This document is part of an archive of postings on Greenie Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
28 February, 2023
Apple Update Throttles iPhone Charging To Reduce Carbon Footprint
Millions of iPhone owners who updated to Apple’s latest operating system over the last six months may have noticed that their phones are charging a little slower than usual since they did so. For that, they can thank the climate change activists at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.
Apple installed a new feature on those phones — Clean Energy Charging — and automatically signed up all users for the service. When activated, the feature allows users to reduce their carbon footprint by charging the phone more slowly when renewable sources of energy, such as solar or wind power, are not widely available on the electric grid.
“When Clean Energy Charging is enabled and you connect your iPhone to a charger,” Apple says, “your iPhone gets a forecast of the carbon emissions in your local energy grid and uses it to charge your iPhone during times of cleaner energy production.”
Apple included the option in the latest update to its operating system, iOS 16.1, released in October. It was included without warning or much in the way of notice, and the updated iPhones are automatically signed up for the option. To turn it off, users have to be aware of what is going on, and wade deep into the iPhone settings in order to turn it off.
Apple touts it as a feature. Many users, who might have been as to baffled why their phones weren’t charging very quickly, are calling it a bug. Apple says the option is only available on iPhones in the United States.
Many iPhone users who updated months ago were caught unaware when alerted about the new feature in a Twitter post over the weekend. Many reported that when they attempted to turn off the feature, a pop-up tried to dissuade them from doing so by reminding them yet again that clean energy charging reduces their carbon footprint.
The CEO of a thermal energy company, a self-avowed clean energy enthusiast, Tim Latimer, said on Twitter Sunday that he was glad Apple is working on dynamic charging to shift to low carbon hours, “but the way they rolled it out isn’t great. Limited awareness, default position is opted in. We should demand better transparency and choice for clean energy solutions or it’s going to backfire.”
Marjorie Taylor Green, the bombastic Republican congresswoman of Georgia, bragged that she turned off the feature Sunday in order to increase her carbon footprint. “I believe in feeding trees,” she wrote, above an illustration of the role carbon dioxide plays in photosynthesis.
Congressman Chip Roy of Texas also mocked Apple’s attempt to force its climate concerns on customers who spent a thousand dollars for their iPhones. “Don’t forget to plug in your 2 Electric Vehicles! (equivalent to 20 household refrigerators),” he wrote. “And don’t ask where the iphones were made or rare earth materials sourced from!”
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Trump vows ban on $8.4 trillion ESG juggernaut
Former President Donald Trump, who is once again running for president as Republican in 2024, has promised in a video post on Truth Social to ban via executive order and changes to federal law Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) retirement investments that have led to divestment from traditional U.S. energy production in violation of federal antitrust laws and racial and gender hiring quotas that appear to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
ESG investments in the U.S. have grown to $8.4 trillion in 2022, according to the latest data by the USSIF, The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment.
“When I’m in the White House I will sign an executive order and with Congress’ support a law to keep politics away from America’s retirement accounts forever. I will demand that funds invest your money to help you, not them, but to help you, not to help radical left communists…” Trump said in the video, promising an executive order that will direct departments and agencies to end these perverse subsidies.
Here, Trump is in part referring to changes made to federal regulations including the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by the Barack Obama Labor Department in 2015 allowing ESG investments into tax-deferred, employer-based retirement savings accounts like the $6.3 trillion 401(k) market and other .
A 2020 regulation by the Trump Labor Department watered this regulation down a bit, mirroring a 2008 regulation by the George W. Bush Labor Department, but was promptly overturned via a May 2021 executive order by President Joe Biden defining climate change a financial risk under ERISA and affirmed later via a 2022 regulation by the Biden Labor Department. The 2008 regulation was actually a revision of a 1994 regulation by the Bill Clinton Labor Department, which in turn were revisions to the rules made by prior administrations.
These attempts to hold back ESG depend on fiduciary rules, that state as long as investments remain profitable commensurate with other non-ESG investments, then environmental, social and other factors may be taken into consideration when making economically targeted investments.
All of these rules are based on the fiduciary duties and obligations defined under federal law in 29 U.S.C. Section 1104, which states, “a fiduciary shall discharge his duties with respect to a plan solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries and… for the exclusive purpose of … providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries; and … defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan; …
with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims; …
by diversifying the investments of the plan so as to minimize the risk of large losses, unless under the circumstances it is clearly prudent not to do so; and … in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan insofar as such documents and instruments are consistent with the provisions of this subchapter and subchapter III.”
Contrary to former President Trump’s claim that he “issued an historic rule banning Wall Street and employers from pouring your 401(k)s, pensions and retirement accounts into so-called ESG… investments for political reasons,” none of these rules, including the one issued by his Labor Department ever did away with ESG. I don’t believe Trump is lying at all, instead, perhaps his advisors told him what he did somehow banned it, but it’s simply not true, Mr. President. If only it were true.
Like the 2008 Bush Labor Department regulation — and every other rulemaking on this subject in fact — the 2020 Trump Labor Department once again affirmed the “all things being equal” test. None have dared to overturn that via a rulemaking.
The 2020 rulemaking stated, “Under the final rule, plan fiduciaries, when making decisions on investments and investment courses of action, must focus solely on the plan’s financial risks and returns and keep the interests of plan participants and beneficiaries in their plan benefits paramount. The fundamental principle is that an ERISA fiduciary’s evaluation of plan investments must be focused solely on economic considerations that have a material effect on the risk and return of an investment based on appropriate investment horizons, consistent with the plan’s funding policy and investment policy objectives. The corollary principle is that ERISA fiduciaries must never sacrifice investment returns, take on additional investment risk, or pay higher fees to promote non-pecuniary benefits or goals.”
So far, so good, but then the Trump Labor Department, like every single Labor Department before it, affirmed ESG investments would continue to be allowed by fiduciaries: “The final rule recognizes that there are instances where one or more environmental, social, or governance factors will present an economic business risk or opportunity that corporate officers, directors, and qualified investment professionals would appropriately treat as material economic considerations under generally accepted investment theories.”
Repeat: “[T]here are instances where one or more environmental, social, or governance factors will present an economic business risk…”
That is no ban, Mr. President. It’s an authorization that explicitly left it up to fiduciaries to decide what financial risk factors there were. One could say it was “neutral” at best, which is to say, again, it did nothing to stop ESG investments.
But, in fact, the Labor Department explicitly stated there was no ban, and discouraged that interpretation of the rulemaking in 2020, stating, “Many commenters interpreted paragraph (c)(3)(iii) of the proposal as a ban on any investment alternative serving as a [Qualified Default Investment Alternative] QDIA if the investment alternative (or any component of the investment alternative) was constructed using any ‘E’, ‘S’, or ‘G’ factor even if such factor was pecuniary in nature… (i.e., it has a material effect on the risk and/or return of the investment based on an appropriate time horizon)…
That was not the Department’s intention or, in the Department’s view, a reasonable reading of paragraph (c)(3)(iii) of the proposal. The intent behind that paragraph, rather, was to prohibit an investment alternative (or any component of the investment alternative) whose investment objectives or principal strategies included a nonfinancial goal from being a QDIA… The foregoing misinterpretation notwithstanding, some commenters supported a ban on any investment alternative serving as a QDIA if the investment alternative (or any component of the investment alternative) was constructed using ESG factors…
This refocusing is an acknowledgement that individual ‘E’, ‘S’, and ‘G’ factors can be both pecuniary and non-pecuniary in nature, and that the selection of ESG funds is not per se prudent or imprudent.”
To be fair, Trump did stop the now $714 billion federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Thrift Savings Plan from making similar kinds of investments, which did not begin making such investments until 2022 after President Joe Biden gave it the green light.
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New study finds global warming contributes to thousands of gun deaths
Global warming causes EVERYTHING
As temperatures across the country soar and unseasonably warm days continue, the number of gun deaths across the country has gone up.
Nearly 8,000 gun shootings can be attributed to extreme temperatures, according to research published by JAMA Network.
The study analyzed 100 major U.S. cities with the highest proportion of gun violence between 2015 and 2020. It found that out of 116 ,511 shootings, roughly 6.85% (or 7,973) were attributable to above-average temperatures.
Gun violence, as well as other types of violence, such as road rage, is known to worsen in the summer. Warmer temperatures increase the body’s stress hormones in the nervous system, which may heighten violent impulses.
People also spend more time outdoors when the weather is warm, which makes encounters with others — and the potential for lethal clashes — more likely.
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Australian regulator sues firm in greenwashing crackdown
Mercer Superannuation is the first company being dragged to court by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for allegedly making misleading statements about the sustainability of some of its investment products, as the regulator looks to crack down on greenwashing.
In a media release on Tuesday, ASIC announced it was commencing civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against the super fund for greenwashing – a move which the regulator’s deputy chair Sarah Court said reflected a growing area of concern. Greenwashing is when companies overstate or lie about their environmental credentials.
“There is increased demand for sustainability-related financial products, and with that comes the growing risk of misleading marketing and greenwashing,” she said.
“The vast majority of Australians already investing in sustainable options are looking to continue to do so, and [...] funds being invested in sustainability-related options are just growing exponentially. If financial products make sustainable investment claims to investors and potential investors, they need to reflect the true position.”
ASIC alleges Mercer made misleading statements on its website about the nature and characteristics of the “Sustainable Plus” investment options offered by the Mercer Super Trust, of which Mercer is the trustee.
The Sustainable Plus options were marketed as suitable for members who “are deeply committed to sustainability” because they excluded investments in companies involved in carbon intensive fossil fuels like thermal coal.
Two-thirds of companies in misleading ‘greenwashing’ claims
But ASIC alleges that members who took up the Sustainable Plus options had investments in industries the website statements said were excluded. This included investments in 15 companies involved in the extraction or sale of carbon intensive fossil fuels, such as AGL Energy, mining giant BHP and Whitehaven Coal.
Mercer also stated that the Sustainable Plus options excluded investments in companies involved in alcohol production and gambling. However, ASIC alleged it found investments in 15 companies involved in the production of alcohol and 19 companies involved in gambling.
ASIC said these statements and investments amounted to Mercer engaging in conduct that could mislead the public, and that it sought declarations and financial penalties from the court. It is also seeking injunctions preventing Mercer from continuing to make the alleged misleading statements on its website, and orders requiring Mercer to publicise any breaches found by the court.
ASIC has issued more than $140,000 in infringement notices for alleged greenwashing, levelled against companies such as Tlou Energy, Vanguard Investments Australia, Diversa Trustees and Black Mountain Energy.
But the regulator’s first court proceeding in this area reflects a sharpened focus on action against greenwashing as outlined in ASIC’s 2023 Enforcement Priorities.
“We’re now ramping up,” deputy chair Sarah Court said. “We have made very clear to the industry what we are concerned about. The importance of these court actions is that, if the court rules in ASIC’s favour, it sends a message not just to Mercer, but to the industry more broadly that if you are going to make these kinds of representation, you need to be very sure that you can implement the exclusions you are promising investors.”
The move comes after the Financial Services Royal Commission gave rise to legislative amendments which enhanced ASIC’s powers to take action regarding a broader range of superannuation trustee conduct.
Mercer is not the only superannuation fund potentially misleading consumers.
Market Forces campaigner Brett Morgan said analysis conducted by his firm in July last year found that eight out of 11 major Australian super fund investment options labelled “sustainable” or “socially responsible” were investing in companies expanding in the fossil fuel sector.
“We looked at the investment options offered by Australia’s biggest super funds, with those labels, and compared their investments to a piece of work we did on the 180 global companies most responsible for fossil fuel expansion,” he said.
ASIC takes first compliance action over greenwashing
Morgan said the court action from ASIC was a positive step, but that he would continue to keep an eye on the super funds.
“Super funds are now required to publish their investment holdings every six months, so we continue to analyse those and will continue to publish analyses of their holdings,” Morgan said. “The court action is a big step-up from ASIC and should send shockwaves through the superannuation industry, and corporate Australia more broadly.”
Court said there was “no end of matters” getting referred to the regulator, and that she anticipated further enforcement action against greenwashing this year.
A Mercer spokeswoman said the company was considering ASIC’s concerns, but that it would be inappropriate to comment further because the matter is before the courts.
“Mercer has co-operated with ASIC throughout its investigation, and will continue to carefully consider ASIC’s concerns with respect to this matter,” she said.
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27 February, 2023
The climate change debate: lessons from evolutionary psychology
One of the many perplexities of life is how some new scientific discoveries and insights quickly find their way into popular culture, yet others go largely unnoticed.
Freud’s theories about the human psyche rapidly entered public awareness, as did Einstein’s E= MC2, as often do the latest scientific claims on health or diet. On the other hand, the public and political debate seems oblivious to the many new findings and insights over recent decades from the intersection of evolutionary science and psychology.
Yet these insights have dramatic implications for our approach to public policy and debate, as just three examples will show.
Firstly, humans have been shown generally to form their views on normative issues in emotionally driven snap judgments, shaped by evolution and culture. People then adhere dogmatically to those views while coming up with conscious rationalisations to justify them. We tend to do this because evolutionary survival required our ancestors to make a multitude of behavioural judgments in everyday life with far greater speed and less effort than conscious deliberation would allow.
Secondly, humans are deeply tribal in their behaviour, supportive of fellow tribe members yet readily hostile to outsiders. We seek to feel part of a group in many different facets of our lives, be it around sporting teams, brand loyalties, states or nations or, increasingly, political alignments. Our ancestors also needed to be part of a tribe or troop and to defend it, in order to survive.
Thirdly, humans have deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour that we adhere to and expect of others. These patterns, often regarded as ‘human nature’, are a mix shaped both by evolution and by inherited cultural norms developed and transmitted over generations. This mix is difficult to change quickly in fundamental respects and can have unexpected and deleterious consequences when rapid change is imposed. This is a key reason why intellectually constructed political utopias usually fail – either they are incompatible with evolved human nature and/or their proponents haven’t mapped a viable transition path from current behaviours.
At one level, these insights simply confirm what unfortunately has become clear to many from bitter experience already, namely that rational political argument often fails to persuade, and that the dark arts of political manipulation can have a far higher political payoff than well-researched and carefully argued policy formulation.
However, rather than go over to the dark side, well-intentioned political and public policy actors can and should use the insights of evolutionary psychology to gain a better understanding both of themselves and of their fellow human beings. In doing so, they will be able to better deploy conscious reasoning to validate or override their own snap judgments, to better assess the likely benefits or detriments of particular policy initiatives, and to better understand how their political and policy propositions are likely to be received by others.
The current public debate about human-induced climate change is a stark illustration of all this. It’s easy to conclude that, for some, the climate change movement fulfils an instinctive longing for a religious substitute or for purity from contamination. It’s easy to deplore the distortions of scientific research caused by the pressures for conformity and the quest for ‘climate action’ at all costs. It’s easy to decry the virtue signalling and empty gestures, and the expensive and poorly considered measures that governments seem prone to rush into so they can be seen to be doing something.
However, some of the response to climate change concerns seems itself driven by emotion more than by reason, and especially to be driven by tribalism. It would be unbearably humiliating if those insufferable, Woke, politically correct leftists were actually right about something. Surely it’s simply another of their periodic doomsday obsessions, just like the Club of Rome global starvation scare or the 1970s global cooling scare? We’ve caught them rigging the data in the past, and they must be doing the same now, even if we can’t figure out how. They attack and denigrate us personally, so we must do the same to them. We must unite together and not concede an inch.
Instead of all this, if we want to get the best outcome for humanity on the climate change issue, we need to put aside both the quasi-religious zealotry and the tribalism.
The evolutionary record shows that, while fundamental human behaviours change slowly, humans can adapt rapidly to changes in the world around them and to changes in their knowledge of the world. Humanity’s discovery over recent centuries of the potential benefits of technological invention, and the development of the scientific method that underpins it, have provided a rapid and massive improvement in human wellbeing unprecedented in evolutionary history.
Even though it is now under attack by some, we should defend the scientific method and apply it rigorously to the issue of climate change – to gather and assess the evidence without fear or favour, including its uncertainties and risks. Sceptics have been urged in the past to accept the truth even if inconvenient. Zealots and sceptics alike must also avoid propagating untruth, even if convenient.
One of the many harmful consequences of the tribalism that has developed over climate change is that the devising of solutions has been dominated by the passionate. By definition, the passionate see climate change as the overarching imperative of the era, and thus understandably give priority to solving that perceived problem and to be less mindful of potentially adverse consequences of their solutions.
As well, climate change tribalism has meant that most of the solutions have tended to come from the left of politics, and thus to be based on extensive government involvement in both spending and prescriptive regulation.
An invaluable contribution that could be made by more of those who are sceptical of some or all climate change concerns is to take part in a ‘what if’ exercise. Assume – if you like, only for the sake of the exercise – that human CO2 and other emissions are in fact causing an unacceptable level of climate change. What then should be done about it? What level of emissions reductions are required and how should they be achieved? What are the trade-offs between using and foregoing resources to achieve emissions reductions compared with other desirable uses for those resources? Is there a ‘light touch’ regulatory framework that will maximise the likelihood of free enterprise human ingenuity developing new or improved technologies that will allow the problem to be solved for good, as has been achieved previously for so many pollution problems?
Further, if the best available climate change solution involves emission reductions that require a burden of cost or reduction in living standards, who should bear what amounts of that burden? What principles should apply in allocating the burden between nations and between individuals within nations? Instead of the current ‘moral suasion’ approach of volunteered Nationally Determined Contributions, should a maximum amount of permitted per capita emissions be agreed upon, to be the same for everyone worldwide?
The public conversation on climate change needs the contributions of more ‘sceptics’ on these matters, even if only on a ‘what if’ basis, to develop better policy outcomes, whether that be to solve a real and dangerous global problem or to achieve a less wasteful solution to an imagined or overstated problem, as well as to help bring about a more informed and temperate public perspective.
As evolutionary psychology has discovered, humans are obsessively social in observing, talking about, and responding to each other’s behaviour, and one of the important ways in which individuals can best come to recognise and correct the flaws of their emotional snap judgments – far more readily than through their own conscious reflections alone – is through receiving and taking on board the feedback that others give them in respectful dialogue.
It’s often not an easy task to take on new and demanding learnings and to change the way in which we approach political issues and debate. However, if the point of our interest in politics and public policy is to help achieve a better world, it is something we need to do, and the climate change issue is a good place to start.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/the-climate-change-debate-lessons-from-evolutionary-psychology/
***************************************************Grids Can’t Handle All the Solar and Wind Dems Want to Hook Up
Our electric grids were shaky to begin with. They cover vast distances and are not being properly maintained. But then the Democrats come in with the brilliant idea of spending hundreds of billions on erratic and unreliable wind and solar which then delivers power erratically and puts a further strain on the grids. As the money gets shoveled out the door, unworkable and unfeasible green energy projects go out the door.
And the grids can’t handle them.
PJM Interconnection, which operates the nation’s largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, has been so inundated by connection requests that last year it announced a freeze on new applications until 2026, so that it can work through a backlog of thousands of proposals, mostly for renewable energy.
It now takes roughly four years, on average, for developers to get approval, double the time it took a decade ago.
And when companies finally get their projects reviewed, they often face another hurdle: the local grid is at capacity, and they are required to spend much more than they planned for new transmission lines and other upgrades.
Many give up. Fewer than one-fifth of solar and wind proposals actually make it through the so-called interconnection queue, according to research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Maybe having an actual plan beyond “The Earth is Exploding, We All Need to go Solar” would have been a good idea.
Biden is doing a victory lap over yet another bill that spends yet more money on ‘green energy’ systems that won’t even be plugged in.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/grids-cant-handle-all-the-solar-and-wind-dems-want-to-hook-up/
*********************************************Biden Proposal Puts Climate Agenda Above America’s Defense
The Biden administration seems bent on forcing defense contractors to comply with new climate pledges instead of protecting Americans from our enemies.
The FAR Rule doesn’t just put America’s defense in second place, it actively takes money away from defense priorities.
With one rulemaking, the rule could establish new priorities for about half the department’s budget by conscripting major contractors into a war on fossil fuels.
Every few days, it seems the U.S. military shoots down another unexplained object drifting over our airspace—and at least one was a Chinese spy balloon. These incidents are also coming on the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the most destructive fighting in Europe since World War II. Surely, at this critical juncture, the U.S. Department of Defense and its contractors are focused on keeping Americans safe, right?
Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems bent on forcing defense contractors to comply with new climate pledges instead of protecting Americans from our enemies.
At issue is a new rulemaking called the “FAR Rule” that uses a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulations to bulldoze federal contractors—including defense contractors—into compliance with the Paris climate accords, also known as the Paris Agreement.
Regulations are notoriously boring, but the stakes are high: In fiscal year 2021, the federal government obligated $637 billion through contracts that were subject to Federal Acquisition Regulations.
The FAR Rule should be dropped because it weakens our national security, wasn’t authorized by Congress, skirts required rulemaking procedures, and is so disruptive to the agencies involved that it likely triggers what’s called the Major Questions Doctrine.
The Congressional Research Service explains the doctrine thusly: “The Supreme Court has declared that if an agency seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear congressional authorization.”
First and foremost, the FAR Rule risks turning defense contractors into just another tool of climate activists. The new regulation places the Department of Defense’s basic mission of national security second to climate change. Rather than helping arm America against growing threats from China, the rule requires major contractors to count their level of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide and develop a plan to comply with the Paris climate accords.
This follows a pattern of politicization of our national defense. Does anyone care how much carbon dioxide was emitted when the F-22 fighter jet engaged a foreign object and shot it down with a Sidewinder missile?
The FAR Rule doesn’t just put America’s defense in second place, it actively takes money away from defense priorities. The proposed rule is estimated to cost $3.9 billion in compliance over a 10-year period. That amount could buy an aircraft carrier or 42 F-35 fighter jets.
Second, the new rulemaking is entirely optional. Congress never passed a greenhouse gas emissions reduction mandate; and the Paris Agreement, although signed by President Barack Obama and reinstated by President Joe Biden, does not carry the weight of an international treaty because it was not ratified by the Senate.
So why implement this regulation? The administration says the rule is meant to comply with Executive Order 14030, issued in 2021, which attempts to establish a goal of “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions, at least for the federal government. However, there’s no law that compels the Department of Defense or any other agency to move forward with these regulations.
Third, if we are to take executive orders seriously, Executive Order 12866, issued in 1993, states that a detailed cost-benefit analysis is needed whenever an agency proposes “significant regulatory action.”
The FAR Rule concedes that it is significant regulation, but it did not go through the necessary procedures required of a significant rule. Specifically, the rule’s benefits are not quantified. This may be because the government cannot plausibly show that the benefits outweigh the costs.
Finally, the rulemaking may fall under the Major Questions Doctrine during judicial review. Major contractors must have their “science-based” targets—defined by the FAR Rule as targets that are in line with the Paris Agreement—validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, a private organization focused on getting companies to comply with emissions reduction targets.
This would grant the organization undue authority over large private corporations to alter business decisions and reorient company priorities toward climate change mitigation instead of defense. The result essentially would be a takeover of corporate planning by a nonprofit group whose interests may not align with those of the American people, the executive branch agencies, or Congress.
To offer a glimpse into the size of the problem at hand, more than half of the Department of Defense’s annual budget of over $800 billion goes to contractors that would be subject to the FAR Rule.
With one rulemaking, the rule could establish new priorities for about half the department’s budget by conscripting major contractors into a war on fossil fuels that was never voted on by Congress or endorsed by the American people.
Just like a Chinese spy balloon, this proposed regulation should never have taken flight. The best that can be done now is to make sure it goes down in flames.
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World Bank elites put climate policy over developing nations’ prosperity and security
The World Bank is one of the cornerstones of the liberal international order that America built after World War II. The bank is also one of the reasons this American-led system finds so few friends in the developing world today.
Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are valiantly fighting for their homeland. But Washington does not see the conflict in terms of rival nations and opposing nationalisms — one aggressive, the other defensive.
Our leaders instead think of the conflict as a war for the liberal international order. And they expect the international community to support Ukraine.
When developing countries like India and Brazil prove reluctant or unwilling to do so, Washington is appalled. But look at what liberal international institutions like the World Bank mean for these countries.
Ajay Banga, an Indian businessman who became a naturalized US citizen in 2007, is the Biden administration’s nominee to become the World Bank’s next president.
Yet Banga, who has experience with everything from launching fast-food franchises in India to serving as CEO of Mastercard, is under fire from development experts for having an inadequate background in climate policy.
Before being nominated for the World Bank, Banga was co-chairman of the Partnership for Central America that Vice President Kamala Harris launched as a private-public partnership in 2021. His crony credentials are unimpeachable.
And he was a dutifully green CEO, always alarmed about warmer weather. “Hectares of forests are on fire at any given time. Trillions of tons of glacial ice are melting. Temperatures are rising,” a Financial Times profile quotes him writing at Mastercard in 2020.
Yet within the field of international development, insiders demand more. One anonymous expert complained in the same FT profile, “The US administration has been messaging this would be a climate person.” Instead, Banga is a finance man.
The controversy doesn’t jeopardize Banga’s appointment. Rather, it signals the supreme priority that the technocrats of the liberal order place on climate change.
The anonymous snipes at Banga are intended not to stop him but to reinforce an ideological pecking order — the business side of development must take second place to the green politics of development experts.
The World Bank, founded in 1944, has always been an arm of American policy, with particularly close ties to US foreign policy.
Past presidents include one of the masterminds of the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and an architect of the Iraq War, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
What we call the liberal international order looks, to the nations we once called the Third World, a lot like simple imperialism.
Before the bank took up a mission to save the planet from warming, it was already seen by developing nations as a dangerous patron. Whenever a bank offers loans to recipients who are not creditworthy, the recipients are apt to take on too much debt.
The World Bank perpetuates on a global scale the kind of bad decision-making that led to the 2008 financial crisis at home and abroad.
What’s a poor country to do when it’s offered easy money to redirect development away from traditional industry in favor of the green schemes preferred by Western and Western-educated elites?
For billions of people in Latin America, Asia and Africa, the liberal international order means submitting to American ideological obsessions in return for loans that may in fact result in catastrophic malinvestment and crippling debt.
Even when the worst doesn’t come to pass, beneficiaries of our largesse resent the inherent inequality of the relationship. Our generosity — in the service of our own elite aims — only stokes anti-Americanism.
The developing world is entitled to much the same industrial growth that raised the West to the pinnacle of prosperity.
Climate is not the crisis that hunger or political insecurity is. Economic disorder lies at the root of those greater, immediate threats. But Western money insists green ideology take priority.
We in the West enjoy so much wealth and security that we can afford to worry about weather projections. The rest of the world does not have that luxury. Yet the liberal international order reflects our anxieties rather than other nations’ needs.
The way the World Bank works, is it any wonder if India or Brazil chooses to sit out a call to arms for the international system?
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26 February, 2023
Childish Beliefs Drive Energy and Agricultural Agendas
Paul Driessen
Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.
Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts, while using less land, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Brazil, India and other countries worldwide have likewise enjoyed record harvests in recent years. Their success has many “roots.”
Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against insects and viruses and reduce water and pesticide demand. Nitrogen fertilizers (synthesized from natural gas) join phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. School and online programs offer libraries of agricultural success tools. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) further spurs plant growth.
Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops, while enabling farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, further retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms. Israeli-developed drip irrigation delivers water without the evaporation characteristic of other irrigation methods.
Modern high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, cameras and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.
Imagine the bounteous crops for humanity if all these technologies could spread across the globe.
Instead, this planet-saving, life-saving progress is under assault – by well-meaning or ideologically driven, ill-advised or ill-intended ... but all well-funded ... organizations that demand natural gas bans, “more Earth friendly” agriculture and a return to “traditional farming lifestyles.”
Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented, but they also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of “natural” alternatives that are often toxic to bees, animals and people – and may actually be synthetic (eg, neurotoxic pyrethrins). They demand “natural” fertilizers, which often provide a tiny fraction of nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do.
They want to teach only “traditional” (aka subsistence) farming, especially in Africa. They prefer to call it “food sovereignty” – which they claim is the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” in accord with AgroEcology policies. In other words, millions more people (ruling elites and their kids?) doing back-breaking stoop labor, dawn to dusk.
Tractors? What’s wrong with horses, oxen or human labor? At least get rid of gasoline and diesel tractors and trucks, in favor of electric models. Never mind that EV tractors and combines would require several tons of battery modules, and still wouldn’t be able to do a full day’s work without hours-long recharges.
Keep oil and gas locked in the ground; we don’t need petrochemical products, especially synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Or tractor tires, paint, windows, GPS/computer housings, and more.
Have these illiterati looked at their own clothing, food, homes, offices or world? Synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, cell phone and computer housings, pharmaceuticals, tapes and adhesives, protective gear, eyeglasses, car bodies, detergents, wind turbine nacelle covers and blades, medical devices, car bodies – practically everything around them and in their lives exists because of oil, gas and petrochemicals.
But we can just use biofuels to replace feed stocks for products we really need, they proclaim. Right.
Banishing oil, gas, petrochemicals and internal-combustion engines would certainly mean no more ethanol as a gasoline additive. That alone would eliminate the need to grow corn on 36,000,000 acres (equivalent to Iowa), and that land could be used for food crops or wildlife habitat. Except it won’t be.
Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.
That means vastly more tractors or human labor – and more water, fertilizers and pesticides – to cultivate and harvest sugar and oilseed crops (and algae). And then all those simple biofuel molecules would have to be transformed into much more complex hydrocarbons to provide the necessary feed stocks. That would require even more energy, from even more wind turbines and solar panels – on top of doubling or tripling our existing electricity needs, to transform the U.S. and global economies to all-electric systems, and repeatedly recharge the grid-balancing and power backup batteries those systems would require.
Or perhaps Team Biden plans to simply import all those petrochemicals and/or products – as it seems to be planning with regard to wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and other “green” energy equipment. America will not be able to produce any of it, because Team Biden and its allies oppose miningand drilling in the USA (even for raw materials essential for their utopian “renewable” energy transformation – and we won’t even have affordable, reliable electricity to operate factories.
How can these “best and brightest” decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless – so unable to connect even two or three dots? They’re destroying our planet, habitats and wildlife, to “Save the Earth” from a computer-modeled “climate crisis” that President Biden absurdly insists is “a greater threat than nuclear war.”
They base critical policies that deeply affect lives and livelihoods everywhere on childish beliefs in Santa Claus and Harry Potter. They think we can banish today’s energy and agricultural resources and technologies – and amazing replacements will just be there ... via some mystical, mythical process called Materials Acquisition for Government-mandated Infrastructure Change (MAGIC).
Some of them know this cannot possibly happen, but promote the policies anyway. They seem to believe they can mandate that “common folks” will just have to live austerely, under nineteenth or early twentieth century living standards, in 700-square-foot apartments, using electricity when it’s available (not when they need it), and subsisting on bug burgers and larvae milk.
They think Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods, like “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. If all that fails, they’ll just impose forced rationing.
Others would go even further. Obama science advisor John Holdren advocated “de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.”
Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau once said, “in order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” Environmental Defense scientist Charles Wurster said “People are the cause of all the problems.... We need to get rid of some of them, and [banning DDT] is as good a way as any.”
Banishing fossil fuels and modern agricultural practices and technologies go well beyond callous and imperious, even beyond eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism or eco-Apartheid. It is manslaughter on a global scale via energy, farming and climate policy. It is systemic, systematic racism.
These ideas, and these policy proponents, are what should be banished from government, media and academic institutions. Not the wondrous technologies that make modern life possible.
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Behind the 'climate crisis' myth: green ideology
Ben Pile
For much of the recent history of climate politics, demands for the radical reorganisation of society to save the planet rested on the precautionary principle. However, in recent years, where green activists used to talk about precaution, they now talk about the ‘climate crisis’.
In the eighties and nineties, Adherents of the precautionary principle argued that a hypothesis of a potentially civilisation-ending catastrophe merely needs to be plausible to be sufficient to compel action, and that the world cannot afford to wait for scientific knowledge to verify the threat with any certainty. This urgency was the basis of the Montreal Protocol on limiting ozone-depleting substances, and it was the hope of many greens that the same formulation could be used again to drive global agreements on climate change.
The problem for adherents of the precautionary principle is that, as is the case with all green ideologues’ prognostications, too much time passed without the events they were sure would befall us, undermining the original hypothesis. In the 1970s, before global warming had been invented, environmentalists proclaimed that civilisation stood on the brink of collapse. Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb were global best sellers, putting green politics at the top of the global political agenda, and cementing the end of post-war optimism with a terminally negative outlook that the West has not shaken off, despite the books’ manifest failures.
The precautionary principle (and many $billions of ersatz ‘philanthropic’ generosity) saved the greens and their ideological project the humiliation they deserved by adding an unending not-if-but-when caveat to their soothsaying. Like devotees of the end-times sect in Peter Cook and company’s skit at the 1979 Secret Policeman’s Ball, green doomsday cultists could defer the day of judgement indefinitely, at least in theory… But not in practice. The precautionary principle is an article of faith, and work both ways when fully considered. Progress towards a global climate lockdown agreement has been slow in significant part because many countries have been unwilling to undermine the certain benefits of economic growth on the basis of uncertain speculation. The precautionary principle, has thus been of decreasing value towards advancing the climate agenda as time has passed. There are only so many times even the most faithful are willing to climb the mountain to wait for salvation from doom before doubt creeps in.
The new claim, intended to overcome the global climate policy agendas’ inertia, is that certainty has been achieved by science, and that scientists have shown that the world is in the grip of the very catastrophe that environmentalists had predicted: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty.
The problem, of course, is that it is not true. In every region of the world, and at every level of economic development, people are living healthier, wealthier, longer, and safer lives. In the few places where this trend of continued progress does not hold, other reasons better account for the failure than slightly different weather: failed states, corruption and conflict.
I first became aware of this shift from prediction to precaution to outright lie beginning in the late 2000s. A report by the Global Humanitarian Forum – erstwhile UN Chief Kofi Annan’s think tank – made the claim that climate change was taking 300,000 lives per year, and that this would rise to near twice that number by 2030. The report had adapted the method from a WHO report in 2002, which merely assumed that a proportion of deaths from malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change – a foreshadowing of the epidemiology-by-back-of-an-envelope modelling we are now all too familiar with.
The problem for the green narrative then, as now, is that deaths from these diseases of poverty were falling, and have continued to fall, radically. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of deaths from malaria in the world fell from 900 thousand to 560 thousand – given the world’s population increase, this is equivalent to a halving of the mortality rate. Over the same time, the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases fell from 2.4 million to 1.5 million. And deaths from malnutrition fell from 506 thousand to 212 thousand. What this means is not merely that there is no evidence of a climate crisis, there extremely good evidence of the opposite: humanity is thriving.
Many other metrics of human welfare bear out the same picture of reality. But try to explain this indubitable progress to the protestors who, on the words of UN chiefs, nonagenarian BBC voice-over artists and degenerate green ideologues of the Guardian and green blob, block roads and demand nothing less than the cancellation of industry and the economy and the immiseration of the entire world, to make certain that all of humanity’s development is undone. The good news provokes an angry and uncomprehending rage in green activists. To compare the story of the climate crisis with the facts is to betray one’s own children, country and world, and to condemn future generations to an ‘unliveable planet’.
The facts and stats of the world are in contradiction to the ideological conception of nature held by the global green Great and Good and by the street-level environmentalists, but not the broader public. So what is this ideology, and how does it overwhelm its victims’ capacity for reason and facts?
Beneath the dire prognostications of the 1970s onwards is the belief that nature can be understood in toto as a system, which through its known and unknown mechanisms produce a balance on which its mechanisms, including populations such as us depend for their continued survival. No doubt many parts of the natural world can be understood as systems, but it is the matter of the total system, and its ability to produce ‘balance’ which are in question, and which have deeply mystical underpinnings. Moreover, the implication from this understanding is that society must be disciplined by the supposed limits of this system, such as its capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. If we fail to observe this imperative, the system will fall out of balance and will punish us.
As David Attenborough explains, it,
Our economies and political systems are unconsciously predicated on the belief that nature will continue to be a benign and regular provider of the conditions we need to thrive. […] Our stable and reliable planet no longer exists. The impacts of this destabilisation will profoundly impact every country on Earth.
We can know that this is a false belief, because it is a myth that nature has ever been anything but extremely hostile, rather than a benign ‘provider’. Hence, until the end of the 1880s, a quarter of all British children died before reaching their fifth birthday. In Germany, half of children did not survive that long. Globally, infant mortality was 22.4 per cent in 1950. In 2021, it was 3.7 per cent. The ‘planet’ is manifestly far less hostile to humanity than it was just a lifetime ago. And this is thanks to industries, to expanding access to markets, and to technological and scientific development – sheer artifice – not to Natural Providence. David Attenborough is as misled and misleading as he is a ‘national treasure’.
