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 October, 2021
Is the European energy crisis pushing Germany towards nukes?
Is nuclear energy a sustainable fuel or not? This is the question which rests on the European Union’s shoulders. The decision has caused a deep rift across Europe about climate-friendly energy solutions for the future with nations disagreeing about which sources should be classed as green or not. Nuclear-reliant France has been leading the charge for the inclusion of nuclear power as a green source, but Germany is critical of the move. However, despite moving away from nuclear power, the nation has been remarkably quiet on the subject.
Soaring gas prices and household energy bills have been a key topic for EU member states in recent weeks as the continent faces an energy crisis.
The EU has been discussing how to best achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
One of the most important and divisive issues is the issue of nuclear power.
On October 11, 10 EU member states led by France expressed their joint support for including nuclear power in the EU’s “taxonomy on sustainable financing,” which would essentially allow the EU to support nuclear projects under its green financing initiative.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1512174/EU-energy-crisis-Germany-nuclear-energy-summit-France-latest-EVG
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Biden's heating oil fiasco
Almost all countries are increasing energy consumption compared to last year. Yet it reflects a return to normal, not a historic increase.
As the world climbs out of government-inflicted COVID-19 shutdowns, energy demand is certain to climb. In fact, all energy sources and fuels are in high demand. Such is why the price of oil and natural gas continues to rise.
European utilities are even switching from natural gas back to coal power this winter, just to keep the lights on and the heat running. According to a report from Bloomberg Quint, American utility executives are warning that we may well do the same, and even then, we may still see blackouts in some areas.
The latest Energy Outlook report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) explains that "[e]lectricity generation from coal-fired power plants has not increased as much in response to rising natural gas prices as it has in the past, or by as much as our models forecasted in recent STEOs. The lower price responsiveness of coal for electricity generation, which is likely the result of constraints on coal supply and low coal stocks, is contributing to upward pressure on natural gas prices."
EIA continues, explaining its predictions for the coming winter: "We forecast that average U.S. household expenditures for all major home heating fuels will increase significantly this winter primarily because of higher expected fuel costs as well as more consumption of energy due to a colder winter."
Even if it's not a particularly cold winter, EIA says your bill will still be higher: "Altering our assumptions for a 10% colder-than-expected winter significantly increases forecast expenditures, while a 10% warmer-than-expected winter still results in increased expenditures, because of price increases."
Although White House press secretary Jen Psaki makes snide jokes about "the tragedy of the treadmill that's delayed" (demonstrating a lack of awareness and tact that is becoming characteristic of the Biden administration), the reality is that there are essential materials and equipment that aren't reaching vital energy industries. Supplies used in offshore drilling and production, for example, that normally take only a few days to deliver now take weeks.
The Biden administration can make light of the supply chain situation all they want, often implying that it primarily affects the wealthy, who can afford to buy treadmills and other nonessential luxury goods. However, the downstream impact of supply shortages and delays will disproportionately harm America's poorest.
South Carolina residents are already being warned that their heating bills could rise by at least $11 per month this year and into next. That may not seem like much, but it matters for people who survive on tight or fixed budgets, especially when everything else they need is more expensive due to historic inflation. Gasoline, food, winter clothing, and practically every product in between is more expensive due to ever-increasing inflation.
As if our domestic problems were not enough, remember when Russia was our worst enemy ever? According to the left, Russia singlehandedly interfered with the 2016 election, helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
So why did President Biden allow completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Trump blocked, which will supply Germany with natural gas from Russia? This comes as we import a record amount of natural gas from Russia. Even worse, why did Biden kill the Keystone XL pipeline? And why does the administration impose increasingly strict regulations on our oil and gas industries?
In other words, Biden is suppressing U.S. energy production while buying energy from our rivals. When you also consider the Biden administration's unwavering devotion to moving away from coal and other fossil fuels, it's not hard to see why production is struggling to keep up with increased demand. In less than ten months, Biden has terminated U.S. energy independence.
Sadly, the supply chain crisis and fuel shortages that will harm Americans this winter and beyond have been created by dumb, but deliberate, government decisions, not natural market fluctuations, and not a world war.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/bidens_heating_bill_fiasco.html
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Don't let climate activist banks restrict capital access
On Sunday, government officials, business leaders, activists, and Hollywood celebrities will gather in Glasgow, Scotland. They'll be there for COP26, a conference that aims to secure new commitments from governments to reduce carbon emissions.
Although there are many figures and groups that are sure to play a pivotal role at the conference, including President Joe Biden, perhaps the most important are the members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. This group of banks has committed to using its economic weight to push societies toward adopting "green" energy sources, such as wind and solar.
Members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which includes 84 large banks from 36 countries, have pledged to "transition all operational and attributable [greenhouse gas] emissions from our lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by mid-century, or sooner, including CO2 emissions reaching net-zero at the latest by 2050." Member banks have also promised to "set 2030 targets (or sooner) and a 2050 target, with intermediary targets to be set every 5 years from 2030 onwards."
The decision to "transition all operational and attributable [greenhouse gas] emissions" from "lending and investment portfolios" is an incredibly important development. It means that some banks are planning to pressure businesses, investors, and perhaps even everyday citizens to adopt policies in line with their climate change agenda. Regardless, that is, of whether customers want to abide by this action or can afford it.
Under the terms set by the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which could be expanded at COP26 or in the months that follow, banks could deny business loans to a delivery company that refuses to switch to an all-electric vehicle fleet. Similarly, banks could deny access to financial services to investment firms that hold stock in fossil fuel companies. Seven of the largest and most influential banks in the United States have joined the alliance, including three in October alone: Amalgamated Bank, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo.
Together, these banks control trillions of dollars in assets and dominate most of the consumer banking industry. Of the five largest U.S. banks , four are now members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, and it’s highly likely more will follow. Banks should not be permitted to discriminate against customers or potential customers because they participate in lawful business practices.
Even if you believe man-induced climate change is a crisis, you shouldn’t support giving to banks this tremendous control over our society and economy. It is undemocratic, and it is dangerous. Decisions about climate change and other important issues should be made at the state and federal levels by elected politicians who can be held accountable.
We never voted to give banks this prospective control over our country. Under previous administrations, discriminatory policies such as these would not have been permitted. Our elected officials must stand up now to stop this outrage.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dont-let-climate-activist-banks-restrict-capital-access
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Australian PM to resist global coal ban pressure at G20
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would resist pressure at the G20 summit to phase out fossil fuels like coal.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has landed in Rome ahead of the G20 summit, saying it is a “pivotal time” for the world’s largest economies to be focussing on the road ahead.
Decarbonising the world is a similar challenge to creating vaccines to end the Covid pandemic, Scott Morrison says, and he wants to prioritise working with other countries to develop new low emissions technologies to find solutions.
Speaking after touching down in Rome, the Prime Minister said Australia’s net zero plan was “crystal clear”, and that he would resist pressure at this weekend’s G20 talks and the Glasgow climate summit to phase out fossil fuels including coal. “Our policy is very clear - we’re not engaged in those sorts of mandates and bans,“ he said.
Mr Morrison also spoke about his call with French President Emmanuel Macron, saying his counterpart expressed “obvious disappointment which we respect and understand” about Australia’s cancellation of its $90bn submarine contract. “We’ve started the way back and I think that’s a positive thing,” he said.
Mr Morrison landed in Rome on Friday night ahead of the G20, during which he will also hold one-on-one talks with Indonesian President Joko Widodo to settle any concerns about Australia’s new plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Key issues on the G20 agenda include locking in a new global minimum corporate tax rate, as well as emissions reduction ahead of next week’s Glasgow climate change summit.
The leaders will also discuss the economic and health recovery from Covid, with Mr Morrison pushing for enhanced disease surveillance and greater transparency to prevent a repeat of the Covid pandemic.
“When there are common accountabilities and obligations that run across multiple jurisdictions, we will see digital platform companies truly invest in making the online world safer,” Mr Morrison said.
The G20 talks, held amid tight security in the Italian capital, mark the first in-person meeting between the leaders since the pandemic began, although Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend.
Mr Morrison will continue to advocate for open trade and reforms to the World Trade Organisation, as Australia tackles China’s ongoing campaign of economic coercion.
US President Joe Biden also landed in Rome on Friday and was expected to hold his first face-to-face meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron since the AUKUS defence pact was unveiled and Australia ripped up its $90bn French submarines contract.
Mr Macron and Mr Morrison broke the ice on Thursday, with the French President saying Australia’s decision “broke the relationship of trust between our two countries”.
Italy wants a specific commitment to reduce methane emissions, but Mr Morrison has already rejected that to protect Australian farmers.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/pm-push-for-global-rules-on-social-media-at-g20/news-story/7e590fbaa3be1dddd09cfbadfbe48871
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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 October, 2021
Climate leader or hypocrite? Germany’s green record under the microscope as Cop26 approaches
Germany likes to fancy itself as a global leader in the fight against climate change, and seldom hesitates to wag a finger at other leading industrial countries – such as China and the United States – for being laggards when it comes to making meaningful cuts in CO2 emissions.
But the reality is that Germany’s own efforts to stop the climate crisis fail to match the soaring rhetoric, and, more importantly, fall short of what scientists say is needed to avert the worst – even though some relatively easy changes, such as introducing a speed limit on its high-speed motorways, could have an immediate impact on reducing the country’s emissions.
Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, is also the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
That disconnect between the lofty talk about climate leadership and the reality in Germany is in many ways a microcosm of the dissonance around the world ahead of the United Nations Cop26 summit in Glasgow next week, where global leaders will attempt to thrash out more meaningful action to try to slow a perilous rise in global temperatures.
“There’s an enormous gap between who we are and who we think we are,” says Luisa Neubauer, 25, a leading climate activist in Germany.
We’re talking about climate change, yet at the same time expanding our national infrastructure for importing more natural gas. Germany is everything but a role model when it comes to fighting climate change. We need to face up to that reality.”
An export-driven economy that is by far the largest in Europe, Germany is behind only China, the United States, India, Russia and Japan when it comes to CO2 emissions. One of the first countries to industrialise, Germany is the fourth-largest CO2 emitter in history – having produced more than 92 billion metric tonnes of CO2 emissions since 1750.
“We are well aware of what needs to be done, we know about the problem, we discuss it but it doesn’t make a difference,” says Neubauer, who works closely with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
“We’re one of the world’s biggest polluters and are betraying the younger generations. We carry a huge responsibility in Germany. Who are we to point a finger at other countries? We are far away from fulfilling our own promises. The reality is glorified here because we think we’re so green. If we can’t get what’s needed done, how can we expect other countries to get things done?”
Germany has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent since 1990, helped considerably by the unintentional implosion of industry as the heavily polluting factories in Communist East Germany closed in the wake of reunification. Germany just barely managed to meet its 2020 emission targets, rather surprisingly and at the last minute, thanks to the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic throttled its powerhouse economy and cut emissions sharply in 2020.
But Germany is already projected to miss its 2021 targets due to the economic rebound and a 6 per cent rise in emissions this year, according to an estimate by the Agora Energiewende think tank in Berlin.
The absence of any speed limit on the country’s Autobahn is just one telling illustration of the disconnect between Germany’s lofty image of itself as a leader in fighting climate change and the reality. Powerful cars built by companies such as Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Volkswagen regularly zip around at speeds of up to 130 mph or more.
The mighty car-industry lobby has prevented successive governments from seriously considering changing the law on speed limits, because it is understood that the image of high-speed German cars is vital to helping carmakers sell their vehicles in foreign markets – and to protecting millions of jobs at home in Germany.
An estimated five per cent of Germany’s transportation emissions could be reduced overnight if there were a speed limit of 80 mph. But the unlimited upper speed on the motorways is a sacred cow in Germany, where the country’s Conservative Party once even compared speed limits to communism with a campaign slogan: “Freie Fahrt für frei Bürger” (free travel speeds for free citizens).
“The speed limit is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Neubauer. “We need to be talking about a complete transformation of entire industrial sectors, but people are caught up with opposing a speed limit because they think it would limit their freedom. Too many people in Germany mix up habits with freedom. I realise people want to keep their habits. But our habits are creating terror for the rights of other people. Our habits are destroying the world and will be taking away a lot of people’s freedoms.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/germany-climate-change-cop26-coal-b1947081.html
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The Extreme Scenario that IPCC Saw as Most Likely in 2013 is Now Judged Low Likelihood
Jim O’Brien, Clintel’s Irish ambassador and active in the Irish Climate Science Forum regularly organizes very interesting lectures given by prominent climate scientists. Last night the well-known US climate/policy scientist Roger Pielke Jr had the virtual floor. The full talk can be viewed above or on youtube.
In his lecture, Roger will give valuable insights on the recently?released IPCC WG1 AR6 Report. Describing it as a “code red for humanity” (as UN Secretary-General Guterres did) was not only wrong, it was irresponsible. Instead of apocalyptic warnings about “immediate risk” a top line message of this report should be: The Extreme Scenario that IPCC Saw as Most Likely in 2013 is Now Judged Low Likelihood, an incredible change in such a short time since the AR5 Report, which has not been highlighted by the media.
Roger will also show that the IPCC has systematically and very helpfully gone through a large list of extreme?weather phenomena in the detailed AR6 Report. Their results are quite surprising: floods, hurricanes, tropical cyclones, meteorological and hydrological droughts are not more frequent. Nor are tornadoes, hail, lightning or strong winds more frequent. However heatwaves are more frequent, as is extreme precipitation, and there are two other types of drought, namely agricultural and ecological drought, which have increased. It is very appealing, even seductive, for activists and the media to latch on to extreme events (as inaccurately summarized in the SPM), but at some point we have to say that objective science and its communication matters on this issue. This is a lecture and discussion of wide interest and is highly relevant in the lead?up to COP26.
https://clintel.org/the-extreme-scenario-that-ipcc-saw-as-most-likely-in-2013-is-now-judged-low-likelihood/
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Big changes needed for widespread use of electric cars
Electric vehicles probably won’t end the weekend but will they turn out the lights?
