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 March, 2022
How Solar Power Hurts People And The Planet
False beliefs about renewable energy are harming the environment. I say this as someone who championed renewable energy for over two decades—first as executive director of a green building non-profit, then as CEO of a consulting firm specializing in clean energy, and most recently as founder of a cleantech startup. I thought my efforts were helping to protect the environment. But I was wrong.
Like many people, I believed the worst harm to the environment came from ‘fossil fuels’—and greedy companies exploiting the land, polluting the air, and destroying ecosystems to get them. It took me many years to realize that this viewpoint is distorted and to admit that many of my beliefs about renewable energy were false.
And now I’m ready to talk about what we really need to do to save the environment.
The Truth About Energy
The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, and reduced reliance on ‘fossil fuels’. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes.
Looking At Life Cycles
To fully evaluate how solar and wind energy hurt people and the environment, we must consider the lifecycle of renewable energy systems. Every artifact has a lifecycle that includes manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Every stage in that lifecycle requires energy and materials, so we need to tally up the energy and materials used at every stage of the cycle to fully understand the environmental impact of an object.
Think of a car. To understand its full impact on the environment, we must consider more than simply how many miles it gets per gallon of gas. Gas consumption measures only the cost of operating the car, but it doesn’t measure all the energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the car. Tally up the costs at each stage of the car’s lifecycle to get a more complete picture of its environmental impact.
The same is true of solar panels. To fully understand the environmental impact of solar panels, we need to consider more than simply how much energy and emissions the panels produce during operation. We also need to tally up the expenditure of energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the panels.
Once we tally up those costs, we see that solar power leaves a larger ecological footprint than advocates like to admit.
The Environmental Costs Of Manufacturing And Installing Solar
Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.
Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38 percent of the world’s industrial energy and 11 percent of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]
Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal.[4]
There are also environmental costs to installing the panels. Solar panels are primarily installed in two ways: in solar farms and on rooftops. Most U.S. solar farms are sited in the southwestern U.S. where sunshine is abundant. The now-canceled Mormon Mesa project, for instance, was proposed for a site about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It was slated to cover 14 square miles (the equivalent of 7,000 football fields) with upwards of a million solar panels, each 10-20 feet tall.
It would have involved bulldozing plants and wildlife habitat on a massive scale to replace them with concrete and steel. Environmentalists and local community groups opposed the project because it threatened views of the landscape and endangered species like the desert tortoise, and the proposed project was eventually withdrawn.[5]
Placing massive solar farms far from populated areas presents additional challenges as their remote locations require new power lines to carry energy to people who use it. Environmentalists and local community groups often fiercely oppose the construction of ugly power lines, which also have to get approval from multiple regulatory agencies. Those factors make it almost impossible to build new transmission lines in the U.S.[6] If approval is granted, installing those lines takes a further toll on the environment.
In addition, the farther the electricity has to travel, the more energy is lost as heat in the transmission process. The cost-effective limit for electricity transmission is roughly 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers.) So you can’t power New York or Chicago from solar energy farms in Arizona.
Limitations To Rooftop Solar
Rooftop solar installations could sidestep some of the problems of solar farms, but they have problems of their own.
First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.
Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.
Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39 percent of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]
Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13]
More here:
https://principia-scientific.com/how-solar-power-hurts-people-and-the-planet/
********************************************Inconvenient truths about energy
The energy transition is not happening. Or not nearly at the pace that everyone believes or wishes. At current rates, the “transition” is set to finish in the mid-2600s.
The Kyoto Protocol launched the energy transition drive in 1992. Global energy consumption from hydrocarbons has grown massively since then, with market share only declining by 4 percentage points over the past 30 years from 87% in 1992 to 83% today.
I am not celebrating this fact as I have spent years working on energy transition technologies.
The energy transition isn’t failing for lack of earnest effort. It is failing because energy is hard, and 3 billion people living in energy poverty are desperate for reliable and scalable energy sources. Meanwhile, 1 billion energy-rich people are resistant to diminishing their standard of living with higher cost and an increasingly unreliable energy diet.
There is no “climate crisis,” either. If there is a term more at odds with the painstaking work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) than “climate crisis,” I have not heard it.
Climate change is a real global challenge that is extensively studied. Unfortunately, the facts and rational dialogue about the myriad tradeoffs aren’t reaching policymakers, the media or activist groups. Or are they are simply ignoring these inconvenient truths?
For example, we hear endlessly about the rise in frequency and intensity of extreme weather. This narrative is highly effective at scaring people and driving political action. It is also false. The reality is detailed in countless publications and summarized in the IPCC reports.
Deaths from extreme weather have plunged over the past century, reaching new all-time lows last year, an outcome to be celebrated. This is not because extreme weather has declined. In fact, extreme weather shows no meaningful trend at all. Deaths from extreme weather events have declined because highly energized, wealthier societies are much better prepared to survive nature’s wrath.
Recognizing reality
You are not supposed to say out loud that there is no climate crisis or that the energy transition is proceeding at a glacial pace. These are unfashionable and, to many, offensive facts. But let’s be honest. Energy transition ambitions must recognize reality. Otherwise, poor investment decisions and regulatory frameworks will lead to surging global-energy and food prices. This is exactly what is happening.
We are here today in large part because energy transition efforts that previously encompassed solely aggressive support of alternative energy policies, economics be damned, have recently supplemented this strategy with growing efforts to obstruct fossil fuel development. Fossil fuels make the modern world possible.
The real crisis today is an energy crisis. It began to reveal itself last fall with a severe shortage in globally traded Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). The LNG crisis has not abated and it gives Russia’s Vladimir Putin tremendous leverage over Europe. Without Russian gas, the lights in Europe go out. Amid war, public outrage, and intense sanctions, Russian gas flows to Europe remain unchanged. Russian oil exports have continued with minimal interruption. The world can talk tough about sanctioning Russian energy exports, but those exports are vitally needed; hence they continue. Energy security equals national security.
The world energy system, critical to human wellbeing, requires meaningful spare capacity to handle inevitable bumps in the road. In the electricity sector, which represents only 20% of global energy but 40% in wealthy countries, this is called reserve capacity. In the oil market, spare production capacity today is shrinking and concentrated in OPEC nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Also, there is a massive global storage network in both surface tanks and underground caverns. In natural gas markets, there are both extensive underground storage reservoirs and typically spare export capacity through pipelines and large industrial LNG export and import facilities.
The past several years have seen this spare capacity whittled away due partly to lower commodity prices and poor corporate returns shrinking the appetite to invest. Excess capacity has also shrunk due to regulatory blockage of critical energy infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals. Roadblocks for well permitting and leasing on federal lands, together with a mass public miseducation campaign on energy and climate alarmism, are also stymieing hydrocarbon development. Investment capital is further constrained by a corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) movement, and divestment campaigns. These factors are shrinking hydrocarbon investment below what it otherwise would be in response to price signals and outlook for supply and demand. The net result is a constrained supply of oil, natural gas, and coal, which means higher prices and greater risk of market dislocations like the one unfolding today.
High energy and food price inflation is the cruelest form of tax on the poor. After a few specific examples, I’ll return to what we should do now to reverse these damaging and deeply inequitable trends.
In denial about demand
Why does the world today suffer from a severe shortage of LNG? Demand for natural gas has been growing strongly for decades. It provides a much cleaner substitute for coal in electricity production, home heating, and a myriad of industrial and petrochemical uses. Rising displacement of coal by natural gas has been the largest source of GHG emission reductions. Unfortunately, the aforementioned factors have prevented supply from keeping pace with rising demand. Energy shortages drive rapid prices rises and have cascading impacts on everything else. Energy is foundational to everything humans do. Everything.
Perhaps the most critical use of natural gas is nitrogen fertilizer production. Roughly a century ago, two German chemists, both subsequently awarded Nobel Prizes, developed a process to produce nitrogen fertilizer on an industrial scale. Before the Haber-Bosch process innovation, nitrogen content in soil was a major constraint on crop productivity. Existing nitrogen sources from bird guano, manure, and rotating cultivation of pea crops were limited. Today, elimination of natural gas-synthesized nitrogen fertilizer would cut global food production in half.
The now 6-months-long LNG crisis translates into a worldwide food crisis as skyrocketing fertilizer prices are cascading into much higher food prices. Wheat prices are already at a record high and will likely head higher as spring plantings suffer from under fertilization.
Global LNG markets are tight because rising demand has outrun the growth in LNG export capacity in the United States, now the largest LNG exporter. We have an abundance of natural gas in the United States. Unfortunately, we have a shortage of pipelines to transport this gas and LNG export terminals, preventing us from relieving the energy crisis in Europe and around the world. These pipeline and export terminal shortages are due in large part to regulatory blockage.
The result is that natural gas prices in the United States and Canada are five to ten times lower than in Asia and Europe. This deeply disadvantages consumers and factories (like fertilizer factories) in Europe and Asia that rely on LNG imports to fulfill their needs.
Failed energy policies
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not cause today’s energy crisis. Quite the reverse. Today’s energy crisis is likely an important factor in why Russia chose to invade Ukraine now. Europe’s energy situation is both tenuous and highly dependent on Russian imports. Russia is the second-largest oil and natural gas producer after the United States. Russia is the largest exporter of natural gas, supplying over 40% of Europe’s total demand. Additionally, Russia is the largest source of imported oil and coal to Europe. Europe put itself in this unenviable position by pursuing unrealistic, politically-driven policies attempting to rapidly transition its energy sources to combat climate change. Europe’s energy pivot has been a massive failure on all fronts: higher energy costs, grave energy insecurity, and negligible climate impacts.
Germany is the poster child of this failure. In 2000, Germany set out to decarbonize its energy system, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this effort over the past 20 years. Germany only marginally reduced its dependence on hydrocarbons from 84% in 2000 to 78% today.
The United States matched this 6% decline in hydrocarbon market share from 86% in 2000 to 80% today. Unlike in the U.S., Germany more than doubled its electricity prices — before the recent massive additional price increases — by creating a second electric grid. This second grid is comprised of massive wind and solar electric generating sources that only deliver 20% of nameplate capacity on average, and often less than 5% for days at a time.
The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Hence, Germany could only shrink legacy coal, gas and nuclear capacity by 15%. It now must pay to maintain both grids. The legacy grid must always be flexing up and down in a wildly inefficient manner to keep the lights on, hospitals functioning, homes heated, and factories powered.
Outside of the electricity sector, Germany’s energy system is largely unchanged. It has long had high taxes on gasoline and diesel for transportation, and lower energy taxes on industry. Germany subsidizes industrial energy prices attempting to avoid the near-complete deindustrialization that the U.K. has suffered due to expensive energy policies across the board.
Over the past 20 years, the United States has seen two shale revolutions, first in natural gas and then in oil. The net result has been the U.S. producing greater total energy than consumed in 2019 and 2020 for the first time since the 1950s.
The U.S. went from the largest importer of natural gas to the second-largest exporter in less than fifteen years, all with private capital and innovation. The shale revolution lowered domestic and global energy prices due to surging growth in U.S. production.
Surging U.S. propane exports are reducing the cost and raising the availability of clean cooking and heating fuels for those in dire energy poverty still burning wood, dung, and agricultural waste to cook their daily meals. U.S. GHG emissions also plunged to the lowest level on a per capita basis since 1960.
We are starting to hamstring and squander the enormous benefits of the shale revolution. The same misinformed anti-hydrocarbon crusade that impoverished Europe and made it heavily dependent on Russia is now sweeping the U.S. California and New England had already adopted European-style energy policies driving up electricity prices, reducing grid reliability, and driving manufacturing and other energy-intensive, blue-collar jobs out of their states. Colorado is not far behind.
California, a state with a plentitude of blessings, managed to create the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation with an expensive, unstable power grid increasingly reliant on coal-powered electricity imports from Nevada and Utah.
New England’s proximity to Pennsylvania’s clean low-cost natural gas resources was a stroke of luck. But it refused to expand the natural gas pipelines running from Pennsylvania, leaving it chronically short of natural gas, its largest source of electricity and cleanest option for home heating.
Instead, it remains heavily reliant on fuel oil for home heating and occasionally imports LNG from Russia to keep the lights on. Last winter New England burned copious amounts of fuel oil to produce electricity which went out of fashion in the 1970s elsewhere in the U.S.
Texas has not been immune from energy illiteracy and collateral damage. Texas’ poorly designed electric grid, structured to encourage investment in renewables, led to hundreds dying last year in the Uri cold spell. No one would pay the same price for an Uber that showed up whenever convenient for the driver and dropped you off wherever they desired.
But that is what Texas does with electricity: paying the same price for reliable electricity that balances the grid as they do for unreliable, unpredictable electricity. No wonder the reliability of the Texas grid has declined and is headed for more trouble.
https://denvergazette.pressreader.com/article/281900186714269?mc_cid=3abefabc7f&mc_eid=cc88839e92
*********************************************The People Promising Us "Net Zero" Have No Clue About The Energy Storage Problem
If you are even a semi-regular reader of this blog, you know about the energy storage problem that is inherent in the effort to eliminate dispatchable fossil fuels from the electricity generation system and replace them with wind and solar. As discussed here many times, other than with nuclear power, the storage problem is the critical issue that must be addressed if there is ever going to be “net zero” electricity generation, let alone a “net zero” economy based on all energy usage having been electrified. For a sample of my prior posts on this subject just in the last few months, go here, here and here.
The problems of trying to provide enough storage to back up a fully wind and solar system without fossil fuels are so huge and so costly that you would think that everyone pushing the “net zero” agenda would be completely focused on these issues. And given that the issues are quite obvious, you would think that such people would be well down the curve with feasibility studies, cost studies, and demonstration projects to make their case on how their plans could be accomplished. Remarkably, that is not the case at all. Instead, if you read about the plans and proposals in various quarters for “net zero” in some short period of years, you quickly realize that the people pushing this agenda have no clue. No clue whatsoever.
Today, I am going to look at discussions of the storage situation coming out of three jurisdictions with ambitious “net zero” plans: California, Australia and New York. First a very brief summary of the problem. It is (or certainly should be) obvious that wind and solar generators have substantial periods when they generate nothing (e.g., calm nights), and other times when they generate far less than users demand. Get out a spreadsheet to do some calculations based on actual historical patterns of usage and generation from wind and solar sources, and you will find that to have a fully wind/solar generation system and make it through a year without a catastrophic failure, you will need approximately a three-times overbuild (based on rated capacity) of the wind/solar system, plus storage for something in the range of 24 - 30 days of average usage. For these purposes “usage” at any given moment is measured in gigawatts, but usage for some period of time is measured in gigawatt hours, not gigawatts. California’s average electricity usage for 2020 was about 31 GW; Australia’s was about 26 GW ; and New York’s was about 18 GW.
To calculate how much storage you need in gigawatt hours, multiply average usage in GW by 30 days and 24 hours per day. So California will need about 22,302 GWH of storage, Australia about 18,720 GWH, and New York about 12,960 GWH. That is to supply current levels of demand. For the “everything electrified” case, triple all of these numbers: 66,906 GWH for California, 56,160 GWH for Australia, and 38,880 GWH for New York. Price that out at current costs of Tesla-type lithium-ion batters (~$150/KWH) and you will get around $10 trillion for California, $8.4 trillion for Australia, and $5.8 trillion for New York. These figures are in the range of triple total annual GDP for each of these jurisdictions, before you even get to the cost of the three-times overbuild of the generations system to account for charging of the batteries when the sun is shining and wind blowing. Nor can Tesla-style batteries hold charge for months on end as would be necessary for this system, but at this point, that seems like a minor quibble.
With that, let’s consider some recent discussion of the march toward “net zero” in each of these jurisdictions:
California. On March 14, PV Magazine (I think that stands for “Photo Voltaic”) had a piece by Christian Roselund with the title “California’s solar market is now a battery market.” The gist is that California’s solar developers have now caught on to the need to pair batteries with their projects, and that therefore new projects going forward are as much battery projects as solar panel projects. Here’s a sample of the cheerleading:
No US state has led the energy transition like California has. . . . As a result California has been a pioneer for a range of clean energy technologies. . . . California is on the cusp of no longer being a solar market where batteries are being added – instead, it is becoming a battery market that (sometimes) includes solar.
So how much battery capacity is being added by the new projects?:
According to the American Clean Power Association, California had only 256MW of utility-scale batteries before 2020, but had reached 2.1GW by the end of 2021 – an eightfold increase. . . . The 256 solar-plus-storage projects representing 72GW of solar and 64GW of batteries make up the vast majority of hybrid projects in the CAISO queue. . . . California will need all the energy storage it can get its hands on; a recent analysis suggests that the state needs 37GW of batteries over the next 20 years, as well as 53.2GW of utility-scale solar.
It’s all GW, GW, GW. But guys, how about the amount of GWH that California will need? You will not find any mention of that unit in this piece. Sorry, but if those 64 GW of batteries you are planning to buy only store energy for one hour, then you will need to multiply your purchase by about a factor of a thousand. If they store energy for about four hours (typical of what you might be able to buy today), then multiply your purchase by a factor of 250.
Could they really be so far off from the actual problem? I’m afraid that the answer is yes.
Australia. Over in Australia, it appears that they have people who have figured out that they need to measure the storage requirements for wind/solar backup in GWH rather than GW. Here is a piece from March 25 from Energy Storage News, headline “Australia surpassed 1GWh of annual battery storage deployments during 2021.” That’s huge progress. But one GWH?
Read the article, and again it’s all cheerleading for the great progress being made:
[F]or Victoria it was a record-breaking year, while NSW has already recorded strong installation volumes and its tally of 7,377 installations was in line with figures in recent years. . . . Victoria hosts a 48% share of the commercial and grid-scale operating capacity today, with South Australia the next biggest at 24%, Queensland on 14% and NSW on 9%. Last year, the Victorian Big Battery came online, which at 300MW/450MWh made a big contribution to the state’s total.
And how much is in the pipeline?:
There is around 1,000MWh of grid-scale energy storage currently under construction, but the development pipeline of projects is a massive 57GWh.
“A massive” 57 GWH. Really? Has anyone told them that they are going to need more like 56,160 GWH to fulfill their “net zero” fantasies? Like California, they are off by about a factor of 1000. Here is a picture from the article of what a Tesla-type battery installation for a mere 150 MWH looks like. That’s well less than 1/6 of one GWH.
Looks like they’re going to need 400,000 +/- of these installations. And by the way, these Tesla-style batteries have no ability to store energy without loss for months on end. Good luck trying to find anyone addressing these issues.
New York. In crazy New York, we have a statute passed in 2019 that requires state-wide greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to 60% of 1990 levels by 2030. Since electricity is less than 1/3 of final energy consumption, this would necessarily mean that all fossil fuel electricity generation will be gone in 8 years.
How to do that? A collection of panels and advisory bodies have been putting out reams of reports, thousands of pages in the aggregate. Nobody could possibly keep up. On the other hand, it is obvious that essentially no batteries are yet under construction.
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A globetrotting carpenter and Sussex University professor are among 117 Insulate Britain activists charged over road-blocking protests between September and November last year
Charges have been issued by the Metropolitan Police, Kent Police and Essex Police in recent weeks.
They include 146 charges of causing a public nuisance, 137 of wilful obstruction of the highway, and 10 of criminal damage.
Among those charged are Cameron Ford, 31, a carpenter from Cambridge, who appeared at several protests despite going on globetrotting trips abroad on two occasions.
He went on a 10,000 mile four month trip across the Atlantic and around Canada - then just months later on a 2,000 mile plus jaunt across much of Europe in an old diesel van.
Also charged is Nick Till, 66, a Sussex University professor from London.
Insulate Britain said it is 'likely these numbers will rise as we understand that further charges are still being issued'.
At least 25 plea hearings are scheduled to take place at magistrates' courts in Crawley, Chelmsford and Stratford in April and May.
Some 174 people were arrested a total of 857 times during the protests.
Insulate Britain said some who repeatedly returned to the roads were arrested '10-15 times during 18 days of roadblocks'.
How Insulate Britain made a mockery of the law over two months
September 13 - 78 Insulate Britain protesters arrested after blocking junctions 3, 6, 14, 20 and 31 of the M25
September 15 - More than 50 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 1, 8, 9 and 23 of the M25
September 17 - 48 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 3, 9 and 28 of the M25, as well as the M3
September 20 - 29 protesters are arrested after blocking the M25 at junctions 4 and 18, as well as the A1
September 21 - Protesters risk death by running into moving traffic to block the carriageway near Junction 10. Some 38 arrests are made. National Highways obtains an injunction against further protests on the M25
September 22 - Protesters burn copies of the injunction outside the Home Office, blocking the road outside the ministry. No arrests are made
September 24 - 39 protesters arrested after blocking roads at three locations in Dover. They are all released under investigation. National Highways obtains a second injunction covering Dover.
September 27 - 53 protesters are arrested for blocking a slip road at Junction 14 of the M25. They are all released under investigation.
September 28 - National Highways says it is taking 'legal advice' over how to enforce its injunction
September 29 - 27 protesters are arrested for blocking a roundabout at Junction 3 of the M25 on two occasions
September 30 - Protesters return to junction 30 at Thurrock in Essex, and nine are arrested
October 1: The group block the M4 at junction 3, the M1 at junction 1 and M25 at junction 25. Some 39 arrests
October 2: Third injunction bans them from obstructing traffic and access to motorways and major A roads in and around London
October 4: 38 arrests after protesters block three major roads in London - the Blackwall Tunnel, Wandsworth Bridge and A40 and North Circular at Hanger Lane.
October 8: 19 arrested over protest at Old Street roundabout and a further 16 on the M25 at junction 24. Transport for London gets a High Court injunction to ban them from obstructing traffic in 14 locations in London.
October 13: Protesters return to the M25 at junction 31 and a nearby industrial estate, with 35 people arrested.
October 25: Activists target areas around Southwark Bridge, Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street station. Some 53 are arrested.
October 27: Protesters blockade the A40 in North Acton, West London, and a major roundabout next to the Dartford Crossing in Kent. Kent Police arrested 32 protesters, while the Metropolitan Police detained 17.
October 29: 10 activists are arrested after walking onto the M25 between junctions 28 and 29 in Essex
November 2: Police arrest 20 activists before they can even get onto the M25 at junction 23 for South Mimms, but other actions take place on the M56 in Manchester, with 11 arrests, and the A4400 in Birmingham
November 4: Some 62 protesters sit down at Parliament Square in Westminster
November 17: Nine of the protesters are jailed at the High Court for between three and six months
Prior to the wave of charges, activists had only faced civil action. Fourteen were jailed for breaking injunctions banning protests on the M25.
Insulate Britain said public nuisance prosecutions can result in a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine.
Cameron Ford, 31, a carpenter from Cambridge who is summoned to appear at Crawley Magistrates' Court on April 4, said: 'The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) undertaking these mass prosecutions is an attempt by our Government to ignore and avoid addressing the biggest dangers facing people right now.
'By not insulating Britain's leaky homes they are knowingly condemning millions more families to live in fuel poverty and thousands and thousands of our elderly to die in frozen homes next winter.'
Nick Till, 66, a university professor from London who is due to appear at the same court on April 6, said: 'As an academic, my duty is to find and tell the truth, and civil disobedience is now the only way of getting the truth out there.
'I do not regret my actions. Even though I regret the inconvenience caused to many of my fellow citizens by my actions, it is nothing compared to what is coming down the line for those same people and their loved ones if we fail to do anything.'
Insulate Britain began a wave of demonstrations last September which included blocking the M25 and other roads in London, including around Parliament, as well as roads in Birmingham, Manchester and Dover in Kent.
A series of High Court injunctions against its road blockades were granted to National Highways and Transport for London to prevent their disruptive protests.
Those who breach them could now be found in contempt of court and face a maximum penalty of two years in prison or an unlimited fine as well as seizure of assets.
The offshoot from the Extinction Rebellion is calling on the UK Government to implement policy and funding for a national home insulation programme starting with all social housing.
The group wants the UK government to promise to fully fund and take responsibility for the insulation of all social housing in Britain by 2025.
It is demanding 'a legally binding national plan to fully fund and take responsibility for the full low energy and low carbon whole-house retrofit, with no externalised costs, of all homes in Britain by 2030 as part of a just transition to full decarbonisation of all parts of society and the economy'.
It comes as Insulate Britain, and a number of other protest groups, threatened to conduct raves around the M25 last month - before postponing the planned chaos until April 2.
There are four demos planned at unknown locations, which are set to take aim at the cost of living crisis as well as the country's reliance on fossil fuel energy.
One party named 'Staying Alive on the M25' has been organised by campaigner Gabriella Ditton, 27, from Norwich, with more than 500 already signed up to attend.
Ms Ditton already received a suspended sentence in February after blocking part of the M25 in a protest.
Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis said last month: 'Yet again, a minority of the crusty Wokerati are willing to endanger others. 'These middle class hippies are hell-bent on imposing green extremist ideals on people regardless of how hard-up that will make working people.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10667177/117-Insulate-Britain-activists-charged-M25-chaos.html \
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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30 March, 2022
Madness of our worship of wind: They despoil our glorious countryside, add £6 billion a year to our household bills and are arguably the most inefficient solution to our energy crisis
Take a wild guess at how much of the UK’s total primary demand for energy was supplied by wind power in 2020.
Half? 30 per cent? No, in fact, it was less than 4 per cent.
That’s right, all those vast wind farms in the North Sea, or disfiguring the hills of Wales and Scotland, give us little more than one-thirtieth of the energy we need to light and heat our homes, power our businesses or move our cars and trains.
Just think what this country and its seas would look like if we relied on wind for one-third or half of our energy needs.
Last week, Government ministers were considering lowering people’s energy bills if they live close to onshore wind turbines.
They’re also considering relaxing the rules so that onshore wind farms no longer need the backing of local communities and councils in order to get planning permission.
This will give wind farms an easier ride through the planning process than new housing — or shale gas drilling sites.
More importantly, it means further privileging an industry that has cost a fortune, wrecked green and pleasant landscapes and made us dependent on the weather for our energy needs — and thus more wedded to natural gas as a back-up.
The wind industry has already been fattened on subsidies of more than £6billion a year (paid for out of green levies on your electricity bills), it has privileged access to the grid and is paid extra compensation when the wind blows too strongly and the grid cannot cope with the energy output.
Indeed, the way wind power has managed to get politicians and others to think it is uniquely virtuous will deserve close study by future theologians.
Its symbols, akin to a post-modern Easter crucifix, now adorn almost any document that purports to be about British energy needs, signalling ‘goodness’.
Tousle-headed eco-protesters go weak at the knees when they see an industrial wind farm on wild land, while angry anti-capitalists won’t hear a word against the financial firms that back wind companies, somehow convincing themselves that this is all about re-empowering the common man.
When faced with a looming energy crisis, it’s obvious that the Government needs to act fast to secure energy selfsufficiency.
But what is so special about wind?
Why, to the exclusion of all else — in particular, fracking and nuclear energy — has arguably the most inefficient solution been privileged?
I was once a fan of wind power, because it seemed to be free. But it’s not. It takes a lot of expensive machinery to extract useful power from the wind. And once turbines are up and running, they’re not reliable.
Because you cannot store electricity for any length of time without huge cost, wind farms need backing up by fossil-fuel power stations.
This makes wind even more expensive.
As I write this article in still, fine spring weather, millions of tonnes of turbines stand largely idle, generating just 3 per cent of our electricity.
Coal contributes 5 per cent.
As a source of energy, wind is so weak that to generate any meaningful electricity output you need three 20-tonne carbon-fibre blades — each nearly the length of a football pitch — turning a 300-tonne generator atop a gigantic steel tower set in reinforced concrete.
Hundreds of these monsters are required to produce as much electricity as one small gas-powered plant. In terms of land covered, wind takes 700 times as much space to generate the same energy that one low-rise shale gas pad can.
It is not as if wind turbines are good for the environment. They kill thousands of birds and bats every year, often rare eagles on land and soaring gannets at sea.
If you were even to disturb a bat when adding a conservatory, you could end up in jail.
The wind turbines are also near impossible to recycle, with the rare earth metals such as neodymium that are vital for the magnets inside most of their generators coming from polluted mines in China.
Wind turbines are often built on hills to catch the breeze, meaning they inevitably intrude into natural beauty.
My favourite Northumbrian view, of Bamburgh Castle and Cheviot from the Farne Islands, is now visually polluted by a giant wind farm.
But for those who live closer to them, life can be intolerable.
The unresolved problem of wind turbine noise can make sleep difficult.
On sunny days, the shadows of the blades create an unnerving flicker as they pass your windows.
Being next to a wind farm won’t enhance your house’s value — and I doubt any reduction in your energy bill would help.
Nor is it clear that wind farms reduce emissions significantly.
If the meagre 4 per cent of our energy that came from wind in 2020 had entirely displaced coal, we would have seen at least a modest cut in our emissions.
But there are three reasons why that is not what happens.
First, we need other power stations to back up the wind farms when the wind does not blow, and these plants — mostly burning gas — are inevitably less efficient when being ramped up and down to support wind’s erratic output.
The wind industry promises that the more wind farms we build, the more likely we are to find there will always be a breeze somewhere.
But experience shows the opposite. Last week, for instance, was virtually still everywhere; the week before was windy everywhere.
A recent study published in the International Journal for Nuclear Power, looking at Germany and 17 neighbouring countries, confirmed this erratic output.
Its author, physicist Thomas Linnemann, wrote: ‘Wind power from a European perspective always will require practically 100 per cent back-up systems.’
Second, wind turbines themselves are built and maintained using fossil fuels.
Analysis of audited accounts suggests that many wind farms will not work for much more than 15 years before the cost of maintaining the machine eats into income and it has to be scrapped and replaced.
The capital refreshment cycle for these machines is very short. A gas turbine on the other hand can easily last 30 or 40 years.
Third, the one source of energy whose economic rationale has been most damaged by wind power is zero-carbon nuclear.
Nuclear plants all over the world are closing down early, or being cancelled, because they cannot pay their way in a world where bursts of almost valueless wind energy keep being dumped into the grid.
Nuclear plants cannot ‘fill a gap’ when the wind drops — they’re efficient only when generating constantly.
A wind-powered grid can be backed up with gas, or a nuclear grid topped up with gas, but a grid powered by wind and nuclear will not work.
Wind’s champions insist its costs are coming down and that its electricity is now cheaper than from gas or even coal.
But there is a great deal of data, all pointing to industry costs (per megawatthour) not falling but rising, as economics Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University has found.
Building and maintaining wind farms is about to get even more costly because of the rocketing costs of fuel and raw materials.
As for the competition, gas is currently very expensive in Britain, but it used to be cheap and it could be once more — particularly if we open up the North Sea and get fracking.
Then there’s the cost of ‘constraint payments’, which means extra compensation paid (by you, the electricity consumer) to wind farms when the grid cannot cope with their output.
Some wind farms in Scotland have been paid to throw away large fractions of their energy.
Since the introduction of the payments in 2010, the cost to consumers has topped a staggering £1.1bn.
That’s before you consider the subsidies, which data shows have been rising for offshore wind for two decades.
When the wind industry boasts of being cheap and you challenge them to forgo subsidies, they mutter and look down at their feet.
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India to Start Building 10 Nuclear Power Plants in ‘Fleet Mode’ from Next Year
With the first pour of concrete for a 700 MW atomic power plant in Karnataka’s Kaiga scheduled in 2023, India is set to put in motion construction activities for 10 ’fleet mode’ nuclear reactors over the next three years. The first pour of concrete (FPC) signals the beginning of construction of nuclear power reactors from the pre-project stage which includes excavation activities at the project site.
The FPC of Kaiga units 5&6 is expected in 2023; FPC of Gorakhpur Haryana Anu Vidyut Praiyonjan units 3 & 4 and Mahi Banswara Rajasthan Atomic Power Projects units 1 to 4 is expected in 2024; and that of Chutka Madhya Pradesh Atomic Power Project units 1 & 2 in 2025, officials of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) told the Parliamentary panel on science and technology. The Centre had approved construction of 10 indigenously developed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) of 700 MW each in June 2017. The ten PHWRs will be built at a cost of Rs 1.05 lakh crore.
It was for the first time that the government had approved building 10 nuclear power reactors in one go with an aim to reduce costs and speed up construction time. Bulk procurement was underway for the fleet mode projects with purchase orders placed for forgings for steam generators, SS 304L lattice tubes and plates for end shields, pressuriser forgings, bleed condensers forgings, incoloy-800 tubes for 40 steam generators, reactor headers, DAE officials said. Engineering, procurement and construction package for turbine island has been awarded for Gorakhpur units three and four and Kaiga units five and six, they added.
Under the fleet mode, a nuclear power plant is expected to be built over a period of five years from the first pour of concrete. Currently, India operates 22 reactors with a total capacity of 6780 MW in operation. One 700 MW reactor at Kakrapar in Gujarat was connected to the grid on January 10 last year, but it is yet to start commercial operations.
The PHWRs, which use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator, have emerged as the mainstay of India’s nuclear power programme. India’s first pair of PHWRs of 220 MW each were set up at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan in the 1960s with Canadian support. The second reactor had to be built with significant domestic components as Canada withdrew support following India’s peaceful nuclear tests in 1974.
As many as 14 PHWRS of 220 MW each with standardised design and improved safety measures were built by India over the years. Indian engineers further improvised the design to increase the power generation capacity to 540 MWe, and two such reactors were made operational at Tarapur in Maharashtra. Further optimisations were carried out to upgrade the capacity to 700 MWe.
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Experienced Engineers must take the lead in the Energy Transition
Guus Berkhout
In recent centuries, faith and superstition have been replaced by rational thinking (“Enlightenment”). For instance, it gradually became clear that extreme weather is not the hand of mysterious gods but is determined by a complex interplay of natural forces.
Another example shows that, step by step, primitive medicine men became the qualified doctors of today. The worldview of the enlightened thinkers brought us great technological developments in all sectors of society. As a result, the quality of life improved by great strides.
Central to that revolution was the concept that measurements are the source of new knowledge. Engineers played an indispensable role in inventing, designing and making the measuring equipment that is required for making new discoveries. That role has become even more important in today’s highly technological society, where natural and anthropogenic systems interact in a complex way.
Today’s technical universities have a great responsibility to educate the new generation of engineers. Without them, there will be no sustainable future.
Collection and analysis of measurements allow us to determine and visualize properties of complex systems. In practice, this needs to be often done without yet knowing much of the internal mechanisms of the system.
Fortunately, empirical knowledge about system properties – in time and space – is often sufficient to make important decisions about how to deal with system changes. This is particularly important when decisions are urgent, and policymakers do not have time to wait until reliable theoretical knowledge becomes available.
In other words, in practice we often cannot wait for scientific explanations (via theoretical models) before acting. In such a situation, it is wise to collect and analyze measurements rather than use theoretical models with large uncertainties. Think of the Earth’s climate, where it may take many more decades to better understand what is going on.
Today, the crucial question that technical universities must ask themselves is: “Is the low-carbon-society ideology really as blessing for nature and society as we are forced to believe daily? After all, CO2 is the building block of life on Earth, isn’t it? If we want to use more organic products, we need more CO2, right?” And as for ‘green’ energy, are solar and wind energy not unreliable? And is the combination of these energy sources with hydrogen storage not unaffordable? Aren’t these the typical matters for sound engineering judgment?
In recent decades, the believe of policymakers in theoretical models has increased dramatically. This is partly due to the impressive computing power of modern computers. In fact, the confidence in computer models has become so large that modeled measurements are increasingly replacing real measurements in government policy. In doing so, governments are creating their own little world. We therefore see that more and more policies are not based on reality, but on political dreams. Ideology-based models increasingly determine what must happen. The most well-known examples are climate policy, energy policy and covid-19 policy. With this irrational development, we are falling back into the pre-Enlightenment world of belief and superstition, now determined by what computer models tell us how to act.
Instead of universities being critical of this trend, they have gone along with it. This may certainly benefit them financially, but it has driven university research into political hobbyhorses. This is bad news for the quality of university education.
For example, at my ‘alma mater’, Delft University of Technology, not real measurements but the output of climate models are assumed to be the guideline. Based on these models, technology is developed with the idea of stopping the global ‘warming crisis’. Think of the belief that wind turbines, solar panels and biomass plants will meet the world’s energy needs in a sustainable way. My university has even awarded an honorary doctorate to European Unions’s (EU) vice-president Frans Timmermans, a champion of green superstition. Because reliable and affordable energy is the key to prosperity and well-being, that honorary doctorate is a historic university failure.
https://clintel.org/experienced-engineers-must-take-the-lead-in-the-energy-transition/
**********************************************The New Greenwashing – False Advertising about Green Energy Jobs
In the private sector, false advertising can get you into legal trouble. In the public sector, it’s often good politics.
Supporters of renewable energy want you to believe that green jobs at union wages are a benefit of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). For example, NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris recently boasted that for every job lost because of the green-energy transition, ten will be created. And Governor Hochul pledged last week to prioritize union labor in the green-energy transition, and the CLCPA mandates the application of New York’s prevailing wage law, which essentially requires union-standard wages and benefits be paid to workers on public construction projects, even when they far exceed market rates.
But Harris and Hochul are wrong — these jobs are a cost of the public policy, not a benefit. And expensive prevailing wage jobs only increase the cost.
How are they a cost?
Consider that the Climate Action Council claims that the CLCPA will cost up to $340 billion while providing benefits of at least $420 billion, for a net gain of at least $80 billion. The state’s numbers are probably wrong but set that aside for now. Instead, imagine that the cost was only one-tenth as much, just $34 billion. In that case, the net benefit would increase to $386 billion.
That would be a huge increase in the net value of the policy, but it would mean many fewer green jobs, because there would be less spending to hire people. Can anyone seriously deny the state would be better off if the net benefit of the policy was higher?
In other words, as a policy requires the public to pay for more jobs — or to pay more for those jobs — it becomes more costly to the paying public, not more beneficial.
Either state officials don’t understand this themselves or they hope you don’t. And admittedly, you’ve probably never been told that jobs are a cost. But it’s true.
But what about the jobs that will be lost in the industries negatively affected by the green-energy transition? That labor is freed up to perform other beneficial economic activity. And this always happens when an industry declines.
For example, almost half of the 100 largest industrial firms of the 20th century have disappeared, and yet with the exception of occasional recessions, employment rates have remained strong. Even more dramatically, two centuries ago, 90 percent of the U.S. population lived on farms. Today it’s only about one percent. The descendants of all those farmers are not unemployed today — instead they’re doing all the jobs that didn’t even exist a century ago.
The free market does a great job of creating all the jobs we need to replace those lost. For job creation, we rarely need any government policy except “get out of the way!” Governor Hochul has also pledged to make New York the most business-friendly state in the nation (it now ranks 48th). If she actually accomplished that, the market would take care of providing all the jobs people need.
Oh, yes, a public policy can create jobs in a specific economic sector, but that’s not the same as creating overall economic growth. Only entrepreneurs can do that.
Politicians promote industries that sound good, and which will reward them with votes, but they have no real skin in the game. If the businesses fail, or need to be propped up with taxpayer subsidies, there’s rarely any cost to the politicians who supported them. In fact, spending more taxpayer dollars on money-losing businesses can actually buy them more support. But entrepreneurs have to find opportunities that have real economic value, or they’ll lose their shirts.
This doesn’t mean the transition isn’t sometimes difficult for those who lose jobs in a declining industry (and public policy can help them out). It just means that if we could transition to a green energy future with fewer jobs, we’d have green energy and whatever other goods and services those other workers would be producing as entrepreneurs took advantage of having more available labor. We’d be producing more, and then we really would be better off.
There will, of course, be jobs associated with the transition to green energy. But for the broad public, that is part of the Climate Act’s cost, not its benefit. Government officials telling you differently is false advertising.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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29 March, 2022
Solar’s dirty secrets: How solar power hurts people and the planet
False beliefs about renewable energy are harming the environment. I say this as someone who championed renewable energy for over two decades—first as executive director of a green building non-profit, then as CEO of a consulting firm specializing in clean energy, and most recently as founder of a cleantech startup. I thought my efforts were helping to protect the environment. But I was wrong.
Like many people, I believed the worst harm to the environment came from fossil fuels—and greedy companies exploiting the land, polluting the air, and destroying ecosystems to get them. It took me many years to realize that this viewpoint is distorted and to admit that many of my beliefs about renewable energy were false. And now I’m ready to talk about what we really need to do to save the environment.
The Truth about Energy
The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes.
Looking at Life Cycles
To fully evaluate how solar and wind energy hurt people and the environment, we must consider the lifecycle of renewable energy systems. Every artifact has a lifecycle that includes manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Every stage in that lifecycle requires energy and materials, so we need to tally up the energy and materials used at every stage of the cycle to fully understand the environmental impact of an object.
Think of a car. To understand its full impact on the environment, we must consider more than simply how many miles it gets per gallon of gas. Gas consumption measures only the cost of operating the car, but it doesn’t measure all the energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the car. Tally up the costs at each stage of the car’s lifecycle to get a more complete picture of its environmental impact.
The same is true of solar panels. To fully understand the environmental impact of solar panels, we need to consider more than simply how much energy and emissions the panels produce during operation. We also need to tally up the expenditure of energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the panels. Once we tally up those costs, we see that solar power leaves a larger ecological footprint than advocates like to admit.
The Environmental Costs of Manufacturing and Installing Solar
Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.
Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38% of the world’s industrial energy and 11% of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]
Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal.[4]
There are also environmental costs to installing the panels. Solar panels are primarily installed in two ways: in solar farms and on rooftops. Most U.S. solar farms are sited in the southwestern U.S. where sunshine is abundant. The now-canceled Mormon Mesa project, for instance, was proposed for a site about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It was slated to cover 14 square miles (the equivalent of 7,000 football fields) with upwards of a million solar panels, each 10-20 feet tall. It would have involved bulldozing plants and wildlife habitat on a massive scale to replace them with concrete and steel. Environmentalists and local community groups opposed the project because it threatened views of the landscape and endangered species like the desert tortoise, and the proposed project was eventually withdrawn.[5]
Placing massive solar farms far from populated areas presents additional challenges as their remote locations require new power lines to carry energy to people who use it. Environmentalists and local community groups often fiercely oppose the construction of ugly power lines, which also have to get approval from multiple regulatory agencies. Those factors make it almost impossible to build new transmission lines in the U.S.[6] If approval is granted, installing those lines takes a further toll on the environment.
In addition, the farther the electricity has to travel, the more energy is lost as heat in the transmission process. The cost-effective limit for electricity transmission is roughly 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers.) So you can’t power New York or Chicago from solar energy farms in Arizona.
Limitations to Rooftop Solar
Rooftop solar installations could sidestep some of the problems of solar farms, but they have problems of their own.
First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.
Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.
Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39% of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]
Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13]
https://atomicinsights.com/solars-dirty-secrets-how-solar-power-hurts-people-and-the-planet/
**************************************************Shutting Canadian Pipeline Would Cost US Consumers $23.7 Billion More in Fuel Costs: Report
A recently published analysis by a consumer advocacy nonprofit maintains that shutting a 4.5-mile section of a nearly 70-year-old pipeline that spans the Great Lakes from Wisconsin to Ontario would impose $23.7 billion in higher fuel costs on families and businesses in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Consumer Energy Alliance’s (CEA) 14-page report estimates that closing Canada-based Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, would spur regional fuel price spikes of 9.47 to 11.66 percent “independent of any other market conditions, such as the surge in fuel prices observed over the past 12 months that are tied to international oil markets and logistical challenges caused by the pandemic.”
