This document is part of an archive of postings on Greenie Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
31 January, 2023
Would YOU accept less anesthetic during surgery to save the planet? Doctors say it could reduce world's carbon footprint... by up to 0.1%
First they wanted us to eat bugs -- and now this. Warmists are a danger to civilization
Researchers are asking doctors to use less anesthesia on their surgery patients in the name of climate change.
Doctors from the Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan, said it could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of hospitals in the US.
Research suggests that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1 percent of the world's carbon emissions.
Dr Mohamed Fayed, a senior anesthetist at the Henry Ford, said: 'Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial.
'No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas — without affecting patient care.'
He made the comments at the American Society of Anesthesiologists annual event last Friday in Orlando, Florida.
Henry Ford fesearchers gathered data from 13,000 patients over the seven months from March to September 2021. They set a goal of reducing anesthesia use to under 3liters of anesthesia every minute (L/m) per surgery when possible.
Trying to reduce the overall use of anesthesia in the hospital, the team instructed physicians to dial back the amount used in between those portions of the procedure.
This is only for inhaled anesthetics, not sedation or localized anesthetics used in smaller procedures.
At the start of their research, only 65 percent of surgeries fell under that threshold. After months of instruction, they had reduced the figure to just seven percent.
Now, they want to reduce anesthesia use to below 2L/m in as many operations as possible.
'For a long time, there was a notion that the greenhouse effect caused in health care settings was an inevitable and unavoidable cost of providing patient care,' said Dr. Fayed.
'But we have learned that reducing anesthetic gas flow is one of the many ways health care can lessen its contribution to the global warming crisis, along with reducing waste, turning off lights and equipment when not in use and challenging practice habits, as long as they don't compromise patient care.'
The amount of anesthesia a person receives during surgery depends on their weight and other factors such as time in surgery, age and potential risk factors
Surgical anesthetics are made up of multiple chemicals, including nitrous oxide halothane, isoflurance, desflurance, sevoflurane.
An hour of using anesthesia can cause the equivalent impact on the atmosphere as someone driving a car for nearly 500 miles, researchers say.
The Henry Ford research team, which presented their findings at ADVANCE 2023, in Orlando, Florida, this week, explains that surgical anesthesia requires fresh gas at the start and end of procedures.
Use of high levels of anesthesia does come with risks. While it is safe in nearly all cases, too much anesthesia can deprive cells of oxygen and cause stroke, brain injury, coma or even death.
There are risks from not receiving enough anesthesia too, though. A person could always wake up during surgery, which can be painful and highly traumatic.
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Climate and Human History
We are being told that continued warming will lead to catastrophic events. Human history tells quite a different story. In the previous much warmer periods, humanity flourished.
The rise of the first great civilizations occurred during a period known as the Bronze Age. Great empires arose and life flourished around the Mediterranean (Mycenaean), in Egypt (Old Kingdom), China (Xia dynasty), Mesopotamia (Hittite, Syrian & Babylonian) and in the Indus Valley of India (Harrapan). In this period, humanity saw early advancements such as the inventions of the wheel, writing, bronze smelting and wine making.
Minoan era temperatures are mainly known from ice cores and other proxies. We know that the crop millet was grown in southern Scandinavia and the Tibetan Plateau -- areas far from the tropical and subtropical regions that are home to the grain now. Comparing today’s average annual temperature in Denmark to that required to grow millet indicates that the temperature was at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) warmer during the Minoan period than today.
Despite temperatures much higher than the most-likely rise predicted for the 21st century by the IPCC, there was no tipping point or cascade of climate catastrophes. Rather, Earth and humanity thrived.
newsletter@co2coalition.org
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Are You Really Against Fossil Fuels? Read this Before You Answer
By Vijay Jayaraj
It is easy for anyone to say that they are against fossil fuels. Opposition to coal, oil and natural gas is fashionable and will prompt heads to nod and even hands to applaud in most places.
But are people aware of the extent to which their lives are dependent on fossil fuels? Do they know that more than 90 percent of things used in their everyday lives are derived from fossil fuels?
From your toothbrush to your car tire, a majority of the things you use today has been made possible because of fossil fuels. Shoes, refrigerators, washing machines, coffee makers, furniture, pens, eating utensils, eyeglasses, commodes, medical gear, camping equipment, and the list goes on and on.
Consider the computer or the phone from which you are reading this article. They are made of glass, metal, plastic, lithium and silicon – all of which require fossil fuels to mine, process or manufacture. While some are chemical derivatives of fossil fuels, all depend one way or another on their combustion for electricity generation, process heat or transportation.
You wouldn’t have the iPhone, Android or MacBook without fossil fuels. Imagine the irony of typing out “end oil” from a phone that is made from fossil fuels! Or supporting climate activism by relaying video that was recorded with a camera made from fossil fuels! Of course, this sort of irony is displayed regularly and missed constantly.
In short, the most fundamental necessities – and the most cherished conveniences – of daily life are products dependent on the use of fossil fuels.
Electricity and Transportation
The industrial era was a time of great change, and the use of fossil fuels played a big part in that. From the early 1800s to the mid-1900s, coal was the primary fuel source for industry and transportation. Oil and natural gas became much more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century.
Cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains use oil. If you go electric, the electricity for the vehicle is again predominantly generated from coal or gas. Even wind, solar, nuclear and hydro power are dependent on manufacturing and mining processes reliant on fossil fuels. If you intend to start a new life on the planet Mars or the moon, the rockets you use need fossil fuels.
While the use of fossil fuels as a source for electricity generation and transportation fuel has been discussed widely, their role in the manufacturing and farming sectors is seldom highlighted.
Cement, Steel, and Plastic
Cement, steel, and plastic are essential materials that are used in the construction, transportation and manufacturing industries, playing a key role in the development of modern civilization.
Being the primary ingredient of concrete, cement is the most frequently used construction material in the 21st century. It is used in the construction of homes, roads, bridges, commercial buildings and other infrastructure. The manufacture of cement is one of the most energy intensive processes, requiring the mining of limestone and other minerals that are eventually heated in kilns at temperatures of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.
Another common construction material is steel, which is preferred for its immense strength compared to its volume and weight – a quality desirable for the structural frameworks of tall buildings, industrial facilities and bridges. Steel is also used in the reinforced concrete of roads and in the manufacture of vehicles, machinery, tools and appliances.
Paints, resins, fiberglass, coatings, varnishes, adhesives, and thousands of other materials are all made from fossil fuels. It is likely the clothing that you are wearing now was made using fossil fuels. In fact, most carpets, fabrics, coatings, cushions, upholstery, drapes, spandex and other textiles are made with the help of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are used as raw materials in the production of many chemicals and plastics. Lightweight, durable and versatile, plastics are used in a wide range of products, from packaging and consumer goods to automotive parts and medical devices.
Food Production
Fertilizers – produced with the help of fossil fuels – replenish the soil with essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, improving soil structure and fertility. Fertilizers have played a crucial role in meeting the global food demand by increasing crop yields by as much as 50 percent.
According to OurWorldInData, which compiles information from the United Nations and World Bank, “From 1961 to 2014, global cereal production has increased by 280 percent. If we compare this increase to that of total population (which increased by only 136 percent over the same period), we see that global cereal production has grown at a much faster rate than the population.”
Not only do fossil fuels enable us to meet the bare necessities our everyday lives, but they are also the reason for the worldwide improvement in the quality of life since the 1950s.
The campaign against fossil fuels focuses on their use in the generation of electricity. However, every part of our material life is made better by fossil fuel derivates. They help us live more efficiently, safely and in an environmentally friendly way, reducing poverty and helping billions enjoy decent and safe lives.
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Here’s Why The World Is Producing More Food
by Vijay Jayaraj
Countries all over the world are surpassing previous records for production of food crops. This is good news that stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture that the media paints daily in reports on climate and weather.
Because food is fundamental to human survival, even a slight increase in its price can significantly affect millions – even billions – of people. “When food fails, everything fails,” said Geraldine Matchett, Co-Chair of the CEO Alliance on Food, Nature and Health.
So, it is not surprising that the purveyors of fear present climate change as the biggest threat to the world’s food security. Endlessly recycled articles and TV programs constantly peddle the misinformation that a supposedly dangerously warming Earth poses a risk to crops or is already destroying them.
However, in the real world, data show historically high crop production all over the globe. This is because climate change has aided in the proliferation of food crops, as well as other vegetation. Abundant harvests continue to affirm this. As in previous years, 2023 is expected to produce records for agricultural production in many countries.
Wheat is a major source of calories, protein and essential nutrients, and it is relatively easy to grow and store. A reliable source of food in many regions, wheat is the staple crop for an estimated 35% of the world population.
After a year of supply uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine, wheat production is slated for a global increase.
In the UK, for example, wheat production in 2022-23 is expected to increase by 450,000 tons from the previous year. In the U.S., winter wheat has been planted across nearly 37 million acres, up by 11% from the prior year and the highest in eight years.
In Africa, Zimbabwe produced a record 375,000 tons of wheat in 2022, making the country self-sufficient. The new record is 13% higher than the previous year and surpasses 50-year-old records. This saves the country 300 million dollars that otherwise would have been spent on wheat imports.
India is second only to China in wheat production. The Indian government reports that wheat production will reach an all-time high of 112 million tons in the 2022-23 crop year.
“The prospect of the wheat crop is better due to current weather conditions and slightly higher acreage,” The Economic Times reported.
In fact, globally, there has been a steady increase in yields of wheat as measured in tons per hectare, with some of the highest being in China.
Crop yields in the 21st century have been increasing due to a combination of factors. Among them are the use of modern technologies, the development of high-yielding crop varieties through plant breeding and genetic engineering and the application of fertilizers.
Nonetheless, the level of production would not have been possible without the post-Little Ice Age warming of the earth since the 18th century and the modern increase of atmospheric CO2.
Greater warmth has allowed for longer growing seasons and the cultivation of a wider variety of crops. Higher CO2 concentrations have helped plants to photosynthesize more efficiently, resulting in increased growth and crop yields.
Even in the worst-case scenarios of alarmists, where temperatures rise sharply, global agriculture can adapt through genetically advanced food crop varieties that are resilient to extreme droughts and high temperatures.
There is simply no reason for alarm over climate’s impact on global food production either today, next year or in 100 years. In fact, climate is aiding crop growth and helping the world to feed growing populations.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/21/opinion-heres-why-the-world-is-producing-more-food-vijay-jayaraj/
***************************************30 January, 2023
Partisan ‘Fact Checkers’ Spread Climate-Change Misinformation
By Bjorn Lomborg
Partisan “fact checks” are undermining open discourse about important issues, including climate change. Earlier this month I wrote an accurate post on Facebook about the growing polar-bear population. The post undercut alarmist climate narratives, so it was wrongly tagged as a falsehood.
Activists have used polar bears as an icon of climate apocalypse for decades, but the best data show that far from dying out, their numbers are growing. The official assessments from the leading scientists who study these animals—the Polar Bear Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature—peg the global population today at 22,000 to 31,000. That’s higher than the 5,000 to 19,000 polar bears scientists estimated were around in the 1960s.
The main reason has nothing to do with climate. An international agreement enacted in 1976 limits polar-bear hunting, always the key threat to polar bears’ numbers. Polar bears survived through the last interglacial period, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when it was significantly warmer than it is now.
None of that means climate change isn’t real or doesn’t affect people or the planet. But to deal effectively with these problems, we need to use good data rather than defaulting to ideologically inspired narratives. It does more good for polar bears, and the rest of us, if those trying to help them use accurate facts.
Agence France-Presse, the world’s oldest news service, has found new relevance in marketing itself as an online “digital verification service.” It stamped “MISLEADING” over the top of my post and declared I’d used “unreliable data.” Other media platforms quickly followed suit, with Facebook flagging multiple posts and newspaper columns in which I made these points as “partly false” and “could mislead.”
But the AFP is verifiably wrong. It based its finding almost entirely on an interview with a retired scientist, Dag Vongraven. He accepts that I referenced the correct findings, but claims that because of the scientists’ limited ability to track animals back then, the 1960s data are “guesswork” that can’t be trusted. The implication is that the rise in the estimated number of polar bears reflects improved tracking, not real population growth.
That’s a politically convenient smoke screen. The 1960s data come from the First International Scientific Meeting on the Polar Bear, in 1965, and are based on three peer-reviewed estimates that extrapolate their totals from well-documented regional populations of polar bears. The pattern is borne out in other data, including a 1970 finding from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and five other sources I referenced. All show that the number of polar bears has risen. AFP and Mr. Vongraven never offer up an alternative estimate; they simply reject the best data available because they don’t match their political narrative.
Even if you throw out all the 20th-century data, the Polar Bear Specialist Group in its latest (2021) report documents that polar-bear numbers have increased over the past two decades. AFP simply ignores this, and instead emphasizes that estimates are difficult.
Yet AFP quickly loses its sense of caution about data extrapolation as soon as it’s politically convenient. Midway through the article, the outlet inserts a huge graphic that declares that polar bears “could be extinct by the end of the century.” AFP doesn’t clearly indicate a source for this claim, but it likely comes from a 2020 article in Nature that was widely reported as demonstrating the potential extinction of polar bears. Here, again, AFP oversteps the data. Even in its worst-case scenario, the Nature article doesn’t show that polar bears would become extinct.
Relying on the data I referenced used to be uncontroversial. When a CNN science journalist did an investigation similar to AFP’s in 2008, he spoke to numerous scientists and they agreed “that polar bear populations have, in all likelihood, increased in the past several decades.” When polar bears in 2008 were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, the decision noted that the population “has grown from a low of about 12,000 in the late 1960’s to a current worldwide estimate of 20,000-25,000.” The data here haven’t changed, only the media’s willingness to disregard annoying facts.
The result is that the public is denied access to accurate data and open debate about these very important topics. Ridiculous points on one side are left standing while so-called fact-checking censors inconvenient truths. If we’re to make good climate policy, voters need a full picture of the facts.
Besides, even today some 700 polar bears are killed by hunters each year. If we want to help polar bears, why not stop shooting them?
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North Asia cranks coal imports to fuel industrial reboot
Thermal coal imports into China, Japan and South Korea - three of the world's largest coal users - hit their highest combined total in 16 months in December as the North Asian manufacturing powerhouses primed their economies for growth in 2023.
Economic momentum in these countries - which collectively accounted for nearly half of all thermal coal imports in 2021 - was subdued in 2022 as China's strict zero-COVID measures stifled industrial activity across the world's largest manufacturing base.
Japan and South Korea have extensive supply chain ties with China which meant that each country suffered slowdowns in both productivity and demand growth in 2022 as China's COVID-19 curbs stifled movement of goods and people over much of the year.
But thanks to a slew of stimulus and easing measures passed by Beijing that are designed to kickstart a revival in China's economy this year, factories and industries throughout North Asia are now also primed for a pick up.
To feed that anticipated sustained rise in output and consumption, each country has stepped up imports of thermal coal, which generates power for electrical grids as well as plants producing everything from cement and ceramics to refined metals, chemicals, heavy machinery and fertilizers.
Combined thermal coal imports by the three countries totalled 43 million tonnes in December 2022, the highest monthly tally since August 2021, ship-tracking data from Kpler shows.
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A Sorry Set of Anniversaries That Will Cost Americans
Many if not most Americans were up in arms when news broke that an obscure federal regulatory agency was considering a ban on natural gas stoves. Rightly so. A government that meddles in Mama’s kitchen for no good reason clearly has gotten too big
But here’s the problem: This kind of regulatory activity is now happening almost every day, whether it makes headline news or not.
Two years ago, on Jan. 20 and 27, President Joe Biden signed two executive orders—EO13990 and EO14008—to deploy an “all of government” regulatory agenda designed to rapidly phase out the production and consumer use of conventional energy. The goal is to halve U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (relative to 2005 levels) and ultimately reach “net zero” emissions by 2050.
If that still sounds obscure, think about how your phone alarm woke you up on time, how you made breakfast, got to work or school today, and enjoyed entering a temperature-controlled room. Every step (and dozens more) required energy, and it’s only the start of the day.
Nearly 80% of Americans’ total energy needs are met by coal, oil, and natural gas—the very energy resources targeted by Biden’s executive orders.
With those two orders in the first week of his term, Biden could take his hands off the wheel and let regulatory agencies do the rest of the job via even more obscure rule-makings, guidance, reports, standards, and bureaucratic forms.
Creating Climate Agencies
Perhaps the most obvious upshot of the two executive orders: the immediate cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline’s cross-border permit and new lease sales for oil and gas production on federal lands and waters.
But between then and the recently considered, infamous gas stove ban have been dozens of regulations targeting private sector investment, exploration, production, distribution, and consumer use of conventional energy in the long term.
Environmental Protection Agency (not one, not two, but three).
Executive Orders 13990 and 14008 have turned the Pentagon, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, and others into climate agencies that regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
These regulations are designed for the long term—that is, to keep new energy infrastructure and use from being “locked in.” At some point, the effect will catch up with Americans.
The Heritage Foundation attempted to model these effects using a replica of the Energy Department’s energy model and found the Biden administration’s climate commitment would reduce the nation’s gross domestic product by $7.7 trillion by 2040. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
That reduction in GDP is about $87,000 in lost income for an average family of four. Importantly, it will do nothing to reduce global temperatures by the end of the century.
The “net zero” climate policy unleashed by Biden’s two executive orders isn’t possible or desirable. The same wrongheaded perspective created Europe’s catastrophic dependency on Russian energy and energy infrastructure.
The Deeper Problem
As a presidential candidate, Biden made clear he was running to “eliminate fossil fuel.” Americans shouldn’t be surprised this is exactly what they’re getting.
But here’s the deeper problem that should concern all Americans, be they conservative or liberal, climate catastrophist or realist: Nearly every agency has become a climate agency, regardless of its statutory mission established by Congress.
Some agencies are stretching their statutory authority beyond recognition to become climate regulators.
Queue up, for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s infamous proposed rule on disclosing greenhouse gas emissions. What do emissions have to do with the SEC’s mission “to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation,” anyway?
Other agencies are ignoring the job that Congress tasked them to do. For example, although the Interior Department is required by law to hold quarterly oil and gas lease sales, it took many rounds of court cases and another act of Congress just to get a modicum of compliance from the Biden administration.
Outskirts of Lawlessness
“Lawless” is a strong word that should be used judiciously, but this kind of regulatory activity is approaching it. The Supreme Court and Congress will have to decide.
Most Americans wouldn’t have a clue what “EO13990” and “EO14008” refer to, for good reason: They are busy living their lives and being productive.
Without a single act of Congress or even a debate by their elected representatives, Biden’s two executive orders put in motion an all-of-government regulatory agenda that is only just beginning to impact Americans’ everyday lives.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/25/a-sorry-set-of-anniversaries-that-will-cost-americans/
*************************************************Activism as a performance, a hideous theatre of the absurd
Activists’ sound and fury signify that the world is being overrun by posturing idiots.
By CHRIS KENNY
The idea that the world is a stage upon which we mortals act out our lives is an ancient one, popularised by Shakespeare. In the digital age, we seem to have flipped this, so that instead of attempting to solve even the world’s most complex problems, we turn them into endless pantomimes and sideshows, just for entertainment and self-aggrandisement.
Those who claim there is an existential threat to life on this planet bely their own alarm by expressing it through confected theatre sports. Stunts and memes have replaced rational debate; slacktivism has usurped real commitment and practical efforts.
Imagine, for instance, that an inspired satirist might attempt to mock the global elite and their climate fearmongering. Could you conceive of a better spoof than sending an Al Gore impersonator to the climate-controlled luxury of the World Economic Forum’s annual talkfest in the Swiss alpine village of Davos, where billionaires and politicians turn up in private jets to lecture the world on what sacrifices others must make.
You could just see this impersonator of the multi-millionaire former US vice-president (a man with a vast carbon footprint whose alarmist predictions have stubbornly failed to materialise) portraying him getting ever angrier and more hysterical. He might have Gore equating our carbon emissions to “600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on earth” and ranting about “boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach one billion in this century”.
Apart from having your audience falling in the aisles, this act would expose the hypocrisy and hysteria of the self-appointed climate elites. But I guess you know where this is going – yes, that is exactly what the real Gore did, and said, last week.
These people are beyond parody.
Greta Thunberg, the teenage activist who passed out of her teens earlier this month, turned up at Davos just days after being arrested at a coalmine protest in Germany, where she posed, smiled, and joked with the arresting officers while the media got their pictures. Theatre.
At Davos, Thunberg rattled off all the well-worn socialist cliches that might have been uttered by her parents in the 1960s or 70s: “self-greed”, “corporate greed”, “short-term profits”, and “profits before people”. Thunberg said the people at Davos were the same ones “fuelling the destruction of the planet”.
Sitting there, as she was, in the Swiss ski village, Thunberg noted that “the people who we really should be listening to are not here”. You can say that again.
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29 January, 2023
Big winners from Biden's climate law: Republicans who voted against it
They didn’t vote for it, they don’t like it and they’re working to undermine it — but Republicans are reaping the benefits of Democrats’ climate law.
In the five months since the Inflation Reduction Act became law, companies have announced tens of billions of dollars in renewable energy, battery and electric vehicle projects that will benefit from incentives in President Joe Biden’s signature law, aimed at expanding domestic manufacturing in clean energy and reducing dependence on Chinese imports.
In fact, roughly two-thirds of the major projects are in districts whose Republican lawmakers opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a POLITICO analysis of major green energy manufacturing announcements made since the bill’s enactment.
The dynamic has prompted a tricky balancing act for the GOP: Tout the jobs and economic benefits coming to their states and districts, but not the bill that helped create them. The results are also potentially awkward for Democrats who expended political capital and more than a year of wrangling to enact the bill, only to see Republican lawmakers and governors sharing in the jobs and positive headlines it’s creating — although Democrats say they also see longer-term benefits for the nation in building GOP support for alternatives to fossil fuels.
Republicans insist their positions on the bill and the jobs are not in conflict.
“Just because you vote against a bill doesn’t mean the entire bill is a bad bill,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who was the top GOP member of Democrats’ Select Climate Crisis Committee in the last Congress. “I go out there and advocate for our district to try and get transportation funds, to try and get energy funds. That’s my job. I am not embarrassed about it. I don’t think it’s inconsistent with my vote.”
To Democrats, the slate of new investments stand as proof that they were correct that the Inflation Reduction Act, H.R. 5376 (117), would expand the reach of clean power to rural and conservative areas — a promise that failed to sway a single Republican vote to support the bill.
“It’s hard not to point out the hypocrisy for people who fought tooth and nail against the bill, those very incentives that are now creating opportunities in their [Republican] districts they are now leading,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). “We just have to point out, thanks for your kind words, but this didn’t just happen. It happened despite your best efforts.”
Smith attended an October ribbon-cutting in her state for Canadian solar panel maker Heliene’s expansion of its manufacturing facility — an effort that was started prior to the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage and that has drawn praise from Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), whose district is home to the plant that will be one of the largest panel makers in the country.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm welcomed the news that Republican districts were drawing the investments. “Great, that is fantastic,” she told reporters at the Monday White House briefing. “We want to be able to see energy — clean energy — produced in every pocket of the country. Blue states, red states, really it helps to save people money, so it’s all about green.”
Democrats’ climate law includes billions of dollars to spur green energy technologies and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including a new tax credit for manufacturing the components crucial for solar, wind and electric vehicles, as well as additional incentives for using domestic content in projects.
Republicans, though, have moved to slash funding of the Internal Revenue Service, the central agency charged with implementing the climate law’s incentives, over concerns that Democrats have expanded its mandate. And Friday, former President Donald Trump urged GOP lawmakers to target “billions being spent on climate extremism” in their fight over the debt limit.
Supporters of the Inflation Reduction Act say its success is due in part to the way it provides long-term certainty for companies looking to place a footprint in the U.S.
The bill is a “fundamental element” of the recent spate of manufacturing announcements, said Abigail Ross Hopper, the president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “There certainly were a number of plans being evaluated and discussed [prior to the bill]. But I think the vast majority were contingent upon the passage of the IRA.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/23/red-states-are-winning-big-from-dems-climate-law-00078420
**************************************************Giant Wind Turbines Falling Over
A rash of recent wind turbine malfunctions are occurring across the U.S. and Europe, ranging from failures of key components to full collapses. Some industry veterans say they’re happening more often, even if the events are occurring at only a small fraction of installed machines. This article opens with an account of a remarkable failure in Oklahoma:
On a calm, sunny day last June, Mike Willey was feeding his cattle when he got a call from the local sheriff’s dispatcher. A motorist had reported that one of the huge turbines at a nearby wind farm had collapsed in dramatic fashion. Willey, chief of the volunteer fire department in Ames, 90 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, set out to survey the scene. The steel tower, which once stood hundreds of feet tall, was buckled in half, and the turbine blades, whose rotation took the machine higher than the Statue of Liberty, were splayed across the wheat field below. The turbine, made by General Electric Co., had been in operation less than a year. “It fell pretty much right on top of itself,” Willey says.
This article reports that the race to add production lines for ever-bigger turbines is cited as a major culprit by people in the industry. “Rapid innovation strains manufacturing and the broader supply chain,” GE CEO Larry Culp said on an earnings call in October. “It takes time to stabilize production and quality on these new products.”
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Evidence Says Offshore Wind Development Is Killing Lots of Whales
The recent deaths of seven whales off New Jersey, mostly humpbacks, got a lot of attention. The federal NOAA Fisheries agency is responsible for whales. An outrageous statement by their spokesperson got me to do some research on humpback whale deaths.
The results are appalling. The evidence seems clear that offshore wind development is killing whales by the hundreds. Here is the statement as reported in the press:
“NOAA said it has been studying what it calls “unusual mortality events” involving 174 humpback whales along the East Coast since January 2016. Agency spokesperson Lauren Gaches said that period pre-dates offshore wind preparation activities in the region.” Gaches is NOAA Fisheries press chief.
The “unusual mortality” data is astounding. Basically the humpback death rate roughly tripled starting in 2016 and continued high thereafter. You can see it here.
But the claim that this huge jump in mortality predates offshore wind preparation activities is wildly false. In fact it coincides with the large scale onset of these activities. This strong correlation is strong evidence of causation, especially since no other possible cause has appeared.
To begin with, offshore lease sales really geared up 2015-16, with nine big sales off New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Massachusetts. These sales must have generated a lot of activity, likely including potentially damaging sonar.
In fact 2016 also saw the beginning of what are called geotechnical and site characterization surveys. These surveys are actually licensed by NOAA Fisheries, under what are called Incidental Harassment Authorizations or IHA’s.
There is some seriously misleading jargon here. IHA’s are incidental to some other activity, in this case offshore wind development. They are not incidental to the whales. In fact the term “harassment” specifically includes injuring the whales. That is called “level A harassment”.
To date NOAA has issued an astounding 46 one-year IHA’s for offshore wind sites. Site characterization typically includes the protracted use of what I call “machine gun sonar”. This shipboard device emits an incredibly loud noise several times a second, often for hours at a time, as the ship slowly maps the sea floor.
Mapping often takes many days to complete. A blaster can log hundreds of miles surveying a 10-by-10 mile site. Each IHA is typically for an entire year.
Here is a list of the IHA’s issued to date and those applied for.
There are lots of ways this sonar blasting might cause whales to die. Simply fleeing the incredible noise could cause ship strikes or fish gear entanglements, the two leading causes of whale deaths. Of the whales could be deafened, increasing their chances of being struck by a ship later on. Direct bleeding injury, like getting their ears damaged, is another known risk, possibly leading to death from infection. So there can be a big time difference between blasting and death.
Note also that these deaths need not be in the immediate vicinity of the sonar blasting, so spatial correlation is unlikely. Humpbacks in particular are prodigious travelers. One group was tracked traveling 3,000 miles in just 28 days, over 100 miles a day on average. Another group routinely migrates 5,000 miles. Both are winter-summer migrations which can happen twice a year.
Thus a sonar blasting, site characterization in one place could easily lead to multiple whale deaths hundreds of miles away. If one of these blasters suddenly goes off near a group of whales they might go off in different directions, then slowly die.
The point is that the huge 2016 jump in annual humpback mortality coincides with the huge jump in NOAA Incidental Harassment Authorizations. It is that simple and surely NOAA Fisheries knows this.
Nor is this just about humpbacks. Some of the dead whales off New Jersey are endangered sperm whales. And of course there are the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, on the verge of extinction.
Even worse, the IHA’s are about to make a much bigger jump. There are eleven pending IHA applications and eight of these are for actually constructing 8 different monster wind “farms”.
Driving the hundreds of enormous monopiles that hold up the turbine towers and blades will be far louder than the sonic blasters approved to date, especially with eight sites going at once. These construction sites range from Virginia to Massachusetts, with a concentration off New Jersey and New York.
https://heartland.org/opinion/evidence-says-offshore-wind-development-is-killing-lots-of-whales/
***************************************************Energy chaos: the shape of things to come
Australian governments have made energy policies focused on achieving higher shares of renewable energy that they claim is the cheapest source of power. The Commonwealth government is planning for renewables to reach 82 per cent of supply by 2030, while the Liberal Party’s plan is for 85 per cent by 2050 and 61 per cent by 2030. State governments have additional plans. In pursuit of these goals, governments around Australia are being sucked into a vortex requiring ever-increasing controls, while seeing mounting cost increases.
Subsidies that amount to $6.9 billion per year have propelled wind and solar, which had virtually no market presence 20 years ago, to their current market share of 27 per cent. The CSIRO and other bodies claim that these are the cheapest forms of electricity, but the absurdity of this is demonstrable – the market shares of wind and solar would be negligible without these subsidies. And the subsidies themselves amount to over one-third of what electricity generation would cost if renewable requirements did not push up prices.
A recent study from the UK identifies a similar magnitude of costs to support renewables (which now provide 36 per cent of the nation’s electricity). The hidden subsidies to renewables amounted to 13 billion pounds ($24 billion) in 2021, a little over three times Australia’s $6.9 billion cost for a population two and a half times greater. Among major countries only Germany, which has gone even further down the renewables path, has higher energy prices
As in Australia, the UK’s growth in subsidised renewables has brought an accelerating increase in prices. That process in both countries predated the Ukraine War. This contradicts Mr Albanese’s response, ‘News Flash!!! There has been a war in Europe that has had a global impact!’ to a question from Chris Kenny on why electricity prices had failed to meet the ALP’s projected price fall $275 of per household, but instead had risen by that magnitude.
In fact, European gas and coal prices, though still much higher than a year ago, have fallen (in the case of gas to a quarter of their June-October 2022 levels). That is in spite of a very strong increase in stored reserves. Reasons for this included customer demand response and supply response of non-Russian sources (and Russian sea-borne sources), to high prices, a mild winter and shift from gas to electricity (including coal-generated electricity).
Australia’s ballooning energy costs are entirely self-inflicted. They are caused by years of bowing to green ideology by:
* increasing taxes on coal and gas;
* discrimination against coal and gas by requiring increasing quantities be incorporated in consumers’ supplies, this month amplified by obligating an additional 30 per cent cut in emissions from the 215 firms that account for some 28 per cent of electricity demand;
* governmental legislative and policy impediments on new mines for coal and gas (as well as the embargo in nuclear) and by government appointed judges’ rulings on new mine proposals;
* government electricity purchasing that excludes supplies generated by coal or gas.
Australia, like many other countries, is dreaming up new restraints on the use of hydrocarbons. Among these are bans proposed (and already legislated in South Australia) on gas ovens. The rationale for these bans is that, though gas has lower CO2 emissions than coal, an electricity supply comprising solar/wind generation is claimed to have no emissions.
Governments, panicked by the failure of their interventionist energy policies to bring about the low costs they and their advisers confidently projected, have now introduced price caps on coal and gas. With no sense of irony, the objective is to maintain hydrocarbon generators that are being driven out of business by governments’ discriminatory energy policies.
The measures exemplify a Hayekian ‘road-to-serfdom’ process, whereby interventions require consequential additional measures. Having seen policies preventing hydrocarbon developments bring shortages and ballooning prices, the Commonwealth implemented price caps. Predictably, the price caps cause supply shortages from an industry that has been prevented from developing new supplies by government embargoes that have been in place for over a decade. So, governments move on to further control involving specifying levels of production that they think are attainable.
Unsurprisingly, governments working with ‘high-level’ policy advisers are even botching price cap and associated domestic reserve process.
Companies are unable to interpret the Commonwealth regulations delegated to the ACCC.
New South Wales, working with the Albanese government, is seeking to reserve 22 million tonnes of coal for local consumption. This ex post facto imposition of reserve tonnage requirements will have damaging effects on the reputation of Australia for political certainty and by causing investors to place a premium on future costs, will lower future income levels.
Moreover, much of the planned coal to be reserved for domestic use is of a more valuable quality than that used in domestic power stations. Redirecting it to domestic uses would be wasteful in itself. This would be compounded since burning this higher quality coal in domestic power stations would likely cause damage unless other costs were incurred.
In addition, planning 22 million tonnes of coal to be redirected from exports is evidence of incompetence since even with the Liddell power station open (it is supposed to close in April) only 15 million tonnes were used last year. And if Liddell’s output is replaced by that of the remaining four power stations (Bayswater, Vales Point, Eraring, and Mount Piper) their greater efficiency would mean even less coal required.
Imprisoned by the green policies they have set in train, instead of abandoning the embargoes and taxes favouring their preferred renewable sources, governments are doubling down on the restrictions. Yet, each new layer of interventions proves to be inadequate and the mirage of low-cost reliable wind/solar electricity constantly recedes to the horizon.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/energy-chaos-the-shape-of-things-to-come/
***************************************27 January, 2023
What? Giant iceberg breaks off from Antarctica, but not due to climate change
A rare event! An admission that most icebergs "have nothing to do with climate change"
There’s a new iceberg off the coast of Antarctica. The yet-to-be-named, 600-square-mile (1550-square-kilometre) iceberg broke away from the nearly 150-metre-thick Brunt Ice Shelf on Sunday during a particularly high tide known as a spring tide, according to a news release issued by the British Antarctic Survey.
The calving event is “part of the natural behaviour of the Brunt Ice Shelf” and “not linked to climate change,” BAS glaciologist Dominic Hodgson said in the news release.
Satellite imagery captured the break, which occurred about 10 years after satellite monitoring detected growth in a previously dormant crack in the ice known as Chasm-1, and almost two years after a slightly smaller iceberg named A74 separated from the same ice shelf. A chasm is a crack in the ice shelf that extends all the way from the surface to the ocean underneath, while an ice shelf is a floating piece of ice that extends from glaciers formed on land.
Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in an email that while the iceberg “is a huge mass of ice, about 500 billion tons ... it is far from being the largest iceberg ever seen, which rivalled Long Island.”
The calving event is not expected to affect the BAS’s Halley Research Station, which was relocated further inland in 2016 as a precaution after Chasm-1 began to grow.
However, “the new fracture puts the base within about 10 miles of the ocean, and new cracking could occur over the next few years, forcing another expensive move of the station,” Scambos wrote. The new iceberg is expected to follow a similar path to that of A74 into the Weddell Sea and will be named by the US National Ice Centre.
Unlike some previous icebergs and collapsed ice shelves that have been linked to climate change, the BAS press release said the break is a “natural process” and there is “no evidence that climate change has played a significant role.”
Rather, the chasm started to grow due to “stresses building up . . . because of the natural growth of the ice shelf,” said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a glaciology researcher at Northumbria University, in a 2019 BBC story.
Scambos compares the calving of the iceberg to a chisel on a board of wood. “In this case the chisel was a small island called ‘MacDonald Ice Rise,’” Scambos wrote. “The ice was driven against this rocky seamount by ice flow, forcing it to split and eventually break off the floating ice shelf.”
“These large iceberg calvings, sometimes as large as a small state, are spectacular. But they’re just part of how Antarctica’s ice sheet works,” Scambos said. “Most of the time they have nothing to do with climate change.”
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The PFAS scare rumbles on
Remember the H1N1 pandemic where everyone overreacted, including the wasteful slaughter of 300,000 Egyptian pigs because the clickbait term “swine flu” was used instead of just H1N1? Even CBS struggled to defend media sensationalism at the time.
It’s happening again, but with something a bit more important to daily life.
So-called progressive environmentalists and their lawyers have taken aim at perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS for short), chemicals which they insist will end life on our planet as we know it – and time is running out. (Isn’t it always though?)
The offending legislation right now is the PFAS Action Act, which would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to designate the substances as hazardous.
As stated, the problem is that PFAS are supposedly “forever chemicals,” that accumulate over time in soil, water, and eventually human bodies. Any potential damage must be “remediated” with government control of 5,000 types of chemicals. Sounds like a good goal, but broad bans like this inevitably cause more problems than they fix.
It’s important to keep our environment as clean as possible – and, spoiler, it’s gotten cleaner and cleaner as time has gone on. But the outcome of the PFAS Act would be overregulation, litigation, discontinuation, and finally appreciation for the product that had previously been such an integral part of daily life.
PFAS are used in a variety of industries – according to the EPA, which does not include them among common sources of drinking water contaminants – including food packaging, commercial household products, raincoats, paints, and so on.
In fact, Minnesota-based manufacturer, 3M, recently published a full list of nearly 15,000 different products containing PFAS.
The substances are critical components in commercial electronics, notably cell phones. PFAS are involved in the production of semiconductors, help cool data centers for cloud computing, and stabilize cell phones. Given that we are already in the midst of a global shortage of semiconductors, banning PFAS will only make matters worse – especially if China exploits the lacuna of strength in the White House right now to invade Taiwan.
PFAS are also crucial components in medical equipment. The same thing that supposedly makes PFAS an environmental bane – a “forever chemical” – is that they are chemically inert and durable. That means they’re useful for creating contamination-resistant products like gowns, drapes, and face masks.
They are also used in implantable, life-saving medical devices like vascular grafts, surgical meshes, and catheter tubes. Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) wanted the PFAS Action Act to include an exemption for medical devices, but the Democrats shot him down.
What would he know – he’s just a heart surgeon. Trust The Science™, not science.
PFAS can also help people from needing to see the doctor, as they’re useful in fire retardants. Call me selfish, but if there are alternative chemicals that are dramatically worse at extinguishing flames, sign me up for the good stuff.
Due to the threat of bad faith “science” discussions and regulatory action, 3M took the proactive step of announcing it would be discontinuing its use of PFAS by 2025.
Now is where the rubber meets the road (and yes, PFAS is in rubber). An important ingredient that is used in countless products is now going to be phased out by a large supplier at a time when the supply chain needs to be shored up. Will we see an orderly transition or more cherry-picked data in the hands of greedy lawyers and overzealous lawmakers?
Only time will tell, but if the progressives and environmentalists continue to push ridiculous unfounded regulations upon us, I hope everyone got everything they wanted for the holidays this year because we might not be able to get them come December 2023.
https://townhall.com/columnists/jaredwhitley/2023/01/25/the-science-is-coming-for-you-again-n2618685
*************************************************Are gas stoves dangerous to your health? Here’s what science says
People either swear by gas stoves or say they’re harming our health. But what is the science behind the debate?
The fury was reignited earlier this month after reports that a commissioner of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering a ban on natural gas stoves. The chairman of the commission has since clarified that there’s no move to ban gas stoves, but they are seeking ways to make them safer.
The main health concern with gas stoves is that they emit nitrogen dioxide. This gas can trigger inflammation in the airway and irritate the lungs, potentially exacerbating respiratory illnesses such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adults and children, according to environmental-health scientists and doctors.
For the approximately 38 per cent of US households that cook with gas, there are ways to reduce exposure. You can use a range hood when you cook with gas, provided you have one that vents air outside rather than recirculates it. And open your windows when possible.
Assessing the Risks
The debate stemmed in part from a December study in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which is a peer-reviewed journal. It analysed previous studies on gas stoves as well as US census data and concluded that nearly 13 per cent of US childhood asthma cases can be attributed to gas stove use.
That study used data from a 2013 meta-analysis – or review of the existing research – which found that children who live in a home with a gas stove have a 42 per cent increased risk of having asthma symptoms and a 24 per cent increased risk of being diagnosed with asthma. The December study also used data from a 2018 Australian study, which found that 12 per cent of childhood asthma cases there can be attributed to gas stoves.
The Rubin Report host Dave Rubin says World Economic Forum attendees have an “obsession” with how other people live their lives while they… “certainly will not partake in that”. “These people I assure you will not be giving up their gas stoves that their very expensive Michelin Star More
A meta-analysis is statistical analysis that looks at multiple studies on the same topic. Researchers often conduct them to evaluate the body of evidence on a particular topic.
“This was sort of a first step in trying to quantify this burden,” says Brady Seals, a co-author on the study and manager of the carbon-free buildings program at RMI, a Colorado-based clean-energy research organisation.
Public and environmental-health scientists say the recent study merely confirmed what they’ve known for more than a decade.
“There’s no uncertainty about the basic premise that burning natural gas is bad for you,” says Darby Jack, an associate professor of environmental health at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. “The emissions are bad for you.”
Gas-stove emissions
Nitrogen dioxide can trigger asthma symptoms in people who already have the condition and is associated with the development of new cases, says Curtis Nordgaard, a paediatrician at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis and an environmental-health consultant.
Exposure to nitrogen dioxide won’t cause asthma in everyone, but in certain people who are more vulnerable to developing it, chronic inflammation and stress in the airway might be one trigger, says Dr Nordgaard.
The level of risk in a home depends on a number of factors, says Dr Jack, including the ventilation in the kitchen, how old and well-maintained the stove is and how you’re using it.
“For somebody cooking on a late model, well-maintained stove with a good hood and good ventilation, concentrations (of natural gas) are going to be pretty low and the risk is pretty low,” says Dr Jack.
Researchers say other appliances that use natural gas, such as furnaces and boilers, are less of a concern when it comes to nitrogen dioxide because they are required to vent directly outdoors.
What about when the stove is off?
Stoves can emit gas even when you’re not using them, but the gas emitted is largely methane, says Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist and professor at Stanford University. Methane is a greenhouse gas linked to global warming, but the levels emitted from a stove aren’t considered harmful to human health, he says.
“The methane emissions are not a health issue indoors at the concentrations we find,” says Dr Jackson. He was senior author on a 2022 study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, which found that three-quarters of the methane emitted from gas stoves takes place when they are turned off.
Reducing the risk
If you’re moving into a new home or renovating your kitchen, consider an electric or induction stove, health experts say.
If you are using a gas stove, the best thing to do, they say, is to get a good range hood and ensure it’s venting air outside rather than recirculating it back into your kitchen. Make sure you use your hood while cooking. Open your windows, too, to improve ventilation.
Fixing or running a kitchen exhaust fan, or replacing a gas stove with an electric one, led to a 7 per cent reduction in serious asthma events in the homes of children with asthma, found a 2014 study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
“You can get appreciable health benefits if you improve ventilation in the kitchen or remove the gas stove as a source,” says Jon Levy, professor and chair of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health, who conducted the study along with co-researchers.
Being farther from the kitchen when using a gas stove also helps, says Dr Levy, as nitrogen-dioxide levels can remain elevated for an hour or more if the kitchen lacks good ventilation.
He recommends keeping young children and other people who might be vulnerable away from the kitchen while you’re cooking. Even cooking on the back burner results in less exposure, he says.
Some doctors suggest buying a countertop induction burner to use for some simpler tasks – such as boiling water for tea or pasta – rather than always using your stove.
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Climate Activists Alarmed That Twitter Under Musk Allows More Dissenting Views on Global Warming
An organization that says it is a coalition of “climate and anti-disinformation organisations” says Twitter under CEO Elon Musk is allowing more dissenting views on climate change.
Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), released a Jan. 19 study (pdf), accusing Musk of allowing misinformation about the climate crisis to spread on the social media platform.
The study accused Twitter of boosting the hashtag “#ClimateScam” to users when searching the word “climate,” as its top search result.
The hashtag has suddenly spiked on Twitter search results since July 2022, with its appearance increasing ever since, according to CAAD.
The report said that “in 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular.”
Twitter Search
CAAD alleged that at least 91,000 Twitter users reported the #ClimateScam hashtag more than 362,000 times by December.