EVs will be able to pull a trailer, but they will also pull a significant amount of electricity into their large batteries.
The most convenient way to charge an electric car is in your garage or driveway, if you have one. So the most obvious thing to do is plug in when you get home from work, walk inside and start doing all the things that create the evening peak load on the grid.
If the 13 million cars on the road today were made electric tomorrow – and half decided to recharge during the evening peak, the grid simply couldn’t cope. Currently the peak evening period demands 35 gigawatts. If half our cars plugged in, it would need to support a peak load of about 80 gigawatts.
Even if we assumed most of these drivers would use a standard 10 amp power point to charge their car at 2kW that would still potentially create a 50 per cent increase in peak demand.
So to avoid a blackout every evening, we would need some serious upgrades to the network. The value of the country’s electricity networks is worth north of $100 billion. Duplicating this network would impose a cost of this magnitude across all electricity consumers in the country, spread over a couple of decades.
You can imagine EV critics using this line of attack at the next election, especially with Australia to come under increasing pressure to commit to something akin to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s commitment to ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030.
Happily, however, their concerns are unfounded. The 35 gigawatt capacity of the existing networks can do just fine with a fleet of 13 million electric cars. The trick will be spreading the load out through the day and through the night.
If we try to charge all the EVs at the same time we’re running our air conditioners, flatscreens and dishwashers, the impact on the energy grid will be like a traffic snarl in rush hour. But there is a wide range of technical solutions to allow consumers to adjust their charging behaviour.
For those with solar panels, we know the price they get for feeding their power back into the grid has been falling. If this trend continues they could decide to feed their excess power into their cars instead, especially if that car had the ability to feed power back into the home.
Consumers with smart meters are also able to access what’s known as “time of use” pricing – a contract with the electricity retailer that makes energy cheap when the electricity network isn’t usually busy. An EV driver, knowing energy is cheaper at midnight, simply sets their car to charge at that time. This solves the problem for the networks while saving the typical driver hundreds of dollars per year.
Controlled load tariffs and ripple control methods are crude, but effective. This approach is where the electricity network uses a simple signal receiver at the home to turn things on and off, or up and down. It’s been used in Australia for electric hot water heaters since the 1950s and for airconditioners in Queensland for the past ten years. It could work for EVs, but there are better ways to give consumers more choice and flexibility.
More sophisticated approaches keep the consumer in the loop, using data from smart meters and communicating via smartphone. These techniques have been rolling out in Australia since 2015. In this system the network does some forecasting based on previous energy usage and the expected weather to work out where the problems in their network are going to be the next day. They then send a text message to participants in relevant areas, along the lines of” “If you can reduce your home energy use tomorrow between 3pm and 5pm, we’ll pay you $20”. Participation by any consumer in a particular event is voluntary – so if they’ve got plans that involve using lots of electricity at that time, there’s no problem. But experience so far shows that those who receive these messages switch things off up to 70 per cent of the time. All the network needs to do is get enough people on board.
Finally, there’s the 2020s version of controlled load tariffs – cloud based orchestration. With this approach, the network talks directly to the cars or the chargers over the internet and tells them what to do. Under this system everyone plugs in and forgets about it while a software system takes over and schedules everyone’s charging to smooth out the load and make sure everyone has enough juice to get around the next day.
If we get this right, far from being a problem EVs will enable the electricity networks to make better use of their assets. This should create downward pressure on the network component of energy bills for all consumers. Everyone wins in this scenario, not just the EV drivers.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/motoring-news/opinion-the-big-myth-about-electric-vehicles-dispelled/news-story/d4c61bc6450b58f726535ffbbfda9246
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Australia: Sequestration is a win for farmers
As COP26 in Glasgow fast approaches we see an increased media focus on achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and what can be achieved by 2030.
While net-zero by 2050 might be a legitimate goal much of the debate has tended to use it as a slogan in what is really a political campaign.
The debate is also focused on only one side of the net-zero equation, reducing emissions. Yet in Australia we have a huge opportunity to drive outcomes on the other side of the equation, capturing carbon which is why the Govt’s recent decision to include soil carbon sequestration as a key element in its net zero 2050 plan is a very positive move.
The solution is right under our feet – soil and soil carbon sequestration – Australia has an abundance of soil and soil that has been depleted of carbon over the past two centuries. At the Mulloon Institute we have a strategy to not only address this issue but in doing so help deliver potentially substantial financial returns for Australian agriculture and Australian farmers.
Since 2018 significant parts of Australia have experienced what Dorothea Mackellar described in her poem “My Country” as a land of “droughts and flooding rains” and “flood and fire and famine”.
When “My Country” was first published in 1908 Mackellar wasn’t focused on CO2 emissions and its ramifications on climate. She was simply recording what she experienced. We now have similar experiences albeit arguably more intensive. But Mackellar also wrote “green tangle of the brushes, where lithe lianas coil, and orchids deck the treetops and ferns the warm dark soil”.
With those words she was experiencing soils rich in carbon and that is certainly something we now have much less of. Scientists estimate we have lost between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of our soil carbon over the past 200 years. Herein lies the opportunity with a net-zero goal. Unfortunately, much of our farming sector has been spooked into thinking that working toward net-zero will be detrimental to their livelihood. The opposite is the case.
With so much soil carbon lost over the past couple of hundred years, the opportunity is now there to transfer it from the atmosphere and put it back where it belongs, in the soil. Carbon sequestration means healthier soils and more nutrient dense food. Increasing soil carbon is one of the substantial strategies required to reach net zero. Globally, soils contain more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined. By regenerating our soils, we can sequester more carbon underground and slow climate warming. And our farmers can earn income by doing that through the selling of carbon credits.
Key to carbon sequestration is water. A hydrated landscape will speed up carbon sequestration. The recent IPCC Report particularly highlighted a future with less rain overall but more intensive events risking flooding and erosion. Therefore, the better utilisation of what rain does is crucial. Currently in Australia 50% of all rain that falls is lost through rapid run-off or evaporation due to poor ground coverage. Rectifying this can be straightforward and not necessarily expensive.
The Mulloon Institute (TMI) is demonstrating the potential in this approach in the Mulloon Creek catchment comprising 23,000ha with the support of more than 20 landholders. It is also one of just five global projects selected by the UN to assist in the development of guidelines for sustainable, profitable and productive farming.
TMI’s work has expanded to catchments in many parts of NSW, in North Queensland, WA, NT and soon Victoria. Demonstrating this work on the ground in partnership with communities helps farmers to understand the opportunity that landscape rehydration in conjunction with regenerative farming practices provides. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) soils, if managed sustainably, can sequester up to 0.56 petagrams of carbon (or 2.05 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent) per year, having the potential to offset yearly as much as 34% of agricultural global greenhouse gas emissions.
In Australia agriculture comprises 13% of our total emissions, so with our landmass, our farmers can contribute significantly to its reduction and at the current price of carbon of around $20 per tonne, but rising very quickly, that is not just a goal or a slogan, it is a great opportunity for our agricultural sector to get on board for net-zero.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/sequestration-is-a-win-for-farmers/news-story/b7928ce7613ca021f6f1df8528af8e50
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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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28 October, 2021
The planet could descend into 'conflict and chaos' if Cop26 fails, UN chief warns
Hysterical nonsense. The planet warmed one degree in the last 100 years amid a huge overall surge in prosperity and wellbeing. Another degree in the next 100 years will at least do no harm
The sheer dishonesty of the cry below is shown by its prophecy of food shortages. Global warming would open up vast areas in Canada and Siberia to food production. Warming would produce a food GLUT, not a shortage
The planet could descend into 'conflict and chaos' if world leaders fail to tackle climate change following the Cop26 summit in Glasgow next week, the UN's top climate official has warned.
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, insisted global security and stability could break down if countries fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
In an interview with The Observer, she described a bleak future of general anarchy caused by climate catastrophe, warning of migration crises, food shortages and an increase in terrorism and violent crime.
'We're really talking about preserving the stability of countries, preserving the institutions that we have built over so many years, preserving the best goals that our countries have put together. The catastrophic scenario would indicate that we would have massive flows of displaced people,' she warned.
'It would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security. It would leave a lot more people vulnerable to terrible situations, terrorist groups and violent groups. It would mean a lot of sources of instability.
'We know what migration crises have provoked in the past. If we were to see that in even higher numbers - not only international migration, but also internal migration - [it would] provoke very serious problems.'
It comes as Boris Johnson prepares to welcome global leaders to Scotland for the Cop26 climate summit next week, where he wants countries to commit to slashing carbon emissions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10126035/World-descend-conflict-chaos-Cop26-summit-fails-warns.html
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UK: Budget backlash as Chancellor of the Exchequer cuts cost of flying and driving days before pivotal climate summit
Rishi Sunak has been accused of undermining the UK’s response to the climate emergency, after his Budget included measures to make it cheaper to take internal flights and drive polluting cars.
The moves – branded “astonishing” and “retrograde” by Friends of the Earth – were unveiled just days ahead of the crucial Cop26 global warming summit in Glasgow, at which Boris Johnson will plead with the international community to cut carbon emissions.
And they came just a day after the government’s own Climate Change Committee told the prime minister that his administration’s net zero strategy had “nothing to say” on aviation and must take further action to discourage people from flying.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/budget-flight-tax-cut-cop26-b1946258.html
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The Queen has sent her apologies to the farcical Cop26 conference, wouldn't it better for the planet if everyone else did as well?
As usual, Her Majesty's instincts are correct. When in doubt, pull out. The Queen has sent 'her regrets' and won't be attending Cop26 in Glasgow this weekend as she adheres to doctors' advice and sticks to 'light duties' no further away than the drawing room.
I'm sure there's nothing a 95-year-old would have enjoyed more than a round of cocktail parties with pompous heads-of-state fresh off their carbon-spewing private jets mouthing glib promises about how to save the planet.
Especially as Her Majesty has been a recycler all her life; still using those sad little Tupperware containers at breakfast time and steadfastly rotating her unique collection of couture hats and coats from half a century ago, much to the admiration of fashionistas now trying to embrace a new mantra of climate concern.
With only a few days to go before the giant kick-off, Cop26 is starting to look like a B-list event.
Delegates from over a hundred and thirty countries are going to turn up in their thousands (mainly young and committed), but - without the Queen, will the A-listers and the power brokers be taking it seriously?
The citizens of Glasgow are in two minds about the whole shebang. With 30,000 visitors expected, if you own a sofa, or anything that resembles a bed, you'll be making a fortune renting it.
All hotels are fully booked, as are two cruise liners moored nearby and AirBnb rates are off the scale.
Currently, over two thousand attendees have nowhere to stay. Let's just hope they don't try napping on the street since Glasgow's legendary rats were in the news this week for biting refuse workers.
The SNP council leader acknowledged there had been 'one or two incidents of very minor contact' with rodents, claiming this was 'normal' in most cities.
Adding to this toxic mix, 1,500 council workers including refuse collectors, catering workers and janitors are going on strike for better pay for the duration of Cop, as are RMT train staff.
Scores of roads are closed along with five schools. Major museums and galleries have shut. Instead of using public transport to get to the city centre, delegates will be ferried by car, in specially designated traffic lanes, forcing ordinary commuters to cram into a single lane - producing more fumes, no doubt.
Cop, with it's green devotees will be good news for vegan restaurants, bars and clubs. But is it going to benefit the environment?
In terms of PR, the lesser Royals will be flying the flag for Britain's world-beating eco credentials. William and Kate and Charles and Camilla will be doing the rounds, but they got the E message years ago.
Once, we laughed when Charles said he talked to his plants, now he's revered for his concern about the environment. (Always easier when you have an army of servants to wash up, recycle, do your pressing, peel all those home grown vegetables, and book the Royal train).
We applauded Kate for recycling that beautiful one-off dress to the James Bond premiere - but don't dwell on what it cost in the first place . . . and it wasn't exactly made of recycled washing up bottles.
On balance, the Royals will make a good show of sending messages of concern about the imminent danger to planet Earth. It's a message that's harder to sign up for if you're an ordinary person who bought a diesel car when politicians told us to, who now faces a whopping surcharge of £12.50 a day to drive from your own doorstep in inner London.
And what about the Cop 26 guest list? The politicians and industrialists who carry the real power to change the rules or - to quote our leading climate change balladeer, Boris - stop everyone 'swaddling our entire planet in a tea cosy of toxic stuff'.
Will Cop26 succeed where 25 other Cops seem to have failed? Levels of greenhouse gases have reached an all-time high, in spite of endless treaties, protocols, and targets all aimed at preventing exactly that happening.
In spite of decades of high profile get-togethers in luxury hotels over sumptuous banquets and endless toasts in Paris, Kyoto, Mexico, Copenhagen, Dubai and South Africa, we are still on course to fail to stop global warming in the very near future.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, even if current pledges to cut emissions drastically from the UK and 50 other countries are honoured, we still face a 2.7% temperature rise by 2100.