Enbridge and the state of Michigan have been engaged in litigation for more than a year over the pipeline after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, in November 2020 revoked the pipeline’s original 1953 lakebed easement and ordered the pipeline to be shut by May 2021, citing the risk of a spill in the ecologically sensitive straits.
Enbridge ignored the order—the pipeline is still funneling 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) of light crude oil, light synthetic crude oil, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) through the straits—and petitioned to have the case heard in federal courts. In October 2021, the government of Canada backed Enbridge in its challenge and invoked a 1977 pipeline treaty with the United States to demand bilateral negotiations at the federal level.
In November 2021, a federal judge transferred Whitmer’s suit out of Michigan’s courts. That suit was subsequently dropped, but a similar lawsuit filed by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel remains in state courts, although a ruling is pending regarding its jurisdictional status.
Built in 1953 by Bechtel Corp., the Line 5 pipeline is actually two 20-inch-diameter parallel pipes with an enamel coating that’s three times thicker than a typical pipeline. Enbridge maintains that there has never been a leak in its 69-year operational existence.
The company maintains that it monitors Line 5’s Straits crossing “24/7, using both specially trained staff and sophisticated computer monitoring systems” that include “regular inspections of the line, using inline tools, expert divers, and remote operating vehicles (ROVs), going above and beyond regulatory requirements.”
In April 2020, Enbridge filed an application with the Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) requesting authority to replace its 4.5-mile Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac and encase it inside a tunnel.
The Straits Line 5 Replacement Segment Project would replace the dual 20-inch diameter pipes with one 30-inch diameter pipe and relocate it within a concrete-lined tunnel below the lakebed.
The application didn’t address the tunnel—only the pipeline replacement. The proposed $500 million tunnel project is being reviewed under separate applications filed with state and federal agencies. The last date for public comments on the proposed tunnel was March 11. State regulators and the three-member PSC are currently reviewing the proposal.
Enbridge sought swift approval for its pipeline replacement project based on its original 1953 approval, but the PSC determined that the proposed pipeline replacement project presented significant differences and denied its request for declaratory relief, referring it to the state’s Act 16 process for formal contested case hearings.
Six months later, Whitmer pulled the plug by revoking its easement and ordering the pipeline shuttered by May 2021, effectively pushing the matter into the courts.
Although there have never been any reported leaks from the pipeline in the straits, Enbridge-owned pipelines have been responsible for oil spills elsewhere in Michigan, including from Line 5 in Crystal Falls in 1999 and in the Kalamazoo River in 2010.
Eight Michigan counties and municipalities have formally called for the “retirement “of Line 5 including Cheboygan, Cheboygan County, Emmet County, Genesee County, Mackinaw City, Mentor Township, Munising Township, and Wayne County.
According to a study published by the University of Michigan and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a leak in Enbridge 5 near the Straits of Mackinac could affect roughly 700 miles of shoreline. A pipeline leak and oil spill could cost as much as $6 billion in cleanup efforts and environmental damage, according to the state, citing a close call in 2018 when a ship’s anchor stuck, but didn’t rupture, the pipeline in the straits.
An August 2020 study by Gary L. Street, former Dow chemical engineer, found a temporary court-ordered shutdown of one of Line 5’s dual pipelines following an incident elsewhere along its traverse didn’t affect gas prices or supply in Michigan or Canada.
But according to CEA’s analysis, shutting down the pipeline permanently would be another matter.
CEA stated that its “independent third-party analysis,” conducted by California-based Weinstein, Clower, and Associates, examined the effects that a Line 5 closure would have on the region and found “shutting down this critical infrastructure would have a devastating impact on the supply of transportation fuels in regional markets, and hurt petrochemical refiners that rely on the pipeline to safely and efficiently deliver feedstock.”
According to the report, Ohio residents and businesses would incur $2.73 billion in higher gasoline and diesel prices through 2027. Michigan residents and businesses would see $2.22 billion in higher costs, those in Indiana $272 million, and those in Pennsylvania for $630 million.
“The jump in transportation fuel prices will not be borne evenly across all consumer groups,” the CEA report reads. “But given current macro-economic trends, most of these higher costs will likely be passed on to households.”
The increase in fuel costs will radiate through local and state economies, according to CEA.
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Biden Budget Packed with Cash for Extreme Climate Agenda
President Joe Biden's latest budget proposal has arrived and it is jam packed full of funding proposals for his far left policy agenda.
According to information released by the Treasury Department Monday, Biden is asking for $11 billion to continue his war on America's energy sector.
"The Budget includes over $11 billion in international climate finance, meeting the President’s pledge to quadruple international climate finance, a year early. This includes $5.3 billion in appropriations, including a $1.6 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund, a critical multilateral tool for financing climate adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries," the Treasury Department released. "The Budget also supports a $3.2 billion loan to the Clean Technology Fund to finance clean energy projects in developing countries by increasing energy security in high-emitting markets. U.S. international climate assistance and financing would accelerate the global energy transition to net zero emissions by 2050; help developing countries build resilience to the growing impacts of climate change, including through the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) and other programs; and support the implementation of the President’s Plan to Conserve Global Forests: Critical Carbon Sinks, while increasing energy independence by decreasing reliance on producers of carbon-intensive non-renewable resources."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to hold America's oil and gas producers hostage as prices at the pump skyrocket. From CNBC:
The Biden administration is delaying decisions on new oil and gas leases and permits after a Louisiana federal judge blocked officials from using higher cost estimates of climate change when making rules for polluting industries.
The leasing pause is an unintended result of the Feb. 11 decision by U.S. District Judge James Cain, who sided with a group GOP-led states and argued that the Biden administration’s attempt to raise the real cost of climate change would hike energy costs and hurt state revenues from energy production.
The ruling has prompted delays and uncertainty across at least four federal agencies that were using higher cost estimates of greenhouse gas emissions in decisions, including plans to restrict methane emissions from natural gas drilling and a grant program for transit projects. It also continues a contentious legal battle that has hampered Biden’s plans to address climate change.
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Australia: The ‘Green’ shades of political hypocrisy
It was only last month that the Leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam, called on the government to ensure that all rental properties contained ‘compulsory air conditioning’ as part of a minimum standard requirement in a letter to Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Melissa Horne.
Air conditioning is an energy-consuming monster.
While those of us who are comfortable living in the modern world feel no guilt about the advances in technology that allow humans to wear a jumper inside when it’s over 45 degrees outside – the Greens hail from the apocalyptic ‘end is nigh’ pool of thought. They are prepared to send Australia back to the caves armed with candles through their relentless pursuit of policies that dismantle Australia’s energy security, but sure, let’s mandate air conditioners?
While the Greens terrify children and incite them to skip school and stage mock ‘die-ins’ in capital cities, they don’t mind arguing in favour of air conditioning to drag votes from the hot and sweaty poor (who are being made more poor by Climate Change policies).
This month, the Greens are back on track, calling for the luvvies in Canberra to give up their vehicles on ‘car-free’ days and try out ‘car-free zones’ in the city. Mind you, this might not be necessary as fuel prices continue to rise on the back of Australia’s dependence on internationally-sourced oil (because ideological zealots fight against domestic resources).
Jo Clay, the Greens’ transport spokesperson, released a discussion paper containing the above proposals along with the usual cash splurge on footpaths, bikes, and – of course – dramatically lowering speed limits so that cars have to expend more fossil fuels to go nowhere.
The paper also suggests mucking around with traffic light sequencing to make life miserable for motorists and leave cars pumping out fumes while bikes and pedestrians take priority. Or if that doesn’t suit, other recommendations include removing roads entirely to make ‘more space for the community’. Pesky things like on-street parking are listed as a ‘loss of space for little real gain’ – aside from having somewhere to park, which is a pretty big gain for motorists.
‘Canberrans love active travel,’ Clay insisted. ‘We have the highest level of cycling in Australia and almost everyone uses active travel at some point. Even those who drive most places will still get out of their car and walk or wheel to their final destination.’
According to Clay, these car-free days and zones are meant to offer the people of Canberra a way to ‘experience a different way to use our roads’ because exploring transport options for fun is probably high up on the list of activities for struggling businesses and families desperately scrambling to recover from Covid health orders.
Australians are more likely to believe in ‘active transport’ when representatives of the Greens permanently exchange their government-funded cars for push-bikes and cycle to Parliament in the pouring rain, freezing cold, and sweltering heat of Canberra. If they want us to believe that the working-class need to give up their cars for the ‘greater good’, Greens MPs should set the example by refusing to fly around the country and instead hop on long-distance trains or buses.
No takers?
‘We have to do more to help Canberrans choose the original zero-emissions transport method of active travel. We need to make active travel fun, accessible, and safe for everyone.’
How does this declaration work with the paper’s recommendation to trial off-road bicycle exemptions for helmet requirements? Helmets are widely regarded as the most important safety advancement for cyclists – something openly acknowledged by the paper – but people don’t like wearing helmets so the Greens reckon we should just ‘ditch them’ because cycling ‘participation dropped when helmet laws were introduced’. Sure, but fatalities also dropped by 46 per cent.
‘This off road exemption could be trialled and the effect on participation measured to see if this increases cycle commuting, especially for short distances within suburbs.’
The original zero-emissions method of transport has been common with the peasantry for thousands of years – walking – although we are yet to see that less-glamorous mode of transport kick off with MPs screeching ‘Net Zero!’ from the chambers of Parliament.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-green-shades-of-political-hypocrisy/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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28 March, 2022
The ‘Sustainability’ Business: A Gathering of Rent-Seekers
The Economist Group, publisher of the Economist, has been hosting its seventh annual “Sustainability Week,” with one day in London and three others on virtual platforms.
The event’s website offers a revealing glimpse into the ecosystem that “sustainability” has created — an ecosystem that contains true believers, to be sure, but is also one in which opportunists can take advantage of the pathway it offers to power, profit, and prestige — or at least a job.
The roster of speakers features an impressive sprinkling of the prominenti, from the secretary-general of the U.N. to the secretary-general of the OECD to the president of Austria to the mayor of Stockholm to the co-head of “global public policy” for — wait for it — BlackRock.
But it was also striking how many on that roster hold positions that, to a greater or lesser degree, depend on the sustainability of the sustainability bandwagon. To take a sample, they included seven (or was it eight?) chief sustainability officers; a chief brand, innovation, international, and sustainability officer; two heads of sustainability; a global head of sustainability; a head of sustainability and inclusion; a vice president of sustainability; a vice president of inclusive impact and sustainability; a director of sustainability (not to be confused with a global sustainability director, although one of those was billed as a speaker too); a senior vice president of marketing for purpose and sustainability; a head of global impact; a director of SRI (or “socially responsible” investment); a director of a climate-risk initiative; an environmental-development director; a director of environmental action; a director of social purpose; a global head of climate business; a global head of impact; a professor in practice for sustainable finance; a head of sustainable energies; a research director for sustainable finance; a chief responsible-investment officer; a global head of climate business; a director of climate-resilience investment; a chief ESG innovation officer, a head of sustainable procurement; a global sustainability-services lead; an ESG solutions engineer; the managing director of a center for carbon transition, and more.
This selection does seem quite . . . extensive. Then again, the event’s website refers to “185+ speakers” and “65+ sessions.”
It’s hardly surprising that sustainability professionals would address an audience attending (virtually or otherwise) a “sustainability week.” Not having them there would be like a church service without priests. At the same time, the sheer number of them — a mere microcosm, incidentally, of the sustainability caste — is a reminder of how rapidly sustainability has caught on, and of the opportunities that it now offers.
While we must assume that all such professionals care sincerely about working toward their particular vision of the planet’s future, it would be naïve not to appreciate that their hiring (and the recruitment, doubtless, of teams to support them) is constructing a powerful interest group that will not only regard any opposition as a danger to the environment but also as a threat to their livelihoods. The implications of where that will lead do not have to be spelled out, and it is by no means a phenomenon confined to the private sector.
We can also be sure that sustainability’s paid evangelists will be doing their best to get their message out — and far beyond their own organizations. They will see that as their duty, of course, but the more converts they win to their cause, the more influential — and the more valuable — they themselves become.
An event like this must have sponsors. Naturally its organizers are not shy about explaining why this is one to back:
"Our commitment to quality, and our unique ability to reach c-suite executives mean that we are able to attract the most important, qualified influencers to speak at our events"
Series speakers past and present include Bill Gates, John Kerry, Tony Blair and Larry Fink. Larry Fink, well, who’d have thunk it?
Sponsors this time round included Deloitte, a firm active in the ESG business, Planetly by OneTrust (“OneTrust ESG simplifies the gathering, storing and assessing of your company’s ESG . . . data and metrics”), Mott Macdonald (ESG consultancy is one of the services it offers), Ecovadis (“the world’s most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings”), Wellington (an asset manager “embracing ESG”), BCG (“WEF [Davos] and BCG are shedding light on the financial materiality of ESG factors and how those factors will evolve”), and Accenture (“we help our clients reinvent their businesses at scale, creating business value and sustainable impact for all stakeholders”).
Yes, there’s an ecosystem. And the Economist Group is a part of it, quite literally, in word as well as in deed:
Since the Climate issue in 2019, The Economist’s climate coverage has permeated all aspects of our journalism. We take a clear-headed approach to analysing what does and does not work. A weekly email newsletter by the same name was launched shortly afterwards. In September 2021 we launched “To a Lesser Degree”, a podcast series exploring how everything—from finance to farming, transport to trade—must change to slow the pace of global warming. Over the last five years, our special reports have taken an in-depth look at the future of energy, water and the business of climate change. Our films reveal the politics of climate change, the definition of net zero and whether veganism could make a real impact on the environment. Our journalists explore the role that business and policy makers can play in reversing climate change, interviewing global leaders such as Bill Gates and Christine Lagarde.
The Economist is focused somewhat on the financial, so that’s an emphasis that would be expected at an event being organized by its parent. Moreover, as climate warriors have come to understand, harnessing capitalism is a way of advancing political aims (a specific response to climate change) without the inconvenience of going through the democratic process (The SEC’s new proposals on climate-related disclosure are just the latest example of this.)
And so, turning to this event’s agenda we see, among other treats, panels on greening the financial system, on innovation in green finance, on the best returns in green finance, and on how banks can gain competitive advantage by accelerating green finance. There were to be talks on investing for change (given by the founder and executive chairman of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that took on Exxon), on how digitization will improve company ESG data, and on analyzing environmental- and social-impact investments.
Another panel (advertised as “the road to nature-positive”) was to consider these compelling questions:
How can businesses across industries identify and calculate their natural-resource dependencies? What tools, metrics and targets exist to enable businesses to measure their impact on the natural environment? How can firms best understand the business risks that arise from environmental degradation and their own impact on biodiversity? What lessons can be applied from the journey towards net zero?
What lessons could be learned from the journey toward net zero?
Hmmm . . .
I wonder whether anyone suggested that, like all too many exercises in central planning, it has been an expensive shambles. Maybe one V. Putin (undisclosed location, Russia) took the time to send a message that he, for one, thought that the journey — which has, curiously, mainly been embarked upon by those in the West — was going very well.
Also on the agenda: a “fireside chat” on making money from sustainability, followed by a lunch break where the talk would revolve around unlocking investment for net zero, a topic so gripping that it was scheduled for further discussion during a networking break later the same day.
A conversation was promised on “embedding the value of natural capital in economic, financial and political decision-making”:
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Environmentalists Are Blocking the Post Office From Replacing Busted 30-Year-Old Mail Trucks
The United States Postal Service (USPS) wants to add 165,000 new trucks to its fleet, which hasn't been upgraded in over 30 years. The agency says it must upgrade its trucks due to their "inefficient gasoline engines" and lack of "modern safety features." But now congressional Democrats hope to stall the agency's plan because it won't add enough electric vehicles, even though forcing the USPS to purchase an entirely "green" fleet would cost the financially troubled agency billions more than its proposed plan.
As required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the USPS submitted its environmental impact statement for Next Generation Delivery Vehicle acquisitions in January 2021. The agency plans to purchase 50,000 to 165,000 new trucks over the next 10 years, of which 5,000 would be battery electric vehicles. This means that 10 percent of the new USPS vehicles will be emissions-free and the remaining 90 percent will be gas-powered.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as the White House Council on Environmental Quality quickly issued complaints, claiming that the USPS' statement did not fully comply with NEPA and that the agency must rely less on gas-powered vehicles.
In its letter to Jennifer Beiro-Réveillé, senior director of environmental affairs and corporate sustainability at the USPS, the EPA complained that the impact statement did not "disclose essential information underlying the key analysis of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), underestimates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fails to consider more environmentally protective feasible alternatives, and inadequately considers impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns." The White House said the purchase would conflict with President Joe Biden's effort to ensure that federal agencies achieve 100 percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035. (The USPS is an independent agency and doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of Biden's zero-emissions executive order.)
In response, USPS said it would move forward with its proposal and that there is no legal basis to deny it. "Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition," said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in a press release. "But the process needs to keep moving forward."
Meanwhile, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D–Va.) has introduced legislation to block any USPS vehicle purchases unless 75 percent of the trucks are electric or emissions-free. And last week, a group of House Democrats penned a letter calling for an investigation into the purchase over its environmental impact. According to a spokeswoman, the letter has been received by the inspector general's office and is being carefully reviewed.
The cost of the purchase would be $6 billion over 10 years. Electrifying the fleet, however, would cost the USPS $2.3 billion more over 20 years due to the cost of manufacturing lithium-battery vehicles, as well as the 2021 average cost of kilowatt-hours ($0.11/kWh) versus gas ($2.71/gallon).
The purchase is part of DeJoy's 10-year Delivering for America plan to make the USPS more efficient and financially viable. Considering the agency's longtime financial unsustainability, it should be prioritizing its fiscal performance over its environmental impacts right now. Forcing the USPS to buy fewer trucks than it needs or necessitating another federal bailout further jeopardizes the agency's ability to serve Americans.
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Green Democrats do an end-run around Congress
Democrats, banks, regulators and activists have increasingly set their sights on the financial sector and legal system, not Congress, for pushing their aggressive climate agenda.
Employing so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, financial institutions and government agencies have quietly implemented policies prioritizing a focus on factors unrelated to a company’s bottom line, experts said. The ESG movement has swept across the corporate world, leading to individual pledges from companies promising to become more sustainable and improve internal diversity.
In the latest example of the ESG and sustainable investing movement, the Democratic-majority U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey was one of many lawmakers to immediately slam the proposal, saying it “hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC.”
“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”
“One of the ways that they’re doing it — it’s like an all fronts attack — is under the guise of environmental, social and governance investments,” he added. (RELATED: New York To Divest Pensions From Fossil Fuel Companies)
‘Priorities Are A Little Misplaced’
Regulators have also targeted Americans’ pensions. In October, the Department of Labor (DOL), which is tasked with regulating private sector pensions under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, reversed a Trump-era rule that placed barriers to fiduciaries’ ability to consider ESG factors when selecting investments.
Similar to the SEC proposal Monday, the DOL rule stated that “climate change and other ESG factors can be financially material” for investors.
“The primary purpose of fiduciaries is to look out for the wellbeing of the pensioners who contribute to these funds,” Pat Pizzella, the former deputy secretary of labor during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “Not to speculate on risky or trendy, expensive ESG products. I think their priorities are a little misplaced.”
He added that the Trump administration’s view was to look at ESG investing from a legal point of view. Pizzella predicted that individuals with pensions managed by fiduciaries that invest in risky ESG-focused companies or funds would eventually take the institutions to court.
“I think if we are going to hear about climate risk, we ought to hear about it from the National Weather Service, not the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he added.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/23/sustainable-investing-esg-democrats-climate-change/
*************************************************Morgan Stanley Flags EV Demand Destruction as Lithium price Soars
Electric vehicle battery makers will need to raise prices by almost 25% due to soaring lithium carbonate prices, leading to crimped margins and possibly demand destruction, according to Morgan Stanley.
Chinese prices for lithium carbonate, the key ingredient in many batteries, have jumped fivefold over the past year, analysts including Jack Lu said in a note. The pass-through of costs could push EV manufacturers to raise prices by as much as 15% and may hit demand, they said in the note dated March 24.
“Historically, the battery price cost curve had been declining at a pace of 3% to 7% annually for so many years in a row it almost seemed inevitable,” the analysts said. “But molecules don’t play by the same rules as Moore’s Law. The world has changed, and along with it is a new paradigm of input costs.”
Lithium carbonate prices have surged as demand from car-makers has outstripped supply, highlighting how the energy transition may be slowed by a shortage of materials and refining capacity. China’s top lithium producers -- Ganfeng Lithium Co. and Tianqi Lithium Corp. -- reported a surge in preliminary revenue in the first two months of the year on the back of the rally.
Most battery manufacturers in China -- which dominates the lithium-ion battery industry -- buy the material on the spot market, rather than though long-term contracts, Morgan Stanley said. However, big companies like Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd. may be able to get some discount, it said.
Despite the rising prices, Morgan Stanley is overweight on Tesla Inc., with a price target of $1,300 per share, about 30% higher than its current level. There’s scope for “profound” long-term changes in the battery industry, and Tesla’s scale, technology and vertical integration make it best placed to address the challenges relative to other EV manufacturers, it said.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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27 March, 2022
Ice shelf collapses in previously stable East Antarctica
The ineffable Seth Borenstein below is doing his best to spread panic. For a start, ice shelves are mostly floating so if they break off and melt they have no influence on sea levels. Secondly, "the first time in human history" wasn't. There was a major iceberg calving in E. Antarctica in 2014. So history for Seth must start in 2014. The rest of the article is just speculation
Tony Heller has a good takedown of the whole thing
An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.
The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.
The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent, making it worrisome.
“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.
The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. That is negligible. It's more about the where it happened.
Neff said he worries that previous assumptions about East Antarctica’s stability may not be correct. And that’s important because if the water frozen in East Antarctica melted — and that’s a millennia-long process if not longer — it would raise seas across the globe more than 160 feet (50 meters). It’s more than five times the ice in the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where scientists have concentrated much of their research.
Helen Amanda Fricker, co-director of the Scripps Polar Center at the University of California San Diego, said researchers have to spend more time looking at that part of the continent.
“East Antarctica is starting to change. There is mass loss starting to happen,” Fricker said. “We need to know how stable each one of the ice shelves are because once one disappears” it means glaciers melt into the warming water and “some of that water will come to San Diego and elsewhere.”
Scientists had been seeing this particular ice shelf — closest to Australia — shrink a bit since the 1970s, Neff said. Then in 2020, the shelf’s ice loss sped up to losing about half of itself every month or so, Walker said.
“We probably are seeing the result of a lot of long time increased ocean warming there,” Walker said. “it’s just been melting and melting.”
Still, one expert thinks that only part of East Antarctica is a concern.
“Most of East Antarctica is relatively secure, relatively invulnerable and there are sectors in it that are vulnerable,” said British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Rob Larter. “The overall effect of climate change around East Antarctica is it’s chipping away at the edges of the ice sheets in some places, but it’s actually adding more snow to the middle.”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ice-shelf-collapses-in-previously-stable-East-17028801.php
*****************************************************Electric Vehicle Makers’ Russia Connection
Elon Musk, who is now spending his time urging the U.S. to increase oil and gas production despite selling electric vehicles, wants you to believe that he is putting his financial interests and environmental ambitions aside in a goodhearted effort to protect America’s national security interests. However, the truth is that today’s heavily subsidized electric vehicles are often built with parts sourced from Russia and that they are not as environmentally friendly as Musk would like you to believe.
Musk promised a $25,000 electric car. Instead, he just raised the price of his electric car — the $44,990 to start Model 3 — by almost 20 percent, in part to compensate for the increased costs of certain raw materials needed to make electric car batteries, such as nickel, palladium and aluminum.
While Musk has warned of inflationary pressures at SpaceX and Tesla because of the situation in Russia, this is far from the first time he has increased costs on the American people. He has made a name for himself by promising cheap prices and then raising them after he secures funding.
This case may be different, however, because as it turns out, Russia is one of the major suppliers of these crucial raw materials — 44 percent of palladium. There are fewer environmental regulatory restrictions in Russia, which makes it less expensive to source them from there. This is also the case with other key raw materials used in EVs, such as cobalt, and lithium, which are also largely sourced from countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo in the case of cobalt, where the environment can be assaulted with impunity while Musk plays the role of the man who is cleaning it up.
Musk and other EV makers to offload the environmental costs of his electric cars onto other countries and other people while he imposes higher costs on those who buy his electric cars. As always, Elon likes to look good, almost as much as he likes making money. But electric cars don't look very good when you look at them closely, and yet he wants the taxpayers to subsidize them.
Most people have no idea just how many environmentally unfriendly materials go into each electric car. A Tesla Model 3, for instance, is laden with more than 1,000 pounds of battery pack, containing materials that are as "green" as the damaged reactors at Fukushima. Lithium-ion is highly reactive, meaning it can, and often does, burn. It's one of the reasons why electric cars catch on fire with what ought to be alarming regularity.
These fires are sometimes spontaneous — the car goes up in smoke when it's parked in someone's garage. And they burn much hotter than an ordinary gasoline fire because they are chemical fires.
That’s not so great for the environment.
Similarly, not much thought has been given to how to deal with the prospect of millions of EV battery packs in circulation, which will eventually sit in old electric cars — many of which will leach their caustic contents into the environment.
Which brings us back to what comes out of the environment.
Musk and EV partisans tout the lack of harmful or even any emissions emanating from the tailpipes of electric cars, which haven't got tailpipes. But where did the materials that make the electric cars come from? How were they made into electric cars? Where does the electricity which powers electric cars come from?
In the United States, about 40 percent of the electricity available is generated by coal-fired utility plants; the bulk of the remainder by oil/gas-fired plants, along with some (but not much) nuclear - the latter having been actively discouraged by non-issuance of permits to build more nuclear-generating plants.
The diminishing nuclear contribution excepted, the remainder generates enough C02 to make up for all the C02 not emitted at the tailpipe of electric cars, which are energy hogs. With the sole exception of the Nissan Leaf, every electric car available touts how quick it is. Teslas especially. You have probably heard about their "ludicrous" speed. But it takes ludicrous power to deliver that speed, and that's why Teslas carry around 1,000-plus pounds of environmentally toxic materials and need 400-800 volts of electricity to "fast" charge (in 45 minutes) so they can go fast again.
Which brings up how all those electric cars will be "fast" charged. It can't be done at home because very few homes are wired to handle 400-800 volts of power surging through the wiring. The wiring panel would melt or the house would catch on fire. It will take re-wiring houses and neighborhoods to make this work, and that will take more power and more raw materials. Not to mention more money.
Meanwhile, Elon collects more money — first from the government, then from the people who buy his cars.
The EV crowd wants you to believe that they’re for clean energy but most of them are not — they’re for subsidizing a business model that is profitable for them. Even when it means putting money in Russia’s pocket. And there’s nothing less patriotic than that.
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SEC goes woke on climate change, abandons mission to protect investors and markets
With Democratic appointees at the helm and the Biden administration’s encouragement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gone fully woke on climate change.
Stepping well outside its legal mission to protect investors from fraud and the markets from insider trading and manipulation, the SEC has decided it knows what the managers of publicly traded companies, portfolio and fund managers, and investors should be most concerned about: climate change.
The SEC has no particular expertise in climate science. Moreover, I see no evidence it is staffed by people known to be able to predict the future. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the SEC from dictating to investors and businesses that they must account for climate change.
The SEC’s proposals would require publicly traded companies to track and report on the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from their own operations, the operations of companies in their supply chain, and the operations of the electric utilities that supply them power. In addition, if these rules are finalized, companies will have to report on how climate change is impacting their businesses now, how it is likely to affect them in the future, and what they are doing in response, including steps they are taking to reduce emissions.
These rules will take hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of dollars away from businesses’ core operations so they can carry out the SEC’s mandate to account for how future climate change might fiscally impact a business’ operations. Not to mention the requirement to act as their brother’s keepers by tracking their power companies’ and suppliers’ emissions as well as their own.
The factors likely to materially impact the success or failure of publicly traded companies are best known to the officers and managers of the firms themselves, not the SEC or any other agency or activist group not actively involved in the relevant business.
The impacts of climate change 20, 50, or 100 years from now are unknowable. Climate model projections of future conditions cannot be trusted. The models have consistently misstated temperatures and misidentified various climate conditions. Thus, projections of the future made by climate modelers should be taken with a huge grain of salt by companies and their investors.
Publicly traded companies exist to make a profit for their owners, although the managers may also list other reasons for a company’s or mutual fund’s formation in its statements of incorporation and disclosures. As such, the managers of publicly traded companies should endeavor to maximize profits for their investors. The politics of a company’s managers should not enter into its business or investment decisions, unless the company explicitly states in their articles of incorporation and public disclosures that business and investment decisions will be driven by a particular ideological point of view or set of political concerns.
Anyone who wishes a company to consider climate change risks and opportunities in its business decisions can purchase stocks or bonds issued by the company, as all investors do. Then, at annual board meetings, they can express their desires. They can try to convince company or fund managers to consider climate change risks and potential rewards.
Failing at that, they can introduce climate-related resolutions and offer candidates for the Board of Directors concerned about climate change. They can also try to convince a majority of stock owners to support these resolutions, directives, and slate of candidates. Thousands of climate-related resolutions, and candidates for board positions focused on climate concerns, have been offered over the past few decades. This mechanism—not likely illegal SEC mandates—is the appropriate way to have companies take climate concerns seriously.
The SEC notes many businesses are already tracking their carbon dioxide emissions and anticipating the impacts of climate change on their operations. Companies that choose to ignore emissions or climate change as a business factor should be allowed to do so. Which course of action is better? I don’t know; neither does the SEC. In truth, it probably depends on the line of business a company is in or where its operations are located.
Those concerned about climate change can form their own companies, complete with public stock offerings, to compete directly with the businesses they believe are not taking climate change seriously. Thousands of such “green” companies exist. This lets the public express their concern for the environment directly through their purchases of goods and services, as well as the investment decisions they make.
The SEC’s role in these matters should be limited to ensuring “truth in advertising,” a policing function. Rather than developing or enforcing some uniform standard for what it means for a company to take climate seriously, it should police those companies that profess to be climate friendly, or committed to reducing their energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, as a business strategy and a way to attract investors. The SEC should require transparency. Such companies should be required to state specifically what practices they are undertaking to respond to climate change and how and on what timeline their efforts should be judged.
Beyond ensuring the transparency of allegedly climate-friendly practices, the SEC should, as part of its public mandate, police businesses claiming to embrace “green” policies, as they do with other promises made to investors by businesses. SEC should also respond to complaints from investors about companies failing to carry out their stated mission and work with the Department of Justice to ensure the companies’ officers, employees, and investors are not involved in illegal business practices.
The SEC has no climate expertise, nor has it evinced thus far the ability to predict the future with regularity. As such, the SEC’s proposal that businesses account for climate risks is purely political, a fetishistic obsession of SEC bureaucrats and their patrons, not based on business concerns. It should stick to regulating insider trading and false business claims and leave the decisions about how to maximize business prospects to those actually running businesses and their owners.
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Sanctions, Climate Policy, ESG, and Energy Dependence
President Biden’s latest effort to impose a cordon upon the Russian economy and place pressure upon the regime of President Vladimir Putin comes in the form of executive order 14066, which blocks the import of all Russian crude oil, petroleum, petroleum fuel, oil derivatives, liquefied natural gas, coal, and coal products. In 2021, the United States purchased approximately 670,000 barrels of petroleum per day from the Russian Federation, representing 8 percent of our total petroleum imports.
The White House’s short-term solution to this impending shortfall and the highest gas prices in American history is two-pronged. First, Biden plans to release 30 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. U.S. petroleum consumption rested at approximately 20 million barrels per day in 2021; such a release would—in a vacuum—sustain this demand for a grand total of 1.5 days.
To make up the remainder, Biden has begun negotiating with Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Iran and Venezuela are already under stringent U.S. sanctions, which would be partially lifted to enable a potential energy deal.
Putting aside these regimes’ sparkling track records of terrorism sponsorship, journalist executions, and human rights atrocities, this deal would directly strengthen countries that are clearly diametric opponents of U.S. strategic interests. Moreover, Venezuela and Iran are long-time allies of Moscow, and have been heavily bolstering their ties to Russia and China in recent years.
What is to stop Venezuela and Iran from buying Russian oil once their sanctions have been lifted, and then selling that oil to the United States for higher prices? Nothing like turning a profit at the expense of Uncle Sam, which can in turn be used to fund Hezbollah.
Everybody but the United States wins from that deal—including Russia; Moscow will simply be able to transfer its oil exports to its allies. As the Heritage Foundation’s Jim Carafano recently wrote, “If you’re doing business with the friends of Russia, you’re helping out Russians. It’s that simple.”
Just as this shift from Putin to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei or Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would prove counterproductive, it is also unlikely to substantially mitigate our domestic energy costs. The damage has already been done.
When Biden took office, gas prices sat at approximately $2.48. On his first day at the Resolute desk, Biden signed executive order 13990, which canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. Keystone XL would have supplied Texas refineries with 800,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada per day.
Further, Biden has blocked oil and gas companies from leasing new property on federal land, significantly increased regulations across the industry, and restricted drilling for new oil on substantial swathes of federal property, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Our current gas price of $4.33 represents a 74.6 percent increase in just 14 months, heavily correlating to the highest inflation rate since the 1970s. As was the case during 1970s stagflation, energy has been a primary driver of the overall inflation rate.
If Biden truly wants to reduce energy prices, reversing his misguided policies is where he should begin. Yet, as economically damaging as these aforementioned short-term price shocks are, Biden’s pandering to the international climate movement carries equally problematic long-term implications for our energy dependence.
Biden’s overarching environmental agenda is to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The aforementioned executive actions implemented by the Biden administration are one principal mechanism for achieving these goals.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scoring is the other mechanism. These scores are essentially a social credit framework for a company’s sustainability reporting. A company’s risk profile is subjectively determined by amalgamating both financial and non-financial aspects into an overall score, which then determines whether that company is an attractive target for investment.
The Biden administration has worked with global financial elites, Wall Street titans, and international organizations to institutionalize ESG within our economic infrastructure. Due to this network’s combined influence and leverage, 98 percent of U.S. companies now report ESG metrics.
One of ESG’s main targets is undoubtedly the U.S. fossil fuel industry. ESG metrics are inundated with green energy objectives. One prominently used system has 16 metrics related to climate themes, including Impact of Air Pollution, Land Use and Ecological Sensitivity, Paris-aligned GHG Emissions Targets, and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
So, if a traditional energy company is slapped with a low ESG score, it will not be seen as an attractive target for investment.
Let’s bring this full circle in the context of oil dependence.
Under the Trump administration, the United States experienced an energy renaissance based not only upon increased drilling and lax regulations, but also unprecedented innovations in drilling technology, especially hydraulic fracturing.
Fracking gives us access to vast new crude oil deposits. Crude oil, however, is not a homogenous product, often differentiated by its density and sulfur content. Most newly accessible U.S. deposits yield “light” and “sweet” crude oil, whereas countries such as Canada, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran yield heavier varieties.
The problem is that most U.S. oil refineries are designed to process heavy crude oil. This is why we still rely upon foreign sources—these refinery characteristics have made it more economically efficient to import heavy crude, and export the light crude we naturally produce.
A logical solution that would result in long-term U.S. energy independence would be re-purposing some of our refineries to process light crude, despite its initial short-term costs. We could both sustain domestic demand, and export surplus for a profit.
Yet—Biden’s policies restrict energy companies’ abilities to tap into our domestic resources, which also disincentivizes companies to overhaul their refineries. Why change the refinery if there isn’t much surplus to refine?
In tandem, the ESG system disincentivizes investors from contributing to energy companies, which could use such funds to finance research and development geared towards optimizing existing technologies, innovation, and refinery updates.
If we desire true energy dominance—not to mention economic superiority, lower prices, higher standard of living, and enhanced national security—there is a simple solution: Allow energy companies to operate in the free market, according to the laws of supply and demand.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/sanctions-climate-policy-esg-and-energy-dependence_4346848.html
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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25 March, 2022
You can't save the world with Net Zero
Global warming is the "big lie" of the 21st century. Endless repetition of it by Leftists has made it widely believed
Ever since socialism’s credibility collapsed in 1990, environmentalism has increasingly dominated the political agenda. Central to this was the global warming scare and its implications for energy supply and economic activities in general.
Environmentalists’ pressures ensured that this agenda was widely embraced. Every Western country agreed to pursue ‘Net Zero’ carbon emissions, replacing hydrocarbons with wind, solar, and prospectively hydrogen as power sources. In most countries, this was combined with rejecting another environmentalist bogeyman – nuclear power.
China, India, and other burgeoning economies rejected denying themselves these power sources.
By reducing their cheap energy supplies, affluent world nations have seen deindustrialisation and a relative economic weakening. Australian governments, like those of most other affluent countries have tried to hide this, promoted unlikely technology advances in alternative energy and taken comfort in occasional blips in the upward march of prices their policies have caused.
Writing in The Australian in February, renewables lobbyist Kane Thornton triumphantly argued, ‘The climate wars of the past 15 years appear to be cooling. Politicians have finally realised the voting public don’t care for their petty arguments and denial; communities just want action. These same politicians have also come to realise that the clean energy revolution is in full swing.’
And even on March 21, an article in The Australian by advertising agency chief James Walker-Smith offered advice to firms presaged on, ‘With the science won and the tragic proof of the climate emergency all too real…’
But the new reality is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed the debate.
The march to an inevitable hydrocarbon-free world, so loudly trumpeted at the Glasgow climate conference in November of last year, has gone into reverse.
In the US, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, previously a vigorous advocate for renewable energy, is now urging the gas and oil suppliers to increase their pumping.
European statesmen claim to be still pushing ahead with banning petrol and diesel cars by 2035, but the clarion call has changed from ‘save the world from global warming’ to ‘save us from dependence on Russian gas’. Government policies to replace hydrocarbon and nuclear power with wind/solar has not only increased costs, but left Europe politically vulnerable.
The UK is inching its way to re-opening oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, and is in a softening up process to permit fracking of its vast on-shore gas reserves.
France has reversed course on nuclear power closures.
In August of last year, the Dutch categorically ruled out extending beyond mid-2022 the life of their massive Groningen gas field; but Prime Minister Mark Rutte on February 25 added, ‘You can never completely completely completely exclude something 100 per cent’; in mid-March Groningen’s continued operation is described as ‘a last option’.
Even Germany, governed by a left-dominated rainbow coalition, is having doubts; a new survey shows that while 80 per cent of people want an acceleration to renewables, half the respondents also see a larger role for nuclear and coal.
Whatever the outcome of hostilities in Ukraine, a move to low emission energy technologies will be henceforth subsidiary to ensuring access to technologies that work and are cheap. And that means coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. Europe has abundant coal resources. It has the same fracking potential as the US, but has banned the technology because it creates tremors, which academic scientists, estimate are smaller than ‘a small pumpkin dropping to the floor’. The forces preventing the use of these resources are now in retreat.
Ironically, the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) anti-hydrocarbon campaigns reached an apogee the day after Biden banned Russian oil, when eleven major European fund managers announced plans to force Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, to cut its lending to oil and gas companies.
Such calls are looking increasingly like vanity projects that, however unwittingly, undermine western security.
ESG and gas fracking hysteria has also gripped Australia as part of the green crusade against fossil fuels (and nuclear and new large hydro). Opposition to coal and gas developments comes from state and federal politicians, the law officers they have appointed, and the gaggle of rainbow warriors in pressure groups and in the business community.
These have prevented, delayed, and added costs to major new proposals making us unable to respond to the strategic need and economic opportunities presented.
Politicians like NSW’s Matt Kean and Victoria’s Lily D’Ambrosio continue to promote the fiction that renewables are the cheapest electricity sources, alongside policies that impose costs of electricity from coal and gas. But even they are confronted by the enormous expenses involved in ‘firming’ the intermittent supply of wind and solar and arranging for their transmission.
Aluminium smelting, industrial chemicals, steel production, and cement are the basic industries on which economic prosperity is built. All four are reliant on the cheap energy, which government policies are fast eliminating. Those woke media and business leaders who were once enchanted by Sanjeev Gupta’s fanciful plans for carbon-neutral steel are now silent. Australia’s three major aluminium smelters in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland all face the scrapyard, as a result of forced closures of coal generators – Victoria’s Portland smelter is already reliant on state subsidies which, ironically, compensate for the government imposts that have increased its power costs.
Added to the wealth generation Australia is sacrificing by regulations forcing the displacement of low-cost coal and gas by high-cost wind and solar energy, these policies also detract from our defence capabilities at a time when these are assuming a higher priority.
Do we have the political awareness to change course?
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Is a global famine on the way?
Warmists are aleways warning us about upcoming food shortages but it looks like war will do what global warming never has. Big grain exporting countries like Australian and Canada will ensure that first world countries will have bread but poorer countries may well be priced out of the market
The threat to wheat supplies from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been exacerbated by a shift in global stocks away from major exporters such as the United States and European Union, undermining their effectiveness as a cushion in times of crisis, Reuters reported.
Now, the devastating effects cause major concerns across the Middle East and North Africa that the war in Ukraine will send prices of staple foods soaring as wheat supplies are hit, potentially fuelling unrest.
Russia and Ukraine supply a quarter of the world’s wheat exports, while Egypt is the world’s biggest importer of wheat. 33% of all wheat exports among the top ten exporters came from Russia and Ukraine combined.
That’s the grim assessment of many experts on global food security, who point to how heavily the rest of the world relies on Ukraine and Russia for wheat and a slew of other essential commodities.
As that supply is cut off, it will drive up food prices that are already at record levels – and at a time when the economic fallout from the pandemic has already pinched household budgets, most devastatingly in low-income countries.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is highly likely to disrupt Ukraine’s ability to fully plant and harvest wheat in 2022. And Russia will be blocked, in theory at least, from being able to accept U.S. dollars for its wheat export.
On March 9 President Putin signed an order banning the exports of some goods and raw materials:
The order includes a ban or restrictions on “exports outside of the Russian Federation’s territory and (or) imports to the Russian Federation’s territory of products and (or) raw materials,” according to an Interfax news agency translation of the order released on Tuesday.
The Gateway Pundit noted:
While wheat is not mentioned specifically in this order, those who have bought wheat from Russia in the past will need to consider very seriously whether they will be able to buy Russian grain this year. There are two possible terrible scenarios. First, because of the war Ukraine will not be able to plant its crop. No crop, no exports.
Second, Russia will keep all of its wheat at home to ensure its citizens have enough to eat. That means those parts of the world that depended on Russia as its grocer will have to find an alternative supply and will have to pay substantially higher prices if they can find another country able to fill the demand.
But that is only the beginning of the looming agricultural disaster for the anti-Russian world. One word–POTASH. Potash is a key ingredient in producing fertilizer.
The potash component corrects the deficiency of potassium in the soil. As a natural mineral, potash is an important nutrient that enhances water retention, disease resistance and general crop productivity.
For the record, 37% of the top ten producers of potash in the world came from Russia and Belarus. Now that Biden sanctioned Belarus, its potash supply will not be available to the world.
