lost and renegotiated contracts.

Adani is suing Mr Pennings, an outspoken serial protester and former Greens mayoral candidate, who it claims has orchestrated a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation against the company for almost a decade.

In addition to the damages lawsuit, Adani last week also applied for an injunction to force Pennings to remove previous online posts threatening the mine and its contractors and cease publishing any future posts relating to the mine on social media and websites including Galilee Blockade.

Adani alleges Pennings helped orchestrate an “infiltration campaign” whereby people were encouraged to leak the company’s confidential information, and a “Dob in Adani” campaign in which contractors were targeted by activists, causing a number of companies to cease relationships with the coal mine and its rail line.

This morning Justice Glenn Martin granted the mine’s injunction application, saying he was satisfied the evidence supported the conclusion that Pennings and others had “misused and will, unless restrained, continue to misuse confidential information with the purpose of frustrating or terminating the development of the mine and rail network”.

“The protest activity undertaken by the Galilee Blockade has led to at least three contractors withdrawing,” Justice Martin said.

“The information published on the social media accounts reinforces that the Galilee Blockade is determined to continue to obtain confidential information and to use it, and other information, to place pressure upon contractors to either withdraw from negotiations or to withdraw from contracts.

The evidence relating to the conduct of Mr Pennings and the Galilee Blockade allows for an inference to be drawn that, unless required to remove the statements complained of, they will remain on the social media accounts and will be acted upon by Mr Pennings and the Galilee Blockade.”

He said Adani had provided un-contradicted evidence that contractors and suppliers had been the subject of threats, some of which had been fulfilled through action being taken against contractors such as Downer Group, AECOM, and Greyhound Australia.

“The conduct alleged against Mr Pennings has, on the applicants’ case, resulted in a loss of many millions of dollars to the applicants,” Justice Martin said.

“Should they be successful in this matter then the potential size of an award of damages would, on the material, be beyond Mr Pennings. “There is nothing to suggest that an individual in his circumstances could make good the damage which is said to have been caused.”

Justice Martin said the balance of convenience “clearly favours” the granting of the injunction.

The order will require Mr Ben Pennings to remove online posts and campaigns remove any online material related to the Dob in a Contractor campaign, remove content from online channels that encourages the collation of confidential material about our business, and to stop what Adani alleges is threatening behaviour towards its contractors and employees.

“The plaintiffs have a good case against Mr Pennings and there will be no prejudice to him should orders be made which, effectively, require him to act in a lawful way,” he said.

“The injunction sought will have no financial repercussion for Mr Pennings but, if they are not made, the losses to the applicants will be very substantial.

“The injunctions sought do not seek to, nor would they, have any effect on any business or undertaking of Mr Pennings, nor do they restrict his right, or any other member of Galilee Blockade, to participate in lawful protest.”

Outside court, Mr Pennings said while he would comply with the court order, the “global movement” would not be deterred by the lawsuit. “Adani claims their legal strategy is not about inflicting hardship on me,” Mr Pennings said.

“Despite this successful injunction, Adani is still undertaking court action that could bankrupt my family. I shouldn’t have to sell our suburban family home to make a multi-billionaire even richer. So long as Adani threatens my family and the environment we all share I will do everything lawfully in my powers to stop them.”

“The global movement to stop Adani’s coal mine will not be deterred by the cold-hearted bullying tactics of a billionaire’s mining company targeting one individual.

“The Australian public will continue to oppose Adani’s destructive climate wrecking mine.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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14 September, 2020

Global temperatures are on track to reach a level the planet has not seen in 50 MILLION years by 2300, analysis of seabed rocks reveals

"On track to reach" -- just another prophecy. Certain to be just as good as all their previous failed prophecies. The fact that we actually live in an era of exceptional temperature stability makes it really hard for the climate alarmists

To this day, we have very little temperature data for large parts of the earth's surface -- the Southern ocean, Siberia, Northern Canada, for instance. So the whole idea that we can say with any accuracy from that data what the earth's average temperature is like even now, is suspect.

But there is some evidence to suggest that the average global temperature has risen by about one degree Celsius over the last 100 years or so, but it has to be noted that in many places -- particularly in the USA, where the measurements are most accurate -- there has been no rise at all over that time, even a slight fall.

So if we project from the most recent measurements rather than very shaky measurements of what happened millions of years ago in one place, there is no cause for concern. A patchy rise of another one degree over the whole of the next century would hardly be noticed

Global temperatures by the end of the century will reach levels not seen in 50 million years if greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly reduced, a study has warned.

German and US experts analysed tiny fossils in cores drilled from the seabed to reconstruct the Earth's climatic history back to the time of the dinosaurs.

During this 66-million-year period, the planet has seen four distinct climate states — which scientists have dubbed 'hothouse', 'warmhouse', 'coolhouse' and 'icehouse'.

Each state is characterised by particular greenhouse gas concentrations and the extent of the ice to be found stored at the Earth's poles

For most of the past three million years, the Earth has been in an 'icehouse' state — one characterised by alternating glacial and interglacial periods.

However, greenhouse gas emissions and other human activities are now pushing the climate towards a 'warmhouse' and 'hothouse' state, experts have warned.

Warmhouse conditions were last seen during the Eocene epoch — which ended around 34 million years ago — in which there were no polar ice caps.

Across this time, the average global temperatures were 16.2–25.2°F (9–14°C) higher than they are in the present day.

Global temperatures by the end of the century will reach levels not seen in 50 million years if greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly reduced, a study has warned. German and US experts analysed cores drilled up from the seabed over the last five decades to reconstruct the Earth's climatic history. all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs.

'The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections for 2300 in the "business-as-usual" [emissions] scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years,' said paper author James Zachos.

In their study, Professor Zachos and colleagues created a 'climate reference curve' dubbed CENOGRID, which maps out global temperature changes in the past, at present and includes various predictions for the future based on emissions levels.

CENOGRID has revealed that the natural climate variability that occurs as a result of changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun is much smaller than the future warming predicted as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

'We now know more accurately when it was warmer or colder and have a better understanding of the underlying dynamics and the processes that drive them,' said paper author and marine geologist Thomas Westerhold.

'The time from 66 to 34 million years ago — when the planet was significantly warmer than it is today — is of particular interest, as it represents a parallel in the past to what future anthropogenic change could lead to,' he added.

'We have known for a long time [that] the glacial–interglacial cycles are paced by changes in Earth's orbit,' explained Professor Zachos, who conducts research at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

These cycles, he added, 'alter the amount of solar energy reaching Earth's surface, and astronomers have been computing these orbital variations back in time.'

'As we reconstructed past climates, we could see long-term coarse changes quite well. We also knew there should be finer-scale rhythmic variability due to orbital variations, but for a long time it was considered impossible to recover that signal.'

'Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that.'

'We use CENOGRID to understand what Earth's normal range of natural climate change and variability is and how quickly Earth recovered from past events,' said paper author and palaeoclimatologist Anna Joy Drury of University College London.

'While we show [that] the Earth previously experienced warm climate states, these were characterised by extreme climate events and were radically different from our modern world.'

'Since the peak warmth of the Hothouse, Earth's climate has gradually cooled over the last 50 million years.'

'But the present and predicted rapid anthropogenic changes reverse this trend and, if unabated, far exceed the natural variability of the last 66 million years.'

'CENOGRID's window into the past provides context for the ongoing anthropogenic change and how exceptional it is.'

Most of the major climate transitions in the past 66 million years — when a giant asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs — have been associated with changes in greenhouse gas levels.

Previous research by Prof Zachos determined that a period of rapid global warming around 50 million years ago that drove the climate into a hothouse state was caused by a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Similarly, in the late Eocene, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fell, ice sheets began to form in Antarctica and the climate transitioned to a coolhouse state.

'The climate can become unstable when it is nearing one of these transitions, and we see less predictable responses to orbital forcing, so that is something we would like to better understand,' Prof Zachos added.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Science.

SOURCE

Separating fact from fiction about wildfires

Due to much of the western United States being naturally arid, high mountain scrub desert, grassland, and dry forest, wildfires are an unfortunate fact of life. They always have been and likely always will be.

And despite what you may have heard, there is no evidence climate change is making the problem worse.

California, where much of the attention on wildfires has been focused in recent years, because it has a large population and major media outlets are located there, was one of the least populated (and lowest population density) regions of the country before European colonizers spread across the continent. Research shows droughts in the region have on occasion lasted on the order of a hundred years. And there is evidence massive wildfires regularly swept through the region in the past. Indeed, a 2007 paper in the journal Forest Ecology and Management found prior to European colonization in the 1800s, more than 4.4 million acres of California forest and shrub-land burned annually, far more than the area of California that has burned since 2000, which ranges from 90,000 acres to 1,590,000 acres per year.

Although one wouldn’t know it from the news coverage and alarming, but false, claims that climate change is making wildfires more frequent and severe, the opposite is true. A 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found wildfires in the western United States attained “the lowest levels … during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca. 1400–1700 CE [Common Era]). Prominent peaks in forest fires occurred during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. 950–1250 CE) and during the 1800s.”

Wildfires have declined sharply over the course of the past century in the United States and globally. As reported in Climate at a Glance: Wildfires, long-term data from U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) show wildfires have declined in number and severity since the early 1900s. Using data on U.S. wildfires from as far back as 1926, NIFC reports the numbers of acres burned is far less now than it was throughout the early 20th century, with the current acres burned running about 1/4th to 1/5th of the record values that occurred in the 1930s.

Globally, the data on wildfires are just as clear. In his book “False Alarm,” Bjorn Lomborg observes:

“There is plenty of evidence for a reduction in the level of devastation caused by fire, with satellites showing a 25 percent reduction globally in burned area just over the past 18 years … In total, the global amount of area burned has declined by more than 540,000 square miles, from 1.9 million square miles in the early part of last century to 1.4 million square miles today.”

To the extent wildfires have grown modestly in recent years, although still far below the modern peaks of the early 1900s, government policies and demographic shifts are mostly to blame.

After the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, forest policy on federal lands shifted, and not for the better. After Reagan, forests began to be managed for the imagined good of ecosystems, placing ecological and recreational values above timber production. The result was an abdication of management so that nature was allowed to take its course unfettered.

Under this policy, thousands of miles of forest roads were ripped out, roads built to allow the harvesting of timber, but also used by firefighters to access wildfires in the hinterlands before they spread to populated regions. And timber harvests plunged as much as 84 percent from 12 billion board feet per year to less than 2 billion board feet per year.

The result across much of the western states has been an unnatural tree density. For example, historically, ponderosa pines grew in stands of 20 to 55 trees per acre, but in some areas they now grow in densities of 300 to 900 trees per acre. The unnatural density allowed what were formerly isolated pockets of insect infestations to morph into massive infestations killing large swaths of forests. There are now more dead trees in many federal forests than live ones, drying out and becoming growing stockpile of fuel for wildfires. Indeed, the U.S. Forest Service estimates more than 190 million acres of public land, almost all of it in the arid west, are at risk of catastrophic fires. Too many trees, too much brush, and bureaucratic regulations and lawsuits filed by environmental extremists are to blame.

On the demographic side, populations have grown dramatically in the western states. What were once uninhabited areas or small towns have become major metropolitan areas with suburbs growing out to the edges of wildlands. For instance, in Colorado, where wildfires are raging at the moment, the population has grown five-fold since 1940, from a little more than one million in 1940 to nearly 5.76 million today. Former small mining towns have become cities. Colorado’s population has grown 14.5 percent since the 2010 census, the fourth largest percentage growth in the nation.

Across the west, more people, more buildings, and more infrastructure have created a growing urban-rural interface, meaning more people and property are in harm’s way when wildfires inevitably occur. Indeed, the absolute costs of wildfires have increased dramatically over the past century even as the number of acres burned has declined. When wildfires strike, more people are affected and more expensive property is destroyed. The higher costs aren’t caused by climate change but from the rise in the number of people and value of assets placed in the “bullseye” as a result of demographic shifts in where people live and the lifestyles they pursue.

When it comes to wildfires, to co-opt the immortal words of naval officer Oliver Hazard Perry, “we have met the enemy, and it is, not climate change, but us.”

SOURCE

Modernizing America’s Environmental Policy for the 21st Century

Since publication of the last Mandate for Leadership, the Trump administration has taken a number of encouraging steps to decrease the ever-expanding regulatory state that threatens liberty, property rights, and economic progress for little to no environmental benefit.

The administration scrapped the climate agenda of the Obama administration, which would have driven up energy bills on American families for no meaningful global temperature impact.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule and revamped New Source Performance Standards to allow new coal-fired power plants to compete in the market, and the U.S. is withdrawing from the ineffective Paris Agreement.

Another Obama-era problem that needed fixing was the Waters of the United States rule, more colloquially known as WOTUS. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created a new and expansive regulatory definition for the waters within the federal government’s jurisdiction according to the Clean Water Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency rescinded the rule in September 2019 and is replacing it with one that limits federal responsibilities to those that are more in line with its constitutional powers, protects property rights, and recognizes the role of the states.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, which implement the Endangered Species Act, finalized regulations that will better conserve species by solving some significant problems with the law’s implementation. This law simply has not worked.

Over the law’s more than 45 years, only about 3% of the species listed as threatened or endangered have been removed from the list due to recovery. While greater reform by Congress is necessary, new regulations will provide much-needed transparency and better protect species instead of using the Endangered Species Act as a premise to block development.

The Environmental Protection Agency also announced in October 2017 that it would no longer engage in legal settlements frequently negotiated by the previous administration, which emboldened and enriched private groups.

The practice involved the Environmental Protection Agency encouraging lawsuits by environmental lobbyists to force rule-making or enforcement action. The agency would privately strike a generous settlement, with the plaintiffs heavily involved in the rule-making and the rest of the public excluded.

The president has likewise sought to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act, which has plagued permitting projects. Executive Order 13766, “Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High Priority Infrastructure Projects,” directed agencies to designate select infrastructure projects as “high priority” for the purpose of expediting permitting reviews.

Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure,” instituted a policy of “One Federal Decision.” This order calls for designating a “lead” agency for each major project to navigate National Environmental Policy Act reviews. Relevant agencies will compile reviews into a single record of decision rather than conflicting opinions among federal agencies.

Executive Order 13807 also calls for the processing time for environmental reviews to be reduced to “not more than an average of approximately 2 years.” Once a record of decision is issued, permit decisions should be completed within 90 days.

The president also acted on his executive order to review national monument designations under the law since 1996, making his announcement in Utah, which has been the subject of sweeping national monument designations through the Antiquities Act. The president announced reductions in two national monuments in southern Utah to make these designations consistent with the law.

In 1906, Congress gave the president the power to designate federal lands as national monuments. According to the law, these lands must constitute “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

The law has been abused by presidents from both parties, particularly in the past several decades. In severely limiting access to these lands, presidents have acutely affected the lives of the people who live and work on the land and have not given the states a say in the decision.

The Environmental Protection Agency also made some progress by recognizing its egregious practice of using ancillary benefits (co-benefits) to justify regulations. This has played out in a number of rule-makings, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s review of air quality standards and hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired and oil-fired electric plants.

Over-reliance on ancillary benefits can allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate a pollutant without ever making the case that reducing emissions of the targeted pollutant is even warranted.

SOURCE

Pennsylvania Lawmakers Resist Governor’s Executive Actions on Climate Change

If Pennsylvania joins a multistate agreement that restricts carbon dioxide emissions, the commonwealth could jeopardize its position as an energy producer and exporter without achieving discernible environmental benefits, according to elected officials who are resisting executive actions to address climate change.

The state Senate on Wednesday passed legislation to prohibit Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, from joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and imposing carbon taxes without the approval of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

A state Senate committee last week voted to move to the floor two bills that reaffirm the General Assembly’s authority over tax policy while asserting that Wolf’s Department of Environmental Protection cannot act unilaterally “to abate, control, or limit carbon dioxide emissions by imposing a revenue-generating tax or fee on carbon emissions.”

The Senate passed the House version of the legislation Wednesday by a vote of 33-17, one vote shy of a veto-proof majority.

“I don’t think the governor has the legal authority to proceed as he is,” said state Sen. Joe Pittman, a Republican representing the 41st District, which cuts across Armstrong, Butler, Indiana and Westmoreland counties.

“At the end of the day, we are not an appendage of the governor’s office, we are a coequal branch of the government,” Pittman said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal, “and if you’re going to slap a $300 million annual electricity tax on the people, then the people’s elected representatives need to have a voice in this process.”

The $300 million figure, found in a document from the state’s environmental protection agency, is drawn from estimates of the costs of Pennsylvania’s participation in the initiative in 2022.

The House passed HB 2025, co-sponsored by seven of Wolf’s fellow Democrats, by a vote of 130-71 in July.

The Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee votes in favor of that bill and companion bill SB 950 also received bipartisan support. State Sen. Andy Dinniman, a Chester County Democrat who represents the 19th District, joined with Republicans in 8-3 votes to advance the two bills challenging the governor.

With Senate action on the House bill, a Senate committee staffer told The Daily Signal, Wolf will have 10 days to decide whether to sign or veto it.

“Senate Bill 950 needs to be considered yet by the Senate Appropriations Committee,” the staffer said. “That bill could be considered by the full Senate as early as the week of Sept. 21.”

‘Keep Pushing’

Pittman, lead sponsor of SB 950 and vice chairman of the environmental and energy committee, said he is encouraged by the support the House version of his bill attracted and sees a “similar dynamic” at work in the Senate:

With the House vote, there was a very large contingent of the House Democratic Caucus who fully recognize the concern that working women and men and many blue-collar industries have for the potential impact that a carbon tax could have on their livelihoods. I’m hopeful that a similar outcome will occur in the Senate. We need to keep pushing this so we can get the governor to have real conversations about how communities will be affected and severely impacted by becoming part of this agreement.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, known as RGGI, is a compact among New England and Mid-Atlantic states that currently includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Jersey. Virginia is set to join in 2021.

Wolf issued an executive order in October 2019 instructing the state Department of Environmental Protection to begin formulating regulations that would enable Pennsylvania to enter the climate change agreement.

Initially, the governor had set a deadline of July 31 for the department to present a regulatory plan to the state’s Environmental Quality Board, but he extended this deadline to Sept. 15.

If the state Senate follows the House in passing legislation prohibiting the Wolf administration from implementing anti-emissions regulations without the General Assembly’s approval, it could set up a constitutional showdown.

Wolf should heed the advice of his own advisory committees that recommended against Pennsylvania’s joining the climate change accord, state Sen. Gene Yaw, a Republican representing the 23rd District (which includes Bradford, Lycoming, Sullivan, Susquehanna, and Union counties), said in an interview.

Three panels that advise the environmental agency have voted against Wolf’s proposal to join RGGI: the Small Business Compliance Advisory Committee, the Citizens Advisory Council, and the Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee. The panels include some members appointed by the governor and others appointed by state lawmakers.

“Why have advisory committees if you’re not going to pay attention to them?” Yaw said. “They’ve had three strikes and they should be out, but the governor is still going forward even though he can’t get support from his own people on the committee. They were chosen because of their expertise in certain areas and because they would give a reasonable, rational approach to certain issues, and they’ve done this.”

‘We Should Be Consulted’

As chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, Yaw held two hearings probing the potential impact of RGGI on Pennsylvania where industry representatives, environmental advocacy groups, and Wolf administration officials testified.

Yaw told The Daily Signal that his concerns about Wolf’s proposed regulations “go beyond” the questions he and other lawmakers have raised about how the governor appears to be overstepping his authority.

As a matter of policy, Yaw said, he isn’t convinced that RGGI would produce tangible environmental benefits but does expect that the resulting regulations would raise energy costs:

I think what the governor is doing is a very narrow, shortsighted view of the environmental concerns that are out there. I have the immediate concern about what this is going to do to electricity rates in Pennsylvania, and these electricity rates will have an effect on health, welfare, and jobs and everything else. These are policy decisions that go beyond any one person, and I think the Legislature needs to be involved in this and that we should be consulted.

The key to RGGI is a Budget Trading Program for carbon dioxide that both limits C02 emissions from electric power plants and issuing “allowances” for the emissions.

In other words, RGGI empowers government officials to implement “cap and trade” measures in which regulators place an upper limit or “cap” on the amount of carbon dioxide at power plants. The regulators also create “allowances” within interstate auctions that may be traded back and forth among companies subjected to the limit on carbon dioxide, so that some may exceed a cap as long as others remain below it.

Wolf has argued that Pennsylvania needs to implement anti-carbon regulations to combat what he describes as a “global climate crisis,” and that this should be done in partnership with other states.

“Even as we continue to work to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, we cannot neglect our responsibility and our efforts to combat climate change,” Wolf said in a June 22 press release.

‘Diverse Energy Portfolio’

The state’s Department of Environmental Protection’s website devoted to RGGI highlights the environmental, health, and economic benefits that the Wolf administration expects Pennsylvanians to experience if the state enters the climate change agreement.

But before pressing ahead with alternative forms of energy, Yaw said, he would like to see policymakers take a harder look at the environmental footprint of so-called “clean energy” sources such as wind and solar, and also to consider what goes into the construction of nuclear power plants.

Environmental and economic benefits also come with Pennsylvania’s vast supplies of natural gas, Yaw said:

I believe we should have a diverse energy portfolio. Right now, we are an energy exporter and we have all this new natural gas, and this has been enormously beneficial. I’ve also seen numbers that said greenhouse gas emissions across Pennsylvania have dropped something like 30% in the last 15 years. That’s a lot, and it can be attributed to the fact that more of our electricity is being produced by natural gas.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Pennsylvania is ranked second only to Texas in oil and natural gas production. An article in Forbes four years ago detailed how natural gas enabled the state to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.