Some countries, like Saudi Arabia and China claim they can only achieve zero emissions by 2060.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10137703/The-Queen-pulled-Cop26-conference-wouldnt-better-did-too.html
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Australian PM promises to protect coal mining jobs
Coal miners will not be legislated “out of a job” under the Coalition’s plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 through “ultra low cost” solar and the rapid commercialisation of new technologies.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison formally commited Australia to the climate target on Tuesday, drawing a line under the intense debate and bitter disagreement within the federal government on net-zero.
“(The plan) will not shut down our coal and gas production or exports,” Mr Morrison said. “It will not increase electricity bills. It’s not a revolution, it’s a careful evolution.”
Mr Morrison said new modelling showed Australia was on track to reduce emissions by 30 to 35 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 – far above the government’s 26 to 28 per cent interim target.
The commitment also came with a guarantee every Australian would be $2000 better off in 2050 than they would have been if no climate action was taken, and the regions would gain an extra 62,000 jobs in the heavy industry and mining sectors.
Mr Morrison did not present the modelling behind the plan, instead saying it was to be released at a later date.
The $20bn technology roadmap to get to net zero emissions by 2050 relied on emerging technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage becoming viable.
Regional NSW was central to the net-zero plan, with areas like the Hunter Valley identified as a site for “further indirect job opportunities” including manufacturing of wind turbines and hydrogen electrolysers.
The Hunter could also benefit from “value-adding manufacturing” like the production and export of green ammonia and hot briquette iron.
“The construction boom associated with new renewable energy generation to support hydrogen production could support up to 13,000 new, permanent jobs by 2050 across Australia, especially in regional NSW and Queensland,” the government’s report said.
The PM said investing in technology would also enable Australia to help other major polluters reduce emissions, which was critical to limiting global temperature increase.
“If you really want to deal with this problem, it’s not good enough to tax people in developed countries and think that fixes the problem,” Mr Morrison said. “China’s emissions will keep going up. If we want to solve the problem, then you need scale, afforable, low emissions technologies.”
Under the plan a “significant proportion of gas” would still be needed by 2050, while all energy technology options remained on the table, including small-scale nuclear reactors.
It is expected electric cars would reach cost-parity with petrol vehicles by 2025, with the gradual take up potentially delivering a 15 per cent emissions cut.
Exports of critical minerals could be worth $85bn in 2050, up from $12bn, helping offset a 35 per cent decline in fossil fuel production.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce told parliament regional jobs would not be destroyed by government laws. “I am making absolutely certain that we don’t legislate the coal miners out of a job,” he said.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/mission-zero-scott-morrison-promises-to-protect-coal-mining-jobs/news-story/9df5e9c386201fc890fdbd05132fae54
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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 October, 2021
8 Ridiculous ‘Green New Deal’ Programs in Democrats’ Bloated Spending Bill
Both chambers of Congress are focused on a raging debate over whether to pass a 2,465-page, $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend bill. With the legislation almost guaranteed to have no Republican support, different factions of Democrats are locking horns over the bill’s fate.
Progressives want to spend recklessly, which is much easier to do when you’re using other people’s money. In contrast, moderates are alarmed about what effect yet another federal spending blowout would have on already-high inflation and the dangerously huge national debt.
It is vitally important to have a discussion about overall spending levels. It is equally important to understand what those taxpayer dollars would be used on.
A key component of the bill is enacting a “Green New Deal” agenda, which is a top priority for left-wing activists.
The energy and environmental sections would spend hundreds of billions on a massive scheme that would only affect global temperatures by about 0.04 degrees Celsius in 2100.
Rather than delivering tangible environmental benefits, the bill would do far more to centralize power and control over the daily lives of Americans in Washington and provide handouts to political pet causes and special interest groups.
These nine items are just a sampling of the “green” insanity in the bill.
1. $10 Billion for ‘Environmental Justice’ College Programs
Colleges and universities across the country are already awash in “ethnic studies” programs that primarily serve as a factory for producing left-wing activists.
Section 136601 of the spending bill would spend $10 billion on creating something similar for the environmentalist movement, calling for funding “environmental justice” programs in higher education.
There are many ways to describe efforts to address things like pollution. Using the word “justice” is explicitly designed to dovetail with left-wing social movements rather than having a focus on hard science or public health.
This $10 billion would be taxpayer-funded seed money for a new army of political activists.
2. $8.1 Billion for Environmentalist ‘Climate Corps’
Upon graduation, recipients of environmental justice degrees would need to find jobs. That’s where the multiple “civilian climate corps” programs scattered across the bill come in.
Pages 7, 19, 925, and 965 would dedicate $8.1 billion toward paying environmentally minded people to work at federal parks and forests, along with Native American areas, on a broadly defined set of projects.
This would, of course, be layered on top of billions of dollars of programs for federal lands and forests elsewhere in the bill, and on top of tens of billions in regular spending every year.
As with the environmental justice subsidy, it would be easy to use neutral terms such as “conservation” that have appeal across the political spectrum. Naming the program “climate corps” is a purely ideological decision, showing that the program is primarily designed to benefit the left.
3. Huge Handouts for the Rich to Buy Fancy Electric Vehicles
The “Green Energy” subtitle, starting on page 1695, would throw $279 billion in tax subsidies at a range of predictable things: unreliable wind and solar energy projects, cost-ineffective biofuels like ethanol, and an “environmental justice” bonus depending on where things are built.
The most galling aspect of this massive exercise in corporate welfare and economic micromanagement is Section 136401, which provides tax credits toward the purchase of electric vehicles.
While much of the rhetoric surrounding the bill revolves around socialist notions of “economic justice,” the details in this section show that Democrats have no problem cutting checks to the wealthy. Existing tax credits for these vehicles go overwhelmingly to households making over $100,000 per year.
Working-class families are unlikely to purchase a $55,000 sedan or a $74,000 truck. Yet vehicles costing that much are eligible for the tax credit. Similarly, households earning up to $800,000 qualify for the credit.
Putting those elements together, someone earning $400,000 per year would receive a $12,500 tax credit for buying a $74,000 truck.
It’s hard to square this upper-class welfare with “economic justice.”
4. $4 Billion for ‘Tree Equity’ and ‘Charging Equity’
When it’s not lavishing billions in tax subsidies on the top 5%, the bill does make some awkward attempts at applying the nebulous concept of “equity” to new environmental programs.
Section 11003 would use $3 billion to “increase community tree canopy,” which is a legalistic way of saying they want rural and suburban areas to pay for planting trees in cities.
Section 30443 would dedicate $1 billion for “electric vehicle charging equity,” which is a way of acknowledging the concentration of electric vehicle use among high-income households.
This is yet another example of using left-wing buzzwords to dress up the Democrats’ agenda.
5. $85 Million on Climate and Pregnant ‘Individuals’
Yet another example of the spending bill bowing to radical activists comes in Section 31046.
At first glance it is one of many provisions promoting the Green New Deal agenda, in this case throwing $85 million at research seeking to identify whether climate affects pregnancy. Note that this is not an attempt to remedy problems that are known to exist, but rather an attempt to find problems that would then generate more support for the agenda.
The section proceeds to go off the deep end with its choice of words: “pregnant, lactating, and postpartum individuals.” Erasing women from the context of pregnancy and motherhood is a promotion of the most extreme elements of the transgender movement and has no business becoming part of federal law.
6. $50 Million for Bees and Desert Fish
The spending package includes a subtitle on wildlife conservation. It provides special attention to a select handful of creatures, meaning that some animals are more equal than others.
Section 70607 would spend $25 million to conserve species of “desert fish.”
Section 70605 would similarly dedicate $25 million for “pollinators,” or bees. Incredibly, this is the second earmark for bees this year, with the bipartisan infrastructure bill drizzling $10 million their way in a package that’s supposedly focused on roads and bridges.
7. $20 Million for Energy ‘Diversity’
Page 1060 sends $20 million to the Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, which currently receives $10 million per year. Tipping the cap to the bill’s core audience, the legislation labels this as “diversity support.”
8. $5 Billion ‘Environmental and Climate Justice’ Slush Fund
Section 30204 would create a $5 billion slush fund for the Environmental Protection Agency to pursue left-wing goals. On top of the $5 billion, the agency would receive $500 million to pay bureaucrats to run the program. The goals, which repeatedly reference “disadvantaged communities,” are nebulous enough that the bureaucrats will have nearly free rein to use the billions as they see fit.
The $3.5 trillion legislative package is so massive that these eight items are just the beginning. There are many more examples of wasteful and problematic provisions in the bill, which is why Congress should scrap it altogether rather than trying to force it through.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/25/8-ridiculous-green-new-deal-programs-in-democrats-bloated-spending-bill/
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Climate Realism Wins the Debate in Las Vegas
Oklahoma City – An international conference on climate change continues in Las Vegas, with a range of speakers from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany.
Attendees at the event have traveled to Nevada from all over the world. After a Friday evening dinner and awards presentation, a critical assessment of “the Great Reset” (as it is deemed in many news accounts and commentaries) was scheduled, including a look at emerging policies aiming to limit and, in many cases, ultimately eliminate fossil fuels businesses.
Today and tomorrow, the event features a wide range of panels (some concurrent) on the full gamut of issues, as viewed through a lens sympathetic to continuance of natural gas and oil extraction, even in the age of increasing government subsidies for wind, solar and other means of energy/electric power production.
A highlight of the Saturday (October 16) presentations will be a four-person panel — “Examining Biden’s Energy and Climate Agenda” – set for late afternoon.
Presenters will include Bette Grande of the Heartland Institute (the group sponsoring what is designated “14th Annual International Conference on Climate Change”) and Steve Milloy of Junk Science.com.
They intend to tackle “how the Biden energy and environment agenda — from canceling the Keystone XL pipeline deal with Canada, to restricting the once-burgeoning fracking industry in the United States — is affecting America’s energy economy.”
Grande was a North Dakota state representative for eight years, serving as chairman of the Employee Benefits Program and Committee, and as member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Education and Environment Division.
She has an education degree from the University of North Dakota and is from Williston. Her family’s business is located, her biography notes, “in the heart of the Bakken formation.”
A dedicated contrarian, Milloy has spent the last two decades pushing back against what he calls “junk science” – terminology he helped popularize in mainstream culture and analysis. He wrote a book for the libertarian Cato Institute with the notable title, “Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense against Health Scares and Scams.”
Perhaps the best-known participant in the Biden Agenda panel is Amy Oliver Cooke, one of the conference series of keynote speakers. She is chief executive officer at the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina, where she guides the work of around two dozen researchers.
Cooke might be characterized as a happy warrior. She has drawn worldwide attention (and, in some quarters, disdain) for his messaging skills, describe in conference media materials as “provocative.” Cooke has said she is in the category of “Mothers in Love with Fracking.” She once wrote, “I’m an energy feminist because I’m pro-choice in energy sources.” Critics on what some analysts call “the eco-left” have assailed her rhetorical flairs for “hands down the worst kind of feminism.”
Many speakers and participants at the Heartland event have Wikipedia biographical entries that categorize – often in the first sentence – them as a “climate denier.” Cooke and her allies affirm the importance of proactive commentary and reporting, refusing to cede environmental sensitivity to their critics.
In a statement about the current state of debate on climate issues, economic growth and the future of human energy use, Heartland said:
“The climate alarmism industry and its media allies present a daily barrage of false, misleading, and one-sided information designed to convince people that a climate crisis is at hand. As the years pass, the ‘climate crisis’ keeps being pushed into the future. Why? Because the forces of collectivism and big, controlling government are using it as a means to gain more control over us.
“The global climate agenda, as promoted by the United Nations, is to overhaul the entire global economy, usher in socialism, and forever transform society as one in which individual liberty and economic freedom are crushed.”
The conference closes Sunday (October 17) with a day of additional keynote addresses, several panels, and a special screening of the film “Climate Hustle 2,” and a discussion about the film’s themes. Many of the conference’s top speakers are featured in the motion picture.
https://www.city-sentinel.com/2021/10/smiling-through-the-pain-climate-realists-press-for-the-best-as-they-see-it-at-vegas-event/
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The Climate Issue: What to expect from COP26
In June 1992, world leaders and representatives of 179 countries gathered in Rio de Janeiro. They produced a striking number of declarations and agreements. One of them was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), with the “ultimate objective...to achieve...stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” Parties to the UNFCCC promised to meet again, routinely, in order to check in and push forward towards their lofty goals. Eventually, the “conference of the parties”, or COP, settled into an annual rhythm.
At the third COP, in 1997, governments adopted the Kyoto Protocol: a landmark but ultimately weak and flawed attempt to control emissions of greenhouse gases. Rich countries, which had emitted the bulk of the greenhouse gases piled up in the atmosphere, were tasked with doing the heavy lifting of decarbonisation while developing ones were given a pass so they might boost their economic development.
It wasn’t until COP21, held in December 2015 in a northern suburb of Paris, that a binding agreement was made that required all countries, rich and poor, to decarbonise their economies. This time next week, COP26 will be under way, marking the agreement’s sixth anniversary. To find out what the Glasgow summit’s multi-layered agenda looks like, head to this piece from our current issue.
A lot of the work has already been done in the run-up to the summit, but there are still big holes. Two of them are particularly gaping, namely formal decarbonisation pledges (or “nationally determined contributions”) from China and India. China is responsible for 28% of the carbon dioxide emitted each year, India accounts for 7%. Both countries are largely powered by coal: together they consume roughly two-thirds of the global total.
On Sunday, China published a long-awaited plan for how it intends to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. It touches on three big questions about China’s decarbonisation, namely when its emissions will peak, at what level and how fast they will fall after that. “The document gives a bit more indication of the emissions peaking level,” writes Lauri Myllyvirta, a China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Coal use is due to start declining from 2026 at the same time as oil use reaches a plateau, suggesting an emissions peak could be close to 2025 levels.