“The source of its virality is entirely unclear, and re-emphasises the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users,” said the study’s authors.
They said that term appeared to be trending despite “data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency.”
The research team claimed that the rise of the term in search results could not be explained by user personalization, the volume of content, or popularity.
“A basic search for ‘climate’ on Facebook did not autofill with overtly sceptic or denialist terms; searching explicitly for #ClimateScam only showed 1.5k users mentioning the term, versus 72k for #ClimateEmergency and 160k for #ClimateCrisis.”
CAAD complained that the source of the #ClimateScam hashtag was unclear and that there was a need for transparency on how the search result came up.
“Equally, TikTok returned no search results for #ClimateScam, but instead suggested the phrase ‘may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines.’”
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26 January, 2023
It Is Not A Conspiracy – Bugs Are, in Fact, on the Menu
This past weekend, the World Economic Forum wrapped up, and the main issue in the press was not some of the daft things proposed by the global elites. No, what had the press bothered is that those of us on the right noticed the inanities.
As noted prior, things began to go sideways early in Davos, Switzerland, when a panel allegedly addressing disinformation was headed up by the famed practitioner of that craft, Brian Stelter. But more speeches and more proposals were trotted out, and the press appears to be rather bothered by the fact that these details were reported on by conservative media.
"In increasingly mainstream corners of the internet and on conservative talk shows," writes Sophia Tulp of the Associated Press, "'The Great Reset' has become shorthand for what skeptics say is a reorganization of society, using global uncertainty as a guise to take away rights. Believers argue that measures including pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates are tools to consolidate power and undercut individual sovereignty." She appears bothered by the use of this phrase, except it was not created out of whole cloth. "The Great Reset" was coined by the WEF in 2020.
Tulp resorts to an "expert" who guides us through the pitfalls of quoting the things spoken at the WEF. "This isn't a conspiracy that is playing out on the extreme fringes," said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher with the Anti-Defamation League who studies anti-government extremism. "We're seeing it on mainstream social media platforms being shared by regular Americans. We were seeing it being spread by mainstream media figures right on their prime time news, on their nightly networks."
Tulp goes on to cite that Fox News, in particular, has been attached to that phrase, invoking the term as much as 60 times in 2022. Imagine the obsession, alluding to "The Great Reset" barely more than once a week!
Joining in on the condemnation of the right-wing press noticing things was Oliver Darcy, the man bequeathed CNN's media watchdog duties when his mentor Stelter had been dispatched last Fall. Darcy, in a recent "Reliable Sources" newsletter entry, is bothered by all of the talks of nefarious proposals being made at the conference. He references a Glenn Beck interview where he entertained a guest "who claimed, unchallenged, that the gathered world leaders want you to eat insects rather than meat." He was echoing Tulp, who also insisted this was a right-wing conspiracy. "Social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment."
Why was there the need to challenge someone when the WEF has been doing precisely that?! There are a number of articles attesting to the very goal of getting people to transition to a bug-based diet, touting the merits of this foodstuff and listing off its benefits. And Oliver, Sophia? These were all found on the WEF website.
Last week, the CEO of Siemans spoke at the Davos conference, and he proposed that we, as a planet, need to move 1 billion people off of eating meat. "And I predict that we will have proteins not coming from meat, in the future."
This is not even something being looked at as a future enterprise – it is happening right now. This month, the European Union approved the use of insect-based protein powder for commercial food production, authorizing the placing on the market of Acheta domesticus (house cricket) partially defatted powder as a novel food. This cricket powder is now acceptable to be used in the production of foods such as multigrain bread, crackers, cereal bars, biscuits, beer-like beverages, chocolates, sauces, whey powder, soups, and other items "intended for the general population."
Yep, those crazy conservatives are at it again, noticing when the authorities are acting in a manner that the press claims is just a fantasy. Seriously, how can allegedly professional journalists pretend they are deluding people with their deflecting accusations when this is easily verifiable information?! But, pretend they do, and they seek out sycophantic "experts" to push their claims.
"When we have very high levels of ambiguity, it's very easy to fill in narratives," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Well, Ms. Jamieson, one might suggest that when you have these very high levels of ambiguity delivered by heads of state, business executives, cultural trendsetters, and representatives from international organizations who gather for a global conference, the blame should rest with those elites for not being clear enough in their proposals. (For the record, I am one of those "ones who might suggest"”)
These high-minded elitists are suggesting global change, yet they are the same who utter unfocused proposals. That ambiguity may, in fact, be by design, as the open-ended plans leave open numerous possibilities down the road. You are mad at those filling in the blanks but not those who originally laid out those blank spaces.
Then you have the very evidence arising that dispels the claim of conspiracies being weaved. That subsequent proof, of course, makes for inconveniences in the reporting – so it is the decision to not report on them at all. This way, the accusations stand, and the outrage is justified.
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Ozone hole recovery claims may be premature and over-optimistic, science writer warns
Large recent holes
Claims by a UN-backed panel of experts that the ozone layer is healing and on track to full recovery may be premature and over-optimistic, Net Zero Watch’s science editor, Dr David Whitehouse, has warned.
Any internet search will find hundreds of news stories announcing that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is slowing filling and that by about the middle of this century mankind’s vandalism of this natural atmospheric layer will have been remedied.
The ozone hole has become an icon of anthropogenic interference in the natural world — and a hopeful signpost that there is a way back. But is the ozone hole really healing? Not by as much as many headlines suggest, it would appear.
The ozone layer — the portion of the stratosphere that protects our planet from the Sun’s ultraviolet rays — thins to form an “ozone hole” above the South Pole every September. Chlorine and bromine in the atmosphere, derived from human-produced compounds, attach to crystals in high-altitude polar clouds initiate ozone-destroying reactions as the Sun reappears at the end of Antarctica’s winter.
Unusual behaviour for three consecutive years
The Antarctic ozone hole usually starts opening during the Southern Hemisphere spring (in late September) and begins to develop during October, usually ending during November. But this has not been the case in the past few years. Data from the last three years show a different behaviour: during this time, the ozone hole has remained larger than usual throughout November and has only come to an end well into December.
The 2022 Antarctic ozone hole was again relatively large and its closure took longer than usual, like 2020 and 2021. This is a different behaviour from what had been seen in the previous 40 years. No one is quite sure what is happening.
Speculating on the cause of this new behaviour Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Director, Vincent-Henri Peuch said:
"There are several factors influencing the extent and duration of the ozone hole each year, particularly the strength of the Polar vortex and the temperatures in the stratosphere. The last three years have been marked by strong vortices and low temperatures, which has led to consecutive large and long-lasting ozone hole episodes. There is a possible connection with climate change, which tends to cool the stratosphere. It is quite unexpected though to see three unusual ozone holes in a row. It is certainly something to look into further."
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Investors Plow Into Renewables, but Projects Aren’t Getting Built
Even as developers plan an unprecedented number of grid-scale wind and solar installations, project construction is plummeting across the U.S.
Despite billions of dollars in federal tax credits up for grabs and investors eager to fund clean energy projects, the pace of development has ground to a crawl and many renewables plans face an uncertain path to completion. Supply-chain snags, long waits to connect to the grid and challenging regulatory and political environments across the country are contributing to the slowdown, analysts and companies say.
New wind installations plunged 77.5% in the third quarter of 2022 versus the same period the year before, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. New utility-scale solar installations likely fell 40% in 2022 compared with 2021, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and research firm Wood Mackenzie.
The decline belies enormous demand for renewable projects. The industry is ready to launch a would-be building spree after last year’s spending and climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, extended and increased tax credits for wind and solar projects and introduced new incentives for green hydrogen and battery storage for the electric grid. The success of the IRA, the Biden administration’s climate targets and many state decarbonization plans hinge on adding massive amounts of renewable energy into the grid.
More than $40 billion in wind, solar and battery projects were announced in three months late last year—as much as the total clean-energy investment for all of 2021, according to the industry group American Clean Power Association. Large corporations with climate targets are among the most eager buyers of green power, contracting for enough wind and solar capacity last year to power more than 1,000 data centers.
“Ten years from now there’s going to be a huge shift in the landscape where there is going to be a significant amount of electricity coming from renewables,” said Matt Birchby, president of renewable-project developer and owner Swift Current Energy LLC. “But getting from A to B is inherently going to be messy.”
Supply-chain and trade issues have complicated planning. Average lead times for securing high voltage equipment have risen from 30 weeks to more than 70, Mr. Birchby said.
Sourcing solar panels has turned into the stuff of spy stories as companies try to avoid running afoul of trade regulations and navigate risks and complications of global shipping. “You almost feel like you’re in a Tom Clancy novel,” Mr. Birchby said. Swift Current Energy has contracted to purchase nearly $1 billion in American-made solar panels, he said.
Efforts to create a domestic solar supply chain to meet U.S. project demand are expected to take a few years. Meanwhile, panel imports, 80% of which come from Chinese and other Asian makers, have slowed following U.S. legislation aimed at cracking down on labor abuses in China. Several thousand shipping containers of solar panels have been detained by U.S. Customs near ports such as Los Angeles, according to some estimates.
The wind industry has struggled to overcome pandemic-related supply-chain and logistics challenges in delivering its massive equipment, but uncertainty over the details of federal tax policy has been a significant factor slowing installations. Companies are waiting on Treasury Department guidance to outline the specifics of how a project can qualify for tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Even in battery storage, an industry which saw more installations in 2022, supply-chain problems have slowed some construction plans by as much as a year, developers say.
A bigger unknown is the time and cost to get new batteries or solar or wind farms connected to the grid, as grid operators and interconnecting utilities must study the projects’ likely impact on the power system and any needed network upgrades before signing off on them.
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The failure of Britishvolt is a surprising success for sound business
No one greets failure with quite as much relief as we do in Britain, so let’s chill the champagne, for we have another reason to celebrate. Last week the start-up Britishvolt went into administration, with the loss of 200 jobs. The company had vowed to become the £3.8bn cornerstone of the British electric vehicle sector, by building a battery “gigafactory” in Red Wall Blyth.
The news is desperately disappointing for the employees who have lost their jobs in a region that Westminster has ignored for decades, but at the risk of sounding callous, the rest of us may breathe a sigh of relief. For this failure is actually a surprising success.
Britishvolt executives had reportedly made use of private jets, while scrambling to buy in the manufacturing technology they needed from Germany. The company had no market-ready technology, no customers and no assets beyond a large field in Northumbria. Nevertheless, it besieged the Government for £100m in funding to tide it over to 2024, when it said the first battery packs would roll off its still-unbuilt production lines.
However, with private investors notably wary, officials were unconvinced. Britishvolt failed to meet the thresholds they demanded. So for once, the system has actually worked as it should. While ministers are being chided by their Labour shadows for not doing more, we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue. But can we be confident this rigour will be the default in the future? I’m not so sure.
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25 January, 2023
Swiss right-wing party to call referendum in bid to block climate change law
Switzerland's right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) will within a few days call a referendum aimed at blocking a draft law to cut greenhouse gas emissions, party officials said.
The SVP, a member of the ruling coalition in Bern, is campaigning against the law to make Switzerland carbon-neutral by 2050 but has so far failed to attract backing from other parties.
The proposed legislation would accelerate CO2 emissions cuts and the rollout of renewables, notably solar energy, backed by 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) of funding.
The SVP argues that imposing further reductions would be counterproductive during the current energy crisis, triggered across Europe after Moscow cut off most gas deliveries in response to Western sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In Switzerland, proposed referendums require the support of 50,000 signatures to be activated.
SVP energy spokesperson Monika Rueegger told a webcast interview on Sunday that numbers "well in excess" of that total had signed up and that the party would probably announce the referendum on Monday.
A party spokesperson declined to confirm how many signatures had been gathered and said it planned to call the referendum as scheduled on Jan. 19, the deadline for acceptances.
The SVP, which also favours tighter curbs on immigration, is the biggest group in Switzerland's 200-member federal parliament, but no other party has supported its referendum,.
However, the new draft anti-CO2 law also faces hurdles.
It too will require approval in a referendum to become law and is a watered-down version of a draft that failed to pass in 2021.
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South Korea curbs plans for renewables in push for more nuclear
South Korea will boost nuclear power generation and downgrade its plans for renewable energy as the nation overhauls its electricity mix to meet emissions reduction targets.
Nuclear plants are now expected to account for almost one-third of generation capacity by 2030 up from about 24% forecast in earlier draft proposals, according to government documents published Thursday. Renewable sources are seen generating about 21.6% by the same date, lower than a previous estimate of 30.2%.
The 10th Basic Plan for Long-Term Electricity Supply and Demand follows the country’s move in 2021 to bolster its climate action. South Korea is aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2018 levels by the end of the decade.
President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office last year, has focused on nuclear power as a key tool to curb emissions rather than solar, wind or hydro. Yoon touted atomic energy throughout his presidential campaign and has called for the building of more reactors — a clear reversal of former President Moon Jae-in’s anti-nuclear policies.
The role of coal and liquefied natural gas will continue to dwindle under the plans. LNG will be required for about 9% of electricity generation and coal for 14% by 2036, according to the energy ministry forecasts.
South Korea is also aiming to use hydrogen and ammonia for co-firing in its existing coal power plants, the ministry said. The two fuels will together make up more than 7% of the power mix in 2036.
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US greenhouse gas emissions rose again in 2022 despite climate goals
US greenhouse gas emissions rose again in 2022, putting the country further behind its targets under the Paris climate agreement despite the passage of sweeping clean energy legislation last year.
Emissions increased by 1.3 per cent last year, according to preliminary estimates by environmental consultancy Rhodium Group, led by sharp increases from the country’s buildings, industry and transport. The electric sector emitted slightly less, largely due to natural gas replacing coal in power stations and increased use of renewable energy.
The 74mn-tonne increase in the US’s carbon dioxide equivalent emissions last year was greater than the total emissions of some European countries, but far smaller than the 6.5 per cent leap (350mn tonnes) recorded in 2021 after authorities eased lockdowns imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.
The emissions trend puts the US further out of sync with the administration of Joe Biden’s climate goals, Rhodium said in a report. Total US emissions of 5.6bn tonnes in 2022 maintain the country’s status as the second largest source of greenhouse gases after China.
“With the slight increase in emissions in 2022, the US continues to fall behind in its efforts to meet its target set under the Paris Agreement of reducing GHG emissions 50-52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030,” the authors said. Last year US emissions were just 15.5 per cent below 2005 levels.
https://www.ft.com/content/3459ec6c-6f0b-4b23-9bce-122609b188e0
*********************************************Australia: Green superannuation funds are 2022’s underperformers
A bad year for super fund returns has spelt a serious setback for “green” funds as coal and oil stocks soared and clean tech shares dropped sharply.
Overall returns in super were down nearly 5 per cent – but returns were regularly twice as bad at green funds which completely missed the energy sector rebound. The average balanced fund – where most investors have most of their money – dropped by 4.8 per cent last year, the fourth negative year recorded by such funds since 2000, according to the SuperRatings group.
Top-rated green funds such as Australian Ethical had nowhere to turn when the tech sell-off accelerated in the second half of 2022. The Australian Ethical balanced fund was down 9 per cent over the year.
Australian Ethical has been the fastest growing super fund in the market in terms of member accumulation over the last five years, according to KPMG.
Some of the worst performers were new funds that target younger investors with green products: Spaceship Super, a fund which has a focus on global technology, reported a minus 15 per cent return on its growth fund.
Younger investors have clearly been attracted to the Spaceship fund – its annual report said it had an 80 per cent growth in membership last year.
Future Super, which focuses on “climate conscious super”, reported an 11 per cent drop in its balanced fund while the group’s more specialised funds did even worse: The group’s Renewables Plus Growth fund fell by 13 per cent over the year.
Cruelty Free Super, the super fund which is a “happy supporter of the vegan community”, did a little better, though its returns were still below average at minus 7.25 per cent. The fund also managed to get hit with a fine from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission this month, which was concerned over “what may have been false and misleading statements”.
“It has been a tough period for all funds, but particularly funds where ESG (environment, social and governance) settings may have meant a concentration on technology investments,” says Kirby Rappell of SuperRatings.
Major funds that managed to navigate the parallel boom in fossil fuel stocks and a ferocious sell- off in technology stocks included Hostplus, the best performing fund in the local market over the longer term. Hostplus managed to hold negative returns at minus 2.5 per cent – around half the average return of its peers.
Industry funds dominate the top performers in the market, but it was a retail fund – Perpetual’s Wealthfocus – that topped the 12 month tables with a positive return of 1.7 per cent.
Perpetual was joined by First Super’s balanced fund as the only other fund with a positive return – the First Super balanced fund managed a very slender positive return of 0.1 per cent
The Australian Retirement Trust (created through the merger of Q Super and SunSuper) ranked seventh with a minus 2.6 per cent return.
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24 January, 2023
Welcome to Green Britain: Affordable electric cars ‘not viable’, car maker warns
A mass market in affordable electric cars will not happen soon because of the difficulty of producing them on a commercially viable basis, one of the largest makers of zero-emission vehicles for British drivers has warned.
Paul Philpott, UK chief executive of Kia, the fast-growing South Korean car company, said it had no immediate plans for a mass-market electric product.
Some fear there is a prospect of a society of haves and have-nots in the electric car revolution because of the sheer cost of buying or financing a zero-emission vehicle.
Philpott’s prediction also threatens to undermine the government’s ban on selling petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.
With price inflation roaring ahead in the past couple of years, there are only a handful of electric cars available below £30,000, compared with the less than £20,000 that motorists would expect to pay for mass market or entry-level petrol cars. Even the smallest electric car, the zero-emission version of the Fiat 500, starts at about £30,000.
This month the Advanced Propulsion Centre, the government’s automotive electrification agency, significantly cut electric car forecasts for 2025 because “buyers are expected to stick with cheaper options for longer”.
While European and Asian manufacturers have been stepping up production of electric vehicles, they have been concentrating on more expensive models to make healthy profit margins on the cost of installing electrified systems. The battery pack is the costliest component of an electric car. The smaller the car, the larger the proportion the battery in its production cost.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/affordable-electric-cars-not-viable-shp5q3p2q
*******************************************UK: New peak rates mean charging electric cars more expensive than petrol
New peak pricing at electric car chargepoints can leave consumers worse off than if they stuck to traditional petrol-engined vehicles, according to new analysis from the AA.
Previous analysis by motoring organisations has showed the cost of charging electric vehicles has soared in recent months, driven by rising energy prices partly triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.
Rapid charge points used by motorists topping up on long drives are now nearly £10 more expensive than filling up a car with petrol, the RAC revealed last week.
But research from the AA published on Monday finds that recharging an electric car even using a slow public charger at peak times can be more expensive, per mile driven afterwards, than for refuelling a comparable petrol car.
Peak and off-peak rates have been introduced by major networks including Ubitricity, the UK’s largest public charge-point operator.
Jack Cousens, the AA’s head of roads policy and recharging, said: “While pump prices are falling, electricity prices are going in the other direction, but we are hopeful prices could tail off later this year.”
News that electric cars could be more expensive to run than petrol or diesel alternatives will strike a blow at the Government’s target of reaching net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050.
AA analysts compared a 1.2L petrol Vauxhall Corsa with the e-Corsa, the manufacturer’s electrically-powered alternative.
Topping up the e-Corsa’s charge by 80pc on a slow charger at peak times results in a cost of 16.18p per mile.
The AA said: “A continued fall in the pump price of petrol now places the running costs [of a petrol Corsa] at around 14.45 pence per mile, meaning that a petrol combustion engine vehicle is cheaper to run per mile than an EV.”
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Green, cold & poor: Relying on wind power means Britons must get used to cutting energy use, says National Grid
Households will be paid to cut their electricity use at certain times more often in future as Britain relies on wind power as part of the push to net zero, National Grid has signalled.
Craig Dyke, head of national control at the electricity system operator, said it “strongly believes” in consumers becoming more flexible about when they use electricity as the energy system is overhauled.
It comes as households are paid to reduce electricity usage between 5pm and 6pm tonight as National Grid deploys its new scheme to help avert blackouts for the first time outside of testing.
Asked if similar schemes could become a “feature of British life” and be used regularly, Mr Dyke told the BBC: “It’s something we strongly believe in.
“As we take that step whereby people are far more engaged in the energy they use, and as we drive towards that net zero position with people moving to electric vehicles and taking up heat pumps, for example, consumer engagement around this is key.
“It provides that additional flexibility as well - not just for the system, but for all consumers themselves.
“So we see this as a growing market, we see this as a world-leading step into this space.”
The push to net zero means that electricity demand will rise as households switch to electric cars and heat pumps.
Meanwhile, more electricity is coming from wind turbines and solar plants, which are intermittent.
This makes power supplies more complicated to manage compared to the historic system dominated by large coal-fired and gas-fired power plants which can easily adapt to demand.
With less control over electricity supplies, National Grid hopes therefore to have more control over electricity demand.
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Norwegian shipping company bans electric vehicles over fire fears
The company says that its ships are not equipped to fight a lithium-ion battery fire at sea
Norway’s Havila Krystruten is one of two shipping companies that sails between the coastal cities of Bergen and Kierkenes and says that it will no longer carry electric or electrified vehicles on its ships following the results of an external investigation.
The company mostly carries passengers and goods on the route, but now says that it will only carry private vehicles with internal combustion engines. Havila Krystruten cited fire safety as the main reason for its decision.
While it is not clear what led the company to run the external investigation, fears of fires on ships were stoked by a recent incident in the Atlantic.
The Felicity Ace caught fire at sea last year and, although the cause of the fire has not been determined, there were vehicles with batteries aboard the ship, leading to speculation that they may have been responsible for the blaze.
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23 January, 2023
UK: Keir Starmer to BAN new investment in North Sea oil and gas and focus on renewable energy instead
Labour plans to ban new investment in North Sea oil and gas fields in a major change from current Government policy. Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said the UK must instead focus on renewable energy such as wind farms.
But his pledge during the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday will spell uncertainty for thousands employed in the once-thriving sector – as well as investors currently looking at new projects.
Sir Keir said during a panel discussion at the event: ‘There does need to be a transition. Obviously it [oil and gas] will play its part during that transition but not new investment, not new fields up in the North Sea... we need to ensure that renewable energy is where we go next.’
He is in Davos with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves as the party seeks to portray the pair as ambassadors for the UK on the world stage – in the absence of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt at the event. Sir Keir said Labour would seek a ‘closer economic relationship with the EU’, although Ms Reeves later insisted this would not mean rejoining the single market or customs union.
The new stance on the North Sea was described by Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), which represents the industry, as ‘deeply upsetting to the many workers and communities’ which had been ‘central to the UK’s energy security for five decades’. Jenny Stanning, external relations director at OEUK, said: ‘It will also further damage investor confidence.’
The industry directly employed 28,000 people in 2021 and supported 200,000 jobs, according to OEUK figures. The announcement comes after the Tory government recently held a new round for oil and gas exploration licences.
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The real winners of Net Zero: China's cheap EVs will swamp Europe's car market
Chinese carmaking giant BYD Co. will start selling vehicles this quarter in the UK, where electric cars are seizing a growing share of the market.
The automaker backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has appointed four UK dealer partners in Pendragon Plc, Arnold Clark Automobiles Ltd., Lookers Motor Group Ltd. and LSH Auto Holdings, according to an emailed statement. BYD’s debut model will be the Atto 3 sport utility vehicle, and it will announce more dealer partners and pricing in the coming weeks.
While the UK remains one of Europe’s biggest car markets, automakers have struggled to revive sales since the start of the pandemic, with registrations slumping to a 30-year low in 2022. EVs have been a bright spot, with battery-electric models accounting for around 17% of deliveries last year, overtaking diesel for the first time.
Shenzhen-based BYD has been expanding in Europe, having already set up shop in countries including Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium. The group — which also has been making a big push into other markets around Asia, including Thailand and Australia — may even pass up Tesla Inc. in global EV sales this year by expanding its model lineup and manufacturing capacity, according to BloombergNEF.
When including its plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, BYD already outsold Tesla in 2022, and its sales of fully electric vehicles soared to around 911,000 last year, from 321,000 in 2021.
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German electricity to be rationed as EVs and heat pumps threaten collapse of local power grids
The Federal Network Agency is planning to ration the power supply to heat pumps and EV charging stations in order to protect the distribution grids from collapse. Charging times of three hours to charge electric cars will be allowed so that they can cover a distance of 50 kilometers.
Electric cars, heat pumps and private solar systems are booming. This is pushing the power grids in cities and communities to their limits.
An expert quoted by the “FAZ” warns that the local power grids are in danger of becoming the bottleneck for the energy transition. According to estimates, expanding it would cost a three-digit billion amount.
The Federal Network Agency wants to ration electricity for consumers to prevent a collapse in supply.
Electric cars are booming, as are heat pumps and private solar systems on roofs. This should only be the beginning of the energy transition in Germany. But the energy industry is already warning that the local power grids in cities and communities are reaching their performance limits. This has been reported by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ). According to the report, the Federal Network Agency is planning to temporarily ration the power supply to heat pumps and charging stations in order to protect the distribution grids from overload.
A year ago, the network agency confirmed a “network development plan” in which up to seven million heat pumps in households are expected for 2035. So far there have been around one million heat pump systems.
Enormous growth is also expected in electric vehicles. For large network operators such as Eon, the current figures are a challenge. “The applications for the connection of new systems are going through the roof, and we assume that the growth rates will continue to grow,” said Eon board member Thomas König. According to the “FAZ”, the electricity supplier registered around 100,000 new charging stations for electric cars in 2021.
Local power grids threatened to become the bottleneck for the energy transition, Krzysztof Rudion, professor at the Institute for Energy Transmission and High Voltage Technology at the TU Stuttgart, told the newspaper. “The expansion of the distribution network simply cannot keep up with the boom in heat pumps, electric cars and solar systems.”
In order to arm the distribution grids, between 100 and 135 billion euros would have to be invested in Germany in the next decade and a half, the FAZ reports, citing a new study by the management consultancy Oliver Wyman.
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Hydrocarbon Fuels? We don’t need no Stinking Hydrocarbon Fuels!
Words have meaning. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas can have spectacularly bad consequences.
The best of the Left’s latest bad ideas is to ban gas stoves. It was supposedly coughed up by Richard Trumka, the Biden Commissioner of Product Safety. The rather questionable rationale advanced was that gas stoves can contribute to asthma and other health problems. Within hours his suggestion was being repeated by leading liberals like so many mockingbirds on a telephone line.
In delicious irony (and a fast look-back at social media) it was quickly discovered that many of those same parroters, like Kamala, Dr. Jill, Native-American Senator Warren and even the righteous AOC herself had been shamelessly photographed smiling next to their gas stoves. Who knew? Mr. Trumka quickly and quietly withdrew the proposal…for now.
Anyone with an IQ in triple digits could see that this was but the latest attack on the well known fossil fuel, natural gas. Since the Left has successfully demonized the term and fossils may have had nothing to do with its formation, may we please start calling it hydrocarbon fuel? It is more accurate.
By the way, hydrogen and carbon are among the most common elements in the universe and they are constantly being combined or broken apart. Levels of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere have varied widely over the eons, predating even the assent of gas stoves. Remember also that carbon is constantly being absorbed by plant life. In fact it is essential. Our Sun is primarily a giant ball of hydrogen. The radiation from its nuclear fusion makes life on our blue marble possible.
Hydrogen and carbon are not bad elements.
It cannot be said enough that a major reason we enjoy the standard of living we do is because we have mastered the efficient use of a hydrocarbon fuels. Our economy runs on affordable, abundant energy. Western civilization has been migrating from dirtier to cleaner burning fuels for centuries. We’ve moved from dung to wood to coal to natural gas without the heavy hand of government. One great thing about a free market is that it rewards efficiency. Ironically, we might actually be moving toward cleaner energy solutions faster if the government would simply get out of the way and stop trying to pick winners.
Natural gas is an abundant, clean and affordable source of energy, especially here in North America. Sadly the gas industry has done a miserable job of telling their story. As many other industries have learned (to their peril) if you’re not doing a good job of telling your story, the Left will tell it for you. You won’t like their version. They are not slavishly bound by the facts and are deadly serious concerning their war on hydrocarbon fuels. Witness the first salvo fired at defenseless gas stoves.
The primary ingredient in natural gas is methane. The chemical makeup of methane is four atoms of hydrogen held together with one of carbon (CH4).
So when we burn natural gas we are burning about 80% hydrogen. Any first semester chemistry student should know that when we burn hydrogen the principal byproduct is water vapor.
Yes, burning methane also produces some CO2. But any farmer knows that good crops need water and CO2. Crops absorb and sequester lots of carbon. In a lengthy study done at South Dakota State, crops were found to remove tons of carbon."The carbon stored in South Dakota's 12 million acres of cropped land over this 25 year study period is equal to the carbon emitted from 17.8 billion gallons of gasoline," according to professor of plant science at SDSU, Gregg Carlson.
If the warmists are correct and water vapor and CO2 levels will increase as global temperatures rise by one degree over the next century, won’t that also lead to greater crop production worldwide? And doesn’t that mean a more abundant and affordable food supply to feed a hungry humanity? And won’t greater crop production also mean even greater carbon sequestration? Finally, wouldn’t it be great if the the hydrocarbon energy industry with their enormous advertising budgets would begin sharing these facts and questions with consumers?
Apparently their overpaid execs are far too woke for that to happen.
These bad ideas like the war on natural gas are having dire consequences. The anti-hydrocarbon policies are needlessly driving prices higher. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a staggering 22% of American households were unable to pay a heating bill last year. Millions more scrimp and cut elsewhere to keep the family from freezing. We can expect those numbers to grow significantly this year as the latest EIA projection estimates that natural gas prices will rise 28% over last year. Precisely what the Green New Dealers want.
Yes, bad ideas have can have very negative consequences. Outlawing natural gas stoves is but the tip of a very cold iceberg. The warming warriors will be back.
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22 January, 2023
Resist the ‘Climate Change’ Power Grab
The World Economic Forum insect overlords have convened in Davos, Switzerland for their annual confab this week, and once again, their focus is “crisis.”
Everything is a “crisis” for the WEF and their minions seeded throughout the world’s governments and corporate leaders, and those crises are always “unprecedented.” But this year, they’re trying to foment even more global panic; they’ve declared 2023 to be the “year of the ‘polycrisis.’” In other words, multiple crises at the same time. (Which is the same thing they’ve been saying for years, but with a new, scary epithet attached to it.)
Also consistent with their previous messaging is that those in power need much “more” to accomplish their goals. More power, more government and corporate control, and much more money. Former Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech in Davos on Tuesday in which he warned that “saving the planet” will take “money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money.”
Where is all this money going to come from? Why, from you, of course -- the average citizen -- from whom everything will be taken; not only your money but your car, your single-family home and yard, your food and your freedom. But it’s fine, because we’ll have utopia when the central planners are finished.
Everything about this reeks of fraud, deceit, massive miscalculation and manipulation. And we’ve seen this movie enough times before to be suspicious of everything we’re being told.
First, the science is questionable. A basic tenet of the scientific method is that if your predictions don’t happen, your hypotheses are flawed. The climate catastrophe Cassandras have been wrong for decades. In the 1960s, professor Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” predicted widespread starvation for most of humanity. Didn’t happen. In the 1970s, the “experts” were predicting a new “ice age.” Didn’t happen. “Global cooling” became “global warming” and Al Gore, one of its most famous prophets, relied on computer models to predict that arctic ice would be melted by 2013. Didn’t happen.
Second, science doesn’t become “settled” just because scholars who challenge prevailing theories are silenced. Professor Michael Mann, another renowned expert in climate science, authored the “hockey stick” graph in 1998 that purported to show a huge spike in global temperatures attributable to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But when other scholars pointed out gaps in Mann’s data (he ignored the Medieval Warm Period and the so-called Little Ice Age) and flaws in his methods, Mann attacked them and the journals that published their critiques.
Third, politicized science is both suspect and dangerous. In 2019, Dr. Paul Offit published “Pandora’s Lab,” a hard-hitting account of seven instances of “science” that shaped disastrous shaped public policies, including eugenics, the war against pesticides, the use of lobotomies to treat mental illness, and the aggressive promotion of trans fats instead of natural dairy products. Just two weeks ago, Joanne Silberner wrote a powerful article for Bari Weiss’ new online magazine The Free Press, in which she lays out how the same phenomena Offit exposed have impeded real progress on the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s.
Offit’s book and Silberner’s essay expose two ugly realities: When politicians build their campaigns on sketchy or unproven scientific theories, they have a vested interest in making sure that facts that disprove those theories never see the light of day. And scientists -- whose research money the government controls -- then have a vested interest in making those politicians happy.
Truth may be the first casualty of war, but it is a later casualty of government research as well.
Fourth, rampant hypocrisy gives a glimpse into the dystopic future these megalomaniacs are planning. The seas are supposedly rising, but they own beachfront properties. You shouldn’t be driving a car, but they fly everywhere -- including into Davos -- on private jets. Your modest family home is a problem, but they own multiple mansions that sit empty most of the time.
The deceit and propaganda campaigns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic followed this same template. There were hysterical predictions about lethality based upon inadequate information. Our government lied about its role in the development and funding of the virus, and government policies were clearly designed to maintain -- and exploit -- public ignorance. Scholars, scientists, physicians and other medical experts who pointed to the facts suggesting a lab leak; who argued in favor of inexpensive and readily available drugs to treat symptoms of the virus; who questioned the safety of experimental viruses and called attention to grave side effects and deaths likely caused by the “vaccines” were called kooks and conspiracy theorists. We now know that the government worked with social media to silence these brave people and keep the truth from the public. And while the rest of us were locked down, powerful politicians got special trips to the hair salon, enjoyed maskless parties, dinners at expensive restaurants and vacation trips.
The WEF want total power to address “crises.” We must remember that throughout history, the worst crises faced by humanity -- wars, famines, plagues, starvation, slavery, death on a widespread scale -- were either caused by those in power or exacerbated by them. Those horrific results need not be motivated by malevolence; mere error can do as much damage. Tens of millions of Chinese people died in the famine that was caused by the policies in Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.”
Once the central planners are in complete control, you’re just as dead if they’re accidentally wrong as you would be if they intended it.
Politicized science coupled with propaganda is a recipe for disaster. In the hands of those who seek global power in the name of “climate change,” it is a prescription for an actual catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.
Keep power and control out of the hands of the WEF (and everyone who thinks like them) now, or live to regret it later.
https://townhall.com/columnists/laurahollis/2023/01/20/resist-the-climate-change-power-grab-n2618519
***************************************************The hysteria and doom-mongering that now surround any debate about climate change risk doing more harm than climate change ever could
By ROSS CLARK
Fear is very easy to spread. Make a television documentary in which footage of extreme weather events is overlain with vague statements about climate change, and you sow the idea in viewers’ minds that we are headed for a hellish future.
There can never have been a time when some part of the world was not in a heatwave, another part was not flooded, another suffering unusually high temperatures and another unusually low temperatures.
Yet if you report on every extreme event and throw in the term ‘climate change’, you will very rapidly plant the idea that the world is in some freakish transformation.
Even when it demonstrably isn’t. A Pentagon report that came to light in 2004 claimed that by 2007 large parts of the Netherlands would be rendered uninhabitable by flooding and that by 2020 Britain would have a ‘Siberian climate’ as the system of atmospheric circulation broke down.
In his 2006 climate change film An Inconvenient Truth, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore asserted that the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro would be gone ‘within the decade’. While there has been some continued erosion in the mountain’s glaciers, they are very much still in existence.
Certainly, there is ample evidence that the Earth is warming, and there are potentially many negative consequences from that. Yet hyperbole now rules so much coverage of climate change. Changes which are benign are regularly hyped up into something ominous.
On July 19 last year, Britain experienced its highest-ever recorded temperature: 40.3c (104.5f) at Coningsby, Lincolnshire. This was the fourth time Britain’s maximum temperature record had been broken since 1990 and is consistent with a warming climate.
Yet did that justify the reporting which framed it as an ‘apocalypse’ with predictions of 10,000 excess deaths from that summer’s heatwave? In the event, excess deaths came to less than a third of that. Moreover, the middle of 2022 witnessed a large unexplained number of excess deaths beginning in March, long before the heatwave.
Let us accept, though, that heatwaves are a danger to health and that climate change is making them more common and more intense. Yet the increased risk must be balanced against a fall in deaths from the cold — which is a much bigger killer in Britain’s climate.
Official figures from the ONS (Office for National Statistics) show that over the first 20 years of this century, the upward trend in temperatures in England and Wales resulted in just over half a million — 555,103 to be precise — fewer temperature-related deaths. The headlines ought to read ‘Climate change saves half a million lives’, yet this real-word data seemed to tease out some rare scepticism from news outlets more used to presenting doom-laden forecasts and scenarios as established fact.
BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt began his analysis of the study with the words ‘statistics can be slippery’. In effect, he was saying, I’m choosing not to believe this particular set of data.
But there were no such doubts in the media when, at around the same time, the Government estimated that climate change was going to cost the UK economy up to £20 billion a year by 2050 — even though there is no way of knowing what kind of weather or economy we will have in 30 years’ time.
Rarely is it admitted that there might even be some benefits from a warming climate. The Government’s own climate change risk assessment did identify some of these, such as the ability to grow a richer variety of crops in Britain, but this tended to go missing from the reporting.
Moreover, some of the dangers identified made you wonder: are we really so helpless as to be unable to cope? It cited ‘risks to human health, wellbeing and productivity from increased exposure to heat in homes and other buildings’. Yet people already live and work quite happily in climates far hotter than Britain will experience even in the most dramatic scenarios of climate change.
They manage to do this thanks to properly designed buildings, insulated from heat as well as cold, aided by proper ventilation and air-conditioning.
The trouble is that in Britain we have been putting up poorly engineered new buildings which are designed to cut carbon emissions to the exclusion of all other considerations, such as the comfort of their occupants.
They are stuffed with insulation and sealed against draughts — yet have inadequate ventilation and insufficient means to disperse heat from the sun and other sources. Occupants of new homes are wilting not because of climate change but, perversely, because of building standards designed to avert climate change. Yet nuances such as this are lost as we are fed a diet of ever-greater climatic doom.
There seem to be very simple rules behind the narrative being spun to the public. First, that climate change offers nothing positive, only harm. Second, that the only way to tackle that harm is to end climate change. The idea of adapting to it is considered sacrilege.
We end up not with managed changes to the climate that might improve the situation but cataclysms beyond human ingenuity. And apparently also beyond the ability of the natural world to cope.
Climate change is apparently going to kill off plants which rely on birds to spread their seeds. It is going to kill off insects — except for mosquitoes and locusts, whose numbers are going to explode
Some of what passes for warnings on climate is sheer flight of fancy. In January last year a study funded by the Met Office and written by academics at Exeter and Edinburgh universities presented five scenarios as to what might happen by the year 2100, depending on what actions are taken now.
One of them, in which the Government carried on exploiting fossil fuel, bizarrely had Britain descending into hunter-gathering and feudal warfare. Another, where green policies were adopted, resulted in the eradication of poverty by the end of the century.
This is not climate science, nor science of any kind; it is science fiction, dreamed up to serve a particular political outlook.
None of this is to say that climate change is not happening and is not a problem. The world is warming and there are many reasons why we should want to cut carbon emissions and adopt cleaner forms of energy.
But we are not having a reasoned debate as to the choices and balances which that entails. Instead, we are presented with hysteria, with terms such as ‘heat apocalypse’ being thrown about. That belongs to the movies, not real life.
Worryingly, there is now a growing divide between the statements of climate campaigners who claim to have science on their side and what scientific data actually says. At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, everyone was banging on about ‘the science’, a supposed set of truths which could not be challenged. But it was noticeable how few actual climate scientists were there delivering lectures.
Certainly not the ones who compiled the report of the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published three months earlier, which pointed to some interesting and some conflicting changes in the climate but hardly to doomsday.
Its worst-case scenario — a global temperature rise of 4c, wind speeds in the strongest tropical storms up 5 per cent and rainfall from tropical storms up 12 per cent, as well as sea level rises of a metre by 2100 — would present serious challenges in many places. But even that would hardly amount to a ‘cataclysm’ for human civilisation.
We have lived through many ice ages, with rapid warming and cooling of the climate occurring over a few decades. Surely, an advanced industrial civilisation can find ways to cope with all these changes.
Yet climate change is a world that has come to be controlled by activists and campaigners who claim to be on the side of science and reason but who are really spinning narratives which suit ulterior motives.
And they get away with it because sceptical views have been all but banned from many newspapers and news channels.
In 2018 BBC news staff were asked to go on a one-hour course on reporting climate change, in which it was made clear that interviewees who were sceptical about man-made climate change were no longer regularly to be invited on to BBC news programmes. It went further: sceptics were now branded as ‘deniers’ — an emotive term coined by climate activists to try to compare their opponents to Holocaust deniers.
‘To achieve impartiality,’ BBC news staff were told, ‘you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way as you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2–0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.’ In practice it isn’t just ‘outright deniers of climate change’ who have disappeared from the BBC. I struggle to recall a single case where a dissenting opinion has been expressed on the subject over the past five years.
Yet there appears to be no parallel ban on the views of people who exaggerate the findings of the IPCC or other scientific sources. On the contrary, such people have continued to appear on the BBC, their assertions unchallenged.
In September 2021, for example, an activist with Insulate Britain, which was then causing havoc by blocking motorways, claimed on the Today programme that climate change would lead to ‘the loss of all that we cherish, our society, our way of life and law and order’, that the economy was ‘in serious danger of collapse’ and that climate change was ‘endangering billions of people’s lives’.
On none of these claims was she challenged.
There is a drive on the part of some activists to go further than simply banish sceptical opinion from the airwaves. Trygve Lavik, a philosopher at the University of Bergen, has suggested that climate change ‘denialism’ be made illegal on the grounds that it is a ‘crime against present and future generations’.
This tougher tone in the media is partly down to an organisation called Covering Climate Now, an initiative by the Guardian and other outlets with Left-liberal leanings, to which some very high-profile news organisations, such as Bloomberg, Reuters, the Daily Mirror and Newsweek, have signed up.
It offers support to journalists to ‘forge a path towards an all-newsroom approach to climate reporting’. Its guidance includes: ‘Remember, an extreme weather story that doesn’t mention climate change is incomplete and potentially even inaccurate.’
For example, when reporting a hurricane, they were urged to add that ‘this comes at a time when human-caused climate change is consistently making storms more intense’.
Storms more intense? This is not the conclusion that would be reached by a reporter who bothered to do their own digging and came across a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has done more research into this than anyone. It affirms that ‘there is no strong evidence of century- scale increasing trends in major hurricanes’.
As for the IPCC, it found that Australia is currently experiencing the lowest frequency of tropical cyclones in the past 550 to 1,500 years, while the northern Indian Ocean is seeing an increased intensity of the most severe storms but a decrease in frequency. The data tells us that, no, rising global temperatures have not unleashed lethal hurricanes and other storms which otherwise wouldn’t have occurred, and in some parts of the world there is even a downward trend in storm activity.
Yet that is not the picture that viewers, listeners and readers will have picked up from reports of extreme weather events.
Rather, they are urged to believe that the world is already in the grip of mad winds whipped up as a result of human influence on the climate, that when anyone dies or is made homeless in a hurricane they are victims of man-made climate change and that things are only going to get worse unless we take drastic action now.
Were the public to be fed a calmer, more even-handed reporting of the data, we might have a more rational debate over net zero.
So what is really going on with the climate? What, exactly, is at stake when people assert that climate change is so dire a threat that we have no option other than to eliminate all net greenhouse emissions by 2050?
The evidence from the IPCC shows that the Earth is warming, leading to a rise in extreme high temperatures and a fall in the number of extreme low temperatures over most of the globe.
The world is also seeing higher and heavier rainfall, although this is not translating into greater flood risk in most cases. A study of more than 2,000 rivers over half a century, quoted in the most recent IPCC report, found that in only seven per cent of them was there an increasing trend in maximum annual flood levels.