Not just that, the price of fertilizer already has doubled compared to a year ago, with Russia’s sanctions, the world is now at a major deficit in having fertilizer to put on crops.
Meaning farmers in the Midwest who are planning to plant corn and soy beans will be paying twice as much for fertilizer. And that is not all. The price of diesel fuel–i.e., the juice that makes tractors, planters and harvesters run–also has doubled.
The Gateway Pundit concluded:
When it comes to oil, wheat and potash Russia is holding some powerful trump cards that can be used to hurt the West and its erstwhile allies.
I would suggest the time has come for those Americans blinded by their hatred of Russia based on a false narrative peddled recklessly by a pliant media, to take off the blinders and take a serious look at the implications of a fast approaching future where key Russian and Ukrainian exports will not be available. There is one guarantee for the world–rampant, high inflation.
https://2020conservative.com/is-a-global-famine-about-to-be-on-the-way/
*********************************************Dust shows us that there are cycles of climate unrelated to human activity
Every now and then, our planet passes through a cometary cloud (e.g. 730-740 AD) which produces cold times because dust reflects light and heat and hundreds of years of cold times follow if this coincides with a weak sun and explosive volcanism (735-737 AD). This happened in the Dark Ages (400-900 AD).
Most desertification occurs during periods of glaciation when winds are stronger, rainfall is lower and vegetation is sparse. There is a good geological record of sand dunes, salt lakes and dust storms during long periods of aridity.
Red bed copper deposits formed in mid-latitude glacial wind-blown sand dune sediments because of changes in groundwater chemistry, sea level and sedimentation. The major deposits formed in snowball earth times 650 million years ago (e.g. Copperbelt of Central Africa), when Gondwana drifted over the South Pole (e.g. Kupferschiefer of Europe) and the modern ice age (e.g. salt pans in Texas and Saudi). If we want electric cars, then ironically an understanding of ancient climate is one of the tools used to find the copper needed for the cars.
Explosive volcanic eruptions add huge amounts of dust to the atmosphere. Most of these volcanoes are in the circum-Pacific and Mediterranean-trans Asiatic belts. The dust, incorrectly called ash, comprises minute sharp needles of glass from lava supercooled by the instantaneous release of expanding gas when supercritical water flashes to steam. Breathing volcanic dust near an explosive eruption cuts lung tissue, reduces lung capacity and lungs can be lithified. Humans drown in their own blood which fills the cut lungs.
Volcanic dust rises 25 to 60 km into the atmosphere, does a few laps high in the atmosphere as it falls to earth and creates lightning storms, spectacular sunsets and heavy rain by nucleating droplets. Combined with La Niña, this was the reason for heavy rains in eastern Australia after the Hunga Tonga eruption of 15th January 2022. Notwithstanding, the normal suspects brayed that the heavy rain and flooding were due to climate change and how it was all the Prime Minister’s fault.
Hunga Tonga was a small submarine eruption. Previous past large terrestrial eruptions such as Tambora in 1815 led to years of cooling and 1816 was a year without a summer. The 1783-1784 eruption of Iceland’s Laki covered Europe with dust and choking toxic sulphurous fumes – thousands died from respiratory problems, torrential rainfall and cooling destroyed crops and famine followed. Empire-changing eruptions such as the Minoan eruption of Santorini about 1600 BC are recorded in ice drill cores. The Indonesian supervolcano Toba erupted some 72,000 years ago covering much of the planet with thick volcanic dust which is still preserved in India and Alaska. The tropics were devegetated and soils were removed by torrential rainfall, the surviving population migrated north and south, the orbital-driven cooling cycle of the planet accelerated and sea level rapidly dropped.
Airborne dust is precipitated in restricted lakes where there is neither turbulence nor a massive input of sediments, in deep ocean sediments where there are no strong currents and in polar ice. Dust shows us that there are cycles of climate unrelated to human activity. At times the atmosphere has a higher dust content due to impacting, dusty comet tails, desertification, drought, overgrazing, industry and volcanism. Pollen, spores and charred fragments in dust layers show the history of forest fires and evolution of plants. The chemistry of dust and acid layers in polar ice can be used to show when and where an explosive volcano occurred. Iron-rich dust from deserts stimulates carbon dioxide-consuming algal blooms in oceans.
Closed-minded climate activists claim that every natural event is due to climate change and that human emissions of carbon dioxide are to blame. The joy of integrated interdisciplinary science with all of its exciting uncertainties and detective work should be used to stimulate young people rather than trying to fill their minds with guilt, fear, hopelessness, depression and ignorance.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/australian-notes-314/ ?
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Australian wind Farm ordered to stop emitting night-time noise, pay neighbours damages in landmark ruling
A Victorian court has ordered a wind farm in the state's south east to stop emitting noise at night in a momentous court decision.
The Victorian Supreme Court today found the noise from the Bald Hills Wind Farm at Tarwin Lower created a nuisance to its neighbours ordering damages and an injunction.
John Zakula and Noel Uren took civil action against the wind farm last year, telling the court that "roaring" intermittent noise from the wind turbines caused health problems and loss of sleep.
In a precedent-setting decision, Justice Melinda Richards said the company had not complied with its noise permit conditions and ordered a permanent injunction over the wind farm, with an initial three-month period to fix the issue.
The injunction will require the Bald Hills operators to "take necessary measures to abate" emitting loud noise at night.
"Bald Hills has not established that the sound received at either Mr Uren's house or Mr Zakula's house complied with the noise conditions in the permit at any time," Justice Richards said.
"Noise from the turbines on the wind farm has caused a substantial interference with both plaintiffs' enjoyment of their land. "Specifically, their ability to sleep undisturbed at night in their own beds in their own homes."
Damages for 'distress' and 'annoyance'
The court ordered the operators of Bald Hills Wind Farm to pay the men a total of $260,000.
The court said Mr Zakula, who lives about a kilometre from one of the company's wind turbines, is entitled to damages of $84,000 for "distress, inconvenience and annoyance".
Mr Uren sold his property next to the wind farm in 2018, but the court said he should be paid $46,000 in damages.
Justice Richards also ordered the wind farm operator to pay aggravated damages of an additional $84,000 for Mr Zakula and $46,000 to Mr Uren.
"Bald Hills' conduct towards both Mr Uren and Mr Zakula was high-handed and warrants an award of aggravated damages," Justice Richards said.
In her judgement, the Supreme Court judge also made a pointed comment about the renewable energy push and the rights of neighbouring landholders.
"The generation of renewable energy by the wind farm is a socially valuable activity, and it is in the public interest for it to continue."
She said it should not be a "binary choice between the generation of clean energy by the wind farm and a good night's sleep for its neighbours". "It should be possible to achieve both."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-25/bald-hills-wind-farm-to-pay-damages/100938656
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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24 March, 2022
On this date 51 years ago, climate scientists predicted a new ice age was coming
Climate change hysteria has been a staple of Democratic propaganda for decades now. It’s also an integral part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Climate change advocacy has evolved into a cult, with supporters proclaiming that science shows we are all doomed unless we change our carbon emission habits.
We are told to “trust the science,” but what if that science is wrong? After all, science predicted a new ice age on March 21, 1971, in an article in Parade magazine.
In 1971, global cooling was the climate threat du jour. Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that the planet’s temperature had decreased by “one-half a degree Fahrenheit” since World War II in the 1971 article, titled “New Ice Age?” Claims of longer and harsher winters in Europe since 1940 were also cited. German meteorologist Dr. Martin Rodewald predicted that if this weather pattern continued, Europe “would be covered with the glaciers of a new ice age by the turn of the century.” In 1971, this was the science.
“American and Danish weather researchers in North Greenland, drilling down through 1400 meters of ice to read the weather record of 800 years, found that cold and warm cycles run for an average of 78 to 180 years,” the article stated. “On this basis, Dr. Rodewald does not foresee another warming trend before the year 2015.”
It is worth noting that this method of using ice to study past weather to make predictions about future weather is still used today, albeit with more modern technology.
I would argue it seems preposterous that even a decrease of half a degree Fahrenheit in 26 years between the end of World War II and 1971 would be setting up the planet for an ice age, even if that trend continued until the turn of the century. Such claims are on par with the hysteria we experience in 2022, except they predict cooling instead of warming.
Scientists have a horrible record when it comes to making climate change predictions. Whether it was global cooling in the 1970s or the current cultlike behavior warning of global warming, the only consistency about climate science is its inconsistency. It’s time to stop treating it like it is an absolute truth. If they were wrong before, there’s nothing to suggest they will not be wrong again.
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Net zero push suffers growing pains: Senex Energy
Queensland gas producer Senex Energy said all major countries that have set net zero emissions targets are struggling with the volatile energy transition and how to manage the complexities of limiting climate change.
Senex said while more than 90 per cent of world GDP is now covered by net zero commitments to reach climate change goals, all major markets appear to be struggling with how to manage the thorny shift at a time of soaring raw material prices.
“The uncomfortable fact is that net zero policies are costly and are, therefore, putting pressure on energy prices and, therefore, inflation,” Senex chief executive Ian Davies told the Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference on Tuesday.
“The broader social and political context to decarbonisation is complex. People in rich countries show little inclination to give up their cars and the comforts of urban and suburban life. And those in the populous and fast-growing developing world want this same lifestyle that we’ve come to enjoy.”
The Senex boss, also the chairman of industry body Appea, said a transition that pushes up energy prices or threatens reliability could threaten the social mandate for shifting to renewables.
The gas industry has made the case for several years the fossil fuel is the best transition fuel for the world to decarbonise by offering a source of secure supply, and producing less emissions than coal. However, the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis think-tank said the argument did not stack up.
“The benefits of coal to gas switching are marginal at best. And that’s why I’m saying that if we’re going to decarbonise, we actually need to look at largely jumping that step and moving straight to renewables, which are affordable and are much cheaper particularly before rising global gas prices,” the IEEFA’s gas analyst Bruce Robertson told the conference.
Brent oil jumped to $US139 ($190) a barrel, a 14-year high, earlier in March while spot LNG prices jumped to the equivalent of $US500 a barrel — described as “off the charts” by Woodside Petroleum — as Russian volumes face being sidelined.
Tight supply and skyrocketing commodity prices has more broadly reignited a debate over how quickly economies can pivot away from fossil fuels for their energy needs.
The International Energy Agency said gas use faces tough competition in many advanced economies although demand is expected to remain high within emerging nations.
“Natural gas use could increase in countries with rising electricity demand or declining coal and nuclear capacity — or indeed both — but it faces stiff competition from renewables,” the IEA’s chief economist Tom Gould told the conference.
“You also have a shift across geographies. So in all of our scenarios over the next 10 years, natural gas use increases in emerging and developing economies. But you are looking at declines in advanced economies.”
Global demand for coal is forecast to reach record levels in 2022, driven by huge growth in China and India, defying global efforts to tackle climate change.
The International Energy Agency predicted at least three years of surging demand for coal, just weeks after world leaders failed to agree on a phase out of the fossil fuel source at climate change talks in Glasgow.
The boom in coal use comes despite the billions of dollars being spent on renewable sources of power including wind and solar.
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If fossil fuels are so dangerous to us why don't we go out on a fossil fuel bender
Covid rates are abating just in time for surging gas prices to eclipse the pandemic as our crisis du jour, and people from both sides of the political aisle are crying out in unison: something must be done!
The current energy crisis debate consists of a few camps: one group professes that they can’t abide fossil fuels being used at all, while another can’t imagine living without them. The third group makes up the middle of the Venn diagram, and though a paradoxical state of mind, it contains the most members.
Choosing a winner from among the prevailing arguments is no simple task. Increasing domestic fuel production seems at first like a no-brainer, but it turns out foregoing thousands of homegrown jobs and energy independence in favor of mussing up a rival nation’s backyard is some sort of foreign policy power move.
Then there is the group of green energy advocates who have buried their heads in the ground, and not to look for oil. These types seem not to realize that the clean electricity they so esteem comes from “dirty” sources: natural gas, coal and nuclear-powered plants. They are also evidently unaware that harvesting the rare earth elements required for electric motors, wind turbines and the like is “an energy-intensive and heavily polluting process.” Not to mention the environmental nightmare involved in trying to dispose of old batteries, solar panels and humongous windmills teeming with hazardous materials and nasty toxins.
There’s also the fact that the sun and wind kinda suck at producing energy: in addition to the massive amounts of space (forests, fields, etc.) these eyesores destroy, renewable energy sources are unreliable — it’s only sunny or windy part of the time — inefficient and expensive (the industry is massively subsidized). But never mind all that. “We don’t need to worry about the energy crisis now, because by 2030 we’ll all be driving Teslas,” quixotic ecowarriors say. Such a stance makes about as much sense as a man in the midst of a massive heart attack gesturing with a cigarette in one hand and a martini in the other and declaring, “I don’t need to go to the doctor, because eight years from now, I’ll be eating right and exercising.”
It does occur to me, however, that we may actually all be carbon-neutral by 2030 if we aren’t allowed to extract anything from the earth now. Secret members of the Amish mafia, intent on carrying out justice for Mother Earth and determined once and for all to deprive everyone of electricity, “green” or otherwise, are having a moment. In England, for instance, would-be renewable energy producers are complaining that the permitting process takes too long. Turns out red tape does not discriminate between green energy and traditional fuels. I must admit the rabid environmentalists do have a point: abandoning energy use altogether would, indeed, end our energy crisis.
Meanwhile, in the United States, President Biden is “demanding” that gas prices fall, and lawmakers want oil companies to pay consumers back for the profits they’re making. Though surely a noble notion, let me save our elected do-gooders some trouble: I’ve been there, done that, at my local Sheetz gas station. It never works.
The Atlantic, for its part, has noted how devastating a nuclear skirmish would be…for the environment. So let us consider: is saving the earth worth it? Let’s face it: living without electricity and all its modern conveniences would be the pits. The left would have us believe we can’t continue living the way we are without destroying the earth, and if they subscribe to the same attitude as the Atlantic, caring more about the earth than about the people living on it, I can’t help but wonder what or whom we are saving the earth for? With religion on the decline and carbon neutrality decades away, it appears we’ll stop caring about one another completely long before we can preserve the earth for future humans.
In which case, best to quit while life is still fun. As a nation of hedonists, we should go out with neon sign’s a’ blazin’ — on a fossil fuel bender, if you will. After all, Mother Nature spent millions of years working hard to create those nonrenewable resources, and much like a bottle of 30-year-old single malt Macallan, not enjoying it is not an option.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/going-out-on-a-fossil-fuel-bender/
***************************************************Children of the Corn and the Fraud of Renewable Energy
Corn (a.k.a. maize) is used not just as food for people and cattle, it’s also used to produce ethanol, and not just for boozers, but to mix in with our gasoline.
Since 2005, Congress has required oil refineries to add ethanol, mostly from corn, to their gasoline. It’s called the “Renewable Fuel Standard” (RFS). The EPA runs the program. In January, Reuters reported: “EPA will have to decide on the next phase of the program in coordination with the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. The EPA plans to propose requirements… in May this year.”
Members of Congress should not leave the changing of RFS to some pointy-headed bureaucrat in the administrative state (i.e. the EPA) but should adjust the program themselves. And they should seriously consider ending the program. Or, they might consider an idea floated in “How To Fix The Ethanol Industry” by Robert Rapier at Forbes in 2019.
To understand just how wacky the RFS is, read “Stop the Ethanol Madness” by Mario Loyola, which ran at the Atlantic in November of 2019. Loyola explains how RFS is not only uneconomic but is also destroying the environment. Loyola asserts that “today’s corn-ethanol program is a glaring failure, and it is unconscionable that politicians of both parties are conspiring to keep it alive despite knowing full well what its problems are.”
Ethanol has about one-third less energy than does gasoline. So cars using ethanol get fewer miles per gallon. Flex-fuel vehicles that use E85 get up to 27 percent fewer miles per gallon.
A huge problem with corn ethanol as a fuel for ICE (internal combustion engines) is its EROI, i.e. its energy return on investment. EROI is the amount of energy produced against the amount of energy used to produce it. The formula for EROI is the energy output divided by the energy input. An EROI of 1.0 would mean that you’re expending as much energy to produce energy as the energy being produced, so it’s would be a wash, a draw, and utter folly to produce energy with such a low EROI. Corn ethanol has an EROI of 1.5 as compared to gasoline’s 11. Because of corn ethanol’s low EROI, you’re basically swapping one type of energy for another. How smart is that?
So, the amount of energy that one gets from corn ethanol for mixing into gasoline is just slightly more than the energy it takes to cultivate corn, harvest it, haul it to the distillers, keep the distillers from sampling too much of their product, haul the finished product to refiners, etc.
That gets us to the fraud of renewables -- they depend on fossil fuels. The heavy machinery used to produce corn ethanol, the tractors, corn-pickers, and such, all use fossil fuels; there are no electric versions as yet. (Rapier touches on this in the above link.) So, a farmer must use fossil fuels to produce a non-fossil fuel. Biofuels can’t exist without fossil fuels, at least not yet. (Actually, petroleum is a biofuel; the “bio” is ancient plankton. Geologists don’t think that abiogenic oil can account for what’s in the world’s vast oil fields.)
Although there are questions about how economic corn ethanol is, its lobby keeps it going. But now that the price at the pump is at all-time highs, it’s time to ask how much of that price is due to compliance with the RFS mandate on refiners to mix ethanol into gasoline. If it adds to the price at the pump, then the RFS program should end immediately.
In June of 2021, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) reported:
The total cost of RFS compliance is surging and could be as high as $30.5 billion for 2021 -- more than twice the record-high annual program costs set in 2016, and 8.5 times higher than in 2019, the year the United States reached record ethanol blending. By comparison, the refining sector spends $16.4 billion on workforce pay and benefits. The situation is so dire that labor groups and Democratic Governors have requested relief from the Environmental Protection Agency.
In August of 2021, The Hill ran “Why the Renewable Fuel Standard is a threat to our nation's supply chain security” by former Secretary of the Navy Sean O’Keefe and General Anthony Zinni:
For America’s independent refiners, the cost to comply with the RFS is on track this year to exceed all other costs of running their refineries […] a well-meaning policy to increase biofuels has become a self-inflicted wound that poses an ever-growing threat to our national security and global standing as more domestic refineries succumb to the unsustainable costs of the RFS.
In November of 2021, Bloomberg ran “Biden Could Revisit Renewable Fuel Mandate to Give Drivers Relief at Pumps”:
A reduction in ethanol use could be more effective now, with gasoline from refineries even cheaper than ethanol prices. Wholesale prices for 87-octane conventional gasoline are about 15 cents a gallon cheaper in New York than a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.
Note that these three block quotes are from 2021, before the added price spikes due to war in Ukraine. The historic high prices for fuel are filtering throughout the economy. Congress needs to act, not leave tweaking RFS to the EPA. There may be some movement on that front, as last July a bill was introduced to that end: S.2385 -- Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2021. However, all that’s happened with the bill is its introduction. It needs further action.
The corn ethanol lobby immediately rose up, and six days after the bill’s introduction, FarmProgress ran “Senate bill repeals corn ethanol mandate.” The article is worth reading as it reveals the entrenched interests at play in RFS. But the article is dated, as the world’s food supply has been damaged by the war in Ukraine, which is a breadbasket to much of the world.
This spring, Ukrainian farmers might have a little trouble between missile strikes getting their crops planted. However, if Ukrainian agriculture is taken offline by war, American farmers can make up some of the difference by raising food rather than fuel additives. That is, if Congress lets them.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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23 March, 2022
Media Scares Themselves, Confuse “Unprecedented” Weather Model Temperature Spikes with Actual Temperatures
This past week two left-leaning media outlets, MSN (via The Washington Post aka WaPo), and the always alarmed UK based The Guardian ran stories saying the Arctic and Antarctic, had experienced “unprecedented” high temperatures.
These claims can’t be verified since they were the results from a set of weather model simulations, indicating variations of above normal temperatures for the regions, not actual surface temperatures measured by ground-based weather stations.
The Guardian headline was full of worry courtesy of author Fiona Harvey: She writes:
Startling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the “unprecedented” events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown.
At the same time, weather stations near the north pole also showed signs of melting, with some temperatures 30C above normal, hitting levels normally attained far later in the year.
At this time of year, the Antarctic should be rapidly cooling after its summer, and the Arctic only slowly emerging from its winter, as days lengthen. For both poles to show such heating at once is unprecedented.
The key phrase here is: “weather stations near the north pole.” The northernmost weather station is Alert, Nunavut and it is 817 km (508 mi) from the North Pole. That’s like trying to gauge the temperature in Indianapolis from a warmer temperature reading in Atlanta.
MSN/WaPo authors Jason Samenow and Kasha Patel had this flabbergasting headline:
It’s 70 degrees warmer than normal in eastern Antarctica. Scientists are flabbergasted.
The coldest location on the planet has experienced an episode of warm weather this week unlike any ever observed, with temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soaring 50 to 90 degrees above normal. The warmth has smashed records and shocked scientists. “This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system,” said Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, in an email.
“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” tweeted Stefano Di Battista, a researcher who has published studies on Antarctic temperatures. He added that such temperature anomalies would have been considered “impossible” and “unthinkable” before they actually occurred.
Both articles mentioned “climate” in the context of blame or contribution to these weather events.
To the uninitiated reading about these “events,” it must surely seem like evidence the planet is on its way to being wrecked from global warming aka “climate change,” and that the polar icecaps are in danger of melting away to nothing.
The reality is entirely different. The MSN article includes this graphic:
It always pays to read the fine print, and in this case the MSN caption for that Figure 1 image (when you click on it at MSN to enlarge it) is telling:
Simulation of temperature differences from normal centered over Antarctica from the American (GFS) model.
That’s right, it isn’t temperature that actually measured at the surface of that forlorn icecap, it’s a model simulation of temperature from a single climate model, the GFS model.
If we look at that same “model simulation” today, from the same source, all of the sudden that “flabbergasting” image is gone, and temperatures are frigid again as seen in Figure 2 below.
Good News About "Threatened" marsupial
A recent Epoch Times article details the resurgence of one iconic Australian animal species impacted by the “Black Summer” fires of 2019-2020. The story out of Australia demonstrates, once again, the resilience of animal species confronted with disturbed habitat and is good news for anyone concerned about the impact of large wildfires on vulnerable animals elsewhere.
In the article, “Australia’s Rare Potoroos Bouncing Back After Bushfires,” Epoch Times reports that in December 2021, in the aftermath of large fires across Australia, the rabbit-sized relative of kangaroos called “potoroos” were spotted via camera monitoring systems in 35 of 120 monitored locations. The number of sites has increased since then.
“On March 2022, environment minister Lily D’Ambrosio announced that this has increased to 53 sites across over 300,000 hectares of land,” Epoch Times writes.
The good news for the potoroo has not been widely covered by corporate media outlets. The resurgence of the marsupial serves as an example of nature recovering from bushfires, which at the time were hyped as proof of the impacts of climate change.
Even before the Black Summer fires, alarmists claimed that climate change would decimate the Australian native mammal populations by more frequent or intense fires and associated habitat destruction.
Meteorological data discussed in Climate Realism show there is no meaningful trend of increasing or decreasing rainfall across Australia. In addition, data does not suggest Australian wildfires are becoming more extreme or widespread as the earth modestly warms. To the contrary, data show a declining trend of wildfires since at least the 1970s. NASA satellite data show the amount of acres lost to wildfire annually across the globe decreased by 24 percent since 1998, as described on Climate Realism, here.
As with other fires, new environmental policies, such as limiting the clearing brush, timber, and halting controlled burns may be most responsible for the severity of the 2019-2020 bushfires, following, as they did, multiple years of abundant rainfall and growth. Evidence indicates that many of the Australian fires were lit on purpose by arsonists. Regarding wildfires, the co-director of Australia’s National Centre for Research in Bushfire and Arson said “[a]bout 85 per cent are related to human activity, 13 per cent confirmed arson and 37 per cent suspected arson.”
Invasive grass species and mismanagement of fuel load were also be to blame for the out of control bushfires.
Besides the fact that there is no increasing trend of wildfire extent or severity in Australia, fire is completely natural to the landscape, and even essential to many native species’ survival and health. This is most famously seen in some eucalyptus trees which need fire to germinate their seeds. Eucalyptus are highly flammable, which assists their reproduction.
Rather than climate change induced wildfires, invasive species brought to Australia by humans, like cats and foxes, and habitat loss to development, pose the greatest threat to all small native ground dwelling species. In fact, one of the strategies implemented to aid the potoroo’s continued rebound mentioned by Epoch Times is to set traps and poisons for foxes that are known to kill the marsupial. This active approach to helping the potoroo numbers grow in their original habitat will do far more to promote the species flourishing than limiting fossil fuel use to fight climate change.
https://climaterealism.com/2022/03/thanks-epoch-times-for-reporting-on-the-good-news-about-this-roo/
***********************************************Will war end the climate alarmist zeal of the central banks?
Faced with implacable opposition from the Senate, Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s pick for supervising banks within the Federal Reserve (Fed), has withdrawn her candidature. During the Obama administration, she was one of the Fed’s seven governors and a Treasury deputy secretary.
Her rejection by the Senate was a result of her expressed intent ‘to incentivise a rapid, orderly, and just transition from fossil fuels and other high-emission investments’.
Not so long ago, that opinion would have not been a barrier to the job – indeed her appointments under Obama faced little opposition. But such views became more controversial with Biden’s re-installation of Obama’s anti-oil and gas regulations and the consequent return of the US to becoming a net importer. The Ukrainian war brought home the serious strategic implications of impeding fossil fuel production and last week the swing Senators, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, pulled the plug on Raskin.
There have been few central bankers as woke as climate activist Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, who is now with investment conglomerate Brookfield. At Brookfield, Carney joined fellow activist Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian in bidding for AGL with a view to expediting the firm’s departure from fossil fuels.
Though Carney may have been a stand-out, most banking bureaucrats are infected with alarmist zeal and central banks are coordinating internationally to press their philosophy through the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
In this respect, Australia may have dodged a bullet with the departure from the Reserve Bank of Guy Debelle, who had been the heir-presumptive Governor. He was described as a ‘green energy crusader’ even by fellow hydrocarbon haters at the AFR. Debelle will now help Twiggy Forrest’s Fortesque tilt at windmills, postulate about hydrogen as a future fuel and trumpet pie-in-the-sky $210 billion schemes, like that linking Singapore with an Australian desert paved with solar panels.
Perhaps Debelle was pushed out of contention for the Reserve Bank’s top job or maybe he recognised a growing unease within governments about climate fanatics occupying high places.
The USA and EU between them have spent an estimated $5 trillion on renewable energy over the past 20 years (Australia has spent relatively more). Almost all of renewable energy installations have relied on the support of subsidies, and while the subsidies have savaged the economics of fossil fuel, its share of total energy use has fallen by just two per cent to 84 per cent.
The world has certainly changed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Among other lessons, this has shown many politicians that calls for decarbonisation were luxuries that cannot be indulged in the dangerous world which Putin’s actions have revealed we inhabit.
In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under pressure, is reneging on his 2021 green exhortations and walking, crab-like, towards permitting new oil and gas fields – even to allowing fracking for gas – and re-opening coal generators.
In this context, it is doubtful that the Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, would today deliver a speech like that he gave in 20 November last year. In that speech Bailey outlined a range of further actions necessary to meet the net zero emissions goals of the Bank of England, goals that are broadly shared by all other democratic nations’ central banks. The Bank’s measures included ensuring that the 1,500 financial intermediaries that it regulates ‘hold capital against material climate-related financial risks’. The Governor foreshadowed a ‘wider supervisory toolkit’ to incentivise firms to take meaningful actions in support of climate transition, adding, ‘Where progress is insufficient and assurance or remediation is needed, the (Bank’s Prudential Regulatory Authority) will request clear plans and, where appropriate, exercise its powers,’ to ensure this is rectified.
Even if such thunderous admonitions will now be diluted, repairing the damage will be slow.
It will be slower still for Australia where, almost daily, Energy Minister Angus Taylor issues press releases that pontificate about how government action is securing the future of steel through renewable energy, increasing (subsidised) rooftop energy, causing firms to raise ‘the bar for corporate emissions accountability’, as well as providing additional handouts for hydrogen and emissions reductions. As if this were not bad enough, Taylor would correctly warn us that, if in May we have an ALP Government, the damaging policies would worsen.
Changing course for Australia is proving a more laborious process than in the rest of the world. But everywhere, the accumulation of central bank regulations, procedures, recruitments and policy directives leave a powerful residue that will continue to hamper the redirection of capital towards commercial energy. In doing so, central bank directives, alongside other similar policies, will leave western democracies less able to confront the dangerous world that recent events have revealed.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/will-war-end-the-climate-alarmist-zeal-of-the-central-banks/
******************************************************The U.S. Department of Labor Applies Biden Climate Concerns to Retirement and Labor Rules
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a call for public comment on how to “protect workers’ life savings and pensions” from supposed climate-related financial risks with an eye towards imposing with new regulations on businesses and investors to align with Biden administration climate priorities.
To comply with President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Climate-Related Financial Risk, the DOL published an official Request for Information, calling for public comments on how to identify climate related risks to labor and investments, and what rules the federal government should impose to ensure such risks are taken into account by employers and investment or pension managers.
Biden’s EO directed DOL to identify actions it can take under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Act of 1986, and other relevant laws promulgated to safeguard the life savings and pensions of U.S. workers and families from the threats of climate-related financial risk.
‘Harm Average Americans Grievously’
This is just another move by this administration to impose hard-left policies on every aspect of American life, says Scott Shepard, the director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
“The administration claims to be motivated by the desire to ‘protect the life savings and pensions of U.S. workers and families from the threats of climate-related financial risk,’” said Shepard. “That is not at all what the administration plans to do with this rule; rather, it intends to force pension-fund managers to adopt its manifestly false presumptions about climate, carbon, and the path the future will take.
“There are no considerations in this proposed rule that the IPCC’s climate catastrophism might be overblown–and likewise no consideration that, given 40 years of predictions that a tipping point is just a few years off, it’s too late for carbon reductions to matter,” said Shepard. “There is no consideration of the near certainty that developing and antagonist countries will never join the West in any carbon reductions on politicized schedules, rendering the carbon cuts meaningless.”
Biden Ignores Technology Limits
The Biden administration fails to recognize the technology does not exist to enable the carbon reductions required by his policies on the political timetable he’s established, says Shepard.
“The damage to retirement funds, savings and futures of middle and working-class Americans of reducing carbon investment on a politicized schedule is unfathomable,” said Shepard. “Biden’s policies are revving up inflation while diminishing opportunities, prospects, and the availability of the basic necessities of life, putting peoples’ present and future well-being at risk.
“As with everything from this administration, it is a politicized fraud that will harm average Americans grievously,” said Shepard.
“The DOL simply cannot resist pushing their agenda using other peoples’ money,” said Grande. “The DOL is forcing ERISA retirement plans to support the radical climate agenda, but the plan participants don’t have a seat at the table.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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22 March, 2022
The law that swallowed California’: Why a much-derided environmental law is so hard to change
The landmark 1970 law for preserving California’s beauty has a long history of backfiring.
Although the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, has made it harder to drain wetlands, pave nature preserves and build oil refineries, it has also stymied the construction of bike lanes, affordable housing and public transportation.
When CEQA recently threatened thousands of young Californians’ admissions to the state’s flagship public university, legislators had enough. They introduced a bill to let the students enroll, passed it unanimously, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it all within four days.
“Admit those students now UC Berkeley,” state Sen. Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles) tweeted after the vote. “Students are not pollutants!”
Yet despite the outrage surrounding the Berkeley incident and regular, high-profile examples of the law blocking environmentally friendly projects, few believe that legislators will use the Berkeley case as an excuse for an overhaul. Too many interests — including environmentalists, labor unions and neighborhood groups — support CEQA, and any attempt to make robust changes threatens blowback and failure.
What’s more likely is that lawmakers will continue to poke holes in the law, exempting or setting aside CEQA only in certain situations while leaving more widespread concerns about the law’s effects on development unchallenged.
“Politicians will always fix a problem as narrowly as they possibly can, particularly when fixing a problem broadly is politically difficult,” said Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University and publisher of the California Planning & Development Report. “The idea of limiting the California dream to UC Berkeley students resonated as an issue where somehow limiting the California dream by limiting the amount of housing does not.”
On its face, CEQA is a simple law. It requires developers to study a project’s environmental effects on the surrounding community and take steps to reduce or eliminate them. But the law can result in thousands of pages of studies examining everything from soil samples, to traffic to shadows a project might cast. Successful court challenges can send a project back to square one. The whole process, lawsuit or not, can sometimes take years to resolve.
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The End of the Climate Change Legend
For many years now, there has been a spirited debate about whether climate change is science, religion or even perhaps a secret route to socialism. That question remains unanswered, but we've now discovered with certainty that climate change is a political albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party.
The Left's spiritual devotion to climate change has been speeding the Democrats over a political cliff this fall with likely unprecedented losses this November. The zero fossil fuels suicide pact was always an economic and political loser. More than 70% of all the energy we produce and consume in America derives from oil, gas and coal. President Joe Biden's war on these fuel sources was sure to cause severe shortages and $5 a gallon gasoline at the pump. Didn't Democrats learn their lesson in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won a landslide election against Jimmy Carter that surging inflation and gas prices is a surefire way to infuriate voters?
While Biden keeps saying he is doing "everything I can to lower gas prices," he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth -- because if your goal is to get people to stop using something, raising its price is a pretty good way to accomplish that. If prices go to $10 or $15 a gallon, you can clear the highways of trucks and cars altogether, and what a wonderful world it will be.
Democrats were so enamored with their Green New Deal delusion that they failed to understand that most people aren't as hyper-obsessed with climate change as they are. A new poll sponsored by my group, Committee to Unleash Prosperity, found that people are much more concerned about inflation and high gas prices than climate change. Moreover, the poll found that respondents' average amount they would be willing to pay for the climate change agenda was $55 a year. Sorry, that's the extra cost we are already spending with two fill-ups at the gas station.
Then there is the increasingly unavoidable reality that the green energy sources they fantasize about are decades away from being technologically feasible to replace old-fashioned oil, gas and coal. Even the Energy Department predicts that even with the trend toward renewable energy, by 2035, we will still be heavily reliant on oil, gas and coal for electricity production, home heating and transportation fuels.
Elon Musk, the leading champion of electric cars, reminded Biden in a recent tweet that in the real world rather than in la-la land, we are going to need oil and gas for many years to come. Today 3% of cars on the road are electric, and 95% use gas or diesel.
This brings us to yet another fatal flaw of the climate change movement. The Biden administration and its radical green allies can't explain why getting our energy from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia makes more sense than Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska.
This strategy is especially pinheaded because the war on oil, gas and coal production is a big loser for the environment and increases global greenhouse gas emissions. That is because America has the strictest environmental standards. Shifting oil and gas production to Russia or Iran and shifting coal production to China and India is causing far more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Chinese President Xi Jinping is busy trying to take over the world economy, and the last thing he or the ruling class in Beijing cares about is climate change.
Finally, Democrats should have learned from the green energy catastrophe of Western Europe. A decade ago, the French, Germans, Italians and others in the European Union moved to a renewable energy future. They slashed much of their oil, gas and coal production, shut down nuclear plants (why?) and subsidized the building of wind turbines and solar panels. It nearly bankrupted Germany as energy prices soared and factories left Europe for America and Asia. A decade later, France is back to building nuclear plants, and Germany is burning more coal than ever before and importing natural gas from Russia. Europe recently redefined natural gas and nuclear power as "clean energy."
Going green wrecked their economies and submerged these countries deeper into the red. Unfortunately, Americans weren't paying any attention to that failed experiment. So now Biden is repeating it. The result is likely to be the same. The Democrats' radical climate change agenda isn't greening the planet, and it is bankrupting our country. Voters know exactly whom to blame.
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What is a battery?’ I think Nicholas Tesla said it best when he called it an Energy Storage System. That’s an important distinction
They do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.
Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?
Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.
There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.
Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.
All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity.
As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.
In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.
But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.
Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.
In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.
The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.”
Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”
I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone.
In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicone dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium.
Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.
There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent.
“Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.
https://principia-scientific.com/the-embedded-costs-of-going-green/
**************************************************The Cold, Hard, Bitter Truth About Electric Cars
During the 2020 presidential debates, Joe Biden admitted if he was elected, he would phase out fossil fuel energy, forcing Americans to convert over to renewable energy sources, regardless of their shortcomings.
Now President Biden, who has a long history of not telling the truth, is actually keeping his word this time concerning energy.
On day one, Joe stopped the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline. Laid-off Keystone XL pipeline workers blasted Joe Biden for LYING about American oil production.
In addition, last June Biden Suspended Drilling Leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The decision blocked oil and gas drilling in one of the largest tracts of undeveloped wilderness in the United States.
In a true test of the administration’s resolve, Joe Biden, the media, and Democrats are now using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a cover for Biden’s inflation and soaring gas prices.
Their solution to the skyrocketing gas prices they caused, to advance electric cars, is telling Americans the best way to get their cost down is to go out and buy a $50K electric car.
Yes, they want those who are struggling to pay $5 per gallon, to instead take on a $700 car payment for a new electric car.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stressed in a new interview that families who buy electric vehicles (EVs) “never have to worry about gas prices again.”
While speaking on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show With Jonathan Capehart,” Buttigieg noted that Democrats’ proposed social spending package includes incentives to make it more affordable to buy an electric vehicle.
Buttigieg said that families would essentially have a “$12,500 discount” in transportation costs, adding that “families who own that vehicle will never have to worry about gas prices again.”
“The people who stand to benefit most from owning an EV are often rural residents who have the most distances to drive, who burn the most gas, and underserved urban residents in areas where there are higher gas prices and lower-income,” Buttigieg said.
The problem for Pete, people online are telling the rest of the story.
A woman named Margo, who owns an electric car tweeted out her frustrations on owning her electric car, and Dems aren’t gonna like it one bit.
“Look, I have an electric vehicle. What the government is telling you is a lie. It takes over an hour to SUPERCHARGE my Tesla. Can you imagine waiting an hour to fill up? Or going 25 miles out of the way to charge? It is not for everyone. Our country is nowhere near ready.”
Others are dealing with their own issues, including several who actually had their Teslas catch on fire, with them inside.
Here’s What People Online Are Saying About Margo’s Tweet:
“Electric vehicles are not practical for anything but short distance driving. Also the average person can’t afford them, or their upkeep, especially when the batteries only last 100K miles & it costs a fortune to replace them.”
“We live 58 mi from Anaheim but it can take over 3 hours in traffic. How well will an electric vehicle perform in those conditions? Not very well, I’m guessing…”
“Better have a full charge and not run the AC on blast if you plan to get to point A and Point B and back again. God’s speed LOL”
“I understand it is also around $22 thousand to replace a battery in one. Wow not for me. I love my old gas guzzling 6 cylinder Mercedes! Comfort and know it starts every time . Besides I can get a battery for $125!”
I too own a electric car. Downloaded several apps to plan my road trip. Picked a hotel that had level 2 charging stations. On arrival another Tesla owner checked out the key to use the charger and never returned it. I was unable to charge for 12 hours. What a nightmare”
“We are not ready & it’s like they’re trying to pull the rug out from under us with no one to catch us. And especially during these horrible times from Covid to this war it’s just cruel and maybe evil.”
“LA has brown-outs now. Could you imagine when everyone gets home from work and plugs in ? Power-outage.”
“Another thing that’s being peddled is that it costs nothing to charge an EV. Perhaps it isn’t as expensive to charge an EV as it is to buy gas (comparing EV mile to gas mile cost), but it isn’t free. It’s not carbon free, either. Electricity must be generated…by COAL”
Here is a more extreme way one disgruntled Tesla owner recorded – a Tesla owner blew up his car with 30 kilograms of dynamite after the company told him the cost of replacing the battery was $22,000. Damn…..
I have a much better solution for America, Drill Baby Drill!
https://principia-scientific.com/the-cold-hard-bitter-truth-about-electric-cars/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 March, 2022
The Dems’ Radical Climate Change Agenda Is A Political Albatross
For many years now, there has been a spirited debate about whether climate change is science, religion, or even perhaps a secret route to socialism.
That question remains unanswered, but we’ve now discovered with certainty that climate change is a political albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party.
The Left’s spiritual devotion to climate change has been speeding the Democrats over a political cliff this fall with likely unprecedented losses this November.
The zero fossil fuels suicide pact was always an economic and political loser. More than 70% of all the energy we produce and consume in America derives from oil, gas, and coal.
President Joe Biden’s war on these fuel sources was sure to cause severe shortages and $5 a gallon gasoline at the pump.
Didn’t Democrats learn their lesson in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won a landslide election against Jimmy Carter that surging inflation and gas prices is a surefire way to infuriate voters?
While Biden keeps saying he is doing “everything I can to lower gas prices,” he’s speaking out of both sides of his mouth — because if your goal is to get people to stop using something, raising its price is a pretty good way to accomplish that.
If prices go to $10 or $15 a gallon, you can clear the highways of trucks and cars altogether, and what a wonderful world it will be.
Democrats were so enamored with their “Green New Deal” delusion that they failed to understand that most people aren’t as hyper-obsessed with climate change as they are.
A new poll sponsored by my group, Committee to Unleash Prosperity, found that people are much more concerned about inflation and high gas prices than climate change.
Moreover, the poll found that respondents’ average amount they would be willing to pay for the climate change agenda was $55 a year. Sorry, that’s the extra cost we are already spending with two fill-ups at the gas station.
Then there is the increasingly unavoidable reality that the green energy sources they fantasize about are decades away from being technologically feasible to replace old-fashioned oil, gas, and coal.
Even the Energy Department predicts that even with the trend toward renewable energy, by 2035, we will still be heavily reliant on oil, gas, and coal for electricity production, home heating, and transportation fuels.
Elon Musk, the leading champion of electric cars, reminded Biden in a recent tweet that in the real world rather than in la-la land, we are going to need oil and gas for many years to come. Today 3% of cars on the road are electric, and 95% use gas or diesel.
This brings us to yet another fatal flaw of the climate change movement. The Biden administration and its radical green allies can’t explain why getting our energy from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia makes more sense than Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska.
This strategy is especially pinheaded because the war on oil, gas, and coal production is a big loser for the environment and increases global greenhouse gas emissions.
That is because America has the strictest environmental standards. Shifting oil and gas production to Russia or Iran and shifting coal production to China and India is causing far more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is busy trying to take over the world economy, and the last thing he or the ruling class in Beijing cares about is climate change.
Finally, Democrats should have learned from the green energy catastrophe of Western Europe. A decade ago, the French, Germans, Italians, and others in the European Union moved to a renewable energy future.
They slashed much of their oil, gas, and coal production, shut down nuclear plants (why?), and subsidized the building of wind turbines and solar panels.
It nearly bankrupted Germany as energy prices soared and factories left Europe for America and Asia. A decade later, France is back to building nuclear plants, and Germany is burning more coal than ever before and importing natural gas from Russia.
Europe recently redefined natural gas and nuclear power as “clean energy.”
Going green wrecked their economies and submerged these countries deeper into the red. Unfortunately, Americans weren’t paying any attention to that failed experiment.