“RGGI, in my opinion, takes a superficial look at what the real cost of energy is,” Yaw said. “Let’s take just one example of solar panels. It takes rare earth minerals to make solar panels, and we don’t have enough of those rare earths in the U.S.”

“So, we are going to have to import them, and how are those minerals produced? Well, they are produced by mining. In the Republic of Congo where cobalt is mined, they use young kids for that work. I don’t think we want to be known in Pennsylvania for using kids like this.”

Yaw also cited the potential environmental fallout from solar and wind power.

“We have to find a way to recycle solar panels at the end of their useful life or dispose of them, and the same should apply to windmills,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves what is the real cost of energy and what does it mean to say this is clean energy.”

‘An Advantage’

RGGI typically applies to electric power generators fired by fossil fuel with a capacity of 25 megawatts or greater. If Pennsylvania becomes part of the agreement, all five of the state’s remaining coal-fired plants in Keystone, Conemaugh, Homer City, Cheswick, and Montour would be affected, as well as all of the natural gas plants.

Since Pennsylvania would have to accommodate itself to RGGI’s rules and regulations, Yaw said, he is concerned that the state would lose its standing as an energy supplier and exporter.

“We are a generator of electricity,” he said. “These other states [in RGGI] have no generation. They are just importing it and they’re going to say to us that we have to match their emissions standards since we’re the generator. This means Pennsylvania is going to get hurt.”

Pittman, who sponsored the Senate bill, said he has similar concerns about how RGGI would affect the import-export equation. Pennsylvania doesn’t operate in a “bubble,” he told The Daily Signal, and the actions of other states must be taken into account.

“We are part of a multistate power grid and right now, we export electricity to other states,” he said, adding:

If we choose to move forward and close down our electricity production, we are going to essentially shift that production to other states and those other states will admit carbon when they produce our electricity. To me, the issue is not about needing to shift production to other states, but to allow market forces to continue to do what they’ve been doing.

Right now we have a very diverse power grid that is able to accommodate fluctuations and commodity pricing and to keep really all the sectors as competitive as possible. And I think that’s an advantage that we would be unwise to give up, particularly whenever you consider the reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. We’ve made substantial progress just in the last 10 or 15 years on our own, and it has been without the heavy hand of government. It’s been through market forces.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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13 September, 2020

Wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970—and it’s humanity’s fault

The WWF is a propaganda outfit. And, like the dictators of the 20th century, they like big numbers. The dictators had elections with around 98% of the vote being for the dictator. They were somehow oblivious that such numbers simplty made them look absurd

The WWF are only a little behind. About wildlife populations we read here:

"Most importantly, what lies behind this 68% figure is the inequality in population losses in different regions on the globe. A staggering 94% decline in LPI has taken place in the tropical subregions of Latin America and the Caribbean"

94% of wildlife has disappeared in Latin America? That's nearly all of it. That teeming wildlife in the Amazon and other Southern jungles does not exist apparently. Believe it only if you need to. WWF propaganda is just as stupid as most other propaganda

Over the past 50 years, as human activity has skyrocketed—with our global population increasing by nearly four billion, and consumption, global trade, and deforestation all soaring—we’ve lost, on average, more than two-thirds of world’s wildlife populations. And with that cost to our natural world comes dire consequences for our own health.

That’s according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. The Living Planet Report is a biannual study from WWF on trends in biodiversity and the health of the planet. Looking at nearly 21,000 monitored populations of more than 4,300 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians around the world, this year’s report found that between 1970 and 2016, the size of those populations fell an average of 68%. Some species fared even worse. Wildlife populations in Latin America and the Caribbean saw an average decline of 94%, and freshwater species around the world have dropped 84% on average.

Our planet’s biodiversity “is being destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented in history,” the authors write. Since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has led to the loss of tens of millions of hectares of forests and more than 85% of the world’s wetlands. Of all the Earth’s ice-free land, 75% has been “significantly altered,” and our oceans have been largely overfished and polluted.

Currently, climate change is not the biggest driver of this biodiversity loss. It’s our food production, mainly the conversion of native habitats into agricultural systems. Agriculture is responsible for 80% of deforestation, meaning if we want to stem this biodiversity loss, we need to transform our food systems. As time goes on, though, climate change will become an even bigger driver.

That’s alarming for our plant and animal populations, and also for us. Humanity overspends its biological budget—meaning we take more from the Earth to sustain our lifestyles than the planet can regenerate—every year. We’re living each year, per the report, as if we have 1.56 Earths. As we lose more and more biodiversity, we lose the resources to sustain humanity’s demand, and that in turn will harm our health, wealth, and security.

This is a sign of our “broken” relationship with nature. “These wildlife population trends would be devastating enough taken as an independent metric—but they aren’t independent. Wildlife population trends are an overall indicator for the health of our planet,” says Jeff Opperman, WWF’s Global Freshwater Lead Scientist, over email. “When one alarm bell is ringing this loudly—a 68% decline in average species populations—that means the whole system is off balance. That matters to people because nature provides us with everything: nutritious food, clean air, clean water, medicine.”

Nature and biodiversity also protect humans, he adds, and we’re already seeing the effect of that loss of protection. In 2019, Africa had its largest outbreak of desert locusts in decades, India and Pakistan experienced extreme droughts and heat waves that forced tens of thousands to leave their homes, and more than 10 million hectares—the size of Iceland—burned in Australia’s wildfires. This year has brought a new, worldwide consequence of these global changes: the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we may not know the complete origins of the novel coronavirus, we do know that 60% of emerging infectious diseases come from animals, and the emergence of such diseases is correlated with high human population density, and driven by deforestation and the increased harvesting of wildlife.

“Yes, these trends can actually be reversed. It really is possible, but it will take global conservation strategies along with a transformation of the way we produce and consume as humans, especially for our food system,” Opperman says. We just need to heed these warnings—the pandemic, the fires—of biodiversity loss, and do something about it. He’s optimistic we will. “Young people today really understand this because they are growing up in a world that’s already seeing the impacts of climate change. Unlike previous generations, they don’t need to be convinced that this is a problem, or that it’s not just a side issue,” he says. “I’m not only optimistic but I’m confident that there will be changes to come that will help biodiversity recover and reverse the trends we’re seeing now.”

SOURCE

“New Little ICE Age Instead of Global Warming?” by Dr Theodor Landscheidt

Among the long list or scientific papers suggesting that a solar-driven spell of global cooling is on the cards, Dr Theodor Landscheidt’s ‘New Little ICE Age Instead of Global Warming?‘ probably has the claim of priority.

Published in 2003, just a year before his death, Landscheidt’s research is standing the test of time, and is still largely on course to be proved correct.

The paper’s abstract begins:

‘Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected.’

Crucially, in the growing list of research concluding that a solar-driven multidecadal spell of global cooling is on the cards (research from multiple studies of quite different characteristics), the year 2030 ALWAYS features prominently. Unlike the IPCC, which tosses its thermageddon doomsday date back and forth like a hot potato, researchers who track the multimillennial plays of the cosmos (namely those of the Sun) routinely land on the year 2030 as being the date of ‘climate deterioration’: this in itself should serve as compelling evidence.

Dr Landscheidt continues:

‘It is shown that minima in the 80 to 90-year Gleissberg cycle of solar activity, coinciding with periods of cool climate on Earth, are consistently linked to an 83-year cycle in the change of the rotary force driving the sun’s oscillatory motion … As the future course of this cycle and its amplitudes can be computed, it can be seen that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth. This forecast should prove skillful as other long-range forecasts of climate phenomena, based on cycles in the sun’s orbital motion, have turned out correct as for instance the prediction of the last three El Niño years before the respective event.’

Dr Landscheidt concludes his introduction with the IPCC’s position on global warming, and he points to a growing list of publications showing a solar-climate connection:

‘The IPCC’s judgement that the solar factor is negligible is based on satellite observations available since 1978 which show that the Sun’s total irradiance, though not being constant, changes only by about 0.1 percent during the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle. This argument, however, does not take into account that the Sun’s eruptional activity (energetic flares, coronal mass ejections, eruptive prominences), heavily affecting the solar wind, as well as softer solar wind contributions by coronal holes have a much stronger effect than total irradiance. The total magnetic flux leaving the Sun, dragged out by the solar wind, has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1901 (Lockwood et al., 1999), while global temperature on earth increased by about 0.6°C. The energy in the solar flux is transferred to the near-Earth environment by magnetic reconnection and directly into the atmosphere by charged particles. Energetic flares increase the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation by at least 16 percent. Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs this excess energy which causes local warming and circulation disturbances. General circulation models developed by Haigh (1996), Shindell et al. (1999), and Balachandran et al. (1999) confirm that circulation changes, initially induced in the stratosphere, can penetrate into the troposphere and influence temperature, air pressure, Hadley circulation, and storm tracks by changing the distribution of large amounts of energy already present in the atmosphere.’

Moving on, Section 3 of the paper includes this golden nugget:

‘If the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) were the dominant cause of the observed rise in global temperature, the trend of this rise would be similar to the continuously rising CO2-trend after Peixoto and Oort (1992).

The increase in surface temperature from 1890 to 1940 was steeper and smoother than in the current warming phase since the early 1980s though the rate of anthropogenic emissions at that time was only 10% of the present rate. From 1940 through the late 1960s temperatures were falling in spite of the fast rise of anthropogenic CO2-emissions.

A closer look shows that nearly all Gleissberg minima back to 300 A.D., as for instance around 1670 (Maunder minimum), 1810 (Dalton minimum), and 1895, coincided with cool climate in the Northern Hemisphere, whereas Gleissberg maxima went along with warm climate as for instance around 1130 (Medieval climate optimum). The degree of temperature change was proportional to the respective amplitudes in the Gleissberg cycle. During the Maunder minimum solar activity was minimal and during the Medieval Climate Optimum very high, probably even higher than in the six decades of intense solar activity before 1996.’

In subsequent sections, Dr Landscheidt’s paper delves into ‘the length of the 11 year solar cycle and temperature’, it looks at ‘the relationship between solar eruptions and global temperature’, as well as the ‘forecast of deep Gleissberg minima and cold climate around 2030 and 2200’.

My summary serves as a brief introduction to Dr Theodor Landscheidt’s work, and of course should not be seen as a substitute for reading the paper itself, which concludes with a damning verdict on the IPPC’s scientific method:

‘The IPCC’s “story lines”, far from forecasts as practiced in other fields of science, are nearly exclusively supported by runs of General Circulation Models (GCM). These models are based on the same type of nonlinear differential equations which induced Lorenz in 1961 to acknowledge that long-range weather predictions are impossible because of the atmosphere’s extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. It is not conceivable that the “Butterfly Effect” should disappear when the prediction range of a few days is extended to decades and centuries.

The IPCC-hypothesis of global warming requires that long-wave radiation to space is reduced because of the accumulating anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Actually, satellites have observed a trend of increasing tropical long-wave radiation to space over the past two decades (Wielicki et al., 2002). GCMs predict greater increase in temperature with increasing distance from the equator, but observations show no net change in the polar regions in the past four decades (Comiso, 2000; Przybylak, 2000; Venegas and Mysak, 2000). According to the most recent data, Antarctica has cooled significantly (Doran et al., 2002) instead of warming.’

In this prominent paper’s final section (11), it is concluded:

‘We need not wait until 2030 to see whether the forecast of the next deep Gleissberg minimum is correct. A declining trend in solar activity and global temperature should become manifest long before the deepest point in the development. The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago. As to temperature, only El Niño periods should interrupt the downward trend, but even El Niños should become less frequent and strong.’

Unfortunately, accurately gauging modern temperature trends has been made nigh-on impossible. Many of today’s data sets cannot be trusted as they ignore, deliberately or otherwise, crucial factors such as the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) in order to exaggerate, or indeed completely fabricate, a warming trend.

Furthermore, regional fluctuations –rather than the global average– will be far more important to know as we move forward into a Grand Solar Minimum. Some parts of the planet are actually expected to warm during this otherwise bout of “global” cooling–the Arctic being one. However, saying all this, the overall temperature of Earth is still expected to drop –perhaps by as much as 2C. Looking at the global temperature data sets out there, the most trustworthy is probably the UAH Satellite-Based Temperature of the Global Lower Atmosphere–but this also suffers from a host of issues. Currently, as of August 2020, the UAH has Earth at 0.43C above the 1981-2010 average–which is down a full half from the El Niño-driven high observed at the start of 2016. For almost 5 years now we have been living a sharp cool-down, and if we take out naturally-occurring El Niños then we find that there has been no discernible warming since the turn of the millennium, arguably even longer.

MORE here See the original for links, graphics etc.

US gives first-ever OK for small commercial nuclear reactor

U.S. officials have for the first time approved a design for a small commercial nuclear reactor, and a Utah energy cooperative wants to build 12 of them in Idaho.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday approved Portland-based NuScale Power’s application for the small modular reactor that Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems plans to build at a U.S. Department of Energy site in eastern Idaho.

The small reactors can produce about 60 megawatts of energy, or enough to power more than 50,000 homes. The proposed project includes 12 small modular reactors. The first would be built in 2029, with the rest in 2030.

NuScale says the reactors have advanced safety features, including self-cooling and automatic shutdown.

“This is a significant milestone not only for NuScale, but also for the entire U.S. nuclear sector and the other advanced nuclear technologies that will follow,” said NuScale Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins in a statement.

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems already has agreements with the Energy Department to build the reactors at the federal agency’s 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility that would help with the development of the reactors.

The Department of Energy has spent more than $400 million since 2014 to hasten the development of the small modular reactors, or SMRs.

“DOE is proud to support the licensing and development of NuScale’s Power Module and other SMR technologies that have the potential to bring clean and reliable power to areas never thought possible by nuclear reactors in the U.S., and soon the world,” said Rita Baranwal, assistant secretary for Nuclear Energy.

The energy cooperative has embarked on a plan called the Carbon Free Power Project that aims to supply carbon-free energy to its nearly 50 members, mostly municipalities, in six Western states. The company plans to buy the reactors from NuScale, then assemble them in Idaho. The company is also looking to bring on other utilities that would use the power generated by the reactors.

Cooperative “members themselves would use a portion of the electricity, but other utilities would become involved and purchase power,” said LaVarr Webb, spokesman for the cooperative.

He said not all the power that will be produced from the proposed reactors has been allocated, but he expects more interest with the U.S. approval of NuScale’s design.

He said the next step is for the cooperative to submit a combined construction and operating license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The process also includes an environmental analysis. Webb said the cooperative will likely have that ready within two years.

The first small modular reactor is scheduled to come online in 2029, with 11 more to follow in 2030.

The modular reactors are light-water reactors, which are the vast majority of reactors now operating. But modular reactors are designed to use less water than traditional reactors and have a passive safety system so they shut down without human action should something go wrong.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of the design means the agency is satisfied such technology will work properly.

The modular reactors are also part of a much larger U.S. plan to replace current reactors, many of them decades old, with more efficient and safer reactors. U.S. officials say nuclear power helps reduce carbon emissions from coal and natural gas, a cause of global warming.

There are currently 95 licensed commercial nuclear reactors operating in the U.S., generating about 20 percent of the nation’s energy, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Utah Taxpayers Association has come out against Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems building the reactors, contending costs will soar as they have with some traditional reactors that are much larger.

But the cooperative says such a comparison is unfair, and akin to comparing a 1960s gas guzzler automobile with a modern electric vehicle.

SOURCE

Biden's radical climate change plan could be far reaching

It's just a desperate play for attention and relevance. It would need the co-operation of both houses of Congress to happen so it's just not going to happen. Congress is a notorious lead weight on change of any sort

If he did get some part of it through Congress, its destructive results would soon become obvious and there would be a massive loss for the Donks at the mid-terms, possibly enough to override a presidential veto to corrective legislation

The article below is from a Leftist source. Even they can see the risks

The fire season has just begun in the United States and already it has left the nation staggered by its ferocity. In California alone almost a million hectares have burnt so far, though conflagrations are being fought in 12 other states.

This week the temperature reached an all time record of 49.4 degrees in one Los Angeles suburb and the skies of San Francisco darkened to blood red throughout long hot days. News reports are full of clips of horrified residents saying that they thought they knew the risks of wildfires, but that nothing prepared them for this.

Asked if he had ever witnessed such conditions, the renowned climate scientist Michael Mann said during a radio interview this week: “Yeah, well I was on sabbatical in Sydney during what they now call the Black Summer fires… and it had that same sort of haunting orange hue. And it is the same phenomenon; unprecedented heat and drought last summer gave them unprecedented fires.

“We’re seeing the same thing happen in California, as we warned - as we have long warned - we would see if we continue to warm the planet by polluting the atmosphere with carbon pollution.”

In another time this might have prompted the sort of searing national debate over the need to properly tackle climate change that broke out here in Australia before the rolling catastrophes of 2020 diverted our attention.

But the US is not only battling a pandemic and the consequential economic collapse but relentless civil strife supercharged by a poisonous election campaign.

As a result, Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s adoption of what some consider to be the most ambitious climate change action plan ever put forward by a major party of a major nation has attracted far less attention than it probably deserves.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee, one of many on the party's left who had opposed Biden on environmental grounds and who have now embraced his candidacy, described Biden’s plan as visionary.

“This is not a status quo plan,” he told The New York Times in July. “It is comprehensive. This is not some sort of, ‘Let me just throw a bone to those who care about climate change'.”

At the heart of Biden’s climate change package is a determination to decarbonise the nation’s electricity system by 2035 before reaching net-zero carbon emissions for the entire economy by 2050.

To achieve this Biden would spend US$2 trillion on research for new green technology, new clean infrastructure and retrofitting existing buildings across the nation for energy efficiency.

He would direct all government procurement towards green technology, including electronic vehicles, and fund a Civilian Climate Corp similar to the Works Progress Administration established as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal", established to help the nation lift itself out of the Great Depression.

By comparison, after the 2008 financial crisis the Obama administration secured $90 billion for renewable energy in what is so far the largest single piece of climate change legislation passed in the US.

And Biden’s ambitions go beyond US borders. The plan would see him integrate climate policy into US foreign trade and national security strategies. According to policy documents, the US under a Biden presidency would lead an effort to “to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets”.

So significant is the potential for the plan that the global energy research consultancy Wood Mackenzie recently published a paper saying that a Biden loss would end any chance the US has of decarbonising its economy by 2050.

According to its analysis the plan would see “capital investments in renewable energy and energy storage assets top US$2.2 trillion through 2035. Utility-scale solar demand will soar to over 100 GW/yr, while battery storage capacity will surpass 400 GW - nearly 40 per cent of the total installed power generating capacity of the US in 2020. Coal-fired generation will exit the market in its entirety”.

Wood Mackenzie research director Dan Shreve believes the plan is so ambitious that it “teeters between achievable and aspirational but the backing of energy sector giants could tip the balance and once again establish the US as a leader in the fight against climate change”.

Either way, its scope would upend the US energy sector, and players wishing to thrive in it would need to plan for possible partnerships with - and acquisitions of - upstart storage providers, renewable energy developers and green hydrogen technology suppliers, says the Wood Mackenzie paper.

The international implications of the plan are equally significant says Matto Mildenberger, a University of California professor of political science who specialises in climate policy.

He notes that on their own either China, the European Union or the US has the power to drive down technology costs and shift markets through their sheer market size and force. Operating in concert that process accelerates.

So will it happen?

Mildenberger notes that Biden would not only have to win the White House, but Democrats would need to take the Senate, and then Biden would need to make climate change action central to his first-term agenda.

Mildenberger believes that the will within the administration might be there, as the climate change package is as much an economic stimulus policy as it is an environmental one.

The echoes of Roosevelt's 'New Deal' are no mistake, and much of the plan has been repurposed from the Green New Deal proposed by left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Indeed one of that plan’s chief architects, Julian Brave NoiseCat, is one of many on the left now backing Biden as a result.

It appears clear that Biden is seeking to use his climate policy as a vehicle to unite his party before the election and tackle compounding social, environmental and economic crises after it.

“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax',” Biden said in a speech last month. “When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs'.”

Mildenberger, who has written at length about global and Australian climate politics, believes that a Biden presidency would immediately change the tone of climate diplomacy because Trump’s lack of action has given cover to interest groups and politicians seeking to derail climate policy around the world.

He says Trump has given the Morrison government "cover" to this end just as the Howard government "hid behind" George W. Bush.

This international reset could prove to be critical as the world prepares for next year’s delayed United Nations climate meeting in Glasgow, known as COP26 (the 26th meeting of the UN Conference of Parties). At that meeting nations are expected to reveal more ambitious emissions reduction goals in keeping with scientific advice on the volume of reductions required to keep global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius.

Australia's former top climate diplomat, Howard Bamsey, who led negotiations at a number of COPs, says that Australia would already have been under pressure from the UK, which is determined to host a successful meeting. That pressure will only be increased by a climate activist White House.

But he notes that Australia has proved willing to pay a diplomatic price for its recalcitrance on the issue in the past.

Bamsey, now a professor with the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, says he does not believe that the world would change suddenly for Scott Morrison should Biden win in November, but that pressure for increased Australian ambition would slowly mount over the year leading up to the Glasgow meeting.

Australia would not only feel pressure to increase its ambition from a Biden White House, should he win, says Bamsey, but from the UK which would be determined to host a successful COP meeting.