Storm tracks in some parts of the world have shifted, leading to a rise in storms at high latitudes and a fall elsewhere. There is no increase in tropical storms, although they may be dumping more rainfall in some places.
Some places are suffering more drought, others are seeing less dry conditions. Fire risk has increased in some places but this has not translated into an overall increase in land affected by wildfires.
Data specifically on the UK confirms an upward trend in temperature and rainfall, more heatwaves but also fewer cold spells. There is some evidence of more intense rainfall.
But none of this adds up to the idea that Britain is suffering extreme or ‘violent’ weather, ‘climate breakdown’ or any other of the hysterical claims which are being made every time the country suffers weather-related damage.
If the present trends in temperature and rainfall are maintained throughout this century, Britain will end up with the kind of climate which is already experienced in slightly more southerly latitudes. A further rise of 1.5c in average July temperatures in London, for example, would take us to the current levels experienced in Paris.
But of all the challenges presented by climate change, the most serious for Britain is rising sea levels. Many of the country’s most populated areas are in low-lying coastal locations. London sits at the end of a funnelling estuary vulnerable to tidal surges.
Yet climate change is not the whole story here. Britain sits on a tectonic plate. The South-East of England is sinking — and has been doing so since the last Ice Age. Up to half the change in sea level in the Thames estuary is down to the land sinking rather than the sea rising.
The answer to flooding is better defences. Even in the worst-case scenarios, for the next century at least, we will be able to continue to live where we do now by adopting the drainage and flood defence policies of the Netherlands.
There, a quarter of the land surface already lies below sea level and the lowest point is a full 6.7 metres below sea level. Yet flooding is rare because sea defences are strong and drainage well managed.
None of this is to say that we should not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is very much in our interests to burn less fossil fuel, and to decrease greenhouse gas emissions more generally, even to try to eliminate them eventually.
But the fact is that we are not being fried, frozen, drowned, burned or blown away by human-induced climate change.
That is hyperbole, which is being used to suppress debate over net zero and forcing us into making some very poor decisions.
We need to stop panicking. At the moment we are responding to modelled, worst-case scenarios and to assertions of climatic doom which have no scientific basis, only an emotional one.
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First, Biden came for your gas stove. Next, Democrats will come for your gas heater
The commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Richard Trumka Jr., recently said his agency is considering banning gas stoves because they can cause asthma in children, among other health and respiratory maladies.
Trumka called gas stoves "a hidden hazard," and further said, "Any option is on the table. "Products that can’t be made safe can be banned," he added.
However, after just a few days of intense backlash from Republicans and conservative media, the Biden administration appeared to suddenly reverse course. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden "does not support banning gas stoves."
It’s good news that the Biden administration appears to have caved on its reckless gas-stove proposal, but not every Democrat is as easily persuaded.
Gas-powered stoves or other appliances and heaters powered by natural gas have been banned in new constructions in nearly 100 cities and counties, including in New York City and San Francisco.
Further, lawmakers in at least 20 states have also proposed similar prohibitions. In 2022, Washington State lawmakers banned natural gas appliances in new buildings in 2023.
New York governor Kath Hochul, a Democrat, recently offered a sweeping proposal to ban both natural gas heaters and all appliances, including stoves, in new buildings in the state. If the proposal is passed into law, the ban on natural-gas-powered appliances would begin its phase-in period in 2025. And starting in 2030, new natural-gas heating systems would also be prohibited.
Unlike with the White House’s recent plan, there’s no sign that most other Democratic proposals will be reversed anytime soon.
Supporters of banning the use of natural-gas-powered appliances often claim it can cause health hazards like childhood asthma, an important assertion because tens of millions of homes rely on natural gas today. More than 40 million Americans use gas stoves, and the US Energy Information Administration reports, "About half of the homes in the United States use natural gas for space heating and water heating."
But do appliances like gas stoves actually present an increased risk of asthma for children or pose other health dangers? In short, the answer is no, so long as proper ventilation is present.
And even when it isn’t, experts are divided and the evidence is mixed when it comes to certain correlations between the use of gas-powered appliances and health problems.
Despite getting a lot of attention, the study cited by the CPSC is a weak meta-analysis of previous studies. The researchers didn’t analyze all of the available research. They cherry-picked data from studies that fit their predetermined conclusion while ignoring other data from studies that did not reiterate their preferred assumptions.
Previous reviews of the available research have found, "It’s not clear whether gas stoves are a significant likely cause of health problems, because households have many other potential sources of indoor pollution too." But even if gas stoves and other gas-powered appliances and heating systems do contribute to the development of childhood asthma or other health issues, there is no reason to ban them.
The study cited by CPSC claims just "12.7% … of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use," about 762,000 children. The alleged reason for the association is that cooking over natural gas in poorly ventilated kitchens releases respiratory irritants into the air, some of which have been associated with causing asthma.
If this is true — and again, some researchers claim it isn’t — why not fix the alleged problem by improving ventilation? That would not only alleviate fears over childhood asthma and other health problems, it would do so without government bans and restrictions on the free market.
Even those who are concerned about the use of gas-powered appliances acknowledge this is a reasonable approach. For example, the Massachusetts Medical Society, which has published articles claiming that natural gas stoves are connected to pediatric asthma, has also said "simple actions" like "Using exhaust fans that ventilate to the outdoors when cooking with a gas stove" and "Using HEPA air purifiers with carbon filters" would avert the potential health risks associated with natural gas cooking.
So, instead of banning gas stoves and other gas-powered appliances and heating systems, as many Democrats are now suggesting, policymakers should consider changing building standards so that new constructions use better ventilation.
In general, gas stoves and gas-powered heaters are arguably safer and perform better than electric alternatives. For example, gas stoves ignite quickly and heat food faster than electric stoves. And once the burner is shut off, the risk of unintended burn is minimal. Additionally, gas stoves typically work during a power outage, unlike electric stoves, and they are more durable and last longer than their electric counterparts.
It seems obvious that a ban on gas-powered appliances and heating systems is unnecessary. What is the real reason, then, for why Democrats across America are suddenly so interested in banning them?
It could be that Democrats, who have long suggested natural gas is contributing to a dire climate crisis, have chosen to invent new justifications for destroying the natural gas industry. Most American voters don’t view climate change as a top priority, but perhaps Democrats think a good old-fashioned health scare will do the trick.
Whatever the real reasons are behind the sudden urgency to eliminate gas-powered appliances and heating systems, one thing is abundantly clear: there is no good justification for government to take away Americans’ ability to use natural gas, an extremely efficient, reliable, safe source of energy. It doesn’t pose significant health hazards, as some of falsely claimed, and whatever risks do exist can easily be reduced using simple, affordable, common-sense reforms.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/first-biden-came-gas-stove-next-democrats-come-gas-heater
************************************************Solar panels are leading an energy revolution, but recycling them isn't easy
Almost every day, Anthony Vippond's solar recycling plant in Melbourne's north receives dozens of used solar panels.
In the car park, multiple tilting towers of the devices, held together by tie-downs, take up the spaces.
Right now, a lot of them come from schools as the state government upgrades or replaces about 500 solar panel systems.
Others come from businesses, homes or solar farms from rural Victoria.
Some have large holes shot through the middle, others are smashed, but most have no damage at all and have been cast aside because they are not as efficient as they once were.
All those used panels have to go somewhere, and it cannot be landfill; Victoria, South Australia and the ACT have banned solar panels ending up in landfill — they have to be taken to e-waste drop off points to be recycled.
It was a move made to stop heavy metals in the panels from leaching into the earth, and — with roughly 26,000 tonnes of solar panels predicted to be thrown away every year in Victoria from 2035 — to force industry to innovate.
But recycling solar panels is not straightforward. "They are laminate, they're stuck together, they're glued," Mr Polhill says.
To be reused, solar panels need to be broken down so each component — including glass, aluminium, copper, plastic and silicon — can be separated. And that takes a lot of heavy machinery to achieve.
Some of those materials can then be sold and used in new products.
Various companies in Victoria and South Australia are trialling different methods of breaking down solar panels from using chemicals and heat, to dry processes and computerised mechanical systems.
They each say their process is better than the one next door. But all have admitted one thing: the margins are not great.
Most solar recyclers strip and sell the aluminium from the frame, try to extract as many valuable metals as possible, then stockpile the rest.
Mr Polhill says at the moment, "it would be cheaper to put them into landfill than to recover them".
"Over the last few years companies have started to invest in recovering other materials but that is in its infancy and those materials have a very small market," he says.
But, there is one part of a solar panel that could change that: nano silicon. Silicon is found within the black and grey panels that capture sunlight.
And when refined into its purest form, nano silicon, it can sell for about $64,000 per kilogram. It is a ubiquitous substance used in everything from mobile phones and concrete to rubber, plastic, and computer chips.
Until now it has been tricky to reduce silicon down into its nano particles without using harmful chemicals like hydrochloric acid and nitric acid.
But researchers from Deakin University in Geelong say they have figured out a way to do it that is cheap, effective and safe for the environment. Researchers at the university started investigating their theory in 2019 and have repeatedly tested and reviewed the process to prove it can work and be scaled up for commercial use.
"Compared to other processes around the world, my process is really environmentally friendly," Deakin senior research fellow Mokhlesur Rahman says.
Dr Rahman says he's also discovered a way to combine nano silicon with graphite to create longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries for use in products like electric cars.
It is a breakthrough that could make recycling solar panels a far more viable industry.
Back at his recycling plant, Mr Vippond has been trying to create new products like sleepers and furniture from solar panel products, but says a way to easily and cheaply extract and sell nano silicon would be a game changer.
"Getting the best recovery out of the solar panel is probably more paramount than any other product just in relation to that [environmentally conscious] category that it comes from," he says. "Some of the work like Deakin University and others are doing in their research is quite incredible."
But Mr Polhill is sceptical. "How do we take that research and create a business model — that's the real nut to crack in this," he says.
"Recycling solar panels in Australia is in its infancy. So it needs continuous investment from both industry and from government to support this developing market and some of the technologies as well."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-22/solar-panel-recycling-nano-silicon-extraction/101865624
***************************************20 January, 2023
Former VP Al Gore gives 'unhinged' rant about environmental threats including 'rain bombs' and 'boiling oceans' during speech at World Economic Forum
Former Vice President Al Gore gave an 'impassioned' and 'unhinged' speech about climate change while on stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The eco-warrior warned the crowd of 'rain bombs' and boiling oceans while discussing the concerns facing Earth if drastic changes aren't made to address the environmental concerns.
Gore, who also voiced support for climate activist Greta Thunberg after her recent arrest for protesting a coal mine in Germany, said the world would soon fall into peril if citizens continue to treat the atmosphere as an 'open-air sewer.'
The video of his speech has ignited criticism online from those claiming the former politician has been 'wrong about everything' and calling him a 'shill.'
The World Economic Forum guest said the situation is more dire than people realize and claimed the current output of greenhouse gases is sending heat into the atmosphere that is equivalent to '600,000 Hiroshima' bombs ever day.
Gore also pointed to 'xenophobia' and 'political authoritarian trends' as contributors to the ongoing climate issues and increase in refugees.
'Look at the xenophobia and political authoritarian trends that have come from just a few million refugees,' the activist said.
'What about a billion?! We would lose our capacity for self-governance on this world! We have to act,' he yelled out, referencing how it's predicted the world will see one billion refugees 'in this century.'
Gore has spent the better half of the last two decades 'sounding the alarm' on how humanity is 'failing' when it comes to climate change.
He says the heat created from greenhouse gases is responsible for the climate disasters the world has seen in recent years.
'That's what's boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees,' Gore exclaimed during the forum.
The environmental activist also mentioned the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, which he calls a 'thin blue line.'
'People are familiar with that thin blue line that the astronauts bring back in their pictures from space? That's the part of the atmosphere that has oxygen, the troposphere, and it's only five to seven kilometers thick,' he says.
'That's what we're using as an open sewer,' Gore continued.
That's the moment when the former vice president shared his a dire warning about the heat created by humans being pumped into the troposphere.
'We're still putting 162 million tons [of greenhouse gas] into it every single day,' he said.
'The accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth,' Gore claimed.
Twitter users were quick to jump on Gore's speech, calling the eco-warrior 'unhinged' and asking 'how does anyone take this stuff seriously?'
'Al Gore goes on unhinged rant, claims we're "boiling the oceans" and creating "rain bombs" and "sucking the moisture out of the land and creating the droughts and melting the ice and raising the sea level,"' wrote Tom Elliot in a tweet.
'He's been wrong about everything. Every prediction wrong. He's a shill and doesn't offer anything worthy of consideration regarding our climate,' claimed one Twitter user.
'How does anyone take this stuff seriously?' asked National Review editor Claude Thompson.
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Russian-British comedian mocks wokeness in Oxford Union speech: 'Trained young minds to forget'
Satirist and podcast host Konstantin Kisin slammed woke culture and argued that it has caused young people to "forget" that the way to "improve the world" and fight climate change is to work, build and create.
During a debate at the Oxford Union Society, Kisin argued that woke culture has gone "too far" and noted at the beginning of his argument that he was attempting to speak to those "who are woke" and "open to rationale argument." He started by saying that the younger generation cares more about climate change than any other generation.
Kisin argued the future of the climate would be decided by "poor people in Asia and Latin America," because "they're poor."
"There is only one thing we can do in this country to stop climate change and that is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs that will create the clean energy that is not only clean but also cheap," Kisin said. "The only thing wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright young minds like you to believe that you are victims, to believe that you have no agency, to believe that what you must do to improve the world is to complain, is to protest, is to throw soup on paintings."
Kisin referenced anti-oil protesters who hurled tomato soup at a Vincent van Gogh painting in London's National Gallery.
He argued that those on his side of the debate were "not on this side of the house because we do not wish to improve the world."
"We know that the way to improve the world is to work, is to create, is to build and the problem with woke culture is that it has trained to many young minds like yours to forget about that," he concluded.
Several climate activists across the world have sought to protest climate change by defacing famous works of art. A pair of German climate activists smashed mashed potatoes across Claude Monet’s "Les Meules" at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum in October.
Kisin posted on Twitter that he "didn't hold back."
His speech received plenty of praise on Twitter, including from former Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall.
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NYC’s looming, self-inflicted housing-affordability crisis — thanks to the climate zealots
Happy “State of the. . .” season! That time of year when elected leaders give optimistic enumerations of their plans for the state, city, district or whichever fiefdom they govern. This year, as in the recent past, New York’s housing-affordability crisis will take center stage. Yet despite that, the city is on pace to implement the costliest and most punishing mandates on residents in modern history.
No, I am not talking about the gas-stove ban — but close.
This seldom-discussed policy is Local Law 97, or the Climate Mobilization Act, set to start phasing in next year. When that happens, the only New Yorkers mobilized by this act will be those continuing the flight to lower-cost states down south.
The law demands an unattainable greenhouse-emission standard in existing buildings more than 25,000 square feet, condo and co-op developments more than 50,000 square feet and buildings with up to one-third of units rent-stabilized.
If you’re a New York City apartment dweller, the odds are overwhelming that you’re living in a building targeted by eco-woke zealotry. A 2019 Wall Street Journal survey found that 20% of all buildings would face fines in the law’s first year, a figure that jumps to 80% by 2030.
And the penalties that eventually will be passed down to you are massive.
Failure to comply with Local Law 97 in its first year will result in fines of $268 per metric ton of carbon dioxide over the limit. Within five years, it more than doubles to $583.
What does that mean in practical terms? The Cotocon Group, a noted sustainability consulting firm, published an alarming case study on the law’s fine structure. A sample 150,000-square-foot residential building with a mid-range Energy Star score of 43 will face an annual fine of $167,000 by 2029. Thus if this hypothetical building has 100 condo units, each owner would be responsible for about $1,670 per year.
So much for any promise of alleviating our affordability crisis.
You should also cast aside any hope your building might just squeak by in compliance.
Consider this example. In 2010, One Bryant Park opened its doors as one of the first buildings in the world to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum status. It was widely feted as the city’s greenest. Al Gore, the godfather of climate alarmism himself, not only cut the inaugural ribbon but leased space in the building to house his eco-friendly investment firm.
Yet despite its accolades and next-generation efficiency, it will be slapped with an estimated $2.5 million annual fine.
That is surely “An Inconvenient Truth” for Local Law 97’s proponents.
The crippling cost of compliance is so severe, the city saw fit to exempt its own buildings, meaning some of the Big Apple’s oldest carbon-challenged structures, including those the New York City Housing Authority owns, are spared. Perhaps the issue is not so urgently existential after all.
But if your building attempts to comply, we aren’t just talking about cutting the pipes to those gas stoves. This law requires massive overhauls of existing structures and HVAC systems.
The board president of Glen Oaks Village, a middle-class Queens co-op with 2,900 units, testified at a City Council hearing last year that the cost to convert their 47 boilers will amount to more than $20 million, or $7,000 per apartment, plus a 5% increase in maintenance costs. Yet even after the change, the law’s emission algorithm would still bang them out for an $800,000-per-year fine.
To make matters worse, many building managers and owners recently incurred massive costs to convert heating units from oil to gas to comply with the previous round of climate mandates. Now those will be noncompliant, even if the boilers aren’t yet paid off.
This is the sort of “Let them eat cake” or “Ban gas stoves” policy that rarely works its way into the “State of” speeches each January, despite affordability and climate resiliency being the topics du jour. And policies like this, once handed over to woke technocrats, only get worse.
The Buildings Department, for example, has so far refused to recognize carbon-capture technology — good enough for submarines and spaceships, mind you — as a valid method to lower building emissions as well as the cost of compliance. If the goal is truly to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this technology should be celebrated. But I suspect punishing us bourgeois fossil-fuel users is the real impetus.
This is where policy must meet politics. Local Law 97 will take effect right around the time Mayor Eric Adams is seeking re-election. Let’s make sure the voices of the climate-change cultists aren’t the only ones he hears. Affordability is the first crisis he must resolve.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/18/nycs-looming-self-inflicted-housing-affordability-crisis/
******************************************************The Australian Labor Party’s new tax on those that wear hi-vis to work
In the past week Greta Thunberg was “arrested” for trying to stop the expansion of a coal mine that would bulldoze the abandoned German town of Luetzerath. While a German Greens Government is desperately trying to increase the supply of reliable energy, even against the wishes of St Greta, our Labor-Greens government announced a $15 billion tax hit on our energy producing and consuming businesses.
The Labor Party does not call it a tax, instead preferring the Orwellian moniker of a “safeguard mechanism”. The safeguard mechanism would make 215 Australian businesses reduce their carbon emissions by 5 per cent a year. They will have to pay a capped price of $75 per tonne to do this.
Over the next 7 years until 2030 these businesses will have to reduce their emissions by 205 million tonnes. At $75 a tonne, which is three times the cost of Gillard’s carbon tax, this amounts to a $15 billion new tax to do business in Australia. (The $75 capped price will probably prevail because in Europe carbon credits trade at over $100 per tonne and in New Zealand the price is already at $70 a tonne.)
Former Labor MP, Joel Fitzgibbon, admitted that Labor’s policy was a carbon tax. Like all carbon taxes it will increase the cost of living. Airlines will be made to pay the tax. You will be made to tick the green box on your plane ticket under Labor.
But this new carbon tax will be paid mostly by the mines and factories in regional Australia. The tax will hit 63 coal mines, 22 iron ore mines, 35 gas production facilities and what is left of our manufacturing of steel, aluminium and fertilisers. It is not a good idea to tax the industries that make our nation prosperous.
Over 84 per cent of the carbon emissions covered by Labor’s carbon tax come from businesses in the regions even though only 30 per cent of Australians live in the regions.
Labor’s new carbon tax is a tax on those that wear hi-vis to work.
Queensland is hit hard by Labor’s new carbon tax. A third of the 215 businesses are in Queensland despite the fact we only have 20 per cent of Australia’s population. Queensland businesses are set to pay an extra $4 billion in tax, a much higher burden than the just $700 million that will be paid by Victorian businesses.
It is Queensland’s mining industry that is keeping our nation afloat. Coal is once again Australia’s largest export but the thanks it gets is to pay more tax to prop up a bloated Canberra bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, Labor’s policy lets the banks off scot-free. Banks are large emitters themselves due to the energy use of their data centres.
However, under Labor’s policy, emissions from the use of electricity is inexplicably ignored. If Labor had included emissions from electricity use, three of the four big banks would have carbon emissions over the 100,000-tonne threshold and have to pay the tax.
So Labor’s climate policy taxes the jobs in the hi-vis industries of mining and manufacturing, while turning a blind eye to the emissions created by jobs in suits.
And those hi-vis industries, guess who they will have to buy the carbon credits from? That’s right, the banks. No wonder the banking industry is one of the loudest supporters of Labor’s climate plan.
Labor has tried to claim that this new tax will not hurt business or jobs because other countries want us to reduce carbon emissions and if we do not we will lose their custom. However, this argument is completely undermined by Labor’s own suggestion that we will now need to introduce carbon tariffs on imported products to offset the costs of their carbon tax on Australian businesses.
If Labor’s new carbon tax actually helps Australian businesses sell products to climate conscious customers, why would we need a tariff to provide them protection against low cost goods from countries that do not impose a carbon tax?
This just proves that this new tax is another blow to Australia’s manufacturing industries. The biggest winner of Labor’s carbon tax will be China, who will take more of our manufacturing jobs as they continue to build coal fired power plants like they are going out of fashion.
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19 January, 2023
John Kerry Says WEF Davos Elite Are Like ‘Extraterrestrials’ Here to ‘Save the Planet’ – Touts himself as one of a ‘select group of human beings’
Just a note on the WEF: It is the personal creation of German economist Klaus Schwab. It has gradually gained a following over the last 50 years but is just a talk shop. It has however been very good for the small Swiss resort town of Davos.
Schwab is the son of an industrialist who supplied flame- throwers to the Nazi Wehrmacht and was helping the Nazis to develop nuclear weapons. So his background is pretty authoritarian
John Kerry at the World Economic Forum: "And when you stop and think about it, it's pretty extraordinary that we select group of human beings...are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet. I mean, it's so almost extraterrestrial to think about quote 'saving the planet.' If you said that to most people, most people they think you're just a crazy tree-hugging lefty, liberal, you know, do-gooder or whatever, and, and there's no relationship. But really, that's where we are."
Marc Morano comment: "Kerry and the World Economic Forum, the UN, and Al Gore all seem to believe they are the chosen ones to save the planet. But, Kerry actually said something we can all agree with when he noted, 'most people they think you're just a crazy tree-hugging lefty, liberal'. Yes, Kerry is correct, most people do think that.
We have heard this type of elitism before. See: Klaus Schwab At 2022 WEF: ‘The Future Is Built By Us, By A Powerful Community As You Here In This Room’ & Klaus Schwab Opens the 2023 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting with a Call to “Master the Future”
Morano: "The Great Reset crowd assembling in Davos genuinely believe themselves to be above the rest of humanity and are able to own multiple mansions and fly private jets while spewing 'saving the planet' rhetoric or even picking up environmental awards.
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The Recycling Religion
For decades, we've been told: recycle! "If we're not using recycled paper, we're cutting down more trees!" says Lynn Hoffman, co-president of Eureka Recycling.
Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that's about it.
The ugly truth is that many "recyclables" sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.
Even Greenpeace now says, "Plastic recycling is a dead-end street."
Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.
Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, "Recycling Is Garbage." It set a Times record for hate mail.
But what he wrote was true. "It's even more true today," says Tierney in my new video. "Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less." It would be smarter to just dump our garbage in landfills.
People think landfills are horrible polluters. But they're not. Regulations (occasionally, government regulations are actually useful) make sure today's landfills have protective barriers so they don't leak.
Eventually, landfills are turned into good things: ski hills, parks and golf courses.
But aren't we running out of landfill space? For years, alarmist media said we were. But that's not true.
In 1987, media gave lots of publicity to a garbage barge that traveled thousands of miles trying and failing to find a place to dump its load.
But that barge wasn't rejected because there was a lack of room. States turned the barge away after hysterical media suggested it contained "infectious waste." The Environmental Protection Agency later found it was normal garbage.
Landfills have plenty of room for that. In fact, America has more space than we will ever need. Sometimes states and businesses even compete to get our garbage.
"If you think of the United States as a football field," says Tierney, "all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1,000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one-inch line."
Putting garbage in landfills is often much cheaper than recycling. My town would save $340 million a year if it just stopped recycling.
But they won't, "because people demand it," says Tierney. "It's a sacrament of the green religion."
The religion's commandments are complex. New York City orders me to: "Place recyclables at the curb between 4 PM and midnight ... Rinse plastic containers ... Separate paper from plastic, metal, and glass." Paper must be tied "with twine into bundles no taller than 18 inches," and so on.
"That's one reason recycling fails," says Tierney. "It's so complicated; people never learn the rules."
Worse, some recycling is pointless, or harmful. "If you rinse a plastic bottle in hot water," Tierney points out, "the net result is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than if you threw it in the garbage."
Since most plastic can't be recycled, what's the environmentalists' solution now? "Stop producing it," says Greenpeace's John Hocevar.
Lots of environmental groups now want to ban plastic.
That's just silly. Plastic is useful. Using it often creates fewer emissions than its alternatives. Plastic bags create fewer than paper bags. A metal straw has to be used 150 times before it creates less pollution than a plastic straw.
Environmental groups rarely mention that, or how they misled us about recycling year after year.
"It's appalling that after telling people for three decades to recycle, they don't even apologize for all the time and money that they wasted," complains Tierney. "Instead, they have a proposal (banning plastic) that will make life even worse."
Plastic is not evil. Recycling is no climate savior. When Los Angeles mandated it, they added 400 big noisy garbage trucks. That creates lots of pollution.
But environmentalists still demand we do things like pick through our trash, switch from plastic to paper bags that rip. California even banned small plastic shampoo bottles
"Some of these rules are just so arbitrary and silly," complains Tierney. "It's simply a way for greens and for some politicians to pretend that they're saving the planet."
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/01/18/the-recycling-religion-n2618407
********************************************************UK: Do we truly know the cost of net zero?
Just why is Chris Skidmore’s review into the government’s target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 called an ‘independent’ review? It somewhat stretches the definition of the word ‘independent’.
Skidmore was the very minister – the Energy and Clean Growth Minister – who pushed the net zero commitment through the House of Commons in the first place in 2019. He remains a Conservative MP. Putting him in charge of an ‘independent’ review on net zero is analogous to Rishi Sunak putting Boris Johnson in charge of a ‘independent’ review into Brexit. That, of course, would be laughed out of the House of Commons. But things seem to work very differently in the world of net zero.
It is pretty clear that support for net zero drops away rather rapidly as soon as people understand its implications
The legally-binding target to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 has the most far-reaching consequences of any piece of legislation in recent times. It is far more significant than Brexit, for example, as it requires Britain to adopt multiple new, extremely expensive and unproven technologies. And yet it was passed through the Commons without even a vote. The commitment to net zero didn’t even feature in either the Conservative or Labour manifestos in 2017, the last election before the measure was passed.
But any dissent doesn’t matter, according to Skidmore, because he has held 50 ‘round tables’. He claims, ‘We heard a clear message for businesses, organisations, individuals, and local government across the country: net zero is creating a new era of opportunity, but government, industry, and individuals need to act to make the most of the opportunities, reduce costs, and ensure we deliver successfully.’ Was it really that unanimous, Chris? And if so, who did you invite to your round tables? I guess my invitation got lost in the post.
Skidmore claims there is strong public support for net zero. This might well be the case when people are asked simply about net zero without any context, i.e. what the implications will be for them personally. Polls suggest around 60 per cent of people are generally in favour. But it is a very different matter when people are asked directly about measures which form part of the government’s net zero strategy.
Planting trees (92 per cent approval in a YouGov poll in 2021) and banning single use plastics (81 per cent) are wildly popular. So, too, it seems is ‘only using renewable energy’ (66 per cent). That is perhaps because the cost implications were not explained in the question. A majority, too, backed a frequent flyer levy (60 per cent). Banning petrol and diesel cars, however, was met with approval of 48 per cent, taxing air fares 37 per cent, increasing fuel duty 27 per cent and restricting consumption of meat and dairy 26 per cent.
It is pretty clear that support drops away rather rapidly as soon as people are allowed to understand the implications of net zero. Most support it only as an abstract idea which does not impinge on them personally.
What we really need is a genuinely independent review of this policy which explains very clearly what some of the known costs are and also looks at the many unknown costs of decarbonising food production, industries, backing up intermittent wind and solar, and so on. As Lord Frost suggested in a tweet today, what we could do with is a Red Team review of the review, which asks the difficult questions – the ones MPs failed to ask when they nodded net zero through the Commons. And it needs to be led by someone who really is independent of government.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/do-we-truly-know-the-cost-of-net-zero/
************************************************Australian State loves coal
NSW will introduce a domestic coal reservation policy to keep the lights on and ease an energy crisis gripping the east coast, in a move expected to open a new battle with major coal miners.
The Australian understands NSW Treasurer Matt Kean will issue orders requiring the majority of the state’s thermal coal miners to reserve up to 10 per cent of their output for NSW power stations by the end of the month, under a new clampdown designed to head off potential supply shortfalls this year.
The orders represent an expansion of rules introduced in December requiring only some coal miners to reserve production for the domestic market, included alongside a $125-a-tonne cap on the price of coal sold to local power providers. They could draw in major producers such as BHP, Whitehaven Coal and Yancoal.
The reservation scheme will aim to dodge a gas strike by energy producers and retailers, frustrated by a lack of clarity after the Prime Minister imposed a price cap and code of conduct on the industry. However, the move could split the NSW coal industry, with those companies already subject to domestic reservation orders likely to welcome the move. Those not affected by current orders are likely to be outraged by the decision.
“This coal cap scheme will see NSW doing our part at the request of the Albanese government to contribute to the national solution of this national problem,” Mr Kean said.
“I know those currently providing coal for the local market will appreciate that companies enjoying super profits on the back of the war in Ukraine will now do their part for the domestic market. Of course they should provide Australian production for Australian consumers.
“These new arrangements will help even the playing field among coal producers.”
The NSW government is consulting with the additional companies. The new orders are likely to require them to contribute about 7-10 per cent of their production to the domestic market. Coal still provides up to 60 per cent of generation needs in the state even as NSW looks to phase out the fossil fuel and replace it with renewable energy supplies.
The Australian understands NSW estimates its generators will need about 22 million tonnes of coal to keep operating through 2023. About 18 million tonnes of that total is already contracted in long-term supply contracts with a small group of miners, including Glencore, Peabody, New Hope Corporation and Centennial.
Under orders issued in late December those producers were required to offer at least 18.6 million tonnes of coal into the domestic market at a maximum price of $125 a tonne for coal with a calorific value of 5500 a kilogram. That is the equivalent of $136.40 for high-grade coal exported to international markets from NSW mines, which generally grades 6000 calories per kilogram.
Mr Kean, who is also the Energy Minister, has decided to widen the domestic reservation policy to meet a potential supply shortfall, after complaints the December orders put an unfair burden on a small group of producers.
The Australian understands Mr Kean now intends to require all NSW thermal coal producers to supply into the domestic market – effectively establishing a domestic coal reservation policy for the state.
The move is likely to draw in major producers such as BHP, Whitehaven Coal and Yancoal, who are not currently required to supply NSW power stations beyond any existing contracts.
Mr Kean’s move is not necessarily a permanent impost on the state’s coal industry, as coal-supply requirements will slowly diminish over the next decade as the state phases out its reliance on coal-fired generation.
It is believed sections of the coal industry have argued that coal is ultimately a state-owned resource, and the burden of supplying NSW power stations should be shared more evenly among the state’s miners.
Most of the mines supplying into long-term contracts with NSW power stations do so as a requirement of deals to privatise state-owned operations in the 1980s and 2000s. Private companies that invested in greenfield operations did so with export markets in mind, and are unlikely to welcome any impost on the price they could receive on international markets.
BHP’s Mt Arthur mine is expected to produce 13 million to 15 million tonnes of coal in the current financial year. Yancoal’s NSW mines produced about 23 million tonnes of coal in 2021.
The Australian understands the new orders will not require miners to break existing export agreements if their mine production is fully contracted, and coking coal mines such as South32’s Illawarra operations and Sanjeev Gupta’s Tahmoor mine are not affected by the new rules. AGL Energy’s Liddell coal plant is due to close in April, with Origin Energy’s Eraring station to shut as early as August 2025.
The final NSW coal power plant will be shut by 2040 at the latest after EnergyAustralia’s decision to bring forward the closure date of its Mt Piper facility by at least two years in a bid to hit new green climate targets.
Coal facilities are increasingly having to switch off during daytime hours when high solar supplies undercut them on price.
Mr Kean has been warning the state’s coal plants will exit early as the fossil fuel struggles to compete.
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18 January, 2023
Biden's ESG Investment Rules Threaten Your Retirement Savings
President Joe Biden's Labor Department recently announced a new rule that will permit money managers to play politics with trillions of dollars of people's retirement savings.
The administration is pushing environmental, social and governance investing, which allows retirement fund managers to select stocks of companies based on their positions on social and environmental issues.
Put simply, retirement savings will be used as leverage to force companies to reduce their carbon emissions and establish racial and gender quotas and other social justice fads completely unrelated to securing a high return on workers' lifetime savings.
For example, to reduce greenhouse gases, money managers have divested in traditional oil and gas companies such as Exxon or Chevron. How has that worked out so far? Last year, these were two of the highest-performing stocks.
Socially conscious investing has been around for decades. I have no problem with individual shareholders choosing stocks that comport with their personal values. I have friends, for example, who refuse to invest in Starbucks because the coffee company is fighting unionization by employees. Fine. It's a free country.
But it's an entirely different matter when trillion-dollar investment and retirement funds such as BlackRock inject their own biases into the way they invest people's savings without their knowledge or consent.
It's even worse when these biases rob investors of a high rate of return on their nest eggs.
Terrence Keeley, a former executive at BlackRock, blew the whistle on this scam in the Wall Street Journal by noting that since 2017, when the ESG fad took hold, these funds have had an annual rate of return of 6.3% -- versus 8.9% for the stock market as a whole. Investors lost 2.6% per year on their retirement funds. There goes the down payment on that retirement home in Arizona or Florida.
What is insidious about the new Biden administration ESG rules is that they permit and even tacitly encourage portfolio managers at firms such as BlackRock to violate their fiduciary duty to their clients by allowing ESG factors to trump sound investment decisions. Federal regulators are supposed to be ensuring the soundness of retirement funds, not shrinking them.
To make matters worse, researchers at Columbia University and the London School of Economics found ESG funds may not even be achieving their goals. The study compared the ESG records of American companies in 147 ESG fund portfolios to ones in over 2,000 non-ESG portfolios and found that the ESG companies were often worse when it came to labor and environmental law compliance.
The good news is that there is a backlash emerging against ESG. Late last year, one of the largest money managers, Vanguard, wisely announced it was withdrawing from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a major climate change alliance.
Going forward, ESG investment policies should be illegal unless individual investors check the box to have their money invested in such politically motivated investments.
By the way, victims of the law policies are often unionized workers -- America's truckers, factory workers and teachers -- whose lifetime savings are put at risk.
Bravo to Vanguard for pulling out of the ESG scam. If you've invested your money with BlackRock or State Street, you might want to ask why they haven't done the same.
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Skyscrapers in the sea: are they killing our whales?
Offshore wind turbines have a growing list of serious problems undermining their future sustainability, but few things look worse for environmental PR than dead whales.
A humpback whale carcass recently washed up on the beach at Brigantine near Atlantic City, sparking concern over the preliminary work being done for huge offshore wind farms. It was the seventh inconvenient dead whale in a month around the New Jersey and New York areas. While whales do wash up from time to time, seven in a short period has caused concern.
Environmental groups, no doubt panicked about their two favourite projects potentially murdering each other, have stepped up and said concerns regarding the wind farm construction are ‘unfounded and premature’.
Meanwhile, the Marine Mammal Stranding Centre at Brigantine is carrying out a postmortem on the remains. While it was noted that some of the whales looked as though they had been hit by vessels, it is unclear whether their external injuries happened before or after death.
Political panic about the ‘climate crisis’ is routinely used as a justification for corporate behaviour that would otherwise be scorned. An environmental group in New Jersey went so far as to say:
‘The climate crisis demands that we quickly develop renewable energy, and offshore wind is critically important for New Jersey to reach the state’s economic development and environmental justice goals.’
Wind farms (and whatever critical damage they may cause to marine environments around the world) are considered excusable because they are marketed as the only way to avert planetary catastrophe – which is not true. Nuclear energy has long been recognised as a better solution, environmentally speaking.
What is often forgotten about wind turbines is that they are essentially steel skyscrapers, fitted with blades, and affixed to the ocean floor (which is damaged in the process). These ‘cities’ are encroaching on the ocean and carpeting the shoreline, creating constant noise pollution in a sensitive environment full of creatures that use sound to survive.
The end result is a matrix of spinning blades on the surface of the water, disrupting air patterns and massacring marine bird life. Studies on bird behaviour came to the conclusion that wind farms represent lost territory, with many birds choosing to abandon the area entirely. As for how large wind turbines are getting, the tallest offshore wind turbine is GE’s Haliade-X standing at 260 metres – or roughly a 70-storey building.
A group of residents around the New Jersey site where the whales keep washing up have demanded a federal investigation into the deaths which are suspected to be linked to ocean floor scouting activity.
‘We should suspend all work related to offshore wind development until we can determine the cause of death of these whales, some of which are endangered. The work related to offshore wind projects is the primary difference in our waters, and it’s hard to believe that the death of whales on our beaches is just a coincidence,’ said Republican Senator Vince Polistina.
According to OPB.org:
‘The Clean Ocean Action environmental group said such site work typically involves exploring the ocean floor using focused pulses of low-frequency sound in the same frequency that whales hear and communicate, which could potentially harm or disorient the animals.’
Further:
‘At a news conference Monday in Atlantic City, the groups calling on Biden to probe the deaths said offshore wind developers have applied for authorisation to harass or harm as many as 157,000 marine mammals off the two states.
‘NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said 11 such applications are active in the area but involve non-serious injuries and harassment of marine animals, not killing them.
‘“NOAA Fisheries has not authorised, or proposed to authorise, mortality or serious injury for any wind-related action,” agency spokesperson Lauren Gaches said.’
It’s not much of a leap to look toward the wind farms as a possible cause of whale deaths. There have been many studies, particularly in Europe related to North Sea wind farms, about the impact that these forests of steel have on marine life.
In 2017, three minke whales washed up on the UK coast, apparently distressed by the offshore wind farm. It was argued that the sonar communication between the whales was being confused by the turbines.
A 2006 report Effects of offshore wind farm noise on marine mammals and fish, says:
‘McCauley et al. (2006) found strong behavioural reactions in humpback whales to airgun sounds at a received broad-band level of 172-180 dBp-p (duration = 60 ms; frequency range = 0.1 – 2 kHz). This would correspond roughly to a threshold of 166 dB0-p. If we take the broadband value of the pile-driving noise (see Table 6; value ~ 228 dB0-p for 1.5 m piles and ~ 238 dB0-p for larger piles) and calculate transmission loss to be 15 log (r) – we arrive at a 60 km radius for behavioural reaction.’
The report also warned that the noise related to pole-driving for wind turbine bases could result in permanent hearing damage to various whale species and beaching events. Whales are known to be able to detect the operational noises of wind farms over very large distances. With the oceans filling up with wind farms, humans could be driving marine life insane – like trying to live in an apartment underneath a noisy neighbour.
A 2021 study into Taiwan’s ‘Thousand wind turbines project’ in the Taiwan Strait says:
‘The offshore wind farm life-cycle includes planning, construction, installation, operation maintenance, and decommissioning. The noise and vibrations generated by offshore wind turbines during the construction and operation phase have recently been found to negatively impact hearing sensitivity and cause behavioural changes in numerous marine organisms even at ranges many kilometres distance from the wind farm.’
While the noise is most extreme during the construction phase, the operational continuous low-frequency noise irritates marine life. In particular, this study warned about the danger posed to chorusing fish who may struggle to attract mates, spawn, communicate, or function under such condition resulting in ‘cascade effects on behavioural and ecological processes’.
Offshore wind farms have a similar problem to their onshore cousins, with residents and farm animals living near turbines complaining about low-frequency noises that eventually drive people crazy.
A recent case against a wind farm in Victoria was settled in favour of residents who complained about not being able to sleep due to noise from a nearby wind farm. A 2021 study, Effects of low-frequency noise from wind turbines on heart rate variability in healthy individuals, said that low frequency exposure ‘has been found to cause a variety of health conditions’ and that ‘exposure to LFN from wind turbines results in headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, tinnitus, aural pain, sleep disturbances, and annoyance’ while it also ‘may cause increased risk of epilepsy, cardiovascular effects, and coronary artery disease’.
In order to ‘save the planet’, environmental movements are in danger of making it less livable. At the very least, we should stop allowing Net Zero and renewables industries to use the threat of apocalypse to justify damage to the environment. This ‘for the greater good’ mentality might very well destroy our oceans.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/skyscrapers-in-the-sea-are-they-killing-our-whales/
************************************************************Climate Activism Isn't About the Planet. It's About the Boredom of the Bourgeoisie
The downfall of capitalism will not come from the uprising of an impoverished working class but from the sabotage of a bored upper class. This was the view of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter believed that at some point in the future, an educated elite would have nothing left to struggle for and will instead start to struggle against the very system that they themselves live in.
Nothing makes me think Schumpeter was right like the contemporary climate movement and its acolytes. The Green movement is not a reflection of planetary crisis as so many in media and culture like to depict it, but rather, a crisis of meaning for the affluent.
Take for example a recent interview with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich on CBS's 60 Minutes. Ehrlich is most famous for his career as a professional doom monger. His first major book, The Population Bomb, gave us timelessly wrong predictions, including that by the 1980s, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death and it went downhill from there. Ehrlich assured us that England would no longer exist in the year 2000, that even modern fertilizers would not enable us to feed the world, and that thermonuclear power was just around the corner.
Ehrlich, who recently turned 90, is in the lucky position to have witnessed the complete failure of all his predictions—only to double down on them in his 60 Minutes interview Ehrlich has been wrong on every public policy issue he pontificated on for almost 60 years, yet the mainstream media still treat him like a modern oracle.
Why?
The best answer to this question comes courtesy of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2019 famously said that, "I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right." In other words, no matter what nonsense one spews, as long as it is "morally right," it does not matter what the facts show.
Like the prophet of any religion, Ehrlich is not there to explain the world but to reinforce the upper class's favorite worldview of the imminent end of the world, something that can only be prevented if we fundamentally change the way we live.
Of course, by "we," they actually mean "you." It's not the Tesla driving AOC or the jet-setting Stanford professor Ehrlich who will adapt their lifestyles, but the rubes of the working- and middle-class who supposedly eat too much meat, drive too many miles on gas-guzzling cars, or even book the occasional flight to go on vacation.
This was perfectly embodied by climate czar and millionaire John Kerry who took his family's private jet to attend a climate change conference in Iceland in 2019. Asked by journalists how to square his climate activism with the use of private planes, he seemed befuddled; after all, Kerry explained, "it is the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle" against climate change.
Even supposed grass-roots movements like "Just Stop Oil" or "Last Generation" (of "tomato soup on paintings" fame) are in fact funded by millionaires, like Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of legendary oil-tycoon Jean Paul Getty, and the Climate Emergency Fund.
Just like Kerry, Ehrlich, and these other groups are not really interested in solving the problem of climate change—for example, promoting research in technologies like nuclear energy, carbon capture technologies, and means of adaptation. Instead, they wish to elevate their struggle to an ersatz-religion that allows them to simultaneously enjoy their wealth and lecture the rest of the world from a position of moral superiority.
They are pouring money into those efforts, as the German journalist Axel Bojanowski pointed out, to a degree that would make the oil lobby blush. At the "Climate Action Summit" in 2018, two dozen billionaire-backed foundations pledged 4 billion dollars for climate-change lobbying. Some of them, like the Hewlett Foundation, are directly funding journalists at the Associated Press for "climate reporting," while foundations associated with the Packard and Rockefeller families have been backing the journalistic endeavor "Covering Climate Now," which "collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories" and is financing hundreds of media outlets.