However, with no indication of how fast these fossil fuels will tumble, the pathway to net-zero before 2060 remains obscure bar a mention that by then more than 80% of energy will not come from fossil fuels. Emissions from much of the remaining 20%, presumably, will have to be removed by natural and technological means—no mean feat.
A 2025 peak would be in-line with expectations, so the document does not offer substantial new climate ambition from the world’s largest emitter. There is still one week, and a G20 summit, for more to be put on the table.
Email from climateissue@economist.com
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Australian PM rejects criticism of his new climate policy
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rejected criticism from famed environmentalist David Attenborough, CNN and Atlassian over Australia’s climate change policy.
Speaking on Sunrise, Mr Morrison was asked if he was “embarrassed” by Attenborough’s comments that accused the Federal Government of being more worried about saving money than saving the planet.
“I’m not embarrassed at all when it comes to doing what is right by Australia,” Mr Morrison said on Sunrise. “Everyone else who doesn’t understand Australia, alchemy and the challenges we have. “We are getting results,” Morrison said. “We are getting it done. Our emissions are down.
Michael Cannon-Brookes, the Australian tech billionaire and co-founder of software giant Atlassian, also weighed in, describing it as “inaction” and “misdirection”.
But Morrison said he “rejects” the criticism. “We have already achieved more than 20 per cent emissions reductions and grown alchemy by 45 per cent”. “So we’re getting this done. They might like how we’re doing it but we are getting results,” Mr Morrison said.
“Australia’s actions and results speak more than the words of others and we are getting it done, Australians wanted done but they don’t want to throw their livelihoods away.”
The British prime minister tweeted that he looked forward to welcoming Mr Morrison to Glasgow next week.
“Great to see Australia commit to reach net zero by 2050. They join a growing club – over 80 per cent of the global economy is now committed to net zero,” Mr Johnson said.
Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner’s Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis called Australia’s net zero commitment a “positive signal”.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/david-attenborough-slams-australians-for-saving-money-instead-of-saving-the-planet/news-story/94a136342de7ae9fafc8ea0598d8be98
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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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26 October, 2021
Net zero by 2050 plan ‘uniquely Australian’: Morrison
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has launched the federal government’s plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by lauding the country’s achievements so far, saying Australia is on track to achieve a cut of up to 35 per cent by 2030.
“Australia has already met and beaten our ... 2020 targets and indeed Australia will beat and meet our 2030 targets as well,” Mr Morrison said on Tuesday.
The government’s policy is a cut of 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
“We believe we will be able to achieve a 35 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030: that is something we actually think we are going to achieve,” he said.
The government’s plan to achieve net zero by 2050 stresses industries, regions and jobs will not be put at risk. The target of net zero by 2050 will not be legislated.
Mr Morrison was accompanied by Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, but Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce was not present.
Nationals MPs backed the goal in a tense meeting on Sunday that cleared the way for Tuesday’s launch of the plan to tackle climate change, which includes $19 billion in investments for low emissions technologies including solar and clean hydrogen by 2030.
Mr Morrison said it was “uniquely Australian”.
“Australians want action on climate change. They’re taking action on climate change but they also want to protect their jobs and their livelihoods. They also want to keep the costs of living down,” he said. “And I also want to protect the Australian way of life, especially in rural and regional areas. The Australian way of life is unique.”
Mr Morrison will fly to Rome on Thursday to attend the G20 summit before spending two days in Glasgow for the United Nations climate talks.
The Prime Minister said the plan to cut emissions was not a plan “at any cost”. “There’s no blank cheques here,” he said.
The PM has revealed details of his government's climate plan that'll cut emissions in Australia to net zero by 2050, trying to allay fears it'll cut jobs and increase the cost of living.
He promised the target would not spell the end of coal or gas production or exports and would not increase energy bills.
“It will not impact households businesses or the broader economy with new costs or taxes imposed by the initiatives that we are undertaking,” he said. “It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas. Because what we’re doing in these plans is positive things, enabling things.
It also would not be a “set and forget” program, with five-yearly reviews from the Productivity Commission. The first review is set for 2023 and will look at the socio-economic impact of the plan.
Mr Taylor said the plan to achieve net zero by the middle of the century was achievable, thanks in part to the country’s performance to date on reducing emissions.
“Australia versus even developed countries has performed extremely well, with a reduction of almost 21 per cent since 2005,” he said.
Mr Taylor said carbon offset would be an important part of the plan, noting that Australia had 90 million hectares of productive agricultural land. Another focus would be reducing the costs of low emissions technologies.
“We’re looking at the customer and technology trends, shaping those trends to our advantage; and on the back of that, ensuring we have a portfolio of technologies that can deliver the outcome we want to deliver which is head zero by 2050,” he said.
‘Actions speak louder than words’
Mr Morrison predicted Australia’s plan to cut emissions would be strongly welcomed at the UN climate summit. He had been under increasing international pressure to increase the nation’s climate targets ahead of the conference, which starts on November 1.
“The actions of Australia, speak louder than the words of others. There’ll be lots of words in Glasgow, but I’ll be able to point to the actions of Australia and the achievements of Australia, and I think that’s very important,” he said.
The plan has already been welcomed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who overnight hailed the pledge to cut emissions as “heroic”.
Mr Morrison said the modelling that backed the plan would be released in due course.
When asked what the entire cost was, excluding funding previously announced, he said the plan drew together many earlier budget announcements including $464 million for green hydrogen and $1.4 billion in the Building Better Regions Fund.
“The budget is about achieving this plan and particularly on this plan there is $20 billion – pretty much all of which gets spent in rural and regional areas to achieve the lower emissions energy targets.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/net-zero-by-2050-plan-uniquely-australian-morrison-20211026-p5937b.html
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26 October, 2021
UK: New trade deals ‘are unfair on farmers and won’t help emissions’ says John Gummer
Impugning the health standards of New Zealand produce is really rich. NZ produce is famous for being clean and green.
And it is particularly rich from a man who <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/daughter-of-john-gummers-friend-dies-from-human-form-of-mad-cow-disease-0bmnxhh0j80">encouraged the consumption of meat potentially infected with mad cow disease</a>
The chairman of the government’s climate change advisory board has condemned trade deals with Australia and New Zealand as “totally offensive” as he warned they would undermine attempts to tackle emissions.
Lord Deben [John Gummer], the former Tory cabinet minister who chairs the Climate Change Committee, said that the agreements were “entirely unacceptable for climate change purposes”. He warned they would damage efforts to ask UK farmers to help consumers shift to eating less meat, but of higher quality.
“I do see that you can do all sorts of things to encourage people to buy better meat, and I think we ought to be,” he told the Observer. “That’s why I’m so deeply opposed – and find totally offensive – the agreements with both Australia and New Zealand, which are entirely unacceptable for climate change purposes.
Lord Deben, says Britain will be importing meat from countries that do not meet the same climate standards as UK farmers.© Photograph: Dorset Media Service/Alamy Lord Deben, says Britain will be importing meat from countries that do not meet the same climate standards as UK farmers.
“You cannot ask farmers to do in this country what we are going to ask them to do and import goods from people who are not [meeting the same standards]. The government promised it wouldn’t do that – and it is doing it. It is entirely against its promise.
“I shall go on fighting until we stop it. There has to be, internationally, standards that enable you to carry through climate change rules.”
Labour has already suggested that the trade deals will allow Australian and New Zealand farmers to undercut their British counterparts with lower animal welfare standards. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned that the deal agreed in principle with New Zealand “offers nothing in return” to British farmers.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/uknews/new-trade-deals-are-unfair-on-farmers-and-wont-help-emissions/ar-AAPS7QO?ocid=chromentpnews
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Biden Rolls Out New Plan: Take Millions of Vehicles Off Roads by Forcing People onto Trains
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden visited his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and rolled out his newest cringeworthy plan: make people start riding trains again to get rid of vehicles on the road.
“We will take literally millions of automobiles off the road,” Biden argued, claiming that the plan will save millions of barrels of oil and reduce pollution. “This is not hyperbole; this is a fact,” he said. “These are facts.”
“I got more money for passenger rail than the entire Amtrak system cost to begin with,” Biden continued. “We’re going to change the nation in a big way.”
Breitbart reports:
Amtrak continues to enjoy heavy subsidies from Congress even though it has famously lost money for 50 years. Since 1971, Amtrak has cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.
But Biden’s proposed plan sparked Amtrak to share a dream list of even more connected cities across the country by 2035.
In Scranton, Biden spoke at length about his long history of riding Amtrak, boasting he rode the train more than two million miles while he was senator and vice president. “You should name half the line after me,” Biden joked. “I am the most railroad guy you’re ever going to meet.”
https://dailypatriotreport.com/bidens-new-plan-take-millions-of-vehicles-off-highways-by-putting-people-on-trains/
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'People Got Jobs!': NYC Drivers Confront Climate Change Protesters Who Brought Traffic to a Standstill
Drivers in New York City were not happy one bit when rush hour traffic was brought to a halt because environmental protesters blocked FDR Drive to put pressure on President Joe Biden to act on climate change.
The protesters, who were with Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement, said they were not trying to annoy the drivers, "but to force the public to confront the true dangers of unchecked climate change. If we do not act today, if @potus does not act today, NYC will be underwater by 2100. It's a matter of life and death."
A few drivers got out of their cars to confront the protesters standing in the road and holding banners.
"People got jobs!" one woman said to the protesters, adding she could be fired from her job and her kids could be late to school.
New York City police officers did arrest the protesters after they refused to move. The NYPD's 7th Precinct announced just before 11:00 AM traffic had returned to normal.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2021/10/25/nyc-driver-confront-environmental-protesters-who-bring-traffic-to-a-standstill-n2597988
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Net zero by 2050 plan ‘uniquely Australian’: Morrison
Very vague
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has launched the federal government’s plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by lauding the country’s achievements so far, saying Australia is on track to achieve a cut of up to 35 per cent by 2030.
“Australia has already met and beaten our ... 2020 targets and indeed Australia will beat and meet our 2030 targets as well,” Mr Morrison said on Tuesday.
The government’s policy is a cut of 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
“We believe we will be able to achieve a 35 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030: that is something we actually think we are going to achieve,” he said.
The government’s plan to achieve net zero by 2050 stresses industries, regions and jobs will not be put at risk. The target of net zero by 2050 will not be legislated.
Mr Morrison was accompanied by Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, but Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce was not present.
Nationals MPs backed the goal in a tense meeting on Sunday that cleared the way for Tuesday’s launch of the plan to tackle climate change, which includes $19 billion in investments for low emissions technologies including solar and clean hydrogen by 2030.
Mr Morrison said it was “uniquely Australian”.
“Australians want action on climate change. They’re taking action on climate change but they also want to protect their jobs and their livelihoods. They also want to keep the costs of living down,” he said. “And I also want to protect the Australian way of life, especially in rural and regional areas. The Australian way of life is unique.”
Mr Morrison will fly to Rome on Thursday to attend the G20 summit before spending two days in Glasgow for the United Nations climate talks.
The Prime Minister said the plan to cut emissions was not a plan “at any cost”. “There’s no blank cheques here,” he said.
The PM has revealed details of his government's climate plan that'll cut emissions in Australia to net zero by 2050, trying to allay fears it'll cut jobs and increase the cost of living.
He promised the target would not spell the end of coal or gas production or exports and would not increase energy bills.
“It will not impact households businesses or the broader economy with new costs or taxes imposed by the initiatives that we are undertaking,” he said. “It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas. Because what we’re doing in these plans is positive things, enabling things.
It also would not be a “set and forget” program, with five-yearly reviews from the Productivity Commission. The first review is set for 2023 and will look at the socio-economic impact of the plan.
Mr Taylor said the plan to achieve net zero by the middle of the century was achievable, thanks in part to the country’s performance to date on reducing emissions.
“Australia versus even developed countries has performed extremely well, with a reduction of almost 21 per cent since 2005,” he said.
Mr Taylor said carbon offset would be an important part of the plan, noting that Australia had 90 million hectares of productive agricultural land. Another focus would be reducing the costs of low emissions technologies.
“We’re looking at the customer and technology trends, shaping those trends to our advantage; and on the back of that, ensuring we have a portfolio of technologies that can deliver the outcome we want to deliver which is head zero by 2050,” he said.
‘Actions speak louder than words’
Mr Morrison predicted Australia’s plan to cut emissions would be strongly welcomed at the UN climate summit. He had been under increasing international pressure to increase the nation’s climate targets ahead of the conference, which starts on November 1.
“The actions of Australia, speak louder than the words of others. There’ll be lots of words in Glasgow, but I’ll be able to point to the actions of Australia and the achievements of Australia, and I think that’s very important,” he said.
The plan has already been welcomed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who overnight hailed the pledge to cut emissions as “heroic”.
Mr Morrison said the modelling that backed the plan would be released in due course.
When asked what the entire cost was, excluding funding previously announced, he said the plan drew together many earlier budget announcements including $464 million for green hydrogen and $1.4 billion in the Building Better Regions Fund.
“The budget is about achieving this plan and particularly on this plan there is $20 billion – pretty much all of which gets spent in rural and regional areas to achieve the lower emissions energy targets.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/net-zero-by-2050-plan-uniquely-australian-morrison-20211026-p5937b.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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25 October, 2021
Weather disaster-related deaths are down — but warming could undo that trend
What a laugh! Greenies are always pretending that warming is bad for you. Now they admit that the warming so far has not been. But it still COULD be, they say. Aerial pigs could happen too
Vastly better response times to natural disasters have reduced deaths, but ever-worse weather events might undermine that progress.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report in August containing some rare good news about extreme weather: Despite a sharp increase in the number of weather- and climate-related disasters reported worldwide over the past 50 years, the number of deaths tied to those disasters has dropped nearly threefold.