Perhaps even more significantly, Mildenberger says that should Biden win there is a chance that China and the US could resume co-operation over the issue, a partnership that was crucial to the success of the Paris agreement. (Bamsey is sceptical on this point.)

But even if all that was to fall into place he is no longer convinced that an orderly decarbonisation of the world’s economy is now possible.

“We needed to act 10 years ago for that,” he says. “But the Biden plan offers real hope that we can prevent the worst of climate change.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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11 September, 2020

3.2 BILLION people will have a shortage of drinking water by 2050: Study warns that climate change will cause supplies to decrease by 60%

This the usual crazy logic we get from Warmists. Global warming would produce MORE rain not less. Warmed oceans would evaporate off more which would come down as rain.

And capitalism is the solution to water shortage, anyway. Israel once had a severe water shortage, being a basically desert climate at the end of the Jordan river, which loses a lot of water upstream.

So they now simply desalinate as much ocean water as they need. It costs a bit but not a lot in an advanced market-oriented economy

According to a new UN report, because of climate change, the number of people living in places with insufficient water will go from 1.9 billion to 3.2 billion by 2050

The fact that the past decade has been the warmest on record bears 'a clear fingerprint' of climate change, said the World Meteorological Organization, which just released United in Science 2020, a multi-department assessment of the latest climate science data.

Admitting 2020 was an 'unprecedented' year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that climate disruption was continuing unabated, with 'record heat, ice loss, wildfires, floods and droughts.'

Glacier runoff, which provides water to hundreds of millions of people, is expected to max out globally by the end of the century. Some glaciers have reported losing 14 inches of mass a year since 2012

The United in Science report indicated that climate change 'is often felt through water-related hazards, like drought or flooding.'

Warmer temperatures have led to reductions in the world's glaciers and ice sheets, which threatens the supply of fresh water.

Glacier runoff, which provides potable drinking water, is expected to peak globally by the end of the century and then decline.

Some areas, like Central Europe and the Caucasus region, are already at the tipping point.

In the last decade, 1.9 billion people lived in places with insufficient water. According to the report, that number will explode to 3.2 billion by 2050.

Water scarcity is becoming an increasingly important metric in determining a country's creditworthiness, or sovereign rating, according to analysts.

That's putting more pressure on countries to face up to climate change.

'While disruptions from climate change are likely to manifest themselves only gradually over the coming decades, water risks already materialize on a sufficiently regular basis and large scale,' said Fitch Ratings analysts' Mahmoud Harb and Kathleen Chen.

According to the World Bank, some countries' gross domestic product could drop as much as 6 percent over the next 30 years as a result of water woes.

Middle Eastern nations like Kuwait and Egypt are the most exposed to water stress and drought risk, Bloomberg reports.

On the other side of the scale, climate change is also fueling flooding.

According to data from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels will rise by more than three feet in the next eight decades.

SOURCE

Free speech, fake science - and why we must take the fight to the climate zealots

By DOMINIC LAWSON

As I write this column, I do so without knowing if all those who regularly purchase the Daily Mail from their newsagents will be allowed to buy the edition in which it appears.

That infringement of their — your — liberty is the purpose of Extinction Rebellion, a small-ish but increasingly influential group of middle-class climate change protesters who want to silence anyone or any organisation that doesn't share their hysterical view that the planet and its inhabitants will fry to fossil-fuelled extinction within a decade or two unless we return immediately to a form of pre-industrial subsistence.

That, ostensibly, is why they had been blockading the print sites of most of our national newspapers.

Their belief is not based on science but is quasi-religious: they regard any provider of information which does not conform to their strictures as wicked and to be silenced (if they refuse to be converted), rather in the same way that the Spanish Inquisition treated heretics.

One of its founders and still an active member, Roger Hallam, went even further, declaring that 'maybe we should put a bullet in the head' as 'punishment' for those he deems responsible for this alleged impending planetary extinction.

Intimidate

Although it was the bulk of the newspaper industry that his group has been attempting to intimidate and shut down this weekend, last year it tried something similar with the BBC, massing outside New Broadcasting House, preventing many of the corporation's journalists from getting in, while holding up banners with the slogan 'BBC, your silence is deadly'.

In fact it is Extinction Rebellion which wishes to silence voices it disapproves of; and it was almost comical that it should have targeted the national broadcaster, which has itself taken the decision not to allow airtime to anyone who questions the idea that man-made climate change is the biggest global threat to human health (although the coronavirus pandemic might have caused some inside that organisation to wonder belatedly whether in fact disease might be the true villain).

Sir David Attenborough, still vigorous well into his 90s, is the cutting edge of that BBC campaign. He has declared that 'we cannot be radical enough' in our policies to reduce CO2 emissions.

It is even more fabulously ironic that the issue of The Sun newspaper which the Extinction Rebellion blockaders on Friday night fought to prevent reaching the public contained an adoring interview with Sir David about 'the climate crisis'.

In it, he told his interviewer: 'We are damaging the environment just by sitting here breathing. The carbon dioxide going out of this window as a consequence of meeting here is quite significant.'

I would have been tempted to reply: 'Don't be silly, Sir David; it isn't.' But the nation's favourite presenter of once ideology-free wildlife documentaries was, as always, treated with uncritical deference.

In a way, the same unwillingness to debate has been both the media's — and the politicians' — approach to Extinction Rebellion and its spiritual leader, the precocious Swede Greta Thunberg.

Yes, the Press is now defending itself robustly against XR's physical attempts to silence it, yet there has been a peculiar reluctance to challenge the protest group's claims forensically. Peculiar, because it is not just that their methods are objectionable: so are their arguments.

Perhaps the only time this happened (at least on the BBC) was when Andrew Neil, during XR's tedious onslaught last year on those attempting to get to work in London, interviewed the movement's then spokeswoman, Zion Lights.

Neil asked her to give the scientific basis for her claims that 'our children are going to die in the next ten to 20 years'. After some confused waffle, she responded: 'The overall issue is that the deaths are going to happen' — which did not get us much further.

She seemed even more at a loss when Neil responded to her insistence that 'billions of people will die [as a result of climate change] over the next few decades': 'I looked through the report of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and there is no reference to anything of the sort.'

Alas, the BBC have since parted company with Mr Neil, whose critical approach to this matter is not their house style.

As for Ms Lights, she has since left XR … to become an advocate of nuclear power.

Delusion

In a brave article, she said that she had become aware that this country (or any other developed nation) could not abandon fossil fuels and still keep the lights on without rapid development of nuclear power — the only reliable way of mass-producing energy without emitting CO2.

No amount of wind or solar energy installations can produce energy 24 hours a day, or in absolutely reliable quantities: they are inherently intermittent in their production.

As the late chief scientific adviser to the Government, Professor Sir David MacKay, said a week before he died in 2016: 'Because my time is thinner and thinner, I should call a spade a spade…

'There is this appalling delusion people have that we can take this thing [renewables] and we can just scale it up, and if there is a slight issue of it not adding up, then we can just do energy efficiency. Humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics.'

Yet the XR lot regard nuclear power as satanic, not just because of its former connection with weapons production, but also because they shun anything which doesn't seem to them 'natural'.

It seems they would rather mankind died of hunger naturally, than prospered through technological and industrial processes. Or, rather, they take prosperity for granted, without understanding how it was created (perhaps because the great majority of them seem to come from homes which have never known poverty).

Yet our politicians seem cut from the same cloth. When Greta Thunberg came to the UK in April last year, they queued up to praise her and her arguments, which are indistinguishable from those of XR.

Speaking alongside her in parliament, the then Environment Secretary Michael Gove said: 'We have not done nearly enough. Greta, you have been heard.'

Scared

Indeed, two months later, the Government legislated to make the UK 'net zero carbon by 2050' — admittedly 25 years later than XR's impossible demand. But it had no idea how much this would cost, or how it would be done.

The New Zealand government did carry out such an exercise, and concluded that to achieve 'net zero' by 2050 would cost 16 per cent of GDP annually. This would equate to £560 billion a year if applied to the UK — equivalent to almost three-quarters of all public expenditure.

Yet this legislation was passed without even a debate, let alone a vote in the House of Commons: it was enacted through a statutory instrument. This could only happen because the overwhelming majority of MPs are too scared to be seen as so-called 'climate change deniers'.

And they absolutely refuse to engage with such rigorous thinkers as Bjorn Lomborg, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre think-tank, or Michael Shellenberger (named as a 'hero of the environment' by Time Magazine in 2008), both of whom argue that grotesquely excessive resources are being ineffectually dedicated to 'preventing' climate change.

So Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts The Poor, And Fails To Fix The Planet, has been almost entirely ignored in the British media (forget about any BBC interviews with Lomborg).

And I believe the Daily Mail is the only British newspaper which has given much space to Shellenberger's new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All — perhaps the most pertinent of his points being that to move to 100 per cent renewables 'would require increasing the proportion of land used for energy from today's 0.5 per cent to 50 per cent'.

The fact that the British political establishment — and the bulk of the media — have ceased even to engage in this debate, on an intellectual level, has left the ground free for Extinction Rebellion to occupy. Really, they didn't need to try to silence the Press. The intimidation and groupthink has done its work quite thoroughly already.

SOURCE

From Nixon to Trump: EPA Chief Touts Environmental Gains, Hits ‘Single Issue Advocacy’

Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the government has reduced air pollution by 7%, declared Superfund sites safe again at a record pace, and directed tens of billions of dollars to ensuring clean water, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Thursday in a speech marking the agency’s 50th anniversary.

Wheeler, speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, drew a sharp contrast between the Trump administration’s environmental achievements and the “poor choices” made by some policymakers at the state level.

“Here in California, where the modern environmental movement began—and from where President Nixon brought it to the rest of the country—it’s important to acknowledge the role states have in being laboratories for democracy, and in this case, laboratories for environmental policy,” Wheeler said.

“But for environmental policy to work nationally, the federal government and states must work together as partners, not as adversaries,” the Environmental Protection Agency administrator added.

Wheeler was particularly critical of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and other East Coast governors for impeding construction of natural gas pipelines.

New England states now must import natural gas from Russia, Wheeler said, because Cuomo has stood in the way of pipelines that could have transported gas supplies from Pennsylvania.

The EPA chief also called attention to “rolling blackouts” in California and the public policy hostile to natural gas power plants that he said led to those blackouts.

‘A New Vision’

President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the agency officially will celebrate its 50th anniversary later this year.

Congress also passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act during Nixon’s first term from 1969 through 1972.

Wheeler, who became acting EPA administrator in November 2018 after the resignation of Scott Pruitt, won Senate confirmation to the post in February 2019.

In his speech at the Nixon Library, Wheeler stressed the need for cooperation between the federal government and state governments rather than animosity.

“To do this involves a new vision,” he said, “and for a country searching for a new consensus on the environment as well as on many other things, this can seem tough. But I believe we can find a new consensus, if we strive to.”

Wheeler highlighted several areas where he said the Trump administration had made significant environmental progress that largely went unheralded in the media.

“During the first three years of the Trump administration, air pollution in this country fell 7%,” he said. “Last year, EPA delisted 27 Superfund sites, the most in a single year since 2001. And agency programs have contributed more than $40 billion dollars to clean water infrastructure investment during President Trump’s first term.”

But the EPA administrator also lamented the emergence of “single issue advocacy,” often focused on climate change, that has disrupted a broad, bipartisan consensus on environmental policy in line with Nixon’s vision that made legislation such as the Clear Air Act and Clean Water Act possible:

Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, some members of former administrations and progressives in Congress have elevated single issue advocacy—in many cases focused just on climate change—to virtue-signal to foreign capitals, over the interests of communities within their own country. Communities deserve better than this, but in the recent past, EPA has forgotten important parts of its mission. It’s my belief that we misdirect a lot of resources that could be better used to help communities across this country.

Wheeler also said that climate change policies pursued at the state level often are detrimental to the environment and the economy.

Although Cuomo has moved to block pipelines that would transport natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York and New England “in the name of climate change,” Wheeler told his audience, the carbon footprint of natural gas pipelines is much smaller than what it takes to transport gas supplies across the ocean from Russia and other parts of Europe.

The environmental problems with Cuomo’s anti-pipeline stance don’t end there, he said.

“These poor choices subject Americans to imports of gas from places like Russia, even in the face of evidence that U.S. natural gas has a much cleaner emissions profile than imported gas from Europe,” Wheeler said.

And in the absence of pipelines, citizens in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine must “use more polluting wood and heating oil to heat their homes because of gas shortages in the winter months, which in turn creates very poor local air quality,” he said.

The EPA administrator cited California as an example where environmental policies don’t produce good environmental outcomes. He also cautioned policymakers to refrain from becoming overly reliant on renewable energy during periods that demand reliable energy:

It should go without saying that dumping sewage into San Francisco Bay without disinfection, indeed without any chemical or biological treatment, is a bad idea, but that’s what’s been happening for many years, against federal law. And just last month, the rolling blackouts created by California’s latest electricity crisis—the result of policies against power plants being fueled by natural gas—spilled 50,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Oakland Estuary when back-up wastewater pumps failed.

Wheeler expressed concern that “environmental accidents will happen more often” if state policymakers persist in pushing “more renewables onto the grid at times of the day when renewables aren’t available.”

5 New ‘Pillars’

Looking ahead, Wheeler said the Trump administration intends to focus on “community-driven environmentalism” that promotes revitalization efforts, “meeting the 21st-century demands for water,” “reimagining the Superfund program as a project-oriented program,” “reforming the permitting process to empower states,” and “creating a holistic pesticide program for the future.”

The Superfund program dates to 1980, when Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. The law provided funds for cleaning up thousands of sites across the country laced with contaminants such as lead, asbestos, and dioxin-infused soil as well as radiation.

Superfund sites include “manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills and mining sites,” according to the EPA website.

During his speech, Wheeler said about 16% of the U.S. population, or slightly more than 50 million Americans, lives within 3 miles of a Superfund site.

Although in the past the EPA “allowed litigation and bureaucracy to dictate the pace of Superfund projects, instead of focusing on improving environmental indicators and moving sites to completion,” Wheeler said, he sees an opportunity to “reimagine” the program by implementing the recommendations of the 2018 Superfund Task Force.

Going forward, Wheeler said, the federal government and states should collaborate rather than operate as adversaries. He expressed some confidence that policymakers can reach a new consensus on environmental questions.

“We are a nation made up of communities, and communities are the foundation of this nation, not the other way around,” the EPA chief said. “If we can do the work before us—break down the silos between us as an agency and elsewhere—I believe we can both protect the places we love and bring back the places that have been hurt by pollution and make them even better than they were before.”

SOURCE

Australia: Miner launches own rail company to haul coal from Carmichael mine

The Adani group has launched its own rail business to haul coal to its Queensland port, while avoiding any public mention of the parent company or the controversial Carmichael mine.

It follows years of pressure from anti-coal activists that has prompted a string of potential Adani contractors to walk away from the mining giant, increasing the cost of doing business.

Adani's apparent move to go it alone on coal haulage will add $200 million to the upfront cost of its Queensland project, according to one energy analyst.

Bowen Rail Company (BRC) last month announced it was launching a haulage business to service Abbot Point export terminal.

Head of project delivery, David Wassell, said the company had bought its own "state-of-the-art locomotives and rollingstock" and would recruit about 50 workers.

Neither the media release nor the company website mention Adani or the Carmichael mine.

But company searches show BRC is owned by an Adani group company in India, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited, via two holding companies in Singapore.

The searches show the directors of BRC are all senior Adani staff in Australia.

They are Adani Australia chief executive Jeyakumar Janakaraj, Adani Enterprises infrastructure chief executive Trista Brohier, Adani Australia executive director Samir Vora and Adani Abbot Point Operations finance manager Damien Dederer.

Staff biographies on the BRC website exclude their work history with Adani.

Mr Wassell's biography states that, "prior to joining Bowen Rail Company, David held the position of national supply chain development manager at ASCIANO".

But his LinkedIn profile said between BRC and ASCIANO, he worked for three years as Adani Australia's manager of rail operations.

The LinkedIn profiles of two other BRC staff state they work at Adani Australia, the proponent of the Carmichael mine.

Adani Australia is owned by Indian-based Adani Enterprises Limited.

The Adani family owns almost 75 per cent of Adani Enterprises and just over 62 per cent of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone.

The ABC last year revealed Adani was snubbed by rail haulage operator, Genesee & Wyoming Australia.

The other two rail operators with capacity to haul Adani's 10 million tonnes of coal a year — Aurizon and Pacific National — have come under activist and shareholder pressure to follow suit.

A spokesman for Aurizon told the ABC it was, "not aware Adani has commenced any commercial process with regard to the tender of above-rail haulage contracts or indeed whether they intend to".

A Queensland Government document showed Adani had applied for accreditation as a rolling stock operator, which was needed to haul coal.

The national rail safety register showed Adani was still waiting for that accreditation.

A spokeswoman for Pacific National did not respond to questions from the ABC.

Adani's current plan hinges on building a 189km rail line from the mine to link to Aurizon's Central Queensland Coal Network running to Abbot Point.

It must reach a separate access agreement with Aurizon, which it reportedly has not yet done.

The Aurizon spokesman said it was legally required to consider all access requests but also to keep them confidential.

Adani had previously planned to build a 388km line to transport up to 30 mega tonnes a year of coal.

But it was forced to scale down its plans after the only contractor it considered capable of building the mine, Downer, walked away after being targeted by protesters.

In a Supreme Court application for an injunction and damages against activist Ben Pennings, a lawyer for Adani said scaling down to 10MT of coal a year, "resulted in an increase to the capital cost per tonne of coal of at least 15 per cent".

Protest pressure puts off contractors

Adani, in its application, said activist pressure has driven up its cost of engaging contractors on two fronts.

Adani has, "not always been able to engage what are known as the 'tier 1' companies or the 'industry leaders'", raising its risks and "substantially" increasing its insurance costs, its lawyer said in an affidavit.

Companies won't do business with Adani unless it enters "cost plus" contracts that force it to cover any "additional costs [that] may be incurred as a result of activist and protester action", he said.

Former Citibank analyst Tim Buckley, now at the pro-renewables Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said Adani's decision drastically increased its capital costs, which other rail operators would have wanted to avoid.

Mr Buckley said locomotives and coal wagons for the mine's first phase of 10MT a year would cost $200 million upfront.

This would rise to half a billion dollars in the mine's second phase of 27MT a year, he said.

The money it saved from not outsourcing would be offset by having to pay $50 million a year in interest, he said.

"Adani is now working to set up a business in direct competition with Aurizon's existing coal rail haulage, to help defray the costs of having to also establish new rail loco and wagon maintenance facilities, an expensive duplication of existing infrastructure," he said.

Pablo Brait, from environmental lobby group Market Forces, said BRC was, "another potential vehicle for the shifting of funds from Adani's India-based companies to its Australian coal project".

This meant Adani group investors who had previously ruled out financing the Australian coal project were now linked to it, and faced renewed pressure by environmental campaigners.

Market Forces has raised the issue with financiers linked to Adani Ports.

Adani Ports' biggest bondholder, Allianz, has previously ruled out financing or insuring new coal projects.

An Adani Australia spokeswoman said the Carmichael project was "on-track to produce first coal in 2021".

"Discussions that Adani undertakes with third parties on contractual matters are commercial in confidence," she said.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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10 September, 2020

'Doomsday Glacier' vulnerability seen in new maps

Doomsday my foot. As the map shows, the glacier is in the middle of volcanic hotspots. So it does show some melting from that cause. But it has had volcanoes under it for a long time.

And volcanoes wax and wane. The volcanic activity will drop off at some stage and the glacier will expand again

Scientists may just have identified Thwaites Glacier's Achilles heel.

This Antarctic colossus is melting at a rapid rate, dumping billions of tonnes of ice in the ocean every year and pushing up global sea-levels.

Now, a UK-US team has surveyed the deep seafloor channels in front of the glacier that almost certainly provide the access for warm water to infiltrate and attack Thwaites' underside.

It's information that will be used to try to predict the ice stream's future.

"These channels had not been mapped before in this kind of detail, and what we've discovered is that they're actually much bigger than anyone thought - up to 600m deep. Think of six football pitches back to back," said Dr Kelly Hogan from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"And because they are so deep, and so wide - this allows a lot more water to get at, and melt, Thwaites' floating front as well as its ice that rests on the seabed," she told BBC News.

Why is Thwaites Glacier so important?

Flowing off the west of the Antarctic continent, Thwaites is almost as big as Great Britain.

It's a majestic sight, with its buoyant front, or "ice shelf", pushing far out to sea and kicking off huge icebergs. But satellite monitoring indicates this glacier is melting at an accelerating rate.

In the 1990s it was losing just over 10 billion tonnes of ice a year. Today, it's more like 80 billion tonnes. The cause of the melting is thought to be the influx of relatively warm bottom-water drawn in from the wider ocean.

Currently, Thwaites' ice loss contributes approximately 4% to the annual rise in global sea-levels, with the potential to add 65cm in total should the whole glacier collapse.

No-one thinks this will happen in the short-to-medium term, but Thwaites is considered particularly vulnerable in a warming world, and scientists would like to know precisely how fast any changes might occur.

What does the latest research show?
The UK and the US joined forces in 2019 to investigate Thwaites.

Their scientists sailed a ship equipped with an echo-sounder right up to shelf's ice cliffs, to trace the shape of the seabed below.

A plane was also flown back and forth across the shelf to measure small variations in the pull of gravity. These deviations reflected the seafloor's undulations under the shelf.

The two datasets taken together now provide the best view yet of Thwaites' underlying topography.