One would assume that a journalistic class that constantly prides itself on speaking truth to power would object to talking money from billionaires to promote their peculiar interests, but the opposite is the case. And it makes perfect sense, since the contemporary media is ideologically in the same camp as the billionaire class; they enjoy lecturing the rest of society just as much as Ehrlich and his acolytes.
Contrary to the climate extremists and their virtue signals, the world they are trying to create would be devastating for the poorest people on the planet. The elimination of poverty and the improvement of living conditions is only made possible through access to energy in all forms and the petrochemical processes enabled by fossil fuels—the production of fertilizers for food and plastics needed in medical equipment.
"Just stopping oil" wouldn't stop climate change as swiftly as it would human life. To add insult to injury, this activism seems to have no shred of compassion for all the human suffering caused by their pet projects, from child-labor in cobalt mines (needed for batteries) in the Congo to forced labor in the PV production process in China, to the environmental damage caused by lithium mining in Chile.
This isn't about the planet. It's about the boredom of the bourgeoisie. And they don't care who has to pay to alleviate it.
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The green mining boom is as gritty and dirty as every other boom
Chris Bowen’s ambition to turn Australia into a renewable energy export powerhouse stalled last week when the giant Sun Cable Australia-Asia PowerLink entered voluntary liquidation.
It seems that exporting rays of sunlight to Singapore is as difficult as it sounds. Writing a convincing business plan to install millions of solar panels in the Northern Territory, capturing their intermittent output in giant batteries and sending this through thousands of kilometres of underwater cables is a formidable challenge, even if it’s backed by two renewable energy devotees with very deep pockets.
Australia’s best hope of cashing in on the global clean-energy boom stems not from the thought bubble of a hirsute software entrepreneur, but from the sweat and genius of its mining engineers. Kalgoorlie is at the centre of the so-called green mining boom. It is fast becoming the Dallas of clean energy by doing what it does best: digging up dirt, extracting minerals and sending them to market. The WA outback is to lithium-ion batteries what Texas is to oil. It is rich in deposits of lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements for which global demand is insatiable.
Finding the half tonne of minerals contained in a Tesla battery requires digging up 250 tonnes of dirt, which is good news for a town that makes its money that way. Global car manufacturers have been competing to secure deals with Australian lithium miners. Last July, for example, Ford Motor Co bought up a third of Liontown Resources’ production and threw in a $300m loan facility to expand Kathleen Valley mine, 350km north of Kalgoorlie.
The love for electric vehicles, however, like the love of sausages, is severely tested by seeing how the object of one’s affection is made. The green mining boom is as gritty and dirty as every other boom that has graced the WA goldfields region since the discovery of gold in 1893. Surrounding roads are lined with road trains hauling ore, giant earth movers, chemicals and explosives. Massive new creators are transforming the natural landscape, but this time the wilderness campaigners don’t seem particularly bothered.
The new green job opportunities we have been frequently promised are as dirty and sweaty as the old ones. Ardea Resources plans to employ 500 people over the 25-year life of its Kalgoorlie Nickel Project’s integrated nickel manganese cobalt battery material refinery hub, assisted by $119m in investment by the former federal Coalition government. They will be driving a fleet of 120-tonne excavators and 90-tonne trucks at 13 open-cut sites at Goongarrie Hill, 80km from Kalgoorlie. They will process ore in high-pressure acid-leached autoclaves. The resulting discharge will be filtered and the solids dry-stacked.
This energy-intensive, chemical-thirsty and land-hungry process adds to the substantial carbon debt that is attached to every electric vehicle. If the unrefined ingredients of a single EV battery were to be transported by train to Esperance, they would fill at least four wagons. Figures produced by car manufacturers show an electric vehicle must be driven for approximately 100,000km before its overall emissions are lower than an equivalent diesel or petrol vehicle.
These material realities of the imagined transition to a green economy are discounted by the renewable energy lobby. As US policy analyst Mark P. Mills bluntly points out, no energy system is actually “renewable” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tonnes of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out.
Mills estimates that compared with hydrocarbons, the machines to produce renewable energy require a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.
Mills calculates that by 2050 the quantity of worn-out solar panels will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste together with more than three million tonnes a year of un-recyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tonnes per year of batteries will become garbage.
The failure to offset the costs against the supposed environmental benefits of renewable energy is part of the dodgy accounting clean-energy advocates would like us to ignore. They turn a blind eye to the 8000 tonnes of steel required to generate a terawatt of electricity with solar panels. They look the other way while 8000 tonnes of concrete are delivered by a conga-line of trucks and poured into the ground to support wind turbines with the same capacity. Coal, gas and nuclear require something less than a tenth of those basic raw materials to generate the same amount of power.
The truth seldom acknowledged by advocates of renewable energy is that reducing dependence on hydrocarbons by shifting to wind, solar and batteries alone will dramatically increase our dependence on minerals. The assumed benefits of decarbonising the electricity grid must be offset against corresponding increases in mining and processing.
In 2005, the mining sector produced 9 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was 20 per cent. While the sector has been making considerable strides in reducing emissions, there is no scalable technology available to achieve the massive gains a target of net zero by 2050 requires.
The task will be even harder if we want to bring more of the processing onshore, as we must if we are to avoid increasing our energy dependence on China, currently by far the world’s biggest processor of lithium and other critical minerals.
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17 January, 2023
British coal power facility to stay open for extra two years in blow to net zero
One of Britain's last coal-burning power facilities is to be kept open for two years longer than planned as the energy crisis deals a blow to the green agenda.
The German energy giant Uniper is poised to keep the unit, at its Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, open until 2024 after an appeal from ministers - after initially intending to shut it in 2022.
National Grid on Wednesday also left the door open for extending the life of other coal-fired plants.
The moves risk hurting Britain’s ambitions to cut carbon dioxide emissions little more than a year after it hosted the COP26 climate conference, and highlights strains on the energy system following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Coal supplied more than 40pc of Britain’s electricity as recently as 2012, but this has fallen to 1.5pc across 2022.
Under efforts to cut carbon emissions, it has largely been replaced by other sources in the generation mix, such as gas, wind and biomass.
Coal-fired power plants have been rapidly closing as their owners move into greener forms of energy.
Under a target set in October 2021, the Government says Britain will stop using coal to generate electricity altogether - an important step on its path to net zero carbon emissions.
However, last year, Kwasi Kwarteng, then business secretary, asked the owners of units that were due to close in September 2022 to keep them open this winter to prevent blackouts.
His successor Jacob Rees-Mogg then asked Uniper to keep its unit open for next winter (2023/24) as well.
There have been major concerns over electricity shortages amid disruption to gas supplies triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine and outages in the French nuclear fleet.
EDF, Uniper and Drax agreed to keep units open for back-up supply if needed this winter under special winter contingency contracts with National Grid.
Uniper is now also preparing to keep open one of its units next winter (2023/24) as well, under National Grid's normal market for back-up power supply. It was due to close in September 2022.
It is one of four units at its station in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottingham. The other three were always planned to remain open until September 2024.
Gas supplies are likely to remain extremely tight this year as countries look to refill stocks with much less from Russia, while nuclear power plants in Britain also closed last year.
Meanwhile, more of Britain’s electricity is coming from intermittent wind and solar power, posing challenges for balancing the system.
Uniper said: “As requested by the Government, Uniper is now looking at whether we can make the unit available to run under standard market arrangements until the September 2024 coal phase out date.
“We have prequalified the unit to take part in the capacity market T-1 auction for 2023/24 [an auction for back-up power].
“This means further investment to extend the life of the unit. The power station is set to close at the end of September 2024.”
Separately, National Grid was asked at an industry forum yesterday when it would decide whether to extend its special contingency contracts under which extra coal-fired power is being kept online this winter.
A representative said: “We, like the rest of the industry, have half an eye on next winter... we are continuing to work closely with [the regulator and the government] on what our overall winter response will be for 2023/24”.
Drax and EDF said they had not so far been asked to keep their coal units open longer than this winter. Both are currently planning to shut the units down in March and April this year.
Drax added: “Drax’s strategy is to deliver a coal-free future".
None of the coal-fired power plants asked to stay online this winter have so far been called upon to supply power. Mild weather has helped to lower demand for gas, as well as for heating in France.
A Government spokesman said: “The UK has a secure and diverse energy system, and we remain confident in our security of supply.
“Working closely with Ofgem, National Grid Gas and other key industry organisations, we continuously monitor our energy supply and ensure we are ready for a range of scenarios.
“In line with our net zero target, the Government is planning to phase out unabated coal-fired power generation by the end of 2024.”
**********************************************
German Village at Center of a Fight Over Coal and Climate Is Cleared Out
The fight for Lützerath was long, but the end, when it finally came, was quick.
In a matter of days this past week, more than 1,000 police officers cleared out the hundreds of climate activists who had sworn to protect the small village, once home to 90 people but no church, which was scheduled to be razed as part of a sprawling open-pit coal mine in western Germany.
The relatively fast demise added to the host of contradictions surrounding Lützerath and how a tiny, now uninhabited, village had taken on an improbable, outsize place in Germany’s debate over how to wean itself off coal.
For years, environmental activists had hoped to forestall the fate of Lützerath — possibly the last of hundreds of villages in Germany to fall to open-pit mining since World War II. For a while, it seemed that the activists would succeed.
But this year the political winds and public sentiment shifted against them. Europe’s energy crisis, ushered in by the war in Ukraine and the end of cheap Russia gas, made coal too hard to quit for now. Even a government that includes the environmentalist-minded Green party turned its back on them.
The activists nonetheless prepared themselves to defend the half dozen houses and farmyards with their bodies. They barricaded themselves in a complex of barns and other structures. They erected and occupied tall watchtowers. They carved out a tunnel network. They nested in the branches of 100-year-old trees.
But the clearing, which started Wednesday, proved to be less dramatic than some had feared. A few firecrackers were heard, and some stones and bits of food were thrown (it turned out that activists had stockpiled too much). But for the most part, the standoff ended peacefully, almost businesslike. By Friday, the bulk of the activists were gone, some leaving of their own accord, some carried out by police officers, with just a few stragglers left in a few hard-to-reach places.
On Saturday, an estimated 15,000 climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, staged a march in the area, with police using water cannons and nightsticks to prevent protesters from charging the site, even though by then the village was virtually empty and many of its trees already felled. Ms. Thunberg had also visited the village on Friday afternoon.
Lützerath’s fate was sealed last fall, when Robert Habeck, the country’s business, energy and climate minister, and Mona Neubaur, the state minister for the environment and energy, announced a deal to continue mining coal in the region until 2030.
*****************************************************
Polar bear expert: Activist fact-checkers are misleading the public
Canadian zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford warns that some polar bear specialists are attempting to cast a smoke-screen over the growth of global polar bear numbers.
A ‘fact check” by AFP yesterday, picked up by Yahoo News, claims a graph used by statistical analyst Bjorn Lomborg (author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and False Alarm), which shows polar bear populations rising over five decades, “uses unreliable data”.
The critique insists that the message conveyed by the graph – that polar bear numbers are growing “in spite of global warming” – is “misleading”, and that experts say “human-driven climate change poses a threat to polar bears.” However, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford counters that some polar bear specialists are attempting to cast a smoke-screen over the relevant facts of the matter.
Regarding the assertion that estimates of polar bear population abundance in the 1960s are “pure guesswork”, Crockford points out that sea otter specialists, without shame or apology, routinely use a benchmark figure of “about 2,000” for the pre-protection population size of the species, even though it is based on similar “guesswork”. No one insults these biologists for citing this figure.
In fact, polar bear specialists are unique in the conservation field for refusing to accept a benchmark figure for the 1960s population size, despite eight published estimates made by their peers. Crockford uses an overall average of these, about 10,000 (range 5,000-15,000), as a reasonable compromise, as did polar bear specialist Markus Dyck, who died doing Arctic field work in 2021.
In 2008, the US Fish and Wildlife Service used a figure of about 12,000 in a “frequently asked questions” document: this is the number used by Lomborg in his graph.
As for more recent numbers, PBSG members continue to insist that none of the global population estimates they’ve ever made can be used to assess the conservation health of the species.
Crockford asks:
“How can the public be expected to assess the effectiveness of polar bear conservation measures if there is no way of determining whether numbers have increased or decreased over time – yet are expected to accept without challenge the output of a recent computer model that predicts a catastrophic future, as this ‘fact check’ encourages readers to do?”
Crockford says summer sea ice has declined dramatically since 1979 and especially so in the Svalbard region of the Barents Sea over the last 20 years. However, Svalbard polar bear health and abundance have not been negatively affected, which data from field work and peer-reviewed scientific studies done by polar bear specialists show to be true.
Empirical evidence like this explains why computer models predicting a dire future for polar bears are worthless: much less summer sea ice does not inevitably lead to a decline in polar bear numbers as these models assume.
*************************************************
Catastrophe postponed
As global temperatures rise, there is mounting concern that warming could trigger so-called tipping points that set off irreversible melting of the world's massive ice sheets and ultimately lift oceans enough to drastically redraw the world map.
New research published Monday suggests a complex interaction of factors affecting the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is home to the enormous and unstable Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers -- nicknamed the "Doomsday glacier" -- that together could raise global sea levels by more than three metres (10 feet).
Using satellite imagery as well as ocean and climate records between 2003 and 2015, an international team of researchers found that while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet continued to retreat, the pace of ice loss slowed across a vulnerable region of the coastline.
Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, concluded that this slowdown was caused by changes in ocean temperatures that were caused by offshore winds, with pronounced differences in the impact depending on the region.
Researchers said that this raises questions about how rising temperatures will affect the Antarctic, with ocean and atmospheric conditions playing a key role.
"That means that ice-sheet collapse is not inevitable," said co-author Professor Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.
"It depends on how climate changes over the next few decades, which we could influence in a positive way by reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
The researchers observed that while in one region, in the Bellingshausen Sea, the pace of ice retreat accelerated after 2003, it slowed in the Amundsen Sea.
They concluded that this was down to changes in the strength and direction of offshore surface winds, which can change the ocean currents and disturb the layer of cold water around Antarctica and flush relatively warmer water towards the ice.
Both the North and South pole regions have warmed by roughly three degrees Celsius compared to late 19th-century levels, nearly three times the global average.
Scientists are increasingly concerned that the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers have reached a "tipping point" that could see irreversible melting irrespective of cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who was not connected to the latest study, welcomed the approach of bringing together multiple observations and records, although the study period was "the blink of an eye in ice terms".
"I think we still have to live and plan and do our sea level projections and coastal planning with a hypothesis that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is destabilised and we will get three and a half meters of sea level rise just from this area of the planet alone," he said, adding however that this would happen "over centuries to millennia".
The United Nation's science advisory panel for climate change, the IPCC, has forecast that oceans will rise up to a metre by the end of the century, and even more after that. Hundreds of millions of people live within a few metres of sea level.
While cutting planet-warming emissions is seen as the first and most important way to halt the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have also come up with an array of hi-tech suggestions for saving the gargantuan ice shelf and staving off.
Levermann has researched ideas including using snow cannons to pump trillions of tons of ice back on top of the frozen region.
Other suggestions have included constructing Eiffel Tower-sized columns on the seabed to prop it up from below, and a 100m-tall, 100-kilometre-long berm to block warm water flowing underneath.
***************************************
16 January, 2023
There were 5 years warmer than 2022
Since the global temperature peaked in 2016, the temperature has been essentially flat. Global stasis! Yet CO2 continues to rise -- showing that it is at best a minor influence on temperature
NASA, NOAA and the UK Met Office have released the global temperature for 2022, showing it to be a warm year, ranked sixth warmest year. It was subdued, the researchers say, because we have had the third consecutive year of La Nina conditions.
The announcement was accompanied with the usual proviso that the past nine years were the warmest recorded. But anyone thinking about the claims and numbers should also look behind the headlines.
Fig 1 shows the global temperature anomaly this century: blue is HadCRUT5, Orange is NASA and grey is NOAA.
The stepwise influence of El Nino events on the long-term trends seems very apparent. It was the strong El Nino of 1998 that marked the jump of global temperature to the hiatus, and the 2015 El Nino may have done the same.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/global-temperature-2022-same-again/?mc_cid=7cc89f3000&mc_eid=cc88839e92
*************************************************Biden Lied About the Benefits of the Keystone XL Pipeline
As a justification for withdrawing the permits for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, which would have connected Canadian pipelines to pipelines in the Midwest and ultimately to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden said the pipeline was not justified because we didn’t need the oil and it wouldn’t benefit the economy or produce jobs. We now know he lied.
Even before Biden made his decision to kill the pipeline project, studies showed just the opposite was true. Now, we have further proof of Biden’s duplicity courtesy of the Department of Energy (DOE). In a quiet release during the holidays when most Americans are distracted and not paying close attention to the news, the DOE issued a report that details the significant benefits the United States missed out on when Biden withdrew the pipeline permit as one of his first acts after entering the Oval Office.
The report has been largely ignored by the corrupt mainstream media.
The new report says 16,149 to 59,000 jobs would have been created during the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, with dozens more permanent jobs created to manage, maintain, and operate it. The economic benefits to the local and national economy would have been to the tune of $3.4 to $9.6 billion.
The project was supposed to add a new segment to the pre-existing pipeline that begins in Alberta, Canada, and ends at refineries in Texas. That added capacity would have supplied an additional 830,000 barrels of oil per day, with most of that coming from Canada’s oil sands.
Unfortunately, after more than a decade of regulatory whiplash, uncertainty, and hostility, TC Energy, the Calgary-based company that led the project, officially terminated it, leaving nothing but a press release and map of the terminated pipeline section on its website.
In addition to insisting KXL would not benefit the U.S. economy, the Biden administration claimed the pipeline would harm America’s climate goals. However, it is difficult to see how that is the case (if you believe those climate goals are necessary) considering the fact that the oil is being produced and eventually delivered to the United States. And it will still be used. The only real change is that rather than being delivered through net-zero emissions pipeline, it is now delivered by freight trains and semi trucks, which actually emit the very greenhouse gases the environmental lunatics are so concerned about.
Even more laughably, the other main reason Biden nixed the pipeline is because it would make him look bad to his friends abroad. In the Biden administration’s words, it would “undermine the global energy and climate leadership role of the United States.” Surely, they can’t be worried about looking bad to our allies in Europe, where electricity rates have skyrocketed and coal-fired power plants are making a comeback?
Interestingly, Biden’s buddies in Canada were none too pleased with the sudden cancellation. In 2021, Reuters reported the Canadian government was disappointed that Biden immediately canceled the project. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney vowed legal action, and said Biden’s decision was “a gut punch for the Canadian and Alberta economies.” He added that Biden’s foolish decision was an “insult” to Canada. A lawsuit was filed, spearheaded by the attorneys general of several states, and damages were requested by the Alberta government. Regrettably, TC Energy’s cancellation of the project rendered the suit “moot,” according to the U.S. government. Eventually, the case was thrown out.
What’s more, even Canadian indigenous leaders supported KXL. The president of the National Coalition of Chiefs called the cancellation, “a blow to the First Nations that are involved right now in working with TC Energy to access employment training and contracting opportunities.” Indeed, Canadian First Nations groups owned a 12 percent equity stake in KXL.
Had the KXL pipeline been built, it is unlikely oil and gas prices today would be as high as they are. Perhaps more importantly, had he not killed the project, Biden would certainly not have had to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or go begging hat in hand to authoritarian governments, first to Saudi Arabia and then to Venezuela, to increase oil exports to the United States.
The Keystone XL pipeline was not the absolute end-all-be-all for the economy or energy independence, but the costs of canceling it are a lot worse than the imagined international pooh-poohing that might have occurred had Biden allowed the project to be completed. Former Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once said Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." So, the boneheaded decision to kill the pipeline is really just par for the course for Biden.
https://cnsnews.com/commentary/linnea-lueken/biden-lied-about-benefits-keystone-xl-pipeline
********************************************************Climate Change’ is shaping up to be the most expensive scientific fraud in human history
Yet another false religion
W?d? al-??t?n, also known as ‘The Valley of the Whales’, is an extraordinary paleontological site sitting 150 km south-west of Cairo, Egypt.
There, the fossilised bones of Archaeoceti (ancient whales), lay exposed in the sands of the Western Desert. The find includes rare specimens of Basilosaurus and Dorudo. 50 million years ago in the beginning of the Eocene, these creatures hunted in the warm, shallow waters of a vanished sea.
In news that will no doubt traumatise those who cling to human-centric climate change, the whales tell a story of a constantly changing Earth that cares little for the survival of its creatures. According to Daily News Egypt:
About 37 years ago at the Fayoum desert, where the 200-square-kilometre Wadi Al-Hitan is located, was covered with water as part of the old Mediterranean Sea ‘Tethys Sea’ which existed about 200 million years ago.
The Tethys Sea existed over Fayoum almost 200m years ago, before shrinking North and becoming the Mediterranean Sea and desertification turning the sea floor into a desert.
These fossil fields, discovered in 1902, are crucial because they helped to answer an enduring mystery in the evolution of whales – finally proving that they switched from being land-based mammals into ocean-going creatures.
Other places contain similar fossils, but nowhere is there such a rich layer of preservation allowing palaeontologists to reconstruct the long-lost ecosystem. Unesco, in an unusual moment of clarity, designated the area as a protected World Heritage site. It sits as an open-air museum with over 400 whale fossils and countless other priceless examples of prehistoric life lying in situ.
These are strange whales. In excess of 20 metres, they had both flippers and hind legs with feet and toes while their bodies were elongated, resembling enormous serpents. Unlike modern whales, they retained the powerful jaws and teeth of land-based predecessors.
The skeletons of modern whales contain vestigial hind leg bones that indicate a ghost-like past on land which serve no purpose in the water. They are being erased by the gradual process of natural selection leading scientists to guess that these creatures had once walked on land.
Finding transitional fossils to prove this is a game of luck, but in the case of whales, luck fell on the side of science. The legs, knees, and feet of the desert whales solidified the main theory but also discounted previously assumed ancestors causing a ruthless re-shuffling of life’s tree. Such is the brutality of physical evidence.
Science, if it wishes to be called such, must always bend to real-world data – even if it hurts our feelings.
This can be difficult for those who fall in love with beautiful theories, something that happens frequently to the scientists who dream them up and the ideological movements that worship them. Plenty of elegant theories have been crushed under the weight of conflicting evidence and this is never more dangerous than when humans associate a theory with personal ‘virtue’.
The miasma theory of infectious diseases, held as the gold standard by experts in the field of medicine, was superseded by modern germ theory. ‘Bad air’ or ‘night air’ was originally thought to be the cause of catastrophic epidemics that plagued the ancient world. Hippocrates popularised the globally-held view that bad odours caused illness. This belief, while ultimately wrong, was not entirely detrimental to the development of civilisation as it led to cities cleaning up rotting waste and the creation of water purification techniques which genuinely lowered the prevalence of disease breeding grounds.
The theory of classical elements – where all matter was composed of air, earth, fire, and water – persisted until 1789 when it was put to rest by Antoine Lavoisier in his work Elements of Chemistry. Mind you, the 90s-era Captain Planet children’s cartoon has a lot to answer for when it comes to children mistaking these features for ‘elements’. As for poor Lavoisier, he was rewarded for his efforts to improve the lives of the French peasants with a trip to the guillotine in 1794. It was said of his loss, ‘It took them only an instant to cut off his head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.’ He was later exonerated of any wrongdoing.
Maternal Impression was extremely popular in which doctors believed the mother of a child could spontaneously create birth defects through her ill-thoughts. It was a nasty way to blame women for the malformed and tragic fates of their children. One of the most severely disabled figures in history, Joseph Merrick (known as ‘The Elephant Man’), said that his mother believed his condition was caused by her accident involving an elephant while she was pregnant.
The luminiferous aether was an extremely popular idea that space was saturated by a mysterious substance that allowed light to travel. Waves require mediums and logically scientists assumed that the same must be true of light. At the time, space was reliably reported to be a vacuum, so in order to fit observations, the aether was given properties that made it invisible and un-measurable – in other words, properties that amounted to it not existing at all. It was a theory created to fit one known fact which frustrated scientists to the point they had to sit down and instead consider ways for light to travel without a medium. The aether did not fall out of favour until Einstein’s work on Special Relativity. This is a corner of science that is still evolving, with the discovery of quantum theory’s vacuum energy muddying the elegant solution. It is not the aether as envisioned by previous scientists, but its existence does raise questions about the nature of energy and while the quirks of vacuum energy are observed, its true nature remains unconfirmed. Who knows, it may be thrown on the scrap heap in due course.
There are thousands upon thousands of scientific missteps made by humans desperately trying to answer questions about the world with limited technology. Modern science remains littered with these relics, such as the nostalgically named ‘standard candles’ of astronomy and the vicious debate between Convention Current Flow coined by Benjamin Franklin versus the real direction of Electron Flow. Franklin was wrong, but the drawing convention held. Many scientists believe that we should stop teaching each generation the error and update the system. But that takes effort, so ‘science’ leaves the error and tells students to visualise the reverse of what’s written.
To quote one publication:
Why the scientific, engineering, and academic communities refused to change to electron flow is not known. It is likely that the feeling was that electrical theory was always taught using the conventional current flow model and there was no particular need, desire, or reason to change. Change is difficult and tradition dies hard.
If you feel like starting a war among engineers – this is a good place to start after a few glasses of champagne.
In the past, religious organisations tended to be the powerful institutions that held onto scientific theories and modelling long after scientists wished to move on under the weight of conflicting evidence.
This desire to clutch at discarded theories arises from the problem of power. Science is often interchangeable with ‘knowledge’. Those with knowledge of the world are considered to be powerful, particularly in human eras where most people could not read, let alone describe natural processes. Information was akin to magic, often dangerously so. The church and, to a lesser extent, political institutions, used science to validate their power in the eyes of the public. Just as ‘the divine will of God’ anointed Kings, supreme knowledge about the universe appointed the Church in all its various forms around the world.
Power implies stability and was used to prop up dynasties. These institutions were a poor match for the shape-shifting nature of science which exists in a perpetual state of evolution, changing its mind and refining its ideas.
Two particular scientific ideas infuriated the church during the great upheaval of Enlightened Thought: the Earth being demoted to a planet orbiting the sun, and humanity finding its magical biological status downgraded to ‘just another animal’. Neither of these helped promote the idea that we were the centre of God’s creation. While these discoveries conflicted with the teachings of all religions, they clashed with the Christian religion due to its proximity to rapid scientific expansion happening in Europe.
Modern religion has learned to make peace with observed reality, adapting rather than allowing science to dismantle it. We may call this a sensible arrangement to avoid a nasty ideological war between reality and faith.
This topic is brought up not to upset religious readers, but to hang a lantern on a dangerous parallel taking place today that has no such peaceful intentions.
Science is once again beholden to powerful institutions that have built their reputation, financial dominance, and political supremacy on scientific theories. These theories are propped up by notoriously flimsy modelling that continues to fall short of its apocalyptic promises.
The desired establishment of a globalist (and boldly socialist) bureaucracy – held together with international corporations that usurp the sovereignty of democratically elected leaders – is being justified by the threat of global apocalypse.
If that apocalypse is a lie – if its doomsday is a fabrication – then all of the money and expansion of power has been enacted under false pretences.
‘Climate Change’ is shaping up to be the most expensive scientific fraud in human history with its falsity betrayed by the failings of bizarre theocratic ‘preachings’. We should be asking questions like, why is the scientific community using radicalised children to promote its narrative? Does that sound ‘normal’ or sane? Why are its leaders telling children not to go to school but rather to glue themselves to city streets or scream in deranged fits of hysteria?
Children are offered up to appeal to the emotions, rather than logic, of adults – which should have been the first warning sign that something extremely dangerous is taking place.
Challenging this ‘science’ threatens the most powerful people in the world – and their fortunes.
This is why we find their scientific ‘consensus’ regarding climate change propped up by enormous academic grants and corresponding punishments, ensuring that science is ‘guided’ toward confirming climate change bias.
The lack of an apocalypse remains climate change’s biggest problem. Its second biggest problem is 4.5 billion years of geological history. Every time a climate ‘end date’ slips by, it invalidates the cherished beliefs of those who can only be described as zealots, charlatans, and victims of propaganda.
Science says that the world is not ending, and if it is not ending, it’s time to claw our country back from these ideological squatters.
The whales in the desert are all around us. We are tripping over evidence that the world is not ending – that droughts and floods are part of our natural cycle – and that it is normal for nasty weather to rough us up on a semi-regular basis. The tides are not drowning us nor is a global catastrophe gnawing at our city walls.
Emotion, not reason, holds us to the lie of apocalypse – no doubt feeding the laughter of those behind the curtain of power.
https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/valley-of-the-whales-science-power-and-politics/
************************************************************EV Owner Needs Replacement Battery, Told She'll Have to Wait Four Years to Get It
An electric vehicle owner from rural Alaska found out that owning an EV is less than ideal when she was told it would take four years for her to get a replacement battery pack for her Chevy Bolt.
Patricia Atkinson, who lives in Sitka, in Southeast Alaska, a town so small and isolated it has no public charging stations, bought her electric car from a dealer in Seattle, Washington. She had to travel to Washington to buy the car because there are no car dealers in her small town. But recently she was told that her EV is the subject of a fire hazard recall that has affected around 140,000 Bolts.
Suffering through a recall is bad enough for residents of Sitka. The town is on an isolated island, 12 hours from the mainland on a boat that only comes once a month, according to industry website, Inside EVs
Also, because of the lack of dealers anywhere near the cold environs of Sitka, Atkinson would have to go to Juneau, Alaska, to have her battery replaced. So, the whole situation is a major ordeal. But, apparently, she will have plenty of time to make her plans after she was told that a new battery would not be available for four years.
The Juneau car dealer explained that it is not to blame. The manufacturer only allows the dealer enough supplies for eight battery pack swaps a month and with hundreds of EV owners on a waiting list for the repair, Atkinson’s slot is quite a few years down the road.
Atkinson is faced with a major decision. Does she continue using her car despite the fire hazard, or does she store it and be without a car for the next four years?
The Juneau dealer’s limitation is not unusual. Atkinson called the Seattle dealer where the car was originally purchased, and they told her the same story noting that they also have a year’s-long waiting list. And this is even after General Motors claimed that it has already replaced 62 percent of the faulty packs in the 2017-2019 model years.
However, while GM may be doing well with those model years, it has replaced less than three percent of the battery packs in the 2020 and 2021 models.
The long wait is not just a problem for the Bolt that is under a recall. A shortage of battery packs is expected to grow, according to Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, CNBC reported in May.
“The speed at which we are trying to move (toward electric vehicles) is so high that the supply chain and the production capacities have no time to adjust,” Tavares said.
“The point is, when we want to move too fast with a big magnitude and there is not enough feasibility studies, we may be bumping on this kind of stuff,” Tavares added. “You’ll see that the electrification path, which is a very ambitious one, in a time window that has been set by the administrations is going to bump on the supply side.”
The problem is not new. Clean Technica reported in 2019 that “Electric car growth produces battery shortages, carmakers can’t match production with demand.”
The replacement of a battery pack is an expensive repair, no matter which make of EV you have. According to KTLA, the prices vary, but they seem to start around $9,000.
As the Biden administration continues to try and shove EVs down America’s throat, the TV station noted that hybrids such as the BMW i3, Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius, and Hyundai Ioniq cost anywhere from $9,000 to $11,000 to replace the battery pack. And the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Model 3 will cost between $17,000 and $19,000. Other larger models can cost up to $18,000 to replace a battery pack, the station added.
These costs are in some cases approaching the average cost of an entire used gas-powered car.
This is just one of the problems with owning an electric car.
The stories about EV failures are growing by the month. Just two weeks ago, for instance, an EV owner in Virginia found that his car would not charge in the frigid Christmas week weather.
Only days ago, another EV owner said that he has had so many problems with his Tesla Model 3 that he’d rather just bag the whole EV deal and go back to a gas-powered vehicle.
Last year a group of EV owners even hectored their neighbors to limit their use of electric so that EV owners would be able to charge their cars because the local electric grid wasn’t able to handle both home electric use, and home-based car-charging stations.
Minor inconveniences are part of life, to be sure. But the costs of replacing a battery pack is far from a minor inconvenience and it makes owning an EV a very expensive prospect.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/ev-owner-needs-replacement-battery-told-wait-four-years-get
***************************************15 January, 2023
A Greenie was Germany’s most popular politician. Then he took office
Robert Habeck arrived in Bayreuth, a small Bavarian town about four hours’ drive from Berlin, in an elegant slate grey suit and a white shirt open at the collar. A charismatic 53-year-old with salt and pepper hair, a stubbled jaw and a warm smile, he spent much of his adult life as a writer of novels and children’s books, only entering politics after becoming frustrated with his local Green party.
His frankness and intelligence — he has a PhD in literary aesthetics but wears it lightly — proved appealing to German voters. Less than a decade after becoming a full-time politician, he’d risen to the top of the Green party and then helped it enter government at the 2021 election. Habeck became Germany’s economy minister and deputy chancellor. He was the second most powerful politician in the country and often ranked by polls as its most popular.
It was late July and the sun reflected off the white walls and decorative columns of Bayreuth’s old town castle, now a tax office and the backdrop for Habeck’s appearance. He was in town for a “citizens’ dialogue”, a Q&A with voters that was part of a two-day tour of the south and east of Germany aimed at reassuring a country worried about the effects of the war in Ukraine.
Hundreds of people waited in the stifling heat to hear him. Habeck jettisoned his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He is a confident, even relaxed, public speaker. But as he walked on stage and began to address the crowd, he could barely make himself heard above a chorus of boos, whistles and insults. “Liar!” shouted one attendee. “Traitor!” said another. A chant broke out: “Warmonger!”
A few months earlier, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the German government had overturned a longstanding ban on exporting arms to war zones in order to supply Ukraine with weapons. The decision was controversial. German voters, conscious of their country’s history, are noticeably more pacifist than their European peers. Many feared the weapons shipments would prompt Russia to escalate the conflict. “Our politicians have no fear of nuclear war, but we do!” read one placard in the crowd.
As Robert Habeck began to address the crowd in Bayreuth, he could barely make himself heard above a chorus of boos, whistles and insults. “Liar!” shouted one attendee. “Traitor!” said another © Soeren Stache/picture alliance/dpa
Habeck tried to keep calm, answering questions while ignoring jeers. Gripping the microphone and speaking firmly, frustration occasionally rippling his brow, he acknowledged that sending arms to Kyiv was a “morally ambivalent” thing to do. But abandoning the Ukrainians to their fate — “just letting all those people die” — would be even worse. “It would not make us more innocent,” he said.
The heckling in Bayreuth was some of the worst he’d ever experienced. But it was less bruising than the criticism Habeck faced from those who had once been his most loyal fans. A year before, his reputation as one of the most successful Green politicians of his generation seemed sealed. The electoral performance he’d helped deliver was a turning point for a party that had spent 16 years in opposition. Habeck was increasingly spoken of as a future chancellor. In a practical sense, he was the most powerful green leader in Europe.
Then came the war and Germany’s longstanding reliance on Russian gas threw the economic security of Europe’s largest economy into jeopardy. As Moscow weaponised its energy exports, the threat of gas rationing and blackouts loomed. If anyone had the immense burden of ensuring the lights stayed on, it was Habeck. “Every day there are new developments that can change everything. Every day he has to do a reset,” Omid Nouripour, the Green party’s current co-leader, told me in September. “He is walking on a razor’s edge.”
When I interviewed Habeck in the economy ministry late last year, it was easy to see the toll the past few months had taken. His hair was messier than usual, his face lined and puffy with fatigue. His tone was subdued, at times almost sombre. “I am ultimately responsible for the security of the German energy system,” he said. “So the buck stops with me.” He was being tested, and so was everything he stood for.
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How the population scare predicted today’s climate hysteria
Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich’s recent appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes reminds us what can happen when those with impressive academic credentials begin making end-of-the-world predictions.
It was 1968 when Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a book that declared with absolute certainty that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over.” Because so many people were living so close together and consuming so much of the world’s limited resources, the inevitable future was one of “mass starvation” on “a dying planet.” A year after the book’s publication, Ehrlich went on to say that this “utter breakdown” in Earth’s capacity to support its bulging population was just fifteen years away.
For those of us still alive today, it is clear that nothing even approaching what Ehrlich predicted ever happened. Indeed, in the fifty-four years since his dire prophesy, those suffering from starvation have gone from one in four people on the planet to just one in ten, even as the world’s population has doubled. More importantly, there have been great advances in fertilizer potency, the genetic modification of seeds, irrigation, and related farming techniques.
What did happen is that those who believed in Ehrlich’s predictions caused a different but very real suffering. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Ehrlich’s book inspired the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the World Bank, and other groups to undertake cruel depopulation programs throughout the 1970s and ’80s. In Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh, millions of people were sterilized, often against their will.
In India, many states required sterilization in order for citizens to obtain water, electricity, ration cards, medical care, pay raises, and even an education. And in China, according to Smithsonian author Charles Mann, a “one-child” policy led to as many as 100 million forced abortions, often in unsanitary conditions, causing needless infections, sterility, and even death.
Unfortunately, Paul Ehrlich was not the first presumed expert to foretell a world-shaking catastrophe that would inspire the most awful of “remedies.” In 1798, a British writer named Thomas Robert Malthus published his own warning about the growth of the world’s population, arguing it would inevitably outpace the food supply and lead to famines, wars, mass poverty, and eventually rapid depopulation.
Just as with The Population Bomb, the dire prophecy outlined in Malthus’s widely read Essay on the Principle of Population failed to come true. But not before convincing many of his countrymen to stop supporting charities for the indigent and, in 1834, persuading British Parliament to pass the New Poor Law, which cut back relief for the destitute and limited its provision to the very workhouses novelist Charles Dickens famously condemned.
The latest end-of-life-as-we-know-it scenario is, of course, climate change, and its weaknesses have already become apparent. Its first predictions about the rapid extinction of polar bears and the death of the Great Barrier Reef have not only proved false, but both are flourishing more than ever. And despite the alarmist media death counts following every hurricane or other natural disaster, the OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database estimates that the real number of 2022 climate-related fatalities will be the lowest in twenty years.
At the same time, carbon-capture, making biomethane from organic waste, producing diesel from low-carbon waste, making fuel from hydrogen, and other promising technologies for reducing atmospheric pollution continue to make progress — and in many cases with financial support from the “evil” oil companies themselves.
Yet climate fear persists, driven in no small part by the entertainment industry. Just go to the science fiction section of Netflix and note the large number of films and series based on the premise of an approaching environmental apocalypse. And nearly all the non-fiction books and articles on climate change, which we might expect to take a more sober approach, ignore the fact that even if all the current efforts to produce carbon-free energy sources were to fail, we already have a good fallback in nuclear power.
Unfortunately, the exaggerated fear of climate change, just like the fears raised by Malthus and Ehrlich, is causing its own harm. According to a special 2020 issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, the constant warnings of environmental catastrophe have led to what mental health professionals call “passive anxiety,” in lay terms, a constant worrying over events one feels helpless to stop. And not just among those who live in states like Florida and Oklahoma, which are frequently hit with severe weather. The panic attacks, insomnia, obsessive thinking, substance abuse, and depression associated with passive anxiety are widespread.
The two demographics that seem to be suffering most from this disorder are those with preexisting psychological problems and those under thirty who know they would be most likely to endure the horrors of an increasingly unlivable planet. Judy Wu of the University of British Columbia has become concerned about the second group. She is calling for a robust effort “to mitigate the effects of climate anxiety and stress on the short-term and long-term mental health of young people.” A 2021 study by the research group Avaaz found that over half of those between ages sixteen and twenty-five believe humanity is irrevocably “doomed” because of climate change.
Unfortunately, the fear of a looming climate catastrophe has produced not only needless emotional pain but foolish legislation as well. As Toyota Motors president Akio Toyoda recently confided to reporters, the trillions President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act plans to spend on boosting the use of electric cars will most likely be completely wasted. Toyoda and his auto industry colleagues know full well that battery-powered vehicles have limited range, are expensive, and recharging them is both time-consuming and costly. Most keep quiet, he said, only because they “think it’s the trend, so they can’t speak out loudly.”
Similarly in Europe, where France, Germany, Spain and other governments have passed sweeping laws to accelerate the deployment of solar panels and wind turbines. In places like the Galician countryside of northwest Spain, for example, tourist organizations have had to organize to stop and even dismantle the threat to their livelihoods from what they call “green eye pollution.”
Perhaps the most helpful way to understand the current debilitating obsession with climate change is to go back to a time when another movement to stave off global catastrophe should have had the same cultural impact, but never quite did. I am thinking of the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were both armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, which could have destroyed the world many times over.
Certainly, there was a prudent concern back then about what might unintentionally happen. Schoolchildren were drilled in how to hide under their desks to reduce their exposure to radiation fallout, and groups like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) led protests around the world to demand unilateral disarmament. Yet the fears we see today of a carbon-drenched atmosphere never developed with the same intensity or influence in the 1950s. Indeed, it was during this period that public support for nuclear power plants and other peaceful uses of atomic energy was at its peak.
Part of this undoubtedly had to do with the fact that the country had just recently won World War II and was confident about its future. Without dismissing the need to treat atomic power with respect, its citizens were optimistic about their ability to harness science for the greater good.
It also helped that the financial incentives of the time, what President Eisenhower famously called the “military-industrial complex,” were on the side of the US containing Russia’s nuclear technology, not abandoning its own. By contrast, today’s net-zero believers get considerable marketing support from the growing number of companies with a vested interest in government subsidies to replacing fossil fuels with their own products.
And finally, we cannot overlook that the 1950s were the high point for spiritual belief in America, at least as measured by parish affiliation and attendance. Unlike now, fewer people were ready to believe that their God would let centuries of admittedly difficult but steady progress just evaporate in some meaningless catastrophe.
We may think ourselves more intellectually sophisticated today, but the price has been a dramatically increased vulnerability to the worst projections of our supposed understanding. Paul Ehrlich today is regarded by many as a false prophet; how long until we acknowledge the others in our midst?
https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/how-the-population-scare-predicted-todays-climate-hysteria
************************************************"Extreme weather" mythology
Climate science is the business of numbers and graphs and, above all, trends. Each year, weather agencies crunch the numbers to chart how average global temperatures compare with past years.
There is another graph, however, that says a lot about what has become a dominant trend in climate politics. It is the way in which extreme weather, like the famous hockey stick graph of runaway heating, has exploded on to the scene.
Analysis of how frequently extreme weather is mentioned in scientific and media circles has gone from nowhere only a few years ago, to race up the charts like an Apollo mission rocket launch. A search of the Scopus academic website similarly shows an exponential rise in the number of published papers that mention extreme weather. From just a handful of “extreme weather” references in university research 20 years ago, last year there was close to 2000 instances, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences leading the charge, but Australia’s prestigious University of NSW, University of Melbourne, and University of Queensland are all in the top 10.
A review of the factiva archive of published material worldwide shows a similar explosion in mentions of extreme weather, since about 2015. The US, Britain and Australia have led the way, with our Bureau of Meteorology and the British Met Office prominent. In contrast, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has medium confidence but produced a spike in references to it in 2021 and 2022. The result is popular confusion about what is climate and what is weather.
Extreme weather has become a central part of the ritual new year declaration of how hot it has been in the age of a changing climate.
The year 2022 is expected to come in as the eighth-warmest year globally. In Australia, it was the 22nd-warmest year since national temperature records began in 1910. And, despite the floods that have swept through cities and caused havoc across large areas from Queensland to South Australia and now Western Australia, 2022 was the ninth-wettest year.
Contrary to popular fears of never-ending drought, BoM records show that multi-year rainfall deficiencies, which originated during the 2017-19 drought, have been almost entirely removed from the eastern states. The largest area of remaining multi-year rainfall deficiencies is in the Goldfields district of Western Australia, with smaller pockets in southwest WA and the north of the Northern Territory.