It is ideology which sustains the view that because life seemingly out-of-balance with ‘nature’ must produce an angry reaction from ‘nature’, the climate crisis must be happening and people must be suffering Her wrath. The facts are irrelevant to green ideology’s victims. The facts flow from the higher truth, not from scientific observations of the world. This is the nature of ideology. It is insidious, and far more powerful than reason.
https://benpile.substack.com/p/behind-the-climate-crisis-myth-green
*************************************************UK Govt Forcing Households To Bear The Green-Energy Costs Of Industry
The UK government is today announcing that it will force British households to pay an additional charge on their energy bills to reduce the costs of Net Zero for some 300 energy-intensive industrial users
Net Zero Watch today condemned this so-called “Households Payment Mechanism” as deeply unfair to consumers, but utterly inadequate as help to industry.
It is reported that the so-called ‘British Industry Supercharger’ will cost each household about £3 to £5 per year, suggesting that the scheme will move about £80m to £130m of green-energy costs from industry to households.
This is simultaneously deeply unwelcome for domestic consumers, who are struggling as it is with high energy bills, but trivially weak for businesses.
The measure is not expected to come into force until 2025 when the Office for Budget Responsibility expects levies to support fundamentally uneconomic renewable energy (such as wind and solar energy) to amount to £9 billion per year (and over £10 billion including the Feed-in Tariff for smaller generators).
This huge annual green surcharge is being paid by all energy consumers, with severely negative economic consequences.
The government’s support package for industry is trivial by comparison and seems designed simply to get a few good headlines in response to the bad news of more closures and job cuts in the steel industry.
Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of Net Zero Watch said:
“As long as the UK continues to prioritize Net Zero over the national interest, energy security, and economic competitiveness, Britain will lose the last traces of its industrial base, its prosperity, and its global status.”
Dr. John Constable, Net Zero Watch’s energy editor, said:
“The laughably named ‘British Industry Supercharger’ is nasty in principle but pathetically weak in practice.
Instead of playing PR games, the government needs to tackle the root cause of our energy problems, namely the wind and solar, and biomass subsidies that are costing all consumers many billions per year.
The green levies must be cut to the bone. We simply can’t afford them.”
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Australian landholders offered $8000 sweetener for power line disruption
The good old generous taxpayer again
Victorian landholders forced to accept massive electricity transmission lines across their properties will be paid $8000 per kilometre per year for 25 years, as the Andrews government ramps up efforts to soften community concerns.
The scheme, to be announced on Friday, follows warnings that hundreds of kilometres of new high-voltage, high-capacity, power lines will be needed to cope with the supply variations of wind and solar energy. These renewable technologies are coming online as we approach the looming closure of the state’s three remaining coal-fired power stations.
Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said the first payments under the new compensation scheme would go to landholders who host transmission easements along the proposed VNI West and Western Renewables Link transmission corridors. Victorian landholders affected by the Marinus Link to Tasmania will also be eligible.
It is unclear how many kilometres of power lines will be the subject of compensation, as the exact route of the VNI West link is not yet finalised. But the plan is likely to cost less than $4 million a year, and is expected to add just 55¢ to annual household power bills.
The grid upgrade, however, is almost certain to prove controversial, as some regional communities caught in the path of big transmission projects are already preparing to fight the prospect of long stretches of large above-ground cables hanging from towers looming to 85 metres in height.
The $3.3 billion VNI West project, also known as KerangLink, will involve about 450 kilometres of high-voltage transmission lines, connecting Victoria’s Western Renewables Link (potentially at a terminal just north of Ballarat) with a new interconnector at Dinawan, in the NSW Riverina region, via new stations near Bendigo and Kerang. About 240 kilometres of the link will be in Victoria.
The project will mean power stored by the Snowy 2.0 hydropower scheme in the Snowy Mountains can be sent south to Victoria, while power generated by Victoria’s wind farms can be sent north, and improve the overall stability of the east coast grid.
The 174-kilometre Western Renewables Link, designed to carry energy from wind and solar farms in western Victoria, will start at Bulgana, near Stawell, and connect to Sydenham in Melbourne’s north-west, via a new terminal north of Ballarat.
The three projects, including a 90-kilometre easement on Victorian land for the Marinus Link to Tasmania, will involve a total of 504 kilometres of new transmission lines in Victoria.
D’Ambrosio, who is meeting with state, territory and federal energy ministers in the NSW Hunter region on Friday, said the plan would mean “an equitable approach” for projects spanning the Victorian-NSW border.
“These new payments acknowledge the hugely important role landholders play in hosting critical energy infrastructure – a key part of Victoria’s renewables revolution,” D’Ambrosio said.
“We want to get the process for planning and approving new infrastructure right, so we can make sure the renewables revolution is a shared, equitable legacy for all Victorians.”
The state government this week also announced it has given the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) the green light to start early planning work on the VNI West link, which is expected to unlock between 1900 and 5000 megawatts of renewable energy.
The move, which will bring planning work for the project forward by about a year, follows warnings from the AEMO that Victorian households and businesses will face electricity reliability gaps as early as 2024, with minimum reliability standards expected to be breached in Victoria from 2028, as shortages of gas potentially collide with the closure of coal-fired plants.
The AEMO has become increasingly vocal about the need for thousands of kilometres of new transmission infrastructure to strengthen the reliability of the grid, as the Andrews government has promised to be 65 per cent reliant on renewable energy by 2030 and 95 per cent reliant by 2035.
But the push will also be politically tricky.
AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman warned in a recent speech that without “social licence”, crucial electricity infrastructure might never get built. “No one likes to feel railroaded,” he said.
“If we ... don’t get this right, infrastructure will cost more, take longer to build, and ultimately may never be completed.”
The issue is already a flash point in regional and outer suburban communities. During last year’s state election, a group of angry farmers and landowners in the seat of Melton, on Melbourne’s outer western fringe, campaigned for the high voltage to be used in the western renewables project to run underground, and warned the government hadn’t taken its concerns seriously.
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24 February, 2023
Traffic pollution could be far more dangerous than previously thought, researchers say
And pigs could fly. Studies aiming to prove that traffic pollution is bad for you come out at least once a year -- and the evidential base for them is always poor. So no wonder they have given up on facts and rely on models instead. So I have to agree with their admission, "more robust data was needed". Models prove nothing.
So why is it so hard to find bad effects of traffic pollution? Simple. It does not usually have bad effects. For maybe a million years, mankind evolved sitting around wood and dung fires, which give off a LOT of smoke pollution. So we have evolved to cope with air pollution. Basically, we just cough it up, spit it out and are none the worse for it. It might be a problem in some parts of the Third world but levels of pollution in Western cities are low relative to what could cause illness in otherwise healthy people
Traffic pollution likely causes more than 11,000 premature deaths in Australia a year, new modelling by climate researchers has revealed.
The grave estimate from the study means that death from air pollution in Australia is 10 times more likely than a fatal road accident.
"With these high levels of mortality and morbidity impacts, we look to our leaders to make the decisions required to reduce the social, economic and human costs of vehicle emissions," co-lead researcher from the University of Melbourne Clare Walter said.
The study conducted by the Melbourne Climate Futures used a peer-reviewed New Zealand study of particulate matter — or PM 2.5 — and nitrogen dioxide levels, to assess the risk for Australia.
The New Zealand study estimated that country's traffic pollution death toll at 3,300 premature deaths per year.
A 2021 study had estimated that all air pollution caused around 2,000 deaths a year in Australia – a number that has been widely used since then.
In an expert position statement released on Friday, the researchers said more robust data was needed to quantify the health and economic effects of traffic emissions.
Air pollution is caused by both man-made and natural sources including heavy industry, vehicle emissions and wood fire heaters as well as dust storms and bushfires.
Particulate matter formed by combustion processes is particularly small and can enter the bloodstream leading to systemic inflammation and detrimental effects on organs throughout the body.
Air pollution can cause a wide range of harm to the human body. It has been linked to illnesses including stroke, diabetes, asthma, lung cancer, premature birth and low birth weight.
Nitrogen dioxide is a gas formed from high temperature combustion, such as emissions from vehicles, power stations and industrial processes.
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Pence Fights Biden Administration ESG Assault on American Workers
Vice President Mike Pence, today announced a six-figure ad campaign in Arizona and Montana calling for support on the resolution introduced by Senator Mike Braun and Representative Andy Barr. The resolution would rollback the Biden administration’s ability to regulate how Americans’ retirement accounts are managed with respect to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing goals.
Advancing American Freedom also recently led a coalition letter, co-signed with over 100 conservative leaders and officials, calling on members to support the resolution.
The letter said in part:
A pernicious practice known as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing has emerged over the past several decades. Rather than prioritize the financial well-being and stability of retirees, ESG seeks to advance ideological goals related to environmental policy and other divisive subjects. While it is a tenet of a free society that people ought to be able to use their own money as they see fit (including advancing their own particular priorities), ESG is a misappropriation of retirees’ savings by money managers for their own political agendas. Most Americans think it’s a bad idea for companies to use their financial influence to advance a political or social agenda, as is the case in ESG investing.
Forcing Americans into ESG investment is not only politically inappropriate, it is also financially irresponsible. According to research from the University of Chicago, mutual funds scoring highly on ESG factors are constantly outperformed by funds rated lowest for ESG.2 Moreover, 85 percent of the country does not even know what “ESG” is, and therefore would not be aware of the financial risks their retirement account managers are subjecting them to when they actively pursue ESG investment decisions.3
Under the Trump-Pence administration, the U.S. government protected retirees from this kind of abuse by issuing a rule clarifying that, under ERISA, the managers of retirement funds could not engage in ESG investment if it would have a negative impact on retiree’s savings or expose them to additional risks (“Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments”).
Tragically, on November 22, 2022, the Biden administration chose to undermine the Trump-Pence safeguards by issuing their own ERISA rule that would make it easier for retirement fund managers to imperil retirees’ savings. With 22 percent of Americans set to be relying upon their retirement savings and benefits in 2050, this policy of misappropriation cannot be allowed to stand.
In April of 2022, Vice President Pence delivered remarks at Rice University, calling out those who sought to weaponize the U.S. financial system to “destroy energy producers from within.”
Vice President Pence has since written two nationally-syndicated pieces in RealClearMarkets and the Wall Street Journal calling for conservatives to take up the mantle against the Radical Left’s ESG agenda.
Advancing American Freedom launched the two new digital ads in Arizona and Montana urging voters to contact Senators Sinema and Tester and demand they vote yes on the Braun/Barr Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that seeks to protect Americans’ retirement accounts. This resolution would roll back the Biden administration’s authority to impose ESG rules on how Americans’ retirement accounts are managed.
This six-figure digital spend will run for the next week in the lead up to the vote on the CRA, which will take place between Tuesday and Thursday of next week. Each ad is projected to generate roughly one-million impressions per state, educating constituents on the harmful impacts of the Biden administration’s ESG rulemaking and amplifying our call to action ahead of movement in Senate next week
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Biden’s War on Oil Fuels Putin’s War on Ukraine
With all the hoopla surrounding President Biden’s trip to Poland and his surprise visit to Kyiv to meet with President Zelensky, plus more bravado from Vladimir Putin — including dropping out of the New Start nuclear treaty with the U.S. — and of course the Chinese foreign minister insulting Secretary Blinken and then sucking up to Mr. Putin, one issue that no one seems to be talking about for the moment is oil.
So, let’s talk about oil.
Mr. Biden hates oil. Mr. Putin loves oil. Xi Jinping loves Mr. Putin’s oil.
Remember all the sanctions from the U.S., the EU, and NATO? Sanctioning the Russian central bank, sanctioning the Russian oil producers, bank lenders, and insurance companies around the world? Remember all that?
Well, guess what? Russia today is still selling roughly 10 million barrels of oil a day — basically what it was selling a year ago. How is this possible, you might ask. Well, it’s a good question. It may be unanswerable.
Sanctions really haven’t worked, but, for sure, China and India have been buying up any Russian oil production slack created by reduced European demand. That’s our great friend India, remember?
I don’t know what the U.S. numbers are. I sincerely hope they’re way down, but here’s a thought: With Russia still selling 10 million barrels a day and the basic ballpark oil price being $80 per barrel, that makes $800 million a day from oil sales. With 365 days in a year, that comes to $292 billion. For the year.
That’s enough to fight a war, even if your army is terrible. Even if you’re bungling the war left and right, you still have $292 billion. Much of which, by the way, is probably skimmed off the top and stolen by Mr. Putin and his cronies.
Now, consider this: For the three years pre-Covid under President Trump, the average price of oil was about $60 a barrel. If that were the selling price for Mr. Putin’s 10 million barrels a day, it comes to $600 million, or $219 billion for the year.
So now we complete the exercise: At today’s $80, at which Mr. Putin gets $292 billion, versus the $60 price several years ago, at which Mr. Putin would be getting $219 billion, Mr. Putin has made a tidy profit of $73 billion for the year.
In fact, the oil price rose to well over $100 a barrel at the time of Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which greased his pockets and his war machine ever more, but let’s stay with the current quotes.
That $73 billion profit means Mr. Putin is playing with house money, but it’s our U.S. house. Mr. Putin just stood there and watched it happen and of course fought a war and of course probably stole a good chunk, also.
Now, consider Mr. Biden, who hates oil. If he weren’t waging war against oil, petroleum products, and fossil fuels, we might be producing 14 million or 15 million barrels a day right now, instead of roughly 12 million barrels.
The 14 million or 15 million barrels a day were the estimates from the U.S. Department of Energy a couple years ago. Right before Covid, we were over 13 million.
Purely as a guess, I’m going to suggest that, with 14 million or 15 million barrels a day being produced by the U.S., the world oil price would probably come in someplace close to $50. Just a guess, but I don’t think it would be $80, and I think it’s a pretty good guess it wouldn’t be $100.
So, Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal radical climate obsession, and the global petroleum politics that go with it, has really paid off for — wait for it, hang on a second — Vladimir Putin, and his war against Ukrainian freedom.
Could Mr. Putin fight a war at $50 a barrel? Maybe, but that’s not his history. His history is that when oil hit $130 a barrel in July 2008, Mr. Putin filched a big chunk of Georgia. When oil crossed $100 a barrel in February 2014, Mr. Putin picked off Crimea. Roughly a year ago, with oil above $100 a barrel, he invaded Ukraine.
Moral of the story? Mr. Putin likes high oil prices. Second moral of the story? Let’s ask why the Biden administration is helping him with high oil prices.
Third moral of the story? Reopen the fossil fuel spigots here in the U.S. It could save Ukraine, and it would sure be America First.
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Using EVs as Grid Storage is Unrealistic
The push for electrification of the entire economy – electric cars and trucks, electric heat and hot water, and even electric stoves – is relentless. Various states, including California, New Jersey, and New York, to name just three, have enacted legislation and developed all-encompassing “plans” to put everything into an electrified basket.
But electrification requires, well, electricity. Lots of it. And it requires that electricity to be available at all times. Greens envision most of that electricity will come from wind and solar power, along with hydrogen-burning generators that don’t yet exist and battery storage to meet the demand for power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
Recognizing that building enough battery storage facilities will be prohibitively expensive, a new push has developed: using electric vehicles as a source of back-up power storage to meet electricity demand. It’s called “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology and means using the millions of electric vehicles that consumers and businesses will be forced to buy to supply electricity to the grid when wind and solar do not. Proponents claim it will make the electric grid stronger and more reliable, and provide a quick path to the “net-zero” future that supposedly will save the planet.
But like other green energy fantasies, the math doesn’t add up.
Consider New York. The state’s Climate Action Council Scoping Plan envisions there will be about 3.5 million EVs on the roads by 2050, 15 years after the state’s ban on the sale of internal combustion vehicles takes effect. How much electricity would those vehicles provide?
According to the Electric Vehicle Database, the average EV manufactured today contains about 66 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of usable electricity. Most Teslas provide around 95 to 100 kWh. On the other end of the scale, the cheaper Nissan Leaf provides just 40 kWh.
Here’s the math. Suppose that, on a cold winter’s day in 2050, all 3.5 million EVs are connected to the state’s power grid. None are being driven and all are fully charged. And suppose that improved battery technology means each provides an average of 100 kWh of electricity. That’s 350 million kWh in total, or 350 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
Sounds like a lot. According to the most recent forecast prepared by New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), which oversees operation of the state’s electric generating plants and transmission system, total electricity demand in 2050 will be just under 200,000 GWh. That’s an average of 540 GWh per day. So, on an average day these EVs could provide around 15 hours of electricity.
But extra electricity will be most needed on cold, windless, and cloudy winter days, which are not uncommon for New York. According to NYISO, electricity demand on such a day will peak at almost 45 gigawatts. If that load persisted for an entire day, it would be over 1,000 GWh of electricity. Suppose, though, total electricity consumption on a peak day is just 50% higher than an average day, or around 800 GWh. Then those 3.5 million EVs could supply enough back-up electricity for just 10 hours.
In reality, of course, not all of those EVs would be connected to the power grid. Many would be in use. And not all of them would be fully charged. If only 50% of total EVs are available to supply electricity to the grid, they would supply just five hours of back-up.
Moreover, once those batteries were drained, they would have to be recharged. Were a second consecutive cloudy, windless day to occur – again, not uncommon in New York – millions of EVs would sit useless in garages and parking lots.
Then there is the cost of the infrastructure needed for V2G. Getting power from all of those parked EVs to the grid will require all sorts of new technology, which will cost billions of dollars. It will require upgrading local distribution systems – the poles and wires running down the street.
And what happens if consumers and businesses don’t want their EV batteries drained by the local electric utility? So far, few EV owners are signing up for managed charging programs that allow their local utilities to control when EVs can be charged in exchange for rate reductions. Then again, will EV owners ultimately even have a choice?
Perhaps technological leaps will make V2G practical someday. But the proclamations and studies about V2G strengthening the power grid and making EVs even more perfect ring hollow. That puts V2G in good company with the unrealistic visions of a transformed, fully electric society.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/02/using-evs-as-grid-storage-is-unrealistic/
***************************************23 February, 2023
SEC Hell-Bent On Regulating ‘Climate Change’—Except It Can’t
When Congress chooses not to pursue a certain policy or delegate a new authority, it isn’t inviting administrative agencies to step in and fill the empty space
But federal agencies are increasingly attempting to impose major climate regulations with no mandate from Congress.
In its June 2022 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court made clear that federal agencies may not assert “highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”
The EPA couldn’t find a provision in the Clean Air Act in which Congress gave the agency sweeping authority to restructure the country’s mix of electricity generation with its Clean Power Plan.
Under the so-called major-questions doctrine, an agency action of political and economic significance—such as regulating carbon emissions—requires clear congressional authorization.
The EPA didn’t have it, so the Clean Power Plan had to go.
With its recently proposed climate change policies, the Securities and Exchange Commission is similarly trying to exercise authority it doesn’t have.
In an April 2022 rulemaking, the SEC proposed a set of expansive and costly regulations that would require public companies registered with the SEC to publish information about “climate-related risks” in annual reports and audited financial statements if those risks are “reasonably likely to have a material impact” on a company’s “business, results of operations, or financial condition.”
The SEC also proposed requiring disclosure of registrants’ direct ‘greenhouse-gas’ emissions as well as those from its purchases of electricity and its supply-chain partners.
This isn’t mere “disclosure.”It’s a heavy regulatory burden designed to serve climate policy goals, and it goes beyond the SEC’s statutory authority.
‘Climate change’ involves some of the biggest and most complicated policy debates of our day. A financial regulator empowered by Congress only to police fraud and protect investors isn’t equipped to engage with the policy questions surrounding ‘climate change’.
That’s a mousehole of authority. There’s no room in it for a climate elephant to hide.
West Virginia v. EPA clearly poses a problem for the SEC’s climate proposal—and the commission knows it.
Chairman Gary Gensler acknowledged that the case is “significant and meaningful,” and former Commissioner Joseph Grundfest noted that the SEC “was thrown for a loop” by the high court’s ruling.
Nevertheless, the commission seems determined to dictate broad-reaching climate rules. In January, the SEC asserted that its climate disclosure requirements will be promulgated as a final rule in April 2023.
West Virginia v. EPA should serve as a clear warning to the SEC and other federal agencies—including NASA, the Defense Department, and the General Services Administration—not to act outside their purviews.
If Congress had wanted them to have such broad power, it would have given it to them.
https://principia-scientific.com/sec-hell-bent-on-regulating-climate-change-except-it-cant/
**********************************************************You cannot run businesses, hospitals, and the military on occasional electricity!
Regardless of the intermittency of the weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather.
Power grid blackouts are driven by the rapid retirement of small acreage coal and natural gas power plants.
Wind and solar electricity generation requires vast amounts of pristine acreage, but due to the intermittency and variability of breezes and sunshine being a significant deficiency, wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time.
This is illustrative of why a myopic focus on renewables for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions through a deepening dependence on the intermittency of wind and solar electricity must ultimately come to terms with the laws of physics and the high financial and environmental cost of achieving a reliable electrical grid with these technologies.
Future carbon dioxide concentrations in the global atmosphere will be largely determined by developing nations who are digging themselves out of abject poverty through the development of coal and natural gas energy resources.
Politicians have backed utility engineers into a corner as politicians now designing the power grid to their liking. However, politicians are not cognizant enough to know that renewables only generate electricity, and thus have no plans for the replacement of what is now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!
Over the last 200 years when the world populated from 1 to 8 billion, we learned that crude oil is virtually useless, unless it’s manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products in our daily lives that did not exist before the 1900’s, and the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space program.
Chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and fertilizers, are essential for supporting modern lifestyles.
While we use thousands of chemicals in our lives, most of them are derived from eight primary chemicals, namely ammonia, methanol, ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, and mixed xylenes, all of which are manufactured from crude oil.
Ammonia is the base chemical for all nitrogen fertilizers, which are critical for improving agricultural yields in food production.
Methanol—the simplest alcohol—is a chemical building block for adhesives, paints, and construction materials. Approximately 60 percent of methanol is used as precursor chemicals in production, such as acetic acid (or vinegar) and formaldehyde, used in the production of particle boards and coatings.
Ethylene, propylene, and butadiene (the most important olefins) are used as raw materials in the production of chemical and polymer products such as plastics, detergents, adhesives, and rubber.
Benzene, toluene, and xylene (known as aromatics) are key building block chemicals for consumer products like aspirin, refrigerants, and textiles. About 45 percent of benzene is used in the production of polystyrene plastics, used in foam insulations and single-use cups, while 82 percent of xylenes are used to produce polyethene terephthalate plastics, used in plastic bottles.
Today, the world’s 8 billion are dependent on the products manufactured from oil. Changing that dependency on oil for all the products and fuels manufactured from oil will inflict product shortages throughout the worldwide economy.
An educational video for politicians is the 1-minute YouTube clip about the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about: Renewables only generate electricity, but manufacture nothing for society. The 1-minute video is short, educational, and entertaining to politician. The video has already been viewed by more than 800,000 on social media!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/stf2YrznkZU
The challenge for the renewable electricity movement is that refineries only exist economically to manufacture gasoline and diesel fuels for the global fleet of road vehicles in 2022 that numbered about 1.446 billion, that’s with a “B”.Of this huge global fleet, only 12 million were electric vehicles (EV) in 2021. Thus, less than one percent of the worldwide road vehicle fleet were EVs, and more than 99-percent of the global fleet was “yet to be replaced”.
Refineries are not economically viable JUST to manufacture lower grade bunker fuels for ships, aviation fuels for planes, and the by-products of oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products that are now demanded by societies and economies.
Without a planned replacement for oil, product shortages are imminent to support the 8 billion that’s projected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050.
We continue to argue for a more balanced approach where perhaps the most environmentally responsible thing we can do is generate the most electricity possible, on the smallest piece of land possible, and as close to where the electricity will be consumed as possible.
If carbon dioxide emission reductions are your goal or mandate for electricity generation, then natural gas and nuclear power are the rational near and long-term answers.
The Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMR’s) are the same technology that’s safely powering 160 ships and submarines all around the world right now, and has been for decades; the USS Nautilus set sail and submerged in 1955, forever changing the model for naval propulsion.
Altogether, there are 30 countries where you’ll find nearly 450 nuclear reactors currently operating – as well as the Germans and French – Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Chinese are well aware of the benefits of nuclear power. Another 15 countries are currently building 60 reactors among them.
The Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ new green energy and healthcare spending law, offers a mix of tax incentives to nuclear power generators and funding to produce the uranium necessary to fuel advanced reactors.
Today’s life without fossil fuels is symptomatic of the lack of energy literacy among world leaders who haven’t the faintest idea about what makes their safe and utterly privileged lives possible.
Renewable energy in only occasional electricity from breezes and sunshine.
Wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT manufacture anything for society: NO products and NO fuels.
Subsidies for EV’s, wind, and solar, are financial incentives to continue the exploitations of folks with yellow, brown, and back skin in the developing countries that are mining for the exotic minerals and metals to go green.
World leaders are NOT cognizant that the world has a “products” shortage, not an electricity shortage, but continue their relentless push for renewables that only generate electricity. World leaders have no plans for the replacement of what is now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!
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Admission from Canada: Electric Vehicles Do Struggle During Winter
A recent post by Canada’s The Globe and Mail discusses the difficulties electric vehicle (EVs) drivers have experienced in extremely cold weather. The Globe and Mail’s story is a cautionary tale for people who live in some of the northmost regions of the world, who regularly experience extreme cold. EVs, because of their reliance on batteries, struggle in the cold, with large declines in range and towing capabilities, which are often needed in the northern expanses.
In the article, “In northern Norway’s bitter cold, the durability of electric vehicles is put to the test,” Norwegian journalist Nathan Vanderklippe reports on recent cold-weather tests of EVs in the Lapland Proving Ground. After a night of -40°C, three of five cars wouldn’t start.
While not exactly an anti-EV article, it does describe some of the dangers people in the far north face with vehicles that are less reliable in the cold. Vanderklippe interviewed an ambulance driver from Hesseng, whose “coverage area extends to Bugøynes, a drive of nearly 100 kilometres.” The ambulance driver reports that he does not trust current EVs to get the job done.
A taxi driver reports leaving his one fleet EV in storage over the coldest parts of the winter, and a hunter scoffs at the “stupidity” of mandating the end of combustion engines.
Vanderklippe writes that many people in northern Norway, especially those who live in remote homesteads, tow snowmobiles with them in case they are needed, “and towing can cut an electric vehicle’s range in half, especially in a region where distances are immense.”
Some EV models are reportedly better in the cold than others, but all suffer from decreased range and longer charging times.
Tesla, marketed as a cold-weather friendly model in South Korea, was recently fined by the government for exaggerating the wintertime range of their cars, when testing and experience showed the vehicles’ range dropped far faster and steeper than what Tesla claimed in its advertisements.
In Juneau, Alaska, the city’s first electric public bus could not hold a battery charge long enough to finish its route on the cold days, and requires a heated garage.
Winter is tough on any battery, and increased demand for home-heating also puts strain on the electric grid. This is true in the summer as well, as Californians found out from a Flex notification from the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) last summer, covered by Climate Realism, here. Californians were informed that they should not charge their EVs during heat waves, because it will overload the grid as expected air conditioning use rises.
CAISO told utility customers:
“…grid operators again ask the public to conserve electricity to help balance supply and demand on the grid and avoid service disruptions due to extreme heat across much of the Southwest.”
…
“Pre-charge electronic devices · Close window coverings to keep your home or apartment cool · Pre-charge electric vehicles”
While some EVs do fine when a home has the ability to place the car in a heated garage, or a more expensive model EV with battery-heating technology is used, this won’t work for everyone in places where even gasoline cars can struggle. Both extreme cold and extreme heat can drain batteries quickly, making locations with extended periods of very cold or hot temperatures less than ideal for EV use. Long distances between population centers, harsh subzero temperatures, and suboptimal road conditions all make EVs less appealing.
Political mandates that stop the sale of combustion engine vehicles in these parts of the world before EV technologies have improved may not just be inconvenient or expensive, but may actually be deadly. The Globe and Mail is right to point out these weaknesses in EVs, instead of merely flattering EV manufacturers and virtue signaling for climate alarmists.
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Australian Government plans to protect marine area the size of Germany around Macquarie Island
This is pretty reasonable as environmental lockouts go. The island is close to the Antarctic so the only habitation on the island is a government research station -- so people in general will not be affected. And allowing use of the existing fish resource is unusually realistic too. Allowing some possibilty of expanding fishing would however have been desirable
An area roughly the size of Germany is set to be added to Australia's protected marine zones, safeguarding the future of millions of penguins, seals and sea birds on Macquarie Island.
The remote and rugged island, halfway between the main island of Tasmania and Antarctica, hosts up to 100,000 seals and 4 million penguins, including the royal penguin, which is found nowhere else in the world.
Its shores are the breeding ground for several species of albatross, including the endangered Grey-headed Albatross, and an abundance of sea life that visit its waters, including whales.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek today announced the plan to triple the size of the marine park, most of which will have high-level protections and total fishing bans.
The plan aligns with the government's pledge to protect 30 per cent of Australia's land and 30 per cent of Australia's oceans by 2030.
"Our proposal is that the waters around Macquarie Island — the whole exclusive economic zone — will become marine park," Ms Plibersek told the ABC.
The proposal, which will open for public consultation in March, has been celebrated by conservationists. "Minister Plibersek said last year that the Albanese government wants to re-establish Australia as a global leader in ocean conservation," Richard Leck from WWF Australia said. "This is the type of proposal that will help re-establish our leadership."
Fiona Maxwell from Pew Charitable Trusts said the proposal "opens the door to a once-in-a-decade opportunity to increase protection for one of the most unique environments on the planet".
Seafood industry unhappy with proposal
The waters are also home to a fishery which is operated by two companies that catch the expensive and boutique Patagonian toothfish and which the minister says is "operating at world's best practice on reducing bycatch".
"It shows that a sustainable fishery is compatible with conservation."
The government's proposal allows fishing to continue in areas the companies currently operate in, and also allows room for the industry to move or expand in the future.
But the surrounding waters would be off-limits to all fishing.
Veronica Papacosta, chief executive of Seafood Industry Australia, said the proposal sidelined the fishing industry, and the government had been "hijacked" by an environmental group.
Ms Papacosta did not raise any problems about the proposal itself, but said she was angered by "the process" which "sidelined" the industry's views in favour of environmental organisations.
"It puts chills down our spine to think that this is how we're going to move forward with the Albanese government," Ms Papacosta said.
She said the fishing operations in the area were best practice, and should have been rewarded for that.
"What else is on their agenda? What else is it that we're going to have to be OK with and we're going to have to accept as a decision?"
Asked about the industry's response, Ms Plibersek said: "They'll have an opportunity to make any comments they would like to, just as other members of the public will have an opportunity to make any comments during this consultation period in March."
Marine park 'a good start'
Ian Cresswell was a co-chief author of the recent State of the Environment report and led the oceans flagship at the CSIRO as well as sustainable fisheries assessments for the Commonwealth government.
He said the design of the park was well justified by science and it struck the right balance by allowing the existing fishing to continue.
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22 February, 2023
Another attack on democracy in New Zealand
Under their recently retired PM Ardern, significant power in the country was transferred to the Maori minority. The Parliament became no longer supreme. NZ journalist Marc Daalder has mounted another attack on NZ democracy. See below.
Daalder is a global warming true believer. And he doesn't let the facts get in his way. For a start his assertion that "Human civilisation has never before seen a world as hot as Earth is today " is quite false. It ignores the Medieval warm period and the Roman warm period. Is he saying that the ancient Romans were not civilized? Is he denying that it was hotter then? Elephants cannot now traverse the Alps the way they did under Hannibal.
And note in his third paragraph how he slides from saying (correctly) that there is a lot of CO2 in the atmophere today to linking that to New Zealand's recent weather disasters. Even the IPCC says you cannot infer climate from weather.
But he really nails his colours to the mast when he says that "It is incontrovertible that human burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change". Incontrovertible? A lot of people have controverted it. He is just a foolish young man. He is not worth a Dutch dollar
National Party MP Maureen Pugh echoed an old adage of climate deniers on Tuesday when asked about her belief in human-caused global warming. The climate, she said, has always changed, but she was still awaiting evidence that humans are causing changes this time around.
This is a classic example of paltering - the use of selective truthful statements to create a misleading overall impression. Scientists are aware the climate has changed in the past, and it is the reality of these past changes that make our current situation so concerning.
The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, New Zealand had crocodiles, Central Otago was hotter and more tropical than Queensland is today and conifers lined the coast of Antarctica. Human civilisation has never before seen a world as hot as Earth is today - let alone the 2.6C of warming we are on track for.
Clearly, past climates are not reassuring. But the human impact here is clear as well. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is increasing at the fastest observed rate in 66 million years of records.
It is incontrovertible that human burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change and global temperature increase. That's the conclusion of 234 experts from 64 countries who wrote the latest review of scientific evidence for climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They reviewed 14,000 scientific papers, responded to 80,000 comments from peer reviewers and produced a 2400-page report, as well as a summary for policymakers approved line-by-line by 195 countries.
The first line of that summary?
"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred."
If that isn't enough, consider that the Royal Society of New Zealand first backed the scientific consensus on climate way back in 2001, back when Pugh had been a local councillor for just three years and before her nine-year mayoral term or seven years as an MP. It was joined by 33 other national science academies from around the world.
There's also the World Meteorological Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations, the American Geophysical Union, the European Federation of Geologists, the American Meteorological Society, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Royal Meteorological Society, the American Medical Association and dozens of other expert groups.
When Pugh said she was awaiting evidence from Climate Change Minister James Shaw on the human influence on the climate, why were the views and research of tens of thousands of practising scientists worldwide not enough for her?
Now, of course, Pugh says it was all a misunderstanding. "Human-induced climate change is real," she now says. She had been "unclear", she says.
Pugh wasn't unclear, she was crystal clear on Tuesday morning. She was asked point blank whether she believed in human-caused climate change. She didn't say "yes", she said she was waiting for Shaw's response with the evidence.
It is not credible that Pugh accepted the scientific consensus on climate change when she gave these answers, which inherently contradict her later claim that she had seen all the evidence she needed.
"I'm not waiting on the evidence," she told reporters on Tuesday afternoon, three hours after she told the same reporters, "I am waiting on the evidence".
It's not credible either for her to have missed or ignored two decades of scientific research on climate change, only to have reviewed the science over lunch on Tuesday and come around on the whole climate change thing.
Neither what Pugh wants the public to believe nor any alternative generous interpretations of her swift about-face are feasible.
Even putting aside this dishonesty, the situation raises greater questions about the quality of our representatives.
Pugh is of course an example of the historically poor quality of National's candidate vetting.
When she first arrived at Parliament, she said she didn't believe in pharmaceuticals. In 2021, she was one of the last of the party's caucus to get vaccinated, saying she had not yet booked a doctor's appointment. During the Parliament occupation, she briefly wrote in support of the protesters before deleting the social media post.
The climate issue is perhaps the most significant question mark over her record, however.
In 2023, as climate-intensified storms and cyclones have already killed 15 people, rendered thousands homeless and caused billions of dollars in damage, not accepting the scientific basis for anthropogenic (human-caused) warming is unacceptable in a legislator.
It speaks to both a callous disregard for the mounting toll of victims of climate change and an irrationality we wouldn't allow on other issues. Would anyone trust an MP who was a flat earther to make the best decisions for their constituents and their country?
Legislators make decisions on policy that have concrete effects on people's lives and the country's climate response. It's clearly untenable for people who deny the fact of climate change to be making those calls.
The rapid backlash to Pugh's statements and her unconvincing retraction show that the public and most sitting MPs also see climate denial as an automatic disqualifier for holding office.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/sustainable-future/climate-deniers-should-not-be-mps
***************************************************Manchin digs in against ESG, puts GOP a vote away from rejecting Biden’s woke rules for investments
Sen. Joe Manchin III is escalating his attacks on corporations and financial firms that embrace environmental, social and governance investing as the ESG movement also suffers setbacks in corporate boardrooms.
Once mum on the hot-button issue, the West Virginia Democrat has increasingly targeted the investment strategy that makes fighting climate change a priority.
Mr. Manchin insisted to The Washington Times in a recent interview that his warning that ESG hurts energy security when geopolitical risks go ignored was “not criticizing ESG” or the responsibility to address climate change. But he has begun to sound more like his Republican colleagues who dub ESG “woke capitalism.”
“Colleges, universities, you have different investment firms — they’re looking only at ESG and not geopolitical risks. They’re not being reasonable [or] practical,” Mr. Manchin said. “If you hang your hat on one thing, without the geopolitical risks — just ask Europe what they’ve gone through.”
Mr. Manchin, who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has joined a Republican-led effort to tank President Biden’s climate-friendly 401(k) rules that allow retirement fund managers to consider ESG, as first reported by The Times last month, a move that could force Mr. Biden to issue his first veto.
“At a time when our country is already facing economic uncertainty, record inflation and increasing energy costs, it is irresponsible of the Biden administration to jeopardize retirement savings for more than 150 million Americans for purely political purposes,” Mr. Manchin said earlier this month.