"The connected channels that we've mapped in detail for the first time are the potential pathways for deep-ocean warm water to get in and do damage at that point where the glacier is still grounded on the seabed, where it begins to lift up and float," explained BAS colleague Dr Tom Jordan, "but also to melt the base of the ice shelf, which if you weaken will make the ice further upstream in the glacier flow faster."

SOURCE

The Feds Just Threw a Lifeline to California During Energy Crisis

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Sunday that Sec. Dan Brouillette, in response to an urgent request from the state of California, issued a Section 202 (c) emergency order to help prevent California's already-faltering power grid from being completely overwhelmed.

"I hereby determine that an emergency exists in California due to a shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes, and that issuance of this Order will meet the emergency and serve the public interest," reads a letter from the Assistant Secretary for Electricity Bruce Walker.

The DOE order authorizes the emergency use of stationary and portable generators, as well as auxiliary engines on board ocean-going vessels berthed in California ports. The order suspends any laws, regulations or permits limiting the use of these power-generating machines. The order is set to expire just before midnight on September 13.

"The Secretary concurs with the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) that a grid reliability emergency exists which demands immediate federal intervention," said DOE spokeswoman Shaylyn Hines in a statement.

Despite the rolling blackouts, California policymakers are too busy these days lowering penalties for adults who have sex with minors to deal with the faltering power grid. California's blackouts are entirely the fault of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and his ilk of quixotic environmentalists.

California decided to mandate the use of renewable energy despite the lack of technology to make such a mandate reliable to California residents. Usually, other western states, who haven't pursued reckless green policies, are available to bail out California by sending the state some of their power. But with the high temperatures, neighboring states have less power on hand these days. Combine blackouts with wildfires and many Californians are unable to receive advance warnings of approaching flames or operate electric water pumps that could save residents from losing their homes.

So California is now forced to turn to the feds.

"While the Secretary has offered this emergency assistance to California in this time of crisis, he also encourages state policymakers to evaluate why the grid is not able to handle extreme stress, which could be alleviated with the support of greater baseload power generation and natural gas supply," said Hines.

SOURCE

No, Banning Fossil Fuels Won't Raise Life Expectancy; Fossil-fueled Electricity Will

Mathematical modeler Caleb Stewart Rossiter of the CO2 Coalition reviews a model-based life expectancy study published in the journal Cardiovascular Research. The model misleadingly projects only the benefits and not the costs of eliminating affordable, reliable, and increasingly clean fossil fuels in favor of expensive, intermittent "renewables." Read the full letter below:

Letters to the Editor, Cardiovascular Research:

Lelieveld et al. (March 3, 2020) conclude that ending the use of fossil fuels would add one year to global life expectancy, because of reductions in outdoor air pollution.1 This paper is typical of trendy, misleading "climate change" research that focuses only on one side of a cost-benefit analysis. If fossil fuels were banned, far more expensive and less reliable wind and solar grids would be needed to meet even current demand. That would raise prices and reduce exports and economic growth. Life expectancy is strongly influenced by economic growth.

In addition, the alternative of increased reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy would drive up brownouts and blackouts and the resulting back-up, soot-spewing "dieselization" in unreliable grids like Africa's. Without ready fossil-fueled backup power, a "renewable" grid would collapse daily, at great cost to restart and repair. Ironically, because the mining, refining, construction, and transportation of wind blades, solar panels, and batteries is so fossil-fuel intensive, building enough to replace current methods of power generation would add the very pollutants to the atmosphere that a ban on fossil fuels would eliminate.

China and Sub-Saharan Africa had the same life expectancy in 1960: 44 years. Today, China is at 77, near the U.S. figure of 79, while Africa has only risen to 61.2 For the one billion Sub-Saharan Africans, this represents a loss of 16 billion years of life for not keeping pace with China.

Low access to electricity, at about a third of households and with daily blackouts for businesses, is one of the key causes of Africa's low level of life expectancy. The primary reason for this is that economic growth in a competitive, global market requires reliable, universal electrification. A secondary reason is that, according to the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution is the world's greatest environmental health risk.

Globally, WHO estimates that three billion people cook, heat, and light inside their homes with solid fuels - wood, charcoal, and dried animal dung. The poisons and particulate matter from burning solid fuels kill almost four million people a year from pneumonia (27%), heart disease (27%), pulmonary disease (20%), stroke (18%), lung cancer (7%), and a variety of impaired immunities. Half of pneumonia deaths in children under five are from soot in the house.3

UNICEF estimates the African share of these annual indoor pollution deaths at 400,000. Dangerous levels of indoor air pollution are almost guaranteed for families without access to electricity. UNICEF reports that 352 million Africa children live in homes with solid fuel cooking.4 One top researcher told the WHO: "Having an open fire in your kitchen is like burning 400 cigarettes an hour."5

The coming expansion of Africa's fossil-fueled grid will help solve the indoor air pollution problem. Even better, the use of "new-tech" electricity generation power and scrubbing technologies would keep the 258,000 annual toll from outdoor air pollution in Africa from rising.6 Researchers concerned with health outcomes of energy production would do well to study all sides of the question. None of the factors I have cited are accounted for in the Lelieveld paper.

The CO2 Coalition: info@co2coalition.org

Australian students launch class action to prevent coal mine approval

This is just virtue signalling. Similar lawsuits previously have got nowhere

Eight young Australian students have brought a class action in the country's federal court seeking an injunction to prevent government approval of a coal project, lawyers representing the claimants said on Wednesday.

The lawsuit against Environment Minister Susan Ley comes ahead of a decision this month on whether to approve the Whitehaven Coal-owned Vickery coal mine extension project in New South Wales.
"The case is an Australian first, as it seeks to invoke the Minister's common law duty of care to protect younger people against climate change," Equity Generation Lawyers said in a statement.

All the claimants are under the age of 18 years and Equity Generation is urging other youngsters from across the world to register for the class action.

"It is the only class action on climate change that includes every single person under the age of 18 around the world as a result of the likely harm each one will experience from climate change."

Ley's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment while a spokeswoman for Whitehaven Coal declined to comment.

Climate change has been a divisive topic in Australia, which counts coal and iron ore as its two top exports.

The country's reliance on coal-fired power also makes it one of the world's largest per capita carbon emitters and just last year it approved a huge new coal mine by India’s Adani Enterprises .
"As a young person, I cannot vote to have my voice heard by politicians," said 16-year-old Laura Kirwan from Sydney, one of the litigants.

"I believe that the government has a duty to young people to protect our futures from the impacts of climate change, including stopping the climate impacts of the Vickery Extension Project."

The eight young Australians have all been involved in "School Strike For Climate", which was initiated by student activist Greta Thunberg in 2018 demanding that world leaders adopt urgent measures to stop an environmental catastrophe.

The injunction comes less than two months after a 23-year-old Melbourne student filed a class action against the government alleging it had failed to disclose climate change-related risks to investors in the country's sovereign bonds.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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9 September, 2020

Kamala Harris Flip-Flops on Fracking After Polls Tighten in Pennsylvania

A week ago, Joe Biden notoriously flip-flopped on his long-held anti-fracking position while campaigning in Pennsylvania, where fracking is a major industry.

“I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me,” Biden said.

Unfortunately for him, there was ample evidence that he’s promised to end fracking if elected president.

Now that polls have tightened, and Trump and Biden are tied in the state of Pennsylvania (a crucial swing state), Kamala Harris, who also campaigned on banning fracking, has also flip-flopped on the issue. Harris now says she’s comfortable with Biden’s newfound support for fracking because (wait for it!) it provides “good-paying jobs in places like Pennsylvania.”

During her failed presidential bid, Kamala Harris promised she would ban fracking.

“There is no question I am in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said during a CNN town hall on climate change in September 2019.

The Biden-Harris campaign knows that fracking and natural gas are important to the economy of Pennsylvania. After lurching further and further to the left during the primaries, they’re now trying to pivot back toward the center by reversing key positions they’ve long held to get support from the base of the Democratic Party. Now they’re desperately trying to pander to a crucial swing state and expect the public to trust them when they say they won’t ban fracking.

SOURCE

Recalling EPA’s Gold King Mine disaster

Five years after the infamous blowout, EPA finally settles with Utah over Gold King pollution

Duggan Flanakin

On the fifth anniversary of the notorious spill of 3 million gallons of heavily contaminated acid mine water from the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and State of Utah announced an agreement that ends the state’s lawsuit.

Neither the EPA nor the contractors involved at the Gold King spill site are entirely off the hook for their alleged missteps that resulted in downstream damages. Lawsuits filed by the Navajo Nation, the State of New Mexico, and a group of Navajo farmers and ranchers have been consolidated, and discovery is proceeding, with a projected trial date sometime in late 2021.

Pursuant to the agreement, Utah will dismiss its legal actions against the EPA and the United States; mining companies Kinross Gold Corporation, Kinross Gold U.S.A., Inc., Sunnyside Gold Corporation, and Gold King Mines Corporation; and EPA’s contractors: Environmental Restoration, LLC, Weston Solutions, Inc. and Harrison Western Corporation. EPA also agreed to strengthen Utah’s involvement in the EPA’s work to address contamination at the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund Site, which includes the Gold King Mine and other abandoned mines.

The agency further agreed to act on the Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s application for $3 million in Clean Water Act funds for various projects, including the development of water quality criteria for Utah Lake, septic density studies, nonpoint source pollution reduction projects, and nutrient management plans for agricultural sources.

The agency also agreed to initiate Superfund assessments by the end of 2021 at the Rico Argentine Mine Site, the Camp Bird Mining Site, the Carribeau (or Caribou) Mine Area, all located in Colorado, and possibly other sites that have the potential to impact downstream waters in Utah. Coupled with its work at the recently established Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund Site (which includes Gold King), the EPA expects to conduct and oversee more than $220 million in abandoned mining site work that will potentially improve Utah’s water quality by reducing the flow of heavy metals and other pollutants from old mines in the state’s waterways.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler called the agreement “a win-win for EPA and Utah” that “will bring environmental benefits to Utah, avoid protracted litigation, and hopefully serve as a lesson for the future to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.” EPA General Counsel Matthew Leopold promised that the agency’s “partnership with Utah will be stronger as we continue to support the State in addressing its water quality needs.”

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said the state is “very pleased that millions of dollars can now be spent towards mitigation, remediation and assuring water quality in Utah, rather than years of more litigation, trials and appeals.” This, he added, “is what cooperative federalism looks like – a true federal and state partnership” that protects the people, public health and the environment.

The relationship between the EPA and Utah was not always so amicable. Within days after Cement Creek and the Animas River were turned yellow all the way from Colorado through New Mexico and Utah all the way to Lake Powell, Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert declared a state of emergency and added that he was “deeply disappointed by the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency. It was a preventable mistake, and they must be held accountable.”

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen described the incident this way: A contractor under EPA supervision used a backhoe to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of the Gold King Mine, which had been mostly abandoned since 1923. Because of steady seepage, the EPA should have known that the water was highly acidic (pH 4.0-4.5) and laced with heavy metals. It could and should certainly have checked.

Eventually, the greatly weakened portal burst open, unleashing at least 3 million gallons of toxic water that contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers all the way to Lake Powell, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border on the Colorado River. The EPA waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers of the toxic spill.

Driessen lambasted the Obama Administration, other Democratic Party officials, and eco-activists for their initial response to the incident, which also caused major damage to Navajo Indian lands. But while EPA’s own internal report called the incident “likely inevitable,” an Interior Department review released in October 2015 found it was both “preventable: and also “emblematic” of the federal government’s “inconsistent and deeply flawed approaches to reopening shuttered mines.” Driessen and others agreed.

Specifically, the Interior Department said that contractors at the Gold King site chose not to bore a hole to physically check water levels and contamination inside the mine before digging – a protocol established in 2011 during a successful mine reopening. “Had it been done, the plan to open the mine would have been revised, and the blowout would not have occurred.” Before undertaking its incompetent cleanup, EPA had threatened Gold King property owner Todd Hennis with a $35,000 per day fine unless he granted them access to the property (which the agency and its contractors then turned into a disaster zone).

In a follow-up article, Driessen found the testimony of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell shocking, as she stated she was unaware of anyone being fired, fined or even demoted – and that federal investigations and reports refused to hold anyone responsible for the ensuing disaster. Even worse, while then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said she EPA “absolutely, deeply sorry,” she disavowed any personal or agency responsibility and sent the Navajo emergency water tanks contaminated with oil. Then FEMA denied the Navajo any disaster relief, which prompted nearly 300 affected farmers and ranchers to file a separate (now consolidated) lawsuit.

(Driessen’s in-depth September 2015 MasterResource.org articles (here, here and here) provide extensive details – and damning conclusions – about the scope of EPA and contractor incompetence, negligence, double standards, whitewashing ... and refusal to accept responsibility, compensate victims, or even observe the very rules that EPA typically imposes with an iron fist on corporations, municipalities and citizens. (Most of the damning photographs of activities leading up to and after the blowout appear to have been scrubbed from the internet. However, quite a few can still be found here and elsewhere.)

In the early days of the Trump Administration (while Obama holdovers were still running the show), the EPA finally released an Inspector General’s report on the Gold King incident. Rob Gordon, longtime head of the National Wilderness Institute and currently an advisor to the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said the IG’s report was yet another whitewash, more for its omissions than its inclusions.

Gordon noted, for example, that the IG’s report had omitted EPA’s critical, erroneous and indefensible assumption that the mine was only partially full of water, and failed to mention that the EPA crew reburied the natural plug after unearthing it. His final assessment was that there are “gaping holes in the EPA’s fiction” which, if allowed to stand, will send a message that “misleading, deceiving and lying works, and that bureaucrats need not follow the laws they enforce on others.”

Navajo and New Mexico officials were equally dissatisfied with the EPA’s initial response to their cries for just compensation for immediate and future losses of both revenue and their traditional use of land and water impacted by the spill. New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas lambasted the EPA for seeking to “impose weak testing standards in New Mexico.” That litigation is still ongoing.

Via email

The prospects of a green steel industry

It's possible but if it came about it would require huge dollops of taxpayer money to proceed. And the huge amount of hydrogen needed has to come from somewhere -- from electricity produced by "fossil" fuels most probably. It's really just an intellectual exercise

Last week marked an important moment for the prospects of a green steel industry. In Lulea in Sweden a low-carbon steel pilot plant began to test operations. It is the brainchild of HYBRIT Development, a joint venture between SSAB, a steelmaker, LKAB, a state iron-ore producer, and Vattenfall, a state-owned power company. “There is a lot still to be done, and there are challenges remaining, but I dare to claim that this is a globally unique plant,” says Martin Lindqvist, boss of SSAB.

Somewhere between 7% and 9% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions comes from making steel. Producing one tonne of the stuff emits about two tonnes of carbon dioxide. If the world is to tackle climate change, that needs to be dramatically cut. The most common steelmaking method uses coking coal to remove oxygen from iron ore. The resulting liquid iron is mixed with other substances to create steel. What makes the HYBRIT project unique is that it aims to replace the coking coal with hydrogen. And if that is made with renewable energy (as is the plan), then the process will have virtually no carbon footprint.

Others are following HYBRIT’s lead. On August 28th Thyssenkrupp, a German steelmaker, announced plans to build a similar plant. ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker, is experimenting with a range of low-carbon approaches, including carbon capture and storage and replacing the coking coal with a “bio-coal” made from waste wood. Voestalpine, an Austrian steelmaker, launched a green hydrogen-power plant last November.

Much of the action is happening in the European Union. That is partly the result of its emissions-trading scheme (EU ETS), which puts a price on carbon emissions and eats into the steelmakers’ profit margins. Last year ArcelorMittal blamed carbon taxes, among other things, for its decision to cut European production. Before British Steel went bust in 2019, it received a £100m ($130m) government loan to pay its EU carbon bill.

The pressure is likely to grow. Next year the EU ETS goes into a new phase. As a result, free carbon allowances, which are dished out to many industries, will be reduced. Morgan Stanley, a bank, estimates that the costs will amount to a tenth of European steel-producers’ pre-tax profits. Many hope that the costs will encourage steelmakers to invest more in green products. But bosses claim that, without help, they may be forced to move operations abroad.

Whether or not that is true, higher taxes will help make green steel more competitive. HYBRIT plans to get a product to market in 2026. Initial estimates suggest that the price could be 20% to 30% above that of conventional steel. Those costs could be higher still. Much depends on the price of electricity, which is needed in huge quantities to make the green hydrogen.

A bigger problem than price is scale. Even if European producers create a competitive, low-carbon offering, Chinese mills make 48% of the world’s steel. They may fall under a Chinese emissions scheme in the future. But there is little hope of their experimenting with green steel soon.

HYBRIT’s launch is a welcome, much-needed step. But Mr Lindqvist is indeed right to point out that a lot needs to be done. That goes for Sweden’s pilot plant and for the steel industry as a whole.

Editorial from "The Economist"

Australia: Koala controversy in NSW

How much do we need to lock up to protect its habitat?

Bitter division in the Coalition over planning policy related to koalas is threatening to split the government, with Deputy Premier John Barilaro asking the Premier to call an emergency cabinet meeting over the issue.

Mr Barilaro wrote to his National MPs asking them to sign a letter urging Gladys Berejiklian to hold the cabinet meeting on September 14 as three Nationals MPs threaten to move to the crossbench.

Nationals MPs are demanding that cabinet changes the guidelines which form part of a State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) that seeks to protect koala habitat.

A spokesman for the Premier said the "issue would be considered by cabinet in due course".

While the Nationals are leading the opposition to the policy, some Liberals, such as Wollondilly MP Nathaniel Smith, are also concerned about the impact it could have on their electorates.

Several government sources said Emergency Services Minister David Elliott has also expressed concerns, although the minister said he had not yet declared his position.

The concerned MPs want Planning Minister Rob Stokes to agree to a raft of changes, including the definition of core koala habitat, before NSW Parliament resumes next Tuesday.

A government source said Ms Berejiklian had already made the decision that cabinet would consider the changes before Mr Barilaro's letter.

One of the most vocal opponents, Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis, said the guidelines were "a knee-jerk reaction to target farmers and the timber industry" and a "line in the sand".

The Nationals MP said the new rules, which include increasing the number of tree species protected from 10 to 123, would severely limit the way property owners could manage their land.

"I was elected to parliament to represent my community and I get really annoyed when city-centric people preach to us, especially when people in Sydney have done nothing for their koalas," he said.

Mr Gulaptis said he would move to the crossbench if changes were not made. Nationals MP Gurmesh Singh, who represents Coffs Harbour, is also considering sitting on the crossbench, as is upper house Nationals MP Sam Farraway.

The NSW Nationals' chairman and former long-serving MP Andrew Fraser also weighed into the debate on Monday, issuing a statement "demanding commonsense on planning policy".

"The people of regional NSW are sick and tired of being used as the biodiversity offset for western Sydney development," Mr Fraser said.

Mr Stokes, who has met with Nationals MPs including Mr Gulaptis and Mr Singh to discuss their concerns, has maintained that changes were about modernising koala protection laws.

"It's fair enough then that there should be an obligation to check whether it's [a development] going to have an impact on koala populations," Mr Stokes said last week.

The NSW Farmers Association said on Monday that Ms Berejiklian needed to "partner with farmers" to take steps to protect koalas on farms instead of imposing a policy based on inaccurate mapping.

"The current debate around the Koala [policy] has been wrongly characterised as a green versus brown debate – this is incorrect," NSW Farmers' president James Jackson said.

The Nature Conservation Council has warned that the Berejiklian government should be "considering strengthening laws to protect this iconic species".

“On current trends, koalas are on track to become extinct in NSW by 2050,” the council's chief executive Chris Gambian said.

“The laws that Mr Gulaptis wants to tear up were drafted well before the summer bushfires, which killed thousands, wiped out local populations and pushed many others closer to extinction."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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8 September, 2020

UK: Extinction Rebellion protestors charged as newspaper deliveries blocked in weekend chaos

More than 100 members of the climate action group took part in bamboo lock-ons to block roads outside the Newsprinters' works, at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire and Knowsley, near Liverpool, on Friday evening. This meant some newspaper shelves in shops were left empty on Saturday morning. Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp's titles were targeted, including The Sun, The Times, The Sun On Sunday and The Sunday Times.

The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday were also affected.

Hertfordshire Police said 51 people have now been charged with obstruction of the highway following the protest outside Newsprinters Ltd print works in Waltham Cross.

The statement added two people have been remanded in custody to appear in court on Monday while 49 were released on conditional bail.

Merseyside Police said it had since charged 26 people, aged between 19 and 60, following a demonstration at the "News International premises" in Knowsley on Friday night.

They are due to appear at Liverpool and Knowsley Magistrates' Court and St Helens Magistrates' Court on January 8 and 13 next year.

Police said all 26 have been granted bail under the condition they do not enter Merseyside or contact any News International employees.

XR apologised to newsagents for the disruption. But added it would not apologise to Mr Murdoch, calling on him to "stop suppressing the truth about the climate crisis and profiting from the division your papers create".

Home Secretary Priti Patel now wants to take a "fresh look" at how XR is classified under law after a stunt Boris Johnson deemed "completely unacceptable".

He said: “A free press is vital in holding the government and other powerful institutions to account on issues critical for the future of our country, including the fight against climate change. “It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’ access to news in this way.”

The review could lead to XR being treated as an organised crime group.