The cooler temperatures and wetter conditions in Australia have been due to consecutive La Nina weather patterns, a natural phenomenon driven by ocean temperatures in the Pacific. Consecutive La Ninas are relatively common. According to BoM, consecutive La Nina events have occurred in about half of all past events since 1900.
Three La Nina events in a row, as has just been experienced, are less common but the phenomenon has happened four times in the bureau records since 1900. Other occurrences were in 1954-57, 1973-76 and 1998-2001.
While much has been said about the impact of severe flooding, the flip side has been a restoration of water catchments, an ending of years of drought, bumper crop yields for farmers and a recovery in corals on the Great Barrier Reef to their highest levels since the Australian Institute of Marine Science started its long-term monitoring program in 1983.
For ecologists, floods are important to reconnect creeks and wetlands, and initiate breeding of fish, frogs and birds that bolster the food chain for reptiles and other larger fauna.
For climate catastrophists, attention instead is directed to what are called extreme events, sometimes from datasets that have only a limited history.
As the La Nina weather system degrades, attention has already swung to the possibility of a return to El Nino that would bring higher temperatures and a greater risk of bushfire. That is made likelier by the healthy vegetation growth due to an extended period of above average rainfall, as well as the fertilisation effect of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Although too early to predict with any certainty, an El Nino phase following a prolonged La Nina is a likely probability.
The takeaway is that natural variability continues to play its role in climate against a background warming trend. According to BoM, the background heating from climate change has elevated average Australian temperatures by more than 1.47C since 1910. This compares with a global average increase reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of 1.07C since the industrial revolution. According to BoM, the atmosphere can hold about 7 per cent more moisture for every degree of warmth, increasing the potential for more severe deluges as the planet heats up. This is the reasoning on which the now ubiquitous claims of extreme weather are built. But both the narrative of extreme weather and the quality of the temperature record itself are under constant challenge.
Extreme weather has replaced global warming as the totemic issue of climate change and has become an article of faith for campaigners seeking to galvanise public attention and push policymakers for change.
The IPCC’s most recent report on the science of climate change, AR6, says there is medium confidence that the frequency of extreme fire weather days has increased, and the fire season has become longer since 1950 at many locations. There is medium confidence that heavy rainfall and river floods will increase.
But in its annual report for 2022, the Climate Council has left no room for doubt. It says Australians are experiencing the impact of more frequent and severe extreme weather, with climate change a key influencer in the 2022 flooding emergency that swept through key parts of Queensland and NSW. The council says its community played an instrumental role in pressuring candidates in the 2022 federal election to cite their climate credentials.
“During the 2022 flooding emergency … our work with journalists, spokespeople and the media helped reinforce the narrative that climate change underpins the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather disasters such as this; putting pressure on the federal government for greater policy ambition,” the Climate Council’s report says. “We secured more than 1000 media hits and helped to cumulatively shift the discourse from no discussion around climate change at the onset of the disaster, to flooding being explicitly linked to climate as coverage progressed … We have also worked hard to communicate the role of climate change in driving extreme weather.”
In a message in the report, outgoing chairwoman Sam Mostyn says: “In a year filled with far too many ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ extreme weather events – including devastating flooding, record-breaking temperatures, heatwaves and fires across the world – the urgency of climate action is paramount.” This is a global trend. US climate scientist Judith Curry says she was an inadvertent contributor to explaining the potential harm of one degree of warming through a 2005 paper that identified a doubling in the proportion of Category 4/5 hurricanes since 1970. “For the first time, the connection was made between a devastating hurricane such as Katrina and a small amount of warming,” Curry writes in an essay posted on her Climate Etc website in December.
In retrospect, Curry writes: “Climate activists, the media and even scientists seized on the ‘extreme weather event caused by climate change’ narrative as being the ideal vehicle for ramping up the alarm about human-caused global warming … Every extreme weather event is now attributed to global warming, even extreme cold outbreaks and heavy snow.
“Scientists who should know better just can’t resist the opportunities for media attention and enthusiastically place blame on human-caused global warming. In spite of the fact that IPCC assessment reports find very little in the way of any contribution of human-caused global warming to extreme weather events.”
Curry is concerned about the psychological harm climate alarmism is causing to a generation of children: “Extreme weather events have become an increasingly important part of the climate alarm narrative since 2005, but kids didn’t start getting ‘psychologically injured’ until the climate communicators and ‘educators’ took this to the next higher level,” Curry writes.
“The timing of this started around 2017, following the increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric from UN officials and national leaders in support of the Paris Agreement and the coincident formation of the Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, etc. I don’t find much in the published literature about psychological injuries to children from climate change prior to about 2018; this is a very recent (phenomenon).”
Analysis of available data shows that events being routinely touted as extreme have invariably happened in earlier decades. The paleoclimate record has extensive evidence of much more extreme weather. “No matter – never let the historical and paleoclimate data records get in the way of an alarming story that attributes the most recent disaster to fossil fuel emissions,” Curry writes.
Fellow US climate scientist John Christy, from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, best known for developing a satellite temperature record with colleague Roy Spencer, is similarly concerned.
“You have to give credit to those who in the climate establishment and the media, or whoever is behind all this, have been successful in scaring people about the climate,” Christy says.
“They don’t ever go back and talk to someone who actually builds these datasets and says, ‘Is that really the worst it’s been in the last 120 years?’. They just make those claims.”
Christy’s main concern is that a lot of surface temperature stations on which the global temperature data is built are spuriously affected by the growth of infrastructure around them.
In Britain there are similar concerns, including the fact the Met Office has placed a temperature measuring device halfway down the runway of a military air base that houses two squadrons of Typhoon fighter jets.
Acting Greens Leader Mehreen Faruqi announced her party will enter into negotiations with Energy Minister Chris… Bowen and demand Labor impose a limit on the number of carbon credits fossil fuel producers can buy. The Greens are able to prevent the bill from being legislated through their numbers in More
Australian scientist Jennifer Marohasy has been on a years-long quest to force BoM to better explain its temperature measurements. Her challenge to BoM to provide details about the effect of the switch from using mercury thermometers to platinum resistance probes in automatic weather stations will finally be heard in February by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Marohasy and colleague John Abbot want BoM to release parallel data – temperature records taken by traditional thermometers alongside the new temperature probes when they were replaced – to confirm the compatibility of BoM’s automatic weather stations and probes with the historical record.
Marohasy is concerned that while other weather bureaus have also made the transition to temperature probes in automatic weather stations, BoM is the only weather bureau she knows of that does not average the one-second readings from its temperature probes.
The bureau has claimed in correspondence to Marohasy that it never averaged measurements from probes. BoM chief executive Dr Andrew Johnson told her the probes were specifically designed to have a long response time to mirror the behaviour of mercury in glass, making numerical averaging unnecessary. But according to Marohasy, the lack of numerical averaging despite the use of probes makes the BoM measurements unique in the world.
BoM has refused a Freedom of Information request for parallel data on several grounds, recently claiming the information did not exist in the format requested. This was after the request was revised on the advice of BoM, which said the initial demand was for too much information.
In an affidavit to the AAT, BoM’s chief data officer, Boris Kelly-Gerreyn, explains that rather than extensive records, the new FoI request was for reports that included the data.
Marohasy argues in her affidavit that in the absence of access to the parallel data – and the absence of any quality assurance and credible research into issues arising from the transition to temperature probes – no reliability can be placed on any claims by the bureau and/or other scientists using their data of record hot days, fewer extreme cold days or the claimed accelerated warming trend, or anything similar.
Marohasy says because of the difficulty in achieving consistency between temperature recordings from the newer temperature probes with traditional mercury thermometers, the Indonesian Bureau of Meteorology records and archives measurements from both devices, with a policy of having both types of equipment in the same Stevenson screen, or instrument shelter, at all its official weather-recording stations.
BoM has defended its methodology but so far has refused to hand over comprehensive data on the change for external analysis.
Marohasy says BoM has a policy of maintaining mercury thermometers with probes in the same Stevenson screen for a period of at least three years when there is a changeover. “This policy, however, is not implemented and mostly ignored,” Marohasy says in her affidavit to the AAT.
She maintains data was collected when many of the electronic probes were installed and this requires greater scrutiny. Marohasy says BoM has claimed there is no parallel data but simultaneously has erected barriers to the public accessing parallel temperature data by saying there would be high processing costs involved. BoM refused to waive the costs of satisfying the initial FoI request, claiming there was no public interest in the data sought.
“It is truly astonishing that the bureau should take the position that accurately evaluating the extent of temperature change during the past 100 years by fully understanding the effect of changes in instrumentation has no public interest,” Marohasy says. “At the same time the bureau is publishing reports and giving media interviews claiming that a temperature increase of 1.5C will have devastating consequences for the planet.”
The dispute has more significance than being simply a local spat. The temperatures measured and recorded by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology contribute to the calculation of global averages. Marohasy says rather than averaging temperatures recorded by probes across a one- to 10-minute period, as recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation, the bureau is entering one-second extrema as the daily maximum and minimum values. She says this would bias the minima downwards and the maxima upwards. “Except that the bureau is placing limits on how cold an individual weather station can record a temperature, so most of the bias is going to be upwards,” she says.
Marohasy has gained some insights from limited documents she has received from BoM. She says the first temperature probe installed at Mildura recorded too cool relative to the mercury thermometer. This may have been the situation at other weather stations. We will know only if the data for the other 37 stations where parallel measurements were taken is made public.
A replacement temperature probe installed at Mildura on June 27, 2012, records too hot relative to a mercury thermometer. Again, Marohasy says, this may be the case at other weather stations, but we can know only if parallel data for the other stations in hot arid regions is made public and available for independent analysis.
With so much at stake, both financially and emotionally for a generation raised on a diet of climate extremism, full transparency is the least that can be expected from our public institutions.
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Why I’ve pulled the plug on my electric car
The spark is gone — you’re better off walking than relying on useless, unreliable vehicles and chargers that never work
As I watch my family strike out on foot across the fields into driving rain and gathering darkness, my wife holding each child’s hand, our new year plans in ruins, while I do what I can to make our dead car safe before abandoning it a mile short of home, full of luggage on a country lane, it occurs to me not for the first time that if we are going to save the planet we will have to find another way. Because electric cars are not the answer.
Yes, it’s the Jaguar again. My doomed bloody £65,000 iPace that has done nothing but fail at everything it was supposed to do for more than two years now, completely dead this time, its lifeless corpse blocking the single-track road.
I can’t even roll it to a safer spot because it can’t be put in neutral. For when an electric car dies, it dies hard. And then lies there as big and grey and not-going-anywhere as the poacher-slain bull elephant I once saw rotting by a roadside in northern Kenya. Just a bit less smelly.
Not that this is unusual. Since I bought my eco dream car in late 2020, in a deluded Thunbergian frenzy, it has spent more time off the road than on it, beached at the dealership for months at a time on account of innumerable electrical calamities, while I galumph around in the big diesel “courtesy cars” they send me under the terms of the warranty.
But this time I don’t want one. And I don’t want my own car back either. I have asked the guys who sold it to me to sell it again, as soon as it is fixed, to the first mug who walks into the shop. Because I am going back to petrol while there is still time.
And if the government really does ban new wet fuel cars after 2030, then we will eventually have to go back to horses.
Because the electric vehicle industry is no readier to get a family home from Cornwall at Christmas time (as I was trying to do) than it is to fly us all to Jupiter. The cars are useless, the infrastructure is not there and you’re honestly better off walking. Even on the really long journeys. In fact, especially on the long journeys. The short ones they can just about manage. It’s no wonder Tesla shares are down 71 per cent. It’s all a huge fraud. And, for me, it’s over.
Yet the new owner of my “preloved” premium electric vehicle, fired with a messianic desire to make a better world for his children, will not know this. He will be delighted with his purchase and overjoyed to find there are still six months of warranty left, little suspecting that once that has expired — and with it the free repairs and replacement cars for those long spells off road — he will be functionally carless.
He will be over the moon to learn that it has “a range of up to 292 miles”. No need to tell him what that really means is “220 miles”. Why electric carmakers are allowed to tell these lies is a mystery to me. As it soon will be to him.
Although for the first few days he won’t worry especially. He’ll think he can just nip into a fuel station and charge it up again. Ho ho ho. No need to tell him that two out of three roadside chargers in this country are broken or busy at any one time. Or that the built-in “find my nearest charge point” function doesn’t work, has never worked, and isn’t meant to work.
Or that apps like Zap-Map don’t work either because the chargers they send you to are always either busy or broken or require a membership card you don’t have or an app you can’t download because there’s no 5G here, in the middle of nowhere, where you will now probably die.
Or that the Society of Motor Manufacturers said this week that only 23 new chargers are being installed nationwide each day, of the 100 per day that were promised (as a proud early adopter, I told myself that charging would become easier as the network grew, but it hasn’t grown, while the number of e-drivers has tripled, so it’s actually harder now than it was two years ago).
There are, of course, plus sides to electric ownership. Such as the camaraderie when we encounter each other, tired and weeping at yet another service station with only two chargers, one of which still has the “this fault has been reported” sign on it from when you were here last August, and the other is of the measly 3kWh variety, which means you will have to spend the night in a Travelodge while your stupid drum lazily inhales enough juice to get home.
Together, in the benighted charging zone, we leccy drivers laugh about what fools we are and drool over the diesel hatchbacks nonchalantly filling up across the way (“imagine getting to a fuel station and knowing for sure you will be able to refuel!”) and talk in the hour-long queue at Exeter services about the petrol car we will buy as soon as we get home.
We filled up there last week on the way back from Cornwall, adding two hours to our four-hour journey, by which time Esther wasn’t speaking to me. She’s been telling me to get rid of the iPace since it ruined last summer’s holidays in both Wales and Devon (“If you won’t let us fly any more, at least buy a car that can get us to the places we’re still allowed to go!”).
But I kept begging her to give me one last chance, as if I’d refused to give up a mistress, rather than a dull family car. Until this time, a couple of miles from home, when a message flashed up on the dash: “Assisted braking not available — proceed with caution.” Then: “Steering control unavailable.”
And then, as I inched off the dual carriageway at our turnoff, begging it to make the last mile, children weeping at the scary noises coming from both car and father: “Gearbox fault detected.” CLUNK. WHIRRR. CRACK.
And dead. Nothing. Poached elephant. I called Jaguar Assist (there is a button in the roof that does it directly — most useful feature on the car) who told me they could have a mechanic there in four hours (who would laugh and say, “Can’t help you, pal. You’ve got a software issue there. I’m just a car mechanic. And this isn’t a car, it’s a laptop on wheels.”)
So Esther and the kids headed for home across the sleety wastes, a vision of post-apocalyptic misery like something out of Cormac McCarthy, while I saw out 2022 waiting for a tow-truck. Again.
But don’t let that put you off. I see in the paper that electric car sales are at record levels and production is struggling to keep up with demand. So why not buy mine? It’s clean as a whistle and boasts super-low mileage. After all, it’s hardly been driven .
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-ive-pulled-the-plug-on-my-electric-car-dwgs9l9hl
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
13 January, 2023
Why don’t we ever hear the good news about climate?
It has been almost impossible to miss the recent media reports that 2022 was the UK’s warmest year on record. But did you also spot the news that 2022 was another year of exceptionally low climate-related deaths across the world? This good news comes from data from the OFDA / CRED International Disaster Database and was noted by economist Bjorn Lomborg on 1 January. Yet few, if any, mainstream media outlets decided to report it.
The 2022 numbers are provisional and may increase slightly, but climate-related deaths will almost certainly end up lower than they were five, 10 or 20 years ago – and this is part of a longer-running downward trend. Our schools provide many hours of lessons on climate change, but I wonder how many teachers, let alone pupils, are aware that climate-related deaths have decreased by as much as 97 per cent over the past 100 years, as the OFDA / CRED data show.
The fact that climate-related deaths are decreasing does not mean climate change is not real, or even that it is not a problem. One reason deaths have fallen is that increased wealth and lower global-poverty rates have improved our ability to protect people when climate disasters happen. Even so, you would think awareness of this positive trend would provide important context for public debates over climate policy.
It is not just climate-related deaths that are falling. The economic costs caused by climate events have also decreased by about 20 per cent over the past 30 years. And although experts tell us that climate change will affect food production, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation show a steady increase in global food production since 1961. The increase has slowed more recently, but production in 2020 (the latest available year) was still eight per cent higher than in 2010. And those figures show production per capita, meaning they take into account the large increases in global population over the same period.
Total food production might be up, but what does this mean for the poorest and most vulnerable? There is good news on this front, too. The UN estimates that the number of people suffering from undernourishment has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. Numbers rose a little in 2021 (the latest year of data), but that is largely due to lockdown policies, which have contributed to global poverty.
For some reason, much of our media seem keen only to report on the bad news, even when that bad news is based on modelled projections of what might happen in the future, as opposed to real-world data.
It is hard to see how such an approach can benefit the public debate over climate change. Although perhaps the key word here is ‘debate’. Our political, academic and media establishment seems to have decided that there is no debate to be had on climate change – the science is settled and anyone who disagrees is a ‘denier’ or a promoter of ‘misinformation’. Journalists, in particular, seem to take this view. Perhaps they feel it would almost be letting the side down to focus on trends that challenge the consensus that climate change represents an existential threat to humanity.
One way to break out of this lazy way of thinking is to distinguish between climate change and climate-change policy. Even if you believe that the ‘science is settled’ on climate change, there must still be room for debate about the most appropriate policies to address climate issues. That being said, the notion of ‘the science’ being ‘settled’ in an area as dynamic and uncertain as the climate is clearly nonsense.
The UK’s current Net Zero approach to climate policy is based on the assumption that reducing carbon emissions over the next 30 years will lead to predictable and significant benefits in terms of reduced climate disasters in the longer term. There are a lot of uncertainties in that assumption. And it is not remotely clear that the likely benefits justify the eye-watering sums of public and private expenditure that would be needed to decarbonise society. There also seems to be very little appetite in the political and media establishment for considering whether there are alternatives to Net Zero that might have a better cost-benefit trade-off. These might include investment in adaptation to climate change, as well as policies that allow for some continued use of cheap and abundant fossil fuels rather than trying to eliminate them entirely.
Because the debate on climate-change policy has been so successfully shut down, a number of major planned polices have gone dangerously unscrutinised, such as the phasing out of investment in fossil-fuel-based energy sources, the ban on the sale of non-electric cars from 2030 and the move away from the use of gas for domestic heating. Each of these policies involves significant public and private expenditure and fundamental changes to how we live our lives. They must be subjected to public debate and challenge. We need to establish whether any likely benefits can justify the huge disruption and costs they will inevitably entail. If those promoting Net Zero are right that these policies are essential for the long-term survival of society, they should not fear having to make that case in public.
We need to have a serious debate about these issues in 2023. And we can start by telling people the good news about the climate.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/09/why-dont-we-ever-hear-the-good-news-about-climate/
***************************************************What climate crisis? Past warming has never been driven by an increase in carbon dioxide
Ian Plimer
For more than 80 per cent of time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice. We live in unusual times, when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight. The great southern continent, Gondwanaland, formed about 550 million years ago. It occupied 20 per cent of the area of our planet and included Antarctica, South America, Australia, South Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Gondwanaland was covered by ice when it drifted across the South Pole 360-255 million years ago. Evidence for this ice age is in the black coal districts of Australia, South Africa and India.
The breakup of Gondwanaland started about 180 million years ago. About 140-120 million years ago, Australia was joined to Antarctica and enjoyed a temperate climate, had alpine glaciers that shed icebergs into warm seas and plant and animal adaptations evolved to cope with the long periods of winter darkness.
If Antarctica is to lose its ice sheets to end the current ice age, plate tectonics must move the continent northwards or fragment Antarctica into smaller land masses. Parts of Antarctica are currently being fragmented which is why there are more than 150 hot spots and volcanoes in rift valleys beneath Antarctic ice. Plate tectonics must also widen the Bering Strait to allow more warm Pacific Ocean water to enter and warm the Arctic.
Australia separated from Antarctica 100 million years ago and continues to move northwards at 7 centimetres per year. The current ice age started when South America separated from Antarctica some 34 million years ago. Plate tectonics isolated Antarctica after South America had moved northwards and the Drake Passage formed. Circum-polar currents formed and prevented warm, southward-moving water from reaching Antarctica. As a result, the Antarctic ice sheets formed.
Arctic ice formed 2.5 million years ago when plate tectonic-driven volcanoes in central America joined North America to South America and stopped Pacific and Atlantic Ocean waters from mixing. This was exacerbated by a supernova explosion that bombarded Earth with cosmic particles to produce cloudiness and cooling.
The Earth has been slowly cooling for the last 50 million years from times when life thrived and rapidly diversified. In these warmer times, there were no mass extinctions due to natural warming and, if the planet is warming today, the past shows us that life will thrive and diversify even more.
Once the Antarctic ice formed, ice sheets waxed and waned depending on whether Earth was closer or more distant from the Sun. Within these cycles there were smaller cycles driven by variations in energy emitted from the Sun producing many short warm spikes during long glaciations and very short cold spikes during short interglacials with average temperature rises and falls of more than 10°C a decade.
On a scale of tens of millions of years or more, the Earth’s climate is driven by plate tectonics. On a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, the Earth’s climate is driven by orbital cycles which bring Earth closer to or more distant from the Sun. On a scale of thousands of years to decades, the Earth’s climate is driven by variations in energy emitted from the Sun.
If governments, the UN or climate activists want to stop the normal planetary process of climate change, then they need to stop plate tectonics, stop variations in the Earth’s orbit and stop variations in solar output. Even the omnipotent, omnipresent Kevin Rudd couldn’t manage this!
No past warming events have been driven by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. No past cooling events were driven by a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Six of the six most recent ice ages were initiated when the Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than at present. Atmospheric temperature rise occurs before the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises. It has never been proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming despite numerous requests to climate activist scientists for the published evidence. Trillion-dollar bankrupting decisions on energy policy are being made using invalid science.
The peak of the last orbitally-driven interglacial was 7,000 to 4,000 years ago and for the last 4,000 years the Earth has been cooling as the climate changes from an interglacial into glaciation. There were solar-driven warm spikes such as the Minoan Warming, Roman Warming, Medieval Warming and the Modern Warming and cold spikes (e.g. Dark Ages, Little Ice Age) during this 4,000-year cooling trend.
In 2020, we entered the Grand Solar Minimum which is calculated to end in 2053. Whether there will be a solar-driven cooling, similar to the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD), or a full-blown orbitally-driven glaciation, such as the last glaciation from 116,000-14,400 years ago, is unknown. The former cooling could last for hundreds of years whereas the latter would last for at least 90,000 years. If there was another period of sustained subaerial volcanism, cooling would be accelerated.
During the last glaciation, Europe was covered with ice north of the Alps, as was Russia; Canada and northern and alpine USA were covered by ice; southern South America and the Andes were covered by ice; Himalayan ice expanded to lower altitudes; and alpine Australia, Tasmania and the South Island of NZ were covered by ice as were the southern and elevated portions of Africa.
In the last glaciation, vegetation contracted and tropical areas such as the Amazon Basin only had copses of trees occupying some ten per cent of the area of the current Amazonian rainforests; large areas of inland Australia, China, India, USA and Africa were covered by sand deposited from cold dry cyclonic winds; inland lakes evaporated; sea level was 130 metres lower than at present; there was no Great Barrier Reef; sea ice isolated Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia and northern Canada; Antarctic sea ice extended hundreds of kilometres north and there was a reduction in rainfall and plant and animal species. Areas that now support pastoral and grain-growing activities were sandy wastelands during the last glaciation. Humans struggled as hunter-gatherers around the edge of ice sheets and at lower latitudes.
We are putting all our efforts and wasting trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into trying to prevent mythical human-induced global warming, yet we still don’t prepare for the inevitable annual floods, droughts and bushfires, let alone longer-term solar – and orbitally – driven global cooling.
We have a crisis of single-minded stupidity exacerbated by a dumbed-down education system supported by incessant propaganda, driven by financial interests and political activist authoritarianism.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/what-climate-crisis
**********************************************************Korea Curbs Plans for Renewables in Push For More Nuclear
South Korea will boost nuclear power generation and downgrade its plans for renewable energy as the nation overhauls its electricity mix to meet emissions reduction targets.
Nuclear plants are now expected to account for almost one-third of generation capacity by 2030 up from about 24% forecast in earlier draft proposals, according to government documents published Thursday. Renewable sources are seen generating about 21.6% by the same date, lower than a previous estimate of 30.2%.
The 10th Basic Plan for Long-Term Electricity Supply and Demand follows the country’s move in 2021 to bolster its climate action. South Korea is aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2018 levels by the end of the decade.
President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office last year, has focused on nuclear power as a key tool to curb emissions rather than solar, wind or hydro. Yoon touted atomic energy throughout his presidential campaign and has called for the building of more reactors — a clear reversal of former President Moon Jae-in’s anti-nuclear policies.
The role of coal and liquefied natural gas will continue to dwindle under the plans. LNG will be required for about 9% of electricity generation and coal for 14% by 2036, according to the energy ministry forecasts.
South Korea is also aiming to use hydrogen and ammonia for co-firing in its existing coal power plants, the ministry said. The two fuels will together make up more than 7% of the power mix in 2036.
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Germany: The absurd spectacle of the Greens defending the dirtiest version of coal
Yesterday’s pictures of police marching in on protesters trying to protect a lignite field is symptomatic of the many contradictions of German energy policy. Here you have Green ministers, Robert Habeck among them, defending police action against protesters, most of whom are members or at least voters of the Green party. The lignite deal was negotiated by the Greens themselves. We are now observers of the absurd spectacle of the Greens defending the dirtiest version of coal.
The reasons this has became necessary is because the Green party has pushed the entire political class, Angela Merkel in particular, into an early exit from nuclear power. It is not just about the three power stations due to go offline on April 15. It is an entire industry that has been phased out. Coal constitutes a staggering 31% of German electricity production. In 2015, it was only 8%. If nuclear energy is phased out altogether, and gas become more expensive, coal is the fall-back position. The original plan had been to use gas-fired power stations to supplement electricity from renewables, and to address the intermittency problem. But despite the recent fall in gas prices, the return to that strategy is commercially not viable if only because liquefied natural gas, even at its current prices, is much more expensive than pipeline gas from Russia was. The alternative is active support for de-industrialisation. Not even the Greens advocate this.
Police yesterday treated us to the spectacle of vacating the village of Lützerath, located in the west of Germany between Aachen and Düsseldorf. It sits on a lignite field, and is to be torn down and turned into a lake. The villagers have long been relocated and compensated. A sole farmer brought legal action and lost. Lützerath is part of Garzweiler II lignite extraction project, which the courts have approved in the final instance. A group of protesters have since squatted in that village, and have now been forcibly removed. There is a long history behind anti-lignite protests in this area of Germany.
The company in charge of Lützerath is RWE, which no longer lists coal as one of its main strategic activities. The official exit date for coal-fired power in Germany has been brought forward from 2038 to 2030, but that happened before the Ukraine war. We would not be betting on this timetable. The cheap Russian gas is gone, and will never return. Nuclear will be gone in April. Betting on the 2030 exit date is betting on the absence of shocks.
This Saturday, Greta Thunberg will appear in Lützerath, and will possibly remind the Greens of the many contradictions of their own energy policy. Now with the Greens firmly entrenched in government, energy policy is getting deeper and deeper into an unbelievable mess.
https://www.eurointelligence.com/?mc_cid=967b333ec1&mc_eid=cc88839e92
***************************************12 January, 2023
Gasping for Gas: The Risks of Relying on Electric Stoves During Blackouts
A chain of storms is hammering Northern California, and as hundreds of thousands have discovered, it’s no fun waking up in the middle of the night without electric power. That means no light, no television, no internet, no microwave oven, no automatic garage door opener, and so forth. But as some discovered, all was not lost.
Those in homes or apartments with gas stoves could light up the gas range, brew tea or coffee, heat up some soup, and even spread some warmth in the kitchen. Those few emergency comforts will disappear if regulatory zealots have their way.
Over the past few years, Yahoo News reports, “dozens of cities across the country have banned natural gas hookups in newly constructed buildings.” The new laws focus on the kitchen, where gas emissions are small, but “a proxy for a larger fight over how far efforts to curb at-home natural gas consumption in the name of fighting climate change should go.” The at-home consumption includes gas furnaces, which federal regulators are also targeting. The overall environmental benefits are a matter of debate.
When a storm shuts down power, those with electric stoves could fire up a generator, but that would require the combustion of gasoline or diesel fuel, also the target of climate-change zealots. They favor Teslas and such, but those will not be charging during a blackout. As it might be noted, during a heat wave last summer, the government of California discouraged charging electric cars. As the “rolling blackouts” of recent years confirm, the current grid is not up to the task.
As these developments show, there are no perfect solutions, only tradeoffs. The campaign to shut down gas furnaces and stoves comes from the regulatory establishment, not the people. Least likely to seek a shut-down of gas stoves are those Californians now using them during blackout emergencies. According to Capitol Public Radio, “after this atmospheric river, meteorologists predict even more storms into the next weekend.”
https://blog.independent.org/2023/01/09/gas-electric-stoves-blackouts/
****************************************************Fed boss says Fed should stay out of social issues like climate change
The Federal Reserve’s independence from political influence is central to its ability to battle inflation, but requires it stay out of issues like climate change that are beyond its congressionally established mandate, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday.
“Restoring price stability when inflation is high can require measures that are not popular in the short term as we raise interest rates to slow the economy. The absence of direct political control over our decisions allows us to take these necessary measures without considering short-term political factors,” Powell said in remarks to a forum on central bank independence sponsored by the Swedish central bank.
But “we should ‘stick to our knitting’ and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities,” Powell said. “Taking on new goals, however worthy, without a clear statutory mandate would undermine the case for our independence.”
Though Powell said the Fed’s regulatory powers give it a “narrow” role to ensure financial institutions “appropriately manage” the risks they face from climate change, “we are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker.'”
“Without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals,” he said. “Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections,” he told the forum in Stockholm.
But the restatement came in sharp terms as his first public remarks since the Republican Party installed one of its members as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and began selecting new chairs for the committees that oversee federal government operations including the Fed.
Powell, now in his fifth year as Fed chair, has put a high priority on building strong relationships with elected officials from both major parties, but faced criticism from some Republicans for, in their view, allowing the Fed to wander from its core responsibilities into areas like climate change and the economics of race.
While Powell’s view of the Fed’s role stands in contrast to major central banks in Europe that have integrated green economy efforts into their policymaking, it recognizes the more divided politics in the US.
To maintain authority over its core mission of managing inflation and demand, “we need to deserve it, and that means stick to that work and don’t look for broader things,” Powell said. “We shouldn’t be getting ahead of where the public is if there’s no specific mandate. In the case of the US that’s a particularly salient point.”
There’s even disagreement within the Fed over the appropriate stance on climate risks.
When the Fed recently asked for public comment about “a high-level framework for the safe and sound management of exposures to climate-related financial risks,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he did not support issuing guidance on the issue because while “climate change is real…I disagree with the premise that it poses a serious risk” to financial stability.
When it comes to inflation, however, Powell said it was critical the Fed retain the ability to manage as it sees fit – raising interest rates to control inflation even if that means slower growth and higher unemployment.
Powell said he felt that principle is “well understood and broadly accepted,” in the US, embodied in a federal law that charges the Fed with maintaining maximum employment and stable prices.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/10/jerome-powell-says-fed-should-avoid-climate-change-issues/
*******************************************Safety Regulator Disavows Idea of a Federal Ban on Gas Stoves in Private Homes
After two days of protest from liberty-minded Americans angry about nanny-state overreach, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission Wednesday denied that his agency has any immediate plans to ban the sale or manufacture of gas stoves in the interest of public health.
In a brief statement, Alexander Hoehn-Saric said his agency is reviewing the health impact of gas stoves and exploring way to reduce any risks to people who use them, “but to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”
“This spring we will be asking the public to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for any associated risks,” he added. “This is part of our product safety mission — learning about hazards and working to make products safer.”
Mr. Hoehn-Saric was compelled to issue the statement after one of his commissioners, Richard Trumka, was quoted by Bloomberg News calling gas stoves a “hidden hazard” in American households because they emit potentially harmful pollutants in people’s homes. He said products that cannot be made safe can be “banned” by the agency.
The comments kicked off a firestorm, with some in Congress and elsewhere pledging that government agents would have to come and take their gas stoves by force. West Virginia’s conservative Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, called the idea a “recipe for disaster.”
“The federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner,” he added on Twitter. “I can tell you the last thing that would ever leave my house is the gas stove that we cook on.”
Outrage about the prospect of losing gas cooktops extended beyond the halls of Congress and into kitchens everywhere. One celebrity TV chef, Andrew Gruel, went so far as to tape himself to his gas range with blue duct tape and promise to stay there “until the idea is completely eliminated from everybody’s minds.”
Defenders of the idea of a ban, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, reiterated the argument that the stoves are health hazards. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez went so far as to claim that the nitrogen dioxide they emit is “linked to reduced cognitive performance.”
Critics of the lawmaker quickly tracked down social media images of her using a gas stove in her own kitchen, as well as images of other prominent politicians and their spouses — including the first lady, Jill Biden, Senator Warren of Massachusetts, and Vice President Harris — laboring over gas-powered stoves in their kitchens as well.
Climate alarmists have been agitating for some time now to force Americans to give up their gas stoves in the interest of combating global warming, but Monday’s comments by the CPSC were the first indication that federal regulators were even considering the idea of banning them on health grounds.
As many as 100 cities around the country have already passed measures forbidding gas hookups in new residential construction, forcing developers to install vastly inferior electric stovetops in newer homes regardless of what their customers want.
**************************************************
Big Australian Solar project gobbling up cash at a fatal rate
Another Greenie fantasy
A fall out between two of the nation’s richest men has led to the abrupt implosion of the $30bn Sun Cable project, one of the world’s biggest solar and battery projects which had aimed to turbocharge Australia into a major international clean energy exporter.
Sun Cable was placed into administration on Wednesday after a dramatic scrap between its two high-profile backers – Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest.
It sets the scene for the businessmen to compete for control of the development, known as the Australia-Asia PowerLink.
The two billionaires clashed over different views on the optimal funding package and strategic vision for the project based in the Northern Territory, which would have sent power from Darwin to Singapore with a 4200km cable.
FTI Consulting were formally appointed as voluntary administrators on Wednesday.
“The appointment followed the absence of alignment with the objectives of all shareholders. Whilst funding proposals were provided, consensus on the future direction and funding structure of the company could not be achieved,” a statement from Sun Cable said.
The fallout threatens to sink one of Australia’s biggest energy projects, pitched as a vision for how the nation could move away from fossil fuels and become a major renewable energy exporter.
Sun Cable in March 2022 raised $210m of new funding to push ahead with its signature clean energy scheme – the $30bn Australia-Asia PowerLink development – with fresh funds ploughed in by the Atlassian co-founder, also the chairman of Sun Cable, and the Fortescue Metals chairman.
However, Dr Forrest’s Squadron Energy recently raised concern that Sun Cable failed to meet its Series B funding milestones and was spending cash at unsustainable rates. The project is running up to 12 months behind schedule, partly due to delays with Indonesian environmental approvals.
Squadron also raised issues with Sun Cable’s management team and may have ultimately wanted to install its own executives in place to run the huge renewable project, sources said.
Documents filed with the corporate regulator show that John Hartman, the chief executive of Dr Forrest’s private Tattarang investment group, quit the Sun Cable board in late November.
As part of ongoing funding needs for the development, Mr Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures was planning to invest an extra $60m into Sun Cable, but that proposal was not agreed to by Squadron, sources said. Squadron, for its part, held concerns over a clause within Grok’s funding proposal that would have seen the company sold or put on the market if there were further failures to meet its funding milestones.
Squadron put forward a funding proposal for a similar amount prior to Christmas but it was not accepted by the rest of the board. Both Grok and Squadron held veto rights which effectively cancelled each other’s funding deals.
It had widespread backing from the federal government and received support from Scott Morrison with Indonesia approving the route of the power project through its territorial waters.
Grok said there was little other choice for the company than the move into administration, while underlining its ongoing interest in the scheme. “In the circumstances, including where all but one shareholder agreed with the company’s funding strategy – the Board was left with no other option, but to enter into voluntary administration,” it said in a statement. “Grok remains a strong supporter of Sun Cable delivering the world’s largest solar energy infrastructure network and the Australia-Asia Power Link. We are confident Sun Cable will be an attractive investment proposition and remain at the forefront of Australia’s energy transition.”
“Voluntary administration provides the best opportunity for the company to access appropriate funding sources.”
Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Monday show that Sun Cable received a $28m cash injection on December 24. Both Squadron and Mr Cannon-Brookes’ private investment company CBC Co were involved, along with Xero founder Craig Winkler, Craig Scroggie – the chief executive of NextDC – and Eytan Lenko, the chief executive of Beyond Zero Emissions.
The same group kicked in another $26m in mid-September, the documents show, with Squadron and CBC also paying $6.2m for new shares in late October.
All of the share issues are believed to be cash calls from the $210m capital raising announced by Sun Cable in March 2022.
The solar project in the NT, which is estimated to deliver carbon emissions abatement of 8.6 million tonnes per year, will help power Darwin and Singapore.
It includes the world’s largest battery and a 4200km high-voltage cable from Darwin to Singapore, the longest in the world.
Sun Cable still needs to raise more than $30bn in debt and equity by the end of 2023 to back its plans, with the company last year appointing Macquarie, Moelis & Company and MA Financial Group as its financial advisers for the massive task.
The Australia-Asia PowerLink project will create more than 1500 jobs during construction, 350 operational jobs and 12,000 indirect jobs. It will start supplying energy to Darwin in 2026. The venture aims to send 20 gigawatts of power from the world’s largest solar farm near Tennant Creek to Darwin and would also feature a giant battery as part of the project.
Sun Cable chief executive David Griffin said the project remains “well placed” for completion. “As we have progressed our work, the demand for delivering reliable, dispatchable 24/7 renewable energy in the Northern Territory and the region has risen materially,” Mr Griffin said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
“Sun Cable looks forward to developing and operating the projects to meet this demand.”
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11 January, 2023
Republican state puts banks on notice over wokeness: 'Won’t be tolerated'
Kentucky issued an official notice Monday morning listing 11 banks it accused of boycotting energy companies and which would be subject to divestment within months.
Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball announced that, after a review of their energy and climate policies, the listed banks — which included BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and HSBC among others — were found to be in an active boycott of fossil fuel companies. The Kentucky state government could begin divesting from the firms if they didn't reverse their boycotts, according to the notice obtained first by FOX Business.
"Kentucky is a coal, oil, and gas producing state," Ball told FOX Business. "Our energy sector helps power America. Kentucky refuses to fund the ideological boycotts of our own fossil fuel industry with the hard-earned taxes and pensions of Kentucky citizens."
Kentucky's Republican-led legislature passed a bill requiring the state government to identify and divest from banks that are determined to be engaging in a boycott of energy and fossil fuel companies. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed the bill, which was endorsed by both the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association and Kentucky Coal Association, into law on April 8, 2022.
The law directs the state treasurer's office to publish an annual list of financial firms engaged in energy boycotts. State agencies then must notify the office if they own direct or indirect holdings of the listed companies and send a notice to the relevant companies within 30 days. If the companies don't halt their boycotts within 90 days of receiving such notice, the state government could divest from their holdings.
"When companies boycott fossil fuels, they intentionally choke off the lifeblood of capital to Kentucky’s signature industries," Ball said in a statement Monday. "Traditional energy sources fuel our Kentucky economy, provide much needed jobs, and warm our homes. Kentucky must not allow our signature industries to be irreparably damaged based upon the ideological whims of a select few."
Dozens of banks and major financial institutions which manage trillions of dollars in assets worldwide have made aggressive commitments to withdraw investment from fossil fuel companies and divert those resources to boost green energy companies as part of the so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement. The companies are in favor of a rapid transition to renewable energy sources to stave off climate change.
Over the last year, though, Republican lawmakers and officials in nearly 20 states have organized a concerted effort to push back against the ESG movement, arguing that the oil, gas and coal sectors are vital for employment and energy production. They have threatened various forms of financial retribution in response to major banks' ESG and climate policies.
Kentucky is the seventh-largest coal-producing state in the U.S., generates 71% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, is home to one of the largest oil refineries in the nation and has about 2% of the nation's total underground natural gas storage capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Overall, the energy sector employs 7.8% of employed Kentuckians.
In her announcement Monday, Ball also noted that Kentucky had the 12th-lowest average electricity price of any state. The average price represented the second-lowest price for a state east of the Mississippi River.
"Treasurer Ball takes another bold step today in defense of her state’s financial future by putting banks on notice that boycotts of American energy won’t be tolerated," State Financial Officers Foundation CEO Derek Kreifels said in a statement to FOX Business.
"She and other state financial officers across the country are leading the movement to ensure that money earned by hardworking American families is used in accordance with their values, not weaponized against them," he added.
Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia have already announced they will divest hundreds of millions of dollars from banks engaging in energy boycotts. Texas and Oklahoma have taken legislative steps akin to Kentucky's that will likely soon lead to divestment.
"Treasurer Allison Ball continues to show undaunted leadership in standing up for her state’s financial interests," Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers' Research, told FOX Business. "By putting financial institutions on notice today, she makes clear that Kentucky will no longer do business with financial institutions whose ideological agendas have targeted one of the state’s signature industries."
"It is past time for banks and money managers to abandon their war on American energy and hardworking people who literally keep the lights on across the country."
In response to the action Monday, BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase pushed back, saying they haven't engaged in energy boycotts as alleged by Kentucky's state government.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/republican-state-puts-banks-notice-wokeness-wont-tolerated
*****************************************************Soaring Costs Threaten U.S. Offshore-Wind Buildout
Offshore wind developers are facing financial challenges that threaten to derail several East Coast projects critical to reaching the Biden administration’s near-term clean-energy targets.
Supply-chain snarls, rising interest rates and inflationary pressures are making projects far more expensive to build. Now, some developers are looking to renegotiate financing agreements to keep their projects under way.
The Biden administration has set a target for the U.S. to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030—enough to supply electricity to roughly 10 million homes. Analysts say that target will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if cost and supply issues persist.
“We’re seeing unexpected and unprecedented macroeconomic challenges,” said David Hardy, chief executive of the Americas for Danish power company Ørsted A/S, which is developing about five gigawatts of offshore wind projects off the coast between Rhode Island and Maryland.
Avangrid AGR - a subsidiary of Spanish power company Iberdrola is developing a 1.2-gigawatt project called Commonwealth Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. The company in December asked the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to terminate its review of contracts the company negotiated with utilities serving the state. The company said it now intends to scrap the contracts and rebid the project next year to account for higher costs.
“We think this allows us to find a path to financeability for the project,” said Kimberly Harriman, Avangrid’s senior vice president of state-government affairs and corporate communications.
Mayflower Wind Energy LLC, a joint venture between Shell New Energies US LLC and Ocean Winds, is developing another Massachusetts project. It said in regulatory filings that its contracts have been similarly affected and that it plans to produce third-party analysis showing the challenges of financing the project. Mayflower Wind declined to comment.
Ørsted told analysts in November that its anticipated return on U.S. projects, including Ocean Wind 1 off New Jersey, is “not where we want it to be.” New Jersey utility company Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., which has a 25% interest in Ocean Winds, told analysts in October that it was reviewing its options and project costs before making a final investment decision. The company declined to comment.
The U.S. offshore wind industry has long faced delays related to federal permitting, a process the Biden administration has pushed to accelerate. Vineyard Wind LLC, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, is now building the nation’s first large-scale project off the coast of Massachusetts and expects it to begin producing power late next year, roughly six years after it started the permitting process.
Global market dynamics have compounded the hurdles. The U.S. is building its first wave of offshore wind farms at the same time European countries try to accelerate their own projects to secure electricity supplies following the invasion of Ukraine. That has strained the supply chain, as well as the availability of specialized installation vessels needed to transport and hoist massive turbines.