So now Biden is repeating it. The result is likely to be the same. The Democrats’ radical climate change agenda isn’t greening the planet, and it is bankrupting our country. Voters know exactly whom to blame.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/the-dems-radical-climate-change-agenda-is-a-political-albatross/
***********************************************Electric cars much more limited in cold climates. Decreased range
Electric vehicle range is still something that potential EV owners, and even existing owners, pay particular attention to. We've told you on numerous occasions that there are a plethora of variables that impact an EV's range, though temperature and weather conditions are the most obvious.
Autocar range-tested numerous EVs in both winter and summer conditions to learn how much real-world range the cars may lose when it's cold. However, sadly, while the publication was able to test four identical cars in both warm and cold temps, the other vehicles were only tested in the winter, and the real-world winter range was then compared to their official WLTP-rated range where available.
Still, while the study isn't consistent across all models tested, it gives us at least some indication of range loss across the board. The results of the four identical models tested during both seasons reveal a range loss of up to 20 percent, with the Porsche Taycan suffering the most, and the Fiat 500e suffering the least.
The publication notes that the tests were performed on a closed loop. They used a 15-mile route with 2.6 miles of stop-and-go traffic simulation. Then, the drive proceeded for 4 miles at 50 mph and 8 miles at 70 mph. Again, not a true real-world range test from full until empty, but it at least paints people a picture of the obvious loss in cold temperatures.
Autocar goes on to say that the range tests also emphasized the importance of a heat pump for dealing with cold-weather range loss. Models with a heat pump had an average winter range loss of about 25% compared to their WLTP-estimated range. Meanwhile, those without a heat pump lost an average of around 34%.
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Climate Crisis Fantasy Hurts Everyone
I believe there is broad bi-partisan agreement on this basic statement: We all love the environment.
We all want to live in harmony with nature and leave a clean, healthy, beautiful environment as a legacy. We all want to have access to clean air, clean water, and abundant, reliable energy. We understand that abundant and reliable energy creates prosperity. Prosperity creates a society that can afford to do things to help improve the environment.
Alternatively, poor, third-world countries have little ability to protect the environment—they’re busy trying to survive. Bjorn Lomborg has done some really thoughtful work on the importance of prosperity on improving the health of the environment and climate (bit.ly/3IRi4GL).
The question becomes how should our society achieve these sensible and mutually held goals? What policy and legal solutions should be implemented that will maximize environmental and societal goals while harming citizens the least? Is there actually a “climate crisis”? Is the world really about to overheat or are we actually on the cusp of a new ice age? Is the science “settled”?
Well, no! Science is never “settled.” As we learned in fifth or sixth grade, science progresses by proposing a hypothesis, and then running experiments and collecting data to prove or disprove the theory. No matter how certain we are of a theory, it remains a theory, and new information could completely upend what we think we know about a particular field of study.
Does climate change? Yes, it does. All we have to do is look back to the age of the dinosaurs to see that the climate now is really different than it was then … Earth was warmer and very lush (bit.ly/3vGeQlF). Is it the fault of the dinosaurs that it’s colder now? What caused the multiple different ice ages? What caused the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age? Is it possible that the overall cycle of changing climate is very much like the changing of seasons?
Would you presume to think that if you just drove an electric car or put solar panels on your house that you could stop spring from turning into summer? If everyone in our state drove an electric car, would that stop summer from coming? Of course not. Yet, that’s exactly what the advocates of the “climate crisis” appear to claim. In addition, the mainstream news media doesn’t report on the scientists who are disproving the global warming “climate crisis” on excellent sites like Wattsupwiththat (bit.ly/3pKuxVn).
Radical progressive politicians from President Biden to Governor Inslee and the state Democratic caucus have seized on a particular scientific theory, and are using it to push a political agenda with a scary narrative—a climate fantasy—that uses fear to manipulate people to agree to radical political policy choices that harm many everyday people. We face higher energy prices, a lack of affordable housing, and an increasingly unreliable power grid, all because of these fantasy-driven policies.
Last year’s dreadful cap-and-tax legislation (The Climate Commitment Act, bit.ly/3HHmYEY) expanded the bloated bureaucracy at the Department of Ecology, and increased the cost of fuel and food prices. This carbon tax was imposed despite the voters rejecting it twice. In 2021, the Legislature also passed a low-carbon fuel standard which imposes new costs on carbon that will raise money primarily by raising the cost of gas for consumers.
Inslee and his cadre of climate alarmists have successfully pushed even more harmful legislation this 2022 session. This year, the democratic majority decided to deepen the affordable housing crisis by increasing the cost of building homes with SB 5722 - Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in buildings (bit.ly/3IQmFJt). New rent control measures in combination with these mandatory greenhouse gas compliance requirements will further reduce the inventory of available housing. Washington state's electric grid may experience reduced reliability due to the increased reliance on electricity mandated in this bill.
HB 1099 - climate response update to comprehensive planning, will deepen the Washington State housing affordability crisis even more (bit.ly/3vJWJeT)! This bill makes our problems worse by slowing permitting and restricting use. Sadly, this bill is also based on the theory of global warming. The whole premise of the bill is a theory that has never been proved.
Then, there is the Biden administration’s fierce opposition to allowing our country to resume oil and gas production. We could be an energy producer for the world, and yet many productive drilling production sites have been shut down or placed off limits by the radical climate crisis fanatics at the federal level. The nation’s average gas prices jumped nearly 20 cents in less than a week, but Labor Secretary Matt Walsh says more U.S drilling is NOT on the table (bit.ly/3KlJVzb).
I don’t know about you, but $1.79 gasoline, a reliable power grid, and affordable housing are starting to look pretty good. I believe that a Republican majority in Washington state and at the national level can find environmental policy solutions that will “save the planet” without putting you out on the street, driving you into poverty, or turning off the lights.
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Shell revives huge North Sea gas field to boost Britain's energy security
Shell has submitted new plans to develop a huge gas field in the North Sea, six months after they were rejected by environmental regulators, in an attempt to help Britain become less dependent on foreign suppliers.
The FTSE 100 company said it wanted the Jackdaw field, about 250km east of Aberdeen, to start operating by 2025.
It argued it would make "a significant contribution to UK energy security" and could be developed with relatively low carbon emissions.
The submission comes as the Government encourages UK producers to increase output to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas.
Boris Johnson will also meet on Monday with executives from companies involved with nuclear power, including Rolls-Royce, EDF and Westinghouse, about ways to boost Britain’s energy independence, Sky News reported.
Shell said it was "disappointed" last October when regulators knocked back its Jackdaw plans, days before the UK was due to host the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow.
About two months later Shell pulled out of the major Cambo proposed development west of Shetland, which had become a flashpoint for anti-fossil fuel campaigners.
The company blamed a weak economic case as well as the “the potential for delays” - widely interpreted as a nod to potential legal and regulatory entanglements.
In its submission about Jackdaw to the Oil and Gas Authority, Shell said: "We have been, and remain, determined to minimise the environmental effects of the Jackdaw development project, including by reducing atmospheric emissions.
"The Jackdaw project will form part of a wider integrated system that makes a significant contribution to UK energy security, and which Shell is working towards repurposing to facilitate significant future greenhouse gas emissions reductions."
About half of the UK's gas is produced domestically with the rest imported via pipelines from Norway and Europe or shipped in from countries including the US, Qatar and Russia.
Less than 3pc of the UK's gas comes directly from Russia and Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, wanted to exclude Russian gas imports altogether.
Both the UK and the US are banning imports of Russian oil and Mr Johnson is believed to want the EU to follow suit.
However, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, has warned that an EU-wide ban on Russian oil and gas would tip economies including the UK's into recession and knock about 3pc off British GDP "straightaway", according to the Financial Times.
The Government has already had to intervene to soften the blow of climbing energy bills due to high wholesale gas prices, with households due a £150 rebate on council tax and a £200 rebate on energy bills.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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20 March, 2022
International Energy Agency goes full Fascist
Intl Energy Agency report urges energy lockdowns due to Russian war:
Restricting private cars’ use of roads in large cities to those with even number-plates some weekdays and to those with odd-numbered plates on other weekdays
Car-free Sundays in cities: Banning the use of private cars on Sundays
'Tax' SUVs: "Sales of SUVs also keep increasing...policies to address the rise in sales of such vehicles – such as specific registration and road taxes – are key." ...Ban installation of new oil boilers
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Experts lay out a strategy for U.S. energy independence amid Ukraine war
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated that energy independence is vital for national security, experts say, as European nations rely on Russian oil, a dependency that undermines the impact of the sanctions against the aggressor nation.
Although the U.S. relied much less on Russian oil (before President Biden nixed imports), America seems unable to replace Russia's role in Europe, which weakens its ability to help allies squeeze Russia. Energy experts emphasized the importance of U.S. energy independence and laid out a strategy to achieve it in comments to Fox News Digital.
"America’s economic sanctions are limited by those of its allies (Europe, India and others) who are hooked on Russian gas," Steve Milloy, a former Trump-Pence EPA transition member and founder of JunkScience.com, told Fox News Digital. "This dependence is unnecessary as Europe, for example, has plenty of coal and natural gas – Europe has the same fracking potential as the US – as well as nuclear power."
Milloy warned that "the green agenda – anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear – made Europe dependent on Putin. Worse, it empowered him and financed the Ukraine invasion."
"America itself has essentially an unlimited supply of energy – a basic requirement for a robust economy and national security – and so could and should be insulated from those who would use energy as geopolitical weapon," he argued.
Joel Griffith, a financial regulations research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, noted that in 2021, the U.S. became a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time since 1949, a result of "pro-energy policies implemented despite opposition from the political Left."
"Thanks to this newfound independence, our nation’s energy exports are helping to mitigate the danger posed by the dependency of European allies on Russian energy supplies," Griffith noted.
Yet Europe's dependence on Russia may be a cautionary tale for the U.S., he warned.
"European dependency on energy from Russia is self-imposed, as leaders across the European Union shutter nuclear power plants, impose renewable energy mandates, and attempt to effectively ban some forms of fossil fuel production," Griffith noted.
He attributed surging oil and gas prices to the reverberations of the COVID-19 shutdowns, but also to President Biden's policies. "The Biden Administration has proposed or finalized regulations that restrict nearly every aspect of conventional energy: financing and private-sector investment, exploration and production, pipeline construction and operation, and consumer use."
"The administration is committing the US to energy policies like Europe did years ago and which have left them paying even higher prices and with few alternatives to Russian oil, putting him in direct conflict with the well-being of Americans," Griffith warned. "President Biden needs to embrace energy freedom and unleash the American energy sector—for the benefit of America and of the world."
How should America pursue energy independence? Greg Wrightstone, executive director of The CO2 Coalition, laid out a six-step plan.
"With respect to domestic energy development, the best thing government could do is get out of the way and allow American energy to blossom," Wrightstone told Fox News Digital. "The renewal of American energy independence is achievable by freeing up the American energy sector to do what they do best: produce."
He recommended six concrete steps:
* Greenlight the completion of pipelines including the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring more than 800,000 barrels per day into the United States.
* Rein in the EPA’s overregulation of the fossil fuel industry.
* Repeal the ban on leasing of federal lands, including the Gulf of Mexico that provides 10% of American oil production.
* Approve development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
* Approve development of the National Petroleum Reserve.
* Employ the Defense Production Act to complete stalled pipelines, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia.
Milloy also emphasized unleashing American energy from burdensome regulations.
"US energy resources are essentially infinite – from coal to oil/gas to nuclear to hydro to wind/solar, etc. ('all of the above')," he argued. "But activists use every tool in the book to stop every sort of energy related development – through junk science, fearmongering, overregulation, lawsuits, protests and more."
He noted that green technologies require rare earth minerals (minerals that are abundant on Earth's crust but require extensive extraction), a market China dominates. The U.S. was "self-sufficient" in rare earths, and even produced over half the global supply of them until the 1980s, but between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. imported 80 percent of its supply from China.
"No one knows what the actual US potential is because it is difficult to mine them here because of regulation and opposition," Milloy noted.
Milloy also argued that America's extensive permitting process" and "enforced environmental regulation" would make U.S. mining for rare earth minerals "much cleaner than China" – and the process would not involve any "child slave labor" as mines in Congo allegedly use.
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Kimberley A. Strassel: Biden is in climate denial
Even the European left understands what the Ukraine invasion means for fossil fuels
Republicans know it. The European left knows it. Joe Manchin knows it. Even some of the Beltway press knows it. Now let’s see how long it takes Joe Biden to recognize that the Ukraine war has reset energy politics and that his climate agenda risks dooming his party this fall.
He certainly hasn’t sussed it out yet. The Joe Biden who showed up Monday at his first in-person fundraiser as president sounded like a man in a time warp. “Let me begin by saying: [Climate change] is the existential threat to humanity,” he opened, proceeding to recite an environmental agenda identical to the one he campaigned on. Ukraine got one mention, and only then as further reason why Americans (among other things) need to “weatherize homes and businesses.”
His administration is similarly proceeding as if Vladimir Putin weren’t exploiting his energy dominance to kill Ukrainians. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently announced a new pipeline review policy that will stop most projects. The White House continues its near-moratorium on new leases to drill on federal land and its block of Alaskan drilling. The president announced he’ll attempt to impose his Green New Deal via executive order. The House Progressive Caucus this week offered ideas, calling on him to “declare a national climate emergency,” and use it to ban “fossil fuel leases,” and force companies to build renewables under the Defense Production Act.
Across the pond, things look exactly opposite. The Europeans have embraced the climate religion with a fervor to rival Bernie Sanders. Yet Mr. Putin’s shocking violence in Ukraine—his willingness to wield energy as a weapon—sobered the Continent overnight. No one is giving up on renewables, but nobody is any longer pretending they are the basis of energy reliability or security. Fossil fuels will remain for decades a currency of global power, and Russia’s invasion highlights the stupidity of being broke.
Germany’s government is stockpiling coal and expediting terminals for liquefied natural gas. Europe is working to get more gas through pipelines from Norway and Azerbaijan. Poland plans new nuclear plants. The U.K. may restart onshore fracking and ramp up North Sea drilling. Norway plans to expand Arctic exploration.
Sen. Manchin gets the shift, and this week he deep-sixed Mr. Biden’s nominee to the Federal Reserve, the anti-fossil-fuel Sarah Bloom Raskin, saying that at this “historic moment” the U.S. needs policy leaders focused on the most pressing issues—“specifically rising inflation and energy costs.” Republicans are flooding the zone with ideas to accelerate fossil-fuel production, and even the pro-Biden media is beginning to fret about the president’s failure to see what’s happening.
While European leaders and Republicans are moving to address substantive geopolitical shifts, they also understand the politics. Gasoline and heating prices have been fleecing consumer wallets since Mr. Biden took office. He can try to lay off the more recent rise on “Putin’s price hike,” but polls consistently show voters blame high energy prices and inflation on the administration.
The inconvenient truth is that Mr. Biden’s climate agenda—no matter how much the liberal press wants to differ—has never been popular. It’s a concoction of the party’s progressive left and radical activist groups. A recent survey from Democratic pollster Impact Research of likely voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arizona (three states with Senate races this year) found that 78% had a favorable view of natural gas, and only 22% want an energy policy that looks like the Green New Deal.
And voters aren’t buying Mr. Biden’s argument that the response to Russia should be to double down on his climate visions. In a HarrisX poll this week, nearly 70% of voters said “yes” to the question of whether, in light of Russia’s attack, the administration should “ease its focus on climate change and allow more oil and natural gas exploration.” They want energy and economic security, not electric-car charging stations.
The other risk to Democrats sticking their heads in the non-tar sands is that they make the situation worse substantively as well as politically. Desperate to remain on climate autopilot, Mr. Biden and other Democrats are now trying to blame higher prices on Big Oil and Big Gas and debating a windfall profits tax—a move that would depress production and further raise prices. Democratic governors are clamoring for a federal gasoline-tax holiday, but it’s a gimmick that would only temporarily mask true prices, and may not count for much in any event.
Which gets to the heart of the problem. Democrats want to make the problem go away without addressing its roots. Russia’s invasion has forced energy security to the center of the political debate, where it is likely to stay through the midterms. Voters will cast ballots for candidates who prove they understand the problem and have a plan for fixing it. Democrats who continue to wallow in platitudes about an “existential” climate crisis may find themselves out of jobs.
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While Boris bans fracking, one in four British households will fail to pay energy bills
More than 14 million households will be plunged into arrears this autumn if gas and electricity bills rise as predicted, experts have warned.
One in four adults will be unable to afford their bills if prices rise by £145 a month in October as expected, according to charity Citizens Advice.
This is significantly higher than the five million households that already will be unable to afford April’s price increase of £60 a month, polling by the charity found.
The findings come ahead of next week’s Spring Statement where the Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been urged to announce further support for families struggling to pay their bills.
The Government has previously said it will offer a £200 energy rebate, to be deducted from customers' bills in October and paid back over the next five years.
However, experts said this would no longer be enough to help struggling households after Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused wholesale energy prices to spike further.
Citizens Advice's Dame Clare Moriarty said: “These staggering findings must be a wake-up call to the Government. With one in four unable to afford their bills come October, measures announced so far simply don’t meet the scale of the challenge.
"Parents shouldn’t have to decide between giving their kids a hot bath or saving the money to buy them new school shoes. The Chancellor has a crucial opportunity to bring forward more support for those most in need."
Industry regulator Ofgem's energy price cap, which limits what suppliers can charge on default tariffs, will rise to £1,971 from next month – a rise of £693 on current levels. Experts predict the price limit will rise again in October, to between £2,900 and £3,200.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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18 March, 2022
Eco-grief a burden for some
These credulous people deserve little sympathy. Instead of wailing about a theoretical future they would a do lot more good agitating for measures that might make a real environmental difference -- such as agitating for more preventive measures against forest fires -- such as regular off-season back- burning
And I am always delighted to hear that the fears and grief of such people deter them from having children. It helps to improve the gene pool as far as I can see
The planet has heated by 1.1 degrees and Australia’s land mass has warmed by an average of 1.4 degrees since 1910, according to the CSIRO.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate change last year issued a “code red for humanity”. The group’s most recent report on March 1 said climate change will cost Australia’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades.
Various terms have been coined to describe the psychological distress which accompanies climate change. There’s climate anxiety and eco-anxiety, as well as solastalgia (from the Latin “solacium” for comfort and the Greek root “-algia” for pain, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 to describe a “homesickness you have when you are still at home”).
Although its use dates back to the 1940s, perhaps the most apt term for the modern state of affairs is “eco-grief”.
“That’s the grief that people are feeling as we watch our planet die around us,” explains Dr Kate Wylie, chair of the Royal Australian College of GPs’ climate and environmental medicine group.
Wylie says GPs are seeing an increase in people of all ages presenting with psychological distress they attribute to concern for the climate.
“One of the interesting things about it is not really an anxiety disorder: it’s an extremely rational response. It makes sense to be sad,” Wylie says.
In its position statement on climate change, the Australian Psychological Society says it believes the phenomenon “involves serious and irreversible harm to the environment and to human health and psychological wellbeing”.
Concern for the climate becomes climate anxiety when it interrupts a person’s life.
The climate crisis has led some young people to reconsider what their futures should look like, including whether they should bring children into the world, Professor Cavenett says.
A 2019 survey of about 1600 young people aged 14 to 23 found 82 per cent believed climate change would “diminish their quality of life” and 80 per cent reported being “somewhat or very anxious” about climate change.
Macheon Smeaton, a 24-year-old university student from Sydney’s inner west, says he “struggles to imagine” what the world will look like when he is 50.
“I have two nieces and I’m already thinking about their future and how difficult parts of their future will be because of what’s already set in motion,” he says.
Asked what form the mental stress he experiences from climate change takes, Smeaton says it is more sadness for himself but anxiety for his nieces.
“I guess getting involved in activism, whether or not we are actually making a huge difference, does help,” he says.
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Weapon of self-destruction: Beware the folly of net zero
Putin’s criminal aggression demonstrates that all net zero emissions can ever achieve is to advance the interests of the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Axis.
The war has exposed the foolishness of American, EU and British politicians in making their countries dependent on Russia for fossil-based energy. The mainstream media should now admit Donald Trump’s wisdom in making America energy independent and in blocking the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. They should also concede that they were at best naive and at worst complicit in giving such ridiculous credence to the Democrats’ and Mrs Clinton’s fabrication about Trump’s alleged collusion with Putin.
Politicians and big-business executives by now must surely realise that the net zero emissions exercise is not only pointless, it requires the West to commit suicide.
Along with many others, Communist China will never significantly reduce her emissions. And with Boris Johnson now being realistic and talking about a ‘climate change pass’, it is surprising that more politicians are not expressing reservations about net zero.
So far, politicians are acting as if nothing relevant has happened in the Ukraine.
They are still resorting to their favourite device to stop discussion, whether it be about the Wuhan virus or global warming. This is to precede some totally unacceptable conclusion with the phrase ‘the modelling says…’. With that, press and people are expected to react as Ancient Greeks did to the Oracle of Delphi.
Such modelling involves computer programs that purport to produce mathematical simulations of whatever is being discussed such as the climate system. This is impossible. As Professor George Box, ‘one of the great statistical minds of the 20th century’ and ‘the Grand Old Man of Anglo-American statistics’ famously said of models, all of them are wrong, but some are useful.
And not only are IPCC models wrong. Professor Steven E. Koonin, who in 1985 wrote one of the first textbooks on computer modelling, reveals in his recent book, Unsettled, that IPCC modelling does not involve, as you might hope, the careful selection of the model which on past performance has been shown to be most correct.
Rather, IPCC modelling is no more than the average of models which, he says, ‘disagree wildly with each other’. The simulated global surface temperature among these models varies by about three degrees celsius, three times greater than the observed value of twentieth century warming they claim to describe and explain. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this is only to avoid damaging public debates among modellers.
In the meantime, adherents of net zero emissions have a convenient distraction from the war in the latest of our ‘droughts and flooding rains’, each one of which is now officially described as an ‘extreme weather event’. This is to suggest that this is not what it is, a normal occurrence. This also hides the fact that the task of the politicians was once accepted to be not one of elimination, which is impossible. Their task was mitigation associated with water harvesting which was being achieved in Australia until a disaster in public administration which occurred forty years ago. Mitigation and harvesting have been well achieved elswhere, for example, in the Netherlands, Singapore, Israel and surprisingly Libya.
The term ‘extreme weather event’ is yet another example of the introduction of Newspeak, predicted by George Orwell in his novel, 1984. Newspeak is a language with a restricted vocabulary introduced to narrow the range of thought.
Another example is when politicians and business executives talk of the form of electricity they are eliminating as ‘dispatchable’ electricity. This is cheap and reliable electricity available 24/7. It is not difficult to see why they want to disguise this as dispatchable. The surprising thing is that the mainstream media go along with this fraud.
They even show film and photographs of steam emitted from coal-fired power stations knowing that this will be seen by some as CO2 emissions which are, of course, invisible. Whenever you hear the other term used, ‘renewable’ electricity, know that this means electricity which is unreliable, must be heavily subsidised and where the means for making this have been cornered by the Chinese communists who are laughing all the way to the bank while they use our coal for their electricity. And whenever you hear any of these terms, know one thing. You are being deceived for the purpose of supporting a policy which will only benefit the dictators and especially Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Unsurprisingly, the recent floods in New South Wales and Queensland have been blamed on climate change. Politicians have chosen this to disguise the fact that they have abandoned their duty to their constituents to mitigate the effect of floods. This occurred after that duty was suppressed by the Hawke government working with activist judges who completely emasculated the constitutional protection of farmers’ access to water. This is discussed in detail by Alan Jones in the 2018 Neville Bonner Oration ‘Drought-Proofing the Nation’.
Predictably, we are told that we are living through a ‘one-in-a-100 (or 500 or 1,000) year flood’. But as hydro-climatologist and former professor of environmental engineering, Professor Stewart Franks, explained to Luke Grant on 2GB, to get an accurate estimate of the significance of such an event, you would need many samples, not just one. And as Dr Jennifer Marohasy points out, Australia’s climate records have been subjected to industrial-scale remodelling by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
The people will have an opportunity to make a judgement on all this in coming elections. Common sense surely is not to elect those who support net zero emissions, or if there is no choice, support those less attached to that doctrine.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/weapon-of-self-destruction/ ?
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The green fairy-tale is over
Even the green cheer squad in the bureaucracy and the media can sense the change. The sudden end was signalled by rolling columns of Russian tanks, quickly followed by surging prices for oil, gas, coal, wheat, and barley.
For decades, one-worlders and greedy industrialists have sung the green songs – lauding wind/solar energy, worshipping hydrogen, and condemning coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. Their doomsday chorus was taken up by tweeting teenagers and trendy adults in the green leafy suburbs – most of them supported in soft-chair jobs in media, bureaucracy and big woke corporations.
John Kerry (a rich climate-obsessed American aristocrat) worries that the Ukraine war ‘could have a profound negative impact on the climate’. He is more concerned about beneficial emissions of life-supporting CO2 than about lethal bullets, missiles, and starvation.
Russia, China, and India have focussed on developing and using their best energy resources, but Australia (following the Pied Pipers of Europe) has a bi-partisan policy to keep spreading the climate virus and subsidising more expensive green toys imported from China.
But, at long last, sanity is surfacing – Nigel Farage (the UK Brexiteer) has rung the full-time bell on climate alarmism with his new slogan against Net Zero madness – ‘Vote Power not Poverty’.
Just one late snowstorm in Berlin, a food riot in Cairo, or a blackout in New York will start the green rout.
The world is becoming a cold, hungry, and dangerous place. Food is not produced in green forests, electricity is not generated in big batteries, green hydrogen is a net consumer of energy, and we will not fight the next war with battery-powered tanks, wind-powered frigates, or an air force burning bio-fuels.
Just two years ago, Biden promised: ‘We are going to get rid of fossil fuels.’
It’s time to drag green dreamers and climate alarmists into the real world where food, fuels, metals, electricity, and defensive weapons are produced. This must start by cleaning the green horse manure from the ‘Net Zero’ stables.
Putin’s tanks and missiles have started this process. Europeans now face the truth that coal, oil, nuclear, and gas provide most of the power for their homes, factories, industry, transportation, and agriculture. Without them, big cities die.
We need more Hydrocarbon Power, more Nuclear Power, and less Un-reliables.
The world has changed. We can no longer afford ‘Net Negative Energy’ or ‘Building Back Worse’.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/power-not-poverty/
********************************************Energy reliability is everything
A recent Wall Street Journal article, The Power Struggle, raised the importance of grid reliability, but claimed that electric grid failures were caused by climate change.
The claim that climate risk is undermining grid reliability is an illusion. The WSJ article correctly diagnosed the danger of blackouts, but incorrectly determined that the cause was climate change.
It is their proposed cure, i.e.,more wind, solar and batteries for storage, that is causing the problem.
As usual, some of their assumptions are wrong.
For example, the WSJ article said:
“Wind and solar technologies have become increasingly cost-competitive and now rival coal, nuclear and, in some places, gas-fired plants.”
And:
“Unlike electric systems in Europe, distribution and transmission lines in the U.S. were typically built overhead instead of buried underground, which makes them more vulnerable to weather.”
And:
”Wind and solar farms, whose output depends on weather and time of day, have become some of the most substantial sources of power in the U.S., second only to natural gas.”
Here are some facts:
Wind and solar are not less costly than existing natural gas combined cycle (NGCC), coal-fired or nuclear power plants.
They are also not less costly than new NGCC power plants. And they are, without question, far more costly when the cost of batteries, needed to backup up wind and solar, are included in the cost of generating and distributing electricity.
Transmission lines in Europe are above ground except for a few DC transmission lines, mostly used to span waterways, just as in the US. The US has many more suburbs which resulted in distribution lines being built above ground, but distribution lines in new developments, since the 1960s, have largely been built underground.
I place the time as the 1960s because I was a manager at the plant making distribution transformers when we began making pad-mounted transformers used for underground distribution. Subsequently, in the 1990s, while living in Reston, I happened across one of the compact pad-mounted transformers we had shipped to the Reston developer, Bob Simon, in 1963.
Wind and solar are not a substantial “source of power" generated by all power plants serving the grid. Together, wind and solar only provided 10.6% of the electricity in 2020.
Rather than solving problems, wind and solar are creating problems and increasing costs.
https://www.cfact.org/2022/03/17/energy-reliability-is-everything/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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17 March, 2022
Stop Biden's war on oil, gas – fight Putin by making US, Europe energy independent
US can again be global energy leader, providing reliable energy for Americans and our allies
Last summer, Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world watched President Biden’s embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan that abandoned thousands of Americans behind enemy lines, as well as our Afghan allies, and allowed the Taliban to quickly take control of that country while leaving them more than $80 billion in the world’s best military equipment. That decision certainly helped convince Putin that he didn’t need to fear America under the Biden administration.
However, the roots of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine go much further back. It was the Obama-Biden administration that did not help Ukraine push back Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. It was that same Obama-Biden administration that began a war on American energy that continues to this day. During that same time, Russia was using its energy resources to dominate Europe and finance a major military buildup around Ukraine.
Scalise blasts Biden's push to ban oil and gas: 'It's devastating' Video
When Putin violently annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine looked to the United States for help. Unfortunately, the Obama-Biden administration rejected their request for lethal assistance like Javelin anti-tank missiles because they were afraid of offending Russia and only provided non-lethal assistance like blankets.
In direct contrast with his predecessor, President Trump approved the sale of $47 million worth of lethal aid to Ukraine in December 2017. This included more than 200 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 missile launchers that, over the past two weeks, have proven vital in the Ukrainian military’s defense against overwhelming Russian forces.?
As Russia steadily massed its military forces on Ukraine’s border in 2021, a $200 million security assistance package for Ukraine went to President Biden for consideration. However, just like the failed decision of the Obama administration, President Biden delayed the actual delivery of the assistance for crucial months.?
The equipment in this security package was just being delivered to Ukraine in February as Putin was launching his invasion. Stinger surface-to-air missiles, a top priority for Ukraine, were left out of the first package and not authorized by the Biden administration until after Russia’s assault on Ukraine began. While Putin inflicts increasing numbers of civilian casualties by bombing schools and hospitals, President Biden is still failing to heed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s calls for help.
Putin’s barbaric attacks on Ukraine can be traced to Europe’s scorn for fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Europe did not become energy-dependent on Russia overnight. Putin’s barbaric attacks on Ukraine can be traced to Europe’s scorn for fossil fuels and nuclear power. Through his efforts to make the United States more like Europe, President Biden has ensured that European countries cannot turn to our abundant resources to drive down natural gas prices and cut free from Russian energy.?
Biden has played into Putin’s hands by ending American energy independence and renouncing U.S. oil and gas resources. While the U.S. could meet all of Europe’s energy needs, Europe receives nearly 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Without alternative energy suppliers, European families will suffer from over-reliance on Russia because of European leaders’ shortsighted Green New Deal policies.?
The United States should not follow Europe’s failed approach. We can again be a global energy leader, and provide reliable, low-cost energy for American households and our friends around the world.
Last week, Republican leaders, including more than 80 members of the House Energy Action Team (HEAT), sent a letter to President Biden laying out specific actions he can take immediately to reverse Russia’s leverage on Europe and the United States. Before he invaded Ukraine, Russian energy sales to the U.S. and Europe were providing more than $700 million a day to fund Putin’s war. We called on the Biden administration to ramp up U.S. energy production to lower prices for American families, eliminate Putin’s revenue stream, and ensure greater energy security here at home and to our allies overseas.
President Biden last week finally agreed with us to ban Russian oil, natural gas and coal imports. However, instead of turning to American energy producers to replace that tyrant’s oil, President Biden issued more attacks on American energy companies and instead turned to dictators in countries like Venezuela and Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, to meet our energy needs.
President Biden needs to stop begging foreign dictators to sell us their oil and, instead, finally say yes to American energy production.
All Americans should ask – why won’t Biden unleash America’s energy industry? In his first days in office, the president killed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have employed thousands of Americans and provided a crude oil source from Canada instead of Putin’s Russian crude. Democrats love to talk about how they are committed to reducing carbon emissions but fail to admit that the United States emits much less carbon to produce oil and natural gas domestically compared with the other countries that President Biden is begging to produce energy because we have much higher standards than those adversarial countries.?
President Biden’s disastrous leadership has crippled the United States’ power and influence on the world stage. When the United States is no longer energy independent, our country and the world become more vulnerable and more dependent on bad actors.
Sadly, we are seeing now how the Biden administration’s far-left energy policies have made Russia richer and emboldened Vladimir Putin.
Under President Trump, the United States demonstrated strong leadership at home and abroad. President Biden can act now to unleash American energy and turn the tables on Russia so that the United States and our allies re-establish the energy security we deserve.
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Battery system capital costs, energy losses, and aging
Articles often assume low turnkey capital cost of battery systems at $350/kWh, delivered as AC (which needs to be stepped up to distribution or high voltage system voltage, about a 1% loss)
A more realistic value would be about $500/kWh, by 2025, based on five annual EIA surveys of battery cost trends.
The EIA is an agency of the Department of Energy.
The EIA has collected turnkey capital costs and operating data of the energy sector for many decades.
Here are some details of the annual EIA reports for 2020 and 2021
Starting in 2015, EIA has prepared annual reports regarding site-specific, custom-designed, grid-scale battery systems.
The data revealed, the average duration of battery discharge increased from 0.5 h in 2015 to 3.2 h in 2019, because they are increasingly used to absorb midday solar output bulges and deliver that electricity during peak hours in the late-afternoon/early-evening
Excluded Costs from the EIA Estimates
Any project has an upfront turnkey capital cost, and ongoing annual operating and maintenance costs and periodic renovations, the same as a house, or a battery system. Some of the annual financing cost, O&M cost, etc., are listed below:
1) Financing costs assumed at about 3.5%/y for 15 years. This is a significant annual expense.
2) Owners return on investment of about 9%/y, which is a standard return utilities make on their investments. This is a significant annual expense
3) Battery system throughput loss of about about 20%, which increases with aging, as measured from distribution grid or high-voltage grid, AC-to-AC. This is a significant anneal expense. See Appendix
4) All other battery system operating and maintenance cost. The total is a significant annual expense
5) Cost benefits of subsidies, such as grants, tax credits, accelerated depreciation, loan interest deductions, waiving of state and local taxes, fees and surcharges, waiving of real estate taxes, etc.
The net effect of subsidies is to shift capital and operating costs from owners to others, by about 45%.
This enables the owner to offer battery services at a much lesser cost/kWh of battery system throughput.
This makes the use of batteries look politically attractive.
Any shifted costs are paid by ratepayers, taxpayers and added to government debts
No cost ever disappears, per Economics 101
Batteries:
1) Are expensive per delivered kWh, about $700/kWh in NE, in 2019, with little prospect of a significant decrease.
2) Last at most 15 years, if operated between 15% full and 80% full, and in a temperature-controlled enclosure.
Some experts claim between 20% full to 80% full is better
3) Age at about 1.5%/y (the capacity loss would be about 25% in year 15)
4) May catch fire, i.e., high insurance costs.
The combination of above conditions would add about 20 to 30 c/kWh to the cost of any electricity passing through the batteries (such as highly subsidized, high-cost, midday solar electricity), if costs of 1) owner’s annual return on investment (about 9%/y), and 2) annual loan servicing, and 3) O&M, and 4) battery energy loss were included.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
******************************************Green policies have fatally enfeebled the West
At the Cop 26 climate conference held in Glasgow last November, almost 200 countries ‘committed’ to the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, especially coal. Conspicuously, two major powers did not.
While China was circumspect, Russia was unambiguous. Moscow said it had no plans to rein in its fossil fuel production in the coming decades. As the world’s second biggest natural gas producer and the third largest oil producer, accounting for about 10 per cent of global supply, the Kremlin understands its comparative advantage.
Meanwhile, Beijing forges ahead with 43 new coal-fired power stations and 18 blast furnaces, promising the Green faithful, as it boosts annual coal production from its Inner Mongolian mines by almost 100 million tonnes, that it will be CO2 neutral by 2060. Although hardly reported in the West, China’s emissions are growing by 15 per cent a year and comfortably exceed the developed world’s total output.
Last month, Moscow and Beijing agreed to partner on energy. Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed a deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping, to supply 10 billion cubic metres of gas per year to China via a new pipeline. This helps secure China’s energy supply and makes Europe less important to Moscow.
Their approach is in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s Pollyanna view of the world. To appease green activists, he renounced energy independence by halting oil and gas drilling on public land and by revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit which was to carry crude oil from Canada to the United States.
The Green Left has also succeeded in capturing Europe’s policymakers. They continue to phase out coal and nuclear energy and have now identified biomass, which accounts for nearly 60 per cent of EU renewables, as climate unfriendly. These policies leave Brussels increasingly dependent on Moscow. Over the last five years alone, imports of Russian natural gas which account for 41 per cent of Europe’s total supply, have increased by 40 per cent.
Yet, for 30 years Russia’s relations with the West have festered over Moscow’s contention that Nato’s expansion breached a 1990 agreement. Tensions boiled over in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia. Six years later, as Nato watched on, President Putin illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea. Not even when Nato began equipping and training the Ukrainian armed forces prior to membership, did Brussels seek to lessen dependence on Russian gas. It’s not as though Europe was unaware of Moscow’s hostile response which made a full scale invasion of Ukraine highly likely.
Four years ago, President Trump called out Europe’s complacency. To universal condemnation, he said Nato members were spending too little on their own defence. But Trump was right. Even now, only one-third of Nato members spend the agreed two per cent of their GDP on defence.
Trump was also right when he claimed ‘Germany is a captive of Russia’. Chancellor Angela Merkel, countered she was ‘in a better position to judge her country’s dependence than the current US president’. Yet so dependent is Berlin on Moscow, it initially baulked at sanctions to suspend the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and, the proposal to exclude a number of Russian banks from the Swift payment system.
Eating his former chancellor’s words, German finance minister, Christian Lindner cautioned, if the EU took such a step, ‘there is a high risk that Germany will no longer be supplied with gas or raw materials’.
Now Germany is saying it will bring defence spending above two per cent of GDP and will create a strategic gas reserve. Do we hear stable doors closing?
Russia’s extraordinary power belies the reality that its economy is only slightly bigger than Australia’s. However, its military budget as a percentage of GDP is twice as big. Of course, it possesses nuclear weapons. But, it is no Soviet Union. Its relative power comes not from the size of its economy, its military hardware or troops on the ground. It comes from intent and the incompetence and naivety of its adversaries. Time will tell how effective the latest sanctions are and how Moscow retaliates.
That EU policymakers consciously opt for climate change over national security raises legitimate questions about their rationality. It’s as though Europe’s ‘Green Deal’, which aims to reduce inequality by changing the economics of energy, construction, agriculture and taxes to incentivise ‘decarbonisation’, was framed by the Russians and Chinese. Either that, or it was devised by modern Walter Mitty types.
But then EU policymakers appear to inhabit the same delusional world as US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. Despite Moscow’s unashamed declaration that it has no intention of reining in production of fossil fuels, Mr Kerry told the BBC he hopes when Russia’s invasion is complete, ‘President Putin will help us stay on track with respect with what we need to do for the climate’. No doubt Ukrainians will be cheered by that.
One thing is certain. Presidents Putin and Xi are not taking orders from Greta Thunberg. Rather they have been emboldened by their adversaries’ weak defence and reluctance to put troops on the ground. They are realists and not governed by hope. Of course they are also dangerously hierarchical and prone to over-reach. But they are deliberate.
By contrast, rather than action, the West resorts to symbolism, like US members of Congress sporting Ukrainian colours. It smacks of impotence; like chanting ‘Je suis Charlie’ after the Paris Charlie Hebdo slayings. Certainly, it is unlikely to deter China from its Taiwan ambitions. Beijing boasts the world’s second largest economy and wields the largest military. It dominates the United Nations and is intent on global hegemony. Biden’s record of incompetence and the West’s lack of intent only offer encouragement.
For too long the West has banked on hope. It’s where the deluded, the naive and the complacent take refuge from reality. But it is a dangerous asylum in which its leaders are unaccountable and its believers unprepared. Inevitably, reality will prevail. But can a rational mindset?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-price-of-delusion/
*****************************************************PM: Australia must ADAPT to climate change'
Scott Morrison has called for more dams and a better approach to managing fuel loads in forests to handle natural disasters worsened by climate change.
After major floods in NSW and Queensland this past fortnight, the Prime Minister on Sunday said that Australia is becoming a harder place to live due to climate change.
But Mr Morrison said the nation's approach to climate needs to focus on resilience and adapting to climate change, as well as bringing down carbon emissions.
“Let's talk about bushfires in that context. You want to deal with resilience on bushfires, you have to do fuel load management,” he said.
“You want to deal with floods, you have to build dams. Now, it hasn't been the Coalition that has been against reducing fuel loads.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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16 March, 2022
Democrats, Green Activists Pressure Big Tech to Censor More Climate ‘Misinformation’
A House Democrat leading an investigation of oil industry “misinformation” blames social media companies for blocking legislation to counter climate change, even as Big Tech corporations move to demonetize and suppress debate on climate-related issues.
Google acted to demonetize “climate denial” information. Facebook upped its fact-checking of climate-related posts, and emails obtained by watchdog groups show it targeted conservative site PragerU and independent journalist John Stossel. Twitter promised to be a forum only for credible content on climate change.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subcommittee on the environment, which has conducted two hearings on oil “misinformation” and postponed a third.
In February, Khanna tweeted: “Facebook is preventing us from taking action on climate change by allowing climate misinformation to spread. Congress must step up and hold them accountable.”
Khanna also put social media companies on notice in January.
“Misinformation being spread on social media is undermining our efforts to tackle climate change,” Khanna said in that tweet. “As chair of the House Oversight Environment Subcommittee, I will be holding a hearing to hold social media companies accountable.”
In a subpoena of oil companies, the House Oversight and Reform Committee asked for “marketing, advertising, or social media activities tending to influence public opinion … including communications with public relations firms or social media companies.”
House Democrats seem to hint that their investigation will expand beyond the oil industry, said Christopher Horner, counsel for the nonprofit watchdog group Government Accountability and Oversight.
“The committee has already expressed outrage, followed by subpoenas, over the targeted companies funding political speech the committee doesn’t like—energy and business trade associations,” Horner told The Daily Signal. “It also has indicated it intends to pursue public affairs firms as well as social media activities. Except we already know from open records productions that the social media giants collaborate with the climate inquisitors.”
Horner’s group is involved with litigation alleging that the committee violated both the law and House rules in its conduct of the investigation.
Neither a spokesperson for Khanna’s office nor a spokesperson for the House Oversight and Reform Committee responded to The Daily Signal’s inquiries for this report.
After Google announced last fall it would “demonetize” what it calls “climate denial,” green activist groups have pushed to expand the definition of denial.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate issued a report in November listing 10 websites, lumping in conservative news sites such as The Washington Times, Breitbart, and Newsmax with Russian state-run media that it said propagate two-thirds of “digital climate change denial.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate is a British-based organization aligned with the left wing of the Labour Party. It advocates for removing what it defines as hate groups from media and social media outlets.
Interestingly, among content cited by the report to try to buttress its point was a commentary on The Daily Wire that said the left “intimidates its opponents into silence.”
The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate states that use of the term “climate alarmism” fits the definition of disinformation or denial:
Throughout this report, the terms ‘climate disinformation’ and ‘climate denial’ should be read as referring to content that fits the following, narrow definition … Deceptive or misleading content that undermines the existence or impacts of climate change, and the need for corresponding urgent action, typically by referring to climate science using phrases such as ‘climate alarmism’ or ‘climate fraud.’