SOURCE

PBS Defies UN ‘Consensus’ While Blaming Hurricanes, Wildfires on Climate Change

PBS News Hour attacked climate science this weekend, publishing alarmist claims about hurricanes and wildfires that defy findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In an interview between PBS reporter Hari Sreenivasan and Andrew Freedman, editor of Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, the two journalists blamed global warming for severe wildfires and hurricanes. According to the IPCC, however, there is little or no evidence indication global warming is impacting hurricanes or drought.

The interview’s headline reads, “Climate change is driving wildfires, giving ‘rocket fuel’ to tropical storms.” Sreenivasan prefaces the interview by stating, “[t]he last two decades have seen an increase in the number and intensity of both wildfires–like those currently burning in California and tropical storms, with this year’s hurricane season on track to be one of the busiest on record.”

Freedman agrees, saying, “Climate change is having a very clear and significant impact on wildfire size wildfire patterns … you’re seeing more extreme fire behavior now than you did before.” Regarding hurricanes, Freedman added, “[i]t’s a record season for tropical storm season in the Atlantic already.”

Sreenivasan and Freedman get the facts wrong. IPCC findings, confirmed by meteorological data provided by the U.S. government, show no increase in either the frequency or intensity of wildfires or hurricanes despite modestly rising temperatures over the past century.

Drought is the primary climate component that would affect wildfires. As reported in Climate at a Glance: Drought, the U.N. IPCC reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years. Also, IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends occurring globally. Moreover, In 2017 and 2019, the United States registered its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history. Still further, The United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions.

Date from federal government sources confirm the IPCC findings. As reported in Climate at a Glance: Wildfires, long-term data from U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) show wildfires have declined in number and severity in recent decades. Using data on U.S. wildfires from as far back as 1926, NIFC reports the numbers of acres burned is far less now than it was throughout the early 20th century. As the Figure below shows, current acres burned run about 1/4th to 1/5th of the record values which occurred in the 1930s.

Globally, the data on wildfires are just as clear. In his book False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg observes:

There is plenty of evidence for a reduction in the level of devastation caused by fire, with satellites showing a 25 percent reduction globally in burned area just over the past 18 years … In total, the global amount of area burned as declined by more than 540,000 square miles, from 1.9 million square miles in the early part of last century to 1.4 million square miles today.

And the hurricane data are just as powerful, with the IPCC reporting there is, “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.”

And, as explained in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, hurricane impacts have recently been an all-time low in the United States. “The United States recently went more than a decade (2005 through 2017) without a major hurricane measuring Category 3 or higher, which is the longest such period in recorded history. The United States also recently experienced the fewest number of hurricane strikes in any eight-year period (2009 through 2017) in recorded history,” according to data from the National Hurricane Center. If at the conclusion of this hurricane season, it proves to be busier than average for the year, it would just represent a return to normal from the 1970s and before.

With major hurricanes at historic lows and wildfires numbers and scope well below the 20th century average, PBS is inventing fake news by claiming climate change is pouring “rocket fuel” on wildfires and hurricanes.

SOURCE

The Saline County (Nebraska) Planning and Zoning Board approved a four-month moratorium for new wind farm applications

As reported by the Seward Independent, the Board’s action came in response to a request made by a local resident, Jeff Koll, during its August 18 public meeting.

Two industrial wind facilities are currently being developed in Saline County, the 300 megawatt (Mw) Milligan One project owned by EDF Renewables and the 300 Mw Cornhusker Harvest wind facilities owned by Apex Clean Energy. These projects are not affected by the moratorium.

‘Ensure the Safety of Further Development’

In the light of the significant wind projects already under construction, Koll said the board should update regulations before allowing further industrial wind farms in the county, “to ensure the safety of further development.”

A majority of the board agreed with Koll’s position, with six members of the zoning board voting to approve a moratorium on accepting new wind farm applications until December 31. One member voted against the moratorium and the zoning board President abstained. During the discussion of the moratorium members of the planning and zoning board noted they had been debating whether imposing limits on noise and lighting from wind facilities, and establishing set-backs from businesses, homes, and other infrastructure, would be justified to protect public health and property values, since July 2019.

If the moratorium agreed to by the planning and zoning board is approved by the Saline County’s Board of Commissioners, project developers will still be allowed to request applications for new wind farm permits, but they would not be accepted for consideration by the board. Whether or not the board ultimately acts to impose new regulations on wind facilities, the moratorium would lapse on January 1, 2021.

SOURCE

Coal's rapid decline won't cripple future energy grid: Australian study

What a laugh! This is just a call to replace coal with natural gas The Greenies won't be happy at all. Natural gas is also a "fossil" fuel that gives off CO2!

Natural gas does tend to be cheaper than coal but that is subject to supply and demand. On the East coast at the moment only Queensland mines it and their producers have long-term contracts with overseas customers.

It would certainly be cheap if NSW and Victoria relaxed their bans on gas mining but that seems a long way off. An unholy alliance between Greenies, Nimbys and farmers is standing in the way so far

Coal’s rapid exit from the energy grid can run smoothly and governments won’t need to intervene in the market to keep the lights on.

The future energy market can serve consumers well without big government subsidies despite the unprecedented disruption in the shift to renewables, said Energy Security Board (ESB) chair Dr Kerry Schott. The ESB is proposing a range of market reforms in a new study released for consultation on Monday.

Established by the Commonwealth of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council in 2017 the ESB advises on the unprecedented market transition so it can deliver “security and reliability to drive better outcomes for consumers” in the national electricity market.

“Governments are pretty nervous about big coal plants exiting the grid, and old gas plants for that matter, and I can understand why they want to intervene,” Dr Schott said.

“But if we can get the market measures in place outlined in the report, governments may not need to intervene at all. But comprehensive change to the market design is needed “

The ESB’s Post 2025 Energy market design report found “the exit of generation is not in itself a problem” if forward-looking reforms are made.

It’s seeking feedback on a suite of policy proposals to manage prices and encourage private investment in not just large scale power generation but also firm dispatchable resources like hydro power, batteries and fast-start gas plants for when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.

Over the next 20 years 61 per cent of Australia’s ageing and increasingly expensive coal fired capacity is set to be shut down and mainly replaced by cheaper renewable energy with dispatchable back-up that can enter the grid as required at short notice.

The national energy market in the past year comprised 74 per cent coal, six per cent gas, 4 per cent solar, 10 per cent wind and 5 per cent hydro. This is changing rapidly.

The ESB noted governments have reacted to the volatility in consumer electricity prices with a wide range of uncoordinated policies that “do not align with incentives to encourage investment in the amount and type of resources that would meet consumer and power system needs”.

“What we’re trying to do with our reform options is to have a market for the essential services that firm and dispatchable power provides. We want companies bidding those services into a market that is properly valued so the Australian Energy Market Operator can stop intervening to ensure those services are available - which is currently very expensive,” Dr Schott said.

The ESB also emphasised the need for new market rules to harness the benefits of what’s known as the distributed energy resources - that is the two million households and business with rooftop solar panels that can feed power back into the grid, and store power in batteries.

The CSIRO has found a two-sided energy market, where households pay for using power supplied from the grid and are also paid for the power generated on their premises and demand savings they make, could earn up to $2.5 billion a year, or an annual electricity saving of $414 to an average household.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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7 September, 2020

Jane Fonda: Cut CO2 Emissions Or Democracy Is ‘Impossible’

As nutty as ever

Jane Fonda ramped up her climate change rhetoric in an interview Thursday with Time magazine, in which she urges “civil disobedience” and the adoption of the Green New Deal.

The climate crisis “looms,” Ms. Fonda told Time writer Justin Worland. “If we don’t cut our fossil fuel emissions in half by 2030, everything will not only become much, much harder, but a lot of things — equality, democracy, stability in our society — will become impossible.”

Fonda was touting her new book What Can I Do?: My Path from Climate Despair to Action, which will be released on September 8, and purportedly “recounts stories from her time on the frontlines advocating for climate solutions.”

“The climate crisis affects so many parts of our lives: our health, our jobs, the economy, national security,” Fonda asserts. “A lot of people haven’t really thought about the crisis in those terms. There’s a lot in the book that the majority of people don’t know—and should know.”

The 82-year-old actress and activist said that studies show that “women care more about the climate crisis” but they “sometimes feel insecure about the science.”

“I wanted to give the science so they could be more secure in that,” she said.

Citing young climate strikers like Greta Thunberg, Fonda insists civil disobedience “has to become the new norm. No matter who is elected in November.”

Ms. Fonda also urges her followers to vote for Joe Biden because he is more malleable and easier to influence than Donald Trump.

“What I want to tell voters who say, ‘I can’t decide who to vote for. I don’t really believe in Joe Biden,’ is, ‘Hey, I’d rather push a moderate than fight a fascist,’” she said.

According to Fonda, global warming is the preeminent issue of the day, overshadowing all others.

“It’s all-consuming. This climate crisis is an existential issue that has to be dealt with if anything else is going to be achieved,” she stated.

“There were issues that mattered to me before, but they weren’t life-or-death — nothing else is going to matter if this isn’t solved — like the climate crisis is,” she said.

SOURCE

Florida Regulators Approve Genetically Modified Mosquitoes to Fight Tropical Diseases

Recently, the federal government and state regulators in Florida approved the release of a strain of genetically modified mosquitos into a small area of the Florida Keys in an effort to fight mosquito-borne tropical diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fevers, malaria, and yellow fever.

Under the plan, the biotech company Oxitec would be allowed to release hundreds of millions of genetically modified male mosquitoes of the Aedes aegypti subspecies into the Florida Keys.

Oxitec’s mosquitos have been modified so when they mate with females, the offspring they produce are incapable of surviving to adulthood. Laboratory tests and field tests have indicated widespread introduction of this mosquito could dramatically reduce the population of the disease-spreading mosquitoes and thus the spread of tropical diseases.

Possible Boon for Humanity

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals on earth. The WHO attributes 438,000 deaths to the insects from malaria alone in 2015. Other mosquito-spread diseases claim thousands more lives each year.

If Oxitec’s trademarked “Oxitec’s Friendly” mosquitos prove successful in reducing overall mosquito populations across multiple generations, it could save millions of lives around the world over time.

In recent years, with the approval of their respective governments, Oxitec has released its genetically modified mosquitoes at sites in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama. Brazil reported mosquito populations fell by at least 90 percent in the locations Oxitec’s Friendly mosquitos were released in the year following their introduction.

‘New Generation … of Control Tools’

After a careful review of the potential environmental and human health impacts of introducing Oxitec’s Friendly mosquitos into the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted Oxitec permission in May to undertake a pilot project with mosquitoes until 2022. By a vote of four to one, the board of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) has approved an experimental release of the genetically modified mosquitos as well. Oxitec expects to release the mosquitos in 2021.

The federal and state approvals are justified because Oxitec’s Friendly mosquitoes will prevent the spread of deadly diseases while causing no environmental harm, said Oxitec in a press release.

“Oxitec’s Friendly mosquitoes pose no risks to human health or the environment, including fish and other aquatic life, birds, bats, plants, invertebrates, or endangered species,” said the company in its news release.

“There is broad consensus amongst public health officials in the U.S. that a new generation of safe, targeted and cost-effective vector control tools are needed urgently to combat the growing threat posed by Aedes aegypti without impacting the ecosystem,” Grey Frandsen, Oxitec’s CEO said in the company’s press release.

‘The Science Is There’

The FKMCD currently spends as much as $1 million annually combatting disease-carrying mosquitos, through actions such as expensive aerial spraying of insecticides. In approving Oxitec’s release of its genetically modified mosquitos, the board indicated it hoped the procedure would be less expensive, more effective, and better for the environment than the mosquito control options it currently uses.

Florida needs more effective mosquito control technologies, Jill Cranny-Gage, a member of FKMCD’s board, told the Associated Press (AP).

“The science is there,” said Cranny-Gage. “This is something Monroe County needs.

“We’re trying everything in our power, and we’re running out of options,” Cranny-Gage said, according to the AP.

SOURCE

How Plants Respond To Changes In Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

IN THE CASE OF RISING CO2, photosynthesis will go up and there will be a greening of the earth as in the images above but this effect varies regionally. It is a strong function of the local ecosystem variables the most important being the availability of water.

Under ideal conditions, when there is plenty water {but not too much water where that partially submerges the plant}, plant productivity by way of photosynthesis will go up by a factor equal to 10% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration in parts per million.

For example, all other factors being equal, a 100ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration will increase plant productivity by 10% and a 200ppm increase will increase plant productivity by 20% and so on.

When sufficient water is available for plant survival but water availability is less than optimal, the gains from higher CO2 are constrained by the availability of water. Typically, in these water constrained situations, the rise in plant productivity is half the rise in productivity under ideal water conditions. So for example, a 100ppm rise in CO2 will result in a 5% increase in plant productivity, not 10% and a 200ppm rise in CO2 will result in a rise in plant productivity of only 10% and not 20%.

The third water constraint is extreme water scarcity as in drought conditions described in the literature as “lethal water shortage”. there will be no increase in plant productivity but higher CO2 will increase the probability that the plant will survive the drought. In that way, CO2 can still be credited with “greening” since it helps to preserve greenness that could otherwise have been lost.

A LIMIT TO THE EFFECT OF RISING CO2 is identified in the Van der Water 1994 paper cited above where we see a chart that identifies a limit to the rising CO2 effect. It shows that the CO2 effect on plant productivity under ideal water conditions is strong up to 300ppm, weaker from 300ppm to 500ppm, and then it flattens out implying that plants are unable to realize productivity benefits from atmospheric CO2 above 500ppm. At well above 400ppm we are now approaching the no greening condition.

SOURCE

Australian government puts environmental law changes through lower house

Legislation to change Australia’s environmental laws has been put through the lower house by the Morrison government prompting outrage from Labor, the Greens and the crossbench.

The government’s bill would amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, clearing the way for the transfer of development approval powers to state and territory governments.

The proposed changes passed the lower house on Thursday night after the government used its numbers to gag debate on the bill and amendments proposed by Labor and the crossbench.

No member of the government spoke on the bill, which still has to pass the Senate and will now likely be debated during the October budget sittings.

“To just gag that debate, to prevent people from having their say, I think is a real disgrace,” Labor’s environment spokeswoman, Terri Butler, said.

“This isn’t minor legislation, this is significant legislation that affects what happens to our natural environment, what happens with jobs and what happens with investment.”

Butler said the government was trying to rush changes to the laws through parliament under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Now is a time for more scrutiny. Now is not the time for us to be putting up with the government rushing things through in the dead of night in a situation when there’s not that attention focused on them,” she said.

The independent MP, Zali Steggall, had proposed an amendment that would have added a reference in the bill to promised national standards recommended by the interim report of the review of the EPBC Act. “This is appalling conduct by government minister [Sussan] Ley, the prime minister and every coalition MP that is supporting this,” Steggall said.

“The conduct of the government today in parliament had nothing to do with this pandemic. It had nothing to do with measures around the welfare or the health or the long-term benefit of Australians. This was about abrogating your rights, all of you, in having a voice in this parliament and knowing that you will actually have an environment that is going to be protected.”

The Greens MP, Adam Bandt, said the government was “trashing the environment and trashing democracy”.

“No government MP wanted to front up and defend the indefensible, but the rest of the country is entitled to have its say on such a crucial bill,” he said.

Andrew Wilkie, another independent MP, called the bill “environmental vandalism in the extreme”. He said it ignored the recommendations of the interim report handed down by the former competition watchdog chair Prof Graeme Samuel.

By blocking debate the government had shown “complete contempt for democracy”, Wilkie said.

The government introduced its bill, a near replica of Tony Abbott’s failed 2014 one-stop-shop policy, last week. It has argued deregulation of its decision-making powers under the EPBC Act is necessary to aid Australia’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill had been criticised by conservationists, Labor and the Greens for weakening environmental protections and failing to include promised national environmental standards, which were the key recommendation of the interim report.

Labor also wanted the government to commit to another of the review’s recommendations – an independent regulator that would enforce the law if approval powers are devolved to state and territory governments.

In a statement on Thursday night, the environment minister said moving to a “single touch” approval system would “reduce regulatory burden, promote economic activity and create certainty around environmental protections”.

“The Labor party, which turned its back on environmental reform after its own review of the EPBC Act a decade ago, today attempted a day of cynical misrepresentation in the House,” Ley said. The minister said there would be more reforms to follow.

“We will develop strong commonwealth-led national environmental standards which will underpin new bilateral agreements with state governments.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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6 September, 2020

The Racism of Climate Change Alarmists

Climate alarmists are hypocritically proclaiming climate change is founded on racist practices. Under this theory, the sun, our galaxy, and their creator are racist, since they have driven climate change throughout history.

Racism has historically been a factor in many decisions about education, land use, zoning, and many other aspects of our lives, but this began long before Europeans made landfall in the new world. Tribalism, the most fundamental form of racism historically, has existed from time immemorial.

‘Domain of Environmental Alarmists’

Recent racism is a prime domain of environmental alarmists, and a direct outgrowth of centuries of patronizing colonialism. Many climate alarmists argue today’s poor and indigenous people must be “guided” into a “green” tomorrow and not allowed to use the fossil fuels industrialized nations have employed to grow, create wealth, improve living standards, and remain free. Often these same people seem okay with the fact their “solutions” to “climate change” harm billions of people worldwide by leaving them in abject poverty, lacking electricity and clean water. Their lives are far removed from the privileges of eco-elites, who are more concerned about the indirect impacts of climate change on future generations than saving real lives today.

Instead of recognizing their own role in sustaining energy poverty (and its resultant misery, disease, and death), climate alarmists berate the West for escaping generational poverty through technology. Penn State meteorologist Gregory Jenkins has linked racism to climate change “because it dictates who benefits from activities that produce planet-warming gases and who suffers most from the consequences.” Their “solution” is to deny poor people around the world access to fossil fuels and the blessings their use can bring.

Fifteen years ago, Cameroonian journalist Jean-Claude Shanda Tomme said environmentalists “still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don’t realize ourselves what the source of our problems is.” Incredibly, this remains a prevailing attitude.

‘Eco-Imperialism’

Nearly two decades ago, in his seminal book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, Paul Driessen exposed the racist origins of European and American nongovernmental organizations, banking institutions, and government’s eco-colonialist, anti-modernity agenda.

In its introduction, Congress Of Racial Equality National Spokesman Niger Innis said the green elites’ policies “prevent needy nations from using the very technologies that developed countries employed to become rich, comfortable, and free of disease. And they send millions of infants, children, men and women to early graves every year.”

Eco-elites insist Africans not be allowed to combat malaria with DDT, which eradicated malaria throughout the developed world. And they pressure Africans to not use their abundant coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear or oil resources, the same technologies and resources that enriched modern civilizations.

Multiple voices have demanded the West stop smothering Africans with money that fuels massive corruption. A decade ago, in reviewing Dambisa Moyo’s brilliant 2009 book, Dead Aid, I recalled her litany of “sins of aid with strings.” It fuels corruption, encourages inflation, increases debt loads, kills exports, causes civil unrest, frustrates entrepreneurship, and disenfranchises citizens. In effect, foreign aid is also racist.

OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo pleaded with Western leaders that “energy is fundamental for economic development and social progress. While the use of all forms of energy is welcome, it is clear that fossil fuels will continue to satisfy the lion’s share of the world’s growing energy needs for decades to come.” But Africans are still routinely denied financing to develop those resources for their own citizens. This is racism at its worst.

Recently, a World Bank Development Research Group proposed building a 100,000-kilometer African highway system to connect all major African capitals and large cities. It would cost just $30 billion, plus $2 billion a year in maintenance, in the process generating $750 billion a year in overland trade among African nations. In an act of pure racism, environmentalists within the World Bank and other development organizations successfully lobbied to shelve it.

Green-Racism Continues Post-COVID-19

And so the green racism continues. African Energy Chamber Executive Chairman N.J. Ayuk recently criticized the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA) for describing low oil prices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as “golden opportunity” for governments to phase out fossil fuels support– and thus better living standards.

“The OECD and IEA don’t necessarily know what’s best for the people who live on this planet,” wrote Ayuk in a syndicated article released by the African Energy Chamber. “Pressuring governments to stop supporting fossil fuels certainly would not be good for the African oil and gas companies or entrepreneurs striving to build a better future.

“And it could be downright harmful to communities looking at gas-to-power initiatives to bring them reliable electricity,” Ayuk wrote. “Too often the discussion about climate change – and the call to leave fossil fuels in the ground – is largely a Western narrative [that] does not factor in the needs of low-income Africans who could reap the many benefits of a strategic approach to oil and gas operations in Africa: Reduced energy poverty, job creation, and entrepreneurship opportunities, to name a few.”

On the global stage, Ayuk concluded, the OECD and the IEA are “dismissing the voices of many Africans who want and need the continent’s oil and gas industry to thrive.” In short, elitist global power brokers ignore the voices of the world’s most needy.

Firewood Not Gas for Thee

Despite abundant rivers, sunlight, and oil, gas, coal, and uranium reserves, in a report for the Global Warming Policy Forum, journalist Geoff Hill details how many Africans still rely on increasingly scarce firewood to cook and heat their homes on cold nights, stripping forest habitats and decimating wildlife habitats in the process. Of the world’s 50 countries with the least access to electricity, 41 are in Africa.

Nigerian neurosurgeon Dr. Sylvanus Ayeni’s 2017 book Rescue Thyself exposes how the corrupt African governments have failed to serve their people. He is saddened that, despite over a trillion dollars in aid to Africa from the United States alone, so much has been blown on palaces, private jets, and outright theft.