His anti-ESG rhetoric comes amid diversity, equity and inclusion workers — components of ESG — being put on the chopping block in recent layoffs across corporate America. Between December 2021 and December 2022, the attrition rate for these DEI workers was 33% compared to 21% for non-DEI workers, according to workforce analytics company Revelio Labs.
Mr. Manchin remains an outlier for Democratic leaders who overwhelmingly back ESG. Republicans in state capitals and on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are working to combat the woke takeover of pension funds and corporate culture.
When lawmakers return next week from the Presidents Day recess, Mr. Manchin and all 49 Senate Republicans plan to force a vote on a Congressional Review Act resolution to dismantle new Labor Department rules allowing financial managers to use ESG for investing clients’ retirement money.
The vote will only require a simple majority to pass, meaning one more Democrat is needed to pass it. The Republican-controlled House already has the votes.
Potential defectors in the Senate, such as Democrat Jon Tester of Montana and independents Angus King of Maine and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom caucus with Democrats, are holding their cards close to the vest. The trio is up for reelection next year and each is crucial for Senate Democrats to retain the majority.
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Wall Street Clashes With Green Bankers Fed Up With Oil Agenda
Inside the world’s biggest climate-finance alliance, a number of green banks are reviewing their membership in objection to perceived concessions to Wall Street.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which is a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, faces a potentially embarrassing mutiny from some of the world’s most climate-conscious lenders after it decided against imposing binding restrictions on fossil-fuel financing. One lender, Germany’s GLS Bank, has already walked out in protest. Now, others say they may follow.
Compromises made by NZBA to keep Wall Street firms on board are “disappointing and discouraging,” said Jeroen Rijpkema, chief executive officer of Triodos Bank, a green lender from the Netherlands. Gareth Griffiths, CEO of the UK’s Ecology Building Society, described as “frustrating” the fact that major NZBA members continue to finance new fossil-fuel exploration, which is “incompatible with net zero.”
Both Triodos and Ecology said they will review their membership in the alliance and may walk away if the group doesn’t tighten its rules around the funding of fossil fuels.
The compromises in question relate to a decision late last year by the net-zero alliance to loosen ties with Race to Zero, a United Nations-backed group behind proposed restrictions that would have forced members to phase out their financing of oil, gas and coal. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. threatened to leave NZBA if such limits were imposed, people familiar with the process said at the time. Part of their concern hinged on the legal liability that binding terms represented, the people said.
The upshot is that banks can continue to call themselves alliance members without being subject to externally imposed limits on their fossil-fuel financing. As a result, “a significant proportion of NZBA members continue to lack an appropriate approach to their own climate and environmental impact,” a spokesperson for GLS said earlier this month.
GFANZ expanded its membership to 550 financial firms last year with about $150 trillion in combined assets. Together, Triodos, Ecology and GLS account for just a tiny fraction of that. Yet the lenders represent some of the highest green standards in finance, and their departure would mark a reputational setback for GFANZ and NZBA.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and others find themselves at the receiving end of climate activism intended to expose their perceived lack of credible net-zero plans. As You Sow, a climate nonprofit, just filed shareholder resolutions asking the three Wall Street firms, along with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., to disclose climate transition plans in order to “assure investors and the public they have a path forward” to meet their stated net-zero goals.
A spokesperson for NZBA said the alliance doesn’t comment on individual banks.
As an umbrella group for all net-zero finance alliances, GFANZ faces an increasingly tough balancing act. Late last year, Vanguard Group Inc. walked out of the asset manager coalition after scoring the lowest results in addressing its financed emissions. Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley told the Financial Times in a report published Tuesday that he felt "our voice was being drowned out or confused.” Vanguard said in December that it plans to keep investors informed of its ongoing climate work.
Remco Fischer, climate lead at the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, which convenes NZBA, said members, which include global systemically important banks, are expected to set decarbonization targets that “reflect decreasing use” of unabated fossil fuels in accordance with emissions-reductions pathways aligned with keeping the increases in global temperatures to below 1.5C.
Ben Caldecott, director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group at the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, said given the alliance’s size, “it was always going to be hard” to be the high ambition coalition. “It has real leaders and it has some laggards, and that reflects what it is trying to achieve: improving practice across a variegated industry,” he said.
“I understand the frustrations of members who want to pick up the pace – we are facing a climate emergency after all – but I’d caution against giving up on the coalition too soon," said James Vaccaro, who leads the Climate Safe Lending Network. “The most progressive institutions should stretch the ambition of those less advanced, but if they want to optimize their positive influence they should be leading from the inside."
Rijpkema at Triodos Bank said some laggards appear to have too much leeway. The fact that “some financial institutions that have signed the commitment still finance fossil-fuel expansion and exploration” is “not in line with the commitment financial institutions have made and does not bring the 1.5C scenario any closer,” he said.
The Dutch bank, which has committed to reaching net zero by 2035, 15 years earlier than the NZBA requires, joined the banking alliance as a founding member. Triodos said being an NZBA member should “at a minimum” require banks to follow the criteria that had been proposed by Race to Zero.
NZBA is due to revise its target setting guidelines by April 2024 at the latest as part of a periodic review of its criteria. In an unrelated move, Norwegian green energy investor Aker Horizons has left GFANZ’s asset management sub-group. While Aker continues to support the goals of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, the firm’s model of taking large ownership stakes means the alliance “is not well adapted to the reality and needs of our company,” said a company spokesman.
“It is frustrating that it appears that some of the requirements of the UN’s Race to Zero climate action campaign have been dropped by NZBA,” said Griffiths of Ecology Building Society. “Also frustrating, is that a number of NZBA members are still providing finance for new fossil-fuel explorations. If we don’t see NZBA being an enabler in creating a fair society in a sustainable world, then we will need to reconsider our membership.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/wall-street-clashes-with-green-bankers-fed-up-with-oil-agenda-1.1886100?mc_cid=6d365c3d56&mc_eid=cc88839e92 .
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Australia's Leftist government gives Santos gas expansion project green light
The Greens say Labor’s environmental credentials are “in tatters” after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek gave the green light for a new gas expansion project in Queensland, amid deteriorating negotiations over Labor’s key climate policy.
The criticism comes after The Australian revealed Ms Plibersek approved an application from energy giant Santos to construct and operate an expansion of 116 gas wells at an existing facility in the Surat Basin out until 2077.
The project’s approval has threatened to derail Labor’s negotiations with the Greens as it seeks to win support for its key climate change policy, with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen locked in negotiations with the minor party in a bid to get Labor’s safeguard mechanism through the upper house.
Anthony Albanese on Tuesday slapped down threats from the Greens to block the carbon credits scheme without a blanket ban on fossil fuel projects, saying they would “not be entertained” by the government.
The Prime Minister said the Greens were trying to “exert their influence” in negotiations after the Coalition formally opposed their climate policy.
But Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi said Labor’s climate credibility was “in tatters” after the new gas approval and called on Ms Plibersek to explain her decision to approve “new gas fracking until 2077”.
“Labor has just approved 116 new gas wells and its climate credibility is in tatters,” Senator Faruqi said. “Gas is as dirty as coal. We’re in the middle of a climate crisis and Tanya Plibersek needs to explain why Labor is approving new gas fracking until 2077.”
Labor’s safeguard mechanism – in which Australia’s 215 biggest-polluting facilities would slash emissions by almost 5 per cent each year out to 2030 – is essential to the government’s target to cut emissions by 43 per cent by the end of the decade.
With the Coalition opposing the safeguard mechanism, the federal government needs the votes of the Greens’ 11 senators and two crossbenchers to get its carbon credits regime through the Senate.
A spokeswoman for Ms Plibersek said the gas expansion was assessed on its merit and was subject to strict environmental approvals.
The spokeswoman said the federal government was putting Australia “on a clear path to net zero” through its $15bn National Reconstruction Fund, safeguard mechanism and support for electric cars.
The Australian understands the expansion is a small addition to an existing project which has been operational for more than eight years. “This proposal, as with all proposals, was assessed on its merits. It was subject to robust scientific assessments, and strict environmental approval conditions have been applied,” the spokeswoman said.
It comes after a new report from the Australian Energy Market Operator highlighted an “urgent” need to invest in back-up capacity – including batteries, long-life storage and more generation – to avoid the risk of blackouts later this decade.
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21 February, 2023
WWII-style rationing of petrol and energy 'could fight climate change'
Another Greenie attempt to send society backwards. They really hate us
Climate change could be tackled with the help of a World War II-style rationing of petrol, meat and the energy people use in their homes, UK scientists say.
They claim that this would help countries to slash their greenhouse gas emissions 'rapidly and fairly'.
Researchers from the University of Leeds also said that governments could restrict the number of long-haul flights people make in a year or 'limit the amount of petrol one can buy in a month'.
They said that previous schemes put forward as a way to fight global warming – such as carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes – would not work because they favoured the wealthy, who would effectively be able to buy the right to pollute.
The experts also made a comparison with the need to limit certain goods as they grew scarce in the 1940s, adding that trying to achieve this by raising taxes was rejected at the time because 'the impact of tax rises would be slow and inequitable'.
But rationing in Britain during the war was widely accepted, the authors wrote in their paper. 'As long as there was scarcity, rationing was accepted, even welcomed or demanded,' they said.
How would the scheme work?
The researchers say there are two options for a rationing policy:
It wasn't until nine years after the war ended that rationing finished in the UK.
In much the same way as during World War Two, the researchers argue that carbon rationing would allow people to receive an equal portion of resources based on their needs, therefore sharing out the effort to protect the planet.
Lead author Dr Nathan Wood, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Utrecht University's Fair Energy Consortium, said: 'The concept of rationing could help, not only in the mitigation of climate change, but also in reference to a variety of other social and political issues – such as the current energy crisis.'
The researchers add: 'Rationing is often seen as unattractive, and therefore not a viable option for policy-makers. 'It is important to highlight the fact that this was not the case for many of those who had experienced rationing.
'It is important to emphasise the difference between rationing itself and the scarcity that rationing was a response to.
'Of course, people did welcome the end of rationing, but they were really celebrating the end of scarcity, and celebrating the fact that rationing was no longer necessary.'
The problem with rationing energy, meat and petrol, the researchers point out, is that people might not be as willing to accept it as they would if resources were scarce, because they know there is an 'abundance of resources available'.
To tackle this, the researchers said, governments could regulate the biggest polluters, such as oil, gas and petrol, long-haul flights and intensive farming, which would therefore create a scarcity in products that harm the planet.
They added that rationing could then be introduced gradually to manage the resulting scarcity.
Fellow lead author Dr Rob Lawlor, of the University of Leeds, said: 'There is a limit to how much we can emit if we are to reduce the catastrophic impacts of climate change. In this sense, the scarcity is very real.
'It seems feasible to reduce emissions overall even while the lowest emitters, often the worst off, may be able to increase their emissions – not despite rationing, but because of rationing and price controls.'
Dr Wood added: 'The cost of living crisis has shown what happens when scarcity drives up prices, with energy prices rising steeply and leaving vulnerable groups unable to pay their bills.
'Currently, those living in energy poverty cannot use anywhere near their fair share of energy supply, whereas the richest in society are free to use as much energy as they can afford.'
The experts said one way to roll out the rationing scheme would be to use 'carbon cards', which would work like bank cards to keep track of a person's carbon allowance, rather than using ration cards.
Dr Lawlor said: 'Many have proposed carbon allowances and carbon cards before.
'What is new (or old, taking inspiration from World War II) is the idea that the allowances should not be tradable.
'Another feature of World War II-style rationing is that price controls on rationed goods would prevent prices from rising with increased demand, benefitting those with the least money.'
The experts believe that rationing would also encourage people to move to more sustainable lifestyles, rather than relying on fossil fuels.
'For example, rationing petrol could encourage greater use of, and investment in, low carbon public transport, such as railways and local trams,' Dr Wood said.
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Hey, Axios, Try Looking at Real Data, not Models; It Shows Ice Sheet Melting is not Dangerous
A recent article in Axios claims that the current rate of global ice sheet melting and sea level rise will rapidly accelerate unless global warming is stopped before it reaches 1.5°C. Axios also claims that even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, sea levels will rise for centuries because of the “delayed response” of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Axios’ claims are misleading at best. Warming, sea level rise, and ice melt is likely to continue regardless of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, as it has been going on for far longer than human emissions have been a factor. There is no evidence that any out-of-control “tipping point” exists or is being approached, nor any evidence rates of sea level rise are increasing. Ice mass naturally grows and shrinks in the north and south poles.
The article, “Drastic emissions cuts needed to avert multi-century sea level rise, study finds,” discusses a new study that comes to some old, unoriginal conclusions. Mainly, that unless humans stop emitting greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane rapidly in order to keep warming to 1.5°C or less (the earth has already warmed 1.2°C) rapid ice melt and rising seas will occur.
Writer Andrew Freedman cites a study published in Nature Communications, to support his story. Describing the study’s methodology, Freedman writes it “utilizes multiple simulations from what are known as “coupled” computer models in which the interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, ice sheets and ice shelves are included and capable of influencing one another over time.”
As is typical, these alarming predictions are based not on observable data, but on computer model projections that have a bias towards human-caused warming. Climate Realism has discussed the problems with climate modelling dozens of times, including here, here, and here, for instance.
In reality, scientists’ understanding of how the atmosphere and clouds, oceans, and polar ice caps interact is limited in scope, with new connections and feedbacks being discovered with some regularity. Because of the immense complexity of the Earth’s climate, it is no wonder that modelers consistently fail to accurately predict future warming and downstream effects like sea level rise.
Regarding sea level rise, current and past trends are hardly alarming. Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise shows that global sea level has been rising since the end of the last ices age, far before humans began burning large quantities of fossil fuels, sometimes at rates far above the roughly 1.2 inches per decade measured over the past couple of centuries
Sea level has already risen more than 400 feet since the end of the last ice age. As explored in Climate Realism, here and here, for example, recent claims that rates of sea level rise have increased in the past few decades are due to an incorrect methodology in accounting for a shift from one set of satellites to a newer set. Tide gauge data does not support the claim that rates of sea level rise are accelerating.
Freedman claims that the research proves “even if global warming slows near or just after 2100, as would be the case in moderate to high emissions scenarios, ice sheet contributions to sea level rise would keep accelerating well beyond that.”
The researchers themselves are quoted as claiming that ice sheet melting will be “similar to a runaway train.”
However, ice melt data demonstrates no evidence such a “tipping point” exists that would lead to runaway melting.
Looking at Greenland, one of the “at risk” locations mentioned in the article, it’s clear that ice mass change fluctuates over time. While there has been a general decline in ice mass, the rate of loss has actually been declining in recent years, despite the modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Ice loss in Greenland thus far has been insignificant compared to the ice mass of the entire Greenland ice sheet, the loss each year is around 0.005 percent of the entire mass.
Antarctica’s ice sheets, also mentioned by Freedman as being at risk of melting away, are seeing similarly unalarming melting trends. In fact, recent research concludes that Antarctica has seen a modest expansion of ice over the last several decades, as well as net-zero warming across the continent. Some sections, like the Antarctic Peninsula, are more prone to melting, while the eastern portion of the continent has seen a cooling trend and ice expansion.
The discovery of 800-year-old penguin remains that were revealed after some ice melted away in Antarctica gives good evidence that Antarctica experienced lower ice levels and warming that allowed penguins to inhabit the normally too-icy region during the Medieval Warm Period, which took place between 900 A.D. and 1200 A.D.
The researchers and Freedman claim that the ice sheets are merely “delayed” in responding to global warming. Yet when ice losses begin to mount, researchers claim it shows ice sheets respond to warming nearly immediately. It evidently never occurred to the researchers or Freedman that the climate models could be wrong, as they have consistently been concerning temperatures, and as a result, the response might not be as severe as they hypothesize. Without a return to ice age conditions, sea levels will inevitably rise over time, and ice will melt, regardless of anthropogenic causes. These cycles of warming and cooling are natural elements of earth history. Although humans are likely contributing to warming, available data does not point towards a looming catastrophe from rising seas. Axios probably would have been better served had they taken a more skeptical approach towards computer modelling, relying on publicly available (and easily accessible) sea level and ice melt data instead.
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House GOP Puts New Methane Tax, ‘Greenhouse Gas’ Fund on Chopping Block
House Republicans want to eliminate a tax on methane emissions and do away with a “greenhouse gas” reduction grant program as part of their “Unleash America’s Energy” campaign to roll back regulatory restraints on domestic production in the United States.
A proposed ‘Natural Gas Tax Repeal Act,’ sponsored by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), would eliminate the Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP) and its methane waste fee.
A yet-unnumbered bill calls for repeal of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion program administered through the Clean Air Act to support low- and zero-emission technologies to “reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollution in low-income and disadvantaged communities.”
Both MERP and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund were established with the November 2021 adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The repeals are within a 17-bill “Unleash America’s Energy” package introduced by House Republicans since January. Other measures seek to expand domestic oil and natural gas exports, secure critical minerals supplies, and reform regulations in key environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and Toxic Substances Control Act.
The bills were vetted in Feb. 7–9 hearings in Washington, and in Feb. 13–16 Texas field hearings. They will occupy House Natural Resources and Energy & Commerce committees’ agendas when Congress returns to Washington on Feb. 27. Some could be on the House floor by late March.
Section 60113 of the IRA establishes MERP, which creates a fee on methane emissions paid by the oil and gas industry, starting at $900 per ton in 2024 and increasing to $1,500 per ton by 2026.
The IRA requires producers of emissions exceeding 25,000 tons of “CO2 equivalent” to collect data historically reported under the Clean Air Act to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program as the basis for a new realm of taxation.
MERP’s fee “is an inappropriate and unworkable methane emissions tax” derived by dividing the calculated weight of methane by the sales volume of natural gas and heat content,” Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) President and CEO Jeff Eshelman said in Washington hearings.
Emissions are already regulated under the Clean Air Act, he said, calling MERP “a redundant effort” that will “impose financial and filing burdens on independent American oil and natural gas producers” and “add another complexity to these small businesses and divert their attention from what they do best, produce the cleanest and safest barrels of oil and natural gas in the world.”
A week later during a field hearing in Midland, Texas, IPAA Board Chair Steven Pruett raised similar issues with MERP, claiming “none of the tools the law uses to generate the tax were ever designed to be used for this purpose,” adding it appears the regulations were “drafted by environmental firms that know nothing about our business.”
Both expressed concern about MERP giving “a tax collection function” to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Eshelman said MERP will “trigger complex audit challenges and the potential for abusive use” of laws by federal agencies. “The methane tax would add the burden of moving EPA into tax collection, including audit processes which involve a degree of accuracy in measurement and tax assessment that goes well beyond the agency’s capacity,” he said.
“EPA never taxed anything before,” Pruett said in Texas a week later, calling giving “the EPA a license to tax our industry as they see fit … unnerving.”
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Climate Change ‘Irony’: Restricting American Oil and Gas Output Ultimately Harms Environment, Report Says
Attempts to restrict oil and natural gas production in the United States would result in negative impacts on the environment, according to a recent report, coming at a time when the Biden administration has taken several steps to curtail domestic fossil fuel activity.
Over the past years, there has arisen a “political movement centered in North America and Europe” which focuses on halting oil and gas production in these regions, according to The Environmental Quality Index report (pdf) published by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) this month. “The great irony is that this political movement—which purports to be about protecting the environment—results in oil and natural gas production moving from countries with the highest environmental standards to countries with lower, or even functionally zero, environmental standards,” the report notes.
“Reductions or limitations on domestic U.S. oil production must be made up elsewhere in the remaining major oil-producing countries, which have far lower environmental standards than the U.S.”
The report analyzed the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by Yale University and found that the United States had an EPI score of 51.1. Meanwhile, the 20 largest oil-producing nations outside the United States had an average EPI score of 39. A lower score indicates poor performance concerning the impact to the environment.
“It means the average barrel of non-U.S. petroleum is produced in a country with an environmental score that is 23.6 percent lower than that of the U.S.”
The 20 largest non-U.S. natural gas producers had an average EPI of 38.6, which is 24.5 percent lower than the U.S. EPI, essentially meaning that environmental degradation increases when production is taken out of the country.
A similar situation is happening in the mining industry, where President Biden has imposed a multi-decade moratorium on thousands of acres of land within the country citing the need to protect the natural environment.
Besides the loss of revenue for U.S. businesses, national mineral self-sufficiency and loss of high-paying domestic jobs, this economical transfer has resulted in boosting mining projects in troubled regions such as Congo, where Chinese companies exploit workers, engage in slave labor, and disregard environmental factors.
High Global Output and Low Emissions
The United States is the world’s largest producer of both natural gas and oil. According to the report, only three nations outranked the country on environmental quality in terms of oil production. When it came to gas output, also only three nations scored above America.
However, among these nations, not one produces 25 percent of the gas and oil that the United States outputs.
“All oil production from countries scoring higher on environmental quality amounts to only 35.7 percent of U.S. production, and that from gas-producing countries is only 33.4 percent of U.S. production,” the report noted.
“The sheer size of U.S. production combined with its excellent environmental standards means that U.S. production disproportionately reduces the environmental harms of oil and gas production on a global scale.”
The report also notes that while the U.S. output of natural gas and oil has grown over the last four decades, pollution and emissions “have steadily declined across sources.”
“Contrary to popular media characterizations, wealth created by energy development in free economies enhances environmental performance while making people’s lives better,” the IER report stated.
Restricting American Production
Since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Biden administration has tried to fill the gap of missing Russian production by seeking to import oil from authoritarian countries like Venezuela.
The IER report pointed out that “the environmental impact of Venezuelan oil has become continually more severe.” Earlier, Republican lawmakers had also criticized the Biden administration for the decision.
“President Biden is currently sitting on more than 4,400 pending applications for permits to drill. There is no reason to drill abroad when we have an abundance of clean, affordable, American-made energy,” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) stated in a tweet on Nov. 30.
Biden is the only president since Richard Nixon to lease less than 4.4 million acres of land in the first 19 months of their first term. Under Biden, the Department of Interior leased only 126,228 acres during this period, and there is a moratorium on oil and gas leases.
Biden suspended oil production leases in the Arctic National Wildlife that former President Trump had opened up for production during his time.
The American Exploration and Production Council, a national trade association representing the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in the United States, cited the Biden administration’s policies as weighing down on the industry in a blog post in May 2022.
“Unfortunately, this administration’s policies are restricting supply by hamstringing production on federal lands and waters, making it harder to build much-needed infrastructure, and discouraging industry capital with policies and rhetoric about the long-term value of American oil and gas.”
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20 February, 2023
Technology (Not More Mandates) to the Rescue
The “you didn’t build that” crowd hates to admit it, but the solutions to our energy and environmental problems won’t be created by the government. Solutions will be found by free people working in a free market. It will be researchers and entrepreneurs working in small labs.
One such entrepreneur/scientist is Sam Weaver. Dr. Sam has an impressive list of inventions. From the process to make carbon brakes used on most Boeing aircraft to the ceramic press that turns out the world’s thinnest aluminum cans for a brewery in Golden Colorado, you see Sam’s handiwork all around.
What he and his Proton Power team have been working on for the last number of years may just be the energy game-changer we need. In a lab just west of Knoxville, Dr. Weaver and his team began figuring out how to efficiently separate hydrogen from plant-based (biomass) material. They accomplished that and Wampler’s Farm Sausage plant nearby has been running on clean-burning hydrogen rich syngas for several years. In effect, they remove the carbon before burning the hydrogen.
That’s good, but their story gets better. Almost by accident, they discovered that the black powder carbon byproduct is rich in what they now call PPI Graphene. It has many of the same chemical properties of pure graphene. Graphene represents the holy grail of material scientists. It sells for as much as $2500 per gram. The Weaver team can upgrade this renewable and sustainable version from the carbon the biomass plants removed from the air for just fifty cents per gram.
Now it becomes truly disruptive!
Pure, layered graphene is both amazing and very expensive. Light as a feather while unbelievably strong. It has incredible electrical properties as well. The last few years the Weaver team has focused on producing batteries using their graphene. Imagine a battery that charges much faster, holds that charge longer, is impervious to cold and contains no lithium or rare earth materials. Oh, and it lasts longer; 800,000 cycles compared to 1,000 cycles in today’s batteries.
All of a sudden everything from electric cars to large scale storage of “green” power for the grid begin to actually make sense. This is being accomplished without mandates, the heavy hand or even much help from the government.
Imagine that.
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Europe’s Lesson in Green Hydrogen
Politicians love to say that green hydrogen is the carbon-neutral fuel of the future. If only it were true. A series of policy fights in Brussels is highlighting the perils of the new “hydrogen economy” even as political enthusiasm for it reaches a new peak.
It’s hard to overstate how much the green agenda relies on hydrogen’s alleged promise. It holds out the prospect of carbon-free transportation even if electric-vehicle battery technology never improves. Hydrogen also could be used in industrial processes that can’t easily be electrified to run directly on renewable power.
There’s one problem: physics. Hydrogen atoms don’t appear in isolation in nature so they must be produced, usually by splitting water molecules via electrolysis. A lot of energy is lost in this process, and hydrogen is only as green as the electricity used to electrolyze it.
Enter Brussels. The European Union has set an ambitious target of incorporating 20 million metric tons of clean hydrogen into the continent’s energy mix by 2030. Current consumption is about 6.5 million metric tons, most of that used in industry and produced from fossil fuels. Brussels wants 10 million of those 20 million metric tons to be produced in Europe. Now it wants to make sure hydrogen will be produced the green way.
The first step is a regulation proposed this week by the European Commission setting out what counts as “renewable hydrogen.” Brussels would require that by 2028 hydrogen is electrolyzed using power only from newly installed renewable sources such as windmills or solar panels. This would prevent countries from powering hydrogen electrolysis with existing renewable power and then adding new fossil-fuel generation to meet other demands.
This “additionality rule” brings into focus the extraordinary demands hydrogen will impose on electric grids. Producing one million metric tons of hydrogen would require 11 gigawatts of installed capacity for offshore wind, 22 gigawatts of onshore wind, or 52 gigawatts of solar, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. The numbers are different to account for the intermittency of those sources. Installed capacity in Europe today is 17 gigawatts for offshore wind, 188 gigawatts for onshore wind and 196 gigawatts for solar.
Put another way, meeting the EU’s domestic clean-hydrogen production target in 2030 would require about 500 terawatt-hours of electricity. That’s roughly equivalent to Germany’s current annual power consumption. Since renewable power production across the EU currently measures 1,100 terawatt-hours, making so much hydrogen would require increasing renewables by 44%.
Nuclear is the obvious solution. Due to its ability to produce near-constant power, only seven gigawatts of installed nuclear capacity are required to produce one million metric tons of hydrogen. But Brussels, egged on by nuclear skeptics in Germany’s government and elsewhere, is dragging its heels.
The commission agreed to exempt countries from parts of the new additionality rule if total carbon emissions from electricity generation fall below a certain level—a sop to nuclear-intensive France. But a second regulation is expected determining which forms of hydrogen qualify for the most generous green subsidies. The risk is that nuclear-powered hydrogen will be excluded—guaranteeing subsidies go to unreliable renewables.
Politicians haven’t warned voters about this when touting hydrogen, implying instead that it’s a simple matter of exploiting atoms found in water to replace the gasoline in your car. The public is about to discover that hydrogen doubles down on all the costs of renewables—skyrocketing prices, unstable electric grids, and dependence on China for rare-earth metals. Hydrogen shows again that green climate promises always exceed what can be delivered.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-brussels-hydrogen-green-energy-renewables-electricity-dbec480a \
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Coal is making a comeback, and Australia is supplying a lot of it
Coal supplies a quarter of the world’s energy, oil and gas account for a half, and renewables – in spite of vast subsidies everywhere they are built – comprise just 7 per cent.
While Germany is being ridiculed for re-opening coal mines, even tearing down a wind farm to do so, it is claiming this is only a temporary departure from its decarbonisation transition.
Such assurances are not being given by the fastest-growing developing nations.
Indeed, Bloomberg reports, regretfully, that coal is making a comeback almost everywhere except in the US, which has stacks of gas, and Russia which, denied its European markets, has an unexpected gas surplus. India’s government, while having said it will phase down coal, is urging the owners of existing stations to keep them open. India, together with China, consumed 67 per cent of the world’s coal in 2022, up from 35 per cent in 2000. China itself claims to be moving toward a renewables future but their new coal generator build is proceeding apace. It hosts over half of the world’s coal plants and this is likely to increase since China accounts for over two-thirds of plants listed as planned or under construction.
Even some failing states are building new coal-generating facilities. These include Pakistan, in the face of steep gas price increases. And South Africa, a darling of the US/EU greenaid donors, is indefinitely shelving its planned transition from coal in the face of energy shortages.
Indicating a sound future for coal notwithstanding specious, ill-informed attacks on fossil fuels globally, 2022 saw 26,000 megawatts of old coal plants being retired offset by 45,000 megawatts of new plants commissioned, and 60,000 megawatts starting or resuming construction.
Australian coal energy generation is a little over 1 per cent of global capacity, a share that has been falling as new plants are opened overseas. As a result of increased State and Commonwealth government discrimination against domestic coal use, the latest such measures being price caps and forced redirection of exports to the domestic market.
Australia’s coal developments more generally have been under attack from government actions, Woke regulatory bodies like the Queensland and NSW Land Courts and, of course, green activists. Themselves ladened with green baggage, politicians have installed like-minded officials to reinforce their prejudices. This was evident in Senate hearings when Senator Antic expressed surprise that climate change was a priority for the Department of Home Affairs. Mike Pezzullo, the Departmental Secretary, responded, ‘I am not sure if you’ve noticed the increasing frequency and severity of weather events.’ Unfortunately, nabobs like Pezzullo have swallowed the climate con without troubling themselves to delve into the statistics, which show no increase in hot and cold spells, floods and droughts, or any other severe weather events.
In spite of politico-legal impediments, the quality of Australia’s coal reserves, their ease of mining, and the skills developed have catapulted Australia into becoming the world’s leading coal exporter.
This cannot be taken for granted and faces increased challenges from political intrusion.
Understandably, Tanya Plibersek excoriated the Greens for their decision to block additional carbon taxes on businesses via the so-called ‘safeguard’ mechanism unless the government goes the Full Monty and bans all new fossil fuel developments. The government would have assumed that its decision to ban Clive Palmer’s Rockhampton mine proposal would have earned sufficient greenie points to push through the additional imposts on domestic coal use. After all, she punished an opponent loathed equally by Labor and the Greens on the spurious grounds that the mine might harm the Great Barrier Reef, which is over 100 kilometres away. And, in any event, as Dr Peter Ridd from the Australian Environment Foundation has demonstrated the Reef, contrary to claims of rent-seeking scientists, is in pristine condition.
The heightened politically charged approval processes evident in the Palmer mine’s decision builds on countless other regulatory measures that have stunted the industry’s growth. The effects of previous interventions are already evident. Thus, even in nominal dollars, coal mining capital expenditure is below its level a decade ago and mining spending as a whole is down by a half. That spending is the backbone of future living standards. In the case of coal alone, political interventions inhibit the development of an industry that currently provides nearly a quarter of our exports.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/is-coal-making-a-comeback-australian-minings-uphill-battle/ ?
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The future of Australia's electricity supply is blowing in the wind
The events of the past few weeks have brought Australia’s energy future into sharp focus – we won’t have one. Green enthusiasts who dominate the public debate have insisted that much of the east coast’s reliable power supply must cease operating by about the middle of next decade, but there may not be anything to put in its place.
Those same activists insist that a vast network of renewable energy projects can take over the role of coal plants, ignoring considerable evidence that they cannot. However, state governments are relying on private investors to create this dense network, despite investment in the area having tanked.
Unless policymakers come to their senses, consumers who want to use electrical appliances, or even turn on the hall light in perhaps twelve years or so, may have to make their own arrangements. They might still be able to turn on gas stoves but not gas heaters (these still require power for fans), although policymakers are also doing their best to reduce gas supplies.
This heroic attempt at ruining Australia’s power supply is all the more remarkable for occurring during an international energy crisis and with the policymakers apparently oblivious to the notable failure of renewable energy to make much of a contribution to the overall energy supply, despite decades of investment.
As previously noted in The Spectator Australia (‘Engineering disaster’, 29 October 2022) a combination of billionaire activist Mike Cannon-Brookes and the state governments of Queensland and Victoria have organised the closure of the bulk of the reliable coal-fired power supply of the eastern half of the continent. At the same time the Victorian and Queensland state governments in particular, have been encouraging investment in renewable energy as well as pumped-hydro storage projects.
To date the response has been disappointing. Figures on renewable energy projects compiled by the Clean Energy Council show that just seventeen were completed and commissioned in 2022, representing 1,248 Megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, as opposed to forty-eight completed in Covid-stricken 2021 adding up to 4,589 MW, and 3,205 MW worth of projects in 2020. These figures are even less impressive when it is remembered that wind projects typically have an average output of about one-third of stated capacity. The average output for photovoltaics is somewhat less, but it is better for projects using the likes of solar concentrators.
There is no indication investment is improving. Wind farms under construction listed by the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning amount to just 864 MW in installed capacity – an effective average output of perhaps a paltry 300 MW or so.
One reason for investment in this area falling off a cliff, despite all the talk, is that markets did not do well generally in 2022. A count of initial public offerings on the securities exchange by professional services firm HLB Mann Judd shows that the number of new IPOs fell by 48 per cent in 2022, and total funds raised collapsed 91 per cent.
Another perspective is provided by lobby group WindEurope, which in January declared that orders for new wind turbines in Europe fell by 47 per cent, or nearly half, in 2022 compared with the previous year.
WindEurope complained about government interference in the European markets, but also noted that ‘inflation in commodity prices and other input costs has raised the price of wind turbines, by up to 40 per cent over the last two years’. Revenue had not kept pace with costs.
Despite the different conditions in Europe, the result was much the same as the investment market in general and renewable energy projects in Australia in particular, in that investment collapsed notably in the second half of 2022.
But then decades of talk about renewable energy and investment in all sorts of wild and wonderful projects has barely shifted the dial on renewable energy’s contribution. A control panel for the National Energy Market (the eastern Australian grid) compiled by the Australian Energy Market Operator shows that in the past 12 months just short of 70 per cent of electricity came from black and brown coal plants, and just short of 20 per cent from solar and wind. Another 7 per cent came from hydro (which counts as a renewable) and a few per cent from gas.
This does not seem very different from the energy mix of preceding years, but the really bad news for activists is the total energy mix figures for Australia compiled by the International Energy Agency. This analysis adds in the use of fuel in domestic and freight transport, gas for cooking and industrial use plus the power required for electrical generation. In 2021, despite all the talk about net-zero emissions, wind, solar and biomass collectively amounted to just a few per cent of the total energy task.
As for gas, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released a gas inquiry interim report in January which forecasts a 12 per cent shortfall in supply for the east coast this year, although the problems may really start about 2027 or so. The commission then makes the far from surprising suggestion that governments could reduce the barriers faced by producers seeking to bring new gas supply to market.
But governments and environmentalists have reacted to the obvious problems by doubling down on discouraging the industry. The federal government reacted to price increases for gas by instituting a mixture of price controls and reserving gas for domestic consumers. As a result, producers including Senex Energy, Beach Energy, Cooper Energy and ExxonMobil have stalled or put under review proposed investment in new gas supplies.
In addition, environmental activism and the late-2022 court decision which required Santos to consult more extensively with indigenous groups over the $4.7 billion Barossa project it plans north of the Tiwi Islands (north of Darwin), have imposed delays of up to two years on a range of gas projects. To top off all of this, a project to build an LNG gas import terminal at Newcastle in NSW, which could have supplied 80 per cent of the state’s needs, was axed in early February, with the South Korean developers citing volatility in gas markets. Another proposed LNG import plant in Victoria is facing endless delays in approvals.
Investment in green energy projects may revive of course, but there is a long way to go and there are still the major problems of whether intermittent power can replace coal plants, and of dismantling all the barriers blocking gas development. Australia’s much-vaunted energy transition may simply mean switching to no power at all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/dark-ages-coming/
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Dem lawmakers push ban on gas-powered lawn mowers, chainsaws to curb ‘climate pollution’
I hope they succeed with this. Not because of the climate but because of the noise. These small motor devices create an infernal racket when used and stopping the noise is very difficult. Silent electrical versions would greatly increase the amenity of life in most suburbs
Two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers are proposing a pair of bills that would significantly impact the state’s backyards and neighborhood ice rinks in an effort to combat climate change.
State Reps. Jerry Newton and Heather Edelson, members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, introduced legislation on Monday that would block the sale of common landscaping appliances like lawnmowers and chainsaws as well ice-resurfacing machines such as Zambonis, requiring that only electric battery versions be sold in the state starting Jan. 1, 2025.
The ban on lawn and garden equipment would include any machine that uses “a spark ignition engine rated at or below 19 kilowatts or 25 gross horsepower.” Commonly used landscaping tools like lawnmowers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, lawn edgers, string trimmers and brush cutters would all be prohibited by that definition.