“The tech guys shouldn’t play ball. It’s not wise to be the judge and jury about what information on this issue can be public,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, which supports oil and gas development, told The Daily Signal.
Pressure from Democrats and activist groups to block differing opinions, Pyle added, is no sign of strength.
“This sends a message that they are so worried the public is not signing onto their agenda they are using a strong-arm tactic to silence viewpoints that challenge their viewpoints,” Pyle said. “These hearings are just a political exercise to silence ideological opponents.”
After facing criticism from environmental groups, Twitter announced in June that it would create a climate change “topic” that would feature only what Twitter said would be credible information.
In 2020, Facebook partnered with the group Climate Feedback, which it said would be an “independent fact-checker.” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, told The Washington Post that the company planned to reduce distribution of posts that its fact-checkers say are false.
Stossel sued Facebook last year, asserting that the platform went beyond censorship of the journalist and into defamation.
Government Accountability and Oversight, representing another nonprofit, Energy Policy Advocates, obtained emails that Climate Feedback sends to public universities across the country to recruit help in flagging “misinformation” in Facebook posts.
Horner said the emails demonstrate that Facebook contacts what it calls its “independent fact-checker” with suggestions about what to write about.
One April 2021 message from a Facebook employee to faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles said: “Facebook reached out to Climate Feedback to alert us about a video by John Stossel that is going insanely viral right now.”
A May 2020 message from a Facebook employee tells a professor at the University of Illinois: “PragerU recently posted a video titled ‘Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?’”
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Some corals are not only surviving increased acidification and warming temperatures, but appear to be thriving in them
A team of Australian researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney has just returned from New Caledonia, where they were able to investigate this ‘extreme coral’, and figure out what makes it so hardy, and whether it could help save other reefs - and the species they support - around the world.
The coral we usually think of are located in tropical coral reefs - of which the Great Barrier Reef is an awesome example. But there’s also coral that lurks around the corners of these pristine reefs – for example, in murky mangrove-rich areas - which scientists have shown are much tougher than their pristine counterparts.
Mangroves are small trees that grow in coastal salty water, mostly in tropical and subtropical climates. The water around them is usually thick and muddy, and not somewhere you’d think to look for coral, but these extreme corals are a little different.
"The corals … thrive in relatively acidic and hot mangrove waters; visibility is not great so they often go unnoticed," said one of the researchers, David Suggett. "We want … to understand how corals can adapt and thrive to extreme environments that potentially represent the future for many reefs worldwide."
So why travel to New Caledonia? The reef there, which is kind of like a mini version of the Great Barrier Reef, has amazing diversity in its coral population. "Despite the fact that among the 800 coral species described in the world, more than 401 were identified in New Caledonia we are only starting to really uncover the diversity and abundance of corals here," said New Caledonian researcher, Riccardo Rodolfo-Metalpa. "And, importantly, whether these corals are resilient to human stressors, including climate change."
Climate change is a huge problem for many kinds of corals. As ocean temperatures rise, corals can shed the symbiotic algae living in their tissue, which causes them to starve and turn white. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere is also making the ocean more acidic, which stops corals from calcifying properly.
But these extreme corals, which are happy growing in around 33 degrees Celsius, could be the key to determining if some corals will survive the transition.
"Global research predicts a poor future for reefs. An important step in reef management is therefore identifying 'refuges' that will enable coral populations to thrive as most reef environments decline," says one of the team, Emma Camp.
Although they’ve now identified these impressive coral species, there’s plenty of information they still need to uncover about them, such as, how different are they to similar, less hardy species? "We don’t really know whether the coral populations in these mangroves are a distinct, genetically isolated community that has evolved over hundreds of years, or whether they represent a supply of corals coming continually from the main reef, and they just happen to be extremely physiologically plastic," Suggett told the Think: Sustainability podcast.
"We are frantically pouring through our data to find the ‘smoking gun’ that has enabled them to be so stress resilient," he added. "Whilst it is tempting to be optimistic from our findings that corals can adapt to climate change-like scenarios, we have a long road ahead to understand the complex mix of conditions that actually allow corals to thrive within hot-acidic mangrove waters."
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Satellite outage knocks out thousands of Enercon's wind turbines
Germany's Enercon on Monday said a "massive disruption" of satellite connections in Europe was affecting the operations of 5,800 wind turbines in central Europe.
It said the satellite connections stopped working on Thursday, knocking out remote monitoring and control of the wind turbines, which have a total capacity of 11 gigawatt (GW).
"The exact cause of the disruption is not yet known. The communication services failed almost simultaneously with the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine," Enercon said in a statement.
The company said it had no further information on who or what may have caused the disruption.
Enercon has informed Germany's cybersecurity watchdog BSI and is working with the relevant providers of the satellite communication networks to resolve the disruption, which it said affected around 30,000 satellite terminals used by companies and organisations from various sectors across Europe.
BSI said it was aware that a satellite-based communications operator has experienced a malfunction and that this had restricted the maintenance of some wind turbines, without providing details.
"However, no effects on power grid stability are currently expected due to redundant communication capabilities of the responsible grid operators. Further investigations into the cause are being carried out by the company concerned in close exchange with the responsible authorities," BSI said.
U.S.-listed satellite communications firm Viasat Inc (VSAT.O) said earlier on Monday it was investigating a suspected cyberattack that caused a partial outage in its residential broadband services in Ukraine and other European countries. read more
Enercon is working with the operators of the affected wind farms to set up alternative ways to regain remote control of the turbines, it said, without naming the operators.
There was no risk to the turbines as they continued to operate on "auto mode," the company said.
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Australian High school students LOSE climate change court case against the environment minister after demanding she block a coal mine to 'save the future'
A legal decision finding the Australian government owes the country's children protection from harm caused by climate change has been overturned by a court.
The full bench of the Federal Court on Tuesday morning unanimously ruled in favour of an appeal by the Environment Minister Sussan Ley, reversing a decision by a previous judge.
Eight high school students took Ms Ley to court in 2020, seeking to block the expansion of a coal mine that is expected to produce an additional 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg in May 2021 knocked back their bid to stop the expansion, but he did rule that Ms Ley has a duty of reasonable care to not cause the children personal injury when exercising her legislative decision-making powers regarding the mine. It was lauded as a landmark win that would open an avenue for legal challenges to the government's future decisions on coal projects.
However, Ms Ley soon after announced she would appeal the finding, and on Tuesday the full Federal Court bench - Justices James Allsop, Jonathan Beach and Michael Wheelahan - ruled in her favour. All agreed a legal duty of care should not be imposed, but the judges varied in their reasons.
Chief Justice James Allsop concluded that decisions about mining approvals belonging to the executive arm of government - ministers of the day - not the judiciary.
Ms Ley also had control over only a tiny contribution to global carbon emissions, he said. 'The lack of proportionality between the tiny increase in risk and lack of control, and the liability for all damaged by heatwaves, bushfires and rising sea levels ... into the future, mean that the duty ... should not be imposed.'
Chief Justice Allsop did, however, note the considerable evidence demonstrating the dangers to humanity that climate change presents was not challenged. 'None of the evidence was disputed,' he said.
'There was no cross examination of any witness brought by the applicants by those acting for the minister and there was no contrary or qualifying evidence,' he said.
Lawyers acting for the group of children now have the option to appeal that decision in the High Court.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, March 15, 2022
US and EU Shift Fuel Imports From Russia to China
The Ukraine war is driving sanctions on Russia that limit sources of oil and gas for U.S. and European markets. Buyers are now seeking alternate non-Russian sources, driving renewed interest in renewable energy such as wind and solar—both sectors in which Chinese companies are increasingly competitive.
Energy buyers are also seeking oil and gas from currently sanctioned countries like Iran and Venezuela, relieving pressure on them meant to improve their human rights, and giving them bargaining leverage on issues like their authoritarian forms of government and nuclear proliferation.
While Russian sanctions are ramping up, pressure on other illiberal countries is necessarily decreasing due to a lack of an even and sustainable approach to the application of sanctions. China and its de facto allies—Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela—are actually the bigger long-term threat, compared to Russia, and so shifting markets there could hurt democracy more in the long term.
This is not to argue that Russia should not be sanctioned—it should, and sanctions should increase. Rather, Russia sanctions should be designed so that other illiberal regimes are not the beneficiaries.
On March 8, the European Commission issued an energy plan that started, “Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the case for a rapid clean energy transition has never been stronger and clearer.” The European Union imports over 46 percent of its coal, 40 percent of its gas, and 27 percent of its oil from Russia.
The EU statement said that while diversifying its supply of gas away from Russia, “the EU fosters its international partnerships,” including with the G-7 and other major global gas importers: Japan, South Korea, India, and China.
Luz Ding at Bloomberg noted on March 9 that “Europe’s wartime plan for a faster transition to clean energy as it seeks to replace Russian fossil fuels will provide a boost to the order books of China renewable manufacturers.”
By 2030, the European Union will add 900 gigawatts of solar and wind power, according to the new EU energy plan, almost double what analysts previously expected.
The key beneficiary will be China’s Longi Green Energy Technology Company, which is the world’s biggest solar company. Longi had its products seized by U.S. customs authorities in November due to their polysilicon sourced from Xinjiang, where Uyghurs are enslaved in factories and fields. Xinjiang currently supplies 45 percent of the world’s polysilicon.
Rather than shifting purchases of energy to China and its illiberal allies, Europe and the United States could patronize their own allies, including through the purchase of British solar panels, Norwegian natural gas, and Canadian oil, for example.
Norway’s gas already accounts for 23.6 percent of EU gas imports. Supporting countries friendly to democracy means buying more energy from countries like Norway.
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Four huge gas reserves identified in UK to avoid energy crisis
According to some estimates, Britain is expected to fork out £2billion for Russian imports of natural gas imports this year.
Official figures from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy also suggest reliance on Russian gas has doubled in just four years.
But the UK may be able to avoid having to fork out that extra cash if it focuses on its domestic reserves.
As prices rise, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been urged to address these domestic supplies, which critics say are being pushed aside over his climate policies.
Currently, the country’s production of natural gas from conventional reserves do not meet domestic demand (typically 70–80 billion cubic metres per year).
But after coming under fire, Mr Johnson said at a Downing Street press conference on Monday that Britain would take a look at using more domestic energy resources as part of an "energy supply strategy".
This could involve accessing four key areas with huge potential for shale gas extraction.
These include the Carboniferous Bowland–Hodder area in northwest England (Lancashire and the Midlands) and the Carboniferous Midland Valley in Scotland.
It also includes the Jurassic Weald Basin in south England, and the Wessex area in south England.
Recent analysis in 2019 suggested Bowland–Hodder holds around four trillion cubic metres (tcm) of gas.
But an obstacle stands in the way of accessing those supplies.
Shale gas is extracted through a process called fracking, but this was banned by the Government back in 2019 after scientists raised concerns about earthquakes and the threats it posed to local communities.
A review published in March 2020 by Warwick Business School said fracking could produce between 90 and 330 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas between 2020 and 2050.
Now, the Government has been urged to lift the ban so Britain can access more of its domestic reserves and avoid the huge price increases for gas imports.
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Australia: Five years on, Snowy 2.0 emerges as a $10 billion white elephant
A very costly alternative to coal. The original Snowy scheme was a boondoggle too
Five years ago on Tuesday, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced, with great fanfare, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project: “The Turnbull Government will start work on an electricity game-changer ... This plan will increase the generation of the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50 per cent, adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM).”
Senate Estimates papers confirm the announcement was cobbled together in less than two weeks after the concept was floated by Snowy Hydro.
The nation-building vision was for a big battery to be added to the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. It was to be completed in four years (that is, by last year) at a cost of $2 billion without any taxpayer subsidy, bring down electricity prices, generate renewable energy and incur minimal environmental impact on Kosciuszko National Park.
Inspiring stuff. But not one of these grand claims has turned out to be true. Worse, Australian taxpayers and NSW electricity consumers will be up for billions of dollars in subsidies and increased electricity costs, all while Kosciuszko is trashed. Let’s have a quick recap.
Snowy Hydro now expects completion in 10 years, not four, by 2026. Some experts consider even this extended timeframe to be optimistic. Construction of the tunnels is running at least six months behind the latest schedule and the transmission connection is unlikely to be built by 2026 anyway. The all-up cost has increased at least five-fold, to $10 billion-plus, as energy experts warned the Prime Minister and the then NSW premier in 2020.
The underground power station and tunnels alone will cost more than $6 billion, and Snowy Hydro avoids mentioning the transmission connections to Sydney – $4 billion-plus for HumeLink and the Sydney ring – and to Victoria. To make matters worse, Snowy Hydro refuses to contribute to these transmission works, leaving it to electricity consumers to pick up the tab. Transmission tariffs in NSW will increase by more than 50 per cent if the NSW government allows Snowy Hydro to get its way, based on analysis in a Victoria Energy Policy Centre report.
It’s been around for decades but pumped hydro power is gaining attention as a potential back up for renewable energy, which is increasing its share of the electricity grid. It’s also technology the federal government is interested in.
Despite the assurance that taxpayer subsidies were not required, the federal government was forced to shore up Snowy 2.0’s business case with a $1.4bn “equity injection”. Further taxpayer funding is inevitable, warned Standard & Poors when it downgraded Snowy Hydro’s credit rating in 2020.
Far from bringing electricity prices down, Snowy Hydro’s own modelling predicts that prices will rise because of Snowy 2.0.
As far as the claim that Snowy 2.0 will add 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market, Snowy 2.0 is not a conventional hydro station generating renewable energy. It is no different to any other battery, and as such it will be a net load on the NEM. For every 100 units of electricity purchased from the NEM to pump water uphill, only 75 units are returned when the water flows back down through the turbine generators. Not only is the electricity generated not renewable, Snowy 2.0 will be the most inefficient battery on the NEM, losing 25 per cent of energy cycled.
And on the final claim of minimal environmental impact to Kosciuszko National Park, vast areas have already been cleared, blasted, reshaped and compacted. Hundreds of kilometres of roads and tracks are being constructed, twenty million tonnes of excavated spoil will be dumped (astoundingly, mainly in Snowy Hydro’s reservoirs), and noxious fish will be transferred throughout the Snowy Mountains and the headwaters of the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Snowy Rivers, devastating native fish and trout. The NSW government has even agreed to issue exemptions to its own legislation to override the prohibition of such pest fish transfers – an astonishing precedent.
The massive cost and environmental impacts of Snowy 2.0 cannot be justified for providing occasional longer-term storage.
The latest revelation in this dismal saga is the proposal for four high-voltage transmission lines through eight kilometres of Kosciuszko National Park with a cleared easement swath up to 200 metres wide. The statutory plan of management that controls activities in Kosciuszko expressly prohibits the construction of new overhead transmission lines, as is the norm with national parks in Australia and throughout the developed world. Reprehensibly, the NSW government has released a draft amendment to exempt Snowy 2.0 from having to install underground cables.
Despite Snowy 2.0’s abysmal track record over the past five years, the Commonwealth and NSW governments continue to bend over backwards with billion-dollar subsidies (and more to come), electricity price increases and environmental exemptions, despite conclusive evidence that the project is fundamentally flawed and can never pay for itself.
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Ignore climate twerps, fossil fuels coal, gas and oil still rule
Don’t we have enough twerps in Australia that we have to import one like the former hapless and hopeless Bank of England governor turned climate-boondoggle main-chancer Mark Carney?
Carney, who is now vice-chairman of Canadian investment group Brookfield, was ‘in’ Australia – be thankful for small mercies, only virtually – to lecture Australians on two topics.
The first was our tardiness in embracing ‘going dark’ with so-called full-on renewable energy.
The second was to berate the board of AGL specifically for knocking back the opportunistic takeover bid Brookfield had launched for it in partnership with ‘Mr Harbourside Mansions Version 2.0’, got-lucky, once, tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Brookfield and Brookes wanted to buy AGL, abandon its proposed de-merger into two companies, and accelerate the closure of its coal-fired stations which are currently keeping Australian lights on, especially, when the wind don’t blow - and you know the rest. Last weekend the partners had upped their bid to $8.25 a share. It was promptly – and sensibly – rejected by the AGL board.
The central point that AGL holders should understand is that if the duo were prepared to pay $8.25, AGL shares are worth more, much more. Bidders don’t go around offering to spend $9bn just to play Father Christmas.
They want to make big bucks on their billions outlaid. The central point that the other 25m Australians should understand is that those ‘big bucks’ would be made by ripping more dollars out of their pockets, either directly as consumers or indirectly as taxpayers, while taking them into an increasingly – real, not virtual – dark future.
Indeed, with surprising – utterly unknowing? – ‘honesty’ Carney said as much out loud. “The scale of the net zero transition (read: destroying cheap, reliable power generation) is such that this is a target-rich environment (read: there are trillions of dollars to be made from hapless governments and suffering consumers),” he said.
You could not have asked for more exquisite timing for Carney’s comments, as the events in and out of Ukraine prove the absolute, utterly critical, centrality of coal, gas and oil – fossil fuels all – in our every-day 24/7 energy needs and indeed our very existence. Despite the trillions of dollars already wasted around the world on useless wind and solar, 85 per cent of global energy still comes from coal, gas and oil.
Just 5 per cent comes from so-called ‘renewables (not including the real renewable, hated by Dark Greens, hydro) after all those trillions. The trillions more that Carney talks about will barely take it up to 10 percent. And people like Carney never talk about China, pumping one-third of global emissions today and yet more tomorrow, other than to make fatuous and false claims China is ‘taking action on climate change’.
Go coal, gas and oil to keep the lights on; go renewables-woke, go broke and go dark. Talking of twerps, there was opposition leader and wannabe-PM Anthony Albanese Wednesday saying in a speech that he would be a PM like John Howard (and Bob Hawke). So, was that Albanese saying he intended to emulate the “petulance, pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy” that he judged Howard as PM?
I’m indebted to blogger Michael Smith for highlighting a speech Albanese gave back in 1998 where he described Howard as a worse PM even than Billy McMahon. Is it Albanese’s intent to ‘match that’? I was particularly taken with Albanese’s reference to Howard – nicely highlighted by Smith:
“You can trim the eyebrows; you can cap the teeth; you can cut the hair; you can put on different glasses; you can give him a ewe’s milk facial, for all I care; but, to paraphrase a gritty Australian saying, `Same stuff, different bucket’.”
Looked in a mirror recently, Anthony?
***********************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, March 14, 2022
Why aren’t oil companies drilling more? Look no further than the ESG goals in their corporate annual reports
The largest oil producers in the U.S. do not appear to have major plans to increase production through 2025, a review of U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) data and corporate reports of U.S.-based oil companies reveals, despite oil prices being over $100 per barrel and inflation raging at 7.9 percent the last twelve months.
According to EIA, U.S. oil production will reach 12 million barrels per day in 2022 and 12.6 million barrels per day in 2023, a return to pre-Covid production levels that peaked at 12.9 million barrels per day in Nov. 2019.
But what about over the long term? A look at top U.S. oil producers reveals that these companies have been pivoting away from carbon-based energy for years. In short, they’re going green.
Last year, ExxonMobil, the largest producer in the U.S., announced that it would produce about 3.7 million barrels of oil a day — about 18 percent of all U.S. consumption — from its facilities throughout the world, a level which would remain relatively unchanged through 2025. This year, the estimate for 2022 was up slightly to 3.8 million barrels a day, expected to rise to 4.2 million barrels a day by 2027.
Long term, ExxonMobil reports in its 2020 corporate annual report that it is “Positioning for a Lower-Carbon Energy Future” by “working to develop breakthrough solutions in areas such as carbon capture, biofuels, hydrogen, and energy-efficiency process technology that can help achieve the Paris Agreement objectives. In early 2021 ExxonMobil announced the creation of a new business, ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, to commercialize low-carbon technologies.”
According to ExxonMobil President Neil Chapman, speaking on March 2 to investors, “we will reduce the emissions in our existing operations. We’re aiming for net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions at our operated facilities by 2050.” And in the U.S., Exxon’s net zero plans will be attained on the Permian basin by 2030.
As for Chevron, the second largest U.S.-based producer, it currently produces about 3 million barrels a day, expected to rise by just 500,000 barrels per day by 2025 to 3.5 million barrels per day.
In Chevron’s 2020 corporate annual report, it promised “higher returns in a lower-carbon future” by “reducing the carbon intensity of our operations and assets, prioritizing the projects that return the largest reduction in carbon emissions at the lowest cost to customers and society… increasing renewables and offsets in support of our business…. [and] investing in low-carbon technologies to enable commercial solutions while leveraging our capabilities and operations to advance technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen.” Chevron also has similarly set a goal to be a net-zero carbon emitter by 2050.
These are explicit Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals being pursued by the largest oil companies in the U.S., particularly goals to support the Paris Climate Accords and to reduce carbon emissions to zero.
In both companies’ cases, the strategies short-term include deploying carbon capture technologies as well as reducing onsite carbon emissions on existing production facilities, and more investment in green energies. Long term, however, they are sealing the fate of carbon-based energies, by embracing an investment model that calls for their extinction.
Ultimately, that will mean almost no oil production or consumption, a goal that would be contrary to an oil company’s continued existence and profitability.
ESG investing has increased dramatically the past decade via private retirement funds regulated under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) thanks to a regulation by the Obama Labor Department in 2015.
In addition, the $762 billion federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for federal employee retirees will begin investing in ESG funds in 2022, following state government employee retirement funds in California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland and Oregon.
The combination of these incentives and subsidies has led to an unprecedented rise of ESG investment: $38 trillion out more than $100 trillion global assets under management, will grow to $53 trillion by 2025, according to Bloomberg News. That’s about one-third of all assets under management, not necessarily seeking profitability, but to save the world.
BlackRock, a hedge fund with more than $9 trillion of assets under management, have placed green activists onto the board of Exxon to make it a “not-oil” company, thanks to ESG. Other hedge funds like Vanguard also make significant ESG investments.
But it has led to catastrophe. Besides making Europe and the West increasingly dependent on energy from adversaries like Russia, inflation is on fire. Thanks to the energy crisis, even major ESG beneficiaries like Tesla CEO Elon Musk are calling for an increase in oil and gas production in a bid to offset Russia, writing on Twitter on March 8: “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”
Musk is right. It’s time to expand production dramatically. But ESG won’t let us. That’s a big problem.
The net result of these policies incentivizing and subsidizing ESG investments has been to restrict capitalization and financing to carbon-based oil, coal and natural gas energies in favor of green energies such as solar, wind and electric vehicles — and endangering the West. As it turns out, energy security is national security, and with ESG, we do not have energy security.
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Road usage fee hits a rock
The city of La Mesa seems on the surface to be as progressive as they come. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2:1 margin—and, generally speaking,
It’s the kind of place where someone like Laura Lothian, who is cut from the cloth of conservative cable news, might not be the most popular. In a recent conversation on the patio of her hillside home, she railed against COVID-19 shutdowns and unisex dressing rooms, and told me with delight about her “intimate” meal with “MTG” — Marjorie Taylor Greene, a U.S. Representative from Georgia known for trumpeting far-right conspiracy theories.
But it turns out Lothian is just what progressive La Mesa was looking for. In November, she clinched an unlikely electoral victory, becoming La Mesa’s newest city councillor, by focusing on a single issue: opposing a new road-usage fee, which would charge people for every mile they drive. With gas prices on the rise and inflation reaching the highest level in decades, Lothian gambled that voters would put their pocketbook concerns above their anxieties about climate change. The bet paid off. “This issue brought out everybody— and it changed things,” she says.
The road-usage fee is hardly out of left field. It’s part of a $160 billion plan to restructure San Diego County’s transportation system, spearheaded by the regional planning authority, the San Diego Association of Governments, also known as SANDAG. More than a dozen states are currently considering similar fees, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The idea is straightforward: by levying a small fee on miles driven, state and local governments can recoup some of the revenue lost in gas taxes, which are declining as more cars go electric, while simultaneously pushing people to use cleaner methods of getting around, like public transit or rideshares. In San Diego, revenue from the new fee would fund a slew of local, emissionsreducing projects.
At first, SANDAG’s road-usage fee, which is slated to go into effect in 2030, flew under the political radar. But last year, as energy prices crept up, San Diego Republicans embraced it as a potential political gold mine. “We made this issue the singular issue in that race,” says Carl Demaio, a local Republican activist, referring to Lothian’s campaign. “The Mileage Tax being backed by La Mesa City Council members would charge you 4–6 cents PER MILE you drive—costing $600–900 per driver in La Mesa!” read one Lothian mailer.
Lothian’s surprise victory upended politics in San Diego County. Democrats across the region immediately began backpedaling, insisting that they no longer supported the road-usage fee, or demanding more study of it, while Republicans doubled down on the issue, making it the centerpiece of their 2022 campaigns. Thousands of locals responded to a call from a local Republican to flood the inbox of county officials. “This is kryptonite for the Democrats,” Demaio says.
It’s not just San Diego. The political drama playing out in this sunny Southern California outpost is in many ways a microcosm of what’s happening both nationally and globally. As energy prices rise at the same time that many governments are finally getting serious about climate change, lawmakers are facing an inescapable dilemma: effective climate policy requires raising the price of fossil fuels—and, by extension, the price of highcarbon products and services. But raising prices is deeply unpopular among voters, especially when energy costs are already high, and especially during periods of rapid inflation.
Climate-minded politicians are left with no easy choice. Those who raise prices to enact climate action plans risk being thrown out of office; those who refuse to do so undermine effective policy and invite a world in which unchecked, catastrophic climate change levies a much greater, if more diffuse, cost on communities in the long run. Whether democratic societies can enact policies that meaningfully curb greenhouse gas emissions depends on whether elected officials—in San Diego and around the world—are able to navigate this political tar pit.
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Biden Urged to Invoke Cold-War Powers to Blunt Energy Price Hike
Here we go again! Wartime emergency powers for the executive branch to battle a "crisis" without the messiness of market forces or democracy. Can anyone say more Chinese-style one party rule?!
President Joe Biden is under pressure to invoke Cold War-era powers to force more domestic oil production as the war in Ukraine strains supplies, raising gasoline prices and fueling inflation.
Lawmakers and labor activists have urged Biden to compel deployment of drilling rigs and solar panels using the 1950 Defense Production Act, the same authority wielded by Harry Truman to make steel for the Korean War and Donald Trump to spur mask production to battle the coronavirus.
So far, the Biden administration has shown little enthusiasm for the move. “It would basically be providing money to oil companies to do something that they already probably have the capacity to do,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
Nevertheless, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is rapidly shifting the window of what’s possible. The administration is already weighing a narrow use of the 72-year-old law to jump-start production of electric heat pumps that can help Europe curb its reliance on Russian gas.
And in Washington, lawmakers eager to tame gasoline prices and combat Russia’s energy dominance are pushing the Defense Production Act as a prescription for supply-chain bottlenecks and languished gas projects.
Senator Joe Manchin, an influential Democrat from West Virginia, has urged Biden to wield the DPA to force construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline to send gas to the East Coast, though the act wouldn’t overcome all of the pipeline’s legal and environmental obstacles. Separately, four senators, including Manchin and Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, on Friday asked Biden to use the act to accelerate production of lithium-ion battery materials needed to power electric vehicles.
Invoking the DPA to steer energy production seems radical in times of peace, said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners. “It’s not so radical when you’re actually in a war that is washing onto American shores as gasoline prices and could potentially mean acute shortages in Europe for American allies,” he said.
The federal law empowers the president to essentially nationalize private industry to ensure the U.S. has resources that could be necessary in a crisis. It even singles out energy as a “strategic and critical material,” giving the president wide latitude to prioritize contracts and force businesses to supply the government with materials and services.
The power isn’t only for wartime. Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton invoked the law to steer natural gas to California utilities and prevent blackouts during the 2001 power crisis. The Trump administration considered using the DPA to force coal plants to keep running.
The statute is a powerful tool to help stabilize markets and forge “an industrial policy that makes sense for the 21st century American economy,” said Alex Williams, a research analyst at the labor advocacy group Employ America that published a blueprint for using the DPA to accelerate oil production.
The Biden administration has so far resorted to imploring the oil industry to increase production, casting it as a patriotic duty in wartime. Lawmakers on Thursday suggested Biden should stop asking and use the DPA to intervene directly, since energy companies and their investors are wary of cranking up drilling to generate crude a year from now, when prices are expected to have fallen well below current highs.
“You can help reduce domestic energy prices and further our nation’s energy independence while blunting the impact of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to use Russian energy exports as leverage in the face of European and American sanctions,” lawmakers, including Representatives Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, and South Dakota Republican Dusty Johnson, said a letter to Biden.
Like the Employ America proposal, their plan would not directly mandate drilling. Instead, the president could guarantee oil demand at consistent prices by loaning crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve today with drillers required to pay that back in a year or more using production from new, domestic wells.
The Treasury Department’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, used to avert currency crises, could be tapped to fund oil drilling that Wall Street now shuns. And the president could invoke the Defense Production Act to ease supply chain problems that are holding back crude production, by ensuring supplies of low-cost pipes, sand and other essential equipment.
It’s a novel option in Washington, where policy makers are used to grasping for the same limited set of options to confront high gasoline prices, said Benjamin Salisbury, director of research at Height Capital Markets. “There is a growing understanding that any one of these tools is inadequate.”
Beyond gas, the DPA is being considered as a tool to combat climate change.
More than 200 environmental, indigenous and progressive groups asked the president to use the DPA to rapidly scale up the production and deployment of electric-vehicle chargers, weatherization equipment and other clean energy technology.
And environmentalist Bill McKibben has pitched government officials to invoke the DPA to manufacture electric heat pumps that can help wean Europe off Russian gas.
Climate activists warn the administration risks forfeiting the campaign against global warming by propping up fossil fuels.
“This would do nothing to help Ukraine” but would “make us more dependent on volatile fossil fuels, on this boom-bust cycle and on energy price spikes,” said Collin Rees, U.S. program manager for Oil Change International. “It’s incredibly short-sighted and cynical.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-urged-invoke-cold-war-153000039.html
****************************************Ignore climate twerps, fossil fuels coal, gas and oil still rule
Don’t we have enough twerps in Australia that we have to import one like the former hapless and hopeless Bank of England governor turned climate-boondoggle main-chancer Mark Carney?
Carney, who is now vice-chairman of Canadian investment group Brookfield, was ‘in’ Australia – be thankful for small mercies, only virtually – to lecture Australians on two topics.
The first was our tardiness in embracing ‘going dark’ with so-called full-on renewable energy.
The second was to berate the board of AGL specifically for knocking back the opportunistic takeover bid Brookfield had launched for it in partnership with ‘Mr Harbourside Mansions Version 2.0’, got-lucky, once, tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Brookfield and Brookes wanted to buy AGL, abandon its proposed de-merger into two companies, and accelerate the closure of its coal-fired stations which are currently keeping Australian lights on, especially, when the wind don’t blow - and you know the rest. Last weekend the partners had upped their bid to $8.25 a share. It was promptly – and sensibly – rejected by the AGL board.
The central point that AGL holders should understand is that if the duo were prepared to pay $8.25, AGL shares are worth more, much more. Bidders don’t go around offering to spend $9bn just to play Father Christmas.
They want to make big bucks on their billions outlaid. The central point that the other 25m Australians should understand is that those ‘big bucks’ would be made by ripping more dollars out of their pockets, either directly as consumers or indirectly as taxpayers, while taking them into an increasingly – real, not virtual – dark future.
Indeed, with surprising – utterly unknowing? – ‘honesty’ Carney said as much out loud. “The scale of the net zero transition (read: destroying cheap, reliable power generation) is such that this is a target-rich environment (read: there are trillions of dollars to be made from hapless governments and suffering consumers),” he said.
You could not have asked for more exquisite timing for Carney’s comments, as the events in and out of Ukraine prove the absolute, utterly critical, centrality of coal, gas and oil – fossil fuels all – in our every-day 24/7 energy needs and indeed our very existence. Despite the trillions of dollars already wasted around the world on useless wind and solar, 85 per cent of global energy still comes from coal, gas and oil.
Just 5 per cent comes from so-called ‘renewables (not including the real renewable, hated by Dark Greens, hydro) after all those trillions. The trillions more that Carney talks about will barely take it up to 10 percent. And people like Carney never talk about China, pumping one-third of global emissions today and yet more tomorrow, other than to make fatuous and false claims China is ‘taking action on climate change’.
Go coal, gas and oil to keep the lights on; go renewables-woke, go broke and go dark. Talking of twerps, there was opposition leader and wannabe-PM Anthony Albanese Wednesday saying in a speech that he would be a PM like John Howard (and Bob Hawke). So, was that Albanese saying he intended to emulate the “petulance, pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy” that he judged Howard as PM?
I’m indebted to blogger Michael Smith for highlighting a speech Albanese gave back in 1998 where he described Howard as a worse PM even than Billy McMahon. Is it Albanese’s intent to ‘match that’? I was particularly taken with Albanese’s reference to Howard – nicely highlighted by Smith:
“You can trim the eyebrows; you can cap the teeth; you can cut the hair; you can put on different glasses; you can give him a ewe’s milk facial, for all I care; but, to paraphrase a gritty Australian saying, `Same stuff, different bucket’.”
Looked in a mirror recently, Anthony?
***************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Sunday, March 13, 2022
On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem
Even a “minor” skirmish would wreck the planet, says Robinson Meyer
This is an amusing article. He quite reasonably portrays the disaster of a nuclear exchange and it is true that such an exchange would have huge and adverse climate effects. But his apparent claim that the damage caused by global warming would be in any way similar or contributory is hilarious.
We have had one degree of warming over the last century or so without anybody noticing it until the Greenies got shrill about it. So another one degree would presumably be equally trivial.
Yet to hear Greenies on the matter, one more degree would cause an Armageddon. It appears to be that such a fictional Armageddon is what Robinson has in mind when he sees similarities between climate change and nuclear war.
It's only in the fevered imaginations of Warmists that the climate is going to do us much harm. And the idea that the harm could be anything like the effects of a nuclear war is feverish indeed. In a nuclear war, the climate would be as trivial a contribution to disaster as it is in the here and now
Just incidentally, he quite accurately admits that cooling would cause drought. But Warmists are always telling us that warming would cause drought. Which is it?
Tony Heller has a cutting comment: "Carl Sagan said nuclear winter would kill more than half of the world's population, which is what climate alarmists say they want - so it isn't clear to me what they are complaining about".
When we talk about what causes climate change, we usually talk about oil and gas, coal and cars, and—just generally—energy policy. There’s a good reason for this. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which enters the atmosphere, warms the climate, and … you know the drill. The more fossil fuels you burn, the worse climate change gets. That’s why, a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time covering the Trump administration’s attempt to weaken the country’s fuel-economy standards. It was an awful policy, one that would have led to more oil consumption for decades to come. If pressed, I would have said that it had a single-digit-percentage chance of creating an uninhabitable climate system.
But energy is not the only domain that has a direct bearing on whether we have a livable climate or not. So does foreign policy—specifically, nuclear war.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine two weeks ago, that threat has become a lot more real: Many Americans, including artists, climate-concerned progressives, and even a few lawmakers, have come out in support of a “no-fly zone.” But despite its euphemistic name, a no-fly zone means that NATO and the United States issue a credible threat that they will shoot down any enemy plane in Ukrainian territory. This would require U.S. bombing runs into Russian territory to eliminate air defenses, bringing the U.S. and Russia into open war, and it would have a reasonable chance of prompting a nuclear exchange. And it would be worse for the climate than any energy policy that Donald Trump ever proposed.
I mean this quite literally. If you are worried about rapid, catastrophic changes to the planet’s climate, then you must be worried about nuclear war. That is because, on top of killing tens of millions of people, even a relatively “minor” exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.
Consider a one-megaton nuke, reportedly the size of a warhead on a modern Russian intercontinental ballistic missile. (Warheads on U.S. ICBMs can be even larger.) A detonation of a bomb that size would, within about a four-mile radius, produce winds equal to those in a Category 5 hurricane, immediately flattening buildings, knocking down power lines, and triggering gas leaks. Anyone within seven miles of the detonation would suffer third-degree burns, the kind that sear and blister flesh. These conditions—and note that I have left out the organ-destroying effects of radiation—would rapidly turn an eight-mile blast radius into a zone of total human misery. But only at this moment of the war do the climate consequences truly begin.
The hot, dry, hurricane-force winds would act like a supercharged version of California’s Santa Ana winds, which have triggered some of the state’s worst wildfires. Even in a small war, that would happen at dozens of places around the planet, igniting urban and wildland forest fires as large as small states. A 2007 study estimated that if 100 small nuclear weapons were detonated, a number equal to only 0.03 percent of the planet’s total arsenal, the number of “direct fatalities due to fire and smoke would be comparable to those worldwide in World War II.” Towering clouds would carry more than five megatons of soot and ash from these fires high into the atmosphere.
All this carbon would transform the climate, shielding it from the sun’s heat. Within months, the planet’s average temperature would fall by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit; some amount of this cooling would persist for more than a decade. But far from reversing climate change, this cooling would be destabilizing. It would reduce global precipitation by about 10 percent, inducing global drought conditions. In parts of North America and Europe, the growing season would shorten by 10 to 20 days.
This would prompt a global food crisis the world hasn’t seen in modern times. Corn, wheat, and soybean yields would all decline by more than 11 percent over five years. In a slightly larger conflict—involving, say, 250 of the world’s 13,080 nuclear weapons—the oceans would become less bountiful; the photosynthesizing plankton that form the basis of the marine food chain would become 5 to 15 percent less productive. In the case of a U.S.-Russia war, fishers worldwide would see their catches decline by nearly 30 percent.
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And even though the world would get cooler, the nuclear winter resulting from a full-blown global conflict (or even “nuclear fall,” as some researchers prefer) would not reverse the effect of what we might morbidly call “traditional” human-caused climate change. In the short term, the effects of ocean acidification would get worse, not better. The layer of smoke in the atmosphere would destroy as much as 75 percent of the ozone layer. That means that more UV radiation would slip through the planet’s atmosphere, causing a pandemic of skin cancer and other medical issues. It would affect not just humans, either—even on the remotest islands, the higher UV rates would imperil plants and animals otherwise untouched by the global carnage.
Nowadays, we don’t tend to think of nuclear war as a climate problem, but concerns over these kinds of dangers were part of how modern climate change achieved political prominence in the first place. During the 1980s, a set of scientists raised the alarm about the effects of a nuclear winter and of the growing “hole in the ozone layer.” As the Stanford professor Paul N. Edwards writes in A Vast Machine, his magisterial history of climate modeling, these environmental issues taught the world that the planet’s entire atmosphere could come under threat at once, priming the public to understand the risks of global warming.
And even before that, climate science and nuclear-weapons engineering were twin disciplines of a sort. John von Neumann, a Princeton physicist and member of the Manhattan Project, took interest in the first programmable computer in 1945 because he hoped that it could solve two problems: the mechanics of a hydrogen-bomb explosion and the mathematical modeling of Earth’s climate. At the time, military interest in meteorology was high. Not only had a good weather forecast helped secure Allied victory on D-Day, but officials feared that weather manipulation would become a weapon in the unfolding Cold War.
The worst fears of that era, thankfully, never came to pass. Or at least, they haven’t happened yet. It is up to us to make sure that they don’t.
Outside of the direct effects of the bombs themselves, the full effect of a nuclear exchange could be even worse. If several years of gasoline- and diesel-fueled conventional military operations followed the global destruction, then the permanent consequences for the climate system would be even worse. That would also be true if society tried to rebuild by undertaking a fossil-powered reconstruction—and that would very likely be the case. The ruins of our postwar society would be poorer, and fossil reserves are the easiest energy sources to locate. Renewables, wind turbines, and other decarbonization technology, meanwhile, require secure factories, highly educated engineers, and complicated global networks of trade and exchange. They depend, in other words, on everything that peace provides. Solving climate change is a luxury of a planet at peace with itself.
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France Cares About Green Causes, but Not Its Green Party
Yannick Jadot, the candidate for the French Green Party in April’s presidential elections, walked through a small cheering crowd to a podium topped with banners featuring his face, as speakers blasted a version of “What a Wonderful World” by the punk rock singer Joey Ramone. The candidate bobbed his head to the rhythm.
The event on a recent afternoon in the sun-soaked central square of Montpellier, a large city on France’s Mediterranean coast, had all of the trappings of a dynamic and enthusiastic campaign. “Environmentalism is all about fun!” said a speaker introducing Mr. Jadot.
But with less than 30 days to go before the first round of the French presidential elections, the Green Party’s campaign has so far failed to generate much excitement among the public. For weeks, Mr. Jadot has been stuck around 5 percent in the polls, about a third of the share of the top three right-wing contenders and one-sixth of the support for President Emmanuel Macron.
The Greens’ disarray comes despite the increasing prominence of environmental concerns in France in recent years, marked by a series of climate marches and lawsuits, as well as by sweeping climate change legislation and a wave of environmental protests that have engulfed universities and cafe terraces.
Mr. Jadot said in an interview that “the French are not yet invested in the election campaign,” as other more dramatic issues like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are consuming much of their attention. He added that he remained “confident” that voters would soon focus on environmental issues.
But so far, the run-up to the election has been dominated by issues like security, immigration and national identity, reflecting France’s recent shift to the right. By comparison, climate issues have largely been ignored, accounting for 2.5 percent of media coverage of the election in the past four weeks, according to a study released by several environmental groups.
The problem, analysts say, is that the French Greens have failed to bring in new ideas and create a clear, coherent platform that goes beyond their core issues. They also point to the party’s struggle to be seen as a credible governmental force, capable of dealing with issues like diplomacy and defense, as is the case in Germany, where the Greens are now part of a three-party government coalition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/europe/france-elections-greens-environment.html
******************************************************The Green Immoralists
Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine.
In response, the Biden Administration’s climate-change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet-owning John Kerry, laments that Russian President Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.
“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact.”
“Impact”?
Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children?
Are Russian soldiers losing their green “focus”? When Putin threatens nuclear war is he merely “diverted”? Would letting off a few nukes be “damaging” to the human environment?
Climate-change moralists love humanity so much in the abstract that they must shut down its life-giving gas, coal, and oil in the concrete. And they value humans so little that they don’t worry in the here and now that ensuing fuel shortages and exorbitant costs cause wars, spike inflation, and threaten people’s ability to travel or keep warm.
The Biden Administration stopped all gas and oil production in the ANWR region of Alaska. It ended all new federal leases for drilling. It is canceling major new pipelines. It is leveraging lending agencies not to finance oil and gas drilling.
It helped force the cancellation of the EastMed pipeline that would have brought much-needed natural gas to southern Europe. And it has in just a year managed to turn the greatest oil and gas producer in the history of the world into a pathetic global fossil-fuel beggar.
Now gas is heading to well over $5 a gallon. In over-regulated blue states, it will likely hit $7.
The result is left-wing terror that the voters in the coming midterm election might rightly blame Democrats for hamstringing the American ability to travel, keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and buy affordable food.
But how will the Biden Administration square the circle of its own ideological war against oil and natural gas versus handing the advantage to our oil- and gas-producing enemies, as Russia invades Ukraine?