But who empowered these greedy leaders, who sought to do what donors wanted? Will the West finally acknowledge their paternalistic racism that empowered this corruption? Or will it just continue the eugenic practices that dehumanized Africans as “unfit” to advance, under the guise of fighting climate change?

SOURCE

Media Misinformation Harms Conservation Efforts

The use of misinformation to shape opinions and actions is a practice as old as politics. Plato argued that falsehoods had a rightful place in politics insofar as they were necessary for the good of the state. In his canonical work The Prince the Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli counseled leaders that one should “never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” Russian President Vladimir Putin once expressed his disdain for politics by remarking it required one to “be insincere and promise something which you cannot promise. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.”

Conservation politics are not immune to misinformation, and few conservation issues have been surrounded by the degree of misinformation that trophy hunting is. While legislation to prohibit the importation of hunting trophies from Africa is debated in Congress and Parliament, social media and newspapers in the United States and United Kingdom contain a daily swarm of stories making claims about trophy hunting that have no basis in science or the lived experience of African people.

Should these false narratives prevail in shaping public policy, efforts to prevent the extinction of species will be set back. Equally important is that every public policy debate dominated by misinformation harms our democracies. Promoting and embracing false narratives surrenders fidelity to reason and facts observed through science to sentiment and mythology. This will not equip us to overcome the challenges of the twenty-first century.

A team of co-authors, led by Adam Hart of the University of Gloucestershire, and including myself, recently confronted this state of affairs in a peer-reviewed letter published in the journal Conservation Biology. In our letter, we highlight the ways in which ideas that are presented as “facts” about trophy hunting’s impact on wildlife run counter to the actual scientific understanding of those impacts. We indict and prosecute specific examples of misinformation about trophy hunting spread through the popular press. Finally, we encourage other academics and subject matter experts to increase their engagement in conservation policy debates so that the “increasingly toxic influence” of misinformation does not take hold.

Winston Churchill once observed that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” This is even more true today, when a meme of questionable provenance can be sent to millions of people over social media platforms, “independent journalists” publish unsourced and unsubstantiated stories, “deep fake” videos can cause people to question their own eyes, and newsroom editors recycle it all to keep readers and get clicks. So long as policy debates around conservation continue to be influenced by these kinds of misinformation tactics, conservation experts must never tire of stepping forward to set the record straight and give the truth a fighting chance.

SOURCE

Opening up post-COVID-19 free trade to save the planet

American refined silicon; German electronic power inverters; Japanese photovoltaic cell manufacturing; British financial services. What do these elements all have in common? They each contribute in one way or another to the creation and distribution of a solar panel. They also represent the international supply chain that has not only brought down the cost of solar energy in recent years, but also renewable energy more broadly.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only shaken renewable energy supply chains across the globe, it has also created a public distrust of relying too much on foreign countries for our energy and other needs. But, we must not ignore the benefits that such global supply chains have brought to the rapid and cost-decreasing deployment of clean forms of energy around the world.

We often hear about the global nature of climate change — a threat all countries must face together. This global aspect is undeniably true.The potential impacts of a changing climate represent a challenge the entire international community needs to address. As parts of Bangladesh face coming under water, so too does Florida. The million-dollar question is: How can countries in the West incentivize climate action not only domestically, but also abroad? Indeed, there is no use in the United States or Europe reaching net zero by 2050, if countries such as India and China do not do the same.

As my recently published book “Green Market Revolution” argues, one particularly promising approach to unleashing a global transition to cleaner energy is through the simple, yet under-appreciated, concept of free trade. We must build on the successes of clean energy global supply chains and further accelerate their impact. For centuries, and especially in the latter half of the 20th century, global free trade has contributed to lifting billions out of poverty, accelerating innovations across the globe and sharing valuable knowledge across cultures.

The international fight against climate change would benefit in a similar manner. Not only have free trade agreements previously contributed to environmental advancement, such as under George W. Bush’s Trade Act of 2002, but established agreements with countries such as Colombia, South Korea and Peru helped to reduce airborne chemicals, deforestation, illegal logging and more. It is only by sharing ideas and innovations across borders that the best and most efficient clean technologies will emerge. The beauty of the international trading system is that different countries with different skill-sets and areas of expertise can all contribute in their own way, cost-effectively, to producing parts of these technologies. American silicon, German inverters, Japanese cells and British financial services.

Even despite the bleakness of the COVID-19 devastation, there are significant opportunities for America to become a global leader in clean free trade. The first of these is an already-existing framework called the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS). Announced in 2019 by the governments of New Zealand, Fiji, Norway, Costa Rica and Iceland, ACCTS puts forward three key policies: the removal of all tariffs on environmental goods and services, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and the development of voluntary mechanisms for eco-labeling. In doing so, these five countries hope to unleash a veritable market of environmentally beneficial goods and services, by tearing down barriers to their global free trade. Instead of placing tariffs on the very goods that will help reduce our emissions, the Trump administration should become a leading player in it. The ACCTS framework would provide both a financially beneficial outlet for American manufacturing and technology innovations, but also a source of cheaper and higher-quality international environmental products, such as parts for solar panels and wind turbines. Both the economy and global environment would benefit.

Secondly, with the United Nations COP26 conference set to be held in the United Kingdom in November 2021, America would do well to use the opportunity to foster closer ties with post-Brexit Britain, along these lines. Indeed, with Britain and the U.S. together representing over a quarter of world GDP, signing a free trade agreement that includes crucial environmental provisions would be hugely significant for the development of clean energy worldwide. Indeed, it would be a sign of genuine climate leadership on behalf of two of the most influential countries in our international system, and would encourage other countries to follow suit. Moreover, in an increasingly multipolar world order, a foreign policy that emphasizes environmental protection and cooperation would provide a refreshing change of scene, strengthening the hand of those countries with honest intentions, over more unscrupulous international players.

Ultimately, as the world increasingly looks toward cleaner forms of energy in the fight against climate change, we need not resort to heavy-handed international interventions or expensive domestic policies. Post-COVID-19 clean free trade policy can accelerate both clean energy innovation internationally, as well as lay the foundations of a sustainable American economic recovery.

SOURCE

Gas Plants To Stay Open As California Bows To Energy Reality

Last week, I described the dilemma facing the California State Water Resources Control Board.

It could demand adherence to the schedule for closing coastal gas plants that use seawater by the end of this year.

If they did so, they would compound California’s energy crisis; if not, the board would have to face the fact that renewable energy was insufficient for the State’s needs and acknowledge that it needed these fossil fuel plants to continue operating or the state would face further blackouts.

Today it acknowledged reality, as the Los Angles Times reports. The board allowed the plants to remain in operation for a few more years until — they hope — chimerical renewable energy can pick up the load:

State officials threw a lifeline to four fossil-fueled power plants along the Southern California coast, deciding the facilities are still needed to provide reliable electricity even as they contribute to the climate crisis.

Tuesday’s vote by the State Water Resources Control Board to let the gas plants keep operating past the end of this year followed brief rolling blackouts over two evenings last month, as a heatwave caused air conditioning demand to soar, and California found itself short on electricity supplies.

Energy regulators are still investigating the causes of the power shortage. But they said allowing the coastal gas plants to stay open a few more years would help prevent more outages as California continues its transition to cleaner energy sources — an ironic solution given that climate change almost certainly exacerbated the recent heatwave.

Maybe it won’t ever get hot again in California. Maybe there never will be smoke and smog blocking sunlight. Maybe storage capacity will be vastly increased.

Maybe the gas plants will find an efficient, affordable way to discharge seawater without substantially affecting marine life. Maybe not.

Of course, the notion that the warm seawater discharge from the plants seriously harms marine life may also be open to some debate.

I remember environmentalists claiming the caribou would die off if the Alaskan pipeline was built, but it turns out the caribou love it:

Thirty years later we can see the effects of the pipeline on the caribous. Walter Hickel, a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and governor of Alaska, said the caribou has not only survived, but flourished. In 1977, as the Prudhoe region started delivering oil to America’s southern 48 states, the Central Arctic caribou numbered 6,000: it has since grown to 27, 128.

It’s hyperbolical predictions like this that make me chary of the environmentalists’ claims, which always exaggerate the risks of real energy production while they ignore the risks related to “renewables,” such as the risk to birds from large solar arrays in the desert and from windmills and the danger now of disposal solar panels and windmills that are now out of commission or soon will be.

Let me know when they march on the auto companies to highlight the environmental risks in the creation and disposal of electric car batteries.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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4 September, 2020

NPR Falsely Links Disease To Climate Change

National Public Radio (NPR) followed its sister organization Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) this week in pushing false climate claims.

Among the most egregious lies told in NPR’s story, “Everything Is Unprecedented. Welcome To Your Hotter Earth,” was linking the seasonal outbreak of mosquito-borne tropical diseases to climate change.

However, as detailed in Chapter Four of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the vast body of scientific literature refutes NPR’s claim that climate change is likely to exacerbate the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

Studies from Africa, to England and Wales, to North and South America, to Thailand and beyond refute any link between climate change and the spread of malaria, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and other vector-borne diseases.

For example, a 2010 study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature reports, “[The study’s authors] compared historical and contemporary maps of the range and incidence of malaria and found endemic/stable malaria is likely to have covered 58% of the world’s land surface around 1900 but only 30% by 2007.”

Clearly, malaria has become less prevalent and deadly as the climate has warmed.

The authors rebut potential assertions that there would be even further reductions in malaria but for global warming.

The authors write, ‘widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent.’

Vector-borne disease expert Paul Reiter, a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control, has written extensively on the transmission of vector-borne diseases.

Reiter concludes any links between such diseases and climate change are not supported by evidence.

For example, in a 2008 article in the Malaria Journal, Reiter writes,

“Simplistic reasoning on the future prevalence of malaria is ill-founded; malaria is not limited by climate in most temperate regions, nor in the tropics, and in nearly all cases, ‘new’ malaria at high altitudes is well below the maximum altitudinal limits for transmission.”

Reiter adds,

“…future changes in climate may alter the prevalence and incidence of the disease, but obsessive emphasis on ‘global warming’ as a dominant parameter is indefensible; the principal determinants are linked to ecological and societal change, politics and economics.”

NPR and PBS should stick to entertainment topics for which they have better expertise – like Big Bird.

SOURCE

The Green New Deal Means Monumental Disruption

Democrat Party vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) cosponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal (GND). Now, former Vice President Joe Biden, the party’s nominee for the presidency in the 2020 election, has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost, usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.

The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at what total cost? Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on health care, energy and housing transformation, climate change, and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture.

Getting the Big Picture

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has a degree in some socialist version of economics, and the folks who helped her write Biden’s so-called Climate Plan have a clear idea of how much money they want, and they pretty much know where they expect the money to come from. Here it is in its clearest form, as stated by Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff at the time, Saikat Chakrabarti:

“The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40 to 60 percent of America’s GDP).” [emphasis added]

World War II was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as part of a dramatic and historic mobilization to win a horrific global war. However, that hard reality doesn’t matter to these folks. They say we are now waging a war to stop catastrophic climate change. So money, sacrifice, and disruption are irrelevant.

Our nation’s GDP is around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. Forty to 60 percent of that is $80 trillion to 120 trillion. For simplicity, let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal utopian dream.

$100 trillion! The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was financed, however that was. To them, it’s obvious that we can simply do this, because we did it before. The specifics don’t matter. Government elites will figure them out.

WW2-Like Mobilizaton

But even this arrogant, cavalier attitude is only part of the picture.

If you read what Green New Dealers say, confusion arises because people think the GND is an ordinary policy proposal: “Here’s what we want done, and this what it should cost.” It is nothing like that. The GND is more along the lines of, “Here’s the level of effort we require to transform our entire economy, and this is what we should be able to do with that much money.”

People tend to interpret Green New Dealer talk of a WW2-like mobilization as a simple metaphor. But these folks mean it as an actual measure of what they are determined to do. So far they have glossed over and ignored the extreme hardships of mobilization. Here’s just one example—not from front-lines mayhem but from the United States home front during World War II.

Gasoline, meat, and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated three U.S. gallons of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, such as cars, new housing, vacuum cleaners, and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended. In industrial areas, housing was in short supply, so people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled (Harold Vatter, The US Economy in World War II]).

No doubt the GND mobilization would impose different hardships. But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without inflicting severe disruption on people’s lives.

No Justification for Climate War

The argument is sound in its way, provided there is a need for all-out war, but there is not. The minor to modest temperature, climate, and extreme weather changes we’ve been seeing (in the real world outside computer models) explain why most Americans see no need for a painful war. So does the fact that China, India, and other emerging economies are not about to give up fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, polls show that roughly half of Americans do not even believe in the idea of dangerous human-caused global warming, much less that it is an “existential threat,” as Sen. Harris claims it is. The latest Gallup poll found that only 1 percent of U.S. adults consider “climate change/environment/pollution” to be “the most important problem facing this country today.” That’s down from a meager 2 percent in the May 28-June 4 poll.

Even more revealing, a 2019 AP-NORC poll found that 68 percent of adult Americans were unwilling to pay even an extra $10 on their monthly electricity bill to combat global warming. Indeed, 57 percent of them would not be willing to pay more than $1.00 in added electricity charges to fight climate change!

Just wait until they see what the Biden-Harris-AOC-Democrat Green New Deal would cost them!

Mounting Costs

And it’s not just that their costs would likely skyrocket from an average U.S. 13.2¢ per kilowatt hour (11.4¢ or less in ten states) to well beyond the nearly 20¢ per kwh that families are already paying in California and New York, or the 30¢ that families are now paying in ultra-green Germany. Or that factories, businesses, hospitals, schools and everyone else would also see their costs escalate, with blue-collar families, the sick and elderly, poor and minority communities hammered hardest.

It’s that the GND would force every American to replace their gasoline and diesel cars and trucks with expensive short-haul electric vehicles; their gas furnaces and stoves with electric systems; their home, local, and state electrical and transmission systems with expensive upgrades for a totally electric economy. They’ll see their landscapes, coastlines, and wildlife habitats blanketed with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, and warehouses filled with thousands of half-ton batteries. Virtually every component of this GND nation would be manufactured in China and other faraway places.

The cost of this massive, total transformation of our energy and economic systems would easily reach $10 trillion: $30,000 per person or $120,000 per family, on top of those skyrocketing electricity prices. And that’s just the intermittent, unreliable energy component of this all-encompassing Green New Deal.

These are stupendous, outrageous costs and personal sacrifices. Every American, at every campaign event and town meeting, should ask GND supporters if they think America needs to, or can afford to, cough up $10 trillion or $100 trillion over the next 10 years. And not let them get away with glib, evasive answers, or attempts to laugh these questions off as meritless or irrelevant.

‘Huge Personal Sacrifices’

The American people are not about to be mobilized into an all-out war against dubious climate change, with price tags like these coupled with repeated blackouts, huge personal sacrifices, and massive joblessness in every sector of the economy except among the enlightened government ruling classes.

The American people have already seen news stories about the latest rolling blackouts in California (here, here, here and here) resulting from one-third of that state’s electricity coming from “renewable” sources, and with another third of the state’s electricity imported from other states that also get heat waves. They should ponder what their lives, livelihoods, and living standards would be under 100 percent wind and solar power.

And yet, once again, even all this insanity is only a small part of the picture.

Remember, the GND is also about government-run healthcare and an economy and nation where “progressive” “woke” legislators, regulators, judges, and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell, and tell us what we can buy, eat, and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think, and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.

The GND is being promoted by politicians, news and social media, “educators,” and “reformers” who want to eliminate free-enterprise capitalism; have totally open borders, even for criminals and people who might have COVID and other diseases; and want to defund the police, put anarchists, looters, and arsonists back on our streets, and take away our right and ability to defend ourselves, our homes, and our families.

The time to think long and hard about all of this is NOW. Not sometime after the November 3 elections.

SOURCE

Exxon Mobil removal from Dow Jones a cautionary tale not to feed the Green New Deal crocodile

This week energy giant Exxon Mobil lost its prestigious place as one of 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its replacement: enterprise software company Salesforce.com. According to S & P Dow Jones, the change was driven by Apple’s decision to split its stock, which reduced the index’s tech-sector weighting.

However, some say Exxon Mobil’s removal is a direct result of its decision to cozy up with liberal climate change activists who are now pushing for the Green New Deal to eliminate petroleum production and all other carbon emissions.

“Not terribly long ago, Exxon was the most valuable company in the U.S.,” said Justin Danhof, Director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, a free market-oriented research foundation. “And now they are a shell of what they once were.”

Danhof said Exxon Mobil used to contribute to market-oriented advocacy and policy groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council that helped the energy giant grow and prosper. “Those kinds of group were very helpful to Exxon,” said Danhof. But he said beginning in the mid 2000’s the company made a strategic decision to cut ties with many of its allies and chase the approval of the Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) crowd. “I guess if you are Exxon, your strategy is to keep your enemies close and throw your friends under the bus,” quipped Danhof.

In 2015, Exxon Mobil very publicly supported the now discredited Paris climate agreement, noting in a press statement, “ExxonMobil has for many years held the view that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the best option to fulfill these key principles.”

The ESG agenda has been driving corporate and even federal investment policies in recent years. Through regulatory channels, President Obama changed the guidelines for the Department of Labor’s investment duties regulations under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Previously, the Act directed that pension fund managers make investments to maximize investor returns. The Obama administration changed the guidelines so that fund managers could make investment decisions based on a company’s ESG profile.

“This is nonsense,” said Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government. “Investment decisions should always be based on maximizing returns for the investor, not in promoting a political agenda.”

Last month, Manning was part of a coalition of free-market advocacy groups and individuals that sent a letter to the Secretary of Labor voicing support for a return to the former ERISA guidelines. The letter called the Department of Labor’s new proposed rule an “important protection for pensioners and 401(k) investors against involuntarily paying the price for a political ‘thumb on the scale’…”

The letter warned that “Under the banner of ‘environmental, social (justice), and governance (ESG),’ mutual fund and pension managers are increasingly investing in ways that advance their political and social predilections, but may not be consistent with their duties to clients… The Labor Department is reminding pension managers that there is a place for politics and a place for sound investment decisions. When ESG investments put politics over fund performance, they are unsuitable.”

“The liberal mob can never be satiated,” added Manning. “Companies and politicians who try to appease them do so at their own peril.” He said Exxon Mobil’s “full embrace of the Left and climate hysteria, has led to their falling out of this listing of our nation’s top blue chip companies.”

Danhof said corporate embrace of “Left wing ESG causes gets them positive headlines in the New York Times, but is a poor long-term strategy.”

Or as Winston Churchill once famously said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

SOURCE

The Folly Of Toronto’s Green Economics

Among the many items that stimulate curiosity about how public officials think, there was a small story out of Toronto concerning the city’s plans for a post-COVID green economy.

It is a story that is also pertinent to the federal government’s overall goal of leveraging the COVID-induced meltdown of the Canadian economy to pursue, with all the flamboyance that the cause can stimulate, its treasured ideal of fighting apocalyptic global warming.

The nub of the story is that Toronto’s ambulances are, thanks to federal funding, going to be outfitted with solar panels.

From one online resource, we read: “The City of Toronto is modifying its medical vehicles to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.… The Canadian government will release up to $1.1 million to help the city in this transformation.”

The report continues: “This funding comes from the ministry of environment and climate change.” To which I reply: where else?

I can think of many accouterments to ambulances — diagnostic equipment, better pay for the staff, great tires, updated electronics — that would better fit with their actual purpose — saving lives — than solar panels.

But the ministry of climate change — I presume having passed on miniature windmills for the hood — was probably most joyous when the request came through.

As for the need for such panels, or their utility for the service in question, who in the climate change bureau would ask such questions?

Toronto Mayor John Tory is very much in agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when it comes to the beautiful oxymoron, “green thought.”

And Toronto is a city whose progressive credentials are easily equal to those of Portland or Seattle, both havens of advanced social thought, so Torontonians have a high tolerance for progressive schemes and politicians.

It is, therefore, no surprise that so inventive, so original an initiative to stave off planetary oblivion as solar-paneling one city’s ambulance fleet occurred to him or was passed on from some green confrere.

Knowing that his city will be doing its bit surely made his fine civic heart thump a little more vigorously.

Let us agree that it will be very good for the residents of Toronto to know that any time one of them has to be carted off at high speed to the emergency department, as a smidgen of consolation for the personal crisis being endured, that person will have the knowledge that he or she is helping to save the rainforest.

And probably giving an anorexic polar bear a few more minutes on a melting ice pan. Not to mention “offsetting,” however infinitesimally, the emissions from China’s ever-expanding fleet of coal-fired power plants.

Such consolation will not be available, of course, should 911 be called on a rainy day, or during the night.

I think it was either Al Einstein or Al Gore who established the principle that you cannot gather the beams of the sun during the periods when it is not shining.

And even on the brightest day, driving an ambulance through the shadowed canyons of Bay Street will foil any harvesting of the sun’s beams.

But there is still much to be said for the symbolism of the gesture. For symbolism, and nothing practical beyond pure symbolism is what green economics is all about.

To put it in bare language, the Liberal craze for being seen as warriors against global warming is all about showing other countries how sublimely climate-virtuous we are.

It’s a summons for applause and praise from the green “thinkers” of the world, and a humble “giving the knee” to the IPCC.

Providing over $1 million for solar panels (and hybrid motors) for Toronto ambulances is just a start. Obviously, the plan cannot be limited just to one city.

So expect many more millions to be passed out to every other city and outsized town for rooftop sun-trapping accessories for every other ambulance service in Canada.

I take this folly as representative of what, in reality, is meant when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland speaks so confidently about a green recovery and how all Canadians understand that it is what we must do.