The measure follows a Democrat-backed clean energy bill signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz that requires electricity production be 80% carbon-free by 2030 and 100% by 2040. Republicans labeled it the “blackout bill.”
“DFLers are committed to taking action on climate – unchecked climate pollution threatens Minnesota’s future,” House Speaker Melissa Hortman said after lawmakers passed the bill, according to Alpha News. “Now is the time to take bold action and ensure Minnesotans have the healthy climate and clean energy future they deserve.”
Some Democratic-run cities, like New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle and others, are also pushing for bans on fuel-burning appliances, such as gas stoves, over concerns that they pose a health risk and affect the climate. While 56% of Democrat voters would support the ban, according to a Morning Consult poll, 56% of Republicans oppose it, 39% of independents would favor it, and others slightly lean toward yes or don’t know.
In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a ban on selling gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers, starting in 2024. The California Air Resources Board also decided that all new vehicles in the state will run on electric batteries by 2035.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/minnesota-dem-lawmakers-push-ban-on-gas-powered-lawn-mowers/
*****************************************************Democrats Coming for Your Car -- and much else
Traditional trappings of the middle-class American dream — a car, or several of them, in every garage, the freedom that comes with inexpensive air travel, modern, efficient appliances in every kitchen, a hamburger on every backyard grill and grills that become bigger and better — are under assault from liberal Democrats and their allies who argue that a world threatened by climate change cannot afford such luxuries anymore.
Absent legislation forcing people to abandon such niceties — legislation that has so far largely eluded the activists — Democrats are calling more and more for regulatory efforts. New regulations are directly or indirectly driving up the prices of such luxuries to the point that consumers are forced, even though such luxuries might still be legal, to abandon them in the name of frugality. It’s another sneaky strategy by the Biden Democrats.
Take that shiny new car in every garage. This week, the Kelly Blue Book is reporting that the average monthly payment for a new car has reached $777, double what it was in 2019 and more than 15 percent of the median take-home pay for American households. Used cars, if one can find them, are at an incredible average of $544 a month — not much cheaper than new cars.
Much of those price increases can be attributed to semiconductor shortages from the pandemic and higher interest rates, but there are few signs that prices are going back down anytime soon even as demand tapers off. The Biden administration’s relentless push to get Americans to adopt electric vehicles, which are 25 percent more expensive than gas-powered jitneys on average, is not going to make things any better.
While Mr. Biden’s climate alarmists insist they aren’t coming for anyone’s gas appliances, the reality is that they are relying on local jurisdictions to do it for them. Encouraged by federal regulators, hundreds of cities across the country have been passing new regulations that outlaw the installation of gas-powered appliances such as cooktops, water heaters, and clothes dryers in new homes.
Natural gas appliances are almost always cheaper to operate than electric ones, by as much as 30 percent in many cases. Yet the antipathy of the greenies extends even to the food cooked on backyard grills — gas or otherwise — by many hungry Americans. Recent years have seen a concerted push to wean Americans from meat and steer them toward plant-based options, also in the name of combating climate change.
Factory farms that produce meat and the economic activity associated with them, we are constantly reminded, produce far more greenhouse gasses than farms producing plant crops. Meantime air travel is shaping up to be another front in the climate-motivated war on American freedoms. With air travel only now recovering from the Covid stoppages, more and more people are hoping to get out into the wider world once again.
Environmental groups want to make it harder. In January, the Sierra Club and other groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency, seeking a crack down on airplane emissions. The Sierra Club has other options in mind when it comes to air travel. Fly less, it tells people, and take vacations closer to home. Airlines should remove first- and business-class seating on planes. Raise taxes on airline tickets and fuel. Stop building new airports.
“Flying will have to get more expensive, so as to reflect its environmental costs,” the Sierra Club promises. We’ll see how that sells on the hustings. For few of the luxuries and comforts to which Americans — and growing middle classes around the globe — have become accustomed in recent decades are safe from the climate lobby. Unless lawmakers begin to rein in the excesses of this cult, the march of progress is likely to stall.
What gets us is not only the policies the Democrats are pursuing. It’s the strategy of seeking such policies in the face of the failure of Congress to enact them democratically. It’s a moment to remember a principle of constitutional law, which goes something like: The failure of Congress to prohibit something doesn’t mean Congress approves. Democrats regulating outcomes Congress won’t enact is outrageous. What is Congress anyhow, chopped liver?
https://www.nysun.com/article/what-is-congress-made-of
***************************************************Solar farms and the trouble with net zero
Say it quietly, especially when there’s a Green listening: but there’s one certainty about Net Zero 2050. It won’t happen. As any honest MP will admit in private, it is stymied not only by the need to keep the lights on following the Ukraine energy shortage, but also for another reason: because no democratic majority will tolerate the cutbacks in their quality of life necessary to maintain the headlong dash to carbon neutrality in 27 years’ time.
Unfortunately there is also another certainty about Net Zero. While it remains official policy, however quixotic, corporate capital is being handed a heaven-sent opportunity at the expense of you, me and the country we live in. If you don’t believe this, ask anyone who lives in rural East Anglia, between Newmarket and Soham.
The worries of residents, who don’t fancy living in an energy factory, count for little
Three years ago, a company called Sunnica proposed taking some 2,500 acres – four square miles – of good agricultural land in the area out of production and submerging much of it in photovoltaic plastic. Few people liked the plan. Several farmers refused to participate. And the three local authorities concerned with planning and the environment in the area, West Suffolk, East Cambridgeshire and Suffolk County, were viscerally opposed.
So was that the end of the scheme? Certainly not. In this era of Net Zero, any solar scheme over 50 MW counts as a National Significant Infrastructure Project, or NSIP. This means the final decision is made, not by local people, but those in Whitehall. The worries of residents, who don’t fancy living in an energy factory, count for little. The same goes for farmers who prefer the idea of potatoes under their land to solar panels above it.
In Newmarket, the local Tory MP, Lucy Frazer, is understandably up in arms. Rishi Sunak himself has said that on his watch ‘we will not lose swathes of our best farmland to solar farms.’ We will see.
Such cases matter, since they are not isolated events. Sunnica is by no means the only organisation seeking to get the green light for plonking its profitable panels on to farm land. There is a similar scheme at Longfield near Chelmsford, in Essex, and yet another at Mallard Pass near Stamford in Lincolnshire. Both schemes are opposed by locals. So why the push to put panels on farm land? To the argument that brownfield sites would work just as well, the response put forward is usually the same: that land is too dear, and the scheme might struggle to break even unless developers are empowered forcibly to buy up virgin fields at agricultural prices.
All this should worry anyone, wherever they live. For one thing, food security is a problem in an overcrowded country, as is the lack of open non-industrial space: sacrificing both these things for the sake of ticking a box on some official green audit is first-rate folly.
For another, all this looks like a misuse of the NSIP regime. Fast-track central planning is all very well for government-initiated projects such as major roads or railways, or large single installations concerned with things like water or energy. It is far more questionable to use it when private companies are seeking to implement widespread land-use change over large areas of countryside which they happen to fancy.
Indeed, it’s worth taking a closer look at some of the companies involved. Sunnica, the organisation trying to muscle in on rural Suffolk, is a British company, but its structure is rather complex. It is actually a joint venture involving two established solar developers, Tribus Energy and PS Renewables. The latter of these is, according to the firm itself, the ‘customer facing name for Padero Solaer’ – a joint venture between a Spanish and British company. Solaer, the Spanish part of this enterprise, is a sub-subsidiary of Swedish investment vehicle EQT AB.
Should such firms be given priority over the views of locals? Clearly not. Yet if the scheme is given the green light, it will show what really matters in this debate: the race to Net Zero.
It is hard not to conclude that there is something wrong with the government’s worthy if foolish policy of carbon neutrality by 2050. At least as regards solar power, it is not working for the benefit of the people who live here – and certainly not for those who look after our land – but instead seems to favour a more international clientele.
What do we need to do? That the whole Net Zero idea needs urgent rethinking – and green activists need facing – is obvious. Meanwhile, however, the government must take steps to limit the use of the NSIP regime to genuinely home-grown projects. Not for the first time, the government seems to have allowed itself to be taken for a ride for fear of upsetting the green lobby. It is high time we stopped this process.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/solar-farms-and-the-trouble-with-net-zero/
************************************************A bleak future for Australia's energy supply
The energy crisis that became real for many Australians in 2022 is at severe risk of becoming the norm.
Last month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released their latest gas inquiry report which gave a stark warning to Australia’s leaders about the perilous state of the east coast’s energy security.
The report stated that investment in gas production is urgently required to avoid shortages and blackouts along Australia’s east coast:
‘Without additional gas supply, transportation, and storage infrastructure, there remain significant risks to domestic energy security over the medium to longer term. It is important therefore that governments continue to support the efficient, competitive, and timely development of new sources of supply and infrastructure.’
Despite this, the federal government has continued to pursue policies that deter investment in the gas sector, causing higher prices through lower supply.
The Albanese government’s announcement of reforms to the ‘safeguard mechanism’ to, effectively, re-introduce the carbon tax first pursued by the Rudd and Gillard governments, which was subsequently and overwhelmingly rejected by Australians a decade ago, is a prime example.
The reformed ‘safeguard mechanism’ will mandate that certain businesses purchase carbon credits from other businesses that emit below their regulated levels. If they cannot trade, they must pay a levy to the federal government.
Recent analysis by the Institute of Public Affairs has identified that 88 per cent of the facilities that this policy targets are in our critical resources and manufacturing sectors, and over eight in ten facilities are located in regional Australia.
BHP has indicated that Australia’s current and proposed energy policy settings will bring forward, by four years, the closure of its Mt Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley, which will only further increase power prices.
The Albanese government has pointed to a 205 million tonne reduction of CO2 emissions by the end of the decade, which will be equivalent to just 0.08 per cent of global carbon emissions in that period. All this economic pain, for little to no environmental gain.
Fortunately for mainstream Australians, the Federal Opposition have come out and publicly opposed this policy, which means the federal government will now have to deal with the Greens and the crossbench.
However, the Greens have publicly and repeatedly stated that their support for the reforms hinges on the federal government banning of all future coal and gas projects in Australia.
IPA research has identified such demands would see the cancellation of 86 coal and gas projects currently in the construction pipeline, 473,000 new jobs located in regional Australia foregone and up to $268.5 billion in direct and indirect economic activity squandered.
This latest energy policy proposal from the federal government follows hot on the heels of the Prime Minister’s emergency sitting of parliament to rush through a price cap on the domestic coal and gas supply.
The Prime Minister claimed without these measures, household energy bills would rise $230 per year over and above the already record increases we all face.
Unsurprisingly, the move to cap the price of gas saw a number of energy retailers cease taking on new customers, along with increasing their prices, as they struggled to secure supply from producers.
Of course, this was entirely predictable. When you artificially limit a company’s ability to get a return on investment, through a carbon tax or restricted revenue, it naturally makes them less likely to invest in the production of gas.
The policy settings being pursued by the Albanese government are diametrically opposed to the advice of Australia’s energy market experts and participants. The bottom line is, a further limited gas supply leaves everyday Australians with higher household energy bills.
These policies will also impact Australia’s trade revenue, domestic manufacturing capabilities, domestic energy generation capabilities, employment opportunities, and the development of regional Australia. Again, all for minimal future environmental gain.
Australia’s current energy crisis is entirely of our own making. It has been caused by deliberate policy decisions by our leaders and it is mainstream Australians who are paying the price daily.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/energy-crisis-households-pay-for-safety-mechanism/
***************************************17 February, 2023
New debate over the future of fossil fuels
The global policy consensus on the future of energy is clear: Fossil fuels are done, finished, peaking, on the way out and never to return once their 100-year role as the engine of human progress has been reduced to net-zero by 2050. That, at least, is the general thrust of the 2023 edition of the BP Energy Outlook released last week based on BP’s carbon control policy models.
The BP outlook is short but densely speculative, and not particularly convincing one way or another. The outcomes are based on simulated future energy environments “dominated by four trends: declining role for hydrocarbons, rapid expansion in renewables, increasing electrification, and growing use of low-carbon hydrogen” along with a “central role for carbon capture and removal” — all directed and subsidized by governments.
But: Could it be that the massive effort to transform the global energy system is working against the best interests of humankind? That’s the question now being debated on the sidelines of the great transition between two climate policy wonks who have been branded by greens and some mainstream media as members of the climate “denier” community.
The debate broke out last week when Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado — and an effective long-time critic of much official and media-driven climate science and policy — wrote a critical review of a 2022 book by Alex Epstein that challenges the prevailing view that carbon-emitting energy sources must be purged from the global energy system. The book’s title says it all: Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less.
Even though Pielke and Epstein have clearly stated that they believe climate change is taking place, both are ranked as climate disinformationists and/or deniers. On DeSmog’s “Disinformation Database” their respective breaches of climate orthodoxy are documented at length. (Full disclosure: DeSmog once described the editor of this page thusly — “Terry Corcoran: King of Canadian Climate Change Deniers,” a title of which I have apparently been stripped.)
In his book, Epstein sets his theme in the opening sentences when he writes “I am going to make the case that more fossil fuel use will actually make the world a far better place, a place where billions more people will have the opportunity to flourish, including: to pull themselves out of poverty, to have a chance to pursue their dreams, and — this will likely seem craziest of all — to experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate.”
Through a few graphs and 400+ pages of argument and exposition, Epstein portrays the soaring use of cost-effective fossil fuels over the past century as the driving force that made possible what he sees as the “flourishing” of humans on an otherwise inhospitable planet. “Save the world,” he says, “with fossil fuels.”
On its release early in 2022, Fossil Future received contradictory pro and con reviews. Pielke joins the debate late. He argues that Epstein’s claims about the transformative benefits of fossil fuels over the past century are based on faulty logic. Above all, he says, Epstein “conflates correlation with causation and also means with ends.” It is undeniable, writes Pielke, that global development since the Industrial Revolution has been powered almost completely by fossil fuels. But that correlation does not lead to the conclusion that the global energy future must also be based on fossil fuels.
As an example of how a country can flourish with reduced fossil fuel consumption Pielke cites France, which slashed its oil and coal consumption since the 1960s by shifting to nuclear power. Good point, although Epstein also happens to be a big proponent of nuclear energy, which he says “has demonstrated by far the most potential as an alternative to fossil fuels.” He argues that nuclear power, while filled with promise, has been “criminalized” by activists.
Pielke also accuses Epstein of ignoring the downsides of fossil fuel dependence, including “pollution, insecurity, and economic risks.” While Epstein in his book acknowledges such “downsides,” he does not see them as a justification for fossil fuel elimination. Just because economic activity does not properly price and account for all fossil fuel externalities such as climate change does not mean that “the government should take action to make fossil fuels more expensive.”
Which takes us to what seems like the real heart of the Epstein/Pielke clash. In Fossil Future, Epstein outlines his view that solar, wind, biofuels, carbon sequestration, electric vehicles and other state-mandated projects cannot offer the kind of energy system the world needs. Moreover, the externalities caused by moving to zero fossil fuels will exceed the externalities of their continued use. Pielke, on the contrary, is inclined to support the official global policy objectives as outlined by the International Energy Agency and the BP Energy Outlook mentioned earlier.
Pielke, in other words, has confidence in the need for and likely effectiveness of government-mandated decarbonization through cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels. Epstein sees no such benefits and warns that fossil fuels are the key to human flourishing in the future.
In response to texted messages, Epstein said Pielke and other critics present a “significant distortion of my view and then argue against it.” He said he will be formally responding to Pielke and others in a few weeks. Let the debate continue!
https://financialpost.com/opinion/debate-future-fossil-fuels
***********************************************India asks utilities to not retire coal-fired power plants till 2030
India has asked utilities to not retire coal-fired power plants till 2030 due to a surge in electricity demand, according to a federal power ministry notice reviewed by Reuters, just over two years after committing to eventually phase down use of the fuel.
The energy-hungry nation said last May it plans to reduce power generation from least 81 coal-fired plants over the next four years, but the proposal did not involve shutting down any of its 179 coal power plants. India has not set a formal timeline for phasing down coal use.
"It is advised to all power utilities not to retire any thermal (power generation) units till 2030 and ensure availability of units after carrying out renovation and modernisation activities if required," the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) said in a notice dated Jan. 20 sent to officials in the federal power ministry.
The CEA, which acts as an advisor to the ministry, cited a December meeting where the federal power minister had asked that ageing thermal power plants not be retired, and to instead increase the lifetime of such units "considering (the) expected demand scenario".
India, the world's second largest-consumer, producer and importer of coal, fell short of its 2022 renewable energy addition target by nearly a third. Coal accounts for nearly three-quarters of annual electricity generation.
Power demand in India has surged in the recent months due to extreme weather, rising household use or electricity as more companies allowing employees to work from home, and a pickup in industrial activity after easing of coronavirus-related restrictions.
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Pakistan to quadruple domestic coal-fired power, move away from gas
Pakistan plans to quadruple its domestic coal-fired capacity to reduce power generation costs and will not build new gas-fired plants in the coming years, its energy minister told Reuters on Monday, as it seeks to ease a crippling foreign-exchange crisis.
A shortage of natural gas, which accounts for over a third of the country's power output, plunged large areas into hours of darkness last year. A surge in global prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and an onerous economic crisis had made LNG unaffordable for Pakistan.
"LNG is no longer part of the long-term plan," Pakistan Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan told Reuters, adding that the country plans to increase domestic coal-fired power capacity to 10 gigawatts (GW) in the medium-term, from 2.31 GW currently.
Pakistan's plan to switch to coal to provide its citizens reliable electricity underscores challenges in drafting effective decarbonisation strategies, at a time when some developing countries are struggling to keep lights on.
Despite power demand increasing in 2022, Pakistan's annual LNG imports fell to the lowest levels in five years as European buyers elbowed out price-sensitive consumers.
"We have some of the world's most efficient regasified LNG-based power plants. But we don't have the gas to run them," Dastgir said in an interview.
The South Asian nation, which is battling a wrenching economic crisis and is in dire need of funds, is seeking to reduce the value of its fuel imports and protect itself from geopolitical shocks, he said.
Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves held by the central bank have fallen to $2.9 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports.
"It's this question of not just being able to generate energy cheaply, but also with domestic sources, that is very important," Dastgir said.
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Skepticism from an Australian Leftist politician
‘We won’t get to net-zero emissions in this country, or indeed the world, without the resources sector, without gas, and even without coal. You cannot build a wind turbine without coal.’ Angus Taylor, perhaps? Ted O’Brien? Tony Abbott? Nope.
The words were uttered this week by Labor’s Minister for Resources Madeleine King, clearly one of the sharper tools in Labor’s climate shed. Speaking on Sky News, she went on to elaborate that gas will be needed ‘in the short-term, medium-term and long-term’ to ensure ‘energy security’.Former Labor MP Jennie George concurred, warning that ‘winter will be a testing time’ as she lambasted the poor planning of successive energy ministers, the virtue-signalling of governments and asked, where are the ‘safeguards’ for our energy future?
Er… there aren’t any. Not that such revelations or insights are news to readers of this magazine. For the best part of the last fifteen years, The Spectator Australia has been virtually alone among the mainstream media in refusing to be captivated by the climate change cult. More importantly, thanks to the great work of so many of our writers, including Ian Plimer, Mark Lawson, Alan Moran and many, many others, we have consistently pointed out the folly of the climate mantra and the extraordinary danger of jeopardising our God-given supplies of cheap and reliable energy sources.
Indeed, in this week’s issue Mark Lawson warns of the ‘dark ages’ that lie ahead as we rush towards Labor’s (and the Coalition’s) ludicrous net-zero goals. As Mark writes, ‘The events of the past few weeks have brought Australia’s energy future into sharp focus – we won’t have one.’
Sadly, the one resource Australia does seem to have an over-abundance of is stupidity, fuelled by Marxist propaganda and abetted by a political class that is either deeply cynical or unbelievably gullible. Take your pick. This stupidity has manifested itself in perfectly good coal-fired power stations literally being blown to smithereens to the applause of fools and shysters. The last decade has seen our energy infrastructure dismantled at breath-taking speed accompanied by a blizzard of false promises about new technologies and to the tune of ever-soaring household bills.
For a time, the Coalition held out against the madness, with the two most pertinent, honest and accurate words ever uttered about climate change doomsday alarmism having been uttered by former prime minister Tony Abbott: ‘It’s crap.’
Indeed, although she won’t thank us for pointing this out, Ms King’s position is now arguably closer to Mr Abbott’s than to Mr Albanese’s. Go to the bottom line – something our political class seem rarely capable of doing – and you have to answer the following question: will Australia abandoning its fossil-fuel energy sources prevent the planet from a climate apocalypse by the end of this century? Yes or no? Clearly, the fanatical climate zealots believe this to be the case, and many on the Left, including the Greens, either also believe this nonsense or more likely cynically pander to it. Hence the urgency of the alarmist position – close all coal and gas now! Swap to electric vehicles now! Stop eating meat! Eat bugs! Shut down all industry and farming!
These ideas are the logical end point of the Bowen/Wong/Albanese/Bandt/Thunberg/Ardern/Biden/UK/EU position, hence the hysterical reductions targets being touted on everything from carbon to nitrogen to methane to meat to household gas heaters; the pointless and ludicrously expensive advocacy of electric vehicles; the hyperventilating around hydrogen; and so on. But a more rational mindset recognises that there are two parts to that bottom-line question: firstly, is there actually a doomsday armageddon on the horizon? (Answer, no). And secondly, could anything Australia does in reducing carbon emissions in isolation ever have any measurable impact on the world’s climate? (Answer again, no.) Remove the urgency demanded of the doomsday scenario and/or recognise the limited role Australia can ever play and you must arrive at what we shall (cheekily) call the Abbott/King position, which can be summarised as, ‘Transition if you must, but there is no need to panic – and whatever you do, don’t dispense of the energy resources we are blessed with’.
This was of course, broadly, the Coalition’s position (approved overwhelming by the electorate in 2019) until it was disgracefully jettisoned by former prime minister Scott Morrison and his accomplice Barnaby Joyce, backed, laughably, by what was once the mainstream conservative press in Australia. The great pity is that the majority of the Australian electorate is, whether recognising it or not, of this same opinion.
Alas, because Australians are by nature fairly trusting (although this was sorely tested during Covid), it is likely that we will undergo a period of energy poverty and a dramatic downturn in our prosperity and all that that entails – both here and abroad – before the public wakes up to the disaster that the political class are deliberately inflicting upon us.
Could Resource Minister Madeleine King, ironically, be Labor’s canary in the climate change coal mine?
Or will she swiftly be brought into line and forced to start whistling to Labor’s alarmist, socialist and fanatical climate change tune?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/king-a-canary-in-the-coal-mine/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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16 February, 2023
Why I Am Against Saving the Planet (and why you should be, too)
MICHAEL LIND
If the human race vanished tomorrow the climate would not “stabilize” but would continue to fluctuate dramatically over time—at least until the gradual warming of the sun evaporates the oceans and turns the Earth into a steam-shrouded desert world in half a billion years, if the predictions of contemporary astrophysicists are correct.
But there is a crucial difference, according to the belief system of environmentalists. If an asteroid annihilates the dinosaurs, that is natural and not a crime. But if a local species of frog becomes extinct because officials drain a malarial swamp and replace it with a civic water reservoir that saves millions of people from infectious diseases, that is mass murder (of frogs).
According to the peculiar ethics of mainstream environmentalism, practically any modification of “the environment” or “the ecosystem” or “the planet” or “nature” is, by definition, harmful. Developers who cut down woods and build housing subdivisions are evil, because they are displacing the local plants and wildlife. Electricity that powers life-saving hospitals and air conditioners or heaters in buildings is sinful, if it is generated by coal or oil or natural gas that emits carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Paved roads? Forget it. They turn wild animals into roadkill.
In short—every single modification of nature by humanity is evil by definition, according to the popular conception of environmentalism.
Saving the planet has become the de facto religion of politicians, business elites, and intellectuals in the West, replacing Christianity’s earlier mission of saving individual souls.
It might seem that the term “planet,” as it’s used by the greens, has no fixed meaning whatsoever. But that would be a mistake. “The planet,” in the lexicon of environmentalism, is defined in contrast with what it is not: the “Not-Planet.”
The Not-Planet includes all human beings. In environmentalist ideology, we humans are not part of “nature” or “the environment” or “the planet.” We are something outside of nature: an alien, destructive force, modifying “the planet” from without. By this standard, all buildings and cities and other human settlements that billions of people depend on for their survival are rendered alien excrescences harming “the planet.” The sand on a beach is “the planet” but the moment you build a sand castle, the sand in the castle becomes Not-Planet. You have taken sand which might have been used by a beach crab for its burrow. How dare you!
Not all plants and animals are included in “the planet,” either. For environmentalists who are romantically nostalgic for the lifestyles of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, agriculture itself is an abomination, replacing “natural” ecosystems with farms and ranches populated by human-modified strains of grains and vegetables and fruit and livestock. A wild buffalo is part of “the planet” but a free-range cow on a ranch or a cow in a feedlot is not. The coyote that dwells in a suburb and kills and eats a pet poodle is “the planet,” but the poor pet poodle, like its grieving owner, is an interloper on “the planet.”
In 2015, George Monbiot lamented in The Guardian that, measured by weight, 60% of the mammals on Earth are livestock, and that while the human population is growing at 1% a year, the livestock population is growing at 2.4%. Global average meat consumption per person is 43 kilograms a year, but swiftly heading toward the U.K. level of 82 kg. The reason is Bennett’s law: As people become richer, they eat more protein and fat, especially the meat and milk and eggs of animals.
Like chimpanzees, our closest relatives, we humans are omnivores who enjoy the taste of meat. Our precursors are thought to have hunted many large herbivores—mastodons, sloths, giant armadillos—to extinction to satisfy their appetites. In my part of central Texas, indigenous Americans drove herds of buffalo off of cliffs and killed the maimed and dying animals in order to have barbecues. Raising bovines in feedlots is more efficient, and, while cruel in many ways, it is no more cruel than stampeding them over bluffs, breaking their bones and spearing them with sharpened flints.
Humans are not the only species that hunts prey or modifies its surroundings to gain an advantage. It is our self-flagellating that sets us apart from other animals, not the fact that we change “the environment.” Is it a tragedy when a beaver family builds a dam, creating a lake that floods a field, drowning other animals and killing the plants and trees that grew there? If the answer of self-described environmentalists is no, if all animals except for humans are allowed to modify their environments for the benefit of their species at the expense of other species if necessary, then environmentalism is a weird cult that is founded on misanthropy.
By arguing that environmentalism is a post-Christian, Euro-American secular religion, hostile to society and civilization—and livestock and pets!—I do not mean to suggest that all policies advocated for by environmentalists are misguided. It is in our own self-interest to outlaw the dumping of poisonous wastes into rivers and watersheds. It may also be in our own self-interest to mitigate atmosphere-heating greenhouse gas emissions with costly measures of various kinds. But there are costs to mitigating climate change as well as benefits, and rational people can prefer a richer but warmer world to a poorer but slightly less warm one. All of these individual policies benefit humanity, so there is no need to justify them on the basis of a romantic creed that defines “the planet” or “the environment” in a way that excludes us and our works.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/against-saving-planet
****************************************************Why the intermittency problem can’t be solved
I often ask renewables enthusiasts to explain what we are supposed to do when the wind isn’t blowing if we can’t fall back on fossil fuels.
The other day, I pressed James Murray, the editor of Business Green magazine, what forms of storage he thought we could use, and this is what he said:
"… a portfolio of nuclear, demand response, grid scale batteries, other emerging forms of energy storage technologies, hydrogen, and gas, ultimately in conjunction with CCS."
Clearly, we were talking somewhat at cross purposes; my question was specifically about storage, but even if we broaden the scope to cover the general question of “what do we do when the wind isn’t blowing”, his answer suggests that he hasn’t grasped the fundamental economic problem.
That problem is that, with wind dominating the grid, for anyone looking to make money in the lulls, the economics look grim. There are two major kinds of lull that need to be filled. The first is a dunkelflaute, a lull in the winter, when solar is generating little or nothing. We get a dunkelflaute most years, and sometimes more than one. They can last from 1-3 weeks. The second is the long summer lull, with low wind generation right through the summer month, although perhaps with occasional windy interruptions. This happens every year of course, and a large amount of energy needs to be stored to cover the gap: perhaps as much as 50 days’ demand.
If we are talking about storage then, most of it will barely be used; it’s required just once a year to deal with the summer wind lull. Most of it will be filled in autumn, and will then sit there waiting for the summer, when it will be emptied to meet demand, before sitting empty again until the winds pick up again as the nights draw in.
Making money on this basis is impossible. A kilowatt hour of lithium ion battery storage might cost £350. If, optimistically, it gets perform two charge-discharge cycles per year, it will complete just 20 cycles over its lifetime. That means it needs to charge £17.50 per kilowatt hour, just to cover its capital costs; the electricity is extra! That is perhaps thirty times the level seen at the peak of the crisis last year, and 300 times the prices we used to enjoy before the advent of “cheap renewables”.
Of course, cheaper storage systems may be on the horizon, so it’s worth looking at these. The best bet on the horizon seems to be liquid air storage, which has a 25-year lifespan, so might be expected to complete 50 recharging cycles. Its capital costs are also much lower, but it will still need £1.68 to cover its capital costs. That’s three times the peak price last year, and thirty times what they were in the good old days.
Needing a large amount of electricity just a couple of times a year makes the economics impossible. It’s not just storage technologies that are affected – James’ idea that we could use nuclear to plug the gap therefore doesn’t stack up. Who is going to build a nuclear power station that only gets to run for 50 days a year? The idea is preposterous. In essence, the intermittency problem can’t be solved. The costs of doing so make it impossible, for any technology, even on the most optimistic assumptions about cost trajectories.
As a coda, it’s interesting to note that the Committee on Climate Change’s model for a net zero energy system has a vast fleet of gas turbines (122 GW of them!) burning hydrogen to deal with the intermittency of its vast fleets of wind and solar. But the power stations get run very rarely – they deliver just 2% of their capacity each year. By my calculations this means they will deliver power at around £1/kWh, or 40 times the prices from the good old days. However, the CCC, perhaps wisely, has accidentally missed the bill for these units out of the final reckoning of the cost of net zero.
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Green Britain: All major road building projects in Wales scrapped for Net Zero
The planned third Menai bridge will not go ahead and neither will the controversial "red route" in Flintshire.
The move is part of the Welsh government's National Transport Plan and follows a year-long review.
Environmental campaigners called it "world-leading and brave" but some in the construction industry warned the announcement could put jobs at risk.
It comes as the Welsh government is accused of endangering bus services as a senior minister said industry subsidies have yet to be confirmed beyond summer.
The Welsh government said all future roads must pass strict criteria which means they must not increase carbon emissions, they must not increase the number of cars on the road, they must not lead to higher speeds and higher emissions, and they must not negatively impact the environment.
Flintshire council leader Ian Roberts was disappointed by the decision.
"The council is concerned that there are currently no alternative solutions being put forward and no funding for much needed improvement works to local transport infrastructure," he said.
It comes as Ken Skates said Welsh government decisions on roads for the north should be made locally.
Freeze on all new road building projects
Shapps says UK government wants to 'fix' congestion
The Clwyd South Senedd member and former Welsh transport minister said certainty over how transport in north Wales would be improved was needed.
"I firmly believe that decisions over roads, buses, rail and active travel are best made at a regional level," he said. "It's time to devolve to the north, beginning with our major roads."
A second Labour Senedd member questioned the move by his party. Blaenau Gwent's Alun Davies called for "more joined up thinking" by ministers.
"If we're going to take services away from people in terms of distance, then what we have to be able to do is to provide the public transport options available for people to reach those services, and that hasn't happened," he added.
Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters told the Senedd the approach of the last 70 years was not working.
"We will not get to net zero unless we stop doing the same thing over and over," he said.
"None of this is easy but neither is the alternative."
To reach net zero by 2050, he said, the Welsh government must "be prepared to follow through".
The deputy minister insisted new roads would be built in future, but said the government was "raising the bar" to ensure any new road was "the right response to transport problems".
In 2021, the Welsh government announced it was conducting a roads review.
An expert panel, led by transport consultant Lynn Sloman, assessed 59 road projects and made recommendations on which projects to proceed with, which to abandon and which to reconsider in a different form.
Of these, 15 will go ahead, but all the rest have been rejected or will be revised.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-64640215?mc_cid=c9ed760f59&mc_eid=cc88839e92
***********************************************Australian supermarket giants have announced huge changes to their plastic bag policies as pressure mounts to reduce waste
The idea that paper and cloth bags are better for the environment is ideological nonsense. Producing both cotton and paper uses huge amounts of both water and bleach
Coles will be binning mesh produce bags introduced as part of a trial in the ACT last year, while Woolworths is disposing of its 15c plastic bags in Queensland and Canberra stores.
Woolworths Queensland state general manager Danny Baldwin said customer habits pushed the supermarket giant to make the move.
“Eighty per cent of our customers currently bring in their own bag, so over the number of years, I think customers have really responded to reusing bags,” he said.
“Also, a number of our customers are electing to actually not use bags at all.”
Mr Baldwin said that by removing the 15c plastic bags across the state and territory, the company would be “removing over 1600 tonnes of plastic from the system”.
It is believed that more sustainable alternatives to plastic bags will be available for purchase in-store, such as those made from paper and fabric.
Meanwhile, Coles will be swapping its trialled mesh produce bags for a compostable alternative after customers in the ACT found the transition “challenging”.
“We acknowledge a significant change of this kind was challenging for both our customers and in-store teams,” a spokesperson said.
“However, we remain committed to working towards appropriate and accessible plastic reduction initiatives for our customers moving forward.”
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15 February, 2023
Natural Gas is a major source of the Fertilizers that Prevent Worse World Hunger
Half of the people on Earth are alive today thanks to nitrogenous fertilizers made of and with natural gas.
So why are governments at home and abroad scrambling to cut off humanity’s natural gas supply?
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has spent years trying to shut down the Line 5 natural gas pipeline – precipitating an international disagreement that puts the state in conflict with both the Biden administration and the Trudeau government. Other natural gas projects in the United States have been attacked, shut down, or blocked, while investment in oil and gas is also under fire.
The Dutch and Canadian governments plan to cut fertilizer usage significantly despite heavy backlash. The leadership of Sri Lanka curtailed fertilizer use – until massive crop failures helped fuel an economic crisis and a popular uprising that toppled the government.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently brought back the country’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, during an energy crisis that leaves thousands of Britons at risk of freezing to death. Meanwhile, an estimated four trillion cubic meters of natural gas sit unused under the English countryside.
Natural gas provides many well-known benefits to society, but one of the lesser-known benefits is right on your plate. Fertilizers produced using natural gas are essential in feeding the global population.
An estimated 44 percent of the world’s people were consuming food produced with nitrogen fertilizers in 2000, according to an article in Our World in Data. That percentage had risen to 48 percent by 2008. The article, which summarized findings published in Nature Geosciences by scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil, estimated that by 2015, three-and-a-half billion people were alive thanks to these products.
The United Nations reported in November that the eight-billionth person had been born. Extending the numbers just discussed, that means approximately four billion people are alive today thanks to nitrogen fertilizers.
How is this possible?
The Haber-Bosch process, the main method for industrial synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production, uses the nitrogen found in the atmosphere and the hydrogen from natural gas to make ammonia. “Approximately 60% of the natural gas is used as raw material,” an article in Fertilizers Europe explains, “with the remainder employed to power the synthesis process.”
The result is synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer, which, when combined with selective crop breeding and various forms of chemical protection (herbicides and pesticides), significantly improves crop yields. As Smil noted in a 2011 article for the journal World Agriculture, fertilizers and other related advances have “more than tripled the average U.S. wheat yields during the 20th century.” Smil found yield multiples of 5.8 for France and 3.8 for China. In the United States, corn yields alone “rose more than five-fold,” while rice yields in Japan “increased nearly three times.”
“By 2025 more than half of the world’s food production will depend on Haber-Bosch synthesis, and this share will keep rising for at least several more decades,” Smil explained.
That is not to say that nitrogenous fertilizers are without downsides. Critics correctly point out that fertilizer runoff from agriculture can lead to eutrophication, where the nutrients from the fertilizer runoff work too well and lead to algae buildup (known as algal blooms) on the surface of bodies of water. The algae block sunlight, killing underwater plants. When the algae die, bacteria break them down in a process which can remove oxygen from the water. These algal blooms can foster a toxic environment for the organisms that live in these bodies of water, as well as the people who wish to use them.
Another problem is the emission of nitrous oxide, a naturally occurring but powerful greenhouse gas. In 2020, nitrous oxide only made up 7% of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the warming force of each molecule is 230 times larger than CO2. On top of that, it lasts in the atmosphere for around a century – shorter than CO2, which can last centuries, but longer than methane, which only lasts around a decade.