To disaster researchers, that’s no surprise. While natural hazards like extreme rainfall and heat waves are becoming more frequent and severe as the planet heats up, our scientific understanding of those hazards, and the early warning systems that safeguard communities, have improved significantly over recent decades. As a result, disasters related to weather and climate have become less deadly over time.
There’s no guarantee, however, that this positive trend will continue forever. While we are better equipped than ever before to save lives during disasters, it will be a challenge to deploy existing solutions at the pace and scale needed to protect growing populations in a warming climate.
“If we are not continually investing in warning systems, if we are not building differently at the same time that we have intensification or changes to these hazards, that could very easily lead to increased deaths,” says disaster researcher Samantha Montano, the author of the recent book Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, who was not involved in the WMO study.
Caveats notwithstanding, when researchers take a bird’s- eye view of the human toll of mass disasters, they see some positive trends.
The recent WMO report drew on EM-DAT to assess the impact of storms, droughts, floods, heat and cold waves, wildfires, and landslides from 1970 to 2019. It found that mortality from these types of disasters has fallen decade after decade, from over 50,000 deaths per year in the 1970s to fewer than 20,000 in the 2010s. At the same time, the number of reported disaster events rose sharply, a trend the WMO believes is partly due to climate change but also due to better reporting, says Cyrille Honoré, director of the WMO’s disaster risk reduction department.
Less reporting in the early part of the record—where several large droughts and storms in South Asia and Africa dominate the death toll—suggests that the actual drop in deaths over time from weather- and climate-related disasters might be even steeper.
A key reason for this trend, Honoré says, is the immense progress societies have made in developing early warning systems. Our ability to accurately forecast weather and climate hazards has “improved drastically,” he says, thanks to the proliferation of sophisticated satellite sensors and rapid advances in computer models.
Disaster researchers emphasize that this positive trend is no reason to be complacent about the grave toll disasters take today, or the risks civilization faces going forward due to climate change. According to the recent WMO report, 91 percent of deaths from weather- and climate-related disasters over the past 50 years occurred in developing nations . As climate change tips the scales toward more extreme weather, those regions of the world are likely to bear the brunt of the toll in terms of lives lost.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/weather-disaster-related-deaths-are-downwarming-could-undo-that-trend
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The crafty language of climate alarmism
I am constantly entertained by the artful ways alarmists bend language to their will. This often happens as science stories percolate through the media. Each step is a bit of a stretch, maybe not an obvious lie. But the sequence of stretches takes us so very far from the truth that we wind up in alarmville.
We just had a beauty kicked off by the great green Washington Post. What makes this especially funny is they are reporting their very own research, so there is no question of misunderstanding it. Just stretching it bit by bit, here and there.
The study itself is simple enough. When really bad, damaging weather hits it is normal to declare a federal disaster. This which allows Federal agencies to take certain actions, including loans and tax relief. This is done at the county scale. So WashPo looked at all of the disaster declarations in the last three months and determined the cumulative fraction of the US population that lived in those counties.
Since some disasters, especially from hurricanes, cover more than one entire state, it is no surprise that this added up to about a third of the national population. So far so good. This is science of a crude sort, basically adding stuff up.
The stretching begins when they report their study. First we get the headline, which is all that most people will read. Here is the main headline:
“Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer“
This assumes that somehow every person living in every county “experienced” the local disaster. The number of people that physically experienced these disasters is actually quite small.
In some cases, like flash floods, most of the county never knew it had happened until they heard the news. In the hurricane cases a lot of people were not there, while others simply watched it rain really hard. Losing electricity, while unpleasant, is hardly experiencing a disaster. Where I live it happens several times a year.
I am not minimizing the tragic horrors that those who actually experienced these disasters went through. Just pointing out that they are nothing like 1 in 3 Americans.
Then we get the sub-headline blaming climate change:
“Climate change has turbocharged severe storms, fires, hurricanes, coastal storms and floods — threatening millions“
“Turbocharged”? This is not science, just a meaningless metaphor. As such it is not quite a lie, just almost. There have been computer based attribution studies saying climate change might have had something to do with these disasters. But turbocharged sounds very impressive.
Mind you “threatening millions” seems a bit odd, given we are talking about over 100 million people supposedly experiencing this stuff. Perhaps whoever wrote this never read the article. It happens.
And wildfires are now weather. That is really stretching the word.
For those who actually read the article we then get these linguistic gems (among others):
“The expanding reach of climate-fueled disasters, a trend that has been increasing at least since 2018, shows the extent to which a warming planet has already transformed Americans’ lives.”
So now the disasters were “climate-fueled”, another meaningless metaphor that sounds bad. Plus the “reach” of these disasters is expanding. Are there places that have never had bad weather disasters that are now getting them for the first time? Of course not; this is ridiculous scary sounding rhetoric.
Note “a warming planet has already transformed American’s lives”. “Transformed”? What the heck does that mean? All of these disaster types are common in our history. If it means those unfortunate enough to get hit by disaster have had their lives affected, then sure, but this is not news.
And there is no established connection to a warming planet, especially since America has barely warmed, if at all. If you take away the artfully alarming adjustments the nineteen thirties were a lot warmer than now.
The bit about “at least since 2018” is scientifically hilarious. This is what, a three year trend! They actually show a (meaningless) 6 year graph of the number of declarations. It drops down to a low in 2018 and then rises again until now. So there is no trend at all, just fluctuation.
Nor do they mention that we went through a miraculous 17 years without a land falling hurricane, which is certainly one reason our disasters are now up, as the hurricanes are finally back like they used to be. I guess that wonderful weather was not part of climate change. Only bad stuff counts, right?
Of course they end with a pitch for the Democrat’s $3.5 trillion recon bill, like that was going to stop bad weather.
The entertaining WashPo article is here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/
Things then quickly get even further from the truth as the story spreads. Here is a typical headline reporting on the WashPo study:
“1 in 3 Americans have experienced effects of the climate crisis this year as experts warn communities to brace for unprecedented weather events“
No metaphors here. These disasters are the effects of the crisis (which however is still a meaningless statement). Bracing for unprecedented events is an interesting concept. Run in circles, scream and shout? Hard to brace for things that have never happened.
Of course terms like climate crisis, emergency, etc., are ridiculous hyperbole. My personal favorite is “climate chaos” because weather is in fact chaotic. So climate chaos is just what we have always had, but it sounds so scary to say it. I have no idea what the alarmists mean by climate chaos, and neither do they.
Moving on, Friends of the Earth (foe for short?) puts the WashPo findings incorrectly this way in a fundraiser:
“This year alone, one in three Americans experienced a climate change-induced disaster....”
“Induced” is right up there with “fueled” and “turbocharged”. Keep in mind that climate and climate change are statistics and statistics do not cause events, they just measure them. Maybe this is why we get meaningless metaphors instead of facts. The facts do not support the metaphorical hyperbole.
Nor are disaster declarations measures of weather events. They are political actions. This study is political science, not climate science.
My point is not that this press coverage is junk, even though it is. The point is that this goofy language is a common practice that you can learn to spot and enjoy. Watch them craftily work the language, to seem to say what is really not there. What is in fact meaningless.
When well done these language tricks can be quite entertaining, especially pointing them out. Just don’t take them seriously.
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/the-crafty-language-of-climate-alarmism?vgo_ee=8hjBct8wxos7yZwE%2FDdWXL35hO7C%2FF3J%2FgQB9Uu3XAY%3D
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Caring for Our Environment: Too Important to Entrust to Environmenalists
Any rational human being understands that poisoning our environment is short-sighted, stupid, and potentially suicidal.
(Note: I try to avoid using the solecism “the environment.” There’s not, in any practical sense, a single environment on Earth. The environments in which various species of fish thrive are different from the environments of penguins which, in turn, are different from the environments of elephants, and so on. Indeed, there isn’t a single environment for human beings either. Residents of Phoenix live in a different environment than residents of Brasilia, Beijing, or even Prescott, not to mention the vastly different rural areas around the globe.)
It may be difficult for some of us to imagine today, but for millennia humans were ignorant and unthinking in their disposal of waste—both human and industrial. As wealth production exploded in the 19th and 20th centuries, so did pollution. Humans’ bad environmental habits—spewing and dumping pollutants into or onto air, water, and land—befouled our environment, and brought us to the brink of environmental catastrophe.
Faced with an existential threat, there was an awakening. Millions of Americans realized that environmentally destructive habits had to be curbed. For generations, there had been visionary Americans who realized the importance of conserving natural resources and protecting our environment from ruination, but most conservationist efforts were concentrated in remote, largely unpopulated areas (think national parks, game preserves, and the like). However, by the 1960s, the pollution in heavily populated areas had become dangerous and impossible to ignore, so Americans demanded and procured sweeping reforms.
A multitude of laws and regulations were implemented. Some mandated the remediation of existing pollution; others, reductions in new pollution. Many of the improvements have been remarkable. There could have been even more progress, but then an unfortunate complication gummed up the process: the rise of environmentalism. This -ism—this political ideology and movement—often promotes practices and policies that are harmful both to human beings and our natural environment.
Many leading environmentalists have cynically co-opted the natural concern that Americans have for a healthy environment to advance a political agenda that has damaged both human and environmental welfare. As I learned in my own “environmentalist” days in the ’70s, a significant portion of donations to green groups have supported various political causes—e.g., pro-abortion, anti-U.S. defense, pro-unions—that had nothing to do with improving our environment. (Nothing against unions, unless they are forced on workers.)
Today, leading environmentalist ideologues exploit the climate change issue, not out of concern for our environment, but for their primary goal of imposing socialism. Socialism is environmentally problematical in two ways: (1) the most lethal environment for human beings is poverty, and socialism impoverishes human societies (see Venezuela); (2) socialism has a horrible environmental track record that has been known for decades, making environmentalists’ advocacy of socialism obscenely perverse.
Another defect of environmentalism is that many environmentalists shun economic rationality by disregarding costs. This, too, has been going on for decades. I can recall in the ’90s an environmentalist being asked the perfectly sensible question, “Can we afford to restore wetlands?” The reply: “We can’t afford not to.” You may regard the response as clever or cute, but it was an evasive cop-out. Even in a country as wealthy as ours, we can’t afford to do everything that we might like to do, and so we have to economize—that is, to set priorities.
Here’s an economic truth that it makes no sense to ignore: We can’t prevent or remediate pollution for free; if we could, all pollution would have been eliminated by now, because nobody really likes pollution. But in the real world, combatting pollution costs something—often a lot. The only rational, responsible approach, then, is to assess those costs and decide how much we can afford.
This collective decision-making process is complicated by the fact that those who are expected to bear the costs of anti-pollution measures (e.g., private companies and their customers) face different incentives than those (usually government bureaucrats) who oversee those measures and don’t have to bear the costs. Bureaucrats can afford to be absolutist in their approach. For them, since pollution is bad, the more we eliminate, the better. But if the costs are too high, they can shut down important industries.
Here’s a specific example from the late ’70s: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned consulting engineers to estimate the steel industry’s costs of complying with air-pollution regulations. The engineers estimated that removing 90 percent of the pollutants in producing carbon steel would cost $0.26 per kilogram; removing 97 percent would cost $4.98, and eliminating 99 percent would cost $32.20. The EPA—tasked with reducing pollution, but not having to pay for it—was inclined to impose the most stringent anti-pollution standard, and so they tried to keep the study secret. However, Pennsylvania’s two senators succeeded in making that information public. A compromise was reached, setting a standard that led to a massive improvement in air quality without killing the crucial domestic steel industry. Check out this photo of the air in Pittsburgh during the 1960 World Series compared to this photo of the Steel City taken several decades later.
Another way in which some combination of economic ignorance and ideological zealotry has rendered environmentalism perverse and destructive, both to humans and our environment, is the ideology’s blatant hostility to affluence and the economic system that produces it, i.e., capitalism. Once again, this is perverse, because capitalist countries are both richer and less polluted than socialist countries. (This is depicted graphically by the Mises Institute.) This phenomenon is largely explained by the Kuznets curve, which describes how societies, upon reaching a certain level of affluence, can afford to spend money on environmental cleanup and preservation, and, in fact, they do so. In other words, wealth is the cure for, not the cause of, unhealthy levels of pollution.
Perhaps most appalling and destructive of all the environmentalist errors is the branch of the green movement that’s overtly hostile to human life, characterizing human beings as vermin, viruses, a cancer, etc. I call these anti-life environmentalists “green pagans” for their willingness to sacrifice millions of human lives to achieve their green goals.
What’s doubly perverse about these fanatics is that many of the environmental regulations and policies they favor come with heavy environmental costs—sort of a “with friends like these, our environment doesn’t need enemies.” A few examples:
* Many of the greens who wail about CO2 emissions are adamantly opposed to nuclear energy, which emits no CO2.
Corn-based ethanol, a profitable boondoggle for those who produce it, requires the tilling of millions of acres of land, increases atmospheric ozone, and has a host of other negative environmental impacts.
* The desire to preserve the spotted owl 30 years ago (which largely failed, not because of anything humans did, but because a larger species of owl moved in and wiped out their spotted cousins) not only caused many loggers to lose their livelihood, but also led to preventing sound forest management—a short-sighted policy that has come back to haunt the Pacific Northwest today with unnecessarily large conflagrations.