Shut down the oilfields, yes. But we’re going to green the ambulances in Calgary to take up the slack. That’ll work. Alberta will drop all thoughts of Wexit.

There is nothing so unpromising in practical terms, so irrelevant to the real challenges of our time or so fruitful of strange and eccentric projects underwritten by the public purse as subservience to green politics.

Toronto’s future ambulance fleet is just a small illustration of what passes for green economics.

We shall see an exponential explosion of far larger, far more wasteful projects once the promised post-COVID recovery goes into full gear.

Our only consolation on this front may be that it is unlikely that the Kielburger brothers will be invited to manage it.

As an addendum, may I add that in my home province of fog-enshrouded, snow-blinded Newfoundland, the idea of harvesting sunlight, for ambulances or any other thing, would be seen as a sign of psychological distress, and a pitifully thin relationship with the nature of things.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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3 September, 2020

President Trump's Entertaining New Take on the Green New Deal

Remember AOC's Green New Deal? The one that would require every single building in the U.S. to be retrofitted? The one that banned air travel? The one that demanded net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years. The one that singled out "emissions from cows"? At the time Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) released the plan, even some of her fellow Democrats were confused by it.

“I read it and I reread it and I asked Ed Markey, what in the heck is this?” Durbin told the "Morning Joe" anchors last year.

All the material was already there for President Trump during his wide ranging interview with Laura Ingraham Monday night. He really needed no punchline.

"The Green New Deal, which is done by a child," Trump noted. "That's the mind of a child. Because the Green New Deal is ridiculous. It doesn't work." Not only does it not work, he added, but it's going to cost $100 trillion.

Or, as Trump put it, "Let's rip down a building and build a new one w/no windows."

Try not to laugh.

Even the Democrats seem to secretly know it's a joke. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered to bring it up for a vote last year, but they declined.

SOURCE

Green Energy Isn't So Green

The often toxic waste produced by solar panels and wind turbines is piling up.

When you hear the term “green energy,” what’s the first word that pops into your head? Okay, the first word besides “fake,” “faux,” “false,” “fraud,” “fable,” or “fascism,” which are way too obvious. And besides “hockey stick hoax” or “polar bear hoax,” which aren’t single words. And besides “Goregasm” or “Solyndra,” which are made-up words.

If “dirty” doesn’t come to mind, it should. Because there’s an ever-growing landfill of evidence that the so-called Green Revolution is also an extraordinarily toxic and wasteful one.

Columnist Michael Shellenberger called our attention to green energy’s dirty little secret in 2018 when he asked a simple question: “If solar panels are so clean, why do they produce so much toxic waste?”

Shellenberger cited a 2016 International Renewable Energy Agency estimate that there were approximately 275,000 tons of solar panel waste worldwide at that time — a figure the agency says could reach more than 85 million tons by 2050. He also cited research scientists at the German Stuttgart Institute for Photovoltaics who wrote, “Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”

Clearly, then, crushing these millions of spent solar panels and dumping them into landfills isn’t the answer. But what about — wait for it — recycling them? Well, as Shellenberger notes, the toxic chemicals within the panels can’t be removed without breaking apart the entire module. And, as San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney notes, “Approximately 90% of most [photovoltaic] modules are made up of glass. However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities” such as plastics, lead, cadmium, and antimony.

Besides, writes Shellenberger, “Recycling costs more than the economic value of the materials recovered, which is why most solar panels end up in landfills.” So we can scratch the recycling idea, too — except maybe in California, where fiscal realities have never once stopped an economically ruinous environmental policy from being enacted.

What’s that, you say? All this isn’t nearly as bad as nuclear waste? Uh, wrong. As the folks at Environmental Progress tell us, “Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.” Then there’s the Chinese recycling official who says the solar panel disposal issue “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment.”

So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

As for those gigantic wind turbines, they don’t introduce all the toxins that spent solar panels do, but these view-wrecking, bird-killing Cuisinarts in the sky have their own disposal problems just the same.

Even NPR has come clean. “While most of a turbine can be recycled or find a second life on another wind farm,” writes Christina Stella, “researchers estimate the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that doesn’t include newer, taller higher-capacity versions.”

“There aren’t many options to recycle or trash turbine blades,” Stella continues, “and what options do exist are expensive, partly because the U.S. wind industry is so young. It’s a waste problem that runs counter to what the industry is held up to be: a perfect solution for environmentalists looking to combat climate change, an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods, and a job creator across the Midwest and Great Plains.”

Worn-out windmill blades are typically 100 to 300 feet long, are made of a durable but otherwise useless combination of resin and fiberglass, have to be cut up before being hauled away on specialized vehicles, can’t be crushed by most landfill machines, and take up an enormous amount of space that might otherwise be taken up by toxic solar panels.

Suffice it to say that we’re long overdue for an intervention between the Left and its unhealthy obsession with “green” energy.

SOURCE

Fact Check: Did Joe Biden Say He'd Ban Fracking or Not?

On Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump for insisting that the Biden campaign wanted to "ban fracking" should they win their bid for the White House. The fossil fuel industry accounts for millions of American jobs, including a large number in Alleghany county, where Biden spoke from Pittsburgh on Monday.

"I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me," Biden said in response to the president and fossil fuel workers concerned with Biden's praise of the Green New Deal. However, his proclamation doesn't match what he's said in the past, as the Democratic Party has lurched toward the far-left and made several, varying vows to eliminate fossil fuel energy altogether.

In fact, Biden has said during several early appearances on the campaign trail that he would strive to eliminate fossil fuels, even at the potential expense of hundreds of thousands of energy jobs. It seems that his only argument in defense of his claim on Monday is over semantics, as he does not appear to have used the word "ban" to apply to currently existing fracking licensure.

But he has vowed, on multiple occasions and without apology, to prevent any new fracking, twisting his words even then to make himself seem more palatable for those opposed to fossil fuel energy.

In a debate last summer, in which the Democratic candidates battled over who had the better plan for the environment, CNN's Dana Bash attempted to gain some clarification from Biden.

"Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?" Bash asked the former vice president.

"No, we would — we would work it out," he said. "We would make sure it's eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either — any fossil fuel."

In September, Biden again avoided the use of the word "ban," but told an environmental activist that he would end all fossil fuel energy.

"I want you to look at my eyes," he told the 24-year-old woman. "I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We're going to end fossil fuel." That activist said she was still skeptical of Biden's vow to end all fossil fuels by 2050 and didn't like the fact that he called her "kiddo."

Biden has faced tremendous pressure from energy unions, particularly in states like Pennsylvania, for his non-committal answers on whether he would support the cutting of potentially 600,000 fracking jobs.

"Joe Biden is really one of us. I always loved the man," said Pittsburgh Democrat and union leader Jim Cassidy in July. "He scares me now. Is he embracing the new Green Deal or whatever they are calling it? He needs to get some stuff straight."

SOURCE

The Green Road To Blackouts

Viv Forbes

California leads the way to electricity blackouts, closely followed by South Australia. They both created this problem by taxing, banning, delaying or demolishing reliable coal, nuclear, gas or hydro generators while subsidising and promoting unreliable electricity from the sickly green twins – solar and wind.

All supposed to solve a global warming crisis that exists only in academic computer models. Energy policy should be driven by proven reliability, efficiency and cost, not by green politics. Wind and solar will always be prone to blackouts for three reasons.

Firstly they are intermittent, producing zero power when winds drops or sunlight fails.

Secondly, green energy is dilute so the collection area must be huge. Both solar panels and wind turbines are old technologies and now close to collecting the maximum energy from a given land area of wind and sun, so limited technology gains are possible.

Wind turbines generate nothing from gentle breezes and must shut down in gales. To collect more energy the green twins must collect from greater areas using a widespread scatter of panels and towers connected by a fragile network of roads and transmission lines.

This expensive, extensive but flimsy system is far more susceptible to damage from cyclones, hail, snow, lightning, bushfire, flood and sabotage than a big, well-built, centrally-located, well-maintained traditional power station with strong walls, a roof and lightning protection. Green energy also requires far more investment in transmission lines and inter-connectors that consumers must pay for, and the energy transmission losses are greater.

Thirdly, green energy is like a virus in a distribution network. When the sun shines, solar energy floods the network, causing energy prices to plummet. Coal and gas plants are forced to operate at a cash loss or shut down. Erratic winds make this problem worse as they are less predictable and changes can be quicker.

But when all green energy fails suddenly, like in an evening peak demand period after a still cold sunset, coal cannot ramp up quickly unless it has been kept on standby with boilers hot, waiting for an opportunity to generate some positive cash flow. Gas and hydro can fire up swiftly but who wants to own/build/maintain an expensive fair-dinkum power station that operates intermittently?

Currently hydro, or stop-start gas turbines on standby, or coal generators fired up but not generating are keeping Australian lights on during green energy blackouts. But no one will build new reliable generators to operate part-time. Soon we will have day-time where there is heaps of electricity producing no profit for any generator, and night-time when electricity prices will soar and blackouts will threaten.

Authorities have their solution – rationing. They will use a blackout crisis to grab the power to dictate rolling blackouts of whole suburbs, areas or factories or selective consumer blackouts using smart meters.

Naturally Green “engineers” also have a solution – “More Big Batteries”.

There are many contestants in the battery growth “industry” including pumped hydro, lithium batteries, compressed air, big flywheels, hydrogen storage, capacitors and molten salt. They all need to be able to cope with a few days without wind-solar, which makes them huge and expensive. And all are net consumers of energy as they go through the charge/discharge cycle.

Half-tonne Li/Co/Pb batteries are huge consumers of energy – energy for exploring/mining/refining metals and for concrete, battery manufacture, transport and construction; energy to charge them and absorb the inevitable losses in the charge/discharge cycle; energy to build battery warehouses and finally energy to recycle/bury worn-out batteries (which wear out far quicker than coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power stations).

Few people consider the extra generating capacity needed to maintain charged batteries. Solar energy at best delivers power for about 8 hours per day when there is no cloud, smoke or dust in the air. So a solar array needs batteries with a capacity of twice name-plate capacity just to cover the hours of darkness, every day. These batteries then need extra generating capacity to charge them during daylight hours.

But a solar system also needs to be able to cope with up to 7 days of cloudy weather. This needs 7 times more batteries plus the generating capacity to charge them.

The Big Battery in South Australia has a capacity of 150 MW and cost $160m. East Coast demand these days is about 22,500 MW which would require 150 SA batteries and adding a 10% factor of safety = 165 batteries. The cost could be 165 X $160m = $26.4bn.

No matter whether the battery is stored hydrogen or pumped hydro, the cost to stabilise 100% green energy would be prohibitively expensive. Before we leap over this green cliff, those who claim otherwise must be obliged to demonstrate a working pilot plant without coal, gas or diesel.

Wind power suffers the same problems but is far less predictable. Wind droughts are a common feature. At times wind turbines drain electricity from the grid.

To maintain grid stability, the generators must charge batteries which can then supply a steady stream of electricity to the grid. This requires many more transmission lines and battery connections.

At this point the maths/costs of zero-emissions with 100% solar/wind become preposterous. And the ecological disruption becomes enormous.

When Danish windmills stand silent, they import hydro power from Scandinavia. When German solar panels are covered in snow, they import nuclear electricity from France. And California can draw power from Canada.

But Australia is an island. When the grid fails, Tasmanian hydro or New Zealand geo-thermal are the closest reliable-energy neighbours.

The looming Covid Depression has no room for more green energy silliness. We cannot afford to mollycoddle an aging failing technology. A hard dangerous new world is coming. To survive we will need cheap reliable energy – coal, gas, nuclear or hydro.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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2 September, 2020

The problem in California is poverty, not climate change

The heatwaves and the fires are natural – the electricity blackouts are not.

California is once again at the frontline of Gaia’s revenge. Climate change has been cited as the cause of a heatwave afflicting the state, causing the governor, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency and announce rolling blackouts. Worse, the heatwave has created the conditions for wildfires to break out, destroying thousands of properties. But are these very serious problems really caused by environmental degradation, as many greens claim?

Environmentalists claim that solving the ‘climate crisis’ also means solving the problem of social injustices, including poverty and inequality. Whether or not the current heatwaves can be linked to anthropogenic climate change, California is a real-world test of environmentalists’ claim. And they have failed the test spectacularly; the world should take notice of this fact.

At the very moment California’s vulnerable population need to escape the heat, not just for comfort but also for health reasons, the state’s grid has collapsed. Aircon, fridges, even ceiling fans all fell silent when the wind dropped, the sun set and the demand for electricity exceeded what little capacity remained on the grid.

Had California’s power been supplied from coal, gas or nuclear, supply might have stood a chance of reaching demand. But instead, California has the most ambitious green-energy agenda in the US. Between 2009 and 2018, supply from coal, gas and nuclear generators fell from eight per cent, 42 per cent and 13 per cent respectively, to three per cent, 35 per cent and nine per cent. Meanwhile, renewable sources, mainly wind and solar, have nearly tripled. This has put a burden on the supply grid, which cannot cope with the intermittent nature of renewables.

California’s energy problems did not begin in 2009, however. In the early 2000s, an electricity crisis was caused by the criminal practices of utilities company Enron. The state’s poor regulatory framework enabled Enron to inflict supply shortages on the grid during peak demand, causing blackouts and forcing the wholesale price of electricity to spiral out of control. This in turn caused less rapacious energy retailers to lose billions of dollars, and some to go bust.

In the scandal that followed the collapse of Enron, internal memos emerged, revealing that Enron had long seen its future in emissions-trading schemes. Through the 1990s, Enron had hired lobbyists to push for the Kyoto Protocol, and had been the first corporation to understand that more money could be taken from the consumer by creating scarcity than by generating electricity. ‘Negawatts’, rather than megawatts, is the green dream.

Events leading up to today’s power cuts follow a bizarre history. The fact that advanced economies need a continuous supply of power is well understood. Yet for three decades, the political agenda, dominated by self-proclaimed ‘progressives’, has put lofty green idealism before security of supply and before the consumer’s interest in reasonable prices. Even if the heatwaves experienced by California were caused by climate change, are their direct effects worse than the loss of electricity supply?

California’s green and tech billionaires, and its business and political elites, certainly seem to think so. But they are largely protected from reality by vast wealth, private security, gated estates, and battery banks. The high cost of property in the state of California means that, despite being the fifth largest economy in the world, and with the sixth highest per capita income in the US, it is the worst US state for poverty. According to the US Census Bureau, around 18 per cent of Californians, some seven million people, lived in poverty between 2016 and 2018 – more than five per cent above the US average.

As well as being the greenest (and most poverty-stricken) state, California can also boast that it is the No1 state for homelessness. According to the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, there are more than 151,000 homeless people in California – a rise of 28,000 since 2010. That figure is shocking enough, but it masks the reality of many thousands more moving in and out of homelessness. The same agency reports that more than a quarter of a million schoolchildren experienced homelessness over the 2017/18 school year.

It is degenerate politics, not climate change, that presses hardest on the millions of Californians who live in poverty, and the many millions more who live just above the poverty line. The problems of this degenerate politics are visible, on the street, chronic and desperate, whereas climate change, if it is a problem at all, is only detectable through questionable statistical techniques. Yet California’s charismatic governors, since Arnold Schwarzenegger, have made their mark on the global stage as environmental champions.

At the 2017 COP23 UNFCCC conference in Bonn, Germany, then governor Jerry Brown shared a platform with the green billionaire and former New York mayor, Mike Bloomberg, to announce ‘America’s Pledge on Climate’ – a commitment of states and cities to combat climate change – despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement earlier that year.

But why not a pledge on homelessness? Why not a pledge to address the problem of property prices? Why not a pledge to tackle poverty? Why not a pledge to secure a supply of energy? The only conceivable answer is that environmentalism is a form of politics that is entirely disinterested in the lives of ordinary people, despite progressive politicians’ claims that environmental and social issues are linked. Clearly they are not in the slightest bit linked. California was the experiment, and now it is the proof: environmentalism is worse for ‘social justice’ than any degree of climate change is.

What about the wildfires? Aren’t they proof of climate change? It is a constant motif of green histrionics that more warming means more fires. But as has been pointed out before on spiked and elsewhere, places like California have long suffered from huge fires; fire is a part of many types of forests’ natural lifecycle.

What California’s rolling blackouts and its uncontrolled fires tell us is that green politics is completely divorced from any kind of reality. Environmentalism is the indulgent fantasy of remote political elites and their self-serving business backers. If California doesn’t prove this, what would?

SOURCE

Reducing the Devastation of California Wildfires

On August 24, 2020, The Wall Street Journal printed an article by Ian Lovett, "California Wildfires Grow as Responders Brace for More Blazes ." Mr. Lovett states that California has dealt with a series of devastating fire seasons in recent years, which scientists say is in large part due to climate change, as hotter temperatures dry out vegetation, making it more likely to burn.

In a new Science & Policy Brief, Jim Steele, Director emeritus of San Francisco State's Sierra Nevada Field Campus, responds with a more accurate assessment for the trend in California wildfires and what Californians must do to reduce the damage caused by wildfires.

This Science & Policy Brief is available on the CO2 Coalition website at

http://co2coalition.org/publications/reducing-the-devastation-of-california-wildfires/

Email from The CO2 Coalition: info@co2coalition.org

California Blackouts Result From Intermittent Renewable Energy Sources

California has been on the forefront of transitioning to more renewable energy. Thirty-three percent of the state’s electricity comes from renewable sources. But the heatwave that’s hitting the Western United States is posing a challenge for California’s energy grid.

Rolling blackouts have affected hundreds of thousands of Californians the past few weeks. Here’s something not obvious about the term “blackout:” It’s not just the lights that are out. Critically, it’s the HVAC systems, too. Summer blackouts are hot. This puts residents’ health at risk due to excessive heat exposure and further challenges all those working from home during this pandemic. All of this is due to an overly-aggressive push in the state to increase renewable energy dependency, despite not having the technology to make it reliable for Californian residents.

The blackouts are the result of a difficult-to-manage power grid. In the evening, as the heat peaks and people come home from work, people turn on their air conditioning and other devices. Throughout the state, electricity demand surges just in time for the sun to set and solar power to stop, reducing the amount of state-generated energy available.

This is an extreme example of the difficulties posed by the intermittent nature of many renewable energy sources. California usually can make up for the lost solar power by importing electricity from other Western states, as well as by using energy generated at the natural gas-fired power plants in California. But with the heat wave hitting across the Western US, other states have less excess power to help California make up the deficit.

What makes this difficult situation most frustrating is that these blackouts were foreseen: Despite warnings from top officials at California’s power grid last year that blackouts were inevitable if a heat wave hit the Western United States, California did not make any change to their energy source structure to prepare for this eventuality.

Moreover, while California has prioritized increasing their renewable energy sources in recent years, it has been making it harder to succeed by discouraging the use of another source of carbon-neutral energy: nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power is often overlooked in discussions about renewable energy sources, as people usually focus on wind, solar, and water. But nuclear power has an important role to play as a very reliable and efficient source of carbon-neutral energy. It doesn’t face the same challenges with intermittency and storage as other clean energy sources, and, when done responsibly, can be a very safe and efficient source of power. Unfortunately, in 2018, California state regulators agreed to close the last nuclear energy power plant in the state. The Diablo Canyon plant currently generates power for 1.7 million homes, making up almost 9 percent of in-state electricity production without emitting greenhouse gases. It is set to stop providing this power in 2024.

If California is already unable to manage the state’s energy needs during a heat wave when Diablo Canyon is still running, imagine the difficulties they’ll face once it closes down.

California should reconsider its approach to the laudable goal of reducing carbon emissions and using more clean energy. Clean energy is increasingly efficient and reliable, and will become more so as technology, and particularly battery storage, improves. However, California’s rush to force the state to rely on renewable energy--and especially to discourage the use of nuclear power--threats this progress. California’s have long faced sky-high energy costs because of the push to force a reliance on select renewable energy sources. Now, people faced with blackouts and the very real harms they cause are likely to become frustrated and demand new energy policies.

Mandates that push states to depend on energy sources that are not yet reliable and capable of meeting people’s needs are dangerous and counterproductive in terms of long-term improvements to the environment. America has become a leader in reducing carbon emissions because of our ability to innovate. We need to continue to encourage the research and development of more efficient and effective clean technology systems. This process, not government dictates, is what will assure that we continue to improve the environment and keep our planet healthy, but without sacrificing the safety and well-being of people alive today.

SOURCE

California Democrats Destroy Once-Successful State

It is now August in California.

Green Napalm

So we can expect the following from our postmodern state government. There are the now-normal raging wildfires in the coastal and Sierra foothills. And they will be greeted as if they are not characteristic threats of 500 years of settled history, but leveraged as proof of global warming as well as the state’s abject inability to put them out.

When the inept state can’t extinguish them as it has in the past, it suggests that it’s more “natural” to let them burn. Jerry Brown’s team told us that the drought’s toll — millions of dead trees and tens of millions of acres of parched grass and calcified shrubs on hillsides — provided a natural source of food and shelter for bugs and birds and thus need not be grazed or thinned or harvested. And so the wages of drought could be in a sense good for an “ecosystem” that otherwise proved to be green napalm for the people of foothill communities.

We can expect power outages, because we don’t believe in releasing clean heat to make energy. Note that we do not mind people heating up in their 108-degree apartments without power. The planet is always more important than the non-privileged people who inhabit it.

For some reason, solar panels don’t create much power when the state is engulfed in dust, haze, and smoke.