However, while these problems should be taken into consideration, regulators should also take the benefits of nitrogenous fertilizer and the tradeoffs of anti-natural gas policy into account. Mandating reductions in fertilizer usage is not prudent. Good policy must consider environmental tradeoffs while keeping food production a priority.
This more nuanced approach is necessary, because the situation is not as bad as it is often portrayed. Nitrous oxide occurs naturally and is an important part of the nitrogen cycle. Atmospheric nitrous oxide is increasing at a limited rate, according to a paper published by the CO2 Coalition in November 2022. The doubling time for nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is described as around 400 years.
“For current growth rates, the contribution of N2O [nitrous oxide] to warming is only about 6% that of all greenhouse gases,” the authors noted, warning in their conclusion:
“To continue to feed the world’s growing population without mineral and natural fertilizers, agricultural areas would have to increase and encroach on native habitats, which could have remained untouched with rational use of fertilizer. The result would be more environmental stress, not less.”
This sentiment is echoed in a 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences USA, which found that “while emissions from factors such as fertilizer production and application have increased, the net effect of higher yields has avoided emissions of up to 161 gigatons of carbon … since 1961. … Further yield improvements should therefore be prominent among efforts to reduce future GHG emissions.”
In other words, gains from higher crop yields allow more food production on less land. Yield gains balance, or outweigh, the effects of nitrous oxide added by that fertilizer use. These higher yields feed half of human life on this planet.
Knowing this, attempts to decrease fertilizer usage and production make little sense. Nitrogenous fertilizer should be the subject of a proper cost-benefit analysis. When the benefits* of using natural gas-derived fertilizers are compared with the costs of restricting their use in the name of climate mitigation, it quickly becomes clear that mandated reductions are dangerous.
There are environmental costs associated with fertilizer use. But those are more than balanced out by advantages that include one benefit governments can’t afford to ignore: Nitrogenous fertilizers enable four billion people to eat.
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The States Are the Shock Troops in the ESG Battle of 2023
One of the most important policy battles of 2023 is already happening quietly and outside of the media spotlight. Indeed, many Americans are completely unaware that it is underway. It is over the Left’s ESG (environmental, social and governance)-driven investments and their corrosive effect on the country.
Over the past two years, the Left has launched a determined campaign to advance their climate, gun-control, and abortion objectives not through legislation, but through the allocation and denial of capital.
The proponents of ESG-driven investments are using woke investment firms like BlackRock to phase out fossil fuels, weaken agriculture, hobble the firearms industry, and punish corporations that don’t support abortion. They do so by starving the offending companies of capital and insurance coverage. Worse, ESG- driven funds have waged this war on disfavored companies often without the knowledge or consent of the owners of that capital. And the Biden Administration has been supporting their efforts.
But in the first two months of 2023, a significant number of states have been fighting back. Last week, I and 23 other state attorneys general joined the Utah attorney general in suing the Biden Administration over new Department of Labor regulations that allow managers of retirement funds to consider non-financial, ideological factors when investing allocating retirees’ assets—in direct violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
State legislatures have joined the battle as well. In the past year, 17 states have introduced bills to stop the investment of state pension assets in ESG-driven funds. The 2023 legislative session is the battlefield on which most of those state efforts will succeed or fail.
On Thursday, the legislative battle in the states just hit a new level of intensity. The strongest anti-ESG bill in the country, SB 224, which I helped draft, was introduced in the Kansas Legislature.
Most of the anti-ESG bills pending in state legislatures address only the state pensions issue, which is certainly a large problem that needs to be addressed. The pensions of state workers should never by commandeered to advance a partisan agenda. ESG-driven funds usually deliver a much lower return on investment, to the detriment of the state workers whose pensions are at stake. In the past year, the ten largest ESG funds by assets have all posted double-digit losses, with eight of them underperforming the S&P 500.
But the Kansas ESG bill goes much farther. Not only does the Kansas bill prohibit the investment of state pension assets in ESG-driven funds, it also prohibits banks from using ESG criteria in denying loans to companies and prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on ESG considerations.
In addition to that, the Kansas bill also defends private investors against the surreptitious use of ESG factors in the management of their investments. It requires registered investment advisers to disclose to clients when their money is being invested in ESG-driven funds and requires written consent from the client before such investments can be made. This section of the Kansas bill could cause a tidal shift in investments, especially if other states follow suit and enact similar disclosure rules. Right now, billions of dollars in private assets are being invested in ESG-driven funds without the knowledge or consent of the investors.
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Cut emissions, but not at the expense of jobs and our cost of living
By TONY ABBOTT, former Prime Minister of Australia
As prime minister, I regularly affirmed that climate does change, mankind does make a contribution, and we should do whatever we reasonably can to reduce our emissions.
I’d normally add, though, that there was little point reducing emissions in ways that drove up our cost of living or just sent our emissions offshore as industrial jobs relocated to places that were less environmentally scrupulous. Because there’s little point dealing with a speculative long-term problem in ways that make short-term practical ones much worse.
It is undeniable that climate changes. It’s the cause that’s uncertain. The ice ages are good examples of a world where the climate was radically different. The Roman and Medieval warm periods, when crops could grow in Greenland, and the mini-ice age of the 1600s, when there were regular ice fairs on the Thames, are more recent examples of climate change; that was, incidentally, independent of any man-made influence. And all other things being equal, the laws of physics mean that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (such as the industrialisation-driven rise from about 300 parts per million to about 400ppm that has taken place in the past century) should tend to warm the planet.
Perhaps this has been the key factor in the average warming of up to 1C that most scientists think has happened across that time (despite some rewriting of the temperature records). Certainly, it seems to be the consensus of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change that man-made carbon dioxide is the principal culprit, even though dissident scientists such as Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry think the atmosphere is such a complex mechanism that it’s impossible to be certain, and that other factors such as sun spot activity may play a much larger part.
I certainly think that all countries should take reasonable, proportionate and prudent steps to reduce emissions. The big question is: how much should a country such as Australia be prepared to pay to reduce our emissions given that other countries, such as China and India, will not reduce theirs in preference to strengthening their economies and that nothing Australia does on its own, with our paltry 1.3 per cent of global emissions, will make any appreciable difference.
As prime minister, I agreed that Australia should take a 26 to 28 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 to the 2015 Paris climate conference, based on official advice that this could be achieved without extra government spending, additional costs in the economy, or changes to existing policy.
At that stage, the federal government was spending about $1bn a year through a tender process to fund emissions-reducing activity such as tree planting, soil improvement and better technology (all of which made sense on other grounds too) that was obtaining credible reductions at the cost of about $15 a tonne.
While the previous Coalition government was routinely demonised as “climate-denying”, largely because I had abolished the carbon tax, which was socialism masquerading as environmentalism, as of last year Australia under the Coalition had already cut its emissions by 20 per cent from 2005 levels – compared with just 9 per cent by Canada and just 5 per cent by climate darling New Zealand.
The Coalition’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – but through technology, not taxes – wasn’t enough to satisfy the climate emergency doomsters who always sought affirmations of faith in the coming climate apocalypse, ignoring the fact the commitment to net zero by a country such as New Zealand relied on excluding emissions from agriculture.
For years now, any discussion of climate policy has been poisoned by fearmongering over supposedly unique catastrophic weather, such as that creating last year’s NSW floods. While last year’s flooding in and around Lismore genuinely was unprecedented, it’s not really surprising that records do sometimes get broken.
On the Hawkesbury, where flood records at Windsor go back to 1799, the four floods of 2020-22 were matched by the five floods of 1860-61; the previous 28-year flood-free period between 1992 and 2020 was more than matched by the flood-free period between 1819 and 1857; and none of the recent floods exceeded 14m (which has been previously exceeded on nine occasions, including three since the completion of Warragamba Dam in 1960). At 13.9m, last year’s flood peak was almost 50 per cent below the all-time peak of 19.7m attained in 1867, which could hardly have had anything to do with man-made climate change.
Unsurprisingly, the Albanese government cited last year’s flood to justify its policy to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, and to cut fossil-fuelled power from more than 60 per cent to under 10 per cent of the electricity grid within eight years. To achieve this, as the Energy Minister has recently admitted, requires the building of 40 large wind turbines every month, the installation of 22,000 solar panels every day and the construction of 28,000km of transmission lines between now and 2030 – all of which will have to be paid for via people’s power bills or taxes. And while (if it’s achieved) this would deliver the renewable power the government seeks, it won’t guarantee the reliable power the economy requires, especially if all the coal-fired power closes in the meantime, as is likely.
By requiring Australia’s 215 biggest emitters (many of which are also big employers) to cut their emissions by 5 per cent each year, or to buy abatement at the cost of up to $75 a tonne, the government is likely further to deindustrialise Australia. And by taking the view that all new fossil-fuel projects pose unacceptable climate risks, the government will gradually kill the coal and gas exports that currently earn more than $200bn a year in national income and deliver the tens of billions in royalty revenue needed to sustain programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Driven by its emissions obsession, the government is gambling the country’s entire electricity-dependent way of life on the rapid development of green hydrogen, even though the International Energy Agency, under the most climate-optimistic of its three scenarios, expects this to be providing less than 2 per cent of global electricity by 2050.
Back in 2017, addressing a Global Warming Policy Foundation event (a speech that’s available at tonyabbott.com.au), I said the “only rational choice is to put jobs and standard of living first; to get emissions down but only as a far as we can without putting prices up. After two decades’ experience of the very modest reality of climate change but the increasingly dire consequences of the policy to deal with it, anything else would be a dereliction of duty as well as a political death wish.”
Although the Albanese government got lucky when the Coalition essentially “me-too-ed” its climate policy at last year’s election, very soon climate wishful thinking will start to crash against the reality of blackouts, not being able to make things here, and even more expensive electricity.
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Expert exposes brutal reality of owning an electric car in Australia after struggling to find a place to charge his $100k vehicle
An expert car reviewer has exposed the difficult reality of owning an electric vehicle and finding a charging station in Australia. Car expert Jonathan Ross has vented his frustration after struggling to find a place to charge a $100,000 Kia EV6 in Perth.
Ross had been driving the vehicle around and reviewing the perks and shortcomings of the electric car for his YouTube channel Ross Reviews.
He filmed his journey as he drove to four different locations before finding an adequate charging station.
He said he had been waiting for about an hour just for the vehicle's battery to reach 80 per cent after waiting in queue for the station.
'It's f***ing. It's crazy man. This is what you call clown world,' he said in a TikTok video. 'Everyone here is waiting an hour and queuing up and waiting for others to charge.'
A look of defeat was on his face as he contemplated the final cost of the recharge. 'We're still going to have to pay, you know, the same as petrol,' he said. 'Clown world.'
Mr Ross revealed that he was forced to search for a charging station after his battery levels dropped to 17 per cent. The vehicle only had enough energy to travel another 61km sending Mr Ross into a panic.
He filmed his disappointment after wasting five kilometres to drive to an inadequate charging station.
A small shelter had been built around it with a locked gate in the doorway. The shelter was only big enough to charge an electric scooter
'There's not even anything in here. Are you kidding me?' Mr Ross said. 'Are you kidding me? I don't know how you get into this.'
Social media users slammed the lack of available charging stations claiming they would not be making the switch from petrol cars anytime soon. 'I don't think Australia is ready for electric cars,' one wrote.
The 2023 Kia EV6 will set drivers back around $100,000, making it the most expensive Kia sold in Australia.
Mr Ross's review is the latest example of growing frustration shown by owners of electric vehicles who are disappointed about the lack of available charging stations.
During the Christmas holidays, Tesla drivers were forced to wait in 90-minute queues at charging stations as thousands took to the roads. Queues for charging stations were spotted nationwide, including in Victoria and NSW.
Footage showed Tesla owners aimlessly standing around their cars as they waited for their turn at a Wodonga station on the NSW/Victoria border.
Similar scenes at a Coffs Harbour charging point in northern NSW, with Teslas stretching through the carpark as drivers waited their turn to power up.
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14 February, 2023
Wrong, Phys.org, Atmospheric Rivers and Hurricanes are Not Getting Worse
A recent article at Phys.org, originally published by the Chicago Tribune, says that climate change is behind the recent atmospheric river events in California, as well as an alleged increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. This is false. Atmospheric rivers are a natural part of the West coast’s climate, and and neither historic data, nor recent trend data, indicate that the frequency or severity of those events are increasing. Likewise, there has been no increase in major hurricanes over the past hundred years of global warming.
In “Climate change is fueling extreme weather. How do we make a difference?,” writer Barbara Willard makes several false claims regarding climate change and extreme weather, the most immediately egregious being that recent atmospheric rivers are being fueled by climate change, and that deadly hurricanes are becoming more common. Single weather events, or even seasons of bad weather, can’t be used to measure climate change, which is measured as at least a 30-year trend of regional weather.
Willard gives credit to “extreme event attribution” science by the National Academy of Sciences for promoting the narrative that weather is worsened by climate change, but she misses the reason why this is a poor scientific standard. Attribution scientists begin with the assumption that carbon dioxide has a significant impact on climate, and that the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years is fueling, at least in part, extreme weather. It is an paradigm example of confirmation bias. They run multiple computer models, some that are fictional recreations of what they assume the climate might like be if humans didn’t exist on the planet, and some scenarios including humans but based on flawed emissions and temperature assumptions.
The misleading nature of attribution science has been pointed out multiple times at Climate Realism, for example, here, here, and here, as the accuracy of a computer models are only as accurate as the input of data and the assumptions concerning interactions and feedback mechanisms built into the models. None of these models have been confirmed to accurately portray recorded climate conditions. Since we can’t tap into a parallel universe where a storm was more or less extreme, there is inherent uncertainty, that makes these kinds of computer models interesting from a theoretical perspective, but not much more.
Real world weather data is available and improving, so the prognostications of attribution modelers can be checked over time. So far, when actual data is compared to computer models projections, the evidence undermines the “climate catastrophe” theory.
Regarding atmospheric rivers, Willard says climate change “fueled” the recent “precipitation episodes” in California. However, even scientists and publications who normally support alarmist messaging have admitted that recent California weather is not historically unusual. A senior hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles told a Los Angeles Times writer that the recent atmospheric river events were “nothing as big as what we’ve gone through before.”
Indeed, there is a long history, both recorded by humans and indicated by paleontological proxy data, of major swings between drought and deluge in California. Willard writes that there is “broad scientific consensus that climate change increases water vapor in the atmosphere,” but recent studies have found no evidence of this occurring in the regions where west coast atmospheric rivers originate.
As for hurricanes, Willard’s claims are easily refuted with the most recent hurricane data. Major hurricanes, or those ranked as a Category 3 and above, have seen no increase over the past decades, and the past year has seen some of the lowest major hurricane counts since the 1980s.
As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the IPCC claims only low confidence “for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.” As recently as 2017 saw the end of the longest period without a major hurricane landfall in the United States in recorded history, a nearly 12-year period with no major hurricanes. The gap is seen in the figure below, showing major landfalling hurricanes in the United States through 2020.
2022 ended with the weakest storm levels in 42 years, despite predictions of an extreme hurricane season early on, as discussed in detail, here.
Willard ends the article with a call to climate action, including personal lifestyle changes like vegetarianism and traveling less, as well as political lobbying and proselytizing to your community. What she neglected, however, is looking into weather data and fact-checking political sources of climate alarm. When even the most basic research is conducted, climate change ceases to look so catastrophic.
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Sorry, NPR, Your Story on the Great Salt Lake’s Decline Was a Half-Truth
A recent story on NPR’s Morning Edition, titled “Climate change and a population boom could dry up the Great Salt Lake in 5 years,” bemoaned recent historically low levels of the Great Salt Lake (GSL), tying the lake’s decline to two factors: climate change and population growth. The writer, Kirk Siegler, was only half-right. Population growth is arguably the prime factor leading to the GSL’s decline. The recent drought is likely another factor in this year’s low levels, however, because the current drought is not historically unusual, and is not part of a long-term trend of increasing drought frequency or intensity, climate change cannot be blamed for the GSL’s recent decline.
Maybe one small bright spot in an otherwise grim story of a looming ecological disaster. The lake doesn’t really stink anymore because it’s drying … and dying.
Scientists point to climate change and rapid population growth — Utah is one of the fastest growing states and also one of the driest — as the culprits. A recent scientific report from Brigham Young University warned that if no action is taken, the Great Salt Lake could go completely dry in five years.
Over two decades of the western megadrought, water diversions from rivers that feed the lake have increased in order to support farms and thirsty, growing cities.
Without action to reduce water diversions and withdrawals from the rivers and streams feeding the GSL, it may, in fact, disappear. Salt Lake City, the surrounding cities and mountain states in the region, are among the fastest growing in the nation. This has increased the demands for water from the rivers and streams feeding the GSL. However, contrary to Siegler’s claims, neither Utah, nor the region is in the midst of a long-term megadrought.
Utah is a relatively arid state, receiving just 13.56 inches of precipitation on average annually, much of it delivered in the form of snow. Utah has received below average rainfall for the past couple of years, although with recent winter storms, the drought has lessened modestly. However, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor show the state received well above average precipitation as recently as 2019, with 99.7 percent of Utah being drought free in July 2019, and only 0.3 percent listed as being abnormally dry. Utah also received well above average precipitation in 2016 and 2015.
Indeed, records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that contrary to Utah being in a midst of a two-decade long megadrought; since 2000 Utah has experienced two years of approximately average rainfall, eight years of above average rainfall, and ten years of below average rainfall, meaning there is no evidence of a two decade long drought. In point of fact, Utah’s recent precipitation history resembles the state’s precipitation history since official record keeping began in 1895.
As discussed in a prior Climate Realism, “No, Climate Change Isn’t Behind Great Salt Lake Decline,” because the GSL is a relatively shallow lake, modest declines in elevation or lake levels can amount to huge declines in area covered by water. During the present drought, the GSL did set a new record for low levels of 4190.2 feet in elevation in October 2021. However, that was only a foot lower than the prior record of 4,191.35 feet set in 1963. Tellingly, the previous record low elevation was set during a period when the earth was in the midst of a cooling trend and many scientists were warming of a pending ice age. It should also be noted that Utah’s precipitation in 1963, although slightly below average, was still more than 4 inches greater than Utah received in 2020.
Droughts come and go in Utah as they have throughout history and the data provides no support for the claim that climate change has made them more severe or frequent in the region. Indeed, as explained in Climate at a Glance: Drought, the current drought is a weather phenomenon of very recent vintage; not an indicator of long-term climate change. 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, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the United States recently underwent its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. The United States recorded its lowest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history in 2017 and 2019.
Since the GSL has undoubtedly declined, and climate change isn’t a factor, what is? This is where NPR got the story right. Utah is one of the fastest growing states in the United States and it has been so for some time. When the previous low elevation record for the GSL was set in 1963, Salt Lake City had a population of approximately 387,000 people and was growing at an estimated rate of 3.2 percent annually. Today, although the city’s annual population growth has slowed, at 0.92 percent annually, it is still increasing faster than most other cities across the country. The most recent estimate of Salt Lake City’s population is 1,203,000. In other words, Salt Lake City’s population increased by approximately 211 percent, between the GSL’s previous record low and the most recent record being set.
The record is clear; rainfall patterns in Utah haven’t changed. Yes, the state is currently experiencing a severe drought, but it is a recent phenomenon, not part of a long-term trend. What has changed for the GSL, the primary cause of the present conditions there, is the huge increase in water users. There have been huge increases in demand for water for the millions of urban and agricultural users added to Salt Lake City and the surrounding area. The growing populace is drawing from the streams and rivers which historically have fed and replenished the GSL. Water volumes and flows have decreased in those rivers and streams not because weather patterns have, they haven’t, but rather because of increased users.
Will the GSL survive another five years or more? If rain and snowfall increases it should, for a while, but if population continues growing and ways of managing water use to keep or return more water to the rivers are not discovered and implemented, then the GSL’s days as “Great” may be numbered regardless of climate change
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UK energy minister faces Tory mutiny over new green tax plans
The extra green levy, which under Government plans would be added onto energy bills from 2025 to fund the production of low-carbon hydrogen, has been met with anger amid concerns households will be paying for energy that they never use.
It would be the first piece of legislation passed by Rishi Sunak's new energy department, but Mr Shapps has been warned that the levy, which critics have branded as another tax, would stoke inflation, going against one of the Prime Minister's five key priorities announced last month.
Former Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg said he tried to block the levies when he was the minister in charge of the bill under Liz Truss.
"Let's not beat around the bush, these levies are taxes and tax is already too high," he told the Telegraph. "Putting more taxes will make the UK more inefficient.
“Energy is already expensive enough," he added. "The Government should try to help people get cheaper energy, not more expensive energy. There is no justification for further levies on bills."
Mr Rees-Mogg said the row over the funding exposed the risks of having a standalone net zero department, after it was hived off from the business department in Rishi Sunak’s recent reshuffle.
“When I was in the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, there was some countervailing pressure from the business side to say is this economic?” he said. “But if they are just net zero zealots this is unlikely to be very economic.”
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House GOP makes first big push to boost energy production by curbing climate rules
House Republicans launched their legislative energy agenda Tuesday of more than a dozen measures aiming to increase domestic oil and natural gas production by curtailing environmental regulations.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee debated 17 energy-related bills, underscoring the party’s desire to combat President Biden’s climate agenda, which they argue has stifled American energy and contributed to soaring prices.
“Hydropower, nuclear, fossil energies, wind, solar and batteries — we need all of them in order to secure a stronger, more prosperous America, reduce costs and emissions, address climate issues, and create more robust and resilient communities,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington Republican and the panel’s chairwoman.
“A rush to green energy policies, both at the state and federal level, has curtailed reliable energy and infrastructure, resulting in everything from blackouts to spiking prices,” she said.
That rhetoric drew jeers from Democrats, who accused their GOP colleagues of being in the pockets of energy companies and ignoring the environment.
“Republicans are showing today that their top energy and environmental priorities are to do the bidding of Big Oil and to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental laws,” said Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the panel’s top Democrat. “House Republicans are stuck in the past and failing to address the energy challenges and opportunities we face today.”
The debate over House Republicans’ energy priorities came just hours before Mr. Biden was set to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress, in which he’s expected to tout Democrats’ signature tax-and-climate-spending law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
House Republicans’ proposals include repealing a new methane emissions fee for natural gas in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act; condemning Mr. Biden for axing the Keystone XL oil pipeline; and rolling back climate regulations in the Clean Air Act and other laws in a bid to fast-track more fossil fuels and critical minerals production.
The Protecting American Energy Production Act is also on the table, which would restrict a president from banning fracking used in oil and natural gas exploration.
The hearing’s witnesses included former government officials at energy agencies, climate activists and energy lobbyists, but noticeably absent were any current Biden administration officials.
The committee’s Republican majority said that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Willie Phillips all declined to appear.
Their absence sparked a moment — albeit brief — of bipartisan frustration.
“I agree with my Republican colleagues that we should seek and expect to hear from the agencies at legislative hearings,” said Rep. Paul Tonko, New York Democrat. “But we should also make efforts to accommodate their participation, including by providing legislative texts well in advance and being flexible with the hearing calendar.”
The agencies were provided a roughly two-week notice, a similar time frame offered by the committee to other administration officials who have appeared for separate hearings.
An Energy Department spokesperson said the department only received an invitation eight days ago, on Jan. 30.
“Unfortunately, it is not possible for the Department to prepare substantively for a legislative hearing on such a timeline, and we remain committed to working with Committee leaders to ensure that it has the Departmental perspectives and expertise that it needs to inform legislation,” the spokesperson said.
EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
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13 February, 2023
When Deforesting The Amazon is OK
What has the destruction of balsa trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest got to do with the wind power industry in Europe?
As the international commitment to renewable energy has grown in recent years, the increase in wind farms has triggered a huge demand for balsa wood, leaving a trail of deforestation in its wake.
Balsa wood is used in Europe, and also more intensively in China, as a component in the construction of the blades of wind turbines. Already-installed wind turbines, with blades that stretch to 80 metres, can cover an area of approximately 21,000 square metres, which is equivalent to about three football pitches.
More recent wind turbine designs can incorporate blades that are up to 100-metres long that consume about 150 cubic metres of balsa wood each – equivalent to several tonnes – according to calculations attributed to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
In 2018, international demand for balsa wood increased significantly. The tropical wood is flexible and yet hard, while also being both light and resilient. Ecuador, which is the main exporter of balsa, with about 75% of the global market, is home to several large exporters, such as Plantabal S.A. in Guayaquil, which dedicates up to 10,000 hectares to growing the wood for export.
Balsa Fever
The increased demand led to the deforestation of virgin balsa in the Amazon basin, in what came to be known as ‘balsa fever’. Balseros began to illegally deforest virgin balsa from the islands and banks of the Amazonian rivers in an effort to overcome the shortage of cultivated wood.
This has had a terrible impact on the Indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, in a similarly brutal way to that caused by mining and oil extraction in recent decades, and the rubber boom at the start of the 20th century.
In 2019, the extension of a road in the Pastaza province bordering Peru through Indigenous Shuar and Achuar territory to link the community of Copataza to the western city of Puyo, caused controversy among the Achuar people.
For the most part, locals perceived the road, which was built without waiting for full Indigenous consensus, more as a threat of extractivism and deforestation than as a contribution to the potential development of their community. But it advanced like a syringe through the jungle, reaching its destination in November of that year.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the ambitious European Green Pact in Brussels. The pact, among other things, aimed to reverse ‘climate change’ by promoting the progressive replacement of ‘fossil fuels’, which contribute to ‘global warming’ through the production of ‘greenhouse gases’, with ‘cleaner’ energy sources.
As a result of the 2019 pact, the financial outlook for ‘renewables’, including wind power, boosted the number of wind farm construction projects in Europe, and added to China’s wind rush. In December 2020, President Xi Jinping declared that China would increase its installed wind and solar power capacity to more than 1,200 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, a five-fold increase from the current 243GW.
The triggering of ‘balsa fever’ has had devastating consequences for Ecuador’s Indigenous Amazonian communities. The story soon moved from the local media to the international press.
And in January this year, The Economist published an article pointing out the problems that the irregular extraction of balsa for wind turbine blades had caused in Ecuador, highlighting the negative impact on the Waorani Indigenous people, based within the Yasuní National Park.
In September, when democraciaAbierta visited the Achuar indigenous territory, travelling down the Pastaza River, one of the areas most affected by balsa fever, we found that the territory’s balsa had already been completely deforested and that the balseros, in their determination to obtain more wood, had moved onto the Peruvian Amazon.
The consequences of this rush have been especially destructive for local communities. In June, the Indigenous leaders of the Achuar Nationality of Ecuador (NAE), reacted by declaring that they would not allow the deforestation of balsa wood in their territory. “Don’t make any investment, even if you cut down balsa you won’t be able to extract it, it won’t be sold,” they posted on Facebook.
But it was a futile declaration, which came too late.
https://principia-scientific.com/deforesting-the-amazon-for-wind-energy-in-the-global-north/
**************************************************"The Nation" Flounders on Miami Sea-Level Rise Story
A recent debate in The Nation claimed Miami should either make plans to evacuate from the Florida coast or become the model of adaptation in response to rapidly rising sea levels from climate change and the refugees that will result from it. The story is not just false, it is laughably inept. There is no evidence the United States faces the loss of any major coastal city due to climate change or that climate change has or will create climate refugees.
The Nation published an exchange between by Daniel Aldana Cohen and Samantha Schuyler titled “Should We Start Preparing for the Evacuation of Miami?”
Cohen, an assistant professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, premises his whole argument for abandoning Miami on the claim that, like residents, refugees arriving there will soon have no place to live, with evacuation setting a good example for other cities, writing:
It’s urgent for governments and social movements to start planning for millions of people to land in new places. Prepping Miami’s evacuation is a perfect starting point. Its residents are a multiracial, multinational, and multigenerational assemblage that spans the class spectrum. Tragically, many of them are already climate migrants—like Puerto Ricans displaced by recent hurricanes.
If cities around the country were forced to plan how they’d integrate arriving Miamians into communities flush with public green investment, they’d get a head start on planning for climate migration generally. This would also trigger conversations about zoning for density, enshrining tenant rights, upgrading infrastructure, taxing the rich, building green banks, and battling racism and police violence.
Throughout his article, Cohen references non-scientific concerns like emancipation, the “Great Migration,” environmental injustice, and apartheid. The only thing missing from Cohen’s argument were actual facts and data providing evidence for the need to withdraw from Miami or that climate refugees are or will become a problem.
Addressing Cohen’s climate refugee concerns first, as explored here and here, neither hurricane frequency nor intensity have increased during the period of modern warming. So worsening hurricanes won’t drive people to abandon Miami, or drive people from islands near Miami to the U.S. mainland. As to the climate refugees Cohen believes are already trickling into to Miami, which he believes will soon become a flood, it turns out he is wrong again. Not a single climate refugee has been proven, as discussed at Climate Realism, here, nor is there reason to believe the United States or any other country is about to be swamped by climate refugees, as discussed here and here.
To The Nation’s credit, Cohen’s article has a counterpoint response from Samantha Schuyler, The Nation’s own research director. Unfortunately Schuyler’s response is only slightly less alarmist.
“At some point, if South Florida doesn’t change its approach to navigating climate change, evacuation will be necessary,” Schuyler writes. “But by withdrawing from Miami too soon, we will lose a vibrant city that could have become a training ground for learning how to adapt to the planet’s future.”
As discussed in numerous Climate Realism articles, here and here, for instance, there is no evidence whatsoever seas are rising at an usually rapid rate.
NASA satellite instruments, measuring sea-level since 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of 1.2 inches per decade. As shown in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise, this is approximately the same pace of sea-level rise that has occurred since at least the mid-1800s. Moreover, there has been little or no acceleration in sea-level rise during recent years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a tidal gauge just offshore from Miami on Virginia Key. The NOAA Virginia Key tidal gauge shows sea level at Miami is rising even more slowly than the global average of 1.2 inches per decade, as seen in Figure 1 below. Miami, shows no signs of acceleration in sea level rise.
So, if sea-level rise is slower that the global average, showing no signs of acceleration, what is driving Cohen’s and Schuyler worry that Miami may soon be uninhabitable?
At the core of Cohen’s and, to a lesser extent, Schuyler’s concern about climate change swamping Miami are flawed computer models and actual land subsidence.
Cohen and Schuyler have seemingly joined other pop-culture climate analysts to embrace worst-case scenarios generated by computer climate models about the future. However, in a recent report, some climate scientists are putting the brakes on future warming and say other researchers should avoid suspect climate models. This research confirms what Climate Realism first reported in August 2021, the climate model Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) produces “implausibly hot forecasts of future warming.”
Without the worst-case scenario, sea-level rise predictions are dialed back. The one piece of evidence that Cohen did cite to make his case for rapidly rising seas is the Miami-Dade County Flooding Vulnerability Viewer, a computer mapping tool for Miami showing what the future might look like with sea-level rise. Yet even this evidence fails to support Cohen’s claims. By doing a side-by side comparison, shown in Figure 2 you can see for yourself that Miami isn’t in need of “evacuation” at all.
Miami’s real problem isn’t rising seas as much as land subsidence. Much of Miami was built on reclaimed swamp land, and then built up with modern infrastructure. That extra weight causes a sinking of the land, known as subsidence, allowing seawater to seep in when the surfaces sink to near sea-level. It also means that during strong rainfall events, and hurricane storm surge, areas that have subsided don’t drain as they did years before.
This is clearly covered in the scientific paper Land subsidence contribution to coastal flooding hazard in southeast Florida, published in Proceedings of IAHS in 2020. The paper clearly states:
Preliminary results reveal that subsidence occurs in localized patches (< 0.02 km2) with magnitude of up to 3 mm yr?1, in urban areas built on reclaimed marshland. These results suggest that contribution of local land subsidence affect only small areas along the southeast Florida coast, but in those areas coastal flooding hazard is significantly higher compared to non-subsiding areas.
Subsidence is also driven by freshwater withdrawals from the region’s groundwater reserves to satisfy the Miami metro area’s growing population.
So, just as the Figure 2 comparison shows, “only small areas along the southeast Florida coast” are affected, and Miami itself is hardly in need of evacuation.
Climate activists such as Cohen and his media regurgitators at The Nation are simply making up claims and counting on nobody fact-checking them to point out their lies as has been done here. It is an indictment of the shoddy state of journalism today.
https://climaterealism.com/2023/02/the-nation-flounders-on-miami-sea-level-rise-story/
***********************************************L.A. City Council Votes Unanimously to Replace Natural Gas with Unproven Hydrogen Power
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to convert a natural gas power plant to a new hydrogen system that critics say may not provide enough power and could cause more environmental damage.
The proposal is part of a “Green New Deal” adopted by former mayor Eric Garcetti to shutter three natural gas plants in favor of “renewable” energy — over objections that solar and wind power would not be sufficient, and that the move would cost thousands of union jobs.
Garcetti stuck with his plan even after the state suffered electricity shortages in 2020 and after Democrats lost a local special election in which the plan was a key issue.
The city council voted to take the first steps to implement Garcetti’s plan, according to the Los Angeles Times:
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with an $800-million plan to convert the city’s largest gas-fired power plant to green hydrogen — a first-of-its-kind project that was hailed by supporters as an important step to solve the climate crisis but slammed by critics as a greenwashing boondoggle that will harm vulnerable communities.
…
The city’s ultimate goal is burning 100% green hydrogen — but [Department of Water and Power] officials have acknowledged the technology might not be ready right away. That means the initial fuel mix at Scattergood might include more planet-warming natural gas than hydrogen.
…
In public comments before the vote, critics from groups including Communities for a Better Environment, Pacoima Beautiful and the Sierra Club noted that although hydrogen doesn’t produce planet-warming carbon emissions when burned, it does generate lung-damaging nitrogen oxide pollution — much more than gas, at least using current technology.
The city’s goal is to produce 100% “clean” electricity by 2035 — an even more aggressive goal than the state’s target of 100% renewable by 2045, though a recent state analysis suggested there is no plan to achieve it.
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Climate czar Biden spiked heat, electricity bills
The price of gasoline is ticking higher now that President Biden has depleted our emergency strategic oil supply to artificially bring down sticker shock and help Democrats in the midterm elections.
But it’s the other gas — natural gas — that is surging in price, ballooning not just home and business heating and operations costs but also electricity rates. Gas is the U.S.’s lead energy source to power the plants that feed electric grids that light our way of life. Natural gas makes electric vehicles, like the $100,000 model Mr. Biden tweeted on Jan. 30, run.
Natural gas used to be thought of as “clean energy.” Not anymore. Mr. Biden and his climate warrior campaign donors have declared war. It’s as odious to them as oil, the most hated substance since Fritz Haber developed Germany’s World War I poison gas arsenal.
The dynamo tandem of petroleum/natural gas fueled the world’s great advances last century in wealth, technology, health care, transportation, space exploration, life expectancy and nutrition.
But Mr. Biden is sidelining Earth’s bounty, without which we would live and die in physical and mental darkness.
The president’s allies are pressing financial institutions to stop funding fossil fuel production, though the banks would have to shut down without it, making 1929 look like a wonderful life. I don’t think there is one banker rising high on the virtue pedestal who has any idea how the firm would operate without them. But the climate warrior status is too good to resist — and you get the all-important positive press.
Mr. Biden says the answer to filling the natural gas gap is to put thousands of windmills out to sea. We are finding out they may well be killing sea life. We know they shred birds and beneficial insects. The carnage used to drive environmentalists to protest and block and burn. But now, they say, windmills kill far fewer birds than house cats, so who cares.
In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy blocked windmills off Cape Cod that would spoil his vacation home view. Whale watchers need a new champion.
From the starting gate, Mr. Biden targeted the natural gas industry. In January 2021, giddy over the thought of more campaign donors after spending over $1 billion to win the election, he signed executive orders making public land off-limits to exploration.
When the president high-fives the death of fossil fuels, its price sat at $2.71 per million BTUs, according to U.S. government stats. By year’s end, the cost nearly doubled to $5.05. In 2022, the spot-check price reached $8.81 in August before falling back to $5.53.
Washington Gas, the supplier for “swamp” creatures, has raised the per-therm, or TH, consumer costs by 50%.
This goes unnoticed by the super-rich lobbyists, PR types, federal contractors and lawyers who encircle our government.
But regular people are noticing.
In San Diego, for example, KUSI News reported on a diner that saw its gas bill shoot up from $2,200 to over $8,000. KUSI said that climate warriors are to blame.
“State and city politicians move to ban natural gas, and suddenly small businesses are choking on their energy bills,” said the report, filmed while fired-up stoves cooked diner fare.
According to government figures, the average price of natural gas per “therm” rose from $2 in December 2021 to $2.38 a year later.
In 2021, the average annual price at the Henry Hub trading site in Louisiana for wholesale natural gas was $3.91 for 1 million BTUs. The average in 2022: $6.48, a 66% increase.
In 2019-20, when Donald Trump was president, the average price was $2.08. Post-Biden throttling, the price sat at $4.51 in 2021-22 — more than doubling.