Or put another way, when selfish theory hits deadly reality, who loses? Answer: the American people.
President Joe Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to provide green Germany with loathsome, but life-saving, natural gas.
But first Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. He has no problem with pipelines per se, just American ones.
While Biden doesn’t like the idea of Germany burning carbon fuel, or Putin reaping enormous profits from Berlin’s self-created dependency, or Germans importing liquified natural gas from America, Biden also does not like the idea of forcing German families to turn off their thermostats in mid-winter when there is Russian-fed war not far from Germany’s borders.
Here at home, Biden gets even crazier. As our enemies around the world reap huge profits from record high oil and gas prices, did Biden ask Alaska, North Dakota, or Texas to ramp up production?
In other words, did he ask Americans to save fellow cash-strapped Americans from a self-created energy crisis, in the way he assured the Germans that during war reality trumps theory?
Not at all.
Instead, Biden came up with the most lunatic idea in recent diplomatic history of begging autocratic and hostile regimes the world over to pump more oil to lower America’s gas prices.
For years, America has sanctioned the oil-rich Venezuelan dictatorship, a narco-terrorist state that wars on its own people and its neighbors. Now Biden is begging strongman Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to pump the supposedly dirty fuels America has in even greater abundance but finds it too icky to produce.
Biden also has beseeched the once sanctioned, terrorist Iranian government. He wants Tehran to help us out by upping the very oil and gas production that America has tried to curtail for years. In return, Iran is demanding a new “Iran Deal” that will soon ensure the now petro-rich theocracy the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
On the eve of the Russian invasion, Biden begged Putin to pump even more oil to supplement its current Russian imports to the United States.
Did Putin see that surreal request as yet another sign of American appeasement that might greenlight his upcoming planned invasion? In Russian eyes, was it more proof of American weakness and craziness after the humiliating flight from Afghanistan?
Biden has blasted the human rights record of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Now he is begging the monarchy to pump more of its despised carbon-spewing oil to make up for what his administration shut down at home. Is that why the Saudi royals refused to take his call?
The moral of Biden’s oil madness?
Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/86813-the-green-immoralists-2022-03-10
********************************************Australia: World’s best weather equipment couldn’t predict deadly Qld floods
But they can predict the global temperature in 50 years' time!
Forecasts issued by the Bureau of Meteorology during last month’s floods failed to predict how long a deadly supercell would remain over southeast Queensland despite Australia having the world’s best equipment, experts say.
Analysis of the deadly southeast Queensland flood event indicates the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and authorities were shocked by the slow-moving nature of the cell, which lingered above the region to dump one metre of rain over four days.
Questions have been raised about the accuracy of forecasts, which led to delays in warnings for people in low-lying areas.
During the height of the floods Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who staunchly defended authorities’ response, declared the amount of rain and flood levels were “not foreseeable”.
Experts say the severity of the rain event, which would become the south east’s wettest three days since records began, was “very difficult” to predict.
Queensland University of Technology Adjunct Professor Mark Gibbs, a specialist in weather research, said the BOM forecasts were made using the world’s best equipment.
He said the bureau accurately predicted the region and severity of the supercell system, but declared it tough to forecast which towns and suburbs would be hardest hit.
“It was more than a typical summer storm and they are very, very difficult to predict,” he said.
“The thing is very sensitive and there’s a tipping point – a little bit less rain it would have been fine but it hung around for that little bit longer and the flood compartments in the dam filled up.
“People want everything perfect these days … we want to know when it’s going to rain, where and how much – the science is very very good but it’s not at that stage.”
Prof Gibbs said the BOM issued “carefully worded and thought-out forecasts”, which he said people often misread or expected to be certain.
“Economic forecasts are mostly wrong yet we seem to accept that – whereas with the weather forecasts people expect them to be 100 per cent right all the time,” he said.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Friday, March 11, 2022
Why you can’t bank on synthetic fuels to save the internal combustion engine
Very costly
Those decrying the decline of fossil-fuelled cars are holding onto a glimmer of hope that synthetic fuels could be the saviour of the internal combustion engines.
Synthetic fuels (sometimes called eFuel or synfuel) are touted as the next steppingstone with regards to a sustainable transport future, due to their environmental benefits and the fact that current petrol-engined cars can use the fuel without modification.
This business-as-usual solution to the climate crisis is an attractive opposition to wider electric vehicle (EV) adoption, which requires vast investment in charging infrastructure and annoyingly long charging times.
Production of the alternative fuel is ramping up, while more manufacturers are getting on board to investigate the technology for their existing fleets of combustion-engined cars.
But while electric vehicles have the ability to be totally carbon-neutral, eFuels can’t quite match that claim just yet. Estimates suggest that synthetic fuels could reduce carbon emissions by up to 85 per cent according to Porsche vice president Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser. Obviously that’s not zero, but it represents a vast improvement on the current status quo.
Does all this mean it’s likely that you won’t have to give up your petrol-powered car in years to come?
I don’t see it happening.
First of all, synthetic fuels describe liquid fuels that basically have the same properties as fossil fuels, but are produced artificially in an environmentally friendly way. Both consist of chains of different hydrocarbon molecules, the universal brick needed to build any type of hydrocarbon fuel such as petrol or avgas. The difference lies in how they’re made.
Fossil fuels are created by the pressurisation of organic matter over the course of millions of years, whereas synthetic fuels are made by imitating these processes using renewable resources.
Although burning synthetic fuels will produce carbon emissions, these should be cancelled out by harvesting that carbon to produce more synthetic fuel.
What is critically important is the fact that these processes use up vast amounts of electricity, and to ensure it’s done in a carbon-neutral (or near carbon-neutral) way. Getting that amount of energy proves difficult.
But more on that later.
Synthetic fuels can be made using a variety of methods, but in most cases they’re produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis. This hydrogen is then processed with carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere to make a methanol, which can then be turned into a synthetic raw petrol.
This raw petrol can then be turned into a standards-compliant petrol, which can be used in all petrol-powered combustion engines without making costly modifications.
All petrol-powered combustion engines include anything from planes and ships to truck engines. Synthetic fuels are also beneficial in terms of fuel delivery – fuel stations wouldn’t need a significant overhaul to accommodate the new fuel the way they might for hydrogen fuelling or EV charging.
A good practical example of this process being used is through Porsche and Siemens Energy, which have just invested vast amounts into a new synthetic fuels factory based in the Magallanes Province in southern Chile. The factory is based in the region because of its windy conditions; a resource the factory utilises to wind-power its fuel factory.
Porsche sees the technology as an important hand-in-hand partner alongside its burgeoning brace of electric vehicles, and expects to be able to use it in applications ranging as far as its fleet of classic vehicles to powering its freight vehicles.
The German manufacturer currently uses the eFuel to power its Porsche Supercup motorsport category in Europe, but has just demonstrated the technology works in a production-ready 2022 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS.
Manufacturers such as Mazda are also involved in partnerships investigating the viability of synthetic fuels, and Mazda sees it as one way of powering its enthusiast vehicles such as the MX-5 sports car.
It all adds up to a convenient and promising prospect, though it seems too good to be true.
The reasons why are many, but chief among all is the question mark over production and how supply is meant to meet demand. Using Porsche’s Haru Oni facility as an example, the factory is on track to produce 130,000 litres of eFuel for 2022, which Porsche will use in its entirety. It will then ramp up to 55 million litres by 2024, then over half a billion litres by 2026.
That latter figure sounds like a lot, but when you consider the United States alone used 467 billion litres of finished fossil fuel in 2020, Porsche’s numbers pale in comparison. This is not the only eFuel factory out there producing synthetic fuel, but while the technology is in its infancy, the applications are limited.
Additionally, the cost of producing synthetic fuels is prohibitively high – at least initially. Porsche estimates the eFuel it’s developing costs US$10 a litre (AUD$13.75). That would mean a 50-litre tank would cost nearly $700 to refuel.
Experts suggest the per-litre cost to be somewhere between $4.50–$7.50, and while costs will come down with production scalability, it will continue to be priced at a premium to other types of energy.
By the time synthetic fuels could feasibly compete on price parity with fossil fuels, it’ll be too late for the world to hit its net zero targets.
Further exacerbating the problem is the necessity for synthetic fuels to compete not only with fossil fuels, but to compete with electric vehicles. The electricity powering EVs is comparable in price (and often cheaper) than petrol, and can even be free if solar power is used.
I will say that we are at the beginning here. Even though synthetic fuels have been around for countless decades, the technology is only ramping up now as an alternative – or partner – fuel.
Future advancements in synthetic fuels could see the above problems addressed, and that would be wholly welcome. But at the moment, it’s hard to see it being offered at your local petrol station and will exist only in niche applications.
Meanwhile, electric vehicles exist now and are capable of being powered using renewable energy. Though they require the purchase of an – often more expensive – all-new car, electric vehicles are still the only way forward en masse.
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German operators prepare to fire up decommissioned coal plants
German coal power plant operators are making provisions for a runtime extension of decommissioned stations in preparation for possible energy supply disruptions as a result of the war in Ukraine, business daily Handelsblatt reports.
“We’re inspecting our facilities to remain ready if the government deems such measures necessary,” a spokesperson for energy provider RWE told the newspaper. Besides RWE, operators Vattenfall, EnBW and Steag also confirmed they are reviewing their decommissioning plans.
About 26 gigawatts (GW) of coal power capacity are currently operational in Germany and this could increase to 34 GW next winter by re-starting plants that have already been taken offline or are being held in reserve, in order to partly replace Russian gas imports.
“In light of the attack on Ukraine, calls are growing to revisit the country’s coal phase-out schedule,” the article says, referring to plans by the new government to bring the exit forward from 2038 to 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement. Plans currently include the decommissioning of about 5 GW capacity by 2024.
The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Ottmar Edenhofer, told the newspaper that “we will need to use coal plants, also in the power sector, especially if we are to reduce hard coal imports from Russia.” He argued that the country faces “an emergency situation that requires well-coordinated action.” Germany currently sources almost half its hard coal imports from Russia, but import companies say these supplies could still be substituted in the short-term. Plants in the country’s capacity reserve mainly run on domestically sourced lignite.
Germany’s economy and climate minister Robert Habeck from the Green party earlier this month said that ensuring energy supply security could take priority over climate action, adding that “this should not obscure the fact that, fundamentally, independence and sovereignty in energy policy and climate-neutral energy production are the same thing.” He said his ministry will assess whether to let coal and nuclear plants scheduled for closure stay open to ensure a secure power supply.
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Dreamy Green policies have fatally enfeebled the West
At the Cop 26 climate conference held in Glasgow last November, almost 200 countries ‘committed’ to the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, especially coal. Conspicuously, two major powers did not.
While China was circumspect, Russia was unambiguous. Moscow said it had no plans to rein in its fossil fuel production in the coming decades. As the world’s second biggest natural gas producer and the third largest oil producer, accounting for about 10 per cent of global supply, the Kremlin understands its comparative advantage.
Meanwhile, Beijing forges ahead with 43 new coal-fired power stations and 18 blast furnaces, promising the Green faithful, as it boosts annual coal production from its Inner Mongolian mines by almost 100 million tonnes, that it will be CO2 neutral by 2060. Although hardly reported in the West, China’s emissions are growing by 15 per cent a year and comfortably exceed the developed world’s total output.
Last month, Moscow and Beijing agreed to partner on energy. Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed a deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping, to supply 10 billion cubic metres of gas per year to China via a new pipeline. This helps secure China’s energy supply and makes Europe less important to Moscow.
Their approach is in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s Pollyanna view of the world. To appease green activists, he renounced energy independence by halting oil and gas drilling on public land and by revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit which was to carry crude oil from Canada to the United States.
The Green Left has also succeeded in capturing Europe’s policymakers. They continue to phase out coal and nuclear energy and have now identified biomass, which accounts for nearly 60 per cent of EU renewables, as climate unfriendly. These policies leave Brussels increasingly dependent on Moscow. Over the last five years alone, imports of Russian natural gas which account for 41 per cent of Europe’s total supply, have increased by 40 per cent.
Yet, for 30 years Russia’s relations with the West have festered over Moscow’s contention that Nato’s expansion breached a 1990 agreement. Tensions boiled over in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia. Six years later, as Nato watched on, President Putin illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea. Not even when Nato began equipping and training the Ukrainian armed forces prior to membership, did Brussels seek to lessen dependence on Russian gas. It’s not as though Europe was unaware of Moscow’s hostile response which made a full scale invasion of Ukraine highly likely.
Four years ago, President Trump called out Europe’s complacency. To universal condemnation, he said Nato members were spending too little on their own defence. But Trump was right. Even now, only one-third of Nato members spend the agreed two per cent of their GDP on defence.
Trump was also right when he claimed ‘Germany is a captive of Russia’. Chancellor Angela Merkel, countered she was ‘in a better position to judge her country’s dependence than the current US president’. Yet so dependent is Berlin on Moscow, it initially baulked at sanctions to suspend the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and, the proposal to exclude a number of Russian banks from the Swift payment system.
Eating his former chancellor’s words, German finance minister, Christian Lindner cautioned, if the EU took such a step, ‘there is a high risk that Germany will no longer be supplied with gas or raw materials’.
Now Germany is saying it will bring defence spending above two per cent of GDP and will create a strategic gas reserve. Do we hear stable doors closing?
Russia’s extraordinary power belies the reality that its economy is only slightly bigger than Australia’s. However, its military budget as a percentage of GDP is twice as big. Of course, it possesses nuclear weapons. But, it is no Soviet Union. Its relative power comes not from the size of its economy, its military hardware or troops on the ground. It comes from intent and the incompetence and naivety of its adversaries. Time will tell how effective the latest sanctions are and how Moscow retaliates.
That EU policymakers consciously opt for climate change over national security raises legitimate questions about their rationality. It’s as though Europe’s ‘Green Deal’, which aims to reduce inequality by changing the economics of energy, construction, agriculture and taxes to incentivise ‘decarbonisation’, was framed by the Russians and Chinese. Either that, or it was devised by modern Walter Mitty types.
But then EU policymakers appear to inhabit the same delusional world as US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. Despite Moscow’s unashamed declaration that it has no intention of reining in production of fossil fuels, Mr Kerry told the BBC he hopes when Russia’s invasion is complete, ‘President Putin will help us stay on track with respect with what we need to do for the climate’. No doubt Ukrainians will be cheered by that.
One thing is certain. Presidents Putin and Xi are not taking orders from Greta Thunberg. Rather they have been emboldened by their adversaries’ weak defence and reluctance to put troops on the ground. They are realists and not governed by hope. Of course they are also dangerously hierarchical and prone to over-reach. But they are deliberate.
By contrast, rather than action, the West resorts to symbolism, like US members of Congress sporting Ukrainian colours. It smacks of impotence; like chanting ‘Je suis Charlie’ after the Paris Charlie Hebdo slayings. Certainly, it is unlikely to deter China from its Taiwan ambitions. Beijing boasts the world’s second largest economy and wields the largest military. It dominates the United Nations and is intent on global hegemony. Biden’s record of incompetence and the West’s lack of intent only offer encouragement.
For too long the West has banked on hope. It’s where the deluded, the naive and the complacent take refuge from reality. But it is a dangerous asylum in which its leaders are unaccountable and its believers unprepared. Inevitably, reality will prevail. But can a rational mindset?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-price-of-delusion/
***************************************************Deception from Australian meteorologists
The recent torrential rains in South East Queensland are not unprecedented. The Australian 24-hour rainfall record of 907mm is still Crohamhurst in the Brisbane catchment recorded on 3 February, 1893. We don’t know how much rain fell at Crohamhurst in February 2022 because that weather station (#040062) was closed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in March 2003.
The Bureau has a habit of closing inconvenient stations. It closed the Charlotte Pass weather station which holds the record of −23.0 °C for the lowest daily minimum temperature in Australia, set on 29 June 1994. That weather station was closed in March 2015. Meanwhile, in June 2017, the Bureau opened several new stations in very hot western New South Wales. One of these stations, Borrona Downs, had a hardware fault and in August 2017 was spuriously recording temperatures as low as –62.5 °C. At the same time, in the cold Australian alps a limit of –10.4 °C had been set on how cold temperatures could be recorded.
The idea of such a limit on cold days does sound conspiratorial and it was reluctantly acknowledged in an official report from the Bureau – but only after I alerted Josh Frydenberg, then the minister responsible for the Bureau, to the problem at the Thredbo and Goulburn stations in July 2017. I could go on. The Bureau deleted what was long regarded as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia – Bourke’s 51.7°C on the 3 January, 1909 recorded at an official recording station in a near-new Stevenson screen with a mercury thermometer. It was scratched from the record in 1997 and replaced with the lower 50.7 °C recorded at Oodnadatta, South Australia, on 2 January, 1960.
These stunning examples of unacceptable behaviour pale into insignificance when compared with the industrial-scale remodelling of the historical record over the last 20 years that has stripped away the natural climate cycles, so even cool years now add warming to the official trend. In denying the very nature of Australia’s climate, which is dominated by wet and dry cycles, the experts are now unable to anticipate extremely wet weather because they have lost all sense of history. February 2022 was extremely wet in South East Queensland. The city of Brisbane flooded again. There were tens of thousands of homes inundated. It is a tragedy. This is the second time in eleven years.
The flooding in 2011 was caused by the emergency release of water from Wivenhoe Dam, a dam built for flood mitigation following devastating flooding in 1974. The 2011 flooding was the subject of a class action with the Queensland government, SunWater and SEQ Water (the dam operators) recently found negligent.
During the worst of the flooding this year the dam operator again kept releasing water as the city flooded. Though the torrential rains had stopped, water kept being released because the Bureau forecast that more – even worse – rain was imminent. Rain that never eventuated. As usual, the Bureau’s skill at forecasting proved dismal with devastating consequences. I benchmarked the skill of the Bureau’s simulation modelling for seasonal rainfall forecasting in a series of papers with John Abbot published in international peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and book chapters from 2012 to 2017. Our conclusion was that the Bureau’s simulation model POAMA, developed over a period of twenty years in collaboration with other IPCC-aligned scientists, had very limited skill at rainfall forecasting despite being run on an expensive supercomputer.
Back in late 2010, it was evident from the very high Southern Oscillation Index that we were likely to experience a very wet summer. But there was no preparation – Wivenhoe Dam was kept full of water until it was too late. This last summer it was not as obvious that we were going to experience torrential flooding rains. It could be that the relatively mild La Nina conditions this year across the South Pacific were made worse by an atmosphere exceptionally high in volcanic aerosols from the explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai a month earlier.
Very high rainfall totals in Hong Kong in 1982 correlate with the arrival of stratospheric aerosol plumes from the eruption of El Chichon, which spewed 20 million tonnes of aerosol.
Atmospheres high in aerosols can contribute to exceptionally high rainfall, but this is ignored by mainstream climate scientists who continue to run simulation models mistakenly emphasising the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.
The most accurate seasonal weather prediction systems rely on statistical models using artificial intelligence software to elucidate patterns in historical data. So, the integrity of Australia’s temperature and rainfall record is paramount. Yet both temperature and rainfall records are being constantly eroded by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Important weather stations are being closed and the available temperature data remodelled, stripping away evidence of past cycles of warming and cooling that correspond with periods of drought and floods.
Back in 2014 an investigation of these issues was proposed by then prime minister Tony Abbot but prevented because of intervention by his environment minister Greg Hunt. He argued in Cabinet that the credibility of the Bureau was paramount so the public would heed weather warnings. No consideration was given to the accuracy, or otherwise, of these warnings.
I was in Brisbane just after the recent flooding (3 March) helping with the clean-up. Tools were downed at 2pm because of the Bureau’s weather warning that described our situation as ‘dangerous’ and ‘potentially life threatening’. All the while the sun kept shining. Not a drop of rain fell from the sky. As I drove out of Brisbane that evening, on my way home, the flash flooding forecast for that same afternoon was cancelled by the Bureau. Next, on the radio there was discussion about the ‘Rain Bombs’ of five days earlier. How they had been ‘unprecedented’. More than one metre of rain had fallen at some locations in just a few days. There was no mention of the more than two metres of rain that fell at Crohamhurst in early February 1893 or the 24-hour record of 907mm that still stands as the highest 24-hour total for anywhere in Australia.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/rain-bom
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Thursday, March 10, 2022
Net Zero Watch has welcomed Boris Johnson's last minute decision to overrule the energy regulator, preventing Britain's shale gas wells being cemented over for good
According to press reports, the Prime Minister has opened the door to the revival of the UK’s shale gas industry in the aftermath of the Government’s ban on imports of Russian oil.
According to the Daily Telegraph "the Prime Minister wants his ministers to look again at whether fracking, which has been under a moratorium for more than two years, can help diversify the country’s energy supply."
Officials are said to be working on an “energy supply strategy”.
Meanwhile, the US administration is ratcheting up pressure on shale gas producers, telling them they should be doing “whatever it takes” to increase shale supplies and tame energy prices that have soared following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Even the EU's newly released energy plan makes absolutely clear that the first and overriding priority is to obtain non-Russian natural gas to shore up security of supply.
Net Zero Watch director Benny Peiser said:
"The Prime Minister needs to heed the desperate calls by US and EU officials for new, non-Russian gas supplies. It is vital that he overrules the obstructive anti-shale gas activism of Kwasi Kwarteng and the Department of Business and Energy."
"BEIS, DEFRA, the Climate Change Committee, and even Ofgem are responsible for the current energy emergency and cannot be trusted with its resolution."
"The lack of realism and the ideological dogmatism in BEIS underlines the need for the PM to take personal control of energy security. We think he should create a new Cabinet committee for 'National Energy Security', based in Number 10.”
e: benny.peiser@netzerowatch.com
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Coal’s comeback
Even before the war began, coal was enjoying a comeback as the surging post-pandemic economic recovery led to high demand for power.
That was the case even in countries with lofty environmental goals. In the US, coal-fired power generation was higher in 2021, under President Joe Biden, than it was in 2019 under then president Donald Trump, who positioned himself as the would-be saviour of America’s coal industry. In Europe, coal power rose 18 per cent in 2021, its first increase in almost a decade.
The global surge in demand has delivered windfall profits for companies such as Glencore, Whitehaven Coal and Peabody Energy, the once bankrupt Wyoming group now planning to expand production after its most profitable quarter ever.
Peabody chief executive Jim Grech expects this year to bring “a period of elevated demand” for coal, and continued high prices.
The war in Ukraine could boost coal demand even further, at least in the short term. That point was acknowledged last week by Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck, of the country’s Green party, who said Europe may be forced to burn more coal in the face of Russian aggression and spiralling gas prices.
Gas prices hit a record above €335 per megawatt hours this week, and at that level it is cheaper for some power stations to burn coal rather than gas even when the cost of carbon permits is taken into consideration.
Energy security concerns are also contributing, with some countries including Italy saying they may need to burn more coal, in order to burn less Russian gas.
The IEA recently acknowledged this trade-off. “The faster EU policymakers seek to move away from Russian gas supplies, the greater the potential implication, in terms of economic costs and near-term emissions,” the IEA said, in a report last week.
The conflict in Ukraine is having an impact on the global coal market in other ways, as Russian coal exports are called into question. As banks, insurers and shipping companies shun Russia, coal consumers in Europe and Asia are now scouring the market for alternative sources of supply and pushing up prices, which last week hit more than $400 a tonne, from $82 a year ago.
At those prices, 2022 promises to be another year of bumper profits for the industry. Russia accounts for about 30 per cent of Europe’s imports of thermal coal, which is burnt in power stations to generate electricity.
Coal is still dominant in Asia too, especially in China, the world’s largest emitter. The country is still constructing new coal plants, and emissions there rose 4 per cent last year, accounting for a quarter of the total global increase in emissions. (The US was not far behind, accounting for about 22 per cent of the global increase in emissions last year.)
The increase in Chinese power demand in 2021, compared with 2019, was the equivalent of the entire power output of Germany and France combined. This year, Beijing is targeting 5.5 per cent gross domestic product growth, which implies a further increase in energy demand.
Even though China gets only 5 per cent of its gas supply from Russia and 10 per cent of its oil supply, according to data from IHS Markit, it is not insulated from the global energy shock.
“If there’s any natural gas shortage, China may have to again resort to increasing domestic coal production — often cited as the last defence for energy security by officials,” says Xizhou Zhou, vice-president of power and renewables at IHS Markit.
Beijing has pledged to cap its coal consumption during this decade, which means that its coal consumption, and emissions, are likely to keep growing for several more years.
https://www.ft.com/content/93eb06ec-ba6c-4ad2-8fae-5b66235632b2?mc_cid=60df0abe34&mc_eid=cc88839e92
***************************************************70% of Americans Favor Increased U.S. Oil and Gas Production
With gas prices soaring, energy policy is likely to be a major issue in the midterm election campaign, and voters strongly favor a policy of promoting domestic petroleum production.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 70% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the U.S. government should encourage increased oil and gas production to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of oil and gas. Only 18% oppose a policy of encouraging U.S. energy independence, while 12% are not sure.
The survey of 1,000 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on March 3 and 6, 2022 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
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Abandoning ‘net zero’ could be the highroad to electoral victory for Australian conservatives
The path to electoral victory is crystal clear. Scott Morrison must abandon net zero to win the next election.
Much has changed since those halcyon Glasgow days back in October, when reaching net zero carbon emissions was all the rage. This week, the great climate warrior himself, Boris Johnson, recognised the inevitable and declared Britain and the rest of the West must ‘give a climate pass’ to natural gas and ramp up gas production. Net zero in the UK, following a Tory backbench revolt, a freezing winter of power cuts, spiralling energy costs and now the Ukrainian war, is almost certainly dead. Leaders in the capitals of the West, faced with Russian military aggression driven by and financed by Europe’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels, are rapidly waking up to the fact that, to put it in a simplistic but irrefutable equation: fossil fuels equal peace, ‘net zero’ equals war.
That this grim equation has for many years been both predicted and feared by many conservative-leaning thinkers, from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to, of course, Donald Trump, comes as no solace.
Unfortunately for the likes of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, even the most fanciful extremist climate change ‘rising sea levels’ and ‘Biblical floods’ doomsday scenarios pale into insignificance compared to the very real ‘Armageddon for mankind’ that nuclear conflict would deliver.
As has long been recognised by conservatives, peace lies in the preparation for war. Credible military deterrence is the ultimate guarantor of freedom. Since the end of the second world war, the West has kept the rapacious communists at bay through superior military weaponry and leaders who proclaimed they were prepared to use them. Up until the hapless Joe Biden stumbled into the White House, the events unravelling in Ukraine were unimaginable.
But the last decade has seen a headlong rush by a plethora of weak Western leaders and institutions to focus primarily on juvenile, trite and idiotic concepts such as ‘diversity and inclusion’, ‘gender fluidity’, critical race theory and climate change and in doing so advertise our impotence.
Perhaps our church-going Prime Minister might like to recall the lines from Corinthians 13.11: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ Climate change is a child’s obsession – both metaphorically and literally – but in an age of potential nuclear war and totalitarian ambitions we need adult, indeed manly, leadership.
Scott Morrison has talked tough on both Russia and China. So he should. And as he and his focus group handlers –sorry, typo, his political advisers – are obviously aware, the way to beat Labor at the forthcoming election is to play the national security card for all it’s worth. In times of strife, the average Aussie family man and woman will always feel more comfortable with a right-leaning politician running the show than a starry-eyed eco-luvvy or some class-obsessed union hack. Again, so they should.
The Prime Minister points out that Labor can never be trusted to protect our borders and to guarantee our national security. And he is right. But unless he backs up his own tough talk with genuine action, the sad truth is that neither can he be trusted. You cannot protect a nation while agreeing to ‘de-growth’ and ‘net zero emissions’. And you cannot protect Australia if your future source of energy is a fantasy like Twiggy’s green hydrogen.
It’s time to grow up, abandon net zero, and deliver a Coalition victory
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/abandon-net-zero-and-win
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Wednesday, March 09, 2022
UK: Green power or confusing failure?
Robert Ellis
I am at a loss to understand the ‘Green Movement’.
I fully understand their concern about the use of fossil fuels, which may be causing an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, although actual limits of acceptability and reasons for them have never been stated – or at least widely publicised.
I fully understand their concern about the destruction of wildlife and the natural environments in general, though the majority of ‘Green’ supporters seem to come from the most unnatural environments on earth – cities. I suspect that most ‘Greens’ would be lost if they had to live in a rural environment.
What I fail to understand is their proposals for alternatives that will not adversely affect our standards of living. I have never heard any coherent suggestions.
If coal-fired power stations are bad, then so are coal mines – at least for thermal coal. That I understand. But why is this the same for coal used in industrial processes?
And if coal power stations are bad, why are there so many objections from the Greens to building dams for hydroelectric power, securing water supplies, creating wind generators, and nuclear power – all of which will help replace coal-fired power stations?
Why has there been no push to build combined cycle gas power stations, which are much more thermally efficient than coal-fired power stations, even if they are not so economical? Maybe it is just because it is far easier to destroy than to build, to condemn rather than develop practical alternatives and be accountable.
And the ‘Green’ demographic also appears to be strange.
The majority are from wealthy and middle-class groups, including education, public service, and the media but their politics are far closer aligned with the older socialist movements.
Perhaps it is a class problem…
Labor used to represent blue-collar workers – poor people with no real voice. They were vocally socialist, wanting more of the wealth generated by work to flow to the workers. They still spruik that same type of story, but the Labor leaders are no longer representative of workers. Few have ever been in the workplace and most have moved from university into politics, sometimes through the legal profession. Workers have had their lot improved and the union movements, which were the backbone of the Labor party, have all but disintegrated (apart from those in the public services, who are perhaps the best treated of all working groups). So, the Greens are not Labor supporters, they are of a different ‘class’ and they have their separate socialist group which aligns itself with Labor.
Maybe it is just another problem associated with wealth in the developed world?
Most citizens of developed countries have never experienced poverty, or any kind of want. They have never experienced wars or real economic depressions. They have never had to fight for all the freedoms and benefits they now have. That was the work of generations passed, bequeathed to them.
Maybe they just assume that life will continue as it is despite the changes that they proclaim to want to introduce. It is easy to make political statements when you never have to accept responsibility for their implementation.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/green-power-or-confusing-failure/
***************************************************Green Energy Mogul Musk Says U.S. Must Increase Oil and Gas Production
In the wake of rising oil prices, last Friday evening Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted to Twitter that he thought the United States should increase oil and gas production. Musk is correct and his admission is significant, coming from the head of largest, most successful electric vehicle manufacturer in the world. Tesla is a company that stands to benefit from higher oil and gas prices. Musk’s tweet indicates he better understands America’s real energy needs and the damage high oil and gas prices impose on the economy, than either the corporate media or the Biden administration.
Musk, who is a vocal public investor in “green” energy technology, says despite lower gas prices having the ability to negatively impact Tesla, sustainable energy sources cannot quickly overcome America’s dependence on Russian oil and gas imports.
“Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures,” Musk said. “Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil and gas exports.”
Musk is entirely correct that, except to the extent government interferes with oil and gas production, delivery, and use, the oil and gas industry is able to quickly react to shortages in supply.
Even the International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested as much, releasing a 10-Point-Plan for the European Union to replace Russian oil and gas that emphasizes the need to quickly ramp up other sources of fossil fuels to replace the Russian gas. For the short-term, the study recommends restarting previously shuttered coal-fueled-power plants, and replacing Russian natural gas by converting gas-fired plants to burn oil.
Oil prices began climbing shortly after Biden became President, well before the Ukraine war began. This was due in part to post-pandemic demand recovery. However, as detailed in a recent report from The Heartland Institute, the most important factor driving higher oil and gas prices were a series of anti-fossil fuel policies implemented by the Biden administration. Heartland’s analysis found that the average American household spent $1,000 more on energy costs in 2021 than the year prior, largely due to Biden’s energy policies.
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Sorry, Mainstream Media, Wildfires Are Declining, Not Increasing, Amidst Modest Warming
A firestorm, pun fully intended, erupted as dozens of mainstream media outlets, large and small, touted a report this week from a team of researchers associated with the United Nations claiming wildfires are on the rise due to climate change. This is false. Data show conclusively wildfires have declined dramatically over the past century even as the earth has modestly warmed.
The BBC, PBS, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Health Day were among the dozens of media outlets uncritically parroting the claims made by a team of researchers that wildfire seasons are worsening due to climate change. The stories also all uniformly claim that unless something is done to lessen future climate change, wildfires will be more frequent and intense in the future.
The story from the St. Louis Post Dispatch by Health Day reporter, Robin Foster, titled, “Climate Change Bringing More Catastrophic Wildfires: UN Report,” was typical of the corporate media’s coverage of the report. Foster writes:
Devastating wildfires around the world will only grow in number in coming decades as climate change further fuels the chances of out-of-control blazes, a landmark report from the United Nations warns.
“The heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes,” said the report, which was published on Wednesday by the United Nations Environment Program.
The report was prompted by a string of deadly blazes around the globe in recent years, burning the American West, vast stretches of Australia and even the Arctic.
Had Foster bothered to exercise a modicum of curiosity, as might be expected of a good investigative journalist, she would have found wildfires in the United States and around the world have, in fact, declined in recent decades.
As presented in Climate at a Glance: Wildfires, data on wildfires from the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center from as far back as 1926 show current acres burned in the United States, are approximately 1/4th to 1/5th of the amount burned annually in the 1930s.
What is true of the United States is true for the world in general. For instance scientists reported in a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, analyzing global wildfires back to the year 1901, “a notable declining rate of burned area globally.” In addition, NASA satellites have documented a global long-term decline in wildfires. NASA reports satellites have measured a 25-percent decrease in global lands burned since 2003. That is an objective scientific fact.
To the extent wildfires in recent years have modestly increased from what they were in the 1990s, as explained in multiple Climate Realism stories, here, here, here, and here, for example, the reason is largely due to changed forest management policies and increased urban incursion into formerly wild forested areas historically prone to wildfires.
Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bows to the data. In its Sixth Climate Assessment Report, the IPCC reports no increase in wildfires globally and states it has only, “medium confidence [emphasis theirs] that weather conditions that promote wildfires (fire weather) have become more probable in Europe, Northern Eurasia, the U.S., and Australia over the past century.”
Although the IPCC says it has “high confidence that fire weather conditions will become more frequent at higher levels of global warming in some regions,” weather conditions are only one factor contributing to wildfires. Fuel load is the most important factor and, as the past century has shown, regardless of the weather fuel load can be managed to reduce wildfire incidences and severity.
When examining breaking new alarming climate research, which claims various extreme weather events, like wildfires, are worsening due to climate change, reporters should look upon the research with a jaundiced eye, and exercise a bit of skepticism before promoting such reports. Remember and repeat the mantra, “follow the data, follow the data, follow the data.” Data or peer reviewed research generally exists for most types of extreme weather, and when examined current weather events don’t seem so extreme or historically unusual.
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Court Blocks Biden Administration Changes to Trump-era Social Cost of Carbon Rules
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Biden administration’s implementation of a “social cost of carbon” metric to be used for federal actions and regulations.
The injunction was came in a lawsuit filed by Louisiana, on behalf it and Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming
Arbitrary Standard, Didn’t Follow Rules
The plaintiffs argued the SCC metric used by the Biden administration was arbitrarily set by the Interagency Working Group (IWG), without following the proper procedures.
The states also argued the SCC metric would unjustifiably increase the costs of energy production and other activities.
Judge James D. Cain Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, agreed, issuing an injunction barring the use of the interim SCC standard from being used to set regulations and in federal contracting, leasing, and permitting.
The injunction does not address the science underlying the standard, but rather blocked its implementation for running afoul of the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act because the SCC did not undergo the requisite notice-and-comment process.
Cain ruled the President lacks the authority to enforce the estimates as they are substantively unlawful under the APA and contravenes existing law. Cain also concluded the government acted beyond congressional authority by basing regulatory policy upon global considerations.
At the heart of the ruling is the court’s determination that the “major questions doctrine,” under which the bureaucracy cannot on its own authority impose new obligations of vast economic and political significance unless Congress speaks clearly on the issue, had been triggered by an executive order issued by Biden.
Louisiana AG Reacts
The multi-state lawsuit was spearheaded by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
This ruling is only a first step in a longer fight, said Landry in a press release following the ruling.
“Biden’s attempt to control the activities of the American people and the activities of every business from Main Street to Wall Street has been halted today,” said Landry. “Biden’s executive order was an attempt by the government to take over and tax the people based on winners and losers chosen by the government.
“Agriculture, energy, and virtually every other manufacturing industry is at stake; and today, a federal judge in Louisiana recognized that the federal government does not have this reach,” said Landry. “While our fight is far from over, I am pleased the Court granted preliminary relief against the President’s unacceptable and unauthorized executive overreach; and I remain committed to seeing this case through to the end – fighting every step of the way for the workers and job creators in Louisiana and throughout our Republic.”
Interim Versus Final Actions
Critics of the decision claimed Cain wrongly interpreted interim SCC values as final and binding values, but interim values have real policy impact, said Devin Watkins, an attorney Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), in a recent post.
“Non-final actions do not yet have legal effect, yet these “interim” IWG values are causing direct legal effect and as such are a final agency action,” wrote Watkins. “The final agency action doesn’t need to directly harm the plaintiffs by itself; it just needs to cause particularized harm that is imminent, and in this case, that harm is already occurring.
“These harms are ongoing harms against the states, and this injunction can prevent those harms from continuing to occur,” Watkins said. “As such, the states have standing.”
Dubious Models
The models used to calculate the SCC are highly subjective, not grounded in real world data but rather based on extreme scenarios generated by climate models, says Kevin Dayaratna, Ph.D., is the principal statistician and a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation.
“It’s disturbing and quite frankly dangerous to put these models in the hands of policymakers who can manipulate them to achieve any result that they want to rubber stamp their agenda,” said Dayaratna. “We applaud the judge’s decision to prohibit the social cost of carbon in rulemaking, and hope lawmakers also realize the flaws in these models.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, March 08, 2022
Amazon rainforest is reaching a 'tipping point' where huge swathes will begin to transform into SAVANNAH
Resilience? Measuring that would seem to require some sort of varied pressure leading to responses that steadily change in an orderly way. Examples of such repeated changes seem unavailable in Amazon climate data as far as I can see.
Their "Methods" section is steeped in technicalities that only the most dedicated specialist could understand so I was able to gain no idea about how they measured their core construct. But it seems unlikely that they actually had data which would enable the measurement of such a construct.
But however it is measured, attributing the changes observed to global warming seems more heroic rather than reasonable. How come: "Resilience actually increased from 1991 to around 2000, but the consistent decrease since then has taken resilience well below 1991 levels".
In other words, resiliience actually INCREASED for roughly half the study period. How does that correlate with the suposedly negative effect of global warming? It does not. Whatever resilience is, it would not seem to correlate with a temperature increase over the period concerned. Their conclusions seem to reflect their prejudices rather than their actual findings -- as with so much Leftist academic writing
The Amazon rainforest is reaching a 'tipping point' where over half of it could be transformed into savannah in a matter of decades, a new study has warned.
Three-quarters of the world's largest rainforest is showing dwindling resilience against droughts and other adverse weather events, researchers say, meaning it is less able to recover.
The loss of the forest would mean billions of tonnes of CO2 would be released into the atmosphere.
It would also reduce the planet's ability to recycle the greenhouse gas and lead to an acceleration of global climate change, according to experts led by the University of Exeter.
While they admit it is 'highly uncertain' when the tipping point will be reached, once the process begins they predict it could be a matter of decades before a 'significant chunk' — possibly 'well over' 50 per cent — is transformed into savannah.
The data from the Prodes' system comes just months after a study revealed that the Amazon rainforest is now 'fuelling' global warming.
Huge areas are producing more carbon than they absorb due to deforestation, reported researchers from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.
A combination of fires and logging in has seen large regions switch from being an essential 'carbon sink' to being a carbon emitter, they said.
This shift is is further fuelling the global warming crisis, leading to more 'extreme weather events' and the team said that 'each year it's getting worse.'
Extensive observations revealed that south-eastern Amazonia — about a fifth of the whole area — has switched to being a substantial source of CO₂.
The researchers said around a fifth of the Amazon has already been lost compared with pre-industrial levels, blaming much of this on human activities such as logging and land use for crops.
Dr Chris Boulton, from the University of Exeter, said: 'We've found a pronounced loss of Amazon rainforest resilience over the last 20 years.
'What we do find over the Amazon is that, particularly since the early 2000s, 75 per cent coverage of the Amazon rainforest appears to show some sense of a loss of resilience.
'And what we also find is that areas which are closer to human land use, such as urban areas or crop lands, they tend to be losing resilience faster, as do areas which receive less rainfall.'
Resilience actually increased from 1991 to around 2000, but the consistent decrease since then has taken resilience well below 1991 levels.
'Deforestation and climate change are likely to be the main drivers of this decline,' said Professor Niklas Boers, of PIK and the Technical University of Munich.
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China to ramp up oil, gas, coal production as energy costs rise
China says it will ramp up domestic oil, gas and coal production and increase reserves of the commodities, warning that the war in Ukraine is driving up energy costs at a time when it is determined to stabilise commodity prices.
In comments that will have long-term ramifications for Australian commodity exports to China, officials from the country’s powerful state planner said on Monday said there were plans to add 200 million tonnes of coal stocks and more than 5 billion cubic metres of gas storage.
Officials acknowledged rising crude oil and gas prices due to the Ukraine war and Russian sanctions would affect China, but said the situation was manageable.
“The recent escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had an impact on the global energy market, and international crude oil and natural gas prices have risen further,” National Development and Refom Commission vice-director Lian Weiliang told reporters.
“Due to the high proportion of China’s crude oil and natural gas which is outsourced, it will definitely be affected and import costs will rise. But overall the impact is manageable,” he said.
The comments came as the latest trade data showed a slowdown in China’s import and export growth in January and February. This included a 14 per cent drop in coal imports for the first two months of the year after Indonesia temporarily banned shipments of the commodity.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major oil and natural gas producer, has driven up global commodity prices amid fears of an energy supply shortage. China, which says it opposes sanctions on Russia, also imports oil and gas from Moscow.
Continued reliance on coal
Rising energy costs and electricity shortages are a major concern for the Chinese government, which is seeking to grow the world’s second-largest economy by about 5.5 per cent this year. China imports more than 70 per cent of its oil and 40 per cent of gas from overseas. It banned imports of Australian coal 18 months ago due to political tensions.
While China has said its carbon emissions would peak in 2025, it is still heavily reliant on coal. The slowing economy has meant earlier plans to scale back the use of coal have been put on the backburner.
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Boris Johnson believes the West should be given a “climate change pass” to help wean the EU off Russian gas supplies as he faces mounting pressure over the government’s 2050 net-zero target
The Times has been told that Johnson wants the West, particularly the US and Canada, to ramp up its own production of gas to help remove the “massive leverage” Russia has over EU countries.
While retaining the government’s target, Johnson is understood to believe that western countries should be able to increase gas production during the transition to nuclear and renewables. It came as Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, announced that he is launching a political movement to campaign for a referendum on the net-zero policy.
A government source said: “The prime minister has been very clear that one of the massive problems is the leverage that Putin has over a number of European countries over gas and oil.
“We have to address this over the short term, mid term and long term. The prime minister is interested in giving the gas industry a climate pass in the transition to nuclear and renewables.” Johnson hinted at the approach during an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and the German publication Die Welt last week.