“There’s going to be a lot of vessel sharing,” said Samantha Woodworth, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Any delay to a single project in the U.S. or Europe could impact other projects, Ms. Woodworth said. WoodMac expects trickle-down delays will cause the U.S. to fall 2 gigawatts short of the 2030 goal set by the Biden administration.
Dominion Energy Inc., a Richmond, Va.-based utility company, is building the only offshore-wind installation vessel under construction in the U.S. The vessel is expected in 2024 to service two projects under development by Ørsted and New England utility company Eversource Energy, and will then move to service a 2.6-gigawatt project Dominion is building off the coast of Virginia.
Josh Bennett, Dominion’s vice president of offshore wind, said the vessel is more than 60% complete. The company’s $9.8 billion offshore wind farm remains on schedule and on budget, he said, largely because the company signed its supply contracts before the constraints emerged.
“There’s so much demand now,” he said. “If you were to attempt to do an offshore wind project starting today, it would take you out into the late ’20s or early ’30s.”
The U.S. is also pushing to begin developing offshore wind along the West Coast, an effort seen as key to achieving the 2030 target and other clean-energy goals. But potential projects there come with regulatory complexities, deep-water technical risks and port space constraints, and developers have been hesitant to bet big on the region as costs soar. The first-ever sale of California offshore wind rights in December fetched $757 million, compared with a $4.37 billion Atlantic coast auction in February.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/soaring-costs-threaten-u-s-offshore-wind-buildout-11672474137
********************************************************U.S. Big Three Auto Companies Commit to Making Cars That People Don't Want
Stephen Moore
I grew up in a household with parents who were of the Greatest Generation. They lived and shouldered through the Great Depression, and then their lives and families were thrown into turmoil on Dec. 7, 1941. My grandfather worked for the War Department in Washington, D.C., and during World War II, my father served in the Pacific Theater.
Both my mother and father made a solemn vow that as long as they lived, they would never buy a German or a Japanese car. No matter how well they were made. They were the enemies. They were the ones who killed nearly half a million Americans. Period.
And that value system was transported to me. In honor of my parents' values, I couldn't in good conscience buy a Japanese or German car.
I've been thinking that after all these years, I may have to change my mind. The American auto companies, which are so often bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, have made a pronouncement that they intend, in the next few years, to stop making and assembling gas-engine cars. You know, the kind of cars that Henry Ford started rolling off the assembly line 100 years ago at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit.
Henceforth, virtually all American-made cars will be electric vehicles. Perhaps the corporate brass in Michigan's auto executive offices thinks this makes them good global citizens. They are all in on the fight against global warming. They may be making a political bet that the federal government and more states are going to go the way of California and eventually mandate that every car produced must be battery-operated. But there is also a good deal of virtue-signaling going on here by the folks at Ford and General Motors.
It's a free country, and if they want to start rolling millions of EVs off the assembly lines, so be it.
But it's one thing to make cars that appeal to members of the Sierra Club and quite another to produce automobiles that the typical buyer wants. And guess what? So far, most people have turned a decisive thumbs-down on EVs. (Incidentally, I'm personally agnostic on electric vehicles. I've driven Teslas, and they are wonderful smooth-driving vehicles. But they have problems, too, such as getting stranded with no juice in the middle of nowhere.)
So far, only about 6% of new cars sold are electric vehicles. And polls show that only about half of Americans prefer an EV over a traditional car. Much larger majorities oppose the government telling us what kind of car we can buy.
Incidentally, the one state that far outpaces the rest of the country in EV sales (with about 1 in 5 new car sales being battery-operated) is California. But, hey, Detroit: Sorry, California isn't the country.
All of this is to say that there's a decent chance the American auto companies' shift to all EVs is going to fail. This could even be the most epic failure for American car companies since Ford introduced the Edsel. (For youngsters, that was the 1950s ugly car that nobody wanted to buy.)
Meanwhile, and this is the especially sad part of the story, at least one company realizes the tomfoolery of making only electric cars. And that company is the Japanese automaker Toyota. Akio Toyoda, the president and grandson of the founder of the giant Japanese car company, is going to buck the trend.
"People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority," Toyoda recently told news reporters. "That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it's the trend, so they can't speak out loudly."
Toyoda wasn't done. "I believe we need to be realistic about when society will be able to fully adopt Battery Electric Vehicles," he explained. "And frankly, BEVs are not the only way to achieve the world's carbon neutrality goals."
Toyoda is right on all counts. There's scant evidence that EVs will reduce pollution levels more than traditional cars -- in part because most of the energy for the batteries comes from burning fossil fuels. And because the batteries themselves create waste issues.
How can it be that a Japanese CEO is more plugged in to the tastes, preferences and buying habits of American car buyers than those based here at home? (Yes, I know Toyota has many plants in the United States.)
You would think that U.S. automakers would understand a basic red, white and blue reality, which is that Americans have a special and long-standing love affair with their cars. They aren't going to trade in their Mustangs, Camaros, Cadillacs and trucks for an EV. For many of us, this would be akin to taking away our firstborn.
What's sadder still is that the Japanese seem to understand American car buyers better than the execs in Detroit. Honda and Toyota were the first to recognize that people wanted more fuel-efficient cars when gas prices more than tripled in the 1970s.
All of this means that if GM, Ford and Chrysler speed forward with their commitment to convert to 100% EVs, I'm going to have to break my long-standing pledge to my parents to "buy American" and never purchase a Japanese car. The American companies will have given me no choice. Sorry, this is 2023, not 1923, when Henry Ford said you could have a Model T in any color you wanted, as long as it was black.
Incidentally, as this "woke" green energy fad fades into the sunset, as it almost assuredly will, and the American auto companies see their sales crash, they'd better not come begging for yet another taxpayer bailout.
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Beijing aims to corner another green energy market: hydrogen
A decade ago, China used low prices to dominate solar manufacturing, wiping out Western competitors just as worldwide demand for panels started to soar. The U.S. and Europe are determined not to let the same thing happen with hydrogen.
As the world sprints to decarbonize, the next round of competition revolves around a device called an electrolyzer. Plug these into clean electricity such as solar power, and it’s possible to extract hydrogen from water without producing any emissions. That’s a crucial step in creating a green fuel capable of decarbonizing such industries as steel, cement or shipping.
Companies around the world are already revving up electrolyzer production, green hydrogen plants are under construction, and the industry is finally making the leap from pilot projects to industrial scale. BloombergNEF, a clean energy research group, estimates worldwide electrolyzer production will need to grow 91 times larger by 2030 to meet demand. But many Western clean tech veterans eye the emerging competition with a queasy feeling of déjà vu. More than 40% of all electrolyzers made today come from China, according to BNEF.
Chinese electrolyzers aren’t as efficient as those made in the U.S. and Europe, but they cost far less — about a quarter of what Western companies charge. Chinese electrolyzer companies still largely serve their domestic market, but they’re starting to expand sales overseas.
“I’ve heard too many government officials say we cannot repeat the experience of solar again,” said BNEF hydrogen analyst Xiaoting Wang.
President Joe Biden served as vice president during the crucial years when China seized the lead in solar manufacturing. Now he views China as a competitor more than a supplier, and he has made bringing clean tech manufacturing back to the U.S. a pillar of his climate policies. The U.S. is determined not to let China control this new energy boom, and Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act showers money on domestic hydrogen production.
“The reality is, the U.S. is going to give very generous subsidies to ensure that local suppliers survive,” Wang said.
Europe has its own reasons for wanting a piece of this nascent industry.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven home the value of fuel that can be produced within Europe, and it has ramped up the continent’s ambitions for hydrogen. And yet, some hydrogen advocates say the European Union isn’t following through, putting it at a disadvantage to both the U.S. and China. The union has set a target for green hydrogen production — 10 million tons per year by 2030 — but has not yet decided which methods will qualify as “green.” That makes it hard for companies to commit to the big hydrogen production projects that would drive electrolyzer orders.
“I’m scared the market shares in the electrolyzer business will be taken away from Europe and shipped to other geographies,” said Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, chief executive officer of the Brussels-based lobbying group Hydrogen Europe. “The EU are shooting themselves in the head. Not in the foot — in the head.”
Meanwhile, many analysts expect the efficiency of Chinese electrolyzers to improve, eroding any technological advantage U.S. and European companies now have.
“I have no doubt that China is working on better electrolyzers,” said Bridget van Dorsten, senior hydrogen analyst at the Wood Mackenzie research and consulting firm. “The day that China decides not to be a laggard anymore is the day they aren’t a laggard anymore.”
And some Chinese companies have a head start. Chemical-equipment manufacturers there have made electrolyzers for years, installing large-scale water electrolysis systems for various manufacturing industries such as polysilicon production for solar cells.
Electrolyzers use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and versions of them have been on the market since the 1920s. Many countries now see hydrogen as the best bet for decarbonizing industries that can’t easily run on electricity. If an electrolyzer’s power comes from a solar or wind facility, or a nuclear reactor, the process of producing the hydrogen is also carbon-free.
The devices come in several varieties, each with its pros and cons. Chinese companies mostly produce “alkaline” electrolyzers that have low up-front costs but need more electricity than competing technologies to yield each kilogram of hydrogen. U.S. and European companies focus on “solid oxide” and “proton-exchange membrane” (PEM) electrolyzers that have a higher initial cost but need less electricity — a big selling point in places where electricity is expensive.
Chinese manufacturers, however, are developing PEM electrolyzers and refining their alkaline products. And they’re eying foreign markets for growth.
Xi’an-based Longi Green Energy Technology Co., the world’s largest solar equipment maker, set up a hydrogen unit in March 2021 and has already built 1.5 gigawatts of electrolyzer manufacturing capacity in China. It’s developing PEM but predicts that alkaline electrolyzers will dominate the industry for the next five years, said Wang Yingge, vice president of Longi Hydrogen. Within three years, the company expects foreign markets to make up more than half of its sales, he said.
“Europe and the U.S. have the most proactive incentive policies for the hydrogen industry, while the Middle East and Africa have the largest scale and most economical renewable energy,” Wang said. “Green hydrogen projects in these regions have good profitability.”
Meanwhile, state-owned PERIC received orders in 2022 from seven foreign countries, including Australia, the U.S. and Korea. Shandong Saikesaisi Hydrogen Energy, one of the few Chinese manufacturers to specialize in PEM, now gets about 10% to 15% of its sales from overseas, said Huang Fang, a project director of the company. It’s aiming to improve that percentage amid demand from Europe and Australia, Huang said.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/01/10/business/china-hydrogen-renewables/
***************************************10 January, 2023
Ozone scare still staggering on
If you read the report carefully below, you will see that the hole has been EXPANDING in recent years, not shrinking and that it is "still large" compared to the 1980s. So their optimism about it shrinking is just speculative modelling. It is 35 years since the agreement designed to close the hole was made but on the actual measurements the hole is clearly going nowhere
Earth's ozone layer is healing at a pace that would see the layer between the polar regions reach pre-1980 levels by 2040, the United Nations revealed Monday.
Scientists said that global emissions of chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11), a banned chemical used as a refrigerant and insulating foams, had declined since 2018 after increasing for several years.
The assessment found that the 8.91-million-square-mile hole over Antarctica will close by 2066 and the atmospheric layer above the Arctic will return to normal by 2045.
The announcement comes more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chop on the layer of ozone in Earth's atmosphere that shields the planet from harmful radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage.
The ozone layer is a natural layer of gas located in the stratosphere – the second layer in Earth's atmosphere.
Although warmer-than-average stratospheric weather conditions have reduced ozone depletion during the past two years, the current ozone hole area is still large compared to the 1980s - when the depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica was first detected.
In the 1970s, it was recognized that CFCs were destroying ozone in the stratosphere. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was agreed upon, which led to the phase-out of CFCs and, recently, the first signs of recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer.
According to the report, the first signs of ozone healing were observed four years ago.
Chlorine levels are down 11.5 percent since they peaked in 1993, and bromine, which is more efficient at eating ozone but is at lower levels in the air, dropped 14.5 percent since its 1999 peak, the report said.
That bromine and chlorine levels 'stopped growing and is coming down is a real testament to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol,' Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment, said.
Natural weather patterns in the Antarctic also affect ozone hole levels, which peak in the fall.
And the holes have been a bit bigger the past couple of years because of that, but the overall trend is one of healing, Newman said.
The recovery is 'saving 2 million people every year from skin cancer,' United Nations Environment Program Director Inger Andersen told The Associated Press earlier this year in an email.
The Ozone layer sits in the stratosphere 25 miles above the Earth's surface and acts like a natural sunscreen
Ozone is a molecule comprised of three oxygen atoms that occurs naturally in small amounts.
In the stratosphere, roughly seven to 25 miles above Earth's surface, the ozone layer acts like sunscreen, shielding the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and also damage plants.
It is produced in tropical latitudes and distributed around the globe.
Although warmer-than-average stratospheric weather conditions have reduced ozone depletion during the past two years, the current ozone hole area is still large compared to the 1980s, when the depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica was first detected.
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Attention Aspiring Chefs: The Government Is Coming for Your Gas Stoves
For some time now, environmentalists and their allies in state and local government have been ratcheting up their efforts to ban the use of gas stoves in American homes in the name of fighting climate change. Now, the federal government is stepping into the fray by claiming that those stoves are a health hazard and need to be banned in the interest of consumer safety.
According to a Bloomberg report, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is contemplating a complete ban on natural gas-powered cooktops in American homes because several recent studies suggest that they emit harmful levels of pollutants that can cause respiratory problems or other health issues. An agency commissioner, Richard Trumka, called gas stoves a “hidden hazard” and said that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Gas stoves, which some 40 percent of American households rely on, are already under fire from climate alarmists who believe they contribute to global warming. New York is one of as many as 100 cities across the country that have restricted gas hookups in new residential buildings following pressure from the climate lobby, and the California Air Resources Board recently voted to ban the sale of natural gas-fired furnaces and water heaters by 2030.
Activists in New York are pressuring the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, to enact a statewide ban similar to New York City’s. A Brooklyn-based member of the state assembly, Emily Gallagher, is leading the charge. “Every new building that is built with gas hookups is making us poorer, sicker, and closer to climate catastrophe,” Ms. Gallagher said at a December rally promoting the ban.
A number of Republican-led states have moved in the opposite direction in the name of “energy choice.” At least 19 states have passed legislation prohibiting local jurisdictions from banning gas hookups, and four more have such legislation pending.
Lobbying by pro-gas energy companies has ramped up almost as quickly as the protests against it. Gas utilities have mounted ad campaigns, hired robo-calling companies, and organized rallies to remind Americans and their legislators what most cooking enthusiasts already know: that cooking over gas is cleaner, more efficient, and more precise than cooking over superheated electric coils. They also remind customers that gas-powered appliances such as hot water heaters, furnaces, and stovetops work even when the electricity fails.
The action by the Consumer Product Safety Commission is less about climate politics and more about public health, according to the agency. Multiple recent studies have concluded that the particulates released by gas stoves indoors may be hazardous. One study suggested that the appliances may exacerbate asthma in children, according to the climate change activists at RMI.
The commission will likely begin seeking public comments on the potential ban in the coming months. Other measures being contemplated reportedly include setting bans on emissions from gas-powered stovetops. A group of Democrats in Congress suggested last month that the agency also consider warning labels on the appliances or requiring range hoods that absorb and filter any contaminants.
In a December letter to head of the commission, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the members suggested that Black, Latino, and low-income people are most vulnerable to the impact of gas stoves.
“The CPSC has broad authority under the Consumer Product Safety Act to regulate consumer products that pose an unreasonable risk of injury,” the letter, which was signed by Senator Booker of New Jersey and 19 other members of Congress, said. “We urge the Commission to protect consumers from these harmful emissions.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/attention-aspiring-chefs-the-government-is-coming-for-your-gas-stoves
************************************************Massive Wind and Solar Farms Imperil European Tourism
In the Galician countryside of northwest Spain, Maria Martin and her husband opened an inn six years ago offering vacationers a tranquil refuge. The ocean is a few miles away, and the Basilica de San Martiño de Mondoñedo, Spain’s oldest cathedral and an attraction for pilgrims walking the famed Camino de Santiago, lies in the same valley.
The couple and other residents are fighting a proposal to build a cluster of 345-foot tall wind turbines near the inn. The turbines are among more than 200 that Pittsburgh-based Alcoa Corp. is counting on to power the restart of a hulking aluminum smelter it owns in San Ciprian, 14 miles to the west. Alcoa idled the smelter in 2021 because of soaring electricity prices as Russia began to cut the flow of natural gas ahead of its invasion of Ukraine.
Galicia’s regional government approved the wind farm in November despite local opposition by designating it a project of strategic interest for the territory. The park also needs the approval of Spain’s national government because of its large size.
“No one can live so close to a wind farm,” Ms. Martin said. Critics say the turbines are a blight on the landscape, make noise and cast shadows. “Probably my business, my way of life, will disappear,” Ms. Martin said.
European Union governments have been replacing coal-generated electricity with natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar in recent years to cut emissions. Still, bureaucratic hurdles and local opposition meant projects take years to complete.
In 2021, the bloc’s executive arm proposed a major expansion of renewable energy over the next decade, from around 20% to 40% of the EU’s total energy consumption by 2030. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which more than tripled natural-gas prices last summer compared to before the war, led the EU to raise that target to 45%.
France, Germany, Spain and other governments in Europe are passing legislation that would declare renewable energy an overriding public interest, sweeping aside obstacles that have slowed wind and solar investment and reducing the power of interest groups to delay or block projects.
High energy prices have already forced the closure of scores of factories that form the region’s industrial backbone and employ tens of thousands. Many more are at risk, threatening the supply chains of auto makers, aerospace firms and other industrial giants. Economists at the European Commission expect the EU economy to contract 0.5% in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 and 0.1% the following quarter as factories curb production.
“If the wind farms don’t get approved, there will be problems,” said Jose Antonio Zan, a union leader at the Alcoa plant in San Ciprian. “In Spain, we don’t have oil or gas, but we have wind, and we should use it.”
In Italy, lawmakers have reined in the power of the Ministry of Culture to challenge renewable energy projects under a new law that has slashed permitting times for new solar farms in Italy to under a year. As a result, the number of projects seeking connection to the grid has soared.
The Ministry of Culture, which is charged with preserving a landscape that is sprinkled with ancient ruins, often objects to wind and solar projects, fearing they could damage antiquities or degrade the landscape’s beauty. Preservation officials within the ministry are pressing for new restrictions on development to safeguard the Italian landscape, which is listed in the Italian constitution as a protected asset.
One proposal would forbid large solar farms on more than 40,000 acres of countryside in the Lazio region around the Arrone river basin, a center of the Etruscan civilization that was dominant in Italy before the rise of Rome. The proposed restriction prompted an outcry from solar industry executives and some Italian lawmakers who say dozens of planned solar farms would be delayed indefinitely. Cultural preservation officials postponed the proposal for further consultations after Lazio’s regional government opposed it.
In Galicia, one of the most blustery corners of Europe, the regional government is accelerating the construction of wind farms to provide electricity for local factories. It has pledged expedited reviews of projects that have signed contracts with manufacturers in Galicia for at least 50% of their output.
Spain already has one of the world’s highest wind-energy capacities, with more than 28,000 megawatts installed across the country. Wind was its second-leading electricity source in 2021, after natural gas, accounting for 23% of electricity production, according to the International Energy Agency. Galicia’s powerful winds have attracted much of that investment: There are more than 4,000 wind turbines spread over a region slightly smaller than the state of Maryland.
Critics say the turbines have marred Galicia’s natural vistas and cultural sites that date back to the Roman empire. Tourism accounted for 10% of GDP and 11% of total employment in the region, according to 2019 data.
The turbines can be seen in many places along the Camino de Santiago, one of the most important pilgrimages in Christianity. Since the Middle Ages, pilgrims have been walking its various routes through Galicia to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. Legend has it that St. James’ bones were taken there after he was beheaded in Jerusalem by King Herod.
Some routes of the camino run so close to turbines that pilgrims say they can hear the whoosh they make spinning. Priscilla White, who runs an inn on one of the routes, said the turbines change the ambience of the pilgrimage. “Because we walk an ancient path, we like to think it looks the same way as it always looked, but you can’t do that anymore,” said Ms. White, vice chair of the Confraternity of St. James, a British organization that helps pilgrims.
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Vital Energy Lessons For Virginia and America
When they open their 30-day session on January 11, Virginia’s Senate and House of Delegates must correct some serious energy mistakes they made two years ago, when Democrats controlled nearly the entire state government and passed the “Virginia Clean Economy Act.”
One of those party-line decisions requires that Virginia adopt California’s requirement that only low-emission vehicles (LEVs) be sold by the model year 2025 and only zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by MY 2035. That means in barely twelve years only new electric vehicles (EVs) could be sold in Virginia.
Again mimicking California, in addition to EVs, the VCEA also requires a massive shift from affordable, reliable coal and natural gas-generated electricity to expensive, weather-dependent, land-intensive wind and solar electricity, stabilized and backed up by huge batteries.
As I’ve explained previously (here, here, here, and here), this is unworkable. Texas, Buffalo, and the Midwest have demonstrated that heavy reliance on wind and solar can bring deadly blackouts during blizzards. California told residents not to charge their soon-to-be-mandatory EVs during last summer’s heat waves, to prevent blackouts. Switzerland might ban EV charging this winter for the same reason.
The Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition PAC (SUVGOP) recognizes these realities and understands that the wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines will not be in Democrat strongholds like Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church, and Richmond. They will be in beautiful rural Virginia, which will also be hardest hit by bans on gasoline and diesel vehicles. SUVGOP has therefore gotten the ball rolling on reversing these ill-advised laws, by launching a campaign to repeal LEV/ZEV mandates.
SUVGOP calls its campaign “Don’t CA my VA.” (When I lived in the Centennial State, bumper stickers proclaimed a crasser version of this message: “Don’t Californiacate Colorado.”)
Arguments for avoiding or terminating LEV/ZEV mandates are compelling – for Virginia and America.
* While great for short hauls, EVs don’t get you far along on your 800-mile vacation trip; recharging can take hours, depending on multiple factors; and charging stations are more limited off main highways.
* You don’t want to get caught in your EV during a hurricane evacuation or blizzard, especially since already limited battery life decreases in cold weather and with heater or AC use.
* EVs (and backup batteries) can burst into chemical-fueled infernos, especially if they get immersed in water. That can be catastrophic and deadly if the EV is in a home or underground garage (or on a cargo ship loaded with EVs).
* EVs require 3-4 times more metals than internal-combustion cars: copper, iron, nickel, aluminum, cobalt, lithium, rare earth, and others. Those materials don’t just appear via Materials Acquisition for Global Industrial Change mechanisms (MAGIC). They must be dug out and processed, somewhere.
China’s BYD Auto company alone used 13,000 tons of copper to make EVs in 2016. Based on average porphyry ore deposits today, every 100,000 tons of copper requires processing 23,000,000 tons of copper ore, after removing 35,000,000 tons of overlying rock – using explosives and fossil fuels!
Start calculating how many billions of tons of copper and other metals and minerals would be required for all the EVs, wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, and grid-stabilizing and backup batteries in Virginia, your state, or the United States, or the entire world, are planning to mandate. Then calculate how many trillions of tons of ore would require – and how much mining, blasting, processing, and fuel.
Where will all that work take place? In whose backyards? With how much ecological destruction, air and water pollution, hazardous waste generation, slave and child labor, and human health risks?
“Clean” energy and vehicles? There may be zero emissions out of Virginia EV tailpipes – maybe even at the electricity source, if it comes from wind or solar power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
But there are no “zero emissions” for mining, processing, and manufacturing. It just happens somewhere else, often in Africa or Asia, often by Chinese companies – affecting someone else’s air and water quality, scenery, croplands, wildlife habitats, wildlife, health, and well-being.
Meanwhile, millions of acres of Virginia and US lands would be covered with turbines, panels, transformers, and transmission lines; millions of birds, bats, and other animals would be killed annually.
Bottom line: There is no such thing as “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy or vehicles. It’s just a matter of where and how and how much the mining and materials processing, manufacturing, and emissions take place. It’s just a matter of how good the “green” PR programs are; and whether US environmentalists, journalists, and politicians recognize or censor these realities.
Earth’s atmospheric, oceanic and climate systems are global. The loss of habitats and species is a global problem. We should act locally, and think globally.
Regarding backup batteries, the VCEA mandates the acquisition of 3,100 megawatts of storage. Assuming legislators meant 3,100 megawatt-hours, this would require some 36,000 Tesla half-ton 85-kWh modules, and it would still meet less than 1% of Virginia’s average daily electricity consumption (and less than 0.5% of its peak demand). This doesn’t include batteries to stabilize wind-solar grid fluctuations.
Virginia legislators also need to address these vitally important issues:
* How many wind turbines, solar panels, transformers, backup/grid-balancing battery modules, and miles of new transmission lines will The Old Dominion need to replace existing coal and gas generation?
* How many more will it require after half of all cars, trucks, and buses are electric? After families are forced to convert gas home and water heating, stoves, and ovens to electricity – and upgrade home and neighborhood electrical systems to handle the added loads?
* Where and on whose property will all these “renewable” systems and power lines be installed? How many millions of acres of land and coastal areas will be impacted? Will residents or local governments be able to veto developments? How often will the eminent domain be employed?
* How many millions (billions?) of tons of metals, minerals, carbon-fiber composites, plastics, concrete, and other materials will be needed? How much ore, overburden, and fuel?
* How many of these materials (and turbines, panels, battery modules, and transformers) will come from China or other adversarial nations, or their surrogates?
* Under what pollution control, wildlife habitat and endangered species protection, workplace safety, slave and child labor, and other “responsible sourcing” laws will all this work be done?
* Where will worn-out, broken, and obsolete solar panels, wind turbine blades, and other non-recyclable equipment be landfilled?
* How many billions or trillions of dollars will all this cost ratepayers and taxpayers?
It takes more than declaring that actions taken under “clean economy” laws are “in the public interest” to make it so. Legislators must look beyond tailpipes, and beyond Virginia or US borders, to avoid destroying the planet with wind and solar, to save it from fossil fuels and climate change.
The 2023 legislative session is a perfect opportunity to start reexamining “clean economy” assumptions and mandates – and implementing reality-based Environment-Social-Governance (ESG) principles. Are Virginia’s legislators up to the task?
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9 January, 2023
Biden Agenda Collides with Liberal Sacred Cows Over Nevada Lithium Mine
Opponents of the largest lithium mine planned in America urged a federal judge in Nevada on Thursday to vacate the federal government’s approval of the project until it completes additional environmental reviews and complies with all state and federal laws.
A district judge, Miranda Du, said after a three-hour hearing at Reno that she hoped to make a decision “in the next couple months” on how to proceed in the nearly two-year-old legal battle over the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the mine Lithium Nevada Corporation plans near the Nevada-Oregon line.
Lawyers for the company and the Bureau of Land Management insisted the project complies with American laws and regulations. But they said that if Judge Du determines it does not, she should stop short of vacating the agency’s approval and allow initial work at the site to begin as further reviews are initiated.
Lawyers for a Nevada rancher, conservation groups and Native American tribes suing to block the mine said that should not occur because any environmental damage would be irreversible.
Dozens of tribe members and other protesters rallied outside the downtown courthouse during the hearing, beating drums and waving signs at passing motorists.
Judge Du has refused twice over the past year to grant temporary injunctions sought by tribal leaders who say the mine site is on sacred land where their ancestors were killed by the United States Cavalry in 1865.
Lithium Nevada and the Bureau of Land Management say the project atop an ancient volcano is critical to meeting the growing demand for lithium to make electric vehicle batteries — a key part of President Biden’s push to expedite a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is the largest known lithium deposit of its kind,” a lawyer representing the company, Laura Granier, told Judge Du Thursday. “Our nation and the world will suffer if this project is delayed further.”
Opponents say it will destroy dwindling habitat for sage grouse, Lahontan cutthroat trout, pronghorn antelope and golden eagles, pollute the air and create a plume of toxic water beneath the open-pit mine deeper than the length of a football field.
“We need a smart energy future that transitions our economy from fossil fuels to renewables without sacrificing rare species in the process,” said the deputy director of the Western Watersheds Project, Greta Anderson. The group also petitioned in September for protection of a tiny nearby snail under the Endangered Species Act.
The Bureau of Land Management fast-tracked the project’s approval during the final days of the Trump administration. The Biden administration continues to embrace it as part of the president’s clean energy agenda.
Demand for lithium is expected to triple by 2030 from 2020. Lithium Nevada says its project is the only one on the drawing board that can help meet the demand.
A lawyer for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Will Falk, said that “in this rush for lithium in Nevada, the BLM went way too fast in permitting this mine.”
A lawyer for the Western Mining Action Project representing several environmental groups, Roger Flynn, said the agency wants the project to move forward even though it botched the environmental reviews it was determined to complete before President Trump left office.
“Meanwhile, there will be this immediate, permanent massive environmental damage,” Mr. Flynn said.
Thursday’s hearing marked the first on the actual merits of the lawsuit filed in February 2021. It will set the legal landscape going forward after the riders of the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals upheld a ruling in Arizona that voided federal approval of a copper mine.
That potentially precedent-setting decision raises questions about the reach of the Mining Law of 1872 and could have a bearing on disposal of waste rock at the lithium mine in the high desert about 200 miles northeast of Reno.
In addition to the cultural and environmental concerns about the potential effects, the new Ninth Circuit ruling halting the Arizona mine in July was a focus of Thursday’s hearing.
Judge Du told lawyers on both sides she was interested in “the extent to which (that case) controls the outcome of this case.”
The San Francisco-based appellate court upheld the Arizona ruling that the Forest Service lacked authority to approve Rosemont Copper’s plans to dispose of waste rock on land adjacent to the mine it wanted to dig on a national forest southeast of Tucson.
The service and the Bureau of Land Management long have interpreted the Mining Law of 1872 to convey the same mineral rights to such lands.
The riders of the Ninth Circuit agreed with a district judge, James Soto, who determined the Forest Service approved Rosemont’s plans in 2019 without considering whether the company had any mining rights on the neighboring lands.
He concluded the agency assumed under mining law that Rosemont had “valid mining claims on the 2,447 acres it proposed to occupy with its waste rock.”
A Justice Department lawyer for the Bureau of Land Management, Leilani Doktor, said the Forest Service and the BLM are under “different regulatory schemes.”
“Each step of the way, BLM followed its own regulations,” she said.
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Biden Administration Admits Canceling the Keystone Pipeline Killed Thousands of Jobs and Cost Billions
A new report quietly released by the Biden administration includes a bombshell admission: President Biden’s action to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline killed thousands of jobs for workers and cost billions of dollars.
Fox News reports, “The report, which the Department of Energy (DOE) completed in late December without any public announcement, says the Keystone XL project would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4-9.6 billion, citing various studies.”
At a time when America’s economy is struggling – largely as a result of Biden’s war on American energy – the Keystone Pipeline would have created jobs and lowered costs. Fox News Continues, “Keystone XL had been slated to be completed early this year and transport an additional 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the U.S. through an existing pipeline network, according to its operator, TC Energy.”
The report was only released publicly because Senate Republicans forced the administration to do that through legislation. Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, blasted the administration for killing the pipeline and trying to bury this report.
“Joe Biden’s adherence to the green agenda destroyed jobs, destroyed revenue and is costing America’s working families untold money in inflation,” said Daniel Turner, Founder and Executive Director of Power The Future. “The Keystone XL pipeline was a commonsense solution to our nation’s energy infrastructure but because it was approved by President Trump, Joe Biden couldn’t help but destroy it for petty political reasons. Joe Biden often talks about creating ‘good union jobs’ but it’s clear he will always put politics before people.”
In 2021, PTF met with the pipeline workers who were betrayed by Biden’s decision to kill Keystone. We featured their stories because these are the Americans we fight for every day. These are the workers who lost their jobs, and they are the ones providing us all with affordable and abundant American energy. Now, the White House has admitted what we’ve been saying for years: this decision hurt people and our economy.
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Zero population idiot exhumed
One of the biggest blowhards of all time
Earth is headed for a sixth extinction, warned biologist Paul Ehrlich on "60 Minutes" this Sunday. And since Ehrlich has predicted about 20 extinctions over the past 60 years, he's a leading expert on the issue.
Couldn't "60 Minutes" find a fresh-faced, yet-to-be-discredited neo-Malthusian to hyperventilate about the end of the world? Why didn't producers invite a single guest to push back against theories that have been reliably debunked by reality? Because the media is staffed by environmental pessimists and doomsayers who need to believe the world is in constant peril due to the excesses of capitalism. And Ehrlich is perhaps our greatest alarmist.
His 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," is among the most destructive of the 20th century. The long screed not only made Ehrlich a celebrity but gave end-of-day alarmists a patina of scientific legitimacy, popularized alarmism as a political tool, and normalized authoritarian and anti-humanist policies as a cure. Ehrlich's progeny are other media-favored hysterics by other antihumanists, such as Al Gore or Eric Holthaus or Greta Thunberg, who skipped learning history and science because she also believes we are on the precipice of "mass extinction." And none of this is to mention the thousands of other Little Ehrlichs nudging you to eat insects, gluing themselves to roads and demanding you surrender the most basic conveniences and necessities of modernity.
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over," the opening line of "The Population Bomb" reads. "In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now," Ehrlich wrote. It was likely, he went on, that the oceans would be without life by 1979 and the United States would see its population plummet to 23 million by 1999 due to pesticides. "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years," he famously told Mademoiselle in 1970.
When Julian Simon offered the biologist his famous wager, Ehrlich responded by saying, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Instead, Ehrlich picked five natural resources he believed would experience shortages due to human consumption. He lost the bet on all counts, as the composite price index for those commodities, copper and chromium and so on, fell by more than 40%, despite there being 800 million new people during that time.
It's not merely that Ehrlich is always spectacularly wrong about the future but that he remains unrepentant. In 2009, Ehrlich argued that "perhaps the most serious flaw" in "The Population Bomb" was that it was "much too optimistic" about the future. "We will soon be asking: is it perfectly OK to eat the bodies of your dead because we're all so hungry?" Ehrlich warned in 2014. One year later, there were 200 million fewer people suffering from hunger than in 1990, despite there being 2 billion more people inhabiting the Earth.
And much like today's environmentalists, Ehrlich offered a slew of authoritarian economic prescriptions to salvage the Earth. Though in 1977's "Ecoscience," a book he co-authored by Barack Obama's future "science czar" John Holdren, Ehrlich toyed with the idea of adding "sterilant to drinking water or staple foods" and compelling abortions to save the world from human beings.
How could "60 Minutes" frame this ridiculous man as a foremost expert on the future?
It would take a lot of work to point to any tangible factor that's worsened for humans since the 1970s. There is less war, terrorism, poverty, hunger, child mortality, genocide, death due to weather, illiteracy, etc. By nearly every quantifiable measure the environment is also better now than it was 55 years ago -- which is why contemporary alarmists have learned to prophesy "climate" catastrophes 30 or 40 years out. Perhaps Ehrlich's biggest mistake was living long enough to be proven wrong dozens of times. (Then again, in 1932, the year he was born, a man could expect to live to 61. Today they will likely live to be 77. Dr. Doom is 90.)
Fears about "overpopulation" are regularly cited by journalists -- who often live in the densest, yet also the wealthiest places -- as if it's one of the world's most pressing problems, like the threat of war or the election of Republicans. Every hurricane, tornado and flood is treated as the opening of the Seventh Seal. The media will seek out the struggling commercial fisherman but fail to speak to any of the billions of humans in developing nations whose lives have dramatically improved in virtually every aspect over the past decades. While we hyperventilate over Elon Musk or Kanye or elections, and scary climate disasters, scientists have made one of the most exciting energy breakthroughs in our lifetimes, perhaps in history.
They always do. We may have many problems in our spiritual lives or our political lives, but human ingenuity has dependably overcome demand
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Australian carbon credit scheme is controversial
An official review of Australia’s $4.5bn carbon credit market has rejected allegations the scheme was a rort, concluding the system was “essentially sound” but needs an overhaul across regulation and transparency to boost public confidence.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen appointed former chief scientist Ian Chubb in July 2022 to carry out a review of Australia’s carbon credit scheme following allegations by whistleblower Andrew Macintosh that a majority of credits issued by the Clean Energy Regulator were flawed.
The Australian Carbon Credit Units scheme has attracted considerable criticism from environmental groups and others associated with the program, who say it is wasting taxpayer funds without cutting carbon emissions.
However, the official Chubb Review released on Monday found the ACCU scheme was essentially sound and it had not found evidence of widespread problems in the sector.
“In recent times, the integrity of the scheme has been called into question – it has been argued that the level of abatement has been overstated, that ACCUs are therefore not what they are meant to be, so that the policy is not effective,” the Review found.
“The Panel does not share this view. While the Panel was provided with some evidence supporting that position, it was also provided with evidence to the contrary.”
The Review found there may be several reasons for the “polar-opposite” views.
“One is likely to be a lack of transparency, meaning that third parties cannot access the relevant data and so different conclusions can be drawn, and all genuinely held.”
Still, the review led by the former chief scientist has suggested breaking up the powers currently managed by the Clean Energy Regulator in order to boost the effectiveness of the scheme with separation of governance, ACCU purchasing and method development functions.
The Australian Government purchasing of ACCUs “should be moved out of the CER and into another Australian Government body to avoid actual or perceived conflicts of interest,” the Review found.
“The multiple roles of the CER, in developing methods, regulating projects and issuing ACCUs, and administering government purchase of ACCUs, results in potential conflicts of interest and risks reduced confidence in scheme arrangements and governance.”
It also called for legislative changes to maximise transparency, data access and data sharing “to support greater public trust and confidence in scheme arrangements.”
Among 16 recommendations made in the Review are for no new project registrations be allowed under the current avoided deforestation method and the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee should be re-established as the Carbon Abatement Integrity Committee “as soon as practicable” with adjusted terms of reference, membership and functions.
The federal government has accepted in principle all 16 recommendations and said it would consider funding arrangements to implement the changes through the 2023-24 budget.
The Carbon Market Institute said it was critical to “align and escalate public and private investments” in industrial decarbonisation and emission reductions across the economy.
“This is a scheme that has developed and evolved over more than a decade, and investors and the community should be encouraged by the Independent Review Panel’s findings that its framework is sound, and the proposed improvements can also now be embedded to ensure a more transparent, robust system that can be scaled up,” CMI chief executive John Connor said.
The review followed criticisms by Mr Macintosh, an academic at ANU and the ex-head of the government’s Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee. Professor Macintosh has described the carbon market as “largely a sham” and said the majority of carbon credits did not represent real cuts to emissions.
More recent analysis by investment house Allan Gray concluded concerns about the integrity of the ACCU scheme were “valid and warrant further investigation”.
Some 30 per cent of ASX 200 companies use carbon credits to reduce their emissions – almost half specifically note their use of ACCUs, Allan Gray found.
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8 January, 2023
‘Holy grail’ wheat gene discovery could feed our overheated world
This sounds like useful research but tying it to global warming is nonsense. Wheat already grows in a range of climates, some of them quite warm. Varieties have long been in use, for instance, which tolerate well the very hot summers in parts of India. The maximum March temperature across that country is around 31 degrees Celsius on average. India is in fact the world's second-biggest producer of the grain.
It is the plant that changed humanity. Thanks to the cultivation of wheat, Homo sapiens was able to feed itself in ever-increasing numbers, transforming groups of hunter-gatherers struggling to survive in a hostile world into rulers of the planet.
In the process, a species of wild grass that was once confined to a small part of the Middle East now covers vast stretches of the Earth. As the historian Yuval Noah Harari has observed: “In the great plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres without encountering any other plant.”
Wheat now provides 20% of the calories consumed by humans every day, but its production is under threat. Thanks to human-induced global heating, our planet faces a future of increasingly severe heat waves, droughts and wildfires that could devastate harvests in future, triggering widespread famine in their wake.
But the crisis could be averted thanks to remarkable research now being undertaken by researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. They are working on a project to make wheat more resistant to heat and drought. Such efforts have proved to be extremely tricky but are set to be the subject of a new set of trials in a few weeks as part of a project in which varieties of wheat – created, in part, by gene-editing technology – will be planted in field trials in Spain.
The ability of these varieties to withstand the heat of Iberia will determine how well crop scientists will be able to protect future arable farms from the worst vicissitudes of climate change, and so bolster food production for the Earth’s billions, says the John Innes Centre team.
Wheat was not the only botanical agent to fuel the agricultural revolution. Other staples, such as rice and potatoes, played a part. But wheat is generally accorded the lead role in triggering the agricultural revolution that created our modern world of “population explosions and pampered elites”, as Harari puts it in his international bestseller Sapiens.
Two main forms of wheat are grown in farms: pasta wheat and bread wheat. Together they play a crucial role in the diets of around 4.5 billion people, said Professor Graham Moore, a wheat geneticist and director of the John Innes Centre, one of the world’s leading crop research institutes. “Of these, around 2.5 billion in 89 countries are dependent on wheat for their daily food, so you can see how vitally important the crop is to the world,” he added.
The problem that has faced crop scientists, who have been seeking to improve the resilience and productivity of wheat varieties, has been the complexity of wheat genetics, Moore added. “Human beings have a single genome that contains our DNA instructions. But pasta wheat has two different ancestral genomes while bread wheat has three.”
This complexity has had important consequences. In order to control their differing genes and chromosomes, wheat has acquired a stabilising gene that segregates the different chromosomes in its various genomes. This has ensured these forms of wheat have high yields. However, the gene also suppresses any exchange of chromosomes with wild relatives of wheat, frustrating the efforts of geneticists trying to make new varieties with beneficial properties.
“Wild relatives have really useful characteristics – disease resistance, salt tolerance, protection against heat – attributes that you want to add to make wheat more robust and easy to grow in harsh conditions. But you couldn’t do that because this gene stopped these attributes from being assimilated.”
This gene was known as the “holy grail” of wheat geneticists, added Moore. “Wheat – despite its critical importance to feeding the world – has proved to be the most difficult of all the major crops to study because of the complexity and size of its genome. Hence, the importance of the search to find the gene that was the cause of this problem.”
It has taken several decades but scientists at the John Innes Centre have now succeeded in their hunt for their holy grail. They identified the key gene, labelled it Zip4.5B and have created a mutant version of it, one that allows the gene to carry out its main function – to allow wheat chromosomes to pair correctly and maintain yields – but which lacks its ability to block the creation of new variants with attributes from wild grasses.
“A key tool in this work was gene editing, which allowed us to make precise changes in wheat DNA. Without it, we would still be struggling with this. It has made all the difference.”
Jones Innes scientists have since discovered that there are at least 50 different versions of Zip4.5B. “We are now going to test these in different varieties of wheat that we have created,” added Moore.
“These will then be grown in Spain, on land near Cordoba, to see how well they do. The aim will be to identify which varieties will do best at surviving the higher temperatures that our farmers are to experience in coming decades.
“Wheat has played a remarkable role in human history. Hopefully, this work will help it to maintain its importance as a foodstuff for the future.”
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Is global warming behind America’s snowstorms?
Is there any weather condition which cannot be blamed on anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? No, it seems, judging by the reaction in the US liberal press to the snowstorm which has engulfed much of the US over the past few days. According to Bloomberg it is all down to a loopier-than-normal jet stream, “the kind of event that could become more common as climate change accelerates”. A similar claim was made by Eric Mack, a correspondent on Forbes, who wrote this week that the poles are warming disproportionately and that, “studies [he didn’t say which ones] have shown that all this unusual and rapid warming in the north affects the jet stream in new and sometimes weird ways”. This week’s storm, he asserted, would soon come to be seen not as a once-in-a-generation event but as normal winter weather. The New York Times has made a similar claim, as has Britain’s Guardian – the latter of which subtly reversed its recently-acquired habit of using the term ‘global heating’ and went back to good old ‘climate change’ for the occasion.