For natural gas-powered electricity, the kilowatt-hour (KWH) rate paid by homeowners and businesses was 0.136 cents in January 2021, when Mr. Biden began his energy magic.
By next January, the price was .147 cents, and by the end of the year .165 cents.
Higher gas-electric bills all around.
Washington Gas gives these reasons for price increases: “This year, natural gas market prices are higher based on many factors such as the economic recovery from COVID-19, increased natural gas demand from last winter, and slower than anticipated production.”
Got that. “Slower than anticipated production.”
I asked the Natural Gas Supply Association, the people keeping us warm as climate change failed to stop what we call “winter,” if the drilling ban hinders production.
A spokesperson said the big drawback right now: pipelines. As stated earlier, Mr. Biden doesn’t want them. Deep-blue states who like banning stuff followed his lead.
“The greater challenge by far for the industry is a lack of sufficient pipeline capacity in specific regions of the country, Northeast; California,” the association says. “Boston/NYC area — we need more pipeline capacity up in that area, but New York keeps canceling and stalling natural gas pipeline permits.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/feb/8/climate-czar-biden-spiked-heat-electricity-bills/
***************************************12 February, 2023
Don’t let Biden & Co. force YOUR nest egg to be invested in ESG companies
President Joe Biden is coming for your nest egg. For real: A new Biden Labor Department rule aims to steer the retirement funds of 152 million Americans toward companies with woke policies on climate change and other “environmental, social and governance” goals.
Cross your fingers that state attorneys general, if not Congress, can stop him.
Under the Biden rule, fund managers would no longer be limited to investing workers’ assets “solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries,” as the law has long required. Instead, they could also “consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select investments and exercise shareholder rights” — by implication, even if it doesn’t maximize returns for workers.
Climate-change and social-justice warriors began pushing companies to adopt ESG practices, and for large shareholders to invest in them, back in the Obama era. But President Donald Trump banned retirement-fund managers from using worker cash for such political purposes. The new Biden rule would override that.
At a time “when Americans’ 401(k)s have already taken such a hit due to market downturns and record high inflation, the last thing we should do is encourage fiduciaries to make decisions with a lower rate of return for purely ideological reasons,” warns Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who’s pushing a resolution to block the rule.
It’s “irresponsible of the Biden administration to jeopardize retirement savings for more than 150 million Americans for purely political purposes,” fumes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
Trouble is, Manchin is so far the only Democratic senator to join the bill’s 49 Republican backers — so it may well fall short of a 51-vote majority needed to pass.
That leaves a group of 25 GOP state attorneys general who’ve sued to keep the change from taking effect. Their suit says the rule “contravenes” the law’s “clear command that fiduciaries act with the sole motive of promoting the financial interests of plan participants and their beneficiaries.”
The AGs are dead right. If woke individuals want to invest their own money for political purposes rather than try to maximize returns, that’s their business. But Biden has no right to do it with your money. He needs to be stopped.
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Biden admin cracks down on washers, fridges in latest climate action: 'Overregulation on steroids'
The Biden administration proposed sweeping rules Friday to boost energy efficiency standards for clothes washers and refrigerators in an action it claimed would save consumers money and "significantly reduce pollution."
The Department of Energy (DOE) said the two regulations, which would be implemented in 2027 if approved, are projected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 233 million metric tons over the next 30 years. The agency also estimated that the energy-efficiency standards taking certain appliance models off the market would save $3.5 billion on an annual basis.
"With today’s proposals, we’re building on a decades-long effort with our industry partners to ensure tomorrow’s appliances work more efficiently and save Americans money," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
"Over the last forty years, at the direction of Congress, DOE has worked to promote innovation, improve consumers’ options, and raise efficiency standards for household appliances without sacrificing the reliability and performance that Americans have come to expect," she continued.
According to the announcement, the washers and refrigerators affected by the regulations currently represent 5% of annual residential energy use and 8% of residential electricity use nationwide.
The new standards proposed for the two household appliances are the latest in a series of energy efficiency actions the Biden administration has pursued since taking office two years ago. In 2022 alone, the administration took more than 110 actions on appliances.
On his first day in office in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department of Energy to make "major revisions" to current appliance regulation standards and standards set by the Trump administration. A month later, the agency listed more than a dozen energy efficiency rules, impacting appliances like water heaters, cooking products and lamps, that it would review.
Experts, though, have argued the appliance regulations are unnecessary and that consumers are already able to freely purchase more efficient appliances.
"This is overregulation on steroids," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "These are appliances that have already been subjected to multiple rounds of successively tighter standards."
"There is just not much there there anymore," he said. "There's a great risk of doing more harm than good in the form of appliances — refrigerators or washers that cost more upfront than you're ever likely to save in the form of less energy and water use."
Lieberman added that such appliance regulations were part of the Biden administration's "war on energy use."
"By using climate as a kind of finger on the scale in favor of tougher standards, I think that's all the more reason to be suspicious that this is going to be a bad deal from a consumer standpoint," he continued.
"Anybody who wants to buy ultra-efficient appliances is free to do so with or without these regulations. The regulations just make that the only game in town and usually at a higher cost that may or may not be earned back over the life of the appliance."
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Biden Slams Oil Companies in State of the Union Address While Admitting We Still Need Oil
For the sake of my blood pressure and mental health, I did not watch the entire State of the Union Address this year. I did, however, take a look at President Biden’s statements on climate change and energy. Unsurprisingly, Biden’s commentary on those topics was not overly insightful or nuanced.
Biden opined on how climate change is causing more extreme weather events (it’s not), he slammed oil companies for daring to make profits when oil prices skyrocketed last year, and then he went off script and admitted that we still need oil for the next few decades, at least.
Such bi-polar statements and behavior are not all that unusual for Biden, and not just when it comes to oil. He publicly chastises oil companies for not drilling enough, or producing enough to keep gasoline prices lower, even as he blocks new lease sales and slow walks or denies permits to drill, both of which throttle new production. Biden’s actions, of course, are among the key reasons for the increase in prices at the pump. Even when oil companies try to produce more, Biden punishes them by imposing new regulations from production to transportation, as well as government encouragement of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment schemes and fossil fuel divestment by major banks.
The oil industry is in a state of feast or famine, and it has always been this way. When I sat down in my first introductory petroleum engineering class, the professor said to us, “Be prepared to be laid off every couple of years.” Sure enough, around the time oil prices took a nosedive in April 2020, with West Texas Intermediate futures prices hitting -$37 per barrel and Brent crude plummeting to $9.12, thousands of employees were laid off in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and Texas oilfields alone.
I didn’t hear anyone on the left advocate for reducing the tax load on the oil industry while this happened.
Biden is not alone in calling for additional windfall taxes on oil companies; international groups are also opining that the record-breaking profits of Shell and BP, in particular, justify imposing new taxes on them.
Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the United Kingdom’s offshore energy industry and supply chain association, told RigZone that these companies are already paying record windfall taxes in the UK. BP, a UK company, already pays 75 percent in total windfall tax on profits made in UK waters, the “highest of any industry,” reports OEUK. The energy industry group says these taxes can’t go higher without risk of oil companies abandoning operations in UK waters altogether, which would, obviously reduce government tax revenue substantially.
Oil companies like Shell or BP are not like a local business, or even like other international chains like Wal-Mart. These companies are not simple: they have multiple international subsidiaries, profits made in countries around the world with their own tax and trade agreements, not to mention international subsidiaries that are invested in renewables like offshore wind. To think that a windfall tax in the United States or UK would benefit gasoline prices is naïve at best.
Add these complexities to the fact that, as Biden said, oil and gas are necessary for several more decades (and beyond), it seems unlikely that our doddering president’s “old man yells at cloud” routine will motivate an international movement that forces oil companies to give the government more of their money. By contrast, it may suppress investment into new production at a time when increased production is needed.
Concerning the profits Big Oil companies make, they will be, as they always have been, returned to investors/owners in the form of higher stock prices and dividends—which is what every publicly traded company is formed to do: maximize return on investment to the owners over the long term or reinvest money into multiple divisions of the companies, including their green energy initiatives. They may also go towards paying for the increasing fines and regulatory requirements of the Biden administration.
Maybe, if my friends offshore are lucky, operators will spend a little more for the higher-tier food service on the drill ships and platforms, too. As long as they’re spending money, buy those roughnecks steak twice a week!
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Australian climate groups fear a key government policy to drive down emissions will instead push them up
Climate advocates are insisting changes be made to one of the federal government's key emissions-reduction tools, warning it currently risks perversely allowing emissions to increase.
The Australian Conservation Foundation and other climate advocacy groups have raised concerns about the role carbon credits will play in the reshaped "safeguard mechanism", which will be used to force heavy emitters to cut their pollution.
The safeguard mechanism will cap the emissions of the 215 heaviest-polluting companies — like coal producers, steelmakers and airlines — and force those who breach their cap to either trade emissions with other companies or buy carbon credits.
The use of carbon credits is not limited by the scheme, so companies can theoretically operate as normal and buy credits to cover their emissions over the cap.
The ACF is pointing to new analysis it commissioned from global research firm Climate Analytics, which found allowing those companies unlimited use of carbon credits would "very likely fail to reduce emissions".
The analysis raises fresh concerns about the usefulness of carbon credits in reducing emissions, arguing forcing companies to actually reduce emissions is highly preferable.
"The proposal … would only serve to enable the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels," the report finds.
"Instead of reducing emissions, as is urgently needed, this proposal would provide an avenue for fossil fuel companies to continue polluting at the expense of Australians – and indeed the world — facing worsening climate change impacts."
Controversial credits
The use and usefulness of carbon credits is highly contested within climate policy discussion.
Carbon credits effectively aim to counterbalance emissions.
Credits are created by either avoiding emissions (for example, through burning landfill gas), or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (through tree-planting and regenerating forest on cleared land).
Those credits can then be sold to companies to counteract the pollution they create.
Significant criticisms of Australia's carbon crediting scheme prompted a major review, led by former chief scientist Ian Chubb, which found the scheme is fundamentally sound.
It did make a number of recommendations for change, going to better oversight of the scheme and its integrity, changing rules for those burning landfill gas, and abandoning the "avoided deforestation" method of creating credits.
While the changes have been broadly welcomed, the Chubb review has done little to satisfy many of the carbon credit scheme's strongest critics.
Bill Hare, one of the authors of the Climate Analytics study, said he did not think the review dealt fully with questions around "additionality" — that is, whether or not the action creating the carbon credit would have simply happened anyway.
He said there was enough available evidence to hold significant doubts.
"A significant fraction of the human-induced regeneration credits would probably have happened in the absence of a carbon-unit generating scheme," he said.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has previously defended the integrity of carbon credits, and their role in the safeguard mechanism.
He argues the credits provide necessary flexibility for companies that will struggle to cut emissions dramatically until new technology is developed.
"Carbon credits are important, they are a complement to emissions reduction at the facility level, at the coal face, if you will," he said.
"They will not ever replace that, but they are an important part of the journey, and I'm absolutely determined that there will be rigour."
Emissions offset, but for how long?
The analysis also raises questions about how long emissions have to be offset for.
Under the current Australian carbon credit unit (ACCU) scheme, credits either last 25 years or 100 years depending on their design.
After that period, stored carbon (carbon captured in trees or soil, for example) no longer has to be maintained — it can simply be released back into the atmosphere.
But Climate Analytics argues that those time frames are far too short.
It points to research suggesting that for every tonne of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, 40 per cent will remain a century on, and more than 20 per cent will remain after 1,000 years.
The report argues that means carbon credits cannot permanently offset emissions over the long term.
"After [either 25 or 100 years], when carbon is ultimately lost from ACCU projects, as is likely over longer time frames, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would be higher than if the offset scheme had not been used in the first place, and instead an emission reduction was made at its source."
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10 February, 2023
Norway: Plug-In Car Sales Collapsed By 80% In January 2023
January 2023 was a very unusual month in Norway, as the automotive market noted the lowest number of new passenger car registrations since 1962 (61 years ago). In total, only 1,860 new cars were registered last month (down 77 percent year-over-year). That's a massive drop (by 95 percent) compared to the previous month (39,497 in December).
The Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) explains that several things caused such a result. The first was war and pandemic (supply constraints), which caused lower sales in early 2022 and higher sales in late 2022 (specifically in November and December).
The next thing is VAT for new electric cars with a price above 500,000 NOK ($48,248) starting from January 1, as well as a new weight tax for all passenger cars. In other words, customers rushed to buy cars in late 2022, but in early 2023 there were not too many customers. OFV says that it's too early to say whether the sales drop will extend beyond the Spring.
Plug-in electric car sales were significantly affected by the above, and in January the number of new registrations amounted to 1,419 (down 80 percent year-over-year). That's still about 76.3 percent of the total market.
The gasoline, diesel, and non-rechargeable hybrids accounted for 23.7 percent in January - the highest value in more than two years (1.9% gasoline, 7.6% diesel, 14.2% hybrids).
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New Zealand's cow burps probably don't matter much
Kevin Trenberth
But is methane from cows really as bad for the climate as methane from fossil fuels? And given its shorter lifetime in the atmosphere, is methane as bad as carbon dioxide?
Some carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. But methane, the second-most important greenhouse gas, lingers in the atmosphere for only about a decade before being oxidized to form carbon dioxide.
However, its effects can be misjudged. A rough equivalence of the heating from methane to that of carbon dioxide is often used to estimate its effects on the climate, but the number varies by the time frame.
The global warming potential typically used for methane is 28 times that of carbon dioxide for a 100-year period. But a spike in methane has no effect after about 30 years because the methane is well gone by then. So, methane’s effects on temperature are greatly overstated over centuries, while considerably understated over the first 20 years. Indeed, scientists have argued that short-lived climate pollutants such as methane should be split out from long-lived ones such as carbon dioxide when making policy.
Biogenic or fossil?
Biogenic methane comes from all sorts of livestock – cattle, sheep, goats, deer and even buffalo – and it has a circular life.
It originates as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is taken up by grass and other plants during photosynthesis. Those plants are eaten by animals and then methane is burped out during digestion, or released as flatulence or through decaying manure. Once released, methane stays in the atmosphere for about a decade before it becomes carbon dioxide and is taken up by plants again.
Some carbon is temporarily stored as meat, leather or wool, but it too is eventually recycled. The amount of methane from livestock would be stable were it not for rising demand for animal protein by the ever-increasing global population, leading to increasing livestock on farms.
Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have been in the Earth for millions of years. Fossil methane is a waste product of coal mines, and also is extracted from shale and other underground deposits as natural gas.
While biogenic methane ultimately recycles the carbon dioxide that was its source a short time ago, fossil-sourced methane adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Studies have estimated that livestock is responsible for about one-third of global anthropogenic methane emissions, while oil and gas operations represent about 63%.
That doesn’t mean countries shouldn’t reduce biogenic methane, too. But the circular life of biogenic methane means that it should be considered separately from fossil methane when determining how to manage emissions to reach net zero by 2050.
Implications for climate policies
Many of the actions that governments take today under the guise of net-zero emissions risk passing the harms of climate change down to future generations rather than fundamentally solving the problem. Strategies that aim to reduce carbon from any source, as opposed to focusing on reducing the use of fossil fuels, are an example.
Right now, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is generally treated interchangeably with carbon emissions from clearing forests or from methane emissions. Simple conversion factors, while convenient, mask complicated value judgments. For example, reducing methane may buy a decade of lower temperatures. Reducing fossil carbon, on the other hand, buys thousands of years.
Steadying or reducing livestock numbers and perhaps changing their feed can stabilize their methane emissions. But to address the climate change crisis long term, I believe it is essential to recognize that the real solution for climate change is to cut emissions of fossil fuels.
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Climate & Human History: Horrors of the Greek Dark Ages
History tells us that bad things happen when the climate cools. Very bad things. The first of the cold periods we will examine came at the end of the Bronze Age’s Minoan Warm Period.
A drop in temperature at the start of the 13th century B.C. ushered in dramatic changes that were devastating to humanity. Drought descended on Europe, North Africa, West Asia and western North America. The ever-greater numbers of people residing in ever-larger cities of ambitious empires were overcome by sudden climatic changes.
Areas that once prospered now faced famine and hunger. Between 1250 and 1150 B.C. there was widespread decimation of nearly all the great empires that had prospered during the Minoan Warm Period. This period of societal collapse is known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse.
According to historian David Kaniewski (2013): "The abrupt climate change at the end of the Late Bronze Age caused region-wide crop failures, leading towards socio-economic crises and unsustainability."
Following the collapse, survivors entered a “dark age” where iron replaced bronze and nearly all trade, art and architecture disappeared:
"Civilization vanished for four centuries or more. The dark centuries lingered in the collective memory for many generations." (Fagan, 2004)
Once again, we find that, contrary to claims of additional warming leading to catastrophe, history tells us that we should welcome the warmth and fear the cold.
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9 February, 2023
World’s coral reefs not declining, new paper reveals
A new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation refutes alarmist claims about the state of the world's coral reefs.
According to the author, eminent reef scientist Peter Ridd, the official data show no signs of any long-term trends in reef health. Indeed, the best records - for Australia's Great Barrier Reef - suggest that coral cover is at record highs.
Dr Ridd said:
"The public are constantly told that reefs are being irreparably damaged by global warming, but bleaching events, about which there is so much doom-mongering, are simply corals' natural response to changes in the environment. They are an extraordinarily adaptable lifeform, and bleaching events are almost always followed by rapid recovery."
Dr Ridd suggests that rather than being seen as under threat from climate change, corals should actually be recognised as one of the organisms least likely to suffer harm in a warming world.
"Corals get energy from a symbiotic relationship with various species of algae. When environmental conditions change, they can rapidly switch to a different species that is better suited to the new conditions. This shapeshifting means that most setbacks they suffer will be short-lived."
Dr Ridd says that the real risks to reefs come from overfishing and pollution.
The GWPF invited responses to this paper from authors likely to dissent from its conclusions. None of the authors who were contacted accepted this invitation.
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UK Govt Deploys ‘Nudge Unit’ To Brainwash People Into Embracing ‘Net Zero’
The UK government has launched a new program to manipulate and goad people into accepting “a net zero society” as the solution to so-called ‘climate change’
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), as it is called, was launched by the UK government in 2021 and eventually taken over by Nesta, a self-described independent charity focused on innovation.
Nesta recently put out a “guide” outlining some of the techniques that are being used to psychologically provoke the general public into accepting a new normal to ‘fight global warming’.
‘Greenhouse gas’ emissions, the report states, are evil and must be done away with by the government.
One way to do this is by launching a “nudge unit” to corral the human herd into embracing a future filled with green fascism and the loss of all freedoms, which we are told destroy the planet.
The stated purpose of the nudge unit is to brainwash people into living shackled lives for fear that if they don’t, the planet will melt, the oceans will rise, and everyone will die.
“These choices concern and consume people’s everyday lives: what they wear, what and how much they eat, how they travel to work, whether that job is ‘climate-friendly,’ how they travel just in general and where to, for example, for a vacation,” explains Reclaim the Net.
“These are all examples of what the report aims to affect from the behavioral perspective, and clearly, the ‘solution’ is to actively push citizens toward ‘social transformation’.”
Net Zero Means Zero Freedoms
The report also mentions trying to redirect people’s behaviors through their smartphone apps by reminding them, as one example, to order less takeout food because the packaging pollutes the earth.
A “net zero society” also means that people will have to eat far less food – and especially far less meat. So, the nudge unit might inform a user via his or her smartphone that ordering a smaller portion of “plant-based” items as opposed to real food is optimal for stopping ‘climate change’.
Social media influencers also play a role in this as they can instruct their followers about how to adopt more “green behaviors” that are ‘environmentally friendly’.
A celebrity, for instance, might avoid flying on her private jet for a day and instead film herself riding a bike to the store to show her followers what “saving the planet” looks like.
Individual car ownership is a no-no in the net zero society of the future, and the BIT report addresses this as well with a case study about a new “Mobility as a Service” app that is designed to encourage people to take public transportation or to just not leave their homes all that often in order to minimize ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions.
Another case study included in the report discusses “encouraging” dining establishment customers to order smaller portions of “sustainable” food items as defined by the globalists.
One concept is to create a “sustainable food easy” app that “gives many opportunities to provide timely substitution prompts, or encourage personalized goals and tips linked to product filters and ranking.”
Some of the listed partners for these case study interventions include HMG, the French government, the Crown Prince Court of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the World Wildlife Forum, Unilever, Tesco, Sky, Gumtree, and Cogo, among others.
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Mainstream gets extreme weather wrong again
“If it [a scientific hypothesis] disagrees with experiment, it’s WRONG.” – Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman
The popular but mistaken belief that weather extremes are worsening because of climate change has been bolstered in recent years by ever increasing hype in nearly all mainstream media coverage of extreme events, despite a lack of scientific evidence for the assertion. This month’s story by NPR (National Public Radio) in the U.S. is just the latest in a steady drumbeat of media misinformation.
Careful examination of the actual data reveals that if there is any trend in most weather extremes, it is downward rather than upward. In fact, a 2016 survey of extreme weather events since 1900 found strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century saw more weather extremes than the second half, when global warming was more prominent. More information can be found in my recent reports on weather extremes (here, here and here).
To be fair, the NPR story merely parrots the conclusions of an ostensibly scientific report from the AMS (American Meteorological Society), Explaining Extreme Events in 2021 and 2022 from a Climate Perspective. Both the AMS and NPR claim to show how the most extreme weather events of the previous two years were driven by climate change.
Nevertheless, all the purported connections rely on the dubious field of extreme-event attribution science, which uses statistics and climate models to supposedly detect the impact of global warming on weather disasters. The shortcomings of this approach are twofold. First, the models have a dismal track record in predicting the future (or indeed of hindcasting the past); and second, attribution studies that assign specific extremes to either natural variability or human causes are based on highly questionable statistical methodology (see here and here).
So the NPR claim that “scientists are increasingly able to pinpoint exactly how the weather is changing as the earth heats up” and “how climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years” is utter nonsense. These weather extremes have occurred from time immemorial, long before modern global warming began.
Yet the AMS and NPR insist that extreme drought in California and Nevada in 2021 was “six times more likely because of climate change.” This is completely at odds with a 2007 U.S. study which reconstructed the drought pattern in North America over the last 1200 years, using tree rings as a proxy.
The reconstruction is illustrated in the figure below, showing the drought area in western North America from 800 to 2003, as a percentage of the total land area. The thick black line is a 60-year mean, while the blue and red horizontal lines represent the average drought area during the periods 1900–2003 and 900–1300, respectively. Clearly, several unprecedently long and severe megadroughts have occurred in this region since the year 800; 2021 (not shown in the graph) was unexceptional.
The same is true for floods. A 2017 study of global flood risk concluded there is very little evidence that flooding is becoming more prevalent worldwide, despite average rainfall getting heavier as the planet warms. And, although the AMS report cites an extremely wet May of 2021 in the UK as likely to have resulted from climate change, “rescued” Victorian rainfall data reveals that the UK was just as wet in Victorian times as today.
The illusion that major floods are becoming more frequent is due in part to the world’s growing population and the appeal, in the more developed countries at least, of living near water. This has led to more people building their dream homes in vulnerable locations, on river or coastal floodplains, as shown in the next figure.
Depicted is what has been termed the “Expanding Bull’s-Eye Effect” for a hypothetical river flood impacting a growing city. It can be seen that the same flood will cause much more destruction in 2040 than in 1950. A larger and wealthier population exposes more individuals and property to the devastation wrought by intermittent flooding from rainfall-swollen rivers or storm surges. Population expansion beyond urban areas, not climate change, has also worsened the death toll and property damage from hurricanes and tornadoes.
In a warming world, it is hardly surprising that heat waves are becoming more common. However, the claim by the AMS and NPR that heat waves are now “more extreme than ever” can be questioned, either because heat wave data prior to 1950 is completely ignored in many compilations, or because the data before 1950 is sparse. No recent heat waves come close to matching the frequency and duration of those experienced worldwide in the 1930s.
The media are misleading and stoking fear in the public about perfectly normal extreme weather, although there are some notable exceptions such as The Australian. The alarmist stories of the others are largely responsible for the current near-epidemic of “climate anxiety” in children, the most vulnerable members of our society.
https://clintel.org/mainstream-gets-extreme-weather-wrong-again/
***************************************************Realism hits oil company
BP’s record profits and its decision to slow down its sector-leading emissions-reductions push has infuriated activists, but delighted its shareholders.
Along with the other oil giants, BP had an earnings bonanza last year as the war in Ukraine caused oil and gas prices to soar as Russian gas was taken out of the market and Europe scrambled to source energy elsewhere in conditions, particular for gas, which were already tight. BP’s profit more than doubled to $US27.7 billion ($40 billion), from $US12.8 billion in 2021.
Three years ago, its CEO Bernard Looney unveiled the most ambitious response of any of the oil majors to climate change, pledging to cut BP’s oil and gas production by 40 per cent by 2030 and reduce its emissions and those of its customers by 35 to 40 per cent, compared with 2019 levels, by the end of this decade.
This week, however, along with the result, he announced a pivot from that strategy.
The company now plans to reduce oil production by “only” 25 per cent by the end of the decade, and to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by “only” 20 to 30 per cent.
It will also spend $US8 billion more than previously budgeted on new oil and gas investments and will match that figure with a similar investment in its “transition” businesses – biofuels, convenience outlets, electric charging stations, renewables and hydrogen.
By 2030, BP expects to be producing about 2 million barrels a day of oil equivalent. Its previous target was 1.5 million barrels a day.
Shareholders cheer
Unsurprisingly, the dilution of its climate goals drew fierce criticism from environmental activists, but was applauded by shareholders and market analysts who have been frustrated that BP (and Shell) shares trade at earnings multiples nearly half those of their US peers Exxon and Chevron.
The US majors are largely sticking to their knitting, investing little in renewable energy or other clean energy-related projects while maximising profits from their legacy assets and showering their shareholders with cash via dividends and share buybacks.
There is an obvious financial rationale for BP’s dialling back of its climate-related goals.
It’s not just the short-term opportunity to generate bumper profits from strong oil prices and the big spike in gas prices that a combination of the pandemic-related dearth of investment in new production and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have created.
According to BP, it can generate returns on investment of 15 per cent to 20 per cent from its fossil fuel projects. The returns from bioenergy are about 15 per cent, but only 6 to 8 per cent for renewables such as solar and wind. Within the new strategy and the additional investment in non-fossil fuel projects is a tilt towards biofuels, electric vehicle charging and its convenience business.
But BP would argue that there’s also a social rationale to its revised plan.
The war in Ukraine, the choking off of access to the Russian gas that supplied 40 per cent of Europe’s gas requirements and the embargoes Europe and the US imposed on Russian oil was a potential “lights off” moment for Europe and its governments.
They scrambled to secure alternate supplies, paying whatever it took to compete with the traditional Asian buyers for LNG, re-opening mothballed coal mines and expanding the production of existing mines, restarting dormant nuclear facilities and buying oil from non-Russian producers.
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8 February, 2023
Climate alarmism is 'robbing' students of hope, ambition, earth science professor says
Geological sciences professor, Dr. Matthew Wielicki, said adults pushing climate catastrophism are "robbing" young Americans of their "ambition and their hope."
Dr. Matthew Wielicki, a University of Alabama earth sciences professor, believes many STEM professionals overstate climate change's immediate effects, like warning of imminent and unavoidable catastrophes. He said such alarmism harms students' mental health.
"They’re only giving one side of the story," Wielicki told Fox News. "They’re catastrophizing or over-exaggerating that side to try to make a point because they claim the ends justify the means."
"I think scientific integrity is way more important," he said.
Wielicki believes political ideology infiltrating college classrooms, particularly diversity, equity and inclusion and climate alarmism, has tarnished the teaching profession. He said young climate activists, like Greta Thunberg, aren't the problem since they're only believing what they're told.
"I never blame the young people," he said. "I blame the adults that are experts in the field that sit and zip their mouths because they don't want to rock the boat."
Wielicki taught earth sciences at the University of Alabama for nearly eight years, fulfilling a lifelong dream to follow in his father’s footsteps as a college professor. Last month, he tweeted that he was resigning at the end of the semester because of the negative effects educators' political messaging was having on students.
"I loved science because it wasn't political," Wielicki told Fox News. "And now we're getting rid of that."
Over the past few years, he began noticing his students were increasingly distressed about climate issues.
"I started asking my students and polling my students and I realized they had an exactly upside-down view of the state of the climate," Wielicki said.
Students told Wielicki they didn't plan on starting a family or having children because they believed the planet would undergo some sort of geological catastrophe in the next decade.
"I felt like as an earth scientist, that's my community that isn't speaking up and is letting false narratives get out there," Wielicki said. "Al Gore up there saying the oceans will boil—there's no chance that the oceans will boil."
Wielicki believes there are threats from climate change but he feels they're being overstated by people who stand to benefit from green initiatives or who want to scare Americans into action. He said the scientific community's credibility will be damaged if STEM professionals continue to push biased narratives.
"There's going to be bigger challenges in the future and then people like me that are scientists—nobody is going to listen to us," Wielicki said. "We saw it with COVID, we're seeing it with climate."
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Al Gore and the End of Climate Policy
Al Gore was right about one thing in his rant at the World Economic Forum in Davos: CO2 emissions have continued to climb and show no sign of being affected by “climate policy.”
He didn’t mention his own contributions to this outcome, intervening in the early Obama years to turn climate policy into an excuse for protectionist pork barrel, with no real effect on climate. Nor that he was the seminal author of a brand of green hyperventilation that almost guaranteed real climate action would become a polarizing dead letter.
He also didn’t mention his singular stroke of luck in the history books, which will let him off more kindly than he deserves because the science now paints a less dire picture of our climate future.
The climate press proved the point, amid his Alpine Vaudeville, by collapsing uncritically in front of a newly-released “Harvard” study allegedly revealing that Exxon 40 years ago predicted today’s warming with “breathtaking,” “stunning,” “astonishing” accuracy.
These adjectives aren’t in the study itself, which is merely tendentious, sponsored by the activists at the Rockefeller Family Fund. But the timing probably wasn’t an accident.
In fact, Exxon’s results were identical to those of other scientists because it collaborated with them. Its findings weren’t hidden “behind closed doors,” as one report alleged. They were published in peer-reviewed journals. Rather blatantly, to get to its desired result, the “Harvard” study attributed to Exxon outside research that its scientists merely “reported.”
This retread builds on Rockefeller’s previous greatest hit, paying journalists in 2016 to flaunt Exxon’s decades-old scientific efforts. Exxon was accused of “emphasizing the uncertainty” when uncertainty was the crucial scientific output. No matter what Exxon said, not sellable to policy makers at the time was spending unknown trillions to reduce future temperatures maybe by 4.5 degrees Celsius, maybe by 1.5 degrees. Yet this was the best guidance science could provide for four decades.
Rockefeller prefers to stress the $30 million Exxon once spent on climate-skeptical think tanks. This money, not the scientific uncertainty or humanity’s desire for cheap energy, explains the failure to enact meaningful CO2 reductions. It’s all Exxon’s fault.
OK, studies like this one sponsored by Rockefeller and served up by provocateurs at the Harvard history department and Germany’s Potsdam Institute exist to exploit media shallowness. They wouldn’t exist otherwise.
The hindsight fallacy abounds. Climate modelers, if their forecasts are borne out, can’t know if they were right for the right reasons or wrong reasons. The study also perilously juggles apples and oranges due to the difference between equilibrium and transient climate sensitivity. More to the point, nothing here redeems Rockefeller philanthropic money being poured down a Greta Thunberg rathole when real needs go unmet.
Never mind. After 40 years, an authoritative U.N. panel, which once shared Mr. Gore’s Nobel Prize, has made real progress on the uncertainty puzzle, not only narrowing the consensus range of likely climate outcomes, more importantly reducing the estimated risk of worst-case warming.
This upshot of its long-awaited Sixth Assessment Report in 2021-22 goes unreported by the same press that gobbles up Rockefeller’s Exxon hate-mongering. It significantly uprates the likelihood that human society will weather the expected changes handily. In turn, as I noted recently, scientists have been able to refocus usefully on outlier risks and geoengineering solutions if those outlier risks should materialize.
Hooray. This is progress. In the meantime, though, thanks to Rockefeller, Mr. Gore and others, we ended up with policy option C—spend X trillion to have no effect on climate. Our obsessive focus on green energy subsidies pleases many constituents but incentivizes more energy consumption overall. After all, the human appetite for energy is limitless if the price is right. Meanwhile, unused and even denigrated by the left is the only tool that was ever likely to reduce meaningfully the path of emissions, a carbon tax.
Oh well. Climate policy is effectively over and that’s probably fine. The energy machine will certainly incorporate new technologies, including renewables; there won’t be a major shift in emissions from the path they would have taken anyway.
Mr. Gore will continue his angry prophet act. Politics will continue to fuel a sacred pork scramble. The climate press will balance on its noses whatever memes are tossed its way. And humanity will adapt to the climate it gets,
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Green Fail: Dozens of Windmills Bailed Out by Diesel Generators - And Look What They Sprayed Into the Countryside
Dozens of wind turbines in Scotland recently failed because of cold weather and were bailed out by the same fossil fuels the green energy mob would like us to believe can and should be eliminated.
The latest black eye for hardline advocates for renewable energy occurred in December when 71 turbines were hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm after they failed to function appropriately in frigid temperatures, according to Glasgow’s Daily Record.
The report said the turbines froze up, siphoned away more power than they generated, and in some cases polluted the country’s beautiful countryside and waterways with hydraulic fluid.
An anonymous whistleblower described as a worker with electricity provider Scottish Power spoke up about the incident.
“The Scottish Government wants to make our country attractive to foreign investors as 40 percent of the wind that blows across Europe blows across Scotland,” the worker said, according to the Daily Record. “However, that should not mean we put up with our waterways and nature being polluted with carbon from diesel generators and hydraulic oil.”
The whistleblower also complained that Scottish Power’s wind turbines regularly experience issues or otherwise fail to protect the environment they were supposedly installed to preserve.
“Turbines are regularly offline due to faults where they are taking energy from the grid rather than producing it, and also left operating on half power for long periods due to parts which haven’t been replaced,” the person said.
“Dirty hydraulic oil is also regularly being sprayed out across the Scottish countryside due to cracks in mechanisms.”
A spokesman for Scottish Power admitted diesel generators were used to keep the turbines functioning as a temporary solution.
Of course, it is more than interesting that we are only hearing about this story now, months after the fact.
Environmental extremists and the establishment media are more or less on the same page with regard to pushing ineffective renewables onto the world.
Pipe dreams take precedence over pipelines.
But stories such as these prove two facts that are irrefutable: Green energy technology is not yet ready to power the world, and the powers that be don’t want the rest of us to know it.
Thankfully, no fatalities were reported during Scotland’s frigid early December.
Sadly, more than 200 people lost their lives in Texas two years ago after the state’s independent power grid failed. In February 2021, a historic winter storm disabled much of the state’s green energy infrastructure. Millions lost power, and many froze to death during a tragedy that largely could have been avoided had common sense prevailed.
If science could find a way to harness wishful thinking, the green lobby would have powered the globe with it decades ago.
Scotland relied on diesel fuel to bail out its wind turbines in the same manner many electrical vehicle drivers here in the U.S. have been seen using gasoline generators to charge up their supposedly “clean” cars.
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E-car sales plummet in Germany following subsidy cut
Registrations of new electric vehicles collapsed in Germany following cuts in buyers’ premiums at the beginning of the year. Registrations for battery electric vehicles dropped about 83 percent to 18,100 in January from 104,300 in December, when many people rushed to receive the full subsidy, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA). The share of e-cars fell to 15 percent in January from more than 55 percent in December, while total car registrations dropped three percent, car industry association VDA said.
The government decided in mid-2022 to reduce support payments for new e-cars, arguing they had become increasingly attractive for buyers even without support payments. Last year, e-car buyers received up 6,000 euros from the state when buying a new vehicle, plus up to 3,000 euros from the car manufacturers themselves. At the start of this year, support for battery electric or fuel cell cars dropped to 3,000-4,500 euros.
The lower support rates are likely to dampen e-car sales throughout the year, VDA said. In total, it expects sales of about 510,000 battery electric vehicles in 2023, eight percent more than last year; and sales of about 250,000 plug-in hybrid cars, a drop of 30 percent compared to 2022. On balance, total EV sales will fall by eight percent this year, the lobby group estimated. Given the lower support payments, “it’s important to strengthen people’s trust in e-mobility in different ways” to keep e-car sales up, VDA head Hildegard Müller said
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/e-car-sales-plummet-germany-following-subsidy-cut
***************************************7 February, 2023
Thanks, Frontline News, For Debunking Alarming Claims Made About Antarctica’s Temperature and Ice Trends
A recent article from Frontline News, written by Chris Morrison originally for The Daily Sceptic, describes the difficulties climate alarmists are having explaining why Antarctica is not warming as quickly—if at all—as climate models suggest it should. There is a substantial amount of evidence that Antarctica is not warming as predicted or otherwise responding as climate models have projected during the period of recent climate change. There is also vigorous debate concerning why Antarctica is experiencing relatively little melting.