Note the synergism of the California postmodern apocalypse: The hotter it gets, the more fires burn on ecological fuel and hillside natural “compost,” the smokier the air becomes, the less efficiently California’s solar pathway to the future generates, the more power outages ensue, the more real people are put in danger from either being incinerated by fire or suffocated by smoke or boiled inside without air conditioning. Last week, I asked an elderly patient at the allergy clinic whether, in the 108-degree heat, he preferred to stay outside to breathe smoke and haze, or stay inside his uncooled apartment. He gave a novel answer: He didn’t care about the power outages since he couldn’t pay the exorbitant electricity charges anyway to turn on his air conditioner. And he added that, in California these days, you can’t tell whether mask wearers are fighting the virus, the smoke, or the police.

We can expect shortages of water, because the state blocks new reservoirs and aqueducts, and drains those we do have to send millions of acre-feet to the sea. State officials now suddenly stop bashing “last generation” hydroelectric power as not really “green” (after all, dams are not quite “natural”) and instead try to use every last drop of stored water to generate hydroelectricity amid brownouts, scorching temperatures, and fires.

We can expect lots of crime, because in fear of COVID-19 and in line with no-to-little bail policies, lots of criminals roam our streets. The state was once far safer after the adoption of the three-strikes law, but as crime radically declined, the imprisoned criminal, not his prey, was recalibrated as a victim. Gun sales are soaring, in the bluest of states, as if carjackers and home invaders just might not extend exemption to the woke.

California, as some of the Democratic primary candidates bragged last year, is the progressive model of the future: a once-innovative rich state that is now a civilization in near ruins. The nation should watch us this election year and learn of its possible future.

After one of the primary debates in late 2019, I drove to San Francisco. On checking into the hotel, I was reminded (off the record) by the officious hotel doorman of the city’s Third World protocols:

1) Do not park your car on the street, because it most surely will have its windows smashed and its contents stolen, and the police will either not respond if called or the city would not prosecute the criminal if arrested.

2) Check the soles of your shoes before entering the hotel lobby to ensure that human feces or needle remnants are not stuck to the bottoms.

3) Do not offer food/money/“help” if walking along nearby homeless corridors, given the uncertain and possibly violent reaction that such outreach might incur.

As he warned me, I kept thinking of scenes in the Hitchcock films of a 1950s San Francisco with streets that were clean and safe, with people polite and mannered. No doubt that world is written off now as racist and exploitive by the morally superior San Francisco of the woke, who 60 years later have created their own wasteland and called it civilization. Once-successful civilizations implode not only from moral laxity, debt, inflation, and luxury, but also from a sort of psychological stasis by which the bureaucracy would rather die in place as it is than change and survive.

How to Destroy a Once-Successful State

I wonder whether their high-tech world reflects or advances such moral regress? Is there some strange unexplored relationship between having sophisticated phone apps that can plot San Francisco’s walking routes to ensure they’re free of human feces, and the fact that human feces from the progressive paradise on the sidewalks are thus far more common than they were 60, 70, or 80 years ago?

Our beleaguered governor Newsom is no longer just leveraging the lockdown and boasting of the virus as “an opportunity for reimagining a more progressive era.”

Instead, he is now worried about our the Frankensteinian Green New Deal state that he, in his earlier political incarnations, helped create: “We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move on.”

That means something like, “We built so many subsidized solar and wind farms, and retired or canceled so many clean-burning natural-gas power plants, that we don’t have enough electricity for 40 million sweltering residents when the annual green napalm hits.” Who would have figured?

So Newsom has announced that his state’s shutting off the power without much warning is “unacceptable.” He fears there will be lots of blackouts if the heat wave and fires continue. Apparently, Newsom now has some doubt that we have really “move[ed] on” to a green utopia. Could someone hooked up on electrically dependent dialysis actually be more important than taking a ranting call from billionaire Tom Steyer?

I would add lots to the governor’s list of California lapses: It might have been a mistake to cancel water projects, like the raising of dams on large existing reservoirs central to the California Water Project and Central Valley project, or the construction of the planned Sites Reservoir, or the Los Banos Grandes or Temperance Flat proposed reservoirs. The Left is instead talking about destroying dams in the far north of the state that store water, generate clean electricity, and stop flooding. We haven’t seen such year-zero nihilism since Mao unleashed the Red Guard.

Some 30 million of 40 million Californians live crowded along a desert-like coastal strip from La Jolla to Berkeley, with a water storage system designed for 20 million state residents that is now woefully inadequate. Yet most in the Bay Area seem to oppose more water-transfer investments.

Their ideology dictates that “dams are bad because they are unnatural and won’t allow rivers to run to the sea as we read about in the mid 19th century.”

Their new reality answers, “How else can we supply water in a state where two-thirds of the precipitation falls where one-third of the population lives, and two-thirds live where one-third falls?”

Is not the most green of all methods of power generation, the cheapest way to store water, the best method to stop flooding, and the most scenic of opportunities for recreation a mountain reservoir that allows gravity-driven water to create electricity, ensures water will flow to the cities without much pumping, stops flooding that destroys civilization, provides water for irrigated food, and endows the middle classes with clean, natural outdoor relaxation?

Was it not a mistake, Governor Newsom, for premodern California to attempt postmodern high-speed rail?

The skeleton of a now mostly canceled high-speed-rail project looms like Stonehenge about 15 miles from where I live. The frozen overpasses remain half-built and are now stained with graffiti. They are religious totems to a now discredited post-viral, post-quarantine, post-rioting/defund-the-police urban model of cramming citizens into trains to send them into crammed stations and on into crammed elevators up to crammed offices and apartments — whose thin margin of safety and efficacy hinges on mayors such as Bill De Blasio, Ted Wheeler, and Lori Lightfoot.

On one side of the high-speed proposed corridor, Amtrak trains sit still on their side turnouts while trains on the opposite side roar by. Would it have been wiser to first create two parallel Amtrak tracks to facilitate nonstop train travel than spend ten times more on a pipe dream now wafting away? Again, when California cannot solve the premodern problem, it hides its impotence by futilely pursuing the postmodern fantasy.

On the other eastern parallel side, Freeway 99 is often backed up with traffic because of constant ad hoc reconstruction. The old 1960s goal of having six lanes in the state’s major central longitudinal freeway was never realized — given the Jerry Brown theory that the worse California roads became, the slower traffic would move, and thus the more that exasperated commuters would cry uncle to mass or high-speed transit.

Might it also have been smarter not to raise income taxes on top tiers to over 13 percent? After 2017, when high earners could no longer write off their property taxes and state income taxes, the real state-income-tax bite doubled. So still more of the most productive residents left the state.

Yet if the state gets its way, raising rates to over 16 percent and inaugurating a wealth tax, there will be a stampede. It is not just that the upper middle class can no longer afford coastal living at $1,000 a square foot and $15,000–$20,000 a year in “low” property taxes.

The rub is more about what they get in return: terrible roads, crumbling bridges, human-enhanced droughts, power blackouts, dismal schools that rank near the nation’s bottom, half the nation’s homeless, a third of its welfare recipients, one-fifth of the residents living below the poverty level — and more lectures from the likes of privileged Gavin Newsom on the progressive possibilities of manipulating the chaos. California enshrined the idea that the higher taxes become, the worse state services will be.

Or is the state’s suicide one Orwellian nightmarish plan? The worse California becomes, the less attractive it will be for illegal immigrants? The more who flee, the more affordable will be their abandoned homes? The fewer Californians, the less need for water and power? The more congested the ossified highways, the fewer will try to drive? The more the middle class shrinks, the more powerful the wealthy and the more dependent the poor?

The New Dark Ages

Through history, Dark Age man relies on his own arms for protection. He travels as little as possible. He trusts no stranger. He has no state service for aid. He fears disease, eats no food not his own, and does not ever sleep far from home. And he prefers only those of this tribe. In other words, whether 900 b.c. or a.d. 900 or 2020, he is a Californian.

It might have been wiser for Newsom and his predecessors to have ensured a secure border and legal, diverse, meritocratic, and measured immigration. Some 27 percent of the state was not born in the U.S. They arrived at a time when California was championing sanctuary cities and a “diversity” K–12 curriculum, and the state was treating with contempt the ancient idea of the melting pot.

The state’s implicit message to new arrivals was that the now long dead who built California — which everyone wished to come to — were racists deserving of contempt and Trotskyization, despite immigrants’ dependence on their strange 1950s and 1960 freeways, UC/CSU/JC master education plan, once-modern airports, and ingenious water projects.

The result of lots of fresh newcomers, a politicized education system, and an inert infrastructure is now that Californians live in something akin to the Greek Dark Ages. They wander about looking at the ruins of prior civilizations and seem dumbstruck at the nature and purpose of decaying monuments in their midst. The problem is not just that the state does not wish to build a new dam, but it is questionable whether it can anymore, even if it wished.

Millions drive along the California aqueduct and have no idea who built it or why, only perhaps that it gives them life. Californians love their Sierra reservoirs but haven’t a clue how hard it once was to build them or why they were ever created in the first place, much less who planned and constructed them — and who is draining them.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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1 September, 2020

Loss of biodiversity through the destruction of the world's forests will 'unleash more pandemics' scientists warn

This is not very logical. If there are fewer species then surely there are fewer species to infect us with stuff. Lost species would take their bugs with them

Conservationists have warned that environmental destruction, such as deforestation and the exploitation of wild animals, could lead to increasing numbers of pandemics.

A UN summit on biodiversity, being held in New York in September, will be told by biologists there is evidence of a strong link between loss of biodiversity and deadly new diseases, such as Covid-19.

Scientists will warn world leaders that the rapid rate of deforestation and the uncontrolled expansion of farming is providing a 'perfect storm' for diseases to pass from wildlife to humans, The Guardian reported.

Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation at Duke University, said: 'There are now a whole raft of activities – illegal logging, clearing and mining – with associated international trades in bushmeat and exotic pets that have created this crisis.'

He added that 'urgent action is needed' as coronavirus has killed 'almost a million people' and cost 'trillions of dollars'.

Conservationists said that as a result of land use change, such as deforestation, five or six new epidemics could soon affect the world each year.

They claimed that almost a third of all emerging diseases have originated through such land use change.

In the process, the destruction of wild animals, which are hosts to many unknown viruses and bacteria, can lead to humans or livestock being accidentally infected.

These 'spillovers' can lead a new disease in humans if the viruses thrive and spread, or lead to transmission, to other individuals.

It has been estimated that an average rate of deforestation is around 10million hectares each year.

This decreased from an average of 16million hectares per year in the 1990s, as it is thought new forests, both naturally and man-made, are being established.

But before human civilisations, the Earth was originally covered by 60million sq km of forest.

But now, following deforestation accelerated due to human activity, there is said to be less than 40million sq km remaining.

It is used for farm cattle, to extract oil and provide access to mines and mineral deposits.

In a paper published in Science last month, scientists and economists have proposed setting up a scheme to monitor wildlife and reduce deforestation.

The researchers added the programme, which could cost more than $20billion a year, would also be able to help the fight against climate change.

The scientists said: 'Postponing a global strategy to reduce pandemic risk would lead to continued soaring costs. Society must strive to avoid the impacts of future pandemics.'

The HIV virus originally spread from chimpanzees and gorillas, which were slaughtered for bushmeat in West Africa, to men and woman.

Other viruses which spread from wild animals to humans include the 2009 swine flu epidemic and Ebola fever, which is passed on by bats.

But zoologist David Redding, of University College London, stressed that not every emerging disease is caused by a single 'spillover event'.

He said: 'Bats, rodents and other pests carrying strange new viruses come from surviving clumps of forests and infect farm animals – who then pass on these infections to humans.'

Lassa fever, which was first discovered in Nigeria in 1969, is spread by the rodent Mastomys natalensis.

The rodent was widespread in Africa's forests but colonises in homes and farms, spreading the disease it carried to humans.

Andy Dobson, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, said that during land use change, workers who chop down rainforest trees do not take food with them.

Instead, he said, the workers eat 'what they can kill' which can expose them to a number of infections.

He added that humans are outnumbered by infections, as there are probably 'ten times more' species of viruses than mammals.

This comes after physicists claimed that human civilisation stands a 90 per cent chance of an 'irreversible collapse' due to deforestation.

Last month it was claimed that within the next two to four decades, Earth may no longer be able to sustain a large human population, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Scientific Reports.

The study, written by Dr Gerardo Aquino and Professor Mauro Bologna, states that if the rate of deforestation continues 'all the forests would disappear approximately in 100–200 years'.

This trajectory would result in the loss of planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation and water cycle regulation.

It is thought this would ultimately result in the collapse of human civilization as 'it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]'.

The paper, which was published in May this year, states: 'The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier.'

'Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization,' the paper concludes.

SOURCE

British climate skeptic is a lockdown skeptic too

Jeremy Corbyn's brother Piers has been handed the first £10,000 fine in London for an illegal gathering after he organised a march claiming coronavirus is a hoax.

The 73-year-old meteorologist led more than 10,000 anti-lockdown protesters who believe coronavirus is a hoax at the 'Unite for Freedom' rally in Trafalgar Square on Saturday.

Mr Corbyn, the older brother of the former Labour leader, was seen being hauled off by officers after the event and his Twitter account has since confirmed he was slapped with the colossal fine and 'held for ten hours.'

He was among eight other offenders who were fined across the rest of England under new lockdown measures imposed on Friday which are designed to stop gatherings of more than 30 people.

The others that were fined had all been organising raves or house parties.

The hefty fine is now being wielded by police forces across the country to discourage people from meeting in groups of more than 30.

On Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday, four people were fined £10,000 each for spearheading a rave in Headingly and another was fined the same for a house party in Leeds.

Two DJs were also fined £10,000 each and had their equipment seized by officers in Burley, West Yorkshire Police said.

The arrest of Mr Corbyn in Trafalgar Square was the third time the divisive anti-lockdown campaigner has been arrested since the pandemic started. He was carted out of Hyde Park by officers on May 16 and May 30.

The Unite for Freedom rally started at noon in the capital and they demonstrators marched past Downing Street towards the Houses of Parliament.

Pictures from the demonstration showed Trafalgar Square packed with protesters - none of whom wore masks - holding signs that branded the pandemic as a 'hoax'.

Other signs claimed masks reduce immunity and likened the restrictions to 'child torture'. One person held a homemade placard on which he had scrawled 'no to mandatory vaccines.'

Video from the scene showed organisers label the Government 'terrorists who are waging a war on the people of this country'.

One man says: 'This is a political agenda to commit mass genocide on the population. That is their agenda.'

A poster advertising the event read: 'Nothing is more important as time is very short - the Government are voting for a two-year extension of their emergency Covid-19 powers in September 2020. 'The first six months was a disaster - this must not be allowed to continue! We have to take a stand.'

It lists its priorities as 'no more lockdowns, no social distancing, no masks. No track and trace, no health passports. No mandatory vaccinations, no 'new normal'. Restore all human rights that have been violated.'

The poster lists 'top world class doctors and nurses speaking out with real truth on Covid-19 against GMC constraints'.

Mr Corbyn was arrested on May 16 after he used a megaphone to say 'vaccination is not necessary' and '5G towers will be installed everywhere', adding: '5G enhances anyone who's got illness from Covid, so they work together.'

There is no evidence to link 5G and Covid-19 and scientists fear that a rise in measles among children can be attributed in part to unfounded fears about vaccines.

He was then arrested again on May 30 at a protest in which he also spoke through a megaphone.

There was one coronavirus death in the United Kingdom on Sunday and another 1,715 new cases were recorded. The death toll from the disease now stands at 41,499 and there have been 334,467 cases.

SOURCE

Cold-weather accounts for almost all temperature-related deaths

With the number of extreme weather days rising around the globe in recent years due to global warming, it is no surprise that there has been an upward trend in hospital visits and admissions for injuries caused by high heat over the last several years. But cold temperatures are responsible for almost all temperature-related deaths, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research.

According to the new study by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago, patients who died because of cold temperatures were responsible for 94% of temperature-related deaths, even though hypothermia was responsible for only 27% of temperature-related hospital visits.

“With the decrease in the number of cold weather days over the last several decades, we still see more deaths due to cold weather as opposed to hot weather,” said Lee Friedman, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health and corresponding author on the paper. “This is in part due to the body’s poorer ability to thermoregulate once hypothermia sets in, as well as since there are fewer cold weather days overall, people don’t have time to acclimate to cold when those rarer cold days do occur.”

Hypothermia, or a drop in the body’s core temperature, doesn’t require sub-arctic temps. Even mildly cool temperatures can initiate hypothermia, defined as a drop in body temperature from the normal 98.7 degrees to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. When this occurs, organs and systems begin to shut down in an effort to preserve the brain. The process, once started, can be very difficult to get under control; however, people who are more regularly exposed to lower temperatures are better able to resist hypothermia.

“People who were experiencing homelessness in the records we looked at were less likely to die from temperature-related injury,” Friedman said. “Because they have greater outdoor exposure, they acclimate better to both heat and cold.”

Heat-related issues are more likely to self-resolve by getting to a cooler place or by hydrating, Friedman said.

The researchers looked at inpatient and outpatient heat- and cold-related injuries that required a hospital visit in Illinois between 2011 and 2018. They identified 23,834 cold-related cases and 24,233 heat-related cases. Among these patients, there were 1,935 cold-related deaths and 70 heat-related deaths.

Friedman said government data systems that track temperature-related deaths significantly undercount these deaths.

“We found five to 10 times more temperature-related deaths by linking the hospital data to data from the National Weather Service and medical examiner’s data,” he said. “There are a lot more people dying from temperature-related injuries than is generally reported.”

Friedman and his colleagues also found that cumulative costs associated with temperature-related hospital visits were approximately $1 billion between 2011 and 2018 in Illinois.

Adults older than age 65 and Black people were almost twice as likely to be hospitalized due to temperature-related injuries. Individuals who visited a hospital due to cold temperatures also commonly had multiple health issues, including electrolyte disorders, cardiovascular disease and kidney failure.

“Currently, the public health community focuses almost exclusively on heat injury. Our data demonstrate that improved awareness and education are needed around the risk for cold injuries, especially since there are fewer but more severe cold weather days — leaving less chance for acclimation, which can be protective against hypothermia,” Friedman said.

SOURCE

Oil and Natural Gas Industry Provides High-Paying Careers for Americans without College Degrees

North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), a building trade federation in the United States and Canada, has released two new studies it commissioned detailing that construction jobs for the oil and natural gas industries provide better pay, benefits, and career opportunities than those in other sectors and are providing “a vital pathway to middle class careers and living standards” for those without a college education.

Cross-Industry Comparison

One NABTU study, Perspectives and Comparisons of Job Quality Across the US Energy Industries, conducted by the Cicero Group, examined government and industry data and conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with workers in the energy industries and building and manufacturing trades, as well as a 1,600-person online survey. The data and the self-reporting from trades people show oil and natural gas workers receive better wages and benefits than workers on “renewable” energy projects such as wind and solar.

“Tradespeople report noteworthy differences between projects in renewable energy and oil and natural gas projects,” the study states. “They report better project variety, trades opportunities, skill development, and project consistency in oil and natural gas construction.

“Many of the trades that work on oil and natural gas projects are not as prevalent on renewables projects, indicating that skilled trade jobs are not highly interchangeable between industries,” reports the study.

No College, No Problem

The finding of a second NABTU study, The Quality of Jobs in Construction and Oil-and-Gas for High School Graduates, conducted by Peter Phillips, a scholar at the Institute for Construction Economics Research and a professor of economics at the University of Utah, shows the oil and gas industry provides well-paying jobs even for people lacking college degrees.

“The construction and oil & natural gas industries rely heavily on high school graduates to staff about 45 percent of all the jobs in these two industries,” Phillips writes. “Relative to many other high school graduates with no college education, high school graduates in construction, oil & natural gas are paid better while receiving more health insurance and pension coverage.

“This is both true for blue-collar and white-collar high school graduates in these two industries,” writes Phillips.

Advanced Education, No Debt

The training the oil and gas industry gives its workers amounts to advanced education while being paid, reports Phillips.

“Because these industries rely upon on-the-job training, industry specific short courses and apprenticeship training, effectively high school workers in these two industries go on to higher education through their work, earning while they learn,” Phillps says. “There is no student debt, and no one is too poor to go on with their schooling even if that schooling is not college, takes place at a workshop, or at a job site, or at an apprenticeship facility.”

“Because of this industry located higher education, wages for high school graduates in construction, oil and natural gas rise more quickly and farther than compared to high school graduates in the overall economy,” Phillips says.

‘Reach the Middle Class’

In the move from the manufacturing to the service economy, the oil and gas industry provides jobs for those lacking an advanced education to attain middle-income status, concludes Phillips.

“As the overall economy shifts from goods production to a service economy, … most young people are urged to go to college [and] those who stopped at high school are seen as trapped in low paying jobs, [b]ut those who go into construction and the oil and natural gas industries can, in fact, reach the middle class,” Phillips writes.

The oil and gas industry provides better pay and benefits to its workers than they could earn in comparable jobs in renewable energy development, said Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, in a press statement on the two studies’ release.

“The findings outlined in these reports demonstrate that today’s oil and natural gas jobs are better for energy construction workers across the country in both the short and long term,” said McGarvey. “The research confirms what our members tell us: the career opportunities for renewables are nowhere near what they are in gas and oil, and domestic energy workers highly value the safety, reliable duration and compensation of oil and gas construction jobs.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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BACKGROUND

Home (Index page)

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here. It shows that we actually live in an era of remarkable temperature stability.

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

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