Is global warming causing the temperature to plunge to minus 40 Celsius? No-one should dismiss something out of hand merely on the grounds that it seems counter-intuitive – the climate could, theoretically, throw up more intense cold weather spells at the same time as observing a general warming trend. It is just that there is compelling evidence to the contrary. For example, the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, published in 2021, cited a number of analyses showing that “cold spells have undergone a reduction in magnitude and intensity in all regions of North America”. In other words, the reality is not counter-intuitive at all. Generally, rising global temperatures have led to a lessening of cold extremes in North America; it is just that this week’s weather was an extreme, random event which occurred in spite of the general climatic trend.
As for the theory that AGW is causing disturbances in the jet stream – a powerful flow of air several miles up in the atmosphere which divides polar air from tropical air – or in the ‘polar vortex’ (a disturbance higher up, in the stratosphere), that was debunked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after the last blast of extreme cold weather to strike the central US in February 2021. It is not easy to establish long-term trends in phenomena which have only been studied since the 1950s, the NOAA pointed out, but even in that short time the polar vortex has trended in entirely opposite directions. During the early-to-mid 1990s, the polar vortex was very strong, which made for a non-loopy jet stream. Come the late 1990s, however, and the polar vortex began to weaken again, giving us a more wandering jet stream. Yet that trend has not been sustained, either. If the polar vortex and jet stream really were being strongly influenced by rising global temperatures you would at least expect a trend to continue year after year as the global temperatures continued to increase.
In other words, this week’s weather in the US is just that: weather. But that will never do when you are trying to tell a morality tale about humans fouling their own nest through their own arrogance and stupidity: every adverse weather event must be blamed.
By the way, the last time the US mid-west saw such low temperatures, in 1977, it was interpreted by some as the sign of a coming ice age. I have a popular book of the time, Earthshock, written by a volcanologist from Imperial College and a geologist from Birkbeck College, claiming that a prolonged freeze like that of 1977 could be exactly what provoked a sudden dive into the next ice age. Now it is apparently a sign that we are all about to fry. There is a third possibility: that the US mid-west has a climate which is prone to occasional blasts of polar conditions. But that doesn’t sound nearly so exciting.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/is-global-warming-behind-americas-snowstorms/
**********************************************************Toyota boss says other industry executives secretly doubt the switch to electric power
Akio Toyoda, president and CEO of the Toyota Motor Corporation, has continued his call for more diversity in future automotive fuels as he promotes a potential role for hydrogen and biofuels.
“Frankly, (electric vehicles) are not the only way to achieve the world's carbon neutrality goals,” said Mr Toyoda.
He said he believes consumers and carmakers also have doubts a total changeover, but are reluctant to speak out.
“That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option,” he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“But they think it's the trend so they can't speak out loudly.”
Mr Toyoda was speaking at the unveiling of a battery-electric HiLux ute in Thailand and has made similar comments recently in the US.
“Personally, I would rather pursue every option, not just one option, such as emission-free synthetic fuels and hydrogen. I still believe hydrogen is as promising a technology for our future as BEV,” said Mr Toyoda.
“Let me correctly explain Toyota’s position. I would like you to think of Toyota as a department store offering every available powertrain.
“People are growing more diverse. There are all kinds of people, from those who already own and use (electric vehicles) to others who live in places with no access to charging facilities.
“Variety is what makes a department store. I think steering customers toward a single product would diminish the store’s value.
“We are serious about pursuing all options, as I hope our products will continue to demonstrate.”
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Complete Renewable energy is impossible
Comment from Australia
The replacement of fossil fuels (and nuclear) by wind and solar is said to be a ‘transition’ implying, like that from sail to steam and horse to motor power, that this is being inexorably pushed by consumers adopting a lower cost technology. In fact, the ‘transition’, wherever it is taking place, is due to government subsidies and regulations. Not one significant unit of wind or solar power generation anywhere in the world has been installed without such assistance.
Moreover, a wind/solar-rich electricity system requires expensive features that are naturally present or available at a trivial cost in systems dominated by coal, gas, or nuclear generation. Among these are ‘system strength’ and frequency control, both of which are automatically present in the ‘synchronous’ spinning machines in coal, gas, and nuclear plants but need to be carefully managed and separately arranged for the ‘asynchronous’ wind and solar facilities.
A solar/wind system also requires considerably more transmission – probably at least four times as much as conventional systems – in order to bring electricity from the inescapably less dense solar and wind facilities. Compared to the current value of the national transmission system of $21 billion, the government has stated that $100 billion (an additional ‘$20 billion direct investment unlocking $58 billion of private co-financing’) will be needed to make a renewable rich national transmission system fit for purpose.
But the greatest cost is how to ensure a system based on variable wind and solar energy can operate to the standards required of a contemporary society. The solution is first, to overbuild the variable facilities in the hope that this will offer a geographic spread to iron-out erratic supplies of sunshine and wind, and secondly to arrange for storage through batteries or pumped hydro facilities like the Snowy 2.
For Australia, a ballpark cost estimate is offered by CSIRO’s Chief Energy Economist Paul Graham, who reckons Australia will need to spend $500 billion to convert the current (coal-based) system to renewables. This is half the cost he estimated five years ago.
$500 billion is twice the value of the current system, (offset by coal and gas fuel savings that amount to perhaps 5 per cent of total costs). Even so, the CSIRO appear to have massively understated the cost.
David Wojick examined the estimated costs of batteries for America. Noting that at present Tesla charges $US650,000 per megawatt hour for the batteries themselves and that a ‘fantastically low estimate’ of future costs offered by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory speculates this may fall to $US143,000 per megawatt hour, the battery costs for the US would be $US150 trillion and $US36 trillion respectively. That is for a $US23 trillion economy.
Batteries have only a ten-year life. Thus, without even counting their progressive deterioration, this means in the US the energy ‘transition’ element of electricity storage alone would cost somewhere between 24 and 60 per cent of GDP per year. On top of this we have the poles and wire costs and the costs of the wind/solar generators themselves.
Such extraordinary estimates should come as no surprise in Australia.
Paul McArdle, head of the highly regarded consultancy WattClarity, showed that even if there was an overbuild resulting in up to 20 per cent of the wind having to be wasted at any one time, with a perfectly planned and operated system 9,000,000 megawatt hours of storage would be needed. This is equivalent to 25 Snowy 2 installations or 70,000 of the original Hornsdale batteries at a price tag of $6.3 trillion or close to three times the Australian GDP. With a ten-year battery life, this would require an impossible annual expenditure on the battery element of supply equivalent to 30 per cent of GDP each year!
This estimate has received corroboration.
ARENA is funding eight batteries costing $2.7 billion and totalling 2,000 megawatts (power output capacity) with 4,200 megawatt hours (energy storage depth). That is just two hours of full output to flatten the batteries. 2,000 megawatts is five per cent of total grid demand in 2030, when AEMO’s forecast maximum demand is 44,000 megawatts.
Most experts believe a seven-day storage depth is the bare minimum to back up a reliable renewables grid. One week of 168 hours and multiplied by maximum demand means 7,392,000 megawatt hours in 2030. Given the announcement’s cost of $2.7 billion per 4,200 megawatt hours of storage, this is $643,000 per megawatt hour. Multiplying this ratio by the total storage required gives an eye-watering cost estimate of $4.7 trillion in 2030 or, with a ten-year battery life, 22 per cent of GDP each year.
Subsidies to wind and solar have resulted in them replacing coal to gain a 20 per cent share of electricity generation. This has already resulted in a trebling of wholesale prices. But the costs of accommodating wind and solar increase exponentially and continuing along this path will cripple the economy.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/batteries-not-included/
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EVs, a new way of waste
American car executives keep insisting that there is no trade-off between saving the planet and having a hell of a good time behind the wheel. “What I find particularly gratifying,” Ford’s executive chair, Bill Ford, said in April as he unveiled his company’s new electric truck, “is not only is this a green F-150, but it’s a better F-150 … You’re actually gaining things that the internal combustion engine doesn’t have.” Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, sounded equally bullish in a recent social-media post: “Once you’ve experienced an [electric vehicle] and all it has to offer—the torque, handling, performance, capability—you’re in.”
The pitch is enticing, but it raises a few questions. Is the electric F-150 Lightning “better” than the conventional F-150 if its added weight and size deepen the country’s road-safety crisis? And how, exactly, are electric-vehicle drivers going to use the extra power that companies are handing them?
Converting the transportation system from fossil fuels to electricity is essential to addressing climate change. But automakers’ focus on large, battery-powered SUVs and trucks reinforces a destructive American desire to drive something bigger, faster, and heavier than everyone else.
In many ways, EVs reflect long-standing weaknesses in the design and regulation of American automobiles. For decades, the car industry has exploited a loophole in federal fuel-economy rules to replace sedans with more profitable SUVs and trucks, which now account for four in five new cars sold in the United States.
Meanwhile, SUVs and trucks have themselves grown more massive; their weight increased by 7 percent and 32 percent, respectively, from 1990 to 2021. The 2023 Ford F-150 with a conventional engine, for instance, is up to 7 inches taller and 800 pounds heavier than its 1991 counterpart. Each purchase of a big truck or SUV pushes other people to buy one, too, in order to avoid being at a disadvantage in a crash or when trying to see over other cars on the highway.
This shift toward ever-larger trucks and SUVs has endangered everyone not inside of one, especially those unprotected by tons of metal. A recent study linked the growing popularity of SUVs in the United States to the surging number of pedestrian deaths, which reached a 40-year high in 2021. A particular problem is that the height of these vehicles expands their blind spots. In a segment this summer, a Washington, D.C., television news channel sat nine children in a line in front of an SUV; the driver could see none of them, because nothing within 16 feet of the front of the vehicle was visible to her.
Few car shoppers seem to care. For decades, Americans have shown little inclination to consider how their vehicle affects the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, or other motorists. (The federal government seems similarly uninterested; the national crash-test-ratings program evaluates only the risk to a car’s occupants.)
As large as gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks are, their electrified versions are even heftier due to the addition of huge batteries. The forthcoming electric Chevrolet Silverado EV, for example, will weigh about 8,000 pounds, 3,000 more than the current gas-powered version. And there will be a lot of these behemoths: A recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that carmakers are rapidly shifting their EV lineups away from sedans and toward SUVs and trucks, just as they did earlier with gas-powered cars.
The danger rises further after accounting for EVs’ unprecedented power. “This sucker is quick!” President Joe Biden exclaimed after taking a Ford F-150 Lightning for a spin last year. He was right: The truck can accelerate from zero to 60 miles an hour in under four seconds, about a second faster than an F-150 running on gasoline.
Car buyers have used zero-to-60 speeds as a proxy for performance ever since the car salesman and automotive journalist Tom McCahill began measuring them after World War II. But the metric is dangerously ill-suited for the faster propulsion of electric powertrains, which are more efficient and contain fewer components than gas engines. The Tesla Plaid Model S, for example, can reach 60 mph in 1.99 seconds, a new record for production cars and far faster than even luxury gas-powered sports cars such as the Porsche 911 (2.8 seconds).
At the risk of stating the obvious, such blistering acceleration serves no practical purpose on a public road, where it can jeopardize everyone’s safety. In Europe, an auto insurer recently linked EVs’ quick pickup speeds to an uptick in crashes. Once again, the most vulnerable street users bear particular risk: A 2018 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that hybrid vehicles, which, like EVs, can accelerate more quickly than gas-powered cars, were 10 percent more likely to injure a pedestrian than their gas-powered equivalents. Superfast acceleration also compromises the efficiency of an electric battery, reducing its range. Nevertheless, car companies are emphasizing acceleration rates in their EV-marketing pitches, such as the Chevrolet Blazer’s “Wide Open Watts Mode.”
As automakers design faster, bigger cars, they are squandering a chance to make EVs safer than their predecessors. Without a gasoline engine under its hood, the Ford F-150 Lightning could have been equipped with a sloping front end that would have reduced danger to others in a crash. Instead, Ford retained the high hood of its F-150, declaring the now vacant space beneath it a “frunk.” That decision was a missed opportunity for roadway safety, but it made sense when viewed through a business lens; few truck buyers are seeking a model that protects those outside their vehicle.
Indeed, carmakers are likely to claim that their EV designs and marketing pitches merely reflect the size and speed that Americans seek when considering their next vehicle. The electrification of America’s vehicle fleet will happen faster, one could argue, the more consumers view EVs as objects of desire, rather than as obligatory concessions to the greater good. But such claims treat car demand as fixed, overlooking ways in which carmakers’ multibillion-dollar advertising budgets shape consumer preferences. Anyway, why should consumer preferences trump the deadly risks posed by unnecessarily fast and heavy EVs?
Although other road users’ safety won’t tilt many EV-purchase decisions, shoppers are more likely to care about another societal impact: climate-change mitigation. Gas-powered cars and trucks have accounted for about a fifth of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, but today’s carmakers are eager to adopt a green halo. Ford has vowed to become carbon neutral (albeit in three decades from now), while GM has made “zero emissions” a centerpiece of its corporate mission.
Because they do not produce tailpipe emissions, electric cars are less polluting than otherwise identical gas-powered models. But EVs still create emissions in other ways, notably from the electricity required to build them and charge their batteries. Such energy needs rise dramatically for the biggest cars: According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the 9,063-pound GMC Hummer EV contributes more emissions per mile than a gas-powered Chevrolet Malibu.
Worse yet, enormous EVs are compounding the global shortage of essential battery minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel. That Hummer EV’s battery weighs as much as a Honda Civic, consuming precious material that could otherwise be used to build several electric-sedan batteries—or a few hundred e-bike batteries. One recent study found that electrifying SUVs could actually increase emissions by restricting the batteries available for smaller electric cars.
That reality is inconvenient for size-obsessed automakers, as well as for certain image-oriented EV buyers, the kind The Onion skewered for believing that “driving one makes up for every bad thing you’ve ever done in your life” (including, presumably, draping your electric charging cord across the sidewalk).
Even modest-size electric cars are not a climate panacea. A 2020 study by University of Toronto scholars found that electrification of automobiles cannot prevent a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 without a concurrent shift toward cleaner travel modes such as public transportation and bicycles. Aware of that need, Norway, a global standout in electric-vehicle adoption, is replacing its EV subsidies with support for people walking and biking, while also considering a car-weight tax to nudge purchasers away from the bulkiest electric cars. A recent article in Nature endorsed such weight-based EV fees.
The United States is not as farsighted. The Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed in August includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 for those buying an electric car with a price tag below $55,000; in an implicit incentive to buy a larger vehicle, eligible SUVs can cost as much as $88,000 and still qualify. The new law offers nothing for buyers of e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, or electric golf carts—all of which produce a fraction of the emissions of an electric car while posing much less danger to road users. Americans require little encouragement to buy an SUV or truck; what the country needs are policies that nudge them toward vehicles that are less dangerous to the planet and to other travelers. Instead of capitalizing on electrification in that way, policy makers are further codifying the supremacy of the biggest, most dangerous automobiles.
Car executives, whose supercharged electric behemoths play to Americans’ worst instincts, are surely grateful. But the rest of us shouldn’t be.
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UK: Cut motorway speed limit to 64mph to drive net zero goals, government told
The Government should consider cutting motorway speed limits to 64mph to reduce transport emissions and dependence on oil imports, MPs have said.
The measure is among many that the Commons environmental audit select committee, in its report out on Thursday about reducing the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels, has said that Westminster should consider.
The report got under way shortly after the war in Ukraine and addressed both the UK’s energy independence and the net zero transition.
It said that solar panels should be installed on new developments and the Government should set an end date for oil and gas licensing.
MPs on the committee criticised a lack of plans by ministers to reduce pollution from transport, which accounts for 23 per cent of Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The committee added that the Government should consult on measures, such as those listed in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 10-point plan to cut oil use, which was drafted in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
The IEA’s plan also included the introduction of car-free Sundays in cities, working from home three days a week and alternating car access to roads depending on licence plate numbers.
“The rapid growth in electric car sales is encouraging, but it will take many years to replace petrol and diesel vehicles,” the report said.
“More must be done to improve the energy efficiency of our transport system and reduce its contribution to climate change in the meantime.”
MPs on the committee also called for a national “war effort” on energy efficiency, including potentially lowering stamp duty for homes that installed energy efficiency measures.
The committee was divided on whether the Government should continue to grant new oil and gas licenses, but acknowledged that doing so was not incompatible with the UK’s goals to reach net zero by 2050.
It said that domestic oil and gas would be necessary to power the economy through the green transition, but called for an end date for new licenses to be set by the Government “well before 2050”.
Writing for The Telegraph, below, Philip Dunne, a Tory MP and the chairman of the environmental audit committee, said: “Decisions need to be made now that will secure our energy supplies, resilient enough so that we are never again so vulnerable to the whims of brutal and autocratic regimes.”
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German 20% coal surge threatens climate goals
A 20% increase in German coal-fired power production last year could threaten the long-term climate goals in the EU’s biggest economy, think tank Agora Energiewende said on Wednesday.
Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions totalled 761m tonnes last year, 5m tonnes short of the 2022 target, as well as the 2020 goal to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels, Agora said.
The country will now have to step up efforts to reach the 2030 and 2040 targets to cut emissions by at least 65% and 88% below 1990 levels, respectively.
Last year, the government permitted the temporary return of around 10 GW of reserve hard coal, lignite and oil-fired capacity to the power market to curb gas usage in the face of sharply reduced supplies from Russia – in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Coal-fired power generation jumped 20% on the year to 60 TWh and lignite output rose 7% to 109 TWh, as the more heavily polluting fuel saw profit margins improve relative to gas, Agora data showed.
Gas-fired output, meanwhile, dropped 16% to 75 TWh, while nuclear production was halved to 33 TWh due to the closure of 4 GW of capacity last year.
The government still intends to phase out coal as a power source by 2030, despite the recent increase in generation.
Renewable buildout “crisis”
Simon Mueller, director at Agora, also warned that Germany “is heading for a massive gap in the expansion of renewables” and that there was a “crisis” in the onshore wind sector, where capacity only rose by 2 GW last year.
Renewable capacity growth had to be tripled from present levels to reach the 2030 target for increasing the share of renewable energy in power demand to 80%.
Nevertheless, total renewable generation in Germany surged to a new annual record high of 248 TWh last year, up 10% from 2021. Yet, this was mainly due to favourable weather conditions rather than policies supporting the buildout of new capacity, Agora said.
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Is Australian pumped-hydro project an impossible dream?
The massive Snowy hydro-electricity "2.0" project is rolling on, but without a chief executive, after the collapse of one of the key builders and with a growing question about what it will deliver.
This has been a season of drama for the controversial project, which is building 27 kilometres of tunnels and seeking to revolutionise Australia's electricity grid.
When Snowy Hydro boss Paul Broad's snap resignation was made public in August, the reason given was delays with the project.
But within days, he said it was a clash with Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
"Issues have arisen obviously between what I think of the world and what Chris Bowen, minister for energy, thinks of the world and, rather than create a drama, I resigned," Mr Broad told the ABC at the time.
"I didn't want to put the company in a position where we were seen to be fighting at every level with whatever the government may or may not want to do."
Just a week later, Webuild reached agreement with the Clough administrators to buy Clough's Australian organisation including offices, brand, credentials, business references, senior management and office personnel, as well as its share of the Snowy 2.0 and Inland Rail contracts, with the related workforce.
Webuild has a backlog of work in Australia worth 8.9 billion Euro ($14 billion) and has completed projects including the airport rail line in Perth.
The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project is a mega project. The first tunnel, completed in October, was a 10-metre-wide, 2.8-kilometre stretch to create access to a cavern 800 metres underground where a new power station would be housed. And it only gets harder from there.
The original scheme produced electricity by buildings dams and releasing the water stored in them to power turbines.
Construction began in 2019 on the so-called "Snowy 2.0" project, which involves a system of "pumped hydro".
Two existing dams will be linked by a 27-kilometre underground tunnel and a new underground power station that will allow water to be pumped and re-used – because it will flow through the turbines twice.
It's due to be finished by 2026. But even without delays, there are problems. One of the biggest dangers for Snowy Hydro 2.0 is that it will be too late to prevent a catastrophic shortfall in energy.
Ageing coal plants are shutting, but many of the closure dates rely on the machinery holding out — and the economics holding up.
Dr Dylan McConnell from the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) at University of New South Wales says there is some good news.
"Pumped hydro projects like Snowy 2.0 are a form of energy storage that provides a useful source of dispatchable generation, useful for balancing the grid," he said.
The reason they provide balance is they can pump and fill their reservoirs when there's abundant energy supply and then provide generation later when supplies are low, such as when the sun goes down or if it's not windy.
But the bad news, he says, is that delays to the project could have a cascading impact on the amount of power in the system.
"The market operator doesn't see a delay to Snowy 2.0 having a material impact on the reliability outlook for New South Wales," Dr McConnell says.
"However, that assessment is also contingent on some significant transmission projects being delivered in a timely manner."
But the clock is ticking. "A key question is how much of the anticipated projects — particularly transmission projects — might be delivered in a timely way," he says.
The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project is set to have a huge impact on the price and reliability of our power.
Beneath the ground, workers are busy digging and building. On the surface, the problems keep mounting.
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5 January, 2023
Siblings Take EV on Trip, End Up Stopping Every 1.5 Hours to Charge - Claim 'Cheaper Than Gas' Is Lie
Despite the liberal elites trying to push electric vehicles on us as the eco-friendly way of the future and as an alternative to gas-powered vehicles, we are once again seeing just how unreliable these cars can be. This is especially true in cold weather.
On Sunday, Business Insider reported on the story of Xaviar Steavenson and his sister Alice Steavenson, who wanted to find out what it was like to drive a Tesla. They rented one and set out on a road trip from Orlando, Florida, to Wichita, Kansas, last month — just as the temperature started rapidly dropping.
That decision would cost them time and money, and that trip would decidedly not be “cheaper” than most internal-combustion alternatives.
Much to their horror, as they headed north and the temperature grew more and more frigid, the battery drained faster and faster — to the point where they reportedly had to stop every 1.5 hours to charge the car.
To add insult to injury, the cost to charge the car ended up being $25 to $30, not much less than the price of gas.
“Just in one day, we stopped six times to charge at that cost,” Xaviar Steavenson told Business Insider.
On top of that, it took between one to two hours for the car to charge, meaning that the sibling couple spent more time stopping and charging their car than they did on the road.
Steavenson told Business Insider that Hertz, the rental website, claimed that charging a Tesla was “always cheaper than gas,” but he found no evidence to support that claim.
This is not the only example of EVs having problems in cold weather. The recent winter storm that raged across much of the United States just before Christmas made the limitations of EV technology visible for all to see.
In Virginia, a radio show host named Domenick Nati found himself stranded on Christmas Eve as his Tesla Model S refused to charge in the frigid weather.
“Tesla S will not charge in the cold. Stranded on Christmas Eve!” Domenick Nati wrote in a Twitter post.
At the same time, recent reports have suggested that the cold weather cut the driving range of an EV by up to 40 percent and doubled the time that it takes for an EV to charge.
One man in Kansas found that the driving range on his EV plunged up to 50 percent in the frigid weather.
And it is not just the cold weather that is causing problems for EV owners. There are numerous stories of EVs stalling in the middle of the road for no apparent reason and of EV owners complaining about the insane amount of time and money it takes to charge EVs, even in normal weather conditions.
It really begs the question: Why are liberal elites so adamant about us ditching our gas-powered cars for EVs?
As The Western Journal has covered several times before, these cars are often super expensive and can be just flat-out unreliable. Gas-powered cars, by contrast, are often much more affordable and usually hold up in adverse conditions.
If you find yourself spending more time on your road trip refueling rather than driving, then clearly the car is not fit for purpose. Teslas really have a long way to go before they become a viable alternative to gas-powered vehicles.
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Environmentalists Lean on RICO Laws To Pressure Oil Companies Over Climate Change
Climate change activists and their foes in the fossil fuel industry are increasingly turning to laws normally used against criminal organizations in their efforts to force their opponents to capitulate on the topic of global warming.
The latest salvo in the legal battle between the two sides comes from Puerto Rico, where a group of communities has sued oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron in federal court alleging that the companies have for “decades” misled their customers about the impact of their carbon-based products on the climate.
Lawyers representing the communities are alleging that the companies violated the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by organizing media campaigns and lobbying against efforts to restrict the use of fossil fuels in the name of combating climate change.
The defendants, according to the complaint, knew that these “material misrepresentations” and “fraudulent concealments” would cause Puerto Rican towns and their citizens to continue buying oil and gas even though doing so would put them at substantial risk from hurricanes such as Maria, which devastated the island in 2017.
“The Defendants understood through their early research, and unique expertise, that they had the capability to prevent or delay violent storms,” the complaint alleges. “Had the Municipalities known that the sale and use of the Defendants’ products would cause the more frequent, hotter, and wetter storms, they would not have accepted the substantial risk caused by the Defendants by purchasing those products and would have appropriately prepared for the ‘hotter and wetter’ storms that pummeled Puerto Rico in 2017.”
The RICO Act, passed by Congress in 1970, gives prosecutors the leeway to connect apparently unrelated crimes or activities into a conspiracy on the part of an organization to racketeer, or engage in dishonest or fraudulent business dealings. The act was initially used to prosecute notorious organized crime clans, but in the years since it has been used against everyone from white collar criminals such as Michael Milken to Major League Baseball and police departments running protection rackets. Cities and states have also leveled RICO charges against the makers of opioids and e-cigarettes in civil suits.
In statements to Reuters, executives at the oil companies dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous and a “distraction” from the challenge of coping with climate change. The Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said legal proceedings such as the case in Puerto Rico “waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change.”
The Puerto Rico case marks the first RICO allegations against the oil companies because of climate change, but not the first time people involved in the debate have used such language. Environmentalists have been on the receiving end of RICO lawsuits by supporters of the fossil fuel industry as well, a trend that when directed at environmental groups as opposed to companies has been criticized as abusive and potentially fraught with First Amendment issues.
Racketeering “is very hard to prove, but if you prove it, it is very devastating,” a New York attorney who has lodged RICO complaints against Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf of corporate clients, Michael Bowe, said. For one thing, he said, damages in such cases are tripled over what the judge or jury decides. “As a practical matter, it gives you more leverage,” he said. “A RICO case creates triple the legal exposure.”
In 2017, Mr. Bowe represented two companies involved in the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline that filed a RICO action against Greenpeace and other environmental groups trying to shut down the project. The complaint alleged that the two companies’ businesses were targeted by “a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims.”
A judge dismissed the case two years later, ruling that defendants Greenpeace, along with other Native American activists and environmental groups protesting the pipeline, were not organized enough to be called a “RICO enterprise,” as the lawsuit alleged. Another case represented by Mr. Bowe, however, survives. In it, a Canadian pulp and paper company, Resolute Forest Products, is suing Greenpeace using the RICO statute for allegedly fabricating charges of misconduct against it in order to raise money.
Mr. Bowe is a staunch defender of using the statute when appropriate. As with any other lawsuit, he cautioned, there are cases that hold up based on the facts, and others that do not — meritorious lawsuits that may warrant the heavy hand, and frivolous ones that may not. “It’s not the cause of action, but whether there is any basis for that cause of action,” Mr. Bowe said.
“If a party alleges real facts that satisfy the legal elements of a RICO claim, there is nothing wrong with bringing those claims regardless of who it is against,” he said. “But the law requires a direct link between the alleged racketeering and your harm.”
Of the recent Puerto Rican claims, he said, “If the plaintiffs claim the alleged misrepresentations by these particular companies about climate change caused the climate change and that climate change caused this particular hurricane, they are a long way off from what the law requires and what they can reasonably expect to prove factually.”
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Biden’s Onshore Wind Goals Will Devastate Idaho’s Magic Valley
A proposed wind energy project on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land pending approval by the Biden administration would devastate southern Idaho’s Magic Valley region.
The Lava Ridge Wind Project, if approved, would comprise 400 turbines across 73,000 acres of BLM lands spanning Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties. Individual turbines could stand as tall as 740 feet. Magic Valley Energy - a subsidiary of the New York-based LS Power–is propping this project up. They claim it’ll generate 1,000 megawatts of power and commence operation as early as 2025. LS Power also has plans for an additional 300 wind turbines near Lava Ridge: the Salmon Falls Wind Project.
But do Magic Valley residents support Lava Ridge as the White House does? The support is hardly there.
I traveled to the region last August for my CFACT “Conservation Nation” video series to interview locals about their opposition to Lava Ridge.
Why does the Biden administration want this particular wind project built? Why the urgency?
This site would help the administration “meet” their goal of supplying “25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy by 2025” and achieve “100% clean electricity by 2035 and a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050.” Unsurprisingly, this boondoggle is expected to be subsidized by renewable tax credits contained in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The Department of Interior will issue its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) pertaining to Lava Ridge on January 13th, 2023. Once live, the public will have 60 days to submit their comments. A final notice of intent to prepare the EIS was initially issued in August 2021.
It claims, “Magic Valley Energy's, LLC (MVE) goal for Lava Ridge is to construct and operate a commercial-scale wind energy facility that reliably and economically produces wind energy for delivery to power markets in the western United States.”
“Renewable wind projects are a critical component of the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to confronting climate change, promoting clean air and water for our current and future generations, creating thousands of good-paying union jobs, and jump starting our country’s transition to a clean energy future,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in the August 2021 press release. “At the Interior Department, we are doing our part to ensure these projects are done thoughtfully and avoid impacts to surrounding communities. The Department is committed to public input and meaningful Tribal consultation to uphold our trust and treaty responsibilities.”
Insistence on phasing out oil and gas for wind energy is unsustainable. Wind is intermittent and not reliable. According to the Department of Energy, wind turbines are noisy and “alter visual aesthetics.” It added, “Wind farms have different impacts on the environment compared to conventional power plants, but similar concerns exist over both the noise produced by the turbine blades and the visual impacts on the landscape.” The agency also says the presence of these behemoth structures results in increased wind turbine-wildlife conflicts.
Therein lies a paradox in so-called renewable energy projects: The environment must be exploited–even destroyed–to achieve net-zero goals.
The majority of Idahoans, regardless of politics, oppose the project on various grounds. Concerns about electricity generation shortcomings, noise pollution, destruction of natural resources, raptor killings, wildlife migration interruptions, and threats to precious natural wonders.
Two public land areas managed by the National Park Service –Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve to the north and Minidoka National Historic Site in the south, would be threatened by Lava Ridge.
For instance, Minidoka–a Japanese internment camp that imprisoned 13,000 people between 1942-1945–is listed as one of 11 endangered places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“We are extremely disturbed by the proposed wind project and its disregard for the sacredness of Minidoka National Historic Site where 13,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were unjustly incarcerated during World War II,” said Robyn Achilles, Executive Director for Friends of Minidoka, in a May 2022 press release. “Minidoka is a memorial to all those who suffered at the site. Survivors and their descendants make emotional pilgrimages to Minidoka where they remember, heal, and share stories to ensure these violations of civil liberties do not happen again. Minidoka is our past and our future.”
Where are the preservationists? Their silence is deafening. And naturally, they reveal themselves to be hypocrites who don’t care about the environment.
If the project moves ahead, critics worry their region would lose its magic. Worse, the energy generated would be shipped out-of-state to power California and Nevada.
Dean Dimond, one of the farmers I interviewed, said there’s much to lose in rural America if projects like Lava Ridge proceed.
“I am afraid no matter what the local BLM does…their bosses - [the] Biden administration - are pushing for it. So I'm a little bit afraid no matter what they do, the Biden administration is going to come in and override it,” Dimond explained.
Lava Ridge Wind Project, as proposed, would be the largest onshore wind operation of its kind built. But it won’t be the last.
IOPScience observed, “Wind and solar, like all energy systems, occupy land, displacing natural systems, agriculture, and human communities.”
Magic Valley residents foresee the lasting damage that would result from this invasive project. They just wish Washington put people before Big Wind payouts.
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Australia: Major investors telling big miner to ‘not go so hard’ on carbon but focus on returns, says chairman
Rio Tinto faces a growing shareholder push to soften its focus on decarbonising its operations in favour of returns, according to its chairman, Dominic Barton.
Mr Barton became the Rio chairman in May, and told a KPMG podcast before Christmas he had already noticed a shift in focus from some of Rio’s institutional shareholders, with even previously strong supporters of the company’s push to cut its carbon emissions shifting their focus to cash returns to shareholders.
Rio accelerated its decarbonisation plans in October 2021, announcing it planned to spend $US7.5bn ($11bn) on renewable energy and other projects to try to halve its scope 1 and 2 emissions by the end of the decade, while maintaining its goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
The company fleshed out those intentions at its annual investor day in November, laying out plans to spend up to an extra $US600m by 2026 to build solar, wind and battery generation to power its Pilbara iron ore operations, on top of a previous $US2.1bn decarbonisation spend in the division, and to buy renewable energy plans for those of its assets connected to the grid.
But Mr Barton told KPMG’s UK chair, Bina Mehta, that major investors were asking how Rio could maintain its shareholder returns in light of that spending, saying even some strong supporters of its decarbonisation plans were asking questions about Rio’s spending priorities.
“Rio Tinto wants to be net zero by 2050, and we’re going to cut our carbon emissions by 50 per cent in 2030. That takes a lot of capital,” he said. “So investors are saying we want you to do that. But we also want the returns.”
Geopolitical uncertainty has thrown a shadow over a broader post-pandemic recovery, and rising inflation has hit major economies across the world. With central banks lifting interest rates to combat inflation, investment returns are likely to be lower in the coming year after a long period of strong stock performances.
Amid the wreckage of technology stocks and poor returns elsewhere on the market, resource companies made up eight of the top 10 performing stocks on the ASX 200 in 2022, on a total return basis, led by coal miners Whitehaven Coal and New Hope Corporation. But with doubt hanging over China’s short-term economic recovery due to the spread of Covid-19, analysts are divided over whether strong commodity pricing will continue into 2023.
“One thing I’m finding interesting – even though I think I’ve been in this role for about five months now, at the beginning it was all ‘That’s great, focus on decarbonising’,” Mr Barton said.
“Now there’s a little more, ‘You know what, maybe you don’t need to go as hard on that one’, and the (shareholder) return side is picking up even from some investors who’ve been talking about being strong proponents of the other side.”
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4 January, 2023
Europe: Thousands of records shattered in historic winter heat
So it's GLOBAL warming, is it? If so, how come that the USA at roughly the same times was experiencing extreme COLD? See the second post below. The extreme weather was clearly not the result of anything global. On average, the global temperature was probably stable. Other explanations for recent weather will have to be sought
As 2022 turned to 2023, an exceptionally strong winter heat dome pounced on much of Europe, producing unprecedented warmth for January.
As temperatures soared 10 to 20 degrees above normal from France to western Russia, thousands of records were broken between Saturday and Monday – many by large margins.
The extreme warm spell followed a record-warm year in many parts of Europe and provided yet another example of how human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extraordinary weather events.
On New Year’s Day, at least seven countries had their warmest January weather on record as temperatures surged to springtime levels: Latvia hit 11.1, Denmark 12.6 , Lithuania 14.6, Belarus 16.4, the Netherlands 16.9, Poland 19.0 and the Czech Republic 19.6.
Those who track worldwide weather records described the warm spell as historic and could hardly believe its scope and magnitude.
Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who tracks global weather extremes, called the event “totally insane” and “absolute madness” in text messages to the Capital Weather Gang. He wrote that some high night temperatures observed were uncommon even in mid-summer.
It’s “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology,” Herrera wrote. “Nothing stands close to this.”
Guillaume Séchet, a broadcast meteorologist in France, agreed, tweeting that Sunday was one of the most incredible days in Europe’s climate history.
“The intensity and extent of warmth in Europe right now is hard to comprehend,” tweeted Scott Duncan, a meteorologist based in London.
In Poland, it was so warm that the January national high-temperature record was broken before sunrise. The town of Glucholazy was 18.7 degrees at 4am, which is warmer than its average low temperature in mid-summer. Temperatures rose further as the day progressed.
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Blizzard claims dozens of lives as freeze grips US
The death toll from a Buffalo-area blizzard rose to 27 in western New York, authorities said on Monday as the region reeled from one of the worst weather-related disasters in its history. Much of the rest of the United States was hit by ferocious winter conditions.
The dead around Buffalo were found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. Some died while shovelling snow. The storm that walloped much of the country is now blamed for at least 48 deaths nationwide, with rescue and recovery efforts continuing Monday.
With many grocery stores in the area closed and driving bans in place, some people pleaded on social media for donations of food and nappies.
The Buffalo police department posted an online plea for the public assistance in search-and-recovery efforts, asking those who “have a snow mobile and are willing to help” to call a special hotline for instructions.
The severity of the storm was notable even for a region well accustomed to harsh winter weather.
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German village to be razed for coal mine
How the mighty are fallen!
Scuffles broke out on Monday outside a village in western Germany that is to be razed to allow the expansion of a coal mine, a plan that is drawing resistance from climate activists.
Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police outside the village of Luetzerath before the situation calmed down and officers pulled back, German news agency dpa reported.
Protesters previously had set up a burning barricade, and one person glued his hand to the access road.
The hamlet is to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine, despite protests from environmentalists who fear millions more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere.
Activists have been living in houses abandoned by former residents.
The Heinsberg county administration has issued an order barring people from Luetzerath and, if they fail to leave, authorizing police to clear the village from January 10 onward. Officials have called for a non-violent end to the activists’ occupation.
In October, the federal and regional governments — both of which include the environmentalist Green party — and energy company RWE agreed to bring forward the exit from coal use in the region by eight years to 2030.
But, amid concerns about Germany's energy security following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the agreement also foresees the life of two power plant units that were supposed to be switched off earlier being extended until at least 2024 and Luetzerath being razed to enable further mining.
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Wilderness is a myth
Environmentalism Can’t Just Be About Protecting “Pristine” Areas. Developing sustainable societies requires us to recognize that humanity is part of nature too
Seeing wilderness as “pristine” or “pure” implies a kind of permanence that never has existed in nature, even when humanity wasn’t in the picture. This illusory permanence only becomes more elusive when human desires enter into the mix. It is precisely this “nature in flux” view that led Meffe et al. (2002) to articulate what they refer to as “a ‘golden rule’ for natural resource management.” According to that rule, “Natural resource management should strive to identify and retain critical types and ranges of natural variation in ecosystems, while satisfying the combined needs of the ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional systems.”
Wilderness designation and other means of protecting relatively undisturbed landscapes are an important part of the policy toolkit for decision-makers seeking to abide by Meffe et al’s “golden rule” of environmental management. However, as William Cronon (1995) points out, “the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. Wilderness,” Cronon continues, “represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world.”
One example of the avoidance of responsibility that Cronon alludes to can be found within the growing urban centers of our planet. When the protection of large often remote landscapes becomes the focal point of our environmental public policy debates, the urban landscape and the lifestyles they enable largely escape scrutiny. It’s impossible to build a city that doesn’t come with an environmental footprint, but we can build/rebuild cities that take lighter steps than has historically been the case.
Writing in the journal Cities and the Environment, Mary L. Cadenasso and Steward T. A. Pickett (2008) state explicitly that “Cities are ecosystems by virtue of having interacting biological and physical complexes. There are organisms in cities, including people, as well as air, soil, water, light, and physical regulators such as temperature and day length.” When this variety of interactions is taken into account rather than dismissed for being too human a setting to be worthy of serious environmental consideration, opportunities to improve human efficiency and enhance habitat for a wide range of species quickly begin to present themselves.
Jessica R. Sushinsky et al (2013) studied the impact of urban development on bird populations in Brisbane, Australia. Sushinsky and her co-authors found that how cities develop and grow can have a profound impact upon birds living in the area. While both densely populated cities with relatively small backyards and less compact sprawling urban areas will negatively impact local bird populations, “compact [dense] development better maintains species assemblages at the city scale, resulting in fewer local extinctions and much smaller reductions in species’ distributions.”
In the third paragraph of The Wilderness Act of 1964, the US Congress defined “wilderness” as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The law went on to state that wilderness is “further defined to mean [an area] retaining its primeval character and influence…”(italics added) These areas, according to the law, were to be of at least 5,000 acres in size. (16 U.S.C. 1131–1136)
It’s a lovely sentiment. The implementation of this idealized vision of nature by U.S. federal land managers and by the U.S. Congress has provided me and many others with vast and incredibly beautiful areas to roam growing up, and still does. But, in retrospect, I see now that William Cronon has a point. This concept of wilderness not only blinded me to the wonders of nature literally taking place within my very own backyard, but devalued those wonders by treating them as corrupted virtually beyond repair.
Later, as I entered adulthood, I watched the wilderness debates consume both the environmental movement and its opponents. The land became a political powder keg fuelling both “sagebrush rebels” demanding greater state and local control over federal land and lawsuits filed by environmental groups to force federal land agencies to set aside areas meeting the Wilderness Act’s criteria until Congress could make the designation official.
These contentious debates have sucked most of the political oxygen from the room in states like Utah. For years this has left little trust or political will remaining that could facilitate NGO and government cooperation on policies like sustainable cities or so-called “smart growth.” To wilderness activists receiving a disproportionate amount of the media coverage and funding, cities were at best necessary evils to be escaped from whenever the chance presented itself. Meanwhile, conservative politicians and rural voters saw environmentalists in general as a group hell-bent on locking up the land upon which many depended for their livelihoods.
But the concept of wilderness needn’t be so problematic. As Cronon (1995) concludes near the end of his essay, “Wilderness gets us into trouble only if we imagine that this experience of wonder and otherness is limited to the remote corners of the planet, or that it somehow depends on pristine landscapes we ourselves do not inhabit. Nothing,” he adds, “ could be more misleading.”
We need large only mildly disturbed areas. We need them not only to protect biodiversity but to nourish our souls now and then. But nature does not meet a single simple definition. Heterogeneity and flux are part of the process. Both landscape and adaptive management strategies require a commitment to the intentional and intelligent incorporation of variation throughout entire regions and around the world.
A human presence, even a large one, need not represent a failure to protect the environment. It can and should be viewed as an opportunity for finding better means of living within nature’s limits. What we’ve come to identify as wilderness is vitally important to our conservation efforts, but we shouldn’t allow the supposedly perfect to become the enemy of the good.
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3 January, 2023
Liberal Media Made Slew Of Dubious Claims About Our Climate last year
The Associated Press took $8 million in donations to fund coverage of ‘climate coverage’ in 2022, with the news cooperative and several other major media publications engaged in dubious claims about climate change, according to a new, exclusive year-end report.
The “Climate Fact Check 2022” report, presented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), stated that “climate alarmists” and members of the media engaged in claims about the relationship between manmade emissions and natural disasters, claims that clashed with “reality and science.”
In February, the Associated Press admitted that they would assign more than 24 journalists across the globe to cover “climate issues” after receiving more than $8 million over three years from various organizations.
The organizations contributing to the “philanthropy-funded news” via a “climate grant” are the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
AP News Vice President Brian Carovillano only accepts money “without strings attached” and asserted that funders have no influence on the stories conducted.
Similarly, in March 2021, high-ranking State Department officials discussed a proposal to sponsor foreign journalists to “have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change,” according to emails obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital.
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told Fox News Digital that the Associate Press has essentially become a “propaganda outfit” for liberal organizations with climate agendas.
“It’s hard to claim it’s news when you’re being paid to report only one side of the climate discourse,” he said.
The report pointed to a recent article from the Associated Press, by reporter Seth Borenstein, called “New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion,” as proof of bias.
The article attributed flooding in Pakistan, Hurricane Ian, droughts in Europe, China and Africa, as well as deadly heat waves across the world to ‘climate change’.
“Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years,” Borenstein wrote.
The Climate Fact Check report questioned whether climate activists and “media mouthpieces” could legitimately attribute disaster damages to ‘climate change’ or if they were merely trying to “surf human tragedy” to advance a political agenda.
The report also highlighted several other climate claims from major media corporations, providing fact-checks for articles written by the Washington Post, New York Times and more.
In August, Times reporter Derrick Bryson Taylor claimed that Britain’s brief heatwaves this summer were worsened by ‘climate change’. A fact-check from the report noted that heatwaves have dramatically declined in duration and frequency in the U.S. over the past 90 years, according to the National Climate Assessment.