The article, “Scientists struggle to understand why Antarctica hasn’t warmed in over 70 years despite rise in CO2,” goes into great detail about the large amount of evidence showing how temperature and ice trends in Antarctica refute claims that the continent is on a path of catastrophic warming and ice loss.
“The lack of warming over a significant portion of the Earth undermines the unproven hypothesis that the carbon dioxide humans add to the atmosphere is the main determinant of global climate,” explains Chris Morrison.
Morrison points out that a 2020 study of Antarctica climate data found that the continent has actually seen a modest expansion of sea ice over the past seven decades, as well as net-zero warming across most of the continent. The only area displaying any warming at all is the Antarctic Peninsula region in the western part of the continent, however sea ice coverage in that region, Morrison explains, “is running at levels seen around 50 years ago.” Included in the article is the graphic below, from the Singh and Polvani study, which visually demonstrates the isolated warming trend of the Peninsula amid the cooling trend the rest of the continent is experiencing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-00143-w
Why Antarctica is not behaving as climate models suggest it should is an open question. Some researchers have suggested that the sheer depth and thickness of the ice across Antarctica dampens the continent’s sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 additions and the general warming trend. An explanation for the anomalous heating of the West Antarctic ice sheet and peninsula is discussed in the Climate Realism post, “Antarctic ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Is Really Doomsday for Climate Alarmism.” The rise in temperatures there may be due an increase in volcanic activity beneath the western ice sheet warming local waters.As discussed in this Climate Realism post, here, multiple studies show that much of the continent has experienced cooling over the last few decades, with the exception of three temperature stations on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Despite data showing the contrary, mainstream media alarmists largely persist in pushing a climate-alarm narrative, hyping any ice calving that occurs along the vast coastline of the continent, without mentioning the full context of the ice loss.
In Climate at a Glance: Antarctic Ice Melt, the cumulative ice loss often publicized most widely is compared to the total ice mass of Antarctica. When the data is combined, total ice loss per year comes out to only 0.0003 percent of the total ice mass.
“Attempting to connect every natural variation in weather and long-term climate to just one trace gas produced by humans leads to some unconvincing explanations, not least when climate models are involved,” concludes Morrison, discussing how Antarctica’s behavior contradicts what climate model projections indicate should be occurring there. This is a lesson that could be applied elsewhere in discussions of climate change, as well.
The Earth’s climate is complex and nuanced, which is something that much of mainstream journalism fails to represent. It is always noteworthy when outlets like Frontline News acknowledge and discuss the fact that there is much uncertainty, indeed much unknown, concerning the how, why, and potential impacts of ongoing climate change. There is, or at least still should, be a lively debate concerning the causes and consequences of global warming in the press.
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The Ministry Of Climate Truth Strikes Again
The Christian God is said to know your every thought, word and deed (Matthew 5:21-37). In the new religion of climate change and Gaia worship, every word is identified by ‘intelligent’ computers, assessed for theological compliance, compiled into bite-sized ‘fact checks’ – and sold to interested government and private parties.
In this new world, the high priests of science have spoken, the matter is settled, and canceling is frankly too good for heretics.
Since 2019, a U.K. company called Logically (founded by Lyric Jain in 2017, when he was just 21) has raised about £30 million ($36M) to track what it calls “information threats” across 120 million domains and over 40 major social media platforms.
Both climate and medical discourse is targeted using, it is said, artificial intelligence. A recent report was published suggesting that climate change ‘misinformation’ had been impacted by COVID-19 related ‘conspiracies’.
Major company clients are said to be Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Bespoke packages are available for governments and private companies who fear their ‘brand’ may be under threat – and a recent Big Brother Watch report revealed that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) entered into two contracts with the company worth £1,264,392 to monitor “disinformation” in 2021 and 2022.
Big Brother Watch found that Logically “strayed significantly from [its] ‘disinformation’ remit to monitor and delegitimise domestic political dissent in [its] reports.”
Fake news is said by Logically to have plagued governments all over the world for the last five years, “undermining the democratic process and fueling populist political movements.”
The company says that governments “are recognising an urgent need to tackle harmful and misleading online content.”
As the catastrophic implications of Net Zero become generally apparent, it might be noted that political elites may well need all the help they can get in neutralizing growing popular opposition.
In March 2021, Logically launched its ‘flagship’ threat intelligence platform “offering both analytical capabilities and countermeasure deployment to tackle mis- and disinformation.”
The company says its mission is to protect democratic debate by providing access to “trustworthy information.”
On the climate front, misinformation is defined as “communication that contradicts or distorts the scientific evidence and expert consensus that the planet is warming as a result of human activity, and that this will lead to significant instability and damage to the environment.”
The notions contained in this definition are of course anti-science – it is hard to find words that differ so much from the traditional Popperian view that all science should be testable and able to be proved false.
If a conclusion cannot be proved wrong – as with climate models attributing single weather events to long-term climate change – it is simply an opinion, not a scientific hypothesis.
Contradicting – or rather critically appraising – what is considered scientific evidence is what scientists do as they seek to discover the truth.
Expert consensus is of course a purely political term. Perish the thought that the expert consensus should ever be contradicted. Like the Pope in Rome, the pronouncements of ‘experts’ when it comes to climate change are deemed infallible.
‘Fact-checking’ is much in vogue these days. There is obviously money to be made since the major social media platforms have partnerships with a variety of suppliers including mainstream media operations.
Last year the Daily Sceptic was hit with what appeared to be a short but concerted campaign of climate fact checks from companies such as Climate Feedback, USA Today, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
These followed hot on the heels of fact checks of our lockdown and vaccine coverage by companies like Logically. Interested readers can look in the Daily Sceptic’s archive and note we replied to each attack, pointing out that no identifiable published facts had been proved to be untrue. (See Will Jones’s reply to a Logically fact check here.)
Needless to say, the stories attracted various labels such as incorrect, false or misleading. After two particularly inept tries by Reuters, a polite note was sent to the company along the lines of “this nuisance must now cease.”
It appears to have stopped, for the moment, but the damage has been done.
In spite of our stout rebuttals, legitimate, fact-based stories in the Daily Sceptic – and other inquiring publications – are plastered with warnings or worse, downplayed and canceled in the online public spaces.
To give just one example, NewsGuard, a company that gives news publishing sites a score out of 100 according to how safe they are to advertise on, has given the Daily Sceptic 37.5 points because, in the words of one of its executives:
NewsGuard determined that based on the site having repeatedly published significantly false claims in articles and headlines and presenting other sources’ provably false claims as factual, the site fails our criteria for ‘does not repeatedly publish false content’ and ‘avoids deceptive headlines’, in addition to failing the criterion of ‘gathering and presenting information responsibly’.
In other words, we’ve been judged untrustworthy because of the fact checks carried out by Logically and others. That’s why we struggle to get a decent quantity of advertising (Google Ads has blocked us).
Logically appears to have been very busy of late building up a large portfolio of fact-check work. The methods used appear to revolve around extensive computer trawls picking up pre-programmed phrases disputing the ‘settled’ nostrums of climate science.
For instance, natural causes play a part in the climate changing, and global temperatures have risen little in the last two decades. The company then tries to refute the story with other material picked up on the web.
Climate change and medical science seem to be big growth areas for Logically, but there are some odd selections in the examples of ‘disinformation’ the company offers in its marketing material.
For instance: “Satellites don’t exist and the Earth is flat”, “Buzz Aldrin admitted that the moon landing didn’t happen”, and “World Economic Forum promotes paedophilia and claims paedophiles will save the world.”
It is possible that there are one or two people who need clarification on these matters, but a more cynical explanation is that a few nutjobs are inserted to cast doubt on anyone who dissents from climate dogma, including those making factually robust claims.
For instance, the claim that climate change is not responsible for the 2022 Pakistan floods. This particular fact check by Logically doesn’t get off to the best start since it repeats the falsehood that one-third of the country was submerged on August 31st.
Any topographical map shows that this could not be true. According to satellite photographs and easily obtainable UN relief agency data, the figure was 8%.
Climate change ‘deniers’ are said to have created a ‘false narrative’ about the floods in Pakistan, claiming that climate change is not the prime cause.
The unhinged view of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is quoted, claiming the country is going through a “monsoon on steroids.”
The problem with attributing single-event weather catastrophes to long-term changes in the climate caused by humans is that there is no proof. In fact, observations show that such events in Pakistan were frequent in the past.
The above graph, published recently by the World Bank, shows that rainfall has been stable in Pakistan for over a century.
Last year’s floods were a tragedy with about 1,000 lives lost. But in the recent past – 1950, 1992, 1993 and 2010 – more lives were lost in floods. Flooding in Pakistan is not helped by recent massive deforestation.
A different tack is taken when examining claims that global warming ran out of steam over two decades ago. Climate sceptics are said to allege that there has been no warming recently, “even claiming that global temperature has decreased.”
As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will know, we state that rises in global temperatures have slowed considerably since the turn of the century, and we quote accurate satellite data.
The latest UAH dataset up to January this year shows the current pause extending to eight years and five months.
Surface datasets have been retrospectively adjusted upwards and show a higher warming trend. They are also subject to considerable urban heat corruptions.
Logically says it is a misrepresentation to quote from such a short period. Misrepresentation, even, to refer to the first great pause of the 21st century that lasted from around 2000 to 2012.
Of course, climate trends become established over lengthy periods. However, at a time when humans populations are being freaked out by politicians and green activists quoting imaginary climate model projections of up to 5°C warming by 2100, it is relevant to note that warming in the first 22 years of the century is barely more than 0.1°C.
The logic behind Logically’s intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is that quoting years of data to show the global temperature is stable after a short warming period is wrong, but attributing a single weather event in Pakistan to unproven long-term human-caused changes in the climate is somehow good science.
What price misinformation?
https://principia-scientific.com/the-ministry-of-climate-truth-strikes-again/
*************************************************Green groups targeting blue-collar lobstermen are largely funded by dark money
Environmental groups that have led litigation targeting the lobster fishing industry have been heavily funded by various liberal dark money groups that don't disclose their individual donors, a Fox News Digital review of tax filings found.
The organizations — the Center For Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Defenders Of Wildlife — first filed a joint federal lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2018, arguing a rule issued by the agency years earlier failed to properly protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from lobster fishing equipment. In April 2020, a federal judge ruled in favor of the groups, ordering the NMFS to issue tighter restrictions.
"Right whales have been getting tangled up and killed in lobster gear for far too long," Kristen Monsell, the oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time. "This decision sends a clear signal that federal officials must protect these desperately endangered animals from more painful and deadly entanglements before it’s too late."
As a result of the decision, the Biden administration moved forward with new regulations on lobster fishing equipment in May 2021. The coalition of environmental groups then filed another lawsuit challenging the new rule and, in July 2022, again received a favorable judgment from a federal court. CLF senior attorney Arica Fuller applauded the ruling, saying it made clear that "fishery managers must do more to protect" right whales.
However, as a result of the litigation and tighter rules, Maine lawmakers and business leaders have argued that thousands of lobster fishing jobs are at risk. The updated NMFS restrictions stated that fixed gear fisheries like the Maine lobster fishery must reduce their risk to whales by a staggering 98%. The first restrictions were rolled out in May and more restrictions are planned for December 2024 and 2030.
"Friendship, Maine, is the name of the town that I grew up in and that I live in now and where all the previous generations in my family fished and operated from," Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation lobsterman, told FOX Business in December. "Basically, the lobster industry is the backbone — that's what everything was built around and that's pretty much the only option we have here. Without it, I don't think there would be much left."
Overall, Maine's lobster industry — which by state law is made up entirely of small business operators — provides the U.S. with about 90% of the nation's lobster supply, making the industry a top economic driver in the state, and boosting other related industries as well. In 2021, Maine's lobster fishery generated $724.9 million of revenue, the largest amount in state history.
The three groups that have led litigation pushing for greater restrictions on the industry have a long history accepting funding from left-wing groups with unknown wealthy donors, according to a Fox News Digital review of tax filings.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/green-groups-targeting-blue-collar-lobstermen-funded-dark-money
*************************************************Australia: Southern coral reefs thriving as COVID dive project uncovers 'enormous amount of coral'
This gives the lie to Warmist claims that Northern GBR coral is threatened by runoff from the land on Cape York Peninsula. There is very little development on most of the peninsula. Yet we read below that a very heavily developed part of the Southern Queensland coast supports thriving corals. So which is it? Does development along the coastline damage coral or not? It's actually arguable that development BENEFITS coral growth
Researchers have uncovered an abundance of healthy, thriving coral along a heavily developed coastline — far beyond what the team expected when they first pitched the project.
University of Queensland researchers and dive club volunteers wanted a project to focus on as COVID restrictions took hold and limited their ability to work and travel.
A pitch was made to re-examine 11 reefs off Queensland's Sunshine Coast, particularly around Mudjimba Island and the popular tourist destination of Mooloolaba.
Associate Professor Chris Roelfsema brought together researchers and 50 volunteers from the UQ dive club to help.
Dr Roelfsema said what they found was incredible.
"We looked at so many different sites — every time we put our heads underwater, the volunteers went down and they did surveys," he said. "And they saw coral, and every time it was a significant amount of coral, and we didn't expect it.
"We noticed that there was an enormous amount of coral there that we didn't realise was there — and not in a couple of spots but in the 11 spots we visited.
"And that's a big deal that there's so much coral so close to a major urban area."
The project involved 8,000 hours of training, collecting, and analysing data obtained from the underwater landscapes.
Beyond simply the amount of coral revealed by the two-year survey, the team also found little sign of crown-of-thorns starfish — which prey on coral — and almost no hint of coral bleaching.
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6 February, 2023
Warming or Cooling??
CO2 Coalition member Dr. Roy Spencer published his latest update on global satellite temperature this week. The temperature for January 2023 was even colder than January 1988 and 0.04° C below the 1991-2020 average.
China to Speed Up Construction of Coal Power Plants This Year
China is planning to accelerate construction of coal- and natural gas-fired power plants this year, even as massive investment in renewables means clean power will dominate generation capacity.
Some 70 gigawatts of fossil fuel capacity will be added in 2023, up from 40 gigawatts last year, according to a report released Thursday by the China Electricity Council, the power sector’s top lobbying group. The target comes as Beijing places more emphasis on energy security due to power shortages and volatile global fuel prices.
Renewable energy will grow even faster, however, with 100 gigawatts of new solar and 65 gigawatts of wind expected, according to the council. By year-end, clean electricity is forecast to make up more than 52% of China’s total power capacity, compared with 49.6% at the end of 2022. That was slightly short of the council’s prediction last year that it would be a 50-50 split.
Electricity demand is also forecast to rebound to growth of around 6% this year, up from 3.6% in 2022, as the economy recovers following the lifting of Covid restrictions. The expected increase in consumption means the power balance will be tight during peak periods of demand in many parts of the country, the council said.
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Renewables lobby warns renewables are uneconomic without hundred of billions in subsidies
The UK and European Union (EU) are at risk of losing green energy projects to the US – if they fail to match its new investment environment, warned two fast growing energy companies.
James Basden, founder and director of clean energy storage specialist, Zenobe Energy (Zenobe), told City A.M. that his company was going to “accelerate what we’re doing in America because of the tax credits.”
He said: “We’re not alone. The UK and the EU are going to have to change, I’m afraid, because markets move very fast.”
Zenobe has been establishing roots in the US over recent months, signing a memorandum of understanding with JERA Americas, the US subsidiary of Japanese power company JERA, to jointly develop utility-scale battery storage projects in New York and New England.
The company mission statement is “to make clean power accessible across the world.”
So far, it has secured funding to pursue e-buses and charging infrastructure, alongside large-scale battery facilities in the UK – which aim to provide renewable energy in response to wind farms being switched off, as an alternative to gas supplies.
Nils Aldag, chief executive of German hydrogen technology experts Sunfire, was also weighing up the possibility of pivoting projects and investment Stateside if the EU failed to provide with more support.
“We will have to consider the US if we do not see Europe respond in time,” he said.
The looming possibility of a mass exodus of clean energy players follows the passing of the US Inflation Reduction Act in Washington last August.
The legislation, ostensibly focused on reducing the deficit, provides significant opportunities to invest in renewables.
The bill will raise $738bn, which includes $391bn of committed spending on clean energy – making it the largest piece of federal legislation ever to address climate change.
This includes $128bn for renewable energy and grid storage, $30bn for nuclear power, $22bn for home improvements and $13bn for electric vehicle incentives.
It also features hefty production tax credits to help US manufacturers accelerate production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and process key minerals.
By contrast, the UK has imposed a fresh levy on electricity generators, snatching 45 per cent of revenues for legacy operators that have provided clean power to meet the country’s energy needs for decades.
https://www.cityam.com/uk-and-eu-at-risk-of-losing-green-energy-projects/
*********************************************The Chemtrail hoax
Larry Wayne Harris was a lieutenant colonel in the white-supremacist organization Aryan Nations and a member of the racist, anti-Semitic sect Christian Identity.
He was arrested for possession of bubonic plague bacteria in 1997, and convicted of wire fraud for posing as a research microbiologist to obtain it. He was arrested for possession of anthrax and convicted of impersonation of a CIA agent in 1998.
He and his neighbor Richard Lew Finke are the people who invented “chemtrails.” But it took a nationwide radio show to popularize it, so widely that it has become nearly impossible for the average citizen to sort out the truth, to distinguish fact from fiction.
In 1996, Harris offered his services to analyze soil samples that he said were contaminated by fallout from additives in jet fuel. He told his clients that their samples contained ethylene dibromide (EDB), and that it was being added to jet fuel as part of a depopulation agenda.
No matter that EDB was an agricultural pesticide that persisted in the soil for years. It was in agricultural soil, he said, because it fell from the sky. The following year he and Finke took this fable even further: they started a consulting company purporting to analyze soil, water and jet fuel samples and Finke sent out an email announcement about “genocide” via “lines in the sky.”
In 1998, that email slowly circulated and became embellished. EDB became transformed by some into aluminum, barium, and strontium. These were also found in samples of soil and groundwater and were also said to have fallen from the sky. No matter that aluminum and barium are also in agricultural pesticides, and that strontium is in gypsum and other minerals and is ubiquitous in groundwater.
In January 1999, Canadian journalist Will Thomas, still sticking to the EDB story, embellished it even more: he published two articles speculating that poisoned contrails were being “sprayed” by unmarked military jets, were related to HAARP, and were being used for weather modification.
On January 25, 1999, Thomas appeared on Coast to Coast conspiracy radio, and disseminated a version of the fable to millions of people. On February 10, 1999, still talking about EDB, he sent out an email telling people to “TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY” and to “STAY INDOORS when contrails are being woven overhead.”
He said that “Emergency Rooms are overflowing with acute respiratory cases from coast to coast,” that the New York Times was reporting that “this is not the flu,” that the BBC was reporting 6,000 deaths from respiratory failure in England in two weeks, and that there was “a BBC photo of a freezer-semi filled with dead bodies”.
However the epidemic he described did not actually exist, and neither the BBC nor the New York Times reported any such thing.
But Thomas continued to embellish these reports on Coast to Coast radio. In March 1999, he coined the word “chemtrails.” He introduced the notion that “contrails” dissipate quickly and “chemtrails” do not. Whereas 80 years previously Wegener had explained that whether they dissipate or not depends on temperature, pressure and humidity.
Belief in the epidemic that Thomas had invented out of whole cloth spread round the world and has been impossible to eradicate since. Rather, it has been disseminated and embellished by a variety of individuals of questionable motives, all of them non-scientists, who to varying degrees have made their living from it: computer consultant Clifford Carnicom; filmmaker Michael John Murphy; TV weatherman Scott Stevens; builder of solar systems Dane Wigington; and author Elana Freeland.
More recently, in an attempt not to sound like conspiracy theorists, those spreading the fable have embellished it even more, claiming that the lines in the sky are being sprayed to combat global warming, and they are using the term “geoengineering” instead of “chemtrails” to sound more credible.
Wigington’s website, for example, is now called geoengineeringwatch.org. But this newer invented purpose is in addition to depopulation, weather control, and “ionization” of the atmosphere to enhance global communications.
And it has nothing to do with actual proposals to remedy global warming, which are found on geoengineeringmonitor.org, nogeoingegneria.com, and other websites that report only real information.
Early on, Thomas began to deliberately combine real information about electromagnetic radiation with made-up stories about “chemtrails,” and Freeland and others have further embellished and reinforced this.
This confuses the public, discredits those of us with an important message, and does yeoman’s work for the telecommunications industry.
The reason this is so important, and the reason I am sending out a newsletter about it, is that the “chemtrails” fable has been promulgated so successfully that according to a 2016 survey, almost 40 percent of Americans believe in it and only 34 percent are sure that it is false.
This is also true of EMF activists and the people protesting 5G: a huge number of them believe in “chemtrails,” or “geoengineering” as it is now wrongly called, and do not believe in global warming. This discredits us and makes it more difficult to gain traction with the media and with environmental organizations.
Ironically, EDB actually was and still is being used as an additive in airplane fuel, just not in military or commercial jets. It is used as an antiknock agent in leaded fuel in general aviation by piston-engine airplanes that do not fly high enough to leave contrails behind them.
That is the real scandal: 38 years after leaded fuel was banned in cars in the United States, 175,000 small airplanes are still spewing lead into all the air we breathe.
https://principia-scientific.com/the-great-chemtrails-hoax/
***************************************5 February, 2023
'Alarming': Man Shows His Electric Car Lost 70% of Its Acceleration Ability in the Cold
Electric vehicles are not only unreliable, but can also be dangerously sluggish in winter temperatures. Is this really progress?
While renewable-energy zealots and climate change alarmists are singing the praises of battery-operated vehicles, the reality is that drivers may find themselves bracing for impact because of the technology’s limitations.
According to Tommy Mica on YouTube’s TFLEV channel, his 2022 Mini Cooper lost as much as 70 percent of its acceleration power during the recent Colorado cold snap.
Some owners have already figured out that they lose driving range when the temperatures plunge, but they could be left bracing for impact if they’re caught short on power during a merge or other situation where speed is critical.
“Hey everybody, so I want to talk about a fairly alarming issue I’m having in my fully electric car now that we’re deep into the Colorado winter,” Mica began in his video posted Tuesday.
“So most folks know this point that the range on EVs decrease when the temperatures go down, but performance also tends to decrease to varying degrees,” Mica argued.
He acknowledged that vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines also experience performance issues in the winter.
However, as the Department of Energy admitted, the cold’s effect, like increased viscosity of engine fluids and gasoline, isn’t as significant as it is for frozen batteries.
“Here’s the issue,” Mica later explained, showing the car’s dashboard indicators.
“Look at these bars go down, this is actually the acceleration meter on the Mini, and these little clicks mean how much acceleration you have available.”
“When it’s at 100, you get the full enchilada, you get all the beans,” Mica said.
“However, when the battery is very low, or if it’s very cold, you actually lose clicks as the car derates itself,” he added.
Mica then showed the indicator hover around 30 percent after sitting outside overnight in subzero temperatures.
The significance of this decrease became apparent when he took his Mini for a spin and attempted to merge onto a highway.
“Can we make it up the hill even?” Mica asked himself at one point.
The vehicle was slow to gain speed — one could almost hear the Little Mini That Could utter, “I think I can, I think I can” — but it got there eventually.
Any car that unexpectedly fails to accelerate is at risk for a rear-end collision or a failed merge, and this could indicate a problem across the board for electric vehicles.
Still, this technology is sold to the American people as the wave of the future even as they have demonstrably rolled back the progress automobiles made.
After more than a century of improvements and innovations, the internal combustion engine has become solidly reliable in all kinds of weather and conditions, every time.
Something like turning on the heat in the cabin for the comfort of passengers is effortless in a gasoline-powered vehicle. Not so for some electric vehicles that can’t spare the voltage.
Having a full tank of gas all but guarantees that the car will go the promised distance regardless of the temperature.
The same can’t be said of electric vehicles that lose battery life while parked in the cold, potentially leaving its drivers stranded on the side of a frigid road in a dead vehicle.
Electric vehicles are still so unreliable that the elites who push for them in every home garage in America still rely on gas-guzzling SUVs to ensure they get where they need to go no matter the distance or degrees.
There may come a time when electric vehicles actually become the modern miracle they’re touted as today.
Unfortunately, we’re not anywhere close, even as our betters try to sell us on the idea that these cars are our future.
The potential dangers, coupled with the fact that electric vehicles are more expensive to buy and maintain, make it a ludicrous proposition to foist them on us.
If progress means dangerous, unreliable, and sluggish electric vehicles, we’re better off in the past when only toy cars were battery-operated.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/alarming-man-shows-electric-car-lost-70-acceleration-ability-cold
*********************************************Murphy’s Law of Alternative Energy
One might think that these would be boom times in the wind power business, with governments and giant corporations around the world competing to offer ever more generous preferences and subsidies for the intermittent energy source. But somehow this primitive means of generating power is still just not quite ready to replace the modern ones.
Part of the challenge is that politicians are finally waking up to the fact that alternative energy carries environmental costs along with the alleged benefits. In December this column noted Jennifer Dlouhy’s Boomberg report uncovering an internal warning from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist to Interior Department officials about the threat to whales posed by offshore wind development.
Now Amanda Oglesby and Dan Radel report: for the Asbury Park Press:
A group of New Jersey mayors are calling for an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind energy development until federal and state scientists can assure the public that ocean noise related to underwater seabed mapping, soil borings and other turbine construction activities poses no threat to whales.
The announcement followed news that another humpback whale died off of the coasts of New Jersey and New York and washed ashore in Lido Beach, New York, according to numerous reports. . . .
The Lido Beach whale marks the eighth whale to wash ashore on the beaches of New York and New Jersey in the past two months, the mayors said.
So far there doesn’t appear to be any evidence linking offshore wind development to the specific whale deaths. But it’s reasonable to demand a long overdue investigation of the true economic and environmental costs and benefits of an industry that taxpayers have been assisting for years.
Despite all the help in this country and around the world, the economics of the business remain challenging. Camilla Hodgson reports for the Financial Times:
The European wind industry has warned of continued difficulties in 2023 as high materials costs and slow approvals for new wind power projects drag back profitability, despite rising demand for renewable energy.
The latest poor outlook came from Danish wind turbine maker Vestas, which told investors on Friday that it would suffer a weaker year as the slow EU planning system and supply chain inflation depressed profits. . . .
The leading European offshore wind manufacturers “are under enormous pressure on the cost side and on the price side”, said Alessandro Boschi, head of the European Investment Bank’s renewable energy division, adding that he expected to see “further consolidation” in the sector.
Things are tough all over for windmill enthusiasts. Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Christoph Steitz recently reported for Reuters:
Denmark’s Orsted . . . the world’s No. 1 offshore wind farm developer... announced a writedown on a large U.S. offshore wind project and an earnings forecast for 2023 that fell short of analyst estimates.
Madrid-listed Siemens Gamesa . . . the world’s biggest offshore wind turbine maker, reported a 472 million euro ($510 million) hit to operating profit due to faulty turbine components that require higher warranty and maintenance provisions.
Here in the U.S., Reuters colleagues Rajesh Kumar Singh and Abhijith Ganapavaram reported last week from Chicago:
General Electric . . . on Tuesday exceeded expectations for quarterly earnings on robust demand for jet engines and power equipment, but gave a disappointing full-year outlook as problems persisted at its renewable energy business. . . . The unit reported a loss of $2.2 billion in 2022.
GE is reducing global headcount at the onshore wind unit by about 20% as part of a plan to restructure and resize the business.
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, Colin Young of the State House News Service reported recently in the Berkshire Eagle:
The developer behind the largest single offshore wind farm in the state’s pipeline . . . filed a formal notice of appeal to contest the Department of Public Utilities’ approval of contracts that the developer agreed to but says will no longer allow its project to be financed or built.
Why do bad things keep happening to this industry?
It’s almost as if wind energy companies are using a less advanced technology than competing power projects.
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Go figure: European fracking bans spark US shale gas boom
Rising demand from Europe has added to a US natural gas investment boom even as the industry struggles to overcome opposition to pipeline construction.
Production of the fuel reached 3.1 trillion cubic feet for the month of October, according to the most recently available US data, an all-time high and up almost 50 percent from the level a decade ago.
The industry has been in growth mode since the summer of 2021 when Russia began trimming shipments to Europe, according to Steven Miles, a fellow at Rice University's Banker Institute in Houston.
That comes on the heels of the US shale revolution in the first decade of the 21st century that ultimately led to the United States becoming a net exporter of the fuel in 2017.
The progression has not been continuous, with plummeting natural gas prices crimping investment and leading to the bankruptcy of one of industry's biggest players, Chesapeake Energy, in June 2020.
But energy companies have become more confident in the long-term demand outlook for the fuel in light of shifting geopolitical dynamics.
Five years ago, the long-term demand "was not nearly as clear as it is today," said Eli Rubin of EBW AnalyticsGroup, a consultancy.
"Especially after Russia invaded Ukraine, we have a healthy new respect for natural gas' role in providing energy security, for its role in helping to tame consumer pricing."
Even before the invasion, there was heavy investment in facilities to transform gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG). In recent years, some 14 new liquefaction terminals have been approved, with the first set to begin operating in 2024.
"Over the next five years, we could potentially double US LNG exports," Rubin said.
The push comes as big energy companies enjoy rich cashflow courtesy of lofty commodity prices that have enabled the industry to invest aggressively even as they boost share buybacks and dividends.
Pipeline blockage
While the growth of LNG has globalized the natural gas market to a limited extent, the dynamics remain heavily localized.
Prices on the benchmark European TTF contract are currently more than six times the level of comparable Henry Hub contract in the United States.
That gap means that LNG exports are priced more closely to the US level, setting the stage for "middlemen" who can move the cargoes to Europe and "sell them at European prices," said Miles.
Much higher exports of US natural gas could lead to more price consistency across regions -- but probably not for many years.
"Maybe in the long run ... (the United States will) export so much gas to Europe that prices between Europe, Asia and North America become more aligned," said Ryan Kellogg, a professor at the University of Chicago specializing in energy.
"But I think we're pretty far away from that right now."
One lingering challenge facing the industry is the lack of pipeline capacity, particularly in the northeastern part of the United States.
The nation's biggest natural gas basin, the Marcellus Shale, which is mostly in Pennsylvania, faces constraints due to lack of infrastructure.
A venture called the Mountain Valley Pipeline stands as a potential solution, but the project has been suspended for the last five years amid resistance from land owners and environmentalists.
Opposition by climate activists and elected officials to industry-backed projects is "certainly much stronger than it was," said Rubin.
But the lack of infrastructure can exacerbate price volatility during periods of peak demand.
New England, which is in northeastern United States, relies on LNG for a fraction of its heating.
But the region, which normally sees some of the coldest weather in the country, is also known for resisting new pipeline capacity.
During a cold snap, "New England is competing with Europe for a spot LNG cargo," said Rubin. "For the cargo to go to New England, they have to pay higher prices than Europe."
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German industry to pay 40% more for energy than pre-crisis - study says
German industry is set to pay about 40% more for energy in 2023 than in 2021, before the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a study by Allianz Trade said on Monday, citing contract expiries and delayed wholesale pricing effects.
"The large energy-price shock still lies ahead for European corporates," said Allianz Trade, the credit insurer that changed its name from Euler Hermes last year.
In 2022, higher corporate utility bills were contained as long pass-through times from wholesale markets and government interventions mitigated the immediate hit from surging prices as Russia curbed fuel exports to the West.
The price increases will hit corporate profits across Europe by 1-1.5% and lead to lower investment, which in Germany's case would amount to 25 billion euros ($27 billion), Allianz Trade estimated.
German companies' finances are robust, however, and a state-imposed gas price cap would help, it added.
Fears the crisis could lead to de-industrialisation and a loss of competitiveness against the United States were overdone, because labour costs and exchange rates have a bigger impact on manufacturing than energy prices, the study said.
Also, while exporters were losing market shares in areas such as agrifood, machinery, electrical equipment, metals and transport, the relative beneficiaries tended to be Asian, Middle Eastern and African, not American, it added.
The German government's one-off payment to help private households and small businesses with gas prices - the first stage of a package that will be complemented with retroactive price caps kicking in in March - has cost 4.3 billion euros so far, the economy ministry said on Saturday.
Berlin has earmarked 12 billion euros for the payment, but the ministry said 4.3 billion euros was not the final cost as many eligible firms had not yet applied for the aid. They have until the end of February.
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3 February, 2023
Jordan Peterson on global warming
Long-term climate warrior Graham Readfearn has made another attempt to defend his faith in The Guardian below. It's an heroic attempt, dealing with most major issues in the matter. But his approach is a typically authoritarian one. Leftism generally is very authoritarian and Warmism is particularly so. They are always quoting some authority in defence of their beliefs -- often something as vague as "the science". So most of Readfearn's article is a series of quotes from confirmed Warmists. He does not delve into the details of the issues concerned.
It's too long an article for me to dissect point by point so let me look at just one issue to show his talent for overlooking important parts of the evidence
He refers to the John Cook study and cheerfully points out that Cook "said that of 4,000 studies that did state a position on the cause of global heating, 97% agreed that humans were the cause".
That is a perfectly accurate statement but fails to highlight that two thirds of the scientists Cook examined stated NO POSITION on global warming. That 97% was 97% of one third of scientists. So there was clearly NO CONSENSUS overall, something Readfearn was careful not to mention. As with all Leftist writing, you have to know what they leave out. If you look at the numbers instead of quoting the opinions of people who agree with you it is a very different story
Canadian psychologist and darling of conservatives and the alt-right, Jordan Peterson, has been on an all-out attack on the science of climate change and the risks of global heating.
Peterson has 6.3 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, and his videos also run as audio podcasts on platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Since December, Peterson has been on something of a crusade publishing four interviews – each more than 90 minutes long – collectively amassing more than 2.2m views on YouTube alone.
The titles of Peterson’s latest offerings give a flavour of the content. “The World is not Ending”, “Unsettled: Climate and Science” and “The Great Climate Con”.
Last year Peterson came in for scathing criticism from climate scientists after claiming climate models were mostly useless. Peterson had badly misunderstood how models work, they said, with one saying: “He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong.”
The criticism appears to have done little to discourage him from wading in even further. Peterson’s popularity among conservatives and, judging by many of the comments he receives, his almost God-like status among his fans, is helping to expose new audiences to old arguments on climate change.
One interview with retired MIT meteorologist Prof Richard Lindzen – a well-known veteran of contrarianism among climate science deniers – ran under the title “Climate Science: What Does it Say?”.
Let’s dive in. Lindzen’s answer was predictable. He has been arguing for three decades there is little to worry about from rising temperatures or adding CO2 to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
During the interview, Lindzen repeated many of his beliefs related to the fundamentals of climate science, such as doubts about how much warming adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause.
Prof Steve Sherwood, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, described several of Lindzen’s arguments as “very old zombie points” that were never fair “and have become much less true over time.”
‘That’s not true’
For example, Peterson argued – and Lindzen agreed – the “putative contribution of carbon dioxide to global warming” might be swamped by the margin of error of the contribution of another important greenhouse gas – water vapor.
“That’s really sad if that’s true,” says Peterson.
“That’s not true,” says Prof Piers Forster, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Leeds. “For more than half a century laboratory measurements, balloon measurements and detailed radiative transfer calculations have been able to calculate the greenhouse effect of both CO2 and water vapour to within a few percent.”
Sherwood adds the effect of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere was “not putative,” but rather was “measurable from space and guaranteed by simple physical principles that has been understood for well over a century and have been used successfully for many decades in all sorts of technological applications such as infrared sensors and telescopes.”
Science from 2001?
Lindzen refers to the findings of a 2001 UN-backed climate assessment – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment report of which he was one of many lead authors – saying it had found the planet had warmed by 0.5C and that this was “mostly” caused by humans.
This was small, Lindzen claimed, and suggested the world was not very sensitive to adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
Putting aside the question of why a conversation about the findings of the IPCC should discuss a report from 20 years ago when there have been three more up-to-date volumes since, Sherwood says Lindzen’s statement on the sensitivity of the planet to CO2 “is complete rubbish.”
“Lindzen and other sceptics have produced no refutation to the extensive evidence-based calculations presented in the most recent IPCC report,” Sherwood said, pointing also to a study he led in 2020.
Lindzen also claimed there were almost as many temperature stations around the world showing cooling as there were showing warming.
This was “flat wrong”, Sherwood said, while Forster added “pretty much all the long-term calibrated stations show a warming”.
Raising sea level
As the oceans heat up and ice sheets and glaciers melt, the world’s sea level has been rising. This has the potential to reshape the world’s coastlines and increase the risk of flooding in coastal cities around the world.
But Lindzen claimed that in the next 50 to 75 years, there could be only a few inches of sea level rise “but there’s no evidence there will be much more”. Young people of today will have little to worry about, he said.