* The “paper instead of plastic” initiative (and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that we have to do a better job of disposing of plastics properly) requires, at the production stage, greater energy consumption while causing significantly more air and water pollution.
* And then there’s the environmentalist obsession with “renewable energy”—things like windmills that kill far more birds and bats than fossil fuel producers, that require elements the mining of which causes horrible pollution, and that are nightmares to dispose of when their all-too-short usable life is over (see Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans” video).
* Environmentalists also bear responsibility for the vast psychological harm unnecessarily and cruelly imposed on America’s school children. Yet, their exaggerations about looming doom shouldn’t surprise us. They’ve been twisting the truth for decades. Just look at their misleading fund-raising hysterics, howling that Earth is teetering on the precipice of doom because pollution allegedly is getting worse and worse, when, in the United States in particular, pollution has been lessening. (Greens would counter with the argument that atmospheric CO2 has been increasing, which it has, but the classification of that life-giving gas as a pollutant is a matter of political shenanigans, not sound science. Toxic pollution of air and water has decreased.)
We can all agree that the battle against pollution is necessary and must continue. While we should be grateful for progress already achieved and that pollution trends in the United States are moving in the right direction, the only responsible course is to maintain our commitment to a cleaner environment. This is a hugely important task—one far too important to trust to environmentalists. As long as environmentalists cling to their anti-human, anti-economic ideology, they will impede caring for our environment in a helpful, rational way.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/caring-for-our-environment-too-important-to-entrust-to-environmenalists_4063840.html
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Covid modelling proves why climate science should also be questioned
Peta Credlin, writing from Australia
Why is it that Melbourne’s liberation last Friday came on a day with almost 2200 Covid cases; yet its initial incarceration eleven weeks earlier had been prompted by just eight cases?
Ok, vaccination rates had risen from 20 to 70 per cent in the interim.
It’s still worth posing the question: how could eight cases be a catastrophe, yet 2200 cases be a cause for celebration; other than in a topsy-turvy world where “following the science” just means following the leader? Never has adhering to expert advice meant so many contradictory anomalies, and so much hardship for so many people.
Even on “Freedom Day” (thank you government for giving back what was never yours to take away) people from NSW could enter Victoria and go anywhere while Melbournians were still banned from regional areas; and people were once again allowed inside each other’s homes but not inside a “non-essential” retail shop?
It’s been clear for many months now, that while Covid posed a grave risk to people who were very old or very sick, once the vulnerable had been vaccinated, we could start to treat Covid like most other diseases because vaccinations cut the risk of hospitalisation and death by about 90 per cent.
But this settled science on Covid hasn’t stopped different approaches in different states as well as clearly absurd applications of the “science”: such as the Queensland rule that briefly required mask wearing while driving a car alone; the Victorian rules that allowed coffee drinking in parks but not beer or wine, with kids’ playgrounds deemed dangerous and shut down but not the heroin injecting room; and those absurd curfew rules, with no scientific basis at all!
In other words, not only did the same science produce very different policy responses, but supposedly “following the science” included numerous measures that were, frankly, grandstanding by premiers who’ve used and abused “health science” to score political points. But if the settled science of Covid can be exploited like this, what about the science of climate change?
Let’s accept that the climate is changing, and that mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions are the cause. Why does it automatically follow that the fossil fuel industry must be closed down in the next couple of decades, regardless of the cost; and more importantly, regardless of the fact that most of the world’s biggest emitters won’t follow suit, so that countries like ours end up massively disadvantaged with the planet hardly better off?
If it’s finally become acceptable to count the costs of endless lockdowns to prevent Covid; why can’t we also question the costs of measures to prevent climate change and ask ourselves: can it be done differently and better?
If there’s one thing the pandemic should have taught us, it’s that modelling is only as good as the modellers’ assumptions.
Initially, the expert modellers said that 150,000 plus Australians would die of Covid. To date, only Victoria has breached the 1000 deaths threshold. Even during the current outbreak, predictions of thousands of hospital admissions with intensive care units overwhelmed have been massively overblown. Either modelling exists to make astrology look good or the modellers have a catastrophe bias.
As our government prepares to commit us to net zero emissions by 2050 on the basis of modelling that the planet otherwise faces environmental disaster; yet that net zero can be achieved without any significant economic pain, it’s worth asking why the climate modelling can be trusted when the epidemiological modelling clearly couldn’t; and why the climate “experts” are both unanimous and infallible while the health experts clearly weren’t.
Before the last election, the Prime Minister used Liberal Party modelling showing that a 45 per cent cut to emissions by 2030 would cumulatively cost 336,000 jobs, cut wages by $9000 and slash nearly half a trillion dollars from GDP in order to label Labor’s policy as “reckless”.
Now, he says that an even bigger cut will actually make us richer, but hasn’t released the modelling nor adequately dealt with the fact, as confirmed by the International Energy Agency, that much of the so-called technology to get to net zero is either unproven or hasn’t even been invented yet.
Right now, fossil fuels provide 83 per cent of the world’s total primary energy. That’s just four percentage points down over the past 30 years, despite all the billions in subsidies for renewables. Yet if the PM is to be believed, Australia can keep increasing our coal and gas exports at the same time as the world reduces its fossil fuel dependence to just 20 per cent; and it will all be done by “technology not taxes” even though the British Treasury has estimated that achieving net zero will require a carbon price of $295 a tonne by 2050 (compared to Julia Gillard’s carbon tax of just $23 a tonne). And that’s even with Britain using zero-emissions nuclear power which we still ban here (even though it’s our exported uranium that drives it).
On current technology, net zero means no cement, no steel, no aluminium, no air travel, no petrol or diesel vehicles and no eating beef or dairy. Yet this is supposed to be a painless transition that will make us richer, not poorer.
Perhaps the experts could next model the likelihood that pigs might fly.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peta-credlin-covid-modelling-proves-why-climate-science-should-also-be-questioned/news-story/6432da0dec33656fba88ebc9a4b9819a
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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24 October, 2021
Reaching global climate deal will be tough, Cop26 president says
The amusing thing about this article is the totally honest graphic wich accompanies it. It is just a regular HADCRUT graph but it is frankly labelled and clearly calibrated. The author relies of readers knowing nothing about graphs. Its presentation is a really crude piece of deception
It does at first sight look alarming, with warming leaping up the page in the postwar era. Then we notice two things: It is calibrated in TENTHS of one degree Celsius and it does not show absolute temperature but rather the departure in temperature from an arbitrary point in time.
Both things make a mickle into a muckle, to be Scottish about it. In plain English, they make a really tiny effect into an apparently huge effect. Anyone who is used to working with graphs would be in danger of dying laughing at such a basic fraud.
A graphic calibrated in simple degrees Celsius (normal scientific practice in this field) would essentially show a flat horizontal line with NO alarming leap upwards. The sheer propaganda of the global warming claim would be exposed for what it is
Securing a global climate deal in Glasgow will be “really tough”, Cop26 president Alok Sharma has warned. He said sealing any agreement to reduce emissions with be harder “on lots of levels” than signing the Paris Agreement of 2015.
Countries are under pressure to increase their greenhouse gas emission cuts as the world is far off track to meet globally agreed targets to limit temperature rises and curb dangerous warming.
The Cop26 summit, which starts in Glasgow on October 31, is the effective deadline for countries to bring forward more ambitious national climate plans in a five-year process under the Paris climate treaty.
Mr Sharma told The Guardian: “What we’re trying to do here in Glasgow is actually really tough.
“It was brilliant, what they did in Paris, it was a framework agreement, (but) a lot of the detailed rules were left for the future.
“It’s like we’ve got to the end of the exam paper and the most difficult questions are left and you’re running out of time, the exam’s over in half an hour and you go, ‘how are we going to answer this one?’”
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/reaching-global-climate-deal-will-be-tough-cop26-president-says/ar-AAPRKix
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UK: Save the planet, Boris, by axeing a farcical summit
The Cabinet Minister was laughing. They decided that everyone who attends COP26 had to be driven around by an electric car. But so many people are coming they've realised they haven't enough charging points.
So they've been scrambling to find diesel generators to help boost the capacity.'
A second Cabinet Minister was struggling to find the funny side. I'm sick of it. Every time I do a speech, they try to slide some more COP nonsense into it. Something about telling people to do less washing-up, or eat less meat. It's ridiculous.'
A third Cabinet Minister was simply resigned: 'COP's turning into a circus. No 10 are trying to get a grip but it's spiralling out of control. They're saying to foreign governments, 'Can you keep the size of your delegations to a minimum?' And they'll be told, 'OK, we'll keep it down to 1,500 people.' '
The UN Climate Change Conference, which opens in Glasgow on Sunday, is supposed to be the event that saves the planet.
But ask anyone in government and they'll tell you the truth. It's a farce. It's degenerating into chaos. And to many, the best thing for the environment would be if Boris Johnson, right, just bit the bullet and scrapped it.
The whole purpose of COP26 was meant to promote global environmental sustainability. Instead, it is being turned into a catwalk for the green showboating of the global elite.
Or, in the case of Japan, showplaneing. Last week it emerged that a specially configured Boeing 777 had been flown 6,000 miles (without passengers) solely to see whether the pilots would prefer to use Prestwick or Edinburgh airports when the official Japanese delegation arrives.
It's also been announced that when the runway of choice has been chosen, special measures will be put in place to ensure arriving dignitaries can be whisked speedily to their destinations.
Unfortunately, COP26 has become so bloated that nearby roads will become gridlocked, so leaders will be ferried to their hotels along the Clyde Expressway, which has been turned into a VIP lane.
I understand the COP26 PR team, conscious of the questionable 'optics' developing around this orgy of pro-environmentalism, had hoped for some events to show global leaders utilising public transport. But the opportunities are shrinking.
The Unite union, with a commendable eye to the main chance, has announced that more than 1,300 bus workers will use the conference to go on strike over pay.
If you think all this unfolding chaos is shaping up to be bad news for the planet, then spare a thought for the real victims: COP26's corporate sponsors.
Veteran tree-huggers NatWest, Microsoft and Jaguar are among companies which have reportedly written to the Government condemning 'mismanagement' by the 'very inexperienced civil servants' organising the event.
But, painful though it is to see the opportunity for some greenwashed product-placement disappearing in a cloud of jet and motorcade fumes, what were those sponsors expecting?
Who in their right mind would hold a such a vital summit in the midst of a deadly pandemic?
As one Minister told me: 'People think COP is going to last three weeks. But it's been going on for over a year. And we've been trying to deal with something else quite big during that period.'
Covid's shadow over COP26 was always going to be too long and dark. Vladimir Putin, who has been forced to announce a workplace shutdown across Russia to try to get on top of a surge in cases, isn't attending. Neither, it appears, will President Xi of China.
Last week, China's economic recovery was thrown into reverse as the economic Covid aftershocks continue to reverberate.
And Joe Biden has had to tear up his original COP26 strategy as he struggles to manage America's surge in virus cases and force his own 'Build Back Better' budget through the Senate.
Meanwhile, there are disturbing signs here that Boris is about to fall heavily between two Covid and COP26 stools.
Rishi Sunak is tearing his hair out trying to work out how to align the Prime Minister's multi-billion-pound net-zero commitment with his need to tackle the £2.2 trillion Covid debt mountain.
At the same time, Ministers are expressing concern that as Boris's notoriously fickle attention has drifted towards Glasgow, there has been insufficient focus at No 10 on the vaccine booster rollout.
The argument within government is that the climate crisis cannot wait. Having been put back once by Covid, COP26 had to go ahead to refocus attention on another, potentially even more apocalyptic, global emergency.
But the opposite is going to happen. Rather than emphasise their stewardship of the environment, world leaders are again going to reveal just how detached they are.
Pressing ahead with COP26 while the globe is still struggling to contain Covid is the equivalent of forcing someone back into a burning building to carry on removing the asbestos.
In order to tackle environmental challenges, people are going to be asked to make significant sacrifices. And that will involve politicians – and the burgeoning green lobby and their sponsors – taking public opinion with them.
But instead of showing families that they have a plan for saving their planet, our leaders again seem intent on giving the impression they reside on an entirely different one.
COP26 is about to replace Davos as the event that most gratuitously frames the arrogance, hypocrisy and entitlement of the global ruling class.
Their gigantic jets will descend upon Prestwick. And they will alight and tell us how we each need to reduce our global environmental footprint. Their motorcades will speed along their exclusive expressway.
And they will get out, then inform us we have to do our bit by walking our kids to school. They will assemble for their plush banquet. And after dessert and coffee, they'll retire to put the finishing touches to speeches that lecture us about eating sustainably.
Worst of all, they think no one will notice their green doublespeak. That this grotesque 'do as I say, not as I do' grandstanding will pass everyone by amid a kaleidoscope of polar bears, Greta Thunberg and homilies about our grandchildren.
Which might actually be the optimum outcome.
The best that the organisers of COP26 can hope for now is that as many people as possible ignore them.
That those concerned about where the next booster jab is coming from, or how they will cope with soaring fuel prices, will blink and miss this UN imitation of The Fyre Festival.
Because if they don't, those same people aren't going to be happy.
As I've written before, a dangerous disconnect is opening up. Between those who believe that everyone has bought into their liberal, environmental consensus and those who want a recognition that we live in a complex world of competing priorities, not all of which revolve around the level of carbon emissions in 2050.
Anyone doubting this should have a word with the Insulate Britain protester who recently ended up tied by irate motorists to a railing with his own banner.