Furthermore, the report claimed it was “unlikely” that emissions are increasing heat waves in Britain because hotter temperatures in the U.K. were offset by cooling elsewhere. Additionally, meteorologist Cliff Mass said that while heatwaves may bring temperatures 30 to 40 degrees above the norm, global warming is only in the noise level of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Washington Post in November published a piece by Barry Svrluga with the headline “In this World Cup ski season, climate change is winning.”
The piece claimed that ‘climate change’ had led to shorter winters and made it so warm that only one of eight races was able to be held as of mid-November. A fact-check of the claim found that when the World Cup skiing started in the 1960s, the season began in January. However, now it begins in October.
If the competition began in the winter everything would likely be okay because wintertime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since the 1960s, the report claimed.
Milloy said that such claims have long been a part of the 30 years of “climate hysteria” cultivated by liberal media networks and have little to show for their dire predictions.
“Instead of moving on to something else, they’re doubling down on this, and they’re making themselves look worse at the same time,” he added.
https://principia-scientific.com/liberal-media-made-slew-of-dubious-claims-about-our-climate/
*******************************************British Nuclear plants face shutdown over tax on windfalls
Two nuclear power stations crucial to keeping Britain's lights on risk being closed next year as a result of Jeremy Hunt's windfall tax, their French owner warns today.
EDF, which operates all five of the country’s serving nuclear plants, said the Chancellor's raid on power producers will make it harder to keep the ageing Heysham 1 and Hartlepool stations open as long as hoped.
It would mean the sites close in March 2024, potentially removing the "cushion" of spare capacity used by the National Grid to avoid blackouts and reducing nuclear power generation in Britain to its lowest level since the 1960s.
Mr Hunt’s windfall tax levy on electricity generators, which was announced in the Autumn Statement in November, comes into force today. Conservative MPs have warned that the raid will reduce investment in the UK’s energy market at a time when the country needs dependable energy sources to balance more intermittent wind and solar power.
The two nuclear stations supply more than two gigawatts of electricity to the grid, typically providing enough power for four million homes per year and around four per cent of the power the UK uses on a cold day.
Rachael Glaving, commercial director of generation at EDF UK, which is owned by the French state, said the windfall tax will damage the business case for the facilities at a time when inflation is already pushing up other costs.
She told The Telegraph: “We accept there's definitely a need for a levy of some kind - you've got to break the link between really high gas prices and the impact they have on power prices.
“But of course that's going to factor into the business case of life extension and we'll have to take that [the windfall tax] into consideration. It's not going to make it easier.
“We will review the technical aspects but we also need a business case to support any life extension, so that has to be factored in as well, and we will have to work out what the right balance is between those two things.”
Experts last night warned that closing the two nuclear power stations would mostly wipe out the four-gigawatt spare capacity the National Grid maintains to avoid blackouts on still, overcast days when wind and solar generation is limited.
Kathryn Porter, an energy analyst at consultancy Watt Logic, said: "Going into winter 2024, we will lose all the coal power stations and could also lose two nuclear plants, so we will be losing roughly the same amount of power as we currently have in spare capacity now.
"We will pretty much be replacing it with wind - and that is replacing readily dispatchable generation with intermittent generation.
"So if you have periods of still winter weather where wind output drops, then you could be in a situation where you really struggle to keep the lights on."
The warning comes after ExxonMobil, a US fossil fuels giant, announced it was suing the EU over its decision to impose a windfall tax.
The firm said the tax would impede “multi-billion Euro” investments in European energy supply, as the continent attempts to wean itself off Russian gas.
The levy on electricity generators is expected to raise £14bn by 2028, while the extra raid on oil and gas companies will raise £40bn.
It forces generators to pay 70 per cent tax on electricity sold for more than £75 per megawatt hour, amid claims generation firms were reaping huge profits from high wholesale prices of electricity.
The windfall tax on oil and gas generators will increase from 25 per cent to 35 per cent, imposing an overall tax rate of 75 per cent on profits from UK operations.
EDF's UK business reported a loss of £21m in 2021 as the company's retail energy business faced high gas costs but was unable to recoup them due to Ofgem's cap on household bills.
Tory MPs last night warned that EDF could be the first of many firms to cut investment to the UK following the announcement of the windfall tax, which is set to run until 2028.
Craig Mackinlay, who runs the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Tory MPs, said: “Forecasts that many of us made on the back of windfall taxes that energy companies would look elsewhere to invest are sadly coming true.
“The events of 2022 of an energy crisis created by Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine and the extreme cold weather in the USA should teach us lessons about energy security but it looks like 2023 will be more of the same. We must reverse these damaging policies.”
Bob Seely MP said: “We need to make sure that both major international firms and smaller but still important players in the energy market can invest to generate the energy we need.
“Otherwise, we become more dependent on other countries, and we have now seen how dangerous that has become.”
Two of EDF’s fleet in the UK have already closed this year due to age, making it more difficult for National Grid to cope with power shortages.
Heysham 1 in Lancashire and Hartlepool are meant to close in March 2024 because they are getting old, but EDF is considering a two-year extension to their lifespan to ease the energy crunch.
The move is regarded as feasible following recent safety inspections, although it would depend on regulatory sign-off.
EDF is expected to take a decision on Heysham 1 and Hartlepool within the next two months.
A Treasury spokesman said: "This temporary measure is not designed to penalise electricity generators.
“It is a response to the fact that, as a result of exceptional and unforeseen geopolitical events, some electricity generators are realising extraordinary returns from higher electricity prices.
“These higher prices have imposed substantial costs on households and businesses which is why the government took unprecedented action with £55 billion to directly help people with their energy bills.”
************************************************
U.K. Climate Activists Swear Off Disruptive Protests for 2023
The United Kingdom division of a climate change protest group called Extinction Rebellion says its activists will temporarily stop blocking busy roads, gluing themselves to buildings, and engaging in other acts of civil disobedience because such methods have not achieved their desired effects.
“As we ring in the new year, we make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic,” the group said in a New Year’s Eve website post. “We recognize and celebrate the power of disruption to raise the alarm and believe that constantly evolving tactics is a necessary approach.”
To further its goals of getting politicians, corporations, and the public “to end the fossil fuel era,” the group said it would instead focus on broadening its support with actions such as getting 100,000 people to surround the Houses of Parliament in London on April 21.
“In a time when speaking out and taking action are criminalized, building collective power, strengthening in number and thriving through bridge-building is a radical act,” the website post said. “This year, we prioritize attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore.”
In response to protests by Extinction Rebellion and other direct-action groups, Britain’s Conservative government last year toughened police powers to shut down disruptive protests and increased penalties for obstructing roads, which can now bring a prison sentence.
Even tougher moves were rejected by Parliament, but the government planned to try again to pass a law that would make it a criminal offense to interfere with infrastructure.
In the four years since Extinction Rebellion formed, the group has attracted considerable criticism for climate demonstrations that were designed to be disruptive and often led to mass arrests while succeeding in snarling road and port traffic. Increasingly, American activists have been attempting to duplicate the disruptive efforts of their European counterparts on this side of the Atlantic.
Antics such as gluing themselves to famous paintings and defacing other works of art at galleries across Europe during 2022 drew scorn from the group’s critics. Their successful efforts to block roadways, with deadly consequences in some cases, led to arrests and angry denunciations by members of the public affected by the protests.
In April, British police said six people were arrested after activists climbed onto an oil tanker and blocked four London bridges to protest investments in fossil fuel. Extinction Rebellion said at the time that two former British Olympic athletes, gold medal-winning canoeist Etienne Stott and sailor Laura Baldwin, were among the protesters.
In its Sunday post titled “We Quit,” the U.K. branch of Extinction Rebellion said that while the group has helped bring about “a seismic shift” in the climate conversation, “very little has changed. Emissions continue to rise and our planet is dying at an accelerated rate.”
The group said it thinks a confluence of multiple crises made it the right time to try a new approach. In its announcement about the April protest, it said, “Surrounding the Houses of Parliament day after day in large numbers means we can leave the locks, glue and paint behind.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/u-k-climate-activists-swear-off-disruptive-protests-for-2023
******************************************************Biden Admin Blasted for 'Quietly' Changing Rule on Water on Last Day of the Year
With the apparent goal of protecting American wetlands, the Biden administration has revised the legal definition of the term “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, bringing the ire of many congressional Republicans.
This move by Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency comes while an important case regarding the EPA is being heard by the Supreme Court.
According to the New York Times, the revised definition reverts to language from before 2015, when the Obama administration made big changes that led to a multitude of legal challenges.
The new EPA rule clarifies what bodies of water are subject to federal jurisdiction and what wetlands are excluded from federal regulation, but critics see it as a federal power grab that gives the EPA far too much discretion.
As reported by CNBC, the rule also revokes past changes made by President Trump to lessen the EPA’s regulating ability.
Members of the Congressional Western Caucus released a statement condemning the EPA’s last-minute rule change, arguing that it gives the EPA far too much discretion and power. “This rule is yet another bureaucratic attack on rural America,” said Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse of Washington state.
Of note, the Congressional Western Caucus lamented the timing of the move, as it was “quietly released on the last business day of the year before a major holiday.”
“Western Caucus Members and the rural communities we represent have consistently called on the Administration to provide regulatory certainty for farmers, ranchers, small businesses, and landowners – most recently, requesting that the Administration not move forward with rulemaking until the Supreme Court has ruled on Sackett v. EPA.”
Vice Chair Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa stated, “The Obama WOTUS rule drastically expanded the jurisdiction over bodies of water like streams and ponds leaving large swaths of Iowa land in the hands of the federal government…I am extremely disappointed in the Biden Administration’s decision to finalize a similar version of this failed rule which will have terrible consequences, for our farmers, ranchers, and landowners in Iowa.”
“Today’s announcement by the Biden Administration on their new rule for Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) is disappointing. This rule is both poor policy and badly timed,” said David Rouzer of North Carolina.
“It is another example of this Administration’s determined adherence to the demands of environmentalists at the expense of hard-working Americans.”
EPA assistant administrator Radhika Fox explained the rationale for these changes in a Times interview. “I think we have found a middle ground that creates as much clarity as possible,” she said. “I am hopeful that this is the one that will stand the test of time.”
By simplifying the definition to its pre-Obama status, it would lessen the legal conflicts over what waterways are federally protected by the Clean Water Act according to the EPA’s reasoning. The Obama-era changes were lambasted by critics as overly-restrictive and hazardous to both farmers and businesses.
President Donald Trump repealed these changes and instituted more farmer-friendly reforms, raising the ire of environmentalists and causing a cascade of legal battles.
This move by the Biden EPA is being seen by many as a preemptive measure due to a case being heard by the Supreme Court; Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, mentioned by Congressman Newhouse in his statement.
The plaintiffs, Michael, and Chantell Sackett attempted to build a home in the panhandle of Idaho, only to be stopped by the EPA, who said that they were building on a federally protected wetland.
The Sackett’s lawyer, Damien Schiff, is not concerned about the EPA’s new rule affecting the case. “It really is just a stopgap measure,” he said.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Sacketts, it could greatly hinder the federal government’s ability to regulate wetlands across the country.
“Why does every Democrat administration need to make a rule giving the federal government more power over farming and private property?” asked Doug LaMalfa of California.
“The federal government doesn’t need to regulate puddles, ditches, seasonal creeks, or culverts. All this rule does it make it more difficult to grow food or build anything.”
While the EPA has assured critics that it is not abusing its power, the new rule put in place on the last workday of the year may give them greater ability to regulate property, and the sneaky way the rule was implemented has raised red flags.
Until the Supreme Court makes its decision on the Sackett matter, these changes are likely to stay, at least as a stopgap.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/biden-admin-blasted-quietly-changing-rule-water-last-day-year
***************************************2 January, 2023
European green energy fiasco is a terrifying warning for US this winter
Europe’s climate-consciousness is hardly paying off for European families who face startling energy blackouts this winter amid a dangerous energy crisis. The energy shortage is largely due to an over reliance on solar and wind generated power made worse by Europe’s 2015 Paris Climate Accord agreement, which mandated the closing of coal-fired power plants and replacing them with less reliable wind and solar power alternatives.
There is no doubt that unpredictable energy sources such as these cause unnecessary suffering, financial strain and even illness among the most vulnerable. Americans should take heed from Europe’s misguided energy strategy and misplaced reliance on wind and solar power, or else watch many regions of the United States endure lengthy power shortages.
As the colder months roll in, Europe could soon face temporary cuts in cell phone and internet service, school closures from a lack of lighting and heating and even traffic jams from underpowered traffic lights. In Germany, a country heavily dependent on Russian gas due to its shuttered nuclear power plants, candle sales have skyrocketed in anticipation of power blackouts. In fact, electric car owners in Finland are being told not to heat their vehicles on frigid mornings to avoid straining the electrical grid.
In the United Kingdom, energy companies have made a game of saving energy during peak usage times by bribing participants to sit in the dark in exchange for prizes and monetary savings. The message from the UK is clear: you might suffer this winter, but you will suffer with a savings and a smile. The truth is that alternative energy sources proposed by Europe are far from a smart investment for families suffering from low energy production.
When it comes to relying on wind power, sometimes the wind 3just doesn’t blow. Europe experienced this phenomenon in 2021 when a drastic reduction in wind caused a decrease in energy generation by wind turbines. Just recently, wind power production in the UK fell from 28% of overall energy production to just 3%.
Due to a lack of wind power, the UK’s reliance on coal for energy outperformed wind and solar even though the country has nearly banned its coal production entirely. The reliability of coal is so obvious that the nation is beginning to reinvest in coal mines to keep the plants open for business. Still, it’s doubtful such reinvestment will spur an uptick in reliable energy in time to protect its citizens from frigid winter temperatures.
Solar energy, on the other hand, has proven to be just as unpredictable in its output, despite Europe’s aggressive commitment to the source. Since Russia cut gas supplies after Europe’s sanctions over the war in Ukraine, there has been a sharp increase in demand for natural gas, forcing prices to rise higher and higher as a result. But this is a bad omen for elderly, lower-income Europeans ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of supply chain issues.
Ordinarily, Europe sees an increase in winter deaths but over 100,000 Europeans could die from high energy prices this winter, according to a study by The Economist magazine. If each country experiences its coldest winter since 2000, the death toll could rise to 185,000. But even if the temperatures remain at usual levels, 147,000 more people could die from cold-related illnesses than if the electricity costs stayed at 2015-2019 averages.
In the United States, European-style energy policies likewise cause tragic consequences with little benefit to Americans. Due to the Biden administration’s inflationary policies, U.S. electricity prices have more than doubled. Oil and natural gas prices have done the same. Hundreds of people in Texas died in February 2021 after frozen wind turbines triggered blackouts. Meanwhile, the administration plans to replace fossil fuel power with wind and solar by wrapping up $369 billion in climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act.
If energy policymakers don’t stop soon, they risk turning the United States into a European "green" energy nightmare. That’s the last thing Americans want or deserve. Congressional leaders on both sides of the political aisle should take heed of the clear European warning signs before it’s too late and American citizens are left in the dark.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/european-green-energy-fiasco-is-terrifying-warning-us-this-winter ?
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NY: Brace yourself for mountains of pain and misery under Gov. Hochul’s zero-emissions fantasy plan
With the start of the new year, New Yorkers are set to have their worlds turned upside down — and all for a fanciful green-dream plan that comes with sky-high costs and mountains of other pain yet is almost certain to fail, and won’t even do much good if successful.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers triggered the nightmare back in 2019 with their delusional Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, setting wholly unrealistic “mandatory” milestones to force the state off fossil-fuel energy and dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Gov. Kathy Hochul eagerly picked up the ball, and in December, a panel stacked with rubber-stampers pushed through a plan they preposterously claim will enable the state to meet those goals. Hochul’s agencies will now spit out specific rules and regulations based on the plan.
It’s pure delusion. Consider: By 2030, just seven years from now, the law requires a 40% cut in emissions over 1990 levels, and 85% by 2050. Yet as of 2019, emissions had dropped only 7% despite years of effort.
The law also requires a shift to renewable energy for electricity, with 70% online by 2030 and 100% just a decade later. Yet that will mean ramping up juice for wind- and solar-energy resources several times over, a herculean (and expensive) undertaking.
(And too bad for communities that don’t want towering windmills or massive solar-panel farms in their backyards.)
In total, the state will need as much as 124 gigawatts of power by 2040, per the New York State Independent System Operator, which oversees the electricity market — though it warns “even that might not be sufficient.” Which means tripling the state’s current generating power by adding 83 GWs in new capacity, plus making up for plants that close, all in just 18 years. For context, the state built just 12.9 GWs over the past 23 years.
The shift to wind and solar also means other new zero-emissions power sources will be needed for when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun won’t shine. Yet get this: There are no such commercial sources available at the moment. The plan itself admits a projected shortfall in electric supplies “will require identifying and developing solutions for dispatchable technologies.” Imagine planning the state’s energy future on a hope that some new technology will be discovered.
No wonder critics doubt the state can meet even its 2030 goals, let alone those beyond. Gavin Donohue, who heads the Independent Power Producers of New York, says it’ll take pure “magic” to make the plan work. And if it fails, and supplies run short, New York faces crippling blackouts, which could cost lives and property damage, as Empire Center energy expert James Hanley notes. That could cascade even to areas outside the state.
Meanwhile, all New Yorkers will personally have to make big-time sacrifices — and not just because of the skyrocketing energy bills they’ll face. As the plan states bluntly: “Every sector [of the economy] will see significant transformation over the next decade and beyond.”
Prefer gas-powered cars to zero-emission ones? Forget about buying one in New York after 2035. Indeed, in just seven years, the plan projects 3 million electric vehicles on New York’s roads.
It also wants New Yorkers to switch to heat pumps, with up to 2 million to be installed by 2030; buildings will have to phase out fossil-fuel sources for heating. Manufacturers will also need to shift to new technologies, with steep costs passed to the public.
And that’s just the start: As Hanley put it, the plan dictates “what types of consumer products New Yorkers will be able to buy . . . how much workers in the green economy will be paid” — those who work on renewable-energy projects get a union-rate premium — “how quickly reliable sources of electricity will shut down and what types of businesses will be bribed to set up shop in the state.”
And if, by some miracle, the plan does work, what do New Yorkers get for all that pain and expense? A reduction in global emissions by the state’s share: all of 0.4% — though, as Hanley also points out, that benefit will be enjoyed by the entire world, not just New Yorkers.
In the meantime, nations like China and India will be boosting emissions, wiping out any gains by New York. Greenies in the state will feel great about their contributions, though they’ll do virtually nothing to tame rising temps.
It’s absolute madness — putting New Yorkers through a risky, painful exercise with virtually nothing to be gained. And here’s the kicker: The entire justification is based on the myth that humans face catastrophe unless warming is slowed.
Yes, temperatures are rising. But as Bjorn Lomborg observes, citing UN figures, unchecked climate change means the average person in 2100 will be “only” 434% better off, instead 450% without climate change. “That is not a disaster,” he quips.
Hochul’s push to go through with this folly is certain to spell pain and misery for the state. The only way out is for New Yorkers to convince her and lawmakers to ditch the plan and start from scratch.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/31/brace-yourself-for-misery-under-hochuls-zero-emissions-fantasy-plan/
**********************************************************Heat kills. Cold kills more
by Jeff Jacoby
IF ANY CITY in America knows how to handle itself in snow and freezing weather it is Buffalo, N.Y., which is notorious for its brutal winters and massive, lake-effect blizzards. Yet the city took a blow to the solar plexus from the Christmas weekend storm that struck much of the United States. Dozens of people were killed in the Buffalo area — at least 38 so far, with more deaths expected to be uncovered as National Guard teams and emergency crews go door-to-door to check on residents and search for victims. And while Buffalo bore the brunt of the blizzard, there were dozens of additional fatalities across the country.
Some of those who died were caught outdoors and froze to death. Several had heart attacks while shoveling snow. Some died in homes that had no heat. Others faced medical emergencies that turned lethal when impassable roads kept ambulances from reaching them. The circumstances varied, but the underlying killer was the cold winter weather.
And deaths from cold, even if many people don't realize it, are far more numerous than deaths from heat.
"Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has consistently shown that excessive cold presents a greater threat to life than excessive heat," reported The Washington Post in 2016. During one five-year period analyzed by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, about 31 percent of weather-related deaths in the United States were attributed to "excessive natural heat, heat stroke, [or] sun stroke" but more than twice as many — 63 percent — were attributed to exposure to "excessive natural cold [or] hypothermia."
What is true for the United States — hypothermia ends more lives than hyperthermia — is no less true worldwide. According to one study published last year in The Lancet, the British medical journal, cold weather killed more people than hot weather "in all countries for which data were available." In South Africa, for example, there were 453 deaths from excessive heat in 2019 vs. 8,372 deaths from excessive cold. In New Zealand, there were just two heat-connected deaths but 1,191 deaths related to cold. The number of heat deaths in China was an appalling 46,224. But that amounted to only one-tenth of China's death toll from cold: 455,735.
Deaths caused by blizzards and cold snaps generally draw less attention because they are less sudden, suggests the Danish scholar Bjorn Lomborg, who notes that too much heat is apt to kill within a few days, whereas cold is more likely to kill over weeks. The physiological processes that lead to death from heat and cold are not mirror images of each other. During brutal heat waves, which have grown more frequent as the global climate shifts, people die when their body temperature gets too high, triggering a quick collapse of the internal regulating system that keeps heart and brain functional. Death from cold is a slower process. During cold weather, the body restricts blood flow to the skin, boosting blood pressure, steadily lowering resistance to disease, and inviting respiratory infection.
There is a reason why far more people prefer to live in warmer places than colder ones.
Doubtless climate change will affect these patterns to some extent. As the planet warms, heat deaths are likely to increase. But that cloud has a significant silver lining: Deaths from cold — a much greater threat to human life — will decrease.
There is a temptation in many quarters these days to treat climate change as a morality tale of good against evil. But the evidence doesn't fit such a simplistic pattern. If global warming continues as expected, weather during the summer months will become hotter and more humid, while winter weather will gradually grow less frigid and dry. On balance, and even considering other effects of climate change, that suggests fatalities from temperature extremes will fall.
Fans of "The Twilight Zone" may remember a 1961 episode set in New York City amid seemingly unstoppable worldwide warming. The Earth's orbit has shifted somehow, and the planet is moving inexorably toward the sun. The story centers on several desperate residents struggling to survive the murderous heat. As the temperature climbs, social order crumbles. Finally Norma, the main character, screams and passes out. Then comes the Rod Serling twist: Norma wakes up and it's snowing outside. She had been having a nightmare. The Earth isn't plunging toward the sun — it is hurtling away from it. The threat to humankind isn't remorseless heat, but a deathly deep freeze. Fade to credits.
In real life, climate doesn't operate like a "Twilight Zone" episode. Our world isn't ending in fire or in ice. Changes in global temperatures will bring changes in the number of weather-related deaths, but we can assume that the total of those deaths will be lower. After all, over the past 50 years, the number of deaths tied to weather and climate disasters has dropped by two-thirds. There is no reason they can't go lower still.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26652/heat-kills-cold-kills-more
*********************************************************How Australian eco warriors fuel hypocrisy
If the radical parties pushing climate alarmism believed in their own messaging, they would lead by example, not by marketing novelty merchandise destined for landfills, shipped from Bangladeshi factories to Port Botany on polluting mega-carriers.
However, Climate 200 and the Greens were flogging novelty trinkets, such as shirts and water bottles, hoping recipients would parade them at their local gym to show how enlightened they are.
All the while, the Teals were bringing in a Bill to rush changes in Australian fuel standards which would see the end of cheap E10 as we know it, for highly refined European-standard fuel, capable of working only in hi-tech engines and which relies on a chemical so foul that it is illegal on our shores.
Climate 200’s North Sydney MP Kylea Tinks’ fuel Bill proposes keeping Australian standards in lock-step with Europe’s madness in perpetuity.
What does it matter to her if people can barely afford the rising living costs, let alone new cars with engines fitted with technology to use European-standard fuel by 2024 and the additional cost of refining imported crude oil to service them?
She doesn’t have to pay for fuel or her car — the taxpayer covers it for her.
The Bill wants to copy Europe. The problem is that European fuel uses a chemical, MTBE, which is banned in Australia. MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) may reduce pollution emissions in fuel, but it is highly pollutant in water, fouling it so it is unpalatable.
You would think so-called environmentalists from the second-driest continent on Earth after Antarctica would be across that.
Tink’s Bill claims there would be no financial impact, but every driver who doesn’t own an engine that can cope with European-standard fuel would need a new car to use it – and manufacturers still make cars that don’t. Flogging ill-considered proposals stands to drive people further into poverty and fails to address the big emitters.
Shipping emits three times as much as our entire country. So why are Australians who are just trying to get to school, the doctors and shops the focus for Climate 200?
These enormous ships are already taking Greens and, presumably, Climate 200 merch, along with 99 per cent of our trade, to Australia, creating three times the emissions our entire country does.
Instead of telling people to buy new cars, why not push for enormous cargo ships to adopt nuclear instead of heavy fuel oil? Nuclear on ocean vessels is not new. It’s already on submarines and naval ships.
Tink’s Bill stands to kick a massive own goal, forcing pensioners and families into unaffordable debt to take on a Climate 200-approved car.
The reality of this policy will be that people hold on to their old second-hand vehicles for longer because a new Mercedes is slightly out of their reach.
The coming safeguard mechanism will put more pressure on our last two oil refineries. If they shut down, we will rely entirely on imported fuel.
If our trade routes were shut down, our entire fleet would be zero-emission because none of them would be able to go anywhere.
Why not focus on expanding our Australian-made biofuel industry instead of vehicles that can only run on refined crude oil imported from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and shipped through waters with an expanding Chinese military presence?
If you want to have any conversation about fuel, we should be brutally honest about how exposed we are.
We cannot only see this issue through the prism of European cleanliness when we have our own homegrown opportunities, such as the biofuels industry — worth just 1.1 per cent of our national pool but worth $3.5 billion to the US and booming in South American nations.
Is total reliance on imports where you want to be? Europe is paying the price for outsourcing its energy sources to other countries.
We could have less international dependence if we grew our biofuel industry – which is recyclable and renewable.
You would think the Climate 200-funded independents who campaigned on reducing emissions would want to actually reduce emissions.
Yet for Climate 200, their “happy holidays” message centred on urging its donors to purchase merch in the form of gift cards to spend on “last-minute Teal coloured gifts”, including water bottles, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia that didn’t grow on trees.
This is the disconnect between Teals, who campaign against fossil fuel use, mining and exploration, yet use fossil fuels to manufacture and ship merchandise to foster the consumerist need to acquire more material possessions.
Teal voters will again fall prey to a marketing machine — and not even an original one. Their key shirt slogan, “A woman’s place is in the House”, takes directly from an Australian Greens Party shirt with the same etching of Parliament House with: “A woman’s place is in the House. And the Senate. And the Cabinet.”
Funny, they don’t think Senator Jacinta Price’s place is in the House.
Why is Climate 200 merchandise unnecessary waste serving no real purpose but to temporarily satisfy a desire for novelty from a community which wishes to be seen as environmental warriors while contributing to the ecological degradation they profess to rail against?
The Greens’ merch bearing slogans such as “This is a Climate Emergency” and “Big Green Power” are made in a part of Bangladesh powered by heavy fuel oil and doubling its coal-fired power stations to feed our desire for cheap clothes.
It is then shipped on a cargo carrier with more heavy fuel oil.
If you want to campaign for the environment, get Queensland to lift its uranium mining ban, refit massive transport ships with their own nuclear propulsion, and address the need for an Australian-made alternative to crude oil.
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1 January, 2023
Scientists reveal Greenland lush ecosystem 10-17°Celsius warmer than today
It shows how trivial is the warming of today. Natural fluctutions can be much larger than any recent changes
Two million-year-old DNA samples revealed the now largely lifeless polar region was once home to rich plant and animal life — including elephant-like mammals known as mastodons, reindeer, hares, lemmings, geese, birch trees and poplars -- when temperatures were between 10 to 17 degrees Celsius warmer than Greenland is today.
The mix of temperate and Arctic trees and animals suggested a previously unknown type of ecosystem that has no modern equivalent — one that could act as a genetic road map for how different species might adapt to a warmer climate, the researchers found.
The finding is the work of scientists in Denmark who were able to detect and retrieve environmental DNA — genetic material shed into the environment by all living organisms — in tiny amounts of sediment taken from the København Formation, in the mouth of a fjord in the Arctic Ocean in Greenland’s northernmost point, during a 2006 expedition. (Greenland is an autonomous country within Denmark.)
They then compared the DNA fragments with existing libraries of DNA collected from both extinct and living animals, plants and microorganisms. The genetic material revealed dozens of other plants and creatures that had not been previously detected at the site based on what’s known from fossils and pollen records.
“The first thing that blew our mind when we’re looking at this data is obviously this mastodon and the presence of it that far north, which is quite far north of what we knew as its natural range,” said study coauthor Mikkel Pedersen, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, at a news conference.
It smashes the previous record for the world’s oldest DNA, set by research published last year on genetic material extracted from the tooth of a mammoth that roamed the Siberian Steppe more than a million years ago, as well as the previous record for DNA from sediment.
Lush ecosystem
While DNA from animal bones or teeth can shed light on an individual species, environmental DNA enabled scientists to build a picture of a whole ecosystem, said professor Eske Willerslev, a fellow of St John’s College at the University of Cambridge and director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre. In this case, the ecological community researchers reconstructed existed when temperatures would have between 10 to 17 degrees Celsius warmer than Greenland is today.
“Only a few plant and animals fossils have been found in the region. It was super exciting when we recovered the DNA (to see) that very, very different ecosystem. People had known from macrofossils that there had been trees, some kind of forest up there, but the DNA allowed us to identify many more taxa (types of living organisms),” said Willerslev, who led the research.
Researchers were surprised to find that cedars similar to those found in British Columbia today would have once grown in the Arctic alongside species like larch, which now grow in the northernmost reaches of the planet. They found no DNA from carnivores but believe predators — such as bears, wolves or even saber-toothed tigers — must have been present in the ecosystem.
Love Dalen, a professor at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University, who worked on the mammoth tooth DNA research but wasn’t involved in this study, said the groundbreaking finding really “pushed the envelope” for the field of ancient DNA.
“This is a truly amazing paper!” he said via email. “It can tell us about the composition of ecosystems at different points in time, which is really important to understand how past changes in climate affected species-level biodiversity. This is something that animal DNA cannot do.”
“Also, the findings that several temperate species (such as relatives of spruce and mastodon) lived at such high latitudes are exceptionally interesting,” he added.
Genetic road map for climate change?
Willerslev said the 16-year study was the longest project of its kind he and most of his team of researchers had ever been involved in.
Extracting the fragments of genetic code from the sediment took a great deal of scientific detective work and several painstaking attempts — after the team established for the first time that DNA was hidden in clay and quartz in the sediment and could be detached from it. The fact that the DNA had binded itself to mineral surfaces was likely why it survived for so long, the researchers said.
“We revisited these samples and we failed and we failed. They got the name in the lab the ‘curse of the København Formation,’” Willerslev said.
Further study of environmental DNA from this time period could help scientists understand how various organisms might adapt to climate change.
“It’s a climate that we expect to face on Earth due to global warming and it gives us some idea of how nature will respond to increasing temperatures,” he explained.
“If we manage to read this road map correctly, it really contains the key to how organisms can (adapt) and how can we help organisms adapt to a very fast changing climate.”
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The EPA’s Latest Regulation Could Devastate The Trucking Industry
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule Tuesday that will impose stricter nitrogen dioxide emissions standards on new heavy-duty trucks, a move that will substantially hike operating costs for truckers, experts and industry representatives told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The EPA’s rule, which is more than 80% stricter than the previous regulation, will require large trucks, delivery vans and buses manufactured after 2027 to cut nitrogen dioxide emissions by nearly 50% by 2045, according to an agency press release. The agency’s rule is intended to push truckers to phase out diesel-powered vehicles and use electric vehicles (EV) instead; however, the compliance costs associated with such rules could suffocate an industry that is not ready to transition to EVs, experts told the DCNF. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans Urge EPA To End ‘Completely Arbitrary’ Regulations On Small Fuel Refiners)
“It’s an overreach that is indicative of this administration’s tendency to set aside balance to achieve the goals of activists that they are politically aligned with,” Mandy Gunasekara, a senior policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Forum and former EPA Chief of Staff during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “It’s going to squeeze out the mid-sized and smaller trucking companies because they’re not going to be able to afford to purchase the new, extremely expensive equipment required to continue to do what they do.”
The new rules are intended to phase out older trucks that emit more nitrogen dioxide and will push drivers to purchase electric trucks or newer models of diesel trucks that do not produce as much nitrogen dioxide when they burn fuel, according to the EPA.
“If small business truckers can’t afford the new, compliant trucks, they’re going to stay with older, less efficient trucks or leave the industry entirely,” Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer told trade publication Freight Waves. “Once again, EPA has largely ignored the warnings and concerns raised by truckers in this latest rule.”
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said that the rule would protect “historically overburdened communities,” that are disproportionately affected by trucking emissions as truck freight routes are often located near “vulnerable populations,” according to the press release. Nitrogen dioxide gas can exacerbate respiratory diseases like asthma and form acid rain in the atmosphere which can damage lakes and forests, according to the EPA.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan gives remarks at an event announcing new national clean air standards for heavy-duty trucks near the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters on December 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“The EPA is happy to go easy on big trucking since they support regulations that will harm their smaller competitors far more,” Steve Milloy, Energy and Environmental Legal Institute senior legal fellow and former Trump administration EPA transition team member, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Regan announced the new rule in front of an electric garbage truck produced by Mack Trucks and following his remarks, Mack spokesman John Mies stated that his company supports the administration’s zero emissions targets for trucks and is working to cut “dangerous” emissions produced by diesel trucks, according to CNN.
“Companies have taken the initiative to electrify a certain percentage of their fleet by a certain year and have made plans to build the necessary infrastructure, but they are then told that there isn’t enough power to achieve what they’re seeking,” Texas Trucking Association President John Esparza told the DCNF. “The costs associated with this are also a concern because these are costs that not only the industry will bear … prices will go up for everybody.”
The EPA’s final rule is the first step in its “Clean Trucks Plan” which seeks to heavily regulate trucks’ emissions to push drivers to adopt electric trucks.
Gunesakara echoed Esparza’s comments and said that such targets were a “technological fantasy” that could cost truckers their jobs due to the high price of electric trucks. Gunesakara added that the EPA’s rules would force truck drivers to drive older, more polluting and less efficient vehicles for longer as diesel trucks will be rapidly phased out long before EVs can become a more viable alternative.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/12/25/epas-regulation-imperil-trucking-industry/
************************************************************An Environmentalist's Tesla Dilemma Is One You'd Expect From a Liberal
You knew this was an issue when Elon Musk bought Twitter. Liberals seethed with rage at the man, a perceived threat to liberal America, but happily bought his products for their green energy value. Musk is the creator of the Tesla, an electric vehicle that doesn’t look ugly. Yet, that was before he was branded a neo-Nazi by the Left after he took over the social media company, promising to make it a bastion of free speech. Now, all these liberals are probably keeping their Teslas hidden in the garage, afraid that if they’re seen by their woke friends driving such a car, they’d be pegged as supporters of a man leftists find worse than Trump. Okay, the last part is an exaggeration, but Musk has driven a healthy number of progressives toward insanity.
So, meet John Blumenthal, a former magazine editor who apparently regrets his Tesla purchase due to Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. Blumenthal admits he’s a hypocrite: while supporting carbon-neutral initiatives, he continued to hold onto his “sentimental” gas-guzzling car. Pressured by his friends to ditch the vehicle, he bought a Tesla but now is “embarrassed” to drive it. The best part is that while a car designed for the green energy-minded, Blumenthal says if Musk doesn’t change his view to his liking, it would be as “untenable” as his old gas guzzler:
A few years ago, I bought a used Tesla, not because I’m a car nut but because I had been a hypocrite. For years, I had been outspoken about the dangers of carbon emissions. Yet at the same time, I was driving an old gas-powered heap that got about 25 miles per gallon, and that sounded like a rocket launch every time I turned on the ignition.
The car was impractical, but it had sentimental value. My environmental activist friends were not impressed by my assiduous urban composting, LED bulb installations and energy-saving appliances. I needed to do more to diminish my carbon footprint. The icebergs were melting, my friends said, and at least one polar bear was wandering around homeless and hungry because of me.
[…]
Because of the recent revelation of Elon Musk’s political views — all of which I abhor — I’m starting to worry about what sort of political statement the car is making. Will people see me as a symbol of right-wing environmentalism, a living oxymoron?
When I bought the car, I had no real opinion on Musk’s somewhat clouded political beliefs. Now that Musk has apparently swung to the far right — banning journalists from Twitter while reinstating neo-Nazis — I’m horrified to be associated with his brand whenever I drive anywhere.
[…]
It’s a beautifully designed car with no carbon emission, and initially, I was proud of owning it and being seen driving a vehicle that displayed my concern for the environment. But I’m a liberal, and if Musk’s politics don’t change radically for the better, driving a Tesla will become, at least for me, as hypocritical and untenable as driving a gas guzzler was.
Misery is a hallmark characteristic of liberal America; this isn’t new. But it’s always amazing how they find new ways to make themselves mad. It’s a tiring existence.
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Save the planet – ditch environmentalism
Comment from Australia
Since becoming custodians of the environment, left-wing politicians, bureaucracies, and businesses have done little except monetise the rapid expansion of renewable energy which, ironically, is one of the most wasteful and destructive technologies in modern history.
Far from ‘saving the planet’, these environmentalists have made their intentions perfectly clear – and we should listen to them.
‘This is about system change!’ read the banners held aloft by the likes of spiritual leader Greta Thunberg and her pre-pubescent minions. She is the moral guide for a generation of children, teaching them to stand in the street screeching at the sky while the clunk of public money hits the pockets of the elite.
In Climate Book, Greta Thunberg describes the capitalist system as: ‘defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and genocide by the so-called Global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.’
Who is going to tell her that capitalism has been the default economic position underpinning human trade since we wandered out of the caves? Would you trust a person who believes the West invented capitalism with the future of human civilisation?
This is a religion to absolve the guilty, not an economic policy.
It could not be clearer that those who lack an education will never be able to save the world from anything, let alone dangerous ideology such as this. The only thing brainwashed children are useful for are the votes they cast in adulthood.
By ‘system change’ what the activists behind the children mean is ‘communism’ – or even a new variation of collectivism that we are beginning to know as eco-fascism. The flavour of destruction depends on which group of activists you come across and what the personal beliefs were of its leaders before the arrival of the #ClimateChange hashtag.
Some environmentalists think a form of communism will ‘save the planet’ because only dictatorial governments have the necessary power over individuals and the economy to carry out ‘uncomfortable change’ (read mass theft of property and rights).
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one such individual who is warming up to the allure of dictatorship: ‘There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.’ Before Trudeau gets too excited, someone should point out that China is the most polluted nation on Earth where the worst man-made famine in human history took place, all under the watch of communism.
Other activists have aligned themselves with international corporations whose influence over global politics dwarfs the democratic process. These are the suited class that sip their way around closed-door lobbying conferences like the World Economic Forum, pretending that innovation rather than political coercion is driving their eco-success. These environmentalists believe that an authoritarian marriage between the State and Corporate can deliver profit at a faster rate than sluggish market forces, held back by concerned citizens.
This magical fountain of money is to be ripped out of the general public via green taxes and unreasonable legislation. Like robbing a bank, no one has a plan for what happens tomorrow when there is no apocalypse and no capitalist economy creating public wealth. Perhaps they’ll start taxing the carbon in our bodies and air in our lungs to make up the difference in their parallel economy…
New Zealand offers a glimpse of the future, with socialist Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proud of what is, quite literally, a race-based water management policy. Such incoherent madness would have been laughed off last century. Her propensity for hypocrisy allows her to demonise farmers for their emissions while pleading with America to send as many tourists as possible, via plane, to a volcanic sandpit which leaks greenhouses gases like an open valve.
The reason that no particular label accurately defines the modern environmentalist movement as a whole is because they are a fractured group of competing political ideologies, all of which are jumping on the ‘green’ bandwagon to elevate their sphere of power. It is time for rational people to see them clearly. These ideas are the weeds of politics, infesting Western Civilisation with the intent of colonisation and eventual suffocation.
Short-sighted businesses, unaware that the end game does not benefit them, think that ‘going green’ means that the government will both kill off their market competitors via legislation and make available fortunes of public money for ‘investment’ justified by the undefined label of ‘saving the planet’.
Politicians hitched a ride early on, seeing that universities and schools had been inundated by failed communists who, to hide the rapid decline in education standards, now elicit praise for raising ‘responsible global citizens’ (who cannot add, spell, or reason). Not only have political movements capitalised on Millennials, they are pushing to lower the voting age to prop up their regimes with children.
The Greens and Labor have never cared much for economic stability or civil liberty, so it was no surprise to see them lead the charge on this. It was similarly inevitable that a movement like the Teals would emerge comprised of bored, wealthy, affluent women funded by self-interested renewables billionaires. They get to virtue signal to the cafe class while their victims remain quarantined in the poorer suburbs.
What remains astonishing is how easily the Liberals and Nationals burned their principles, buried their morality, and scrambled up after unscrupulous Parliamentarians to get a piece of that green salvation.
To be clear, conservation is admirable – eco-fascism is disgraceful, and all we have seen of our politicians in the last decade is a race to install a carbon prison state.
Australians used to be responsible. Clean up Australia Day was one of those worthy initiatives that taught children to take care of the land. Now, instead of cleaning up their local area, kids are demanding that the world’s worst polluters ramp up operations because their teachers gave them a slogan that was never questioned.
How are children ‘making a better world’ by the installation of millions of solar panels and wind turbines destined for landfill within 20 years? Or hundreds of acres of battery farms that face the same fate?
Did any of them do the cost and environmental calculations on the mining, transport, manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and disposal of these ‘planet saving’ technologies? How many of them know that kids, just like them, are sitting in mud pits mining cobalt while entire nations are having their natural resources financially raped by China’s debt trap diplomacy leaving local residents impoverished?
Do they know that sacred sites and ancient communities throughout China’s ‘autonomous’ region of Tibet are destroyed for renewable mining operations, and that their first nations people are imprisoned if they protest? Are they aware that the oceans are facing danger from rare earths deep sea mining operations, or that rare earths represent the largest mining boom in modern history, triggering huge amounts of devastation?
Because it’s not ‘coal’, it doesn’t make the news… Speaking of fossil fuels, their demonisation is done without mention of the pharmaceutical industry which is wholly reliant on petrochemicals. You cannot have the socialist dream of free healthcare without fossil fuels.
Conservative parties had a duty to Australia to fight against destructive collectivism and to see through the cynical green cloak hiding its red core. Instead, they validated the incoherent, fanciful screeching. In their attempt to win a few elections, the conservatives kicked open the Pandora’s Box that formed the Teals. Affluent blue-ribbon seats never would have waded into this sick game without their friends in politics and business insisting it was ‘the right thing to do’. Those voters believed it without evidence, adopting Tealism as though it were a fashion trend.
Worse, these allegedly conservative politicians are still taking advice from the same green-eyed merchants of misery – the end result of which is Matt Kean.
As for the Nationals, there is no saving a party that sides with an international bureaucracy with policies devoted to the destruction of family agriculture. What farmer is going to vote for a local member who nods along while the United Nations demands herd culling to ‘meet Net Zero goals’? What food grower is going to sit by while Australia tries out the Sri Lankan approach to farming?
2023 is a new year, and if the conservatives want to have both an election future and a clean, environmentally friendly Australia – they have to apologise for adopting Net Zero garbage and immediately start a new course toward a genuinely sustainable future (that means, a future where Australians can afford to heat their homes and buy food for their kids).
Neither communism nor fascism does the environment any favours. Australia was clean and green when it was free of grifting activists rolling around in the hay of big business.
We absolutely should embrace conservation, but that is not going to happen if we impoverish, oppress, and starve Australians in pursuit of a Net Zero utopia. Utopias, by definition, do not exist.
Save the planet – ditch environmentalism.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/the-crimes-of-eco-fascism/
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