But observations of sea level tell a different story. Since 1900, the global average sea level has gone up by about 20cm, and studies show the rate of rise is accelerating and is now more than double the average across the 20th century.
Prof John Church, an expert on sea level change at the University of New South Wales, said even on the current annual rate of 4mm of sea level rise – which was accelerating – Lindzen was underestimating what was known to be coming in the future.
The latest IPCC report says the world can expect 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 from where they were at the end of the 20th century – regardless of how much CO2 is emitted. By the end of the century, the rise could be approaching a metre or more, depending on how much CO2 is emitted and how quickly ice sheets melt.
That’s more than a few inches.
Attack the consensus
There’s a whole field of academic study on the social and psychological dynamics of climate science denial. Manufacturing doubt erodes public support for climate action. Public awareness that almost all climate scientists agree climate change is real and is caused by humans is seen as an important part of the public’s climate literacy.
So attacks on that consensus have been consistent over decades. Lindzen was asked about this.
While he said most scientists – including him – would accept that adding CO2 to the atmosphere would cause some warming, he attacked one of the most high-profile studies on scientific consensus that found 97% of climate studies agreed global warming was caused by humans.
Lindzen said: “There are some studies like one by a man called Cook that were just bogus. They ended up looking at 50 papers specially selected… it was nonsense.”
That “man called Cook” is Dr John Cook whose 2013 study while at the University of Queensland assessed 11,000 scientific papers – not 50 – published between 1991–2011.
Cook said that of 4,000 studies that did state a position on the cause of global heating, 97% agreed that humans were the cause.
Cook said: “Lindzen cherry picks a small part of our data – narrowing in on the studies that quantify the amount of human-causation – then criticises our study for not including many studies.”
Cook’s study is one of at least seven to have found very high levels of agreement among climate scientists that humans cause climate change.
Consistently wrong
Cook adds: “Ignoring inconvenient scientific research is a common pattern from Lindzen.
“He ignores the many years of scientific research finding that reinforcing feedbacks make our climate sensitive to greenhouse warming. This is why he continues to make the same debunked arguments we’ve been hearing for decades now. “
Forster said Lindzen had been “consistently proved wrong” and since his involvement in the IPCC 22 years ago “warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate.”
“Experts have important roles but science is not just opinion,” he said “We all need to become fact checkers and look to trusted bodies such as the IPCC – which assesses all published work, including Lindzen’s, and objectively tells it how it is.
“There have been three major IPCC reports since [2001]. All the reports tell us that climate change is real, bad, and getting worse.”
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Democrats Hamstring Their Own Green Agenda
Since Grover Cleveland was president, no one has accused the average politician of being principled or even consistent. Year after year, Republicans claim to care about fiscal prudence but, when in power, spend like Democrats.
In their turn, Democrats insist that they want to engineer a transition to a green-energy economy, but their actions contradict this goal.
Of course, you would miss these contradictions if you looked only at the effort Democrats pour into distributing green-energy subsidies.
The infrastructure bill of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act adopted last year included enormous subsidies for green energy. Then Congress doubled down by enacting the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill at the end of 2022.
This bill includes large funding increases for clean energy and other climate-related programs, including the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, biofuel research and development, and other agencies’ climate research agendas.
Looking at the subsidies alone, you could believe that Democrats are all-in on using the government to impose green energy. But such a focus is too narrow.
For one thing, most innovations capable of truly addressing climate change are likely yet to be discovered by the private sector. Betting that the few options picked and heavily favored by government officials — namely solar and wind — will prove to be the best options is risky.
And, in fact, government incentives could be counterproductive as they direct investment toward politically alluring but scientifically or economically unpromising options, while leaving genuinely promising options underfunded regardless of their merits.
We have seen this happen before with the Section 1705 green energy program, when Energy department funding attracted many private investors to the now-defunct Solyndra and Abound solar.
Another contradiction marring the Democrats’ approach to green energy is that they want to pay for the subsidies by dramatically increasing taxes on income and capital gains.
That’s counterproductive, since heavily taxing capital gains will reduce private-sector innovation and investments, including green energy projects.
Furthermore, neither subsidies nor taxes on income or wealth do much to curb energy usage. For this outcome, user fees applied to energy would be more appropriate. Yet Democrats, being more interested in soaking the rich, continue to obsess over income and capital gains.
Greater reliance on green energy also requires a stupendous increase in mineral extraction to provide the needed materials.
Even if the world unquestionably possessed the mineral capacity necessary for the global energy transformation envisioned by President Biden, Democrats in practice are enemies of mining.
The U.S. Mining Association estimates that the country has $6.2 trillion of recoverable mineral resources like copper and zinc available for mining on millions of acres of federal, state and private lands.
Unfortunately, our labor, health and climate regulations often make it practically impossible to profitably mine. As a result, these precious resources stay in the ground, which explains why the United States went from being the world’s No. 1 producer of minerals in 1990 to seventh place today.
Democrats committed to a green-energy transition should make it a priority to reform counterproductive regulations like the National Environmental Policy Act and to implement other permitting reforms.
Yet for the most part they won’t do so, as we saw when they helped strike down the permitting deal cut last year between Senators Schumer and Manchin. This is especially maddening because the permitting burden has been shown to fail to do much to protect the environment.
Making things worse, when given an opportunity, Democrats will go as far as to proactively wall off undeveloped mineral-rich deposits, restricting any hope of future supply increase.
That’s what Interior Secretary Deb Haaland just did when she declared Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, home to an abundance of materials necessary for electric vehicle parts, off limits for mining.
If Democrats were consistent, they would be willing to give up on certain climate goals to keep minerals in the ground. But they won’t do that either.
As a result, the United States now relies on countries with unsavory governments, many of which use slave labor, to supply us with the minerals we need to generate green energy.
And let’s not forget that our reliance on foreign mineral mining is somehow happening as the administration continues to insist on cumbersome “made in America” requirements in other parts of the economy.
As I said, no one has ever accused politicians of being paragons of consistency.
https://www.nysun.com/article/democrats-hamstring-their-own-green-agenda
************************************************'Smart Cities' are just municipal authoritarianism
From the 15-minute city to the ever extending use of surveillance to control out lives, city governments' green agenda is creating a new authoritarianism
I live in a West Yorkshire village, a place the Americans would call an ‘exurb’, filled with people who commute to a variety of locations for work, leisure and the everyday tasks of an ordinary life. At the junction of Keighley Road and Bingley Road just as you leave the village northwards if you look carefully you’ll see, high up on a lamppost at that corner, a little black camera. It’s an ANPR - 'automatic number plate recognition’ - camera. I’m not remotely paranoid but you do have to ask why our government wants such a camera in such a safe, rural place. And the answer, I suppose, lies in the enthusiasm of municipal leaderships for what they call the ‘smart city’.
Back in October I wrote a short piece for the Daily Telegraph about Oxford County Council’s plans for ‘traffic filters’ in Oxford itself. In the weeks since that article was published there have been a collection of ever more spectacular claims about the proposals. At the heart of these claims, often from the join-the-dots world of Covid and climate scepticism, is the belief that the ‘traffic filters’ are part of wider plans to confine us all to our homes so as to save the planet from the terrors of climate change.
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“In Oxford, and in a similar scheme in Canterbury, councils will require residents to have a permit to work elsewhere in the city and will limit the number of times they can drive across the boundary of their allocated 15-minute zone. If you don’t comply, the city’s automatic number-plate recognition systems will allow the council to levy a £70 fine.”
As a result the leader of Oxford County Council stood hesitatingly in front of a camera and denied any plans for ‘climate lockdown’ and accused unnamed people “...including the national press” of promoting scare stories that resulted in lots of people contacting the council worried that, as I put it in my piece “...you’ll need a permit to visit your mum a few streets away and can only do this twice a week.”
Various versions of Carlos Moreno’s ‘15 Minute City’ have been drawn up all based on the original Parisian scheme. A scheme that Moreno explicitly linked to climate change and ‘net zero’ and then asserted how the Covid pandemic made introducing his ideas possible - “Were it not for Covid-19, I think that the conditions for deploying the 15-minute city concept would have been very hard to instigate…but the catastrophe of the pandemic has seen us drastically change how we live – it has forced us to reassess the nature and quality of our urban lifestyles.”
https://simoncooke.substack.com/p/smart-cities-are-just-municipal-authoritarianism
****************************************************Unions and green groups clash on carbon offsets
The Australian Workers Union and Mining and Energy Union have attacked conservation and clean-energy groups trying to block fossil fuel companies from accessing carbon offsets under Labor’s tougher safeguard mechanism, warning that heavy industries could “collapse”.
The unions said the mechanism, which will force the nation’s 215 biggest-emitting facilities to slash pollution by nearly 5 per cent each year to 2030, must include Australian Carbon Credit Unit offsets and safeguard credits for fossil fuel industries to help their transition and avoid carbon leakage.
BP and Orica, which have facilities captured by the safeguard mechanism, along with the Business Council of Australia and Minerals Council of Australia have strongly backed access to carbon credits and trading to accelerate emissions reduction.
In a joint AWU-MEU submission to a Senate inquiry into Labor’s safeguard mechanism (crediting) amendment bill, the unions endorsed Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen’s draft plan but warned “it is impossible to apply a single approach to reducing emissions across many industries”. The unions, representing 90,000 blue-collar workers, said “the design of the safeguard mechanism will have a significant impact” on industrial facilities that underpin regional economies.
“Australia’s heavy industries continue to provide good pay and conditions to thousands of people across the country, and our members are keen to play a role in supporting Australia through the energy transition,” the submission said. “A successful transition of Australia’s industrial sector also has the opportunity to place Australia as a clean-energy superpower, creating new job opportunities for coal workers and across the broader economy.
“By contrast, a poor transition that fails to consider Australia’s international competitiveness could see our industries collapse.”
Amid calls from the private sector for a bipartisan agreement on the mechanism, the Coalition has flagged it will oppose the emissions crackdown while Greens leader Adam Bandt is demanding new coal and gas projects be scrapped in return for his support in the Senate.
The AWU and MEU said the mechanism, due to start in July, was the most significant energy policy imposed on heavy industry since the now-repealed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
They said higher-grade Australian thermal and metallurgical coal exports would remain essential globally for years. “Some commentary has suggested that fossil fuel projects should be excluded from the use of carbon offsets or otherwise treated differently from safeguard facilities.
“This misguided proposal fails to recognise that Australian coal and natural gas have a role to play in the world’s transition to lower emissions, and it also disregards carbon leakage risks.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation said coal and gas facilities should not have access to carbon credits and be excluded from a $600m fund supporting their low-emissions transition.
ACF climate and energy manager Gavan McFadzean told The Australian “fossil fuel industries have had a free ride on polluting with a toothless safeguard mechanism for the last seven years”.
“The fossil fuel sector has had plenty of time to prepare for this, but has chosen not to prepare and is now crying the sky is going to fall in,” Mr McFadzean said.
Orica, whose ammonium nitrate manufacturing sites in Newcastle and Gladstone fall under the safeguard mechanism, said it supported the “thrust” of the new regime but was “concerned with the erosion of the existing deemed surrender provision and investment uncertainty”.
“Deemed surrender enables an entity to surrender ACCUs to government to achieve an emissions reduction and to also receive payment under an ERF carbon abatement contract,” Orica said.
The chemical giant said deemed surrender had helped it “meet our voluntary corporate emissions reduction commitments and monetise our ACCUs”.
BP, whose facilities under the safeguard mechanism include the Kwinana refinery, said it supports a “market-based policy … to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
“It is BP’s view that the crediting of emissions performance below the safeguard baseline and the ability to trade those credits is essential to the reformed mechanism … ” BP said. “It encourages entities to reduce their emissions beyond what is required … if it is cost-effective to do so. This supports efficiency across safeguard entities, with the market determining the lowest cost abatement pathway for the sector.”
The Australian Aluminium Council, whose members operate several bauxite mines, six alumina refineries and four aluminium smelters captured by the safeguard mechanism, said short-term carbon credits and offsets were crucial because low-emissions technologies were still being developed.
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2 February, 2023
Feeding off insects
Sanja Marcetic
Since 2013, the UN wants to impose insects as our daily food. The UN branch, FAO, says that insects are very healthy food for us humans, because they are rich in protein, especially spiders and scorpions. But also healthy are beetles, flies, caterpillars, wasps, grasshoppers, worms, etc. Beetles have long since entered through the small door into our food products, such as bread and pastries, crackers, biscuits, pasta, sauces, pizzas, soups, various snacks, chocolate desserts and paints used in the food industry. If you notice the name ACHETA DOMESTICUS on the packaging of a product, then you can be sure that it contains zohari in addition to other ingredients.
On the other hand, the UN's information on the usefulness of insects in human nutrition has not been confirmed by independent research teams around the world. Many of them point out some risks associated with this type of "food".
CHEMICAL RISKS
Chemical poisoning comes most often from what the insects feed on. These are usually heavy metals, plant poisons and mushroom poisons.
HEAVY METALS
Research has shown a high concentration of lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic in insects. Of course, other animals that serve humans for food have certain concentrations of them, but the body weight is not the same. The consumption of insects can be very dangerous for humans, precisely because of the increased concentration of poison on a modest body mass.
PLANT POISONS AND MUSHROOM POISONS
Insects feed on edible plants and mushrooms, as well as poisonous ones. which do not bother them. Mushroom poisons are actually considered the biggest risk when it comes to feeding insects. The reason for this is that the mushroom mycelium contains a substance called chitin, and the same chitin forms the insect's skeleton. Chitin itself is inedible, but also a good conductor of poison.
MICROBIOLOGICAL RISKS
Insects are usually carriers of a large number of microorganisms that often spread diseases in humans. Studies are still limited in this area, but it is known that bacteria are an integral part of the microflora of insects and many of them cannot be destroyed by cooking. Of course, the bacteriological world is also present in other living beings, but for now the microbiological control of insects is still incomplete, so the risk is even greater.
ALLERGIES
Insects can very easily cause allergic reactions, such as irritation of the throat, throat and oral cavity, rashes, swelling, asthma, and even anaphylactic shock, which in the worst case can result in death. The reason is the unusually high concentration of HISTAMINE in a modest body mass. There are many foods with histamine, so it is known that people react very negatively to this substance. However, nowhere is the concentration of histamine per body weight as high as in insects.
CHITIN, which forms the skeleton of insects, is in many ways even more dangerous than histamine. Not only is it highly allergenic, but it is actually not food in the true sense of the word. It cannot be broken down in the human body, so it just passes through the body and comes out "alive".
In some areas of Africa, Asia and South America where the consumption of insects is a traditional phenomenon, chitin is increasingly associated with a whole series of diseases, such as impaired immunity, various poisonings and some strange, very persistent and long-lasting infections that people do not recover from throughout their lives. can release.
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With Russian gas gone, coal makes EU comeback as ‘traditional fuel’
Coal demand in Europe went up for the second consecutive year in 2022, led by “strong growth” in electricity generation, where it has partly replaced gas as a backup power source, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Once eclipsed by cheaper and less-polluting Russian gas, coal is making a comeback in Europe to supply electricity when carbon-free sources like nuclear and renewables aren’t available.
And with gas prices expected to remain volatile for some time, the winds are blowing more favourably for European coal power generators, an IEA official said on Monday (23 January).
“In our forecast, despite the recent decline in gas prices, until 2025, coal is still more competitive than gas,” said Carlos Fernández Alvarez, who heads the IEA’s division on gas, coal and power markets.
Growing demand for coal was driven chiefly by the war in Ukraine and the need to reduce gas consumption following Russia’s decision to diminish supplies to Europe, according to the IEA’s 2022 coal report, published in December.
Alvarez said that the demand for coal in Europe was also pushed up by the decline in nuclear power generation coming from France, Germany, and Belgium.
“There is a gap [in power generation capacity] that needs to be filled. And with high gas prices, it’s coal” filling the gap, the IEA analyst said at a meeting organised by industry association Euracoal.
As a result, coal demand in Europe is set to grow for the second year in a row in 2022, the IEA indicated in its December report.
For many in Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine brought an end to the assumption that gas would be used as a stepping stone to phase out coal power.
“Last year, we saw the end of the notion of gas as a transitional fuel,” said Radan Kanev, a Bulgarian conservative MEP. Rather, “the transitional fuel is the traditional fuel,” he added about growing demand for coal last year to replace Russian gas.
Coal’s resurgence in Europe is expected to be short-lived, however.
With EU pressure piling up to meet climate goals and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the industry assumes that coal will have disappeared entirely from the EU’s electricity mix during the next decade.
“If you think it through, it implies that the electricity sector has to hit net zero already in 2035,” said Roger Miesen from RWE, a German power utility. In other words, coal generation in Europe is expected to go down “to virtually nothing in the 2030s,” he explained.
The EU, particularly Germany, will have significantly increased coal consumption and production by the end of the year, though structural decline is expected to start in the next three years, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report.
‘Wrong’ to focus just on coal phase-out
However, phasing out coal power also implies that alternative clean electricity generation capacity is scaled up in parallel to replace it.
According to Miesen, this is an aspect often overlooked in the public debate, which focuses chiefly on the need to phase out coal without considering whether the alternatives are available.
“In our perspective, that’s the wrong discussion,” he said, adding: “it’s even dangerous to do that because you might get security of supply problems”. “The right discussion is how do we get the alternatives in. When the alternatives are in, coal will leave anyway,” he said. But if the alternatives aren’t built quickly enough, the energy transition might simply “not happen,” he warned.
Another key question is whether coal will be needed to provide so-called “ancillary services” to the electricity grid, for example, to provide backup for renewables when unavailable.
“These services will not come as a by-product; someone needs to guarantee that they are provided, otherwise we are in a blackout,” Alvarez said.
In this context, Euracoal Secretary-General Brian Ricketts warned against a push from the gas industry to obtain government subsidies for building new gas power plants as a backup for renewables.
“The gas utilities are calling for subsidies to build those plants,” which is “absolutely amazing” given the current geopolitical volatility with gas, Ricketts told EURACTIV.
A cheaper option, he said, would be to utilise coal power plants, which are immediately available and do not require new investments.
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Electric Vehicles Now More Costly To Operate Than Gas-Powered Cars
A new report found that in late 2022, a drop in fuel prices made gas-powered cars cheaper to drive than electric vehicles for the first time in 18 months.
According to the Anderson Economic Group, the average mid-priced gas-powered car cost around $11.29 to drive 100 miles compared to the average mid-priced electric car, which cost $11.60.
“The run-up in gas prices made EVs look like a bargain during much of 2021 and 2022,” AEG’s Patrick Anderson says. “With electric prices going up and gas prices declining, drivers of traditional ... vehicles saved a little bit of money in the last quarter of 2022.”
The difference between the cost to charge an electric car versus fueling a gas car was more pronounced when adjusted for the cost of commercial charging as opposed to home charging.
Charging a car commercially cost over $3 more than fueling a gas car for the same 100 mile trip. Luxury electric vehicles, however, were still cheaper to fuel by $7.56 per 100 miles, compared to their gas-powered counterparts.
To calculate the total cost of operating the vehicles, Anderson looked at the cost of the underlying energy, be it gas, diesel, or electric; state excise taxes charged for road maintenance; the cost to operate a gas pump or electric charger; and the cost to drive to a fueling station.
According to the Department of Energy, 2022 marked a tipping point for electric cars, as sales of the vehicles exceeded 7 percent of all new car shares for the first time, tripling from around 2 percent of new car sales in 2010.
Although there are multiple drivers of this trend, high gas prices throughout much of the past three years as well as tax credits, expanded on by the Inflation Reduction Act, have been contributing factors.
Until 2032, those who buy an electric vehicle can now receive a $7,500 tax credit per new vehicle or up to $4,000 per used vehicle. Businesses can also receive up to a $7,5000 tax credit for a new light vehicle or up to $40,000 for electric vehicles over 14,000 pounds.
https://www.nysun.com/article/electric-vehicles-now-more-costly-to-operate-than-gas-powered-cars
************************************************Another State Just Joined the Fight Against ESG Investing
In the ongoing work to protect consumers and investors whose assets are managed by large firms from losing out due to woke priorities sold as "ESG," Oklahoma State Treasurer Todd Russ is putting financial companies on notice: confirm that you're not engaged in a boycott of energy companies or get banned from doing business with Oklahoma's state government entities. And that ban on doing business with the Sooner State could cost woke companies billions of dollars.
In a letter to dozens of financial companies — including familiar ESG-pushing names such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — Treasurer Russ explained that the Oklahoma Energy Discrimination Act of 2022 requires him to "prepare and maintain a list of financial companies that boycott energy companies."
To create such a list, Russ' office "requests a written verification of your company's position regarding the boycott of energy companies, executed and verified by an authorized representative of your company" which must be completed and returned to the Oklahoma State Treasurer (OST) "no later than 60 days after receiving" Russ' letter. The treasurer notes that a company "may be presumed to be boycotting energy companies under Oklahoma law" if they "fail to timely respond" to OST's request.
Among the 15+ questions posed by OST to the financial entities are: "Has your company committed or pledged to meet environmental standards, such as reducing your greenhouse gas emissions, beyond applicable federal or state law with respect to its lending, investing, or underwriting portfolio, or with respect to the companies with which your company does business?" and "Do you belong to the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative?"
Getting listed on the State of Oklahoma's energy company-boycotting list "will prohibit Oklahoma governmental entities from investing in, and may potentially require divestment from your company, your company's affiliates and subsidiaries, or investment vehicles affiliated with your company, its affiliates, or subsidiaries," OST's letter further explained.
"I took office on January 9th and began compiling a list of companies, banks, and other entities that act against Oklahoma’s interests because of their ESG stance," Treasurer Russ said. "It is my responsibility to ensure Oklahoman’s tax dollars will not be used to enrich organizations that act counter to our taxpayers’ interests and our values," he explained. "Other states are taking similar steps, and Oklahoma joins them in asserting that we will not do business with financial companies who discriminate against or boycott our energy industries and businesses."
"This list is crucial to provide accountability for our government entities, including organizations responsible for pension funds such as the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), Teachers Retirement System (TRS) to ensure our constituents’ tax dollars are only invested in secure and verified financial companies that comply with Oklahoma law," Russ noted. "OPERS alone has more than 60 percent of their portfolio totaling more than $10 billion managed by BlackRock, a well-known adversary of energy businesses," he said.
That is, BlackRock alone could be out $10 billion just from one State of Oklahoma entity — and there were dozens of financial companies who received the OST letter and other Oklahoma entities from which energy boycotting companies could lose business.
Several other Republican-led states have taken similar actions to divest from financial companies pushing ESG priorities at the detriment of customers and the state's economy. Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and others have worked to divest state funds from ESG-obsessed asset managers while 13 states took action to prevent Vanguard from buying up shares in publicly traded utilities with the goal of "decarbonizing" the energy industry and 19 states launched a probe of major banks' involvement with a United Nations alliance promoting ESG.
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1 February, 2023
Beasts Saved by Conservationist Common Sense, not Climate Lunacy
By Vijay Jayaraj
Two beasts, which are thousands of miles apart, are making a comeback after centuries of overhunting. The iconic American bison and the greater one-horned Indian rhinoceros find themselves among the stories of conservation success in the 21st century.
As is the case of many other mammalian species, overhunting – and not climate change – had been the primary cause in the decline of bison and rhino populations. Though not rocket science, the obvious effects of overhunting on animal numbers are often lost in the noise of climate-change activism.
Climate doomsayers falsely attribute decline in populations to global warming and portray climate change as the major threat to species. However, just as was true for mammals like polar bears and tigers, the fates of bison and rhinos are dependent more on the prevention of poaching and overhunting than on controlling the uncontrollable – namely global temperature.
Bisons Make it Big
Even for a small kid from a third world country like this Indian native, the importance of American bison was unmistakable. An avid reader of Nat Geo magazines, I never missed articles on these impressive beasts that once dominated the plains of North America.
Once hunted nearly to extinction, the North American bison is now thriving. Numbering as many as 60 million centuries ago, the U.S. bison population reached its lowest point in 1884 with only around 325 in the wild, including just 24 in Yellowstone. An average of 5,000 bison were killed every day between 1872-74, according to some estimates. By 1910, conservation efforts had brought the number of bison up to 1,000.
Today, there are at least 400,000 bison in the U.S., along with a bison meat industry that capitalizes on the animal’s relatively lean flesh.
In 2015, CNBC reported that the “sales of bison meat continue to grow, and so does the national herd. Consumers with more disposable income are attracted to grass-fed bison’s low-fat content, buying it everywhere from local farmer’s markets to Whole Foods.” Between 2016 and 2021, live bison exports from Canada to U.S. increased by 50 percent.
Rhino Population Powers Through
Another species recovering from overharvesting is the Indian rhinoceros. Rhinoceroses derive their name from Greek, rhino meaning nose and keras meaning horn – an animal with a horn on its nose. While the two African rhino species have two horns, their three Asian cousins have just one.
The greater one-horned rhino – found in India and Nepal – was hunted to near extinction. But thanks to conservation efforts, their numbers are rising. Since the 1980s, there has been a 167% increase in the population of one-horned rhinos. Today, there are more than 4,000 one-horned rhinos in India and Nepal. India’s famous Kaziranga National Park in the state of Assam alone has 2,613 of these animals.
A reason for the population boost is a decrease in poaching. Indian Rhino Vision 2020 was established in 2005 for the purpose of increasing the rhino population in Assam, where it successfully set up seven protected areas.
Reports show that poaching of rhinos was highest in 2013 and 2014, with 27 rhinos killed each of the years. In comparison, there were only six incidences in 2017, seven in 2018, three in 2019, two in 2020 and one in 2021. The park’s director says, “Kaziranga has a healthy population of rhinos despite casualties due to natural deaths, floods and infighting.” Credit for the recovery is given to increased policing and the construction of mud platforms that serve as refuge from floods.
Such successes frustrate climate alarmists who are obsessively focused on dampening human development in the name of saving other species. Their apocalyptic propaganda and wasteful expenditures on so-called green technology and other nonsense serve neither wild beasts nor humans.
True environmental care lies in conservation efforts that aim to protect endangered species in a scientific way that does not ignore the importance of economic activity.
https://co2coalition.org/2023/01/16/beasts-saved-by-conservationist-common-sense-not-climate-lunacy/
************************************************************California fire crews use SIX THOUSAND gallons of water to extinguish burning Tesla Model S whose battery spontaneously combusted while driving down busy freeway
Firefighters used 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Model S that spontaneously burst into flames on a busy highway outside of Sacramento on Saturday.
The driver, who was not injured, was on Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova at around 3pm when smoke started to come out from the front of the car.
Photos of the luxury car showed the vehicle completely totaled with the front end of completely burnt.
Officials responded to the scene with two fire engines and a water tender. The Metro Fire of Sacramento crew said that nothing was previously wrong with car.
It is unclear what caused the blaze, but the federal government is also probing multiple Tesla self-driving crashes with some resulting in deaths.
The horrific blaze wasn't the first Tesla S fire that Metro Fire of Sacramento officials had to extinguish.
A white Tesla model burst into flames in a Rancho Cordova wrecking yard in June after the car had spent weeks sitting there after a collision.
Firefighters arrived at the wrecking yard to find the Tesla fully engulfed in flames. Each time the firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, the Tesla's battery would reignite the fire.
The fire department posted an Instagram video of the ordeal, saying that even when firefighters moved the Tesla onto its side to spray the battery directly, the car would burst into flames again 'due to the residual heat.'
Eventually, the firefighters dug a pit near the Tesla and moved the burning car into it and then filled the pit with water, 'effectively submerging the battery compartment.'
The technique worked, and the fire department was able to put out the fire with no injuries and 4,500 gallons of water used - about the same amount of water used for a building fire.
Fires generated from electric vehicles can be especially hazardous, as they generate over 100 organic chemicals including some potentially fatal toxic gasses like carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
Tesla batteries may be at a higher risk of combusting due to the lithium-ion technology they use, which is a relatively new introduction to the auto industry. Lithium-ion batteries charge faster but can rise to extraordinary temperatures if damaged.
An increase in electric vehicle use over recent years has brought to light some of the risks associated with them.
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EU Threatens Green Arms Race Over Biden’s So-Called Inflation Reduction Act
The leaders of Germany and France are retaliating against President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and plan to meet next month to consider lodging a formal protest with the World Trade Organization, pushing America and the European Union closer to a trade war that would benefit Communist China.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, sat down at Paris last week to strategize on how the EU could counter the IRA, taking aim at the half-a-trillion dollars in spending, grants, loans, and tax breaks for American companies as well as those in Canada and Mexico.
Politico described the law’s passage as having “thrown the transatlantic economic relationship into turmoil.” Mr. Scholz “expressed frustration that the American law would directly harm Germany’s vital car market,” the outlet wrote, because “the incentives would prove damaging to Germany and Europe and eventually spark a trade war.”
Germany and France, Bloomberg reported in the wake of the summit, “warned that European businesses will need to unleash investments on a nearly unparalleled scale to keep from falling behind U.S. and Chinese firms as countries revamp their economies to make them more climate friendly.”
According to the Financial Times today, an EU draft plan will “hit back” at the IRA “by easing restrictions to allow a wave of tax credits for green investment” and removing obstacles for state money -- some of it from the bloc’s Covid-19 funds — to flow to green segments of the economy.
The Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joseph Manchin III, who provided the deciding vote in passing the IRA, recalled in an interview with Politico that Mr. Macron told him, “You’re hurting my country,” in particular with made-in-America requirements.
The EU’s goal is to ensure they’re “not treated worse than immediate neighbors,” Mr. Scholz said at a news conference with Mr. Macron, who promised that the two European nations planned “a real convergence on the responses we’re bringing.”
On December 4, the chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, Bernd Lange, urged the European Parliament to go forward with legal action against the IRA. “The EU,” he said, “must swiftly file a complaint against the U.S. with the WTO in the coming months.”
There is hope for cooler heads to prevail. In October, the European Commission established a task force with America’s deputy national security adviser, Michael Pyle, aimed at finding solutions and at gaining for European companies a share of the IRA pie.
“The task force will address specific concerns,” they wrote in a statement, “Both sides agreed on the importance of close coordination to support sustainable and resilient supply chains across the Atlantic, including to build the clean energy economy.”
In remarks last week, the European commissioner for trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the European Parliament that features of the IRA “are becoming major irritants,” but warned that Europe “should also be mindful of the risk” of responding “IRA-like policies” like those the Financial Times outlined in the EU’s leaked battle plan.
Mr. Dombrovskis said that the EU was “likely to lose out” in “a more protectionist world,” and that while “subsidies can incentivize the development of green and climate-friendly technologies ... subsidies must not come at the cost of well-functioning markets and fair competition.”
America’s trade representative, Katherine Tai, met with Mr. Dombrovskis in Brussels earlier this month to discuss what he and other EU officials have called “problematic aspects” of the IRA but suggested they be “realistic” about the prospect of changes.
“I don’t think that much will change in substance,” Mr. Lange said according to Funke Mediengruppe, “because the law has already been passed,” but Reuters reported that he sees “complaining to the WTO would make send a message that the bill was incompatible with the organization’s rules.”
At a time when North America and Europe are dealing with the pandemic’s aftermath, record-high inflation, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the last thing countries need is a trade war that hurts businesses in Denver and Dusseldorf far more than dandies at Davos. Leaders may want an energy revolution, but the pain of a green arms race is something their citizens can do without.
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Australian folly: Carbon taxes are useless without a technological breakthrough
Raising the cost of using a particular fuel will shift consumption to another fuel, but only if all other things are equal. Unfortunately for climate change hysterics, when it comes to CO2 emissions, all other things aren’t equal.
This is a relevant issue now Australia effectively has a CO2 tax.
Under Australia’s ‘Safeguard Mechanism’, an invention of the previous Coalition government now being ‘refined’ by Labor, Australia’s 215 largest CO2 emitting facilities will face a virtual carbon tax.
They’ve been told they need to reduce their emissions on average by 4.9 per cent a year, and if they can’t manage this, they may buy carbon credits, but only if the credits cost less than an inflation-adjusted $75 a tonne.
This is effectively a tax that cuts in at the average mandated level of emissions per type of facility, and which is determined by the number of facilities that can’t meet those benchmarks and the amount of emissions they emit.
The more emissions, the higher the price, until $75 a tonne. And if the demand exceeds the supply? Well, perhaps some of those polluters will wish their industry organisations hadn’t lobbied for a price cap. They may already even be thinking that, looking at the mess a cap is making of the gas market. Those that can stay in business at those tax levels, that is.
To make this hang together in some way that keeps the Greens happy, the government needed to prove the carbon offsets market was effective. Carbon markets are susceptible to fraud, with double-dipping, poor governance, and imprecise science.
The answer to these problems, raised in an ANU critique about the Australian carbon credit market, was to appoint former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb to do a review. Chubb gave the scheme the all-clear, subject to 16 recommendations.
Inquiries are only as good as their terms of reference and their personnel. At no stage was Chubb asked what the total carbon credit capacity of Australia is, which would determine the depth of the market and the price that should be charged. If he had, he may have discovered that Australia absorbs more than twice as much CO2 as it emits.
So, on a national basis, the cost of carbon credits ought to be zero – we are already NetZero, with surplus credits to sell to the world.
But this wouldn’t suit the narrative which is to see emissions management as a result purely of fuel-type, rather than also a function of volume. The size of the continent, which contributes to Australia’s high per capita emissions, is also the solution to them, as long as we don’t grow the population too much.
There is also another side to the use of carbon credits which points to the absurdity of carbon taxes. The fact that they need to be available at all, means the government tacitly acknowledges there are no substitutes for fossil fuels for particular uses.
Which is the whole weakness in the idea of carbon taxes. While superficially ‘efficient’ they cannot meet their aim of fuel substitution because the suitable fuels do not exist, or if they do, are banned from consideration by this government.
There are a number of results from this. One is that rather than substituting one fuel type for another they end up substituting one highly-taxed location for a lower-taxed one.
Much of Australia’s emissions under the various regimes in place under previous and current governments have merely been exported to China, South-East Asia more generally, and more recently South Asia, rather than reduced. Ditto for most of the rest of the hyperventilating carbonphobic world, like the EU and the balance of the Anglosphere.
Because only the 215 largest installations will have to adapt, this also represents a boost for smaller businesses. The 216th largest installation will be laughing all the way to the bank, at least in comparison to the 215th (which raises another issue, what happens if one of the 215 goes out of business?).
That’s why since 1990, when the IPCC at the Second World Conference called for a treaty on climate change, global emissions have risen over 53 per cent despite the expenditure of trillions trying to stop them rising.
There are no substitutes and carbon taxes are therefore, in effect, a subsidy to manufacturing in China and the developing world, not a mitigation strategy at all.
Carbon taxes do cause some substitution, such as from coal to gas. This has happened in a perverse way in Australia. As renewables continue to penetrate the power generation mix, there is an increased need for on-demand rapid deployment sources of power, like Open Cycle Gas Generators. In a state like South Australia they make up around 30 per cent of electricity supply.
Unfortunately for Australia the carbonphobics hate natural gas too and have made it difficult to prospect for new fields and bring them online, making gas more expensive than coal, unlike the US where it is generally cheaper. This results in a further ‘tax’ on consumers as gas, being the marginal producer, sets the price for the whole of the electricity network.
Yet even this substitution is to be banned as the governments of Australia declare that gas cannot be part of any ‘capacity mechanism’ (even though gas makes up a substantial part of AEMO’s Infrastructure Plan in 2050, the year we plan to be Net Zero).
Which is where the lack of substitutes will really cut in. Metal refineries need to operate 24/7 – you can’t ever let the metal cool in the pots. And some of them consume vast quantities of electricity. For example, Rio’s three smelters in Queensland consume about 17 per cent of state power generation, the Tomago smelter in NSW around 12 per cent.
The technologies don’t currently exist at all, or where they might exist, in the quantities required, to make these large installations viable using renewables (despite what management says). The tax squeeze is going to send them to the wall, but the world will still need their output, so it will come from somewhere else.
Bear in mind that the businesses we are talking about include power generators, steel and cement manufacturers, fertiliser and plastics manufacturers, oil refineries, and rail operators. The bulk of emissions from some of these has little to do with fuel supply, but is a by-product of their manufacturing process. For example, the coking coal used in steel manufacture cannot be replaced at the moment.
It turns out that carbon taxes are very efficient taxes, but only when it comes to putting industries out of business.
The tax wouldn’t be so dire if all existing technologies were on the table, but alongside gas, nuclear power has been ruled out by this government. Nuclear is the only viable 24/7 non-emitting source of electricity. If it were available the smelters might be safe even if the plastics, fertiliser, steel, and cement manufacturers still faced existential problems.
Bjorn Lomborg has long argued that we need to invest in researching and developing alternative technologies, rather than taxing existing technologies. To date, Australia has more or less avoided this trap, but under enthusiastic Labor, no longer. Their virtual carbon tax guarantees Australia will have an impoverishing collision with the physical limits of reality. And all for no return in global emissions.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/carbon-taxes-are-useless-without-a-technological-breakthrough
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