“We need a collective European strategy and a western strategy to diversify away from this dependence,” he said. “There are other sources . . . in North America, in Canada, in the Gulf.”
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, suggested at the G7 meeting in Brussels on Friday that a ceiling be imposed on imports of Russian coal, oil and gas which comes down over time. She believes that the “long-term defence of freedom is worth short-term economic pain”.
Germany gets two thirds of its gas from Russia. It recently announced that it is shelving the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
In The Mail on Sunday, Farage announced a campaign group, Britain Means Business. He said: “Without any debate, our energy bills have been loaded with green subsidies. Our businesses have been disadvantaged, yet our leaders seem happy to outsource industrial production just as long as they can say it reduces CO2 emissions.
“We will campaign for the 5 per cent VAT on energy bills to be removed.
“Green subsidies are shovelled straight into the bank accounts of rich landowners, wealthy investors and foreign-owned conglomerates who own much of the renewable energy sector.” Many Tory MPs have significant concerns about the cost of net zero.
Thirty-four Tory MPs urged the prime minister to reverse plans to seal two shale gas wells, insisting that Britain must secure its energy independence. Cuadrilla is due to concrete over its wells in Lancashire on March 15.
In their letter to Johnson, the MPs state: “We urge you to pause and conduct a review. At a time of such geopolitical strife, we cannot refrain from actions that would improve the position of the UK and its allies. We have seen how a reliance on imported gas affects the responses of other countries during the initial stages of Russian aggression.” The intervention was organised by Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.
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Dishonest climate propaganda from Australia's ABC
Another instance where Leftists deliberately lie to prop up their ideology
As residents of Northern New South Wales, a region known as the Northern Rivers, are still clinging to their rooftops awaiting rescue from emergency services and selfless fellow citizens in the wake of this week’s devastating floods, the ABC was playing politics with their lives.
While the façade of ABC news reporting sort to shine a light on the personal misfortune of thousands of affected residents and their local communities and businesses, the real underlying agenda was to weaponize this misfortune in its religious quest to proselytise Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) aka ‘climate change’.
Cue the NSW, Sydney-based edition of the 7PM nightly news bulletin on March 1. Those of us who are familiar with the ABC modus operandi of AGW propaganda know that slotting in the word ‘unprecedented’ at every available opportunity, whether factually correct or not, is foundational in spreading the word of their climate change overlords. And when ‘unprecedented’ doesn’t quite fit the historical facts, well why not alter the playing field so that an unsuspecting audience is none the wiser?
Approximately a third of the way through the bulletin, after fielding reports from reporters on the ground in northern NSW and beyond, the anchor brought the weather presenter into the frame to highlight rainfall totals for the town of Casino, located on the Richmond River, in a historical context. We were informed in a stern ‘you have been a bad boy’ kind of way utilising a bar graph visual prop, that the 2022 rainfall totals to date already represented over half the mean annual rainfall for Casino dating back to the seemingly arbitrarily chosen year of 1953. We were psychologically implored to be convinced that such a phenomenon was outside what could be attributed to a pre-AGW world. The implied pitch and tone were clearly aimed at convincing viewers that this was ‘unprecedented’. However, as is so often the case with the ABC, all is not what it seems or more specifically all is not what their ABC is seeking to have you believe.
Let’s start with rainfall data for the town of Casino itself. The nearest Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather station that is currently in service is the Automatic Weather Station (AWS -58208) at the nearby Casino airport which is located almost 4km from the town centre. Now that seems like a relatively central location to be representative of the greater Casino region. The February 2022 monthly total for rain at this station was a hefty 573mm adding to the January total of 155mm to register over 720mm for the year to date – well above average – but is that unprecedented when compared with historical data?
This is where we encounter our first significant issue with the ABC news report. The Casino AWS situated at Casino Airport has only been operational since 1995, hardly a comprehensive sweep of historical rainfall data for the region. The 2022 (January and February combined) totals above are certainly the most substantial in the period 1995 to 2022, with the next largest combined total for the first two months of a year being 574mm in 2008. Where did the arbitrary starting point of 1953 come from as referenced by the ABC news report broadcast to at least a quarter of a million viewers statewide at the time?
Well it seems data was merged for Casino from the old decommissioned BOM weather station (58063) that was located around 1km away at the Casino Airport from the current station and about 3km from the centre of town. This weather station has uninterrupted data commencing from 1858 through to 2011. What does this treasure trove of data reveal in regards to the ‘unprecedented’ nature of Casino’s 2022 rainfall to date? Those who retain the capacity for critical thinking may not be surprised to learn that the year to date 2022 rainfall totals for Casino have to take a back seat to 1893, which recorded a truly eye-watering 1005mm to the end of February exceeding the 2022 total by almost a third again. Other notable contenders were 1890 (644mm), 1959 (612mm), 1953 (597mm), 1947 (575mm), 1954 (563mm), and 2008(574mm). What of the highest daily totals for Casino across its 170 years of records? On February 28 the AWS station recorded 240mm, however on May 14, 1921, 279 mm was recorded in one 24 hour period and on February 22, 1954, 267mm was recorded. To be sure some weather stations recorded in northern NSW recorded over double these 24 hour totals in the last week, but again this is unlikely to be historically unprecedented in the wetter regions of Northern NSW of which Casino is not one of them.
So why did the ABC choose to cut off its historical lens on Casino’s rainfall in 1953 when the same data source extended back another 100 years from that point?
It would seem that the 1890s data represented a truth bomb to their ABC’s ‘unprecedented’ AGW rain bomb narrative. To add to their discomfort and difficulty the ABC has in addressing the real data in the face of cult-like adherence to AGW dogma, the wettest year on record for Casino was 1890 with 1955mm and the runner up was 1893 with 1844mm when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were thought to be between 280 – 300ppm. Go Figure!
All of this recent commentary around record rainfall in NSW and beyond has occurred in the aftermath of the ABC repeatedly reporting, especially since 2019, that Australia’s eastern seaboard was becoming hotter and drier and that this trend was ‘locked in’. Now, in the wake of two consecutive years of above-average rainfall across the eastern seaboard (indeed much of Australia), along with cooler than average temperatures, it’s as if that previous ‘settled climate science’ and associated prognostications never happened.
Ask yourself, how many of these same ABC journalists are willing to look the residents of northern NSW in the eye and guarantee them that if only, just only, we reach Net Zero CO2 emissions their towns will never flood again? Answer – net zero… So, the next time you hear an ABC presenter utter the words ‘Net Zero, it may well be a reference to the ABC’s credibility.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-abc-where-activism-beats-compassion/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, March 07, 2022
How scientists got their global warming sums wrong — and created a £1TRILLION-a-year green industry that bullied experts who dared to question the figures
Thanks to their bad advice on climate change our gas and electricity bills have rocketed.
So too have our taxes, our car bills and the cost of flying abroad, our kids have been brainwashed into becoming tofu-munching eco-zealots, our old folk have frozen to death in fuel poverty, our countryside has been blighted with ranks of space-age solar panels and bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes, our rubbish collection service hijacked by hectoring bullies, our cities poisoned with diesel fumes . . .
And all because a tiny bunch of scientists got their sums wrong and scared the world silly with a story about catastrophic man-made global warming.
This scare story, we now know, was at best an exaggeration, at worst a disgraceful fabrication. But while a handful of reviled and derided sceptics have been saying this for years, it’s only this week that those scientists have fessed up to their mistake.
In a new paper in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, the scientists who produce those doomsday reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have finally come clean — the computer models they’ve been using to predict runaway global warming are wrong, the planet has stubbornly refused to heat up anywhere near as much as they’d warned.
The report’s authors say it is now much more likely that the world will meet its CO2 reduction targets agreed at the UN’s Paris summit in 2015. Back then, Professor Michael Grubb of University College London said that the goal — keeping the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C — was so hard that achieving it would be “incompatible with democracy”.
Now he says: “When the facts change, I change.” Because it is now clear the impact of CO2 has been overstated, it means less needs to be done to stop “global warming”.
According to research by Dr Bjorn Lomborg, former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen, using the UN’s own figures, even if every country in the world sticks to its Paris carbon reduction targets, the result will be, at best, a drop in global temperatures by the end of the century of about one fifth of a degree. All that money, all that effort to — maybe — reduce “global warming” by less than the temperature difference between getting up and having breakfast.
One scientist has described the implications of the new Nature Geoscience report as “breathtaking”. He’s right. What it effectively does is scotch probably the most damaging scientific myth of our age — the notion that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the planet to warm at such dangerous and unprecedented speeds that only massive government intervention can save us.
For a quarter of a century now — it all really got going in 1992 when 172 nations signed up to the Rio Earth Summit — our politicians have believed in and acted on this discredited theory.
In the name of saving the planet, war was declared on carbon dioxide, the benign trace gas which we exhale and which is so good for plant growth it has caused the planet to “green” by an extraordinary 14 per cent in the last 30 years.
This war on CO2 has resulted in a massive global decarbonisation industry worth around $1.5trillion (£1.11trillion) a year. Though it has made a handful of green crony capitalists very rich, it has made most of us much poorer, by forcing us to use expensive “renewables” instead of cheap, abundant fossil fuels.
So if the science behind all this nonsense was so dodgy, why did no one complain all these years?
Well, a few of us did. Some — such as Johnny Ball and David Bellamy — were brave TV celebrities, some — Graham Stringer, Peter Lilley, Owen Paterson, Nigel (now Lord) Lawson — were outspoken MPs, some were bona fide scientists. But whenever we spoke out, the response was the same — we were bullied, vilified, derided and dismissed as scientifically illiterate loons by a powerful climate alarmist establishment which brooked no dissent.
Unfortunately this alarmist establishment has many powerful media allies. The BBC has a huge roster of eco-activist reporters and science “experts” who believe in man-made global warming, and almost never gives sceptics air time.
Typical of this bias was the way one of its scientist presenters — a Guardian writer called Adam Rutherford — campaigned on Twitter to have Labour MP Graham Stringer “blocked” from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee just because Stringer is a climate change sceptic and a trustee of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
One irony here is that Stringer, with his chemistry degree, is probably better equipped than Rutherford to understand the ins and outs of climate science.
Another is that the GWPF produced a report three years ago saying pretty much exactly what the supposed climate change experts are only finally admitting now — that the computer models are running “too hot”.
It comes as little consolation to those of us who’ve been right all along to say: “I told you so.”
In the name of promoting the global warming myth, free speech has been curtailed, honest science corrupted and vast economic and social damage done. That apology is long overdue.
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Sir Iain Duncan Smith calls for honest and open debate on Net Zero
London, 6 March - Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has called for an “honest and open debate” on Net Zero, warning that politicians have not sufficiently scrutinised the requirements, and saying that they must level with the public about the sacrifices required.
He also highlights the UK’s lack of energy security and Western Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.
Sir Iain’s comments, in the foreword to a new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, reflect growing alarm among Conservative backbenchers about a possible electoral backlash in the wake of the cost of living crisis, and a new awareness of the threat the Net Zero project represents to national security.
The report, by Professor Michael Kelly FRS, examines the scope of the Net Zero project and considers the financial, resource and manpower requirements, concluding that the political and economic upheaval it would necessitate make success a practical impossibility.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said:
“We owe it to the citizens of the UK to take a long hard look at the path to be taken. Policymakers must be honest and open with the British public about how much all this will cost them and how much change to our everyday lives may be required.”
Professor Kelly said:
“The scale of this project is, in terms of resource and time, so great that a war footing and a command economy will be essential for its delivery”
Contact: Prof Michael Kelly. e: mjk1@cam.ac.uk
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Biden and Europe Should Respond to Russian Aggression by Scrapping Extremist Climate Policies
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was facilitated by alarmist policies enacted by the United States and Europe, meant to combat alleged runaway global warming.
Germany, for example, decided to abandon coal and nuclear energy in favor of supposed climate-friendly “renewable” energy sources. And in the United Kingdom, after briefly considering allowing fracking a few years back, the government has basically doubled down on wind and solar, erecting bans or nearly insurmountable hurdles to natural gas development on the U.K. mainland.
Those costly sources simply are not reliable enough to sustain the German, U.K., or the wider EU economies. Partly as a result of these policies, even before Russia invaded Ukraine, many Europeans were suffering under cripplingly high energy prices and periodic energy shortages.
Germany’s response has been to become even more reliant on Russian natural gas than it already was. Indeed, major Western European companies have investments in pipelines being built from Russia. Western Europe, having given Russia power over it, emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine.
Under President Donald Trump’s initiative to make American energy dominant, the United States not only became energy independent but also became a net energy exporter. Expansion of natural gas production and the rapid opening of new Liquefied Natural Gas export terminals allowed America to help Europe out of its mess by providing an alternative, geopolitically friendly, source of reliable energy. Had this initiative and other policies the Trump administration instituted continued under President Joe Biden, it could have meant European countries purchasing more energy from America, putting money in our pockets, rather than funding Putin’s war machine.
Instead, Biden reversed course. The Biden administration’s “whole of government approach” to fighting climate change requires rapidly weaning the United States from fossil fuels.
Accordingly, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline partnership with Canada on his first day in office; he imposed a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and on the U.S. outer-continental shelf. Since then, Biden has canceled oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; proposed methane emission restrictions that would make it harder and more expensive to develop, store, and transport oil and natural gas in the United States; proposed increasing the fees and royalty rate oil and gas producers must pay the federal government; and recently announced plans to foreclose drilling on more than half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The result has been to dramatically drive up prices for fossil fuel energy. During Biden’s first year in office, Biden’s climate policies have resulted in overall electricity prices rising by more than 8 percent, home heating oil prices increasing by 43 percent, West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices rising by more than 80 percent, natural gas prices surging by 61 percent, and the price of gasoline jumping by 98 cents per gallon, about 42 percent. To be clear, higher energy prices are the explicit goal of administration policy because the administration believes it is necessary to fight climate change. These policies are not only seriously harming Americans with sharply higher energy prices contributing to higher prices throughout the economy and thus the current upward inflation spiral, but they are also enriching Putin and his oligarchs, who reap the benefits of high-priced Russian oil.
The United States and Europe have crippled their own economies and harmed their own citizens with anti-fossil fuel policies in the name of fighting so-called global warming, simultaneously endangering world peace and security. Russian troops are on the ground creating orphans in Ukraine, while John Kerry, President Biden’s climate czar, bizarrely prattles on about greenhouse gas emissions from Russia’s military action there.
There is never a good time to enact bad policies, and making America and the world more beholden to Russian influence via its stranglehold on European energy markets was about as bad a policy as one can imagine.
For economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical reasons, President Biden should reverse course immediately. He should use his executive authority to remove all restrictions on energy exploration and production in the United States. He should call on all states that still restrict fracking to allow the extraction of clean, low-cost natural gas. He should scrap ongoing efforts to impose carbon dioxide restrictions on every sector of the economy. And, he should pull out of the Paris Agreement, with its climate alarmist restrictions that simply empower the likes of Vladimir Putin.
Bold actions such as these might force Putin and other potential bad actors, I’m thinking China here, to reconsider aggressive, expansionistic policies.
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What Are ESG Scores?
Sustainable investing has become one of the hottest new trends in the financial industry, corresponding to the increasing clamor for corporations and businesses to espouse more socially responsible principles. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores are the primary mechanism by which these sustainability objectives have been institutionalized within our global economic infrastructure.
Their utilization has exponentially increased in recent years, with 98 percent of U.S. companies now disclosing ESG scores, and more than 15,000 companies worldwide signing on the United Nations Global Compact – an initiative to use ESG for tracking the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The United Nations, alongside other international organizations such as the World Economic Forum and mega-financiers like Larry Fink, have been the primary sponsors of this system.
If you have found yourself at a loss in terms of what ESG scores actually entail, you are not alone. It is a confusing system. Yet, the implications associated with this system’s implementation are important to understand.
ESG scores are, essentially, a social credit framework for sustainability reporting. They are supposed to measure both financial and non-financial aspects of a company’s overall risk profile. Companies with favorable credit ratings are therefore attractive targets for investment, whereas companies with unfavorable credit ratings are “screened out.” Ultimately, their utilization alters how businesses are evaluated, grading them on the basis of their commitment to social justice and environmental causes rather than traditional financial metrics.
Despite the implication that there is a set of defined standards by which companies can be objectively evaluated, there is far from a uniform approach. Instead, there are multiple overlapping systems, sponsored by governments, international organizations, and financial institutions alike. Additionally, there are numerous ratings agencies such as Moody’s and S&P, each of which applies its own unique methodology to assigning scores. Studies have even shown that a rating agency’s subjective view of the firm under observation has influenced their rating to a significant degree.
Another area of potential confusion lies within the data itself. Allow me to present you with an example of just one system, promoted by the International Business Council (IBC). This ESG system incorporates 55 metrics, which range from quantitatively determined “Total R&D Expenses” and “Total Social Investment” to qualitatively determined “Purpose-Led Management.”
These metrics are then subjectively weighted according to the preferences of corporate stakeholders, and finally aggregated together into one overall score. It is difficult to countenance a scenario in which that score is an accurate representation of a company’s risk profile.
The power that these stakeholders enjoy over the determination of these metrics leads us to the direst aspect of the ESG system: Banks, corporations, ratings companies, and other financial elites are in total control, and can adjust their predetermined metrics at will. As metrics are not determined by a government agency, instead being a product of the “free market,” no oversight mechanism exists to constrain their influence.
For one, this has allowed those capitalizing upon and driving ESG scores to become exceedingly wealthy, often at the expense of others.
In 2020, investment into sustainable funds surpassed $50 billion, 10 times that of 2018. The novelty associated with ESG has allowed financial institutions to justify higher portfolio management fees while reaping the rewards. The system also allows banks and investment firms to drive large flows of capital to wherever they choose, enriching themselves and their friends in the process.
Moreover, the ESG system has been used to consolidate wealth amongst the individuals responsible for the movement’s genesis. Blackrock – the world’s largest private asset manager – recently hit $10 trillion in assets under management, powered in large part by ETFs. Its iShares Global Clean Energy ETF is one of the largest ESG funds in the world.
Who runs Blackrock? Larry Fink. The same Larry Fink who, along with Charles Schwab, could be seen as the founder of the entire ESG system, and the shift to an overall model of stakeholder governance.
Beyond the issue with wealth consolidation, however, lies the concerning precedent being set. The wealthiest Wall Street investors, such as Blackrock, have become increasingly capable of dictating the affairs of small businesses and companies by virtue of their influence over ratings, and the voting blocs they hold in corporate boardrooms.
Society, too, is at their mercy. The power that ESG affords to its creators could potentially be wielded to censor free speech by coercing social media companies to ban content. The system could be used to alter consumer behavior, pressuring individuals to purchase electric vehicles when their natural preference is for a gasoline-powered car. ESG frameworks could be used to mandate certain food and beverage choices, under the guise of championing sustainable options.
https://redstate.com/heartlandinstitute/2022/03/02/what-are-esg-scores-n530449
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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World faces 'energy starvation' as oil and gas prices soar even higher
"Across the world" is misleading. Australia is an exception. Australia has an abundance of coal and gas and exports much of it. Canada is in a similar position. So supply of both commodities to Canadian and Australian householders is likely to remain little affected by international shortages.
Households across the world are facing “energy starvation”, analysts have warned, as gas prices hit a fresh record and oil surged an 11-year high.
Experts warned prices at the petrol pump would push fresh records after Brent crude oil jumped as much as 8pc to $113 a barrel. In New York, WTI crude rose 8.8pc to the highest since 2011.
European gas prices rose 55pc to an all-time high of €194 per megawatt hour as the conflict in Ukraine rocks global energy markets. In the UK, next-day gas futures soared as much as 60pc to 464p per therm, nearly beating the record highs touched in December.
Thermal coal prices topped $350 a tonne to record highs amid fears supply from Russia will be stifled.
Bjarne Schieldrop, commodities analyst at SEB, said: “The global economy is facing energy starvation right now. Fossil fuel prices can go even higher in the short-term but demand destruction will set a limit to the upside eventually.”
The United States and other world powers on Tuesday announced plans to release 60m barrels of oil from their strategic reserves in an effort to combat soaring fuel prices.
Damien Courvalin, head of energy research at Goldman Sachs, said the release would not provide “sufficient relief”, being only enough to offset a single month of potential disruption.
Opec and its allies – of which Russia is the second-biggest member – agreed to a modest supply increase of 400,000 barrels a day, a negligible increase as the conflict in Ukraine upends global energy markets. The cartel said recent price increases had been driven by geopolitics, rather than market fundamentals.
Edward Gardner, a commodities analyst at Capital Economics, said Russian oil exports were likely to drop as sanctions bite.
“Foreign buyers of Russian oil have already reported problems accessing the required finance to make their purchases,” he said.
Germany is prepared for the worst if Russia stops exporting gas to Europe and could keep coal-fired power plants running, according to its economy minister.
Robert Habeck sought to calm concerns about the potential disruption of energy supplies to Europe's largest economy amid Russia's war in a radio interview on Wednesday.
Germany gets about half of its gas from Russia, some from pipelines through Ukraine. Supplies to Europe continue to flow despite the conflict but there remains the threat of sanctions, damage to pipelines or retaliation from the Kremlin.
Europe also gets gas in shipments from countries including Qatar and Australia, but there is global competition for these supplies and Germany itself does not have any liquified natural gas (LNG) import terminals.
Asked what Berlin would do if Russia stops exporting gas, Mr Habeck said: “We are prepared for that. I can give the all-clear for the current winter and summer.”
In a worse-case scenario Mr Habeck said Berlin could keep “coal-fired power plants in reserve, maybe even keep them running”, but that it remained committed to moving to renewables in the medium-term.
The impact of surging energy prices was visible in new eurozone inflation figures, which showed consumer prices rose 5.8pc in the year to February. Core prices, with energy and food stripped out, rose 2.7pc in a sign price increases are broad-based.
The increase was well above the 5.4pc rise anticipated by economics. Salomon Fielder, an economist at Berenberg, said: “Firms are passing higher input costs on to consumers”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/02/world-faces-energy-starvation-oil-gas-prices-soar/
*****************************************Greta Thunberg enabled Vladimir Putin
Once the Russians have flattened and occupied Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, etc., as surely they will (for anything less would be a defeat), the question will be asked in the West, “Who lost Ukraine?”—as once the question, “Who lost China?” was asked. My preferred answer would be Greta Thunberg—or perhaps I should say, to be a little fairer, Greta Thunberg and people like her.
The Thunberg episode must have been of great aid and comfort to the man in the Kremlin, for it must have convinced him, as it convinced his apologists in the West, of the almost total decadence and fundamental unseriousness of the West. Here was a spoiled upper-middle class Swedish girl claiming that her childhood had been stolen—by whom and by what, exactly?—and no one in any position of power or responsibility had the guts to tell her to shut up and to stop broadcasting her disgusting self-satisfied and highly privileged self-pity. Instead, she was the object of deference and almost of adulation, as if she were being brave in the way that anti-war demonstrators in Russia have been brave.
Why did no one in any position of power or responsibility take on little Greta and tell her to go away? The answer, probably, is sentimentality: She was young, and everyone knows that adolescence is the springtime of idealism. To destroy the fatuous illusions of the ignorant and inexperienced is cruel; therefore, we must submit meekly to be lectured, or hectored, by them, and to do as they say. The fact that the person in question may have been as manipulated as a cruise missile was not allowed to enter anyone’s mind.
One can just imagine little Greta Thunberg trying to hector Putin or Xi: The whole idea is so absurd that it can’t be entertained for a moment. It’s precisely for this reason, that Putin wasn’t decadent enough to take her seriously even for a moment, that some so-called conservatives in the West admired Putin: the enemy of my enemy being supposedly my friend. As we now see, Putin is not anyone’s friend: But Greta Thunberg was his friend, in what Stalin would have called the objective sense.
She was his friend because she, and those who thought like her, assisted in creating Europe’s extreme vulnerability to Russia’s control over its energy supplies. We don’t want nuclear; we don’t want coal; we don’t want gas; we don’t want oil. The reality, however, is that the population does want to be warm over winter, it doesn’t want the factories to close down, and it’s quite attached to the continuous electricity supply that so far renewables can’t guarantee. Thus, the political class paid lip service to the Greta Thunbergs and their like while continuing, and indeed extending, the continent’s dependence on energy from Russia—a potentially, and now actually, hostile power. Of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Net Zero policy, I can barely bring myself to speak.
Putin’s hand would have been much weaker had Europe not chosen to be so abjectly dependent on Russian energy. How he must have giggled—if giggling is in his repertoire—to see the fawning reception of Greta Thunberg in the West. With what contempt must he have regarded us, he, an ex-KGB operative who believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. Thunberg and her ilk must therefore bear some of the responsibility for bringing about the war in Ukraine.
They wanted net zero: What they got was the scramble for more nuclear power stations, more oil and gas exploration, and even a resort to coal, plus Russia into the bargain.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/net-zero-100-percent-putin_4313120.html
**************************************************Germany considers firing-up closed coal power plants
Will Germany's phase-out of nuclear and coal power plants be delayed because of the war in Ukraine? The Essen-based energy company RWE is considering restarting coal-fired power plants that have already been shut down.
In the debate about the best energy policy, Germany is pressing the reset button: no taboos, everything has to be put on the table again – that's what top politicians from the federal and state governments are saying in one way or another these days.
This also includes the thorny question of whether the nuclear phase-out planned for this year could be postponed and whether the coal phase-out should only take place after 2030. The energy politicians of all parties and the experts are all worried about gas supply from Russia. Natural gas from Putin's country currently covers more than half of Germany's gas requirements, and is essential for heating in private households and as fuel for industries, including power plants.
NRW Economics Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) presented some theses to his counterparts from the other federal states on Monday, which were discussed in a special conference of economics ministers. Pinkwart is not at the forefront of those who want to postpone the nuclear phase-out, but believes that it should not be "ruled out without in-depth examination". A temporary extension of the running times should be "examined promptly by the federal government and discussed with the operators," said Pinkwart. He emphasizes that this can help to ensure security of supply without emitting significantly more greenhouse gases. This is currently happening because the coal-fired power plants are delivering more electricity.
The Federal Network Agency must “immediately check” whether the shutting down of hard coal and lignite power plants can continue at the planned pace and, if necessary, suspend shutdowns that have already been approved. Security of supply must now have top priority and not the exit date of 2030 favored by the federal coalition government.
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Australia: Climate catastrophists see opportunity in disaster
While homes in Brisbane, Lismore and Windsor were swamped by floodwaters, again, and at least 15 people were losing their lives, and volunteers were taking risks to rescue others, climate keyboard warriors saw an opportunity to make political hay while the sun was not shining. “If not us, who?” tweeted so-called Voices of independent candidate Zoe Daniel above a reference to the latest climate report. “If not now, when?”
Thankfully, other Australians had a far more useful response to those two questions. They said “me” and “now” as they filled sandbags, crewed boats and delivered food to help others in need.
From surfing legend and great white wrangler Mick Fanning’s jet ski run for the local pharmacist, to two police officers diving under water into a Lismore house to rescue a 93-year-old woman floating on a mattress in an air pocket against the ceiling, the stories of help and heroism were great and small. But some climate crusaders sensed only an opportunity.
As they have done with bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, snowstorms (and lack of snowstorms) climate activists use wild weather to foster fear and further their political causes. Where some see natural peril and human tragedy, and act to help, others see dramatic images and political opportunity, then jump on social media.
Another so-called Voices of independent, Allegra Spender, posted pictures of the flood trauma with familiar slogans. She said a vote for her would “tackle climate change” and protect the environment.
Presumably when people argue we should “follow the science” they mean we should stick to the facts and logic. Yet such an approach would see these climate catastrophists exposed as false prophets pushing false promises – they can no more alter the climate, let alone prevent natural disasters, than Superman can spin the planet backwards on its axis.
By science people tend to mean the increasingly alarmist papers published by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is much science behind these papers but also plenty of public relations in the way they are presented, with a rolling release of reports making the same points, which is why climate news sounds like deja vu.
We hear plenty about “tipping points” and last chances but seldom a word of scepticism, questioning of IPCC statements or references to the benefits of global warming; we get only doom and gloom. NASA findings on the carbon dioxide-induced greening of the planet or research about reduced mortality from milder northern hemisphere winters are not the kind of science the advocates follow.
Let us accept the general thrust of what the bulk of the climate scientists argue: that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming, that most warming is attributable to human-induced emissions and that we will see an increase in the regularity and intensity of weather events. Science also says much of this is baked into the atmosphere, even if we reduce emissions in the medium term, and that a global cut to net zero is necessary to reverse the trend.
There are debates to be had about weather records, interpretation of data, scientific modelling and forecasts. But the first thing to say about the climate activists’ response to natural disasters is that they are not new; floods, droughts, fires, heatwaves and storms have always been with us and always will be, especially in this land of droughts and flooding rains.
The pretence that climate policies can relieve us of these natural traumas is a ridiculously emotive and deceptive ploy. Do the activists really think they can deliver some Truman Show world where we dial up the weather we desire?
They are always desperate to use the word unprecedented so they can pretend global warming is visiting a wrath upon us that our forebears never knew. Every heatwave, cold snap, drought, flood or fire has to be worse than ever to suit their narrative.
In these pages I have demonstrated why this is untrue when it comes to the horrific bushfires in the summer of 2019-20. They were widespread, rampaging and deadly, but this country has had fires cover wider areas, kill more people and start earlier in the season. Firestorms are fearsome but, tragically, Australia will always suffer from them from time to time – always has.
Which is why grand plans to change the climate are unfortunate distractions from the protections that will work here and now, no matter what happens to the climate. We need to control fuel loads near settlements and ensure houses and properties are sufficiently protected in how they are built, where they are built and how much cleared area they are allowed or must have around them.
Despite repeated inquiries making recommendations about this, we have made little progress, and our complacency will lead to more damage from future fires. Instead of these difficult reforms, governments find it easier to buy firefighting aircraft that are useful for some fires but hopeless against the worst.
It is a similar story with floods. At Lismore this week’s flooding was the worst on record, more than 14m. But given there have been many floods over 12m, even in the 19th century, there will be other factors involved beyond climate, such as landclearing and urban build-up. Again, the practical solution to repeated inundations is not some fanciful plan to change the global climate but to adapt to a reality that has always existed and always will. If Lismore is the most regularly flooded town in the country, might we not rethink rebuilding in the same way at the same locations?
If we keep doing the same things we have been doing on fires, floods and droughts, and pretend our climate change policies will fix it, we are doomed to repetitive trauma. Dams can reduce flooding and droughtproof communities yet we seem to bust every dam proposed.
Even the entirely logical plan to extend the height of Sydney’s Warragamba Dam to mitigate the sort of flooding we have seen for two summers in a row has been held up by all the usual environmental objections. This is not rational or practical behaviour; science tells us floods will come and dams can manage them.
Instead of building dams, clearing bush around houses and ensuring buildings on flood plains can endure floods, activists pretend subsidising electric cars and mandating energy-saving light bulbs will tame our natural disasters, and too many politicians play along. Sometimes this country’s political system seems like a press release in search of governance.
Apart from the tackiness of spruiking for votes on the back of natural disasters, this is the first big lie of the climate alarmists: that their policies are the best way to eliminate or minimise the damage from natural disasters.
The second lie is even more preposterous because it goes to their propensity to deliver. Even if we accepted that controlling global climate was a reasonable and plausible goal, how, precisely, could an independent politician achieve this outcome?
To what degree, for instance, has Zali Steggall been able to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. She has done as much on that cause as she has on world peace.
The Greens, Labor and the so-called Voices of independents fallaciously accuse the government of inaction on climate. Reducing emissions by 20 per cent already (up-ending our energy system to do it) and committing to net-zero emissions by 2050 is more than most nations do, and too much for many informed people, so it is a bit cute to dismiss it as inaction.
But let us say, for argument’s sake, that a few of the so-called Voices of independents and the Greens win the balance of power and install a Labor government that is dependent on them for survival. This is their dream scenario, where they could dictate climate policy.
So, we could pretend they get our country to net-zero emissions by 2030 (lord knows how, perhaps by closing all industries and building a dozen nuclear reactors). We could go even further and have them shut down our coal exports.
Would this, could this, change the climate? Between 2019 and 2021 China increased its emissions by 600 million tonnes and India by 200 million. In total, that amounts to double Australia’s annual emissions. In other words, if Australia’s 1.1 per cent of global emissions disappeared overnight, they would be replaced within a year by the global growth.
And no less coal would be burned, our exports would merely be replaced by other nations, as would the produce of our closed factories and farms, adding emissions elsewhere.
The scientific, economic and practical reality is that our self-harm would not reduce global emissions, therefore not improve the climate. That is what would happen in the extreme, impossible expression of the climate catastrophists loony plans.
So imagine the futility of whatever policy morsels they might cajole out of government. The pretence that any politicians, let alone so-called independents, can change the climate is misleading, ignorant and juvenile.
The eventual elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, so long as it is in concert with the rest of the world, makes sense. The way to do it in Australia, while protecting our economy, environment and sovereignty, might be through nuclear power (as France and Germany are suddenly rediscovering) and through abatement schemes involving revegetation, soil carbon and the like.
Climate change, like most other complex policy areas, needs to be tackled with factual, realistic and proportionate progress. Emotive, jingoistic and frankly silly claims about delivering us from Armageddon to Nirvana are not worthy of adult discussion, and certainly have no right to claim science as their defence.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Friday, March 04, 2022
175 states agree pact to tackle plastic in the seas and soil
What a lot of hot air. The big cause of plastic in the oceans is poor people in Africa and Asia treating their rivers as rubbish dumps. How are you going to change that? Laws will be unenforceable. Erecting booms across the mouth of the Yangtse to capture plastic would be a big help and might be possible but not much else would
Millions of tonnes of plastic waste could be prevented from contaminating the ocean, soil and air each year after 175 countries agreed to develop the first binding treaty on plastic pollution.
Its terms are due to be agreed by the end of 2024 and will cover the lifecycle of plastic from production to disposal.
The treaty will address all forms of plastic pollution, including microplastic particles, which have been found everywhere from the deepest ocean to near Everest’s peak as well as in Arctic snow and Antarctic ice, shellfish, table salt and drinking water.
Under the resolution agreed unanimously at the UN environment assembly in Nairobi on Wednesday night, an intergovernmental negotiating committee will be convened “to develop an international, legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment”. The committee will start work this year, with “the ambition of completing its work by the end of 2024”.
The resolution gives it a broad mandate to develop both binding and voluntary measures, set global targets and produce mechanisms for tracking progress and ensuring accountability.
The measures could include limits on the production of virgin plastic, the phasing out of single-use products, and requirements to recycle.
The resolution also calls for financial assistance to help poorer countries to take action.
Plastic production globally increased from two million tonnes in 1950 to 348 million in 2017 and is on course to exceed 600 million by 2040. About 11 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the ocean annually and the UN said that could triple by 2040. The total plastic waste produced globally has more than doubled since 2000 to 353 million tonnes in 2019, according to a report last month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Only 9 per cent is recycled, 19 per cent is incinerated and 50 per cent sent to landfill.
The remaining 22 per cent is dumped in unregulated sites, burnt in open pits or leaks into the environment, the report says.
Ellen MacArthur, the record-breaking yachtswoman who runs an environmental foundation, said the resolution was “a key moment in the effort to eliminate plastic waste and pollution on a global scale”.
“Critically, this includes measures considering the entire lifecycle of plastics, from its production, to product design, to waste management, enabling opportunities to design out waste before it is created,” Dame Ellen said.
The UK was among more than 70 countries that helped to develop the resolution by supporting an initial proposal from Rwanda and Peru that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said: “This is the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord. It is an insurance policy for this generation and future ones, so they may live with plastic and not be doomed by it.”
Zac Goldsmith, the British Environment Minister representing the UK at the conference, wrote on Twitter: “This is a historic moment, and I’m hugely proud the UK co-sponsored the proposal.”
Marco Lambertini, director-general of WWF International, the conservation group, said: “By agreeing to develop a legally binding global treaty on plastic pollution, our world leaders are paving the way for a cleaner and safer future for people and the planet. But our work is far from over – world leaders must now show even more resolve in developing and implementing a treaty which addresses our current plastic pollution crisis and enables an effective transition to a circular economy for plastic.”
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Putin blows up NetZero and the green reset
There can be no greater demonstration of the massive failure — and the paralyzing contradictions and disconnect — revealed this week between two branches of the United Nations that allegedly serve to protect and assure peace and prosperity around the world. One branch is the United Nations Security Council, allegedly dedicated to international peace and security. The other UN operation is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was created to ”provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options.”
As Vladimir Putin dropped bombs on the Ukraine and invaded its cities, the UN Security Council, along with the UN General Assembly, sank into paralysis and debate, unprepared and unwilling or simply incapable of rousing serious opposition to the Russian military operation. On Monday, the UNIPCC delivered its latest report, “Climate Change 2022,” subtitled “Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability.” A monumental 3,675-page document packed with incomprehensible science and meaningless geopolitical jargon, the report in effect outlines how the global fixation on climate policy and net zero carbon targets laid the groundwork for Putin’s move to invade Ukraine.
The split UN personality was personified on Monday by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said the IPCC report demonstrated that “As climate impacts worsen — and they will — scaling up investments will be essential for survival … Delay means death.” Then, on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Guterres said “civilian deaths” were totally unacceptable. “It must stop now.”
But Guterres’s warnings fail to acknowledge the climate/invasion links. Without the UN-led climate crusade it is highly unlikely Putin would have been in a position to launch the Ukraine invasion.
The IPCC, along with political leaders and activists everywhere, portrayed the 21st century war on carbon to be a do-gooding crusade that aims to avoid what they refer to as “risks” associated with climate change. What the UN climate warriors failed to appreciate were the real-world risks associated with political actors who controlled the governments that were being enlisted in the seemingly benign business of protecting the world from climate disaster. Putin, after all, had committed to net zero by 2060.
The opening chapter of the new report, a “Summary for Policymakers,” starts with a fleeting mention of risks and warning of “violent conflict’ over climate issues, but no mention of inter-state military invasions or conflict. Instead, it baffles its way through a claim that the IPCC “recognizes the interdependence of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societies and integrates knowledge more strongly across the natural, ecological, social and economic sciences than earlier IPCC assessments. The assessment of climate change impacts and risks as well as adaptation is set against concurrently unfolding non-climatic global trends e.g., biodiversity loss, overall unsustainable consumption of natural resources, land and ecosystem degradation, rapid urbanization, human demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities and a pandemic.”
No mention of possible invasions or military attacks. The language is classic UN climate geobabble. The report goes on to state that “the subject of risk is central” to the IPCC report, which “recognizes the value of diverse forms of knowledge such as scientific, as well as Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge in understanding and evaluating climate adaptation processes and actions to reduce risks from human-induced climate change.”
The prospect of “violent conflict” is noted 55 times over the 3,675-page IPCC report, including a warning that “climate change may increase susceptibility to violent conflict, primarily intrastate conflicts, by strengthening climate-sensitive drivers of conflict.” Mostly, the IPCC sees violent conflict as something that could occur in regions where climate change may provoke local populations to react to floods, fires, and extreme weather.
Nobody saw Putin coming, riding on the back of Germany and other European nations as they attempted to remake their energy systems to conform with IPCC decarbonization programs. Germany sought to bring in more Russian gas to offset its plans to eliminate coal power from its energy grid. In the wake of the invasion, Germany has withheld approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and has now begun to remake its energy strategy to include the continued use of coal.
Nations around the world, including Canada and the United States, are now under economic and strategic pressure to rethink the IPCC climate crusade toward NetZero 2050. There comes a point when the banal pursuit of the overwhelmingly complicated science of climate change becomes the source of serious geopolitical and military risk. Fossil-fuel energy, thanks to Putin, is now about to make a major comeback as a relatively inexpensive and readily available secure source of energy.
Neither Prime Minister Trudeau nor President Joe Biden can, in the wake of Putin’s disruption of the world energy and political system, continue to regurgitate the Build Back Better and Green New Deal slogans that have dominated their pronouncements over the last two years. The era of the pipeline blockers is over.
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Youngkin Poised to Withdraw Virginia From Multistate Climate Pact
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is pursuing a multipronged strategy to dismantle climate change regulations and hold down energy costs, his press secretary told The Daily Signal.
Government records indicate that Youngkin will rely on a mix of executive action, budget changes, and legislation to withdraw from the 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Some environmental activists and lawyers question the new Republican governor’s authority to exit the pact exclusively through executive action.
But Youngkin press secretary Macaulay Porter said the governor is committed to ending Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a “cap and trade” agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions that is widely known as RGGI.
“The governor pledged to withdraw Virginia from RGGI because of the unfair burden it places on Virginia ratepayers,” Porter said in an interview. “On Day One, he issued an executive order to do just that.”
“The executive action initiated the regulatory process to withdraw,” Porter added, “but he’s also supporting legislative action to make sure future governors cannot unilaterally put Virginia back into this failed and expensive program.”
Youngkin’s executive order set in motion a series of actions that will result in what it calls “a full report reevaluating the costs and benefits of participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,” while notifying RGGI officials that the governor intends to withdraw either by legislative or regulatory action.
The Daily Signal has requested a copy of that report, which was due within 30 days of Youngkin’s Jan. 15 order.
‘Change Not for Better’
The governor’s order provides for an “emergency regulation” enabling Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board to consider repealing climate change regulations. Youngkin also backs a budget amendment that would start the process of withdrawing from RGGI.
Besides Virginia, the climate change agreement includes 10 other states in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, as The Daily Signal previously has reported: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
In these states, government regulators impose an upper limit or “cap” on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that power plants are permitted to emit. The initiative also creates “allowances” within interstate auctions that may be traded back and forth among companies subjected to the emission caps.
The idea behind cap-and-trade is to provide energy companies with financial incentives to reduce emissions. Companies that meet or exceed emissions targets may sell any excess allowances to companies that have not done so.
Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the Washington-based National Center for Public Policy Research, a free-market think tank, told The Daily Signal that he is concerned about environmental degradation that may result from Virginia’s increased reliance on solar and wind projects.
“We have been told that by joining RGGI, adopting net-zero carbon emissions goals, and embracing other schemes to promote ‘clean’ energy, we will become full participants in something truly ‘transformative,’” Cohen said in an email, adding:
Yes, transformative it will be, but the change will not be for the better. The increased reliance on wind and solar power will transform broad swaths of Virginia’s bucolic countryside and deep-blue offshore waters into a world of unsightly and inefficient industrial-scale wind turbines and solar arrays. The pollution potential caused by the disposal of used-up solar panels (tens of thousands of them), giant wind turbines, and dead batteries for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow will make the worst Superfund site look like child’s play.
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A dishonest and misleading IPCC report
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important organization with a primary purpose to assess the scientific literature on climate in order to inform policy. The IPCC spans the physical sciences, impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and economics. I have often stated that the IPCC is so important that if it did not exist we’d need to invent it, because the challenge of climate change presents significant risks. As a consequence, both mitigation and adaptation responses must be a priority. Rigorous scientific assessments are thus needed to inform policy making. Earlier this week the IPCC’s Working Group 2 (WG2) report was released on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability — Working Group 1 on the physical sciences was released last year and Working Group 3 on economics will come later this year.