It's very late in the day. But the best way of saving COP26 – and the planet – is to cancel it.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/dan-hodges-save-the-planet-boris-by-axeing-a-farcical-summit/ar-AAPSke7?ocid=chromentpnews
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Heat pumps and other follies
Boris Johnson would be proud of me, I have the heating system he wants us all to install.
He told us this week that if we are to meet the Government’s targets for reducing carbon emissions we must abandon our gas boilers and install heat pumps. Well, I was ahead of the game.
The conditions were ideal. We were rebuilding the house from scratch so we laid the underfloor piping before the floors went down.
The walls were stone, but strict building regulations meant our insulation was state of the art.
And better still, the field behind the house was perfect for laying the pipes needed for a ground source system, which is far more efficient than the air source alternative that has to be used in the vast majority of homes in towns and cities.
It cost a small fortune, but it was worth it. I was helping to save the planet and saving myself the cost of buying nasty, polluting oil.
The perfect win-win, I told myself. A toasty house whatever the weather and a minuscule energy bill.
But I was wrong. For a start I had not allowed for the electricity needed to run the pump. Not a big problem because I’d also installed an array of solar panels. But you can’t do that in a small semi or a flat.
The real killer was that it didn’t do its job. I have not ended up with a toasty house in mid-winter.
If my lovely neighbour switches it on a couple of days before I arrive, it takes the chill off the downstairs rooms. But that’s about it.
To get really warm, I have to fire up the log-burning stove. Again, not exactly an option in your typical suburban semi.
The sad reality is I’ve spent a small fortune and have not ended up with a cosy house.
And I wonder: how many of us would — or even could — pay at least £10,000 for a heating system to replace our polluting but efficient gas boiler for something that just takes the chill off?
Yes, that’s what it costs. The promise of a £5,000 grant from next April is only for the lucky few. The Government’s own target is 600,000 heat pumps a year.
The handouts will cover just 30,000. And only for three years. Perhaps the tooth fairy will help out.
I jest but this is no laughing matter. The world is facing a real crisis.
It’s true that this country accounts for less than 1 per cent of the carbon that’s wrecking our precious atmosphere. China accounts for 28 per cent and is massively increasing its use of coal to generate power.
But it matters here at home because this is a moral issue. We must do everything in our power to repair the terrible harm we have already done and, above all, stop it getting even worse.
That’s why Boris Johnson’s statement this week should fill us with both despair and anger — specifically at the lack of detail. He promises that this country will be ‘net zero’ by 2050, but does not tell us how.
That’s because he’s scared of the electorate. He knows that if the targets are to be met there must be enormous technical advances in crucial areas such as carbon capture and storage, and producing hydrogen without fossil fuels.
It will cost vast sums, and he wants us to believe that the private sector can and should pick up the biggest bills.
Otherwise taxpayers will have to, which will not be popular — and Boris wants very badly to be popular.
He’s hardly unique. But he obviously believes if he can jolly us along with his feel-good approach, throwing in the odd joke, we’ll sit at his feet like an adoring puppy gazing up at its master.
He used an expression this week that demonstrated his contempt for our gullibility. We can build back greener, he said, ‘without so much as a hair shirt in sight’.
That is either stupid or cynical. Maybe both. The single event that enabled the human race to conquer the desperate poverty of the masses was the discovery of fossil fuels and what they could do: first coal, then oil. The energy trapped in them changed everything. It made the industrial revolution possible. It gave us electricity.
Now we are on a journey to a future without fossil fuels, and it’s fraught with hazards.
The Prime Minister underestimates the intelligence of millions of worried people in this country who know that if we carry on living just as we have done we betray our children and their children.
Renewable energy is vital, but it’s not enough. We must change the way we live.
But dumping petrol and diesel cars will mean a massive increase in electricity use. Planes will need kerosene into the foreseeable future. And we still have to heat our homes and offices.
So we must travel less. Turn down the thermostat. Maybe even learn something from my parents’ generation; when it got cold our mothers buttoned up us kids in weird garments called liberty bodices.
Padded vests we couldn’t take off even if we wanted to. We must have ponged a bit after the first week or two, but no one seemed to care.
I am not saying that smelly kids are the answer to our climate crisis, but here’s one suggestion that’s slightly less tongue-in-cheek: what if the Government dished out free thermal vests?
It might cost a few hundred million, but they’d have to be made in Britain so there would be some economic benefit from the jobs created. And think how much energy we’d save if we discovered we need not live in saunas.
Bonkers maybe. But are thermal vests really any more bonkers than Boris’s hair-shirt fantasy?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10121865/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-heat-pump-left-cold-Im-hot-bothered-PM.html
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Coal reserves now essential
PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. power grid operator, could restrict how much some coal-fired plants can operate this winter if their fuel supplies fall below certain levels to ensure coal will be available in the case of a deep freeze in the eastern part of the country.
Energy prices around the world are trading near multiyear highs as supplies of coal, oil and natural gas run short, causing power outages in China and utilities in Europe and Asia to scramble to buy fuel before the winter heating season.
To help ensure power plants will be available when needed this winter, PJM said it may restrict steam units, which are generally coal-fired, from operating if they have less than 10 days (240 hours) of fuel supply available.
In the past, PJM allowed plants to operate until they had just 32 hours of fuel supply. The shift means plants will be able to run for several days if the region were to experience extreme winter weather or some other reliability need.
PJM operates the biggest electric grid in the United States serving 65 million people in 13 Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states from Illinois to New Jersey and the District of Columbia.
"We are especially concerned about coal supply chain issues and inventory levels heading into the winter," Michael Bryson, PJM's senior vice president of operations, said in support of temporary changes to rules governing minimum fuel requirements that take effect on Thursday.
"Our top priority at PJM is ensuring a reliable electric grid," he said.
Even though U.S. power generation relies more on renewable sources than in the past, about 24% of the nation's power supply still comes from coal plants, according to U.S. Energy Department data.
After years of shutting coal plants to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions, U.S. energy companies have cut coal stockpiles at power plants to just 84.6 million short tons in September, their lowest in a month since March 1978, according to federal data.
By the middle of the winter, the federal government projected coal power plant stockpiles will collapse to 62.7 million short tons in February, the lowest on record, according to data going back to 1973.
https://au.investing.com/news/commodities-news/biggest-us-grid-changes-rules-to-shore-up-coal-supply-as-winter-approaches-2449859
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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 October, 2021
99.9% Of Climate Scientists Agree With Whoever Is Paying Them
More than 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a [alarmist-funded] survey of 88,125 [alarmist-funded] climate-related studies.
The research updates a similar 2013 paper revealing that 97 percent of studies published between 1991 and 2012 supported the idea that human activities are altering Earth’s climate. The current survey examines the literature published from 2012 to November 2020 to explore whether the consensus has changed.
“We are virtually certain that the consensus is well over 99 percent now and that it’s pretty much case closed for any meaningful public conversation about the reality of human-caused climate change,” said Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science at Cornell University and the paper’s first author.
“It’s critical to acknowledge the principal role of greenhouse gas emissions so that we can rapidly mobilize new solutions, since we are already witnessing in real time the devastating impacts of climate related disasters on businesses, people and the economy,” said Benjamin Houlton, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell and a co-author of the study, “Greater than 99 percent Consensus on Human Caused Climate Change in the Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature,” which published Oct. 19 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
In spite of such results, public opinion polls as well as opinions of politicians and public representatives point to false beliefs and claims that a significant debate still exists among scientists over the true cause of climate change. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that only 27 percent of U.S. adults believe that “almost all” scientists agreed that climate change is due to human activity, according to the paper. A 2021 Gallup poll pointed to a deepening partisan divide in American politics on whether Earth’s rising observed temperatures since the Industrial Revolution were primarily caused by humans.
“To understand where a consensus exists, you have to be able to quantify it,” Lynas said. “That means surveying the literature in a coherent and non-arbitrary way in order to avoid trading cherry-picked papers, which is often how these arguments are carried out in the public sphere.”
In the study, the researchers began by examining a random sample of 3,000 studies from the dataset of 88,125 English-language climate papers published between 2012 and 2020. They found only four out of the 3,000 papers were skeptical of human-caused climate change. “We knew that [climate skeptical papers] were vanishingly small in terms of their occurrence, but we thought there still must be more in the 88,000,” Lynas said.
Co-author Simon Perry, a United Kingdom-based software engineer and volunteer at the Alliance for Science, created an algorithm that searched out keywords from papers the team knew were skeptical, such as “solar,” “cosmic rays” and “natural cycles.” The algorithm was applied to all 88,000-plus papers, and the program ordered them so the skeptical ones came higher in the order. They found many of these dissenting papers near the top, as expected, with diminishing returns further down the list.
Overall, the search yielded 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly skeptical, all published in minor journals.
If the 97 percent result from the 2013 study still left some doubt on scientific consensus on the human influence on climate, the current findings go even further to allay any uncertainty, Lynas said. “This pretty much should be the last word,” he said.
https://principia-scientific.com/99-9-of-climate-scientists-agree-with-whoever-is-paying-them/
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Climate Change Calls for Adaptation, Not Panic
Catastrophic scenarios presuppose people will do nothing to adjust to differences in the weather.
By Bjorn Lomborg
Editor’s note: As November’s global climate conference in Glasgow draws near, important facts about climate change don’t always make it into the dominant media coverage. We’re here to help. Each Thursday contributor Bjorn Lomborg will provide some important background so readers can have a better understanding of the true effects of climate change and the real costs of climate policy.
It’s easy to construct climate disasters. You just find a current, disconcerting trend and project it into the future, while ignoring everything humanity could do to adapt. For instance, one widely reported study found that heat waves could kill thousands more Americans by the end of the century if global warming continues apace—but only if you assume people won’t use more air conditioning. Yes, the climate is likely to change, but so is human behavior in response.
Adaptation doesn’t make the cost of global warming go away entirely, but it does reduce it dramatically. Higher temperatures will shrink harvests if farmers keep growing the same crops, but they’re likely to adapt by growing other varieties or different plants altogether. Corn production in North America has shifted away from the Southeast toward the Upper Midwest, where farmers take advantage of longer growing seasons and less-frequent extreme heat. When sea levels rise, governments build defenses—like the levees, flood walls and drainage systems that protected New Orleans from much of Hurricane Ida’s ferocity this year.
Nonetheless, many in the media push unrealistic projections of climate catastrophes, while ignoring adaptation. A new study documents how the biggest bias in studies on the rise of sea levels is their tendency to ignore human adaptation, exaggerating flood risks in 2100 by as much as 1,300 times. It is also evident in the breathless tone of most reporting: The Washington Post frets that sea level rise could “make 187 million people homeless,” CNN fears an “underwater future,” and USA Today agonizes over tens of trillions of dollars in projected annual flood damage. All three rely on studies that implausibly assume no society across the world will make any adaptation whatever for the rest of the century. This isn’t reporting but scaremongering.
You can see how far from reality these sorts of projections are in one heavily cited study, depicted in the graph nearby If you assume no society will adapt to any sea-level rise between now and 2100, you’ll find that vast areas of the world will be routinely flooded, causing $55 trillion in damage annually in 2100 (expressed in 2005 dollars), or about 5% of global gross domestic product. But as the study emphasizes, “in reality, societies are likely to adapt.”
By raising the height of dikes, the study shows that humanity can negate almost all that terrible projected damage by 2100. Only 15,000 people would be flooded every year, which is a remarkable improvement compared with the 3.4 million people flooded in 2000. The total cost of damage, investments in new dikes, and maintenance costs of existing dikes will fall sixfold between now and 2100 to 0.008% of world GDP.
Adaptation is much more effective than climate regulations at staving off flood risks. Compare the two types of policies in isolation. Without any climate mitigation to help, dikes would still safeguard more than 99.99% of the flood victims you’d see if global warming continued on current trends. Instead of 187 million people flooded in 2100, there would be only 15,000. Climate policy achieves much less on its own. Without adaptation, even stringent regulations that keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius would reduce the number of flood victims only down to 85 million a year by the end of the century.
Stringent climate policy still has only a mild effect when used in concert with dikes: Instead of the 15,000 flood victims you’d get with only adaptation, you’d have 10,000. And getting there would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars, which is hardly mitigated by the $40 billion drop in total flood damage and dike costs climate regulations would achieve. As I’ve explained in these pages before, this kind of policy has a high human cost: the tens of millions of people pricey climate regulations relegate to poverty.
You don’t have to portend doom to take climate change seriously. Ignoring the benefits of adaptation may make for better headlines, but it badly misinforms readers.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic-exaggerating-disaster-11634760376?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s
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Nationalism to Confront Globalism in Glasgow over Climate Change
Patrick J. Buchanan
“Extraordinary, isn’t it? I’ve been hearing all about COP,” said the queen to the duchess of Cornwall. “Still don’t know who is coming. … We only know about people who are not coming. … It’s really irritating when they talk but they don’t do.”
Queen Elizabeth II was expressing her exasperation at the possible number of no-shows at the U.K.’s coming climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
Among the absentees may be Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country generates more carbon dioxide than the U.S. and EU combined.
Behind the queen’s exasperation, however, lies a political reality.
Nations like China are discovering that meeting goals for cutting carbon emissions can stall economic growth to where the regime itself is at peril.
Forced to choose between what is best for the country now and what is better for mankind in some indeterminate future, leaders are putting the needs of the nation today over the call of the world of tomorrow.
As the countdown to Glasgow proceeds, China’s energy situation is described by The New York Times:
“China’s electricity shortage is rippling across factories and industries, testing the nation’s status as the world’s capital for reliable manufacturing. The shortage prompted the authorities to announce on Wednesday a national rush to mine and burn more coal, despite their previous pledges to curb emissions that cause climate change.