Regrettably, the IPCC WG2 has strayed far from its purpose to assess and evaluate the scientific literature, and has positioned itself much more as a cheerleader for emissions reductions and produced a report that supports such advocacy. The IPCC exhorts: “impacts will continue to increase if drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are further delayed – affecting the lives of today’s children tomorrow and those of their children much more than ours … Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”
The focus on emissions reductions is a major new orientation for WG2, which previously was focused exclusively on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The new focus on mitigation is explicit, with the IPCC WG2 noting (1-31) that its focus “expands significantly from previous reports” and now includes “the benefits of climate change mitigation and emissions reductions.” This new emphasis on mitigation colors the entire report, which in places reads as if adaptation is secondary to mitigation or even impossible. The IPCC oddly presents non-sequiturs tethering adaptation to mitigation, “Successful adaptation requires urgent, more ambitious and accelerated action and, at the same time, rapid and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”
To illustrate with just one example (of many). The report concludes (TS-31) with high confidence that “Flood risks and societal damages are projected to increase with every increment of global warming.” This is simply not true. And by “not true” I mean that it is not an accurate representation of the literature that WG2 cites to justify this claim. It is also empirically false, as vulnerability to floods has dramatically decreased even as the planet has warmed. However, such a claim is useful in advocating for mitigation actions.
Allow me to go into the weeds just briefly (on Twitter I document many such journeys). The WG2 finding about about increasing damages from floods relies on three papers (Hirabayashi et al. 2021, Dottori et al. 2018 and Alfieri et al. 2017), as indicated below from the body of the report (4-69).
But when you actually go to these three studies, you find that they are not in fact projecting future damages, as claimed by WG2. They are instead exploring what would happen if climate changes projected for 2100 are imposed upon current society. These studies have in fact eliminated the possibility of adaptation in projecting the future. This is of course ridiculous as projection and of little use in a report about adaptation. You can see the relevant assumptions of the three papers in the figure below. For the WG2 to report these studies as projections of future societal damage from floods is misleading at best.
Even worse, each of the three studies utilizes the out-of-date and implausible extreme RCP8.5 scenario to project climate changes for 2100. So not only is society frozen in time, unable to adapt — which is clearly implausible, but future climate change is projected based on an extreme scenario that is also implausible. Implausibility built on implausibility offers no practical insight as to the role of adaptation in reducing vulnerabilities and increasing resilience. We might expect this sort of thing from a passionate advocacy group spinning science for theatrical effect, but not the IPCC.
What happens when adaptation is actually considered in projections of future flood risks and impacts? The IPCC notes (4-69) in the body of the text that according to another study that includes adaptation, 95% of projected flood damage in the absence of adaptation could be avoided: “projected flood damage could be reduced to 1/20th in absolute value with adequate adaptation.” The study that supports this claim (Winsemius et al. 2015) also uses RCP8.5. Even with an implausible climate future almost all damage from floods can be avoided with effective adaptation. Even further, in its supplementary materials the study includes an analysis of adaptation under a more appropriate upper end scenario (RCP4.5) and finds that flood damage could actually be reduced from today’s even with assumed changes in climate and society. Adaptation matters.
Of course, adaptation has long been viewed as problematic in climate policy and politics. The example above indicates why that is so — rather than supporting an apocalyptic view of ever-worsening impacts as a simple function of temperature increases, adaptation opportunities allow for positive human outcomes even as the climate changes. The WG2 misrepresentation of the literature of flooding is repeated throughout the report for other phenomena. Adaptation is often ignored or minimized in favor of presenting impacts as worsening a function of ever-increasing temperatures. In reality, adaptation has great potential to result in positive human futures at a wide range of levels of future emissions and temperature changes. Mitigation and adaptation are both important and the IPCC WG2 did itself and us a huge disservice by adding mitigation to its focus.
And it gets even worse. The RCP8.5 scenario which showed up in the case of flooding above is infused throughout this report. In fact, RCP8.5 plays a greater role in this report than any past IPCC report (the table below shows a count of each scenario explicitly mentioned in the report). This matters because RCP8.5 and similar extreme scenarios are now widely understood to be implausible. The IPCC Working Group 1 even acknowledged last year that such extreme scenarios are viewed as low likelihood with scenarios such as RCP4.5 more likely. Even so, RCP8.5 dominates the WG2 report’s outlook on the future (with RCP4.5 often improperly presented as mitigation success — on current policies the world is presently on track to undershoot RCP4.5 outcomes).
In fact, it is puzzling why it is that as scientific literature has accumulated indicating that such extreme scenarios are implausible — e.g., a 2017 study concluded, “RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research” — the IPCC has chosen to increase its reliance on these discredited scenarios. The figure below illustrates the increasing reliance on implausible scenarios from the Fifth (2013/14) to the Sixth (2021/22) IPCC assessment reports. I have invited IPCC contributors to justify this decision, so far no one has taken me up on the offer.
The reliance on implausible scenarios is all the more baffling because these issues have long been aired in the IPCC community. For instance, a 2016 paper from a leading scenario expert warned presciently that the lack of realistic scenarios for where the world is actually heading meant that, “it will be difficult to draw overarching conclusions from mitigation and impacts research in IPCCs 6th Assessment Report.” That has proven correct. So far, the IPCC has largely ignored the issues associated with its reliance on outdated, implausible scenarios, which fundamentally damages the credibility of its work.
There is no doubt that much excellent work from dedicated researchers is assessed by the IPCC WG2. For me, as an expert in several of the areas covered by WG2, the shortfalls in how the literature I am very familiar with is represented and the overt advocacy stance of the document lead me to distrust the overall report. (And I have not even gotten into the treatment of extreme events, including our work.) That is extremely unfortunate and a reflection of the failure of the IPCC to hold itself to its own high standards. That means playing things straight, leaving mitigation to WG3 where it belongs and avoiding the temptation to use the report for advocacy rather than assessment.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Thursday, March 03, 2022
Electric cars are less reliable than petrols, diesels and hybrids with nearly a third reporting faults that take longer to fix, says Which?
Manufacturers have been urged to boost the reliability of electric cars after Which? found they are less reliable and spend longer off the road than petrols, diesels and hybrids when needing repairs.
The consumer champion's annual car survey found that of cars up to four years old, nearly one in three (31 per cent) eleictric vehicle owners reported one fault or more, compared to less than one in five (19 per cent) petrol cars.
Owners of those faulty EVs then had to be without their cars on average for over five days while it was being fixed, which compared to just three days for petrol equivalents.
The most common faults raised by electric car drivers in the survey were software-related problems, though not issues with the electric motors or battery packs that power the vehicles.
The survey of more than 48,000 UK car owners found that the most reliable cars of any fuel type are conventional self-charging hybrids, with just one in six (17 per cent) owners reporting a fault with 'new' cars aged up to four years old in the prevailing 12 months.
Petrols were the next most dependable, with just 19 per cent of owners of newer models reporting issues, followed by plug-in hybrids (28 per cent).
Diesel cars were found to be marginally more reliable than EVs, with 29 per cent of drivers reporting issues with their oil burners.
Lisa Barber, home products and services editor at Which? said: 'We know that drivers are keen to make the move to more environmentally-friendly cars but it is vital that they are getting a quality product.'
She added: 'With EVs in particular, our research shows a premium price tag does not necessarily mean a reliable vehicle, so we would always encourage drivers to do their research ahead of such a significant purchase to see which cars and brands they can trust.'
While the report painted an unreliable picture for pure electric models, Which? concedes that most of these are software issues rather than serious faults with batteries or parts of the drivetrain that powers the vehicle.
This means most issues are likely with infotainment screens and other electrical features, such as reversing cameras.
The RAC warned that Which?'s findings 'should be taken with a pinch of salt' and that many of these software glitches raised could be simple to resolve.
James Gibson, the motoring organisation's head of technical, said: 'There is no question there are fewer moving parts with electric cars which makes them more reliable than a petrol or diesel car in the long run, but it's also the case that the software running them is more complex which has the potential to cause some issues.
'But it's very important to realise that most software problems can be solved easily, either by wireless updates or 'restarts' in the same way as a desktop computer simply by disconnecting the 12v auxiliary battery and 'rebooting' the system, something our expert patrols routinely do for our members in these situations.
'Many manufacturers are also able to help drivers sort issues out over the phone by getting them to carry out certain functions to reboot systems.
'While taking a new electric car back to the dealership is clearly frustrating it can be the case with any new car, regardless of how it's powered.'
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War marks the end for renewables
Comment from Australia
Fresh gunpowder in everyone’s nostrils has brought a new political reality.
It was only this month that US Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth demonstrated where her focus lies by introducing emission reduction plans, which would de-fang her nation’s military with features like:
* Investing in an all-electric non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035.
* Significantly reducing operational energy and water use.
Buying electricity from carbon-pollution-free generation sources.
* Reducing direct greenhouse gas emissions that result from Army training by 2028.
Overnight, urgent decarbonisation objectives and consultants’ guides to achieving them have become quirkily passé – as irrelevant within a day of its publication as The Australian’s Green Power Player’s List.
Modern military equipment depends on low cost, reliable energy as does its transport and its bullets, shells and missiles. The infrastructure behind this is equally reliant on energy as is the industrial strength without which military defence, as well as general prosperity, can exist only fleetingly.
The war in Ukraine is a wake-up call for matters much beyond ensuring defence capability.
Many are yet to fully understand this. The ABC loyally echoes Germany’s Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck, from the Greens Party, in suggesting that the Ukraine-Russia war will expedite the shift to renewable energy.
But elsewhere there is a recognition that the game has changed. Already in January, the EU had incurred the wrath of Greta by redefining gas as being a politically correct energy resource. The UK, having paused the authorisation of new oil and gas exploration leases in the North Sea, is now going full ahead with approvals. In France, without batting an eyelid, Premier Macron has reversed his opposition to nuclear and his support for renewables. And in Canada, a resurgent Opposition Conservative Party has dropped its support for the nation’s carbon tax.
Bloomberg remarks, with sadness, that in spite of ambitious Net Zero targets set at the Glasgow climate conference, ‘2022 already threatens to be the year of global backsliding. From the US to China, in Europe, India, and Japan, fossil fuels are staging a comeback, clean energy stocks are taking a hammering, and the prospects for speeding the transition to renewable sources of power are looking grim.’
A day before the gunfire started, writing in the Financial Review, the Turnbull appointed former head of Australia’s Energy Security Board, Kerry Schott, endorsed the Brookfield/Cannon-Brookes proposal to close down the NSW Eraring coal power station. She claimed that the regulatory distorted market should be left to run its course and that replacing coal be renewables would reduce costs.
The Australian Energy Market Operator has presented its own plan for an electricity market that is parametrised by state and federal green policies, but the Commonwealth is alarmed to see its discriminatory policies designed to push coal power stations out of the market actually work. The proposed closures of Origin Energy’s Eraring and AGL’s Bayswater coal generators will not be permitted to close unless something turns up to replace them. And wind and solar won’t do. Moreover, although Anthony Albanese has echoed Kerry Schott’s words claiming there is an energy transition being driven by the private sector, his views will doubtless mature during the course of the election campaign.
Yesterday’s dreams of unicorn policies where nature is treated as sacrosanct and is erroneously regarded as precarious will evaporate just as pacifism did in the 1930s with the rise of the dictatorships. Ukraine may be a long way from Australia but its fragilities are not dissimilar to those of Taiwan.
Australia has to change. Having vital business decisions taken by politicians and public servants responding to confected environmental concerns stoked by subsidy seekers has weakened the economy. Not only does this impact on living standards but it diminishes our ability to respond to foreign aggression, which recent events demonstrate remains endemic to human society.
Australia rejuvenated itself after 1982. The Hawke-Keating economic reforms were followed by incursions into government waste and a balanced the budget in the Howard-Costello decade to 2006. Since then, excluding the all too brief Abbott administration, government has regressed, bloating itself with bureaucrats and hampering enterprises with regulations.
Does Australia have a political leadership capable of resurrecting the reform process?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/fresh-gunpowder-in-the-nostrils-of-politics/
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Let’s touch on a few energy-related subjects in the wake of Russia’s market-roiling actions in Ukraine. Exxon was already riding high on the recovery of oil prices. The world has shown it’s not remotely prepared to do without fossil fuels. And a beneficiary has been Engine No. 1, the hedge fund that fought a noisy battle last year for Exxon board seats, saying it wanted to lead the oil giant away from fossil fuels, a claim the media bought hook, line and sinker.
But wait. People invest in oil companies to make money from oil, not wind and solar. Veteran fund manager Chris James, the billionaire founder of Engine Co. 1, could not have been confused on this point. Blather aside, quite clearly he meant to place a bet on Biden priorities and other factors to drive up the price of oil.
This brings up a question. Why was Mr. James nevertheless able to calculate media reporters would gobble up his climate-change snake oil? Quote the snake oil salesman but maybe at least mention he’s selling snake oil. Why does our news media so often fail us in obvious ways?
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You can tell many stories or one story about why Europe didn’t develop its fracking potential, which became richly apparent by the early 2010s. Had it done so, NATO countries would be in a stronger position now vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin and soaring energy prices.
Every country is different goes the complicated story. Farmers and townspeople didn’t want the disruption and alleged risk of drilling; environmental crusaders insisted on investment in wind and solar instead; German utility managers claimed they had Russia over a barrel and Russia would always supply gas at a lower price than shale. Kremlin anti-shale propaganda played a role. Even Romania, with a long history of oil and gas development, faltered. France imposed a moratorium. So did the U.K. Poland has difficult geology but also a big national-security interest in proceeding, and yet stumbled over “civil society” resistance, according to a fascinating study by Andreea Maierean of Wilkes University.
That’s the complicated story. The much simpler story is the lack of any pocketbook incentive in the wider public to allow fracking. In the Eastern U.S., fracking took off because most land and the accompanying mineral rights are privately held. Homeowners and farmers directly profited from drilling. In Europe, mineral rights are controlled by the state, leaving local interests no incentive to go along or put up with costs and inconveniences.
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A petition has been attracting signatures from scientists calling for a ban on most research on solar geoengineering to cool the planet. A Harvard experiment, in conjunction with Sweden, on injecting aerosol particles into the atmosphere was postponed due to activist protests.
Deciding not to learn about a technology, of course, is silly and unrealistic, and only surrenders the initiative to less responsible actors. The signers say the risks are unknown but so are the risks of the CO2 experiment already underway. They complain about the lack of a global regulating authority for geoengineering, but no such authority exists for emissions or humanity’s countless impromptu techno-industrial experiments.
Ironies abound. The computer models used to forecast future temperatures by necessity must take account of aerosol trends. So refusing to learn about particulate effects isn’t even feasible.
Unfortunately, some scientists, like many journalists, pretend to be inquirers into reality when they are really advertising their affiliation with their chosen virtue movements. The consistent failure of the climate movement has been its towering lack of realism. Developed and developing nations were never going to forgo energy use, but higher and lower carbon paths to the future were still possible. The U.S. and others might have enacted carbon taxes long ago to foster the necessary technologies. They still might, though not because of the climate lobby’s persuasiveness. It’s far more likely to happen now because politicians want revenues to finance pro-growth tax cuts.
Give the public a choice between believing climate change is the end of the world or a crock, they will choose crock. Even more so if choosing “end of the world” also means volunteering to surrender their standard of living.
Making climate change an anti-human, anti-progress, anti-prosperity creed was the biggest mistake of all if the goal was to advance climate policy, though more useful if the real purpose was assuring true believers they are special. This can be seen again in the parade of fops piously demanding humanity forgo the potential of solar geoengineerin
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Global scramble for Australian coal to replace Russian exports
The dreaded "fossil fuel" is still essential
Australian trade officials are in discussions with local coal producers as the federal government co-ordinates efforts to find supply for Poland and Asian trading partners amid a global scramble to replace Russian resources.
Officials from Austrade and the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources have been in contact with coal miners this week, asking whether capacity was available to supply Polish utilities – and whether coal promised into existing contracts could be diverted to Europe temporarily due to the Ukraine crisis.
The calls were made after high-level approaches by the Polish government seeking alternative sources to Russian coal used for heating and power generation.
Resources Minister Keith Pitt confirmed the government was “facilitating access to Australian thermal coal producers to interested parties as they seek alternative supplies from Russia”.
“Australian producers have indicated they are willing to help our friends and allies if they can,” Mr Pitt told The Australian.
Russia supplies up to 90 per cent of Poland’s coal but the country’s government has led the European charge to impose sanctions on Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
Last week Poland proposed coal be included in a European Union sanctions list despite its dependence on imports.
Industry sources say officials also sought information on whether coal supplies could be made available to customers in South Korea and Japan, following requests from their counterparts in those countries.
A number of major Australian coal producers confirmed they had been approached by Austrade and senior DISER officials, although each declined to comment on the discussions due to the sensitive nature of the requests.
Coal producers have promised to weigh the requests in consultation with their marketing and trading teams, but industry sources say additional supply is unlikely to become free for months, amid tight markets for coal and soaring global prices.
Australian coal miners have been running at full tilt for the last six months as the coal price has surged, and say there is little capacity in the system to lift export rates. There is an additional bottleneck at Australian ports, with the largest, the Port of Newcastle, at 93 per cent capacity. The Port of Brisbane is closed due to flooding.
Italy and Croatia may also follow Poland’s lead and ask Australian producers for additional tonnes to be sold to their economies, amid talk Italy is about to announce to return a mothballed coal plant in Trieste to service. Bulgaria is also said to be scouring global markets for new sources of coal supply.
While no sanctions have yet to be levied on Russian energy exports, sources say major buyers of Russian coal in Asia and Europe have already begun to cancel shipments and seek alternatives in anticipation the crisis in Europe will intensify, setting off a global scramble for supply.
Coal producers say they have also begun receiving requests for additional supplies of coking coal, though the urgency of the requests is said to be lower than that of those seeking thermal supplies.
Russia produces about 75 million tonnes of metallurgical coal a year, according to recent Macquarie figures, and about 360 million tonnes of thermal coal. About 40 per cent of its coking coal is sent into export markets, along with just under half of its thermal coal production.
The benchmark price for high quality Australian coal hit a record $US256 ($353) a tonne on Friday, and thermal coal prices delivered to Europe have jumped by $US80 in a week to $US285 a tonne on March 1. Forward curves for Australian energy coal have shot up beyond $US300 a tonne this week, industry sources say, with one shipment of high grade thermal coal from South Africa reported to have changed hands for as much as $US350 recently.
The shock return of war in Europe has forced a short-term reshaping of global energy trade routes outside of coal. Qatar is rerouting some LNG shipments bound for Asia to European customers, with Australian producers stepping into the gap to make up for the regional shortfall.
But the crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also forcing a broader rethink of energy policy in the EU and beyond.
German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck told the country’s parliament that it needed a new energy masterplan to end its reliance on Russian gas exports, flagging a potential reversal of policies to phase out nuclear and coal power stations.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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March 02, 2022
New island in Papua New Guinea prompts territorial dispute
The Warmist "spin" put on the article below is flagrantly dishonest. Coral cays throughout the Pacific are expanding. The cay mentioned below is one of many. There are hundreds of them. But the reality of it contradicts Warmist expectations. Islands are supposed to be disaster areas. So the island below has to be treated as aberrant. Expectations trump the facts
While across the Pacific communities are dealing with shrinking coastlines, one area in Papua New Guinea has an altogether different problem: a new island that has solidified and started supporting vegetation in the last few years has caused tensions and even outbreaks of violence as competing clans lay claim to the land.
That fight has been intensified as communities struggle to deal with the consequences of warming oceans and the devastating impact of natural disasters.
The island, off the village of Gona in Oro province, and accessible by canoe, has gradually formed from three smaller islands over the course of two decades but has only solidified over the past few years.
Uninhabited bar the occasional fisherman, it is now home to diverse local flora. Tropical pine (Klinki pine) make up the majority of trees while low-growing shrubs cover the rest of the island.
“At first [when forming], it was made entirely of just crushed coral and sand, but now there’s soil and we see vegetation that normally only grows in soil,” says Simon Seboda, a local fisherman. “We haven’t planted anything. Everything sprang up naturally and on its own. The rain and waves wash a lot of seeds on to the island.”
But the island’s emergence from the waves has caused tensions among two local clans, which have taken the matter to village and district courts in a bid to resolve the dispute. On several occasions they have come to blows, including one instance in which a man was stabbed.
Members of the Yega tribe say their ancestors first settled the mainland opposite the island hundreds of years ago, in a village called Waususu, and eventually moved inland.
But the Garara people who now live along the coastline have also laid claim to the island
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Alaska Gov. Dunleavy: We Can Supply Plenty Of Oil, ‘If We’re Allowed To”
Things don’t have to be so bad in America but apparently, Joe Biden wants it this way.
Just eighteen months ago the United States was energy independent as the largest producer of oil in the entire world, but then came along Joe Biden and his far-left parties Green New Deal.
Immediately following President Biden’s inauguration, his handlers in the White House wrote and presented an executive order to Joe, which he signed, stopping the building and completion of The Keystone XL pipeline.
The developer halted all construction on the project months after its permit was revoked by the Biden administration. The pipeline was set to carry oil 1,200 miles (1,900km) from the Canadian province of Alberta down to Nebraska, (Jun 9, 2021)
On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) stated that Alaska is ready to do its part in helping the U.S. reduce its dependence on foreign energy if the Biden administration will allow it to do so and argued that oil from Alaska is better for the environment than oil from Russia.
Dunleavy said, “I think we should do both. I think we should push renewables, and we should push oil and gas. I think they both present great opportunities for this country. And I don’t understand why we aren’t doing that, especially given what’s happening over in Russia. We’ve had the same issue with Iran and others that are not necessarily friendly to the United States. And so, Neil, I’m all for opportunities. I think we should push it. Alaska could do its part. We have billions of barrels of oil still in the ground. We’ve got about 126 trillion cubic feet of gas that we can deliver to our friends in Asia, as well as our west coast. So, we’re prepared and ready to do our part, if this administration allows us to.”
He added, “We still import oil from Russia, which makes no sense to us here in Alaska. You know, the worry by many of the environmentalists is if you drill in Arctic Alaska, you’re somehow going to spoil it. Do people really think if you drill in Arctic Russia, that they are going to have tougher environmental regulations than we are? That’s simply not true. And so, a molecule of oil coming from America is going to be a cleaner molecule of oil than if it’s coming from Russia. And, at the same time, we’re going to supply ourselves and our friends with American oil if we’re allowed to do that. That just makes for better national security, and again, a lower price at the pump.”
When asked about what steps President Biden was going to take to combat the increasing oil and gas prices resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in line with the goals of the Great Reset, zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner, flippantly said that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has highlighted the need for America to reduce its consumption of foreign oil.
Yes, America, the Biden administration which could unleash the massive oil production infrastructure of the U.S., but they are choosing not to.
Instead, they are hoping that the pain consumers are feeling at the pump will eventually force them into buying overpriced electric cars. If this plan doesn’t work, Americans will vote them out of office, replacing them with a pro-America President who will reverse everything Biden did, leading to lower fuel prices and much more.
In the end, the voters will have the final say. If they vote blue, electric cars are on the way, if they choose red though, oil rigs are here to stay.
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European Industry Faces Shrink or Shut Decisions on Energy Pain
Europe’s biggest industrial firms have been banking on spring to bring down soaring energy costs. Those hopes faded this week as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.
Smelters and chemical factories across Europe were already struggling before the invasion sparked another jump in gas and electricity prices. Now, a growing list of companies including Europe’s biggest chemicals maker BASF SE are warning the energy crisis will keep hacking away at their bottom lines for the foreseeable future.
“Energy prices will stay at a high level and they won’t go back to normal soon,” said Martin Brudermueller, BASF’s chief executive officer.
BASF already took an 800-million euro ($900 million) hit from rising gas prices in the fourth quarter, and the situation could worsen if the U.S. and Europe broaden sanctions against Russia, which supplies more than 40% of the European Union’s natural gas.
“It would be very difficult to replace Russian gas with liquefied natural gas from elsewhere,” Brudermueller said.
BASF isn’t alone. The energy-intensive metals industry is also struggling. Aluminium Dunkerque Industries France, Europe’s largest aluminum smelter, had planned to ramp up curtailed production after the French government helped shoulder as much as 80% of the cost burden. But the renewed surge in prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put the plan on ice, a labor union official said.
European gas prices have surged, denting BASF profits
Meanwhile, Germany’s Trimet Aluminium SE said manufacturing the metal isn’t economical at present energy prices. And building-materials giant HeidelbergCement AG on Thursday warned that profits are likely to suffer from rising energy costs over the coming months.
European energy prices surged in the autumn, tipping smaller firms across the continent toward bankruptcy and prompting others to temporarily cut production at unprofitable factories. The continent’s larger industrial firms typically purchase their energy in monthly tranches, a strategy that initially enabled them to absorb the price shocks and more gradually pass them to consumers.
While mild weather eased gas prices off record highs hit Dec. 21, benchmark month-ahead prices have traded at nearly four times the five-year average of 90 euros per megawatt hour over the past five months.
Gas prices have been highly volatile since Russia’s invasion. Benchmark month-ahead contracts surged 60% to an intraday high of 143 euros per megawatt hour Thursday, before falling back to trade around 90 euros per megawatt hour late Friday.
Low Storage
Wolfgang Hahn, owner of Energy Consulting GmbH that gives energy advisory services to 2,500 companies in Germany, said there’s growing concern about energy supplies later in the year.
“Many companies are already looking forward to next autumn and winter and are wondering whether the gas storage facilities will be filled again,” Hahn said. They’re also worried “whether an appropriate alternative to Russian gas will be found, or whether gas imports from Russia will be completely interrupted.”
In the days since hostilities began in Ukraine, prices have spiked for forward contracts for warmer months when consumers typically use less energy to power and heat their homes. The impact of sanctions, Germany’s decision to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and uncertainty around Russian gas supplies that flow through Ukraine are expected to keep prices elevated over the coming months.
“Firm supplies through Ukraine and NS2 are needed to balance the European gas market and rebuild depleted storage levels,” Rystad Energy analysts said in a note. “The suspension of NS2 wipes out all hope of this and will likely create a prolonged supply deficit and high prices in the European gas market.”
Goldman Sachs Inc. analysts said prolonged price increases will force some industrial producers to shrink or shutter.
“We now believe price-induced industrial demand destruction will be required in the second half of the year to balance the European gas market,” the analysts wrote in a note.
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Anti-mining green frauds not welcome in Central Qld
By Robert Schwarten, a former minister in an Australian Labor Party government. His electorate was in Central Queensland
If the Greens think they can repeat Bob Brown’s stunt of bringing an anti-mining convoy to Central Queensland, they’ve got another thing coming, says Robert Schwarten.
Greens leader Adam Brandt says he will repeat green fraud Bob Brown’s stunt in Capricornia in bringing up a paid gaggle of misfits and no-hopers to protest mining in Central Queensland.
He is in for a rude shock if he expects the same reception. Here’s why.
In 2019, Labor candidates in CQ were instructed to ignore Brown and his convoy of paid parasites on the way to promote a public meeting hosted by the LNP in Clermont.
I actually paid for a large sign to put on my ute and parked at the northern entrance to the city. I authorised the wording, “Welcome Brown and your convoy of coal-fired hypocrites.”
Russell Robertson, the ALP candidate for Capricornia, received a call from someone in the campaign office telling him to get rid of the signage.
As Robertson did not have any involvement he did not comply. Some campaign flunky rang me and I impolitely told him where to go.
This time Labor’s message is clear. Coalminers are not criminals, coal is here for as long as the market says, our coal workers will not be put at risk by overseas miners undercutting their jobs and product quality.
I note that has displeased some of the keyboard job snobs who tut-tut about Labor endorsing coalminers as candidates.
Our party was formed on miners, shearers and other manual workers. It is still their party, the one that still stands up for workers’ rights, and the Tories are still those that oppose them. Rump parties are still the opportunistic oddballs they always were.
Anthony Albanese has had to campaign directly against the inner-city Greens to preserve his political hide. He is not going to sanction any meekness towards a Greens invasion into Labor votes here.
His message could not have been clearer last time he was in Rocky: “Capricornia needs a coalmine worker in Canberra.”
He pointed to the number of times current LNP member Michelle Landry had voted down legislation aimed at improving the lot of workers. Casualisation, penalty rates, mine safety and wage parity were just a few points he raised.
Given that Australians are generally waking up to these impostors it is likely the vote will come down further.
The truth is, Labor has a proud record of achievement on environmental reforms. Brown big-noted himself on saving the Franklin River in Tasmania, but that was the Hawke Labor government.
Brown was merely the protester. The protectors were the Labor MPs who voted to save it.
The Greens voted (with the LNP and One Nation) to sink the Labor Carbon Trading scheme a decade ago. Every bit of carbon thrown into the air since then is theirs.
The Greens have never saved anything. They have never had to put up a Budget, much less a serious policy.
The billboards are awash up here with desperate statements from the LNP of a green alliance with Labor.
Reality is with polling pointing to a Labor lead the numbers mean it will be the LNP, which may well be trying to cobble together One Nation, the Katters and every other ratbag rump if they want to keep their hands in the public till.
Mining is not the conversation piece it was last time. Skills shortages, house prices, the lack of rental accommodation, nursing home workers’ pay are just to pick a few.
The sports rort issue is hotting up too as impoverished clubs want to know where their money is.
Petrol prices and interest rates are hot topics – the cost of meat in the beef capital is at an all-time high. That wages are not keeping pace is also being felt and talked about.
Adam Brandt and his other impostors take note. Whichever way you come into CQ, you will be met with a Labor-led protest.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, March 01, 2022
Best to be rich if you drive an electric car
Almost 10 million households in England and Wales risk missing out on savings of £950 a year that come from owning an electric car, according to a study warning that richer households stand to benefit most.
About a third of households have no access to off-street parking or a personal garage, so will miss out on lower costs from charging the cars using cheaper overnight electricity.
Switching to those tariffs and away from fossil fuel-run cars could see weekly fuel costs fall from £21 to less than £3 for those who can access them. However, while 76% of the richest households have access to off-street parking, the same is true for only 56% of the poorest fifth of households. The findings emerge in a forthcoming study by the Resolution Foundation thinktank examining Britain’s plans for achieving net zero emissions and the impact on living standards. The switch to electric vehicles has the potential to cut fuel costs, but it reveals the barriers that remain in ensuring everyone can access them.
Purchases of battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) have already surpassed projections, representing one-in-five new vehicles bought so far this year. This is double even the most ambitious projections produced by the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on green policies.
The running costs are one of their major draws. Even public charging points cost about 25% less than the average cost of filling a petrol car at the pumps. However, the type of home someone has will impact on the costs of charging. “Unless addressed, these stark cost differences risk creating a ‘charging divide’ – with the bulk of savings risk being accrued by richer households, which risks widening inequality,” the report concludes.
It finds that for households with off-street parking at home, low-cost overnight charging could see annual running costs fall to £139, or £389 for those who do not use the cheapest off-peak tariffs. However, those with no choice but to use the public network of charging points face annual fuel costs of £712 – five times higher than the cheapest off-peak tariff. The equivalent cost of filling up a petrol car is around £1,100 a year. Some 9.8 million households across England and Wales have no access to a garage or off-street parking.
Non-homeowners are less likely to have access to off street parking. Only 51% of private renters, 38% of housing association tenants and 26% of local authority renters have such access, compared to 81% of homeowners.
The government can address the ‘charging divide’ by acting to reduce the disparity in prices across the network.
Jonny Marshall, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, called on ministers to prioritise reducing the cost of public charging and encourage the installation of home charging points in rented accommodation. “Britain’s electric car revolution must be more than just buying new cars,” he said. “The government can address this ‘charging divide’ by acting to reduce the disparity in prices across the charging network and stop those without access to at-home charging paying a much higher rate.”
It comes after calls from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last year for the government to intervene in the electric car charger market to prevent “charging deserts”. It said locations outside of London remained underserved. The expansion of electric car use is a key part of government plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
A DfT spokesperson said: “We’re providing over £1.3bn to support the roll-out of charge points at homes, businesses and on residential streets, and today a driver is never more than 25 miles from a rapid chargepoint anywhere along England’s major A roads and motorways. Our EV Infrastructure Strategy will soon be published, setting out our vision to create a world-leading charging infrastructure network.”
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Climate Action Faces Reality Check In The Energy Crisis
The climate summit in Glasgow in November coincided with the start of the winter heating season in the northern hemisphere. Just as global leaders were racing to pledge net-zero commitments and decisive action to address the worst impacts of climate change, Europe and Asia were starting to see first-hand what tight traditional energy markets looked like.
Despite the record rise in global investments in renewables and clean energy capacity installations in recent years, renewable energy was not enough to meet the rebound in electricity consumption. Power generation and energy-intensive industries found themselves low on the key fossil fuel commodities—coal and natural gas—as the economies recovered from the pandemic slump.
Government priorities turned from actions to reduce emissions in the long term to addressing the immediate energy crunch, soaring energy bills, and catering for the near-term energy security. Even countries that have pledged net-zero by 2050, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, saw coal consumption rise as natural gas became too expensive for some power generating units.
Emissions Soar As Fossil Fuels Stage A Comeback
For example, surging natural gas prices and low wind speeds in the autumn of 2021 forced the UK to fire up an old coal plant to meet electricity demand, despite the fact that the country had pledged to phase out coal-fired power generation by October 2024.
China, the world's largest polluter and top coal consumer, ordered a ramp-up of coal production, which hit record-highs for both December 2021 and the whole of 2021. China was looking to secure energy supply for the winter, cool the high coal prices, and avoid a repeat of the autumn 2021 power crisis.
In the United States, coal is making a transitory comeback as annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation rose in 2021 for the first time since 2014 as high natural gas prices incentivize more coal use in electricity generation. U.S. coal production will increase by almost 5 percent in 2022 and then rise by another 3 percent in 2023, the EIA says.
As a result of surging coal-fired power generation in 2021, the progress in U.S. emission reduction was reversed last year, moving from 22.2 percent below 2005 levels in 2020 to only 17.4 percent in 2021, "putting the US even further off track from achieving its 2025 and 2030 climate targets," Rhodium Group said in an estimate last month.
The economic rebound from the pandemic took world coal power generation to a new record high last year, with global coal demand likely hitting another new high this year, undermining net-zero efforts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual Coal 2021 report in December.
"The fast rebound in overall energy demand strained supply chains for coal and natural gas, pushing up wholesale electricity prices. Despite the impressive growth of renewable power, electricity generation from coal and gas hit record levels. As a result, the global electricity sector's annual carbon dioxide emissions leaped to a new all-time high after having decreased for the previous two years," the IEA said in its Electricity Market Report - January 2022 with 2021 data.
Moreover, coal met more than half of the increase in global electricity demand last year, the IEA said.
All these consequences of the post-COVID global economic rebound are raising emissions to records once again, after a record decline in 2020.
Energy Crisis Highlights High Cost Of Transition
Governments are still committed to their net-zero courses, but they have started to realize that net-zero would probably cost much more than they had imagined, including the social cost to push forward policies to decarbonize energy use.
"We're going to have a multi-year stress test of political will to impose costly transition policies," Bob McNally, president of U.S. consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official, told Bloomberg.
While still pushing for net-zero, governments right now are trying to contain the fallout from the energy crisis that led to skyrocketing energy bills for consumers.
At the same time, the Biden Administration is desperate to see the high U.S. gasoline prices fall, especially in view of the midterm elections in November, when the Democrats could lose majority in Congress, which could stall further ambitious climate action policies from President Biden.
Referring to the global pace of transition needed to limit global warming, John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, said last month:
"We're in trouble. I hope everybody understands that. Not trouble we can't get out of, but we're not on a good track."
Most countries have the ability to deploy very significant additional amounts of renewables, yet they are choosing to go with gas, but gas without affordable 100-percent emission abatement is not helping climate goals, Kerry added.
"Unless we honour the promises made, to turn the commitments in the Glasgow Climate Pact into action, they will wither on the vine," the Glasgow Summit COP26 President, Alok Sharma, said at a Chatham House event last month.
The climate policy leaders in the U.S. and the UK are urging the world to keep the pledges from the latest climate summit. Yet, a large part of the world is now focused on securing immediate energy supply, which risks undermining emission reduction targets and net-zero commitments.
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Germany May Extend Coal Use to Replace Russian Gas
Germany is getting ready to prolong the use of coal as the country seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian energy in the aftermath of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Coal plants could run beyond 2030 -- when Germany currently targets an end for the fuel -- but the ultimate goal is greater energy independence through renewable power, said Robert Habeck, vice chancellor and minister for economy and energy.
“Energy policy is security policy,” Habeck said on Monday prior to talks with European Union counterparts. “Strengthening our energy sovereignty strengthens our security. Therefore, we must first overcome the high dependence on Russian imports of fossil fuels -- a warmonger is not a reliable partner.”
Germany, which gets more than half of its gas from Russia, has undergone a rapid shift in policy in reaction to the assault on Ukraine. Alongside a massive boost in defense spending, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Sunday plans to build two new liquefied natural gas terminals, signaling a longer term realignment of Germany’s energy sector.
Even before the invasion, Scholz halted the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline built to bring more Russian gas directly to Germany and bypass transit through Ukraine.
Germany is now looking at short- and long-term measures to safeguard its energy market from any possible abrupt cutoff of Russian gas. Habeck, the former co-leader of the anti-nuclear Green party, even said he wasn’t “ideologically opposed” to extending the use of the country’s last reactors, but safety is a concern.
“There are no taboos,” Habeck said in an interview late Sunday with public broadcaster ARD. “The real path to independence in terms of energy policy is actually to phase out fossil fuels. The sun and the wind don’t belong to anyone.”
The Economy Ministry is proposing that Germany generate all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2035, 15 years earlier than originally planned, according to a tweet from a ministry official.
The energy rethink has broad backing in Germany’s ruling coalition. Finance Minister Christian Lindner -- from the business-friendly Free Democrats -- on Sunday called renewable power “freedom energy” as it would help reduce reliance on Russia and said he supports the efforts to push ahead with an expansion of hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
“I strongly urge that we review our foreign energy policy,” he said in an ARD interview late Sunday. “This is now all the more pressing.”
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Reporters swallow spin on coal power closures
Australian business journalists apparently missed some of the world’s biggest stories of the past year when they reported on last week’s $5bn bid by local billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian “alternative asset manager” Brookfield.
They did not link the bid and statements about bringing forward the end of AGL’s coal power generation to four months of European power shortages and soaring prices driven by a lack of wind power, nor to brownouts in California and Texas or even to Russian gas price extortion.
The body representing the transmission industry here, Energy Networks Australia, warned last Thursday week: “Increases in energy supply charges across the UK are cause for concern as almost 22 million households will see an average increase in their energy bill of 54 per cent from April.”
Yet only days later many at the Nine newspapers were starry-eyed about their local tech hero bidding for an old-fashioned power company so he could close down its coal-fired power generators earlier than AGL had already planned. They seemed to accept Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield were putting the planet before their pockets.
Reporters showed no sign they had heard about last week’s pact between Russia and China to shore up 100 million tonnes of coal a year for their mutual benefit, a deal announced the Friday before Monday morning’s AGL bid.
This paper’s environment editor Graham Lloyd summed it up perfectly, telling this column: “Mike says renewables freeloading off coal are cheaper so ipso facto, building five times as much renewables will be cheaper still.”
Kerry Schott, head of the Energy Security Board, could see no reason for the government to block the bid, writing in The Australian Financial Review online last Tuesday. Schott did not mention early coal closures would depend on storage technologies to firm the power grid when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
Yet she told PV magazine on May 4 last year: “I know a lot of people hate this but (it’s being proposed to) leave open some management of (coal station) exits so that we can actually keep the system going.
“As coal leaves the system it will be replaced by a mixture of pumped hydro and gas. In due course we will have hydrogen to complement the gas.”
Schott said in PV that big batteries were helpful for stabilising the grid but “as it stands they just aren’t a reliable capacity replacement”. Big batteries were about network frequency harmonisation, and their storage lasted a maximum of four hours.
Not much has been said about storage in the reporting of Mike’s excellent power adventure. Indeed, the bid scarcely mentions storage, although the word does appear in a response to AGL’s rejection of the $7.50 a share offer.
Mark Carney, vice-chair of Brookfield Asset Management, did however point to the reason this kind of deal is flourishing globally: “Energy transition will be one of the biggest investment opportunities of our lifetimes. It is estimated $US150 trillion will need to be invested globally through 2050 to drive the decarbonisation of energy markets.”
This column argued on October 18: “Investors are short-selling the fossil fuels industry because they can make more money on taxpayer-guaranteed renewables.” The transition is giving dictators in Moscow and Beijing a lever over the West that they could not have dreamt of. US President Joe Biden is playing into their hands right now, making it harder for gas pipeline companies to operate in the US.
In the UK it is possible only 10 companies of the 70 that supplied the electricity market a year ago will survive. Many in the UK want Britain to resume fracking and expand its North Sea oil drilling program.
Part of the problem around the world wherever the energy transition is advanced is the zealotry of environmentalists and their business and media acolytes who won’t admit renewables just don’t work well when demand for them is highest: at breakfast time, especially in winter while the sun is low and the wind calm, or at dinner time when the sun has gone.
They also hate admitting gas plants that can be turned on and off quickly are one of the most efficient ways of dealing with the intermittency problem.
Schott’s AFR piece argues the government has no need to worry about the AGL bid driving up prices. But speaking to this column on Thursday she did say AGL, and all other large suppliers, would be forced to rely more on gas when intermittent energy flows were low and that all the large suppliers would need pumped hydro.
“Particularly in Victoria, the state will need to build more gas and hydro dispatchable power,” Schott said.
Many in business and the media suggest storage batteries at the home, charged by rooftop solar during the day, may be the solution to firming the network. But just like state government subsidies for electric cars, this will involve the poor effectively paying more for power to subsidise those who can afford home battery storage.
Another preferred firming solution of the Energy Security Board is investing billions of dollars in extending transmission lines to help to offset geographical differences in wind and solar output on given days.
Schott told this column: “The way you deal with intermittency is first of all by having a lot of transmission to add renewable capacity and to use different regional weather patterns across the network. Typically if it’s not windy in northwest Victoria and South Australia, which have a similar wind system, it’s then very windy in New England. If you have more transmission lines when you have wind drought down south you can use more wind from Queensland and New England.”
So while the ESB has a plan to make the transition to renewables smooth and reliable it is not unreasonable for governments and large users such as the Tomago aluminium smelter in the NSW Hunter Valley to be concerned. When people such as Cannon-Brookes simply announce renewables are cheaper than coal, they are forgetting the tens of billions of dollars that will need to be spent on storage and new transmission lines, all of which will have to be paid for by consumers.
It is only the market design mechanism created in response to political decisions that has made coal uneconomical. Coal stations that run 24 hours a day cannot compete at five-minute bidding intervals with renewables, gas and hydro. Gas and hydro can be turned off when not used but large coal plants cannot.
Back to the real story about the AGL bid and coal closures. As Matthew Warren pointed out in Thursday’s AFR, AGL’s NSW and Victorian power stations, Bayswater and Loy Yang, are its most modern. Whatever Cannon-Brookes says and whoever owns AGL, these will be its last ones standing. AGL will need them for insurance so it can meet its contracts – lest it follow the UK suppliers down the tube.
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