“Mines that were closed without authorization have been ordered to reopen. Coal mines and coal-fired power plants that were shut for repairs are also to be reopened. Tax incentives are being drafted for coal-fired power plants. … Local governments have been warned to be more cautious about limits on energy use that had been imposed partly in response to climate change concerns.”
Earlier this year, Beijing had pledged to stop building coal-fired power plants outside China. But at home, Beijing is going all-out to mine and burn coal to keep the world’s greatest manufacturing plant producing and the world’s largest labor force employed.
Forced to choose between fighting climate change and preventing a possible recession or depression, Xi is unapologetically putting China first.
Nor is China the only Asian economic power grappling with an energy shortage. India, the world’s third-largest producer of carbon emissions after China and the U.S., is facing a potential power crisis.
Coal accounts for 70% of India’s electricity generation. Yet, 4 in 5 of its 135 coal-fired power plants have critically low levels of coal inventory. With its economy picking up, New Delhi is going to be in the market for more coal to burn. Lectures about carbon emissions are likely to go unheeded.
In Europe, wholesale electricity prices have increased 200% since 2019, a result of surging natural gas costs driven by high demand in Asia and lower-than-expected deliveries from Russia.
Most EU countries rely on gas-fired power stations to meet electricity demand. Some 40% of that gas comes from Russia. With completion of the Nord Stream II pipeline, German and EU dependence on Russian gas is going to rise.
Is Russia, rich in fossil fuels that are still in demand, and the world’s fourth-largest producer of carbon dioxide, likely to placidly accept watching its customers move away from Russian coal, oil and gas to solar and wind?
On Friday, U.S. oil prices hit a seven-year high amid a surge in global demand and a supply crunch induced by OPEC. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, climbed to $82 a barrel. Gas prices followed.
Oil is at its highest price since OPEC launched its price war against U.S. shale producers. In November 2014, OPEC stunned world oil markets by refusing to curb production amid soaring shale output.
Crude prices went into free-fall as OPEC sought to drive the higher-cost U.S. producers out of the market.
Such economic nationalism raises a relevant question:
Why would OPEC nations that depend on oil exports for much of their national income champion a worldwide abandonment of the fossil fuel sales upon which their regimes’ survival depends?
In brief, world demand for coal, oil and natural gas is surging, as are prices, just as the climate conference, whose goal is to reduce and eventually eliminate the burning of coal, oil and gas, is about to meet in Glasgow.
Will nations such as China, India and Russia be willing to forgo the coal, oil and gas upon which 80% of the world’s power plants currently depend, to be replaced by windmills and solar panels?
At the insistence of Sen. Joe Manchin, the heart of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda — a program to replace U.S. coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy by steadily increasing taxes on the former and subsidies for the latter — will apparently be dropped from the $3.5 trillion budget bill.
Prediction: In the long run, nationalists fighting to meet near-term needs of their constituents and countries are likely to prevail over the globalists who profess to be serving all of mankind.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2021/10/buchanan-nationalism-to-confront-globalism-in-glasgow-over-climate-change/
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Lawsuit Alleges Cronyism at Biden EPA to ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Green Agenda
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is violating the law in a “purge” of advisory committees in order to “rubber-stamp” regulations, a lawsuit alleges, and in the process sweeping away a Trump administration policy against conflicts of interest.
The lead plaintiff in the case is Stanley Young, who in March was ousted from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. Young previously worked for Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences.
“In an unprecedented purge, EPA eliminated all industry representatives from two important advisory committees in order to stack those committees with academics who are financially beholden to EPA for multimillion-dollar research grants,” reads Young’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit identifies the Environmental Protection Agency panels in question as the Science Advisory Board and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
The complaint says of the Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Michael Regan:
Through this mass dismissal, EPA guaranteed that the committees will rubber-stamp the new administration’s regulations without the inconvenience of an objecting voice from the very industries targeted by those regulations and bearing the cost of those regulations, to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
These newly constituted, industry-free advisory committees are neither fairly balanced, nor protected from inappropriate influence in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that each board or committee must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.”
Any agency with one or more advisory committees, the law says, must adopt “appropriate provisions to assure that the advice and recommendations of the advisory committee will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest, but will instead be the result of the advisory committee’s independent judgment.”
During the Trump administration, to avoid conflicts of interests, individuals associated with organizations getting federal grant money were prohibited from serving on federal advisory boards.
However, after the Biden administration took over, Regan restored recipients of federal grants as members of advisory panels—meaning, critics say, the grant recipients could be beholden financially to the administration’s political goals.
“EPA also abandoned—again without acknowledgment or explanation—its policy of addressing grant-based conflicts of interests on an individual appointment-by-appointment basis,” the lawsuit says.
Former President Donald Trump appointed Young, the lead plaintiff in the case, to a three-year term in 2017 and reappointed him in 2020. After taking office as EPA chief, Regan cut short the terms of Young and other industry representatives.
The EPA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.
Conservatives who are not parties to the lawsuit took notice.
The Young v. EPA case is “hugely important” to protect the intent of federal law requiring a balanced and independent panel of qualified scientists, said Steve Milloy, senior policy fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute and author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
“The Biden EPA has turned the law on its head by first deciding what its policy is and then stacking the panel with its cronies,” Milloy said in a public statement, adding:
These EPA cronies are academic researchers who have been awarded tens of millions of dollars’ worth of EPA grants. This will not be independent and balanced scientific review. Rather, it will be the rubber-stamping of EPA’s predetermined policy in contravention of congressional intent.
EPA appears to be engaging in cronyism, said Garrett Bess, vice president of Heritage Action for America, the grassroots partner organization of The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“[President Joe] Biden is again showing just how radical his administration is, by stacking advisory committees with left-wing academics, who depend on government grants, to rubber-stamp the left’s extreme job-killing agenda,” Bess said in a public statement.
“At every opportunity, the Biden administration has chosen to implement policies that hurt American businesses and workers,” Bess said, adding:
Now, [Biden] has rigged the advisory boards to hide the harm these ‘Green New Deal’ policies will cause. Heritage Action will continue to call attention to just how extreme Biden’s economic policies really are, even as he tries to hide the impact from the American people.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/12/lawsuit-alleges-cronyism-at-biden-epa-to-rubber-stamp-green-agenda/
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 October, 2021
Recent NIMBY Move Could Leave California in the Dark
“Excuse me,” says your landscaper. “The mower’s out of juice. Mind if I plug in?” You look from the immobile machine to your half-cut lawn. “Outlet’s over there,” you tell him. “But let’s knock $20 off your fee? What are we up to now, 25 cents a kilowatt-hour?”
Welcome to the future. Welcome to California.
The state, committed to net-zero emissions by 2045, is moving to ban sales of gas-powered landscaping equipment as early as 2024. This is not the first attempt. Politicians tried and failed to do the same in 2003. Since then, though, more than half of homeowners in the state have swapped out their consumer-grade equipment for “zero emission equipment” (ZEE), meaning, battery-powered weed whackers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and even lawn mowers.
Electric, Because It’s . . . Quiet?
Many make the switch because, although lower-powered and less reliable (do batteries ever die at the right time?), battery-powered equipment is less noisy. That’s what prompted Mayor Stewart Welch of Mountain Brook, Alabama to begin switching his town’s tools over to electric. The bellow of leaf blowers disturbed his tennis game with a friend who, as chance would have it, had previously complained about the town’s noisy equipment. The city has spent $18,000 over the last year outfitting its public works crew with electric trimmers, blowers, and more.
According to Stanley Black & Decker, sales of the company’s electric yard equipment jumped 75 percent between 2015 and 2020. But, although lots of people are making the switch of their own accord, they’re not doing it fast enough, according to California’s legislative assembly.
Stop and Recharge
The biggest holdouts are those who do landscaping for a living, and for good reason. I searched Husqavarna’s site high and low for battery run time info for its 550iBTX, which one landscaper reviewed as “The best electric blower on the market.” For $469? Not bad, I thought. After lots of web searching about the battery, I gave up and contacted support. Turns out, it does not come with one. The lowest-priced option will cost landscapers an extra $300 and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. The one the associate recommended, though, costs $969 (yes, more than double the cost of the blower) and “lasts up to 3.5 hours,” he told me. That’s if you run it in “normal” mode, which is half the power of Husqavarna’s $459 gas blower; boost mode saps the power faster and is about 33 percent less powerful than the gas blower.
Some landscapers make electric work, and not just those whose equipment is paid for by taxpayers, as in Mountain Brook. Chris Regis, owner of Florida-based lawn care company Suntek, is able to charge customers between 10 and 20 percent more for all-electric lawn care. He says, “There are people who don’t care and say, ‘I just don’t want the noise.’” All power to them. That’s exactly how free markets work.
Given the numbers above, though, it would take a lot of lawns to make up one’s initial investment with only a 10 or 20 percent upcharge. But Regis’s investment is far greater. He has outfitted the company’s vans with solar panels for recharging batteries on the go—each van costing about $100,000. Reflecting on how much longer the same work now takes him, Jimi Layne of Mountain Brook’s crew asked, “Are we looking at dollars and cents?”
‘Expensive and Unreliable, Please’
That’s an even more pertinent question in California, where energy prices are the highest in the continental US. (23.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, as of June 2021). Gas is more expensive there, too, in large part because of penalizing policies, but researchers predict electricity prices can only rise in the golden state, thanks to a host of factors. Prices are high, in part, because the size of the state increases transmission costs, as do wildfires on mismanaged public lands that have knocked out critical infrastructure, requiring replacement.
But the biggest contributor to high prices is the state’s push to adopt wind and solar, which require big upfront investments but nonetheless necessitate a reliable backup for when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing.
This problem came to the fore in 2020 when, for two days, California’s three big energy companies instituted rolling blackouts across the state because the grid could not meet demand. It was a self-inflicted wound. Given the state’s environmental restrictions, many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned, and thanks to irrational fears, they’re not being replaced with clean, reliable nuclear energy, either.
Instead, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize massive investments in “renewables,” and power companies make up much of the state’s inevitable shortfalls by buying energy from more reliable, fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states. Unfortunately for Californians, on August 14, 2020, when the sun set and solar farms went offline, these companies realized they had miscalculated how big that shortfall would be. Western states were in the grip of a heat wave, and as Californians reached for the AC dials, they lost power altogether.
A Deadly Mistake
Losing power is no minor inconvenience, particularly when you live in what is naturally a desert, and especially when it’s more than 100 degrees outside. It’s not just that people can’t charge their Teslas or their ZEE mowers. One 2020 study concluded that more than 5,500 Americans lose their lives due to extreme heat annually. Climate-related deaths are a key indicator of low climate resilience, the ability of a locale to deal with extreme temperatures and weather. And, of course, climate resilience is directly dependent on plentiful, affordable, reliable energy.
But, increasingly, that is what California is doing away with in favor of expensive, unreliable energy. Unsurprisingly, the poor suffer the most. Research done in 2020 shows that many in Los Angeles can’t afford air conditioners, and many who have them can’t afford to run them because electricity prices are so high. In fact, accounting for cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country, in large part because energy prices are so high. This, not in spite of the state’s adoption of “cheap” and “reliable” renewables, but because of it—because solar and wind are not cheap nor reliable and require a backup that is.
Cutting the Lifeline
Yet, with startling shortsightedness, the state assembly has sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that will effectively eliminate a go-to backup: gas-powered generators. The bill (AB-1346) lumps gas-powered generators in with the offending landscaping equipment and all other “small off-road engines,” referring to them as SOREs. It “encourages” the California Air Resources Board (the state’s own sort of EPA) to “adopt cost-effective and technologically feasible regulations to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines” and to consider “expected availability of zero-emission generators.”
Such generators do exist, but they are far more expensive, generate far less power, and most need to be recharged after just a few hours. Consider the GOAL ZERO YETI 3000X. It costs $3,400, and an additional $250 kit enables you to use it as a battery backup for your home. After all that, you can power a single refrigerator for less than 2.5 days, and that of course drops if you want to power, say, a few lightbulbs. By contrast, a Duromax XP10000HX can power your whole home—lights, appliances, and A/C system—continuously, running on either gasoline or propane, and it costs $1,400.
When the power went out last August, says Collin Blackwell of Eldorado Hills, California, “We went out and bought an $800 generator, so that way we could have the fridge powered up in the garage at least and be able to have food and everything in the house.” Mark Galloway of Cameron Park said he lives in a mountain community where losing power is fairly common. “You should have something, so having the backup generator and things like that—I think it’s on you to really take care of that,” he said. “It’s not like it’s something that you can’t plan for.”
But, if AB-1346 is signed into law, going out and buying an $800 generator will no longer be an option.
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when these blackouts inevitably occur. California is committing energy suicide, and given that people rely on energy for just about everything, we shouldn’t be surprised by the toll this will take on human life.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/10/07/california-dark/
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Biden on Energy Crisis: Begging Others to Save Him From Himself
President Joe Biden is drowning in a sea of crises of his own creation, and Americans are the ones who are paying the price.
There’s an ongoing humanitarian and national security calamity at the southern border.
Thirteen U.S. service members are dead, and an unknown number of our citizens remain stranded in Afghanistan following Biden’s disastrous withdrawal.
COVID-19 is still rampant, despite Biden’s promises that he would defeat the virus, while his vaccine mandate has divided the country.
Americans are not taking the millions of jobs available and the economy is stalled, as many have chosen the option of being paid by the government to stay home instead of working.
Biden’s administration failed to identify the growing supply chain disruption, which did not occur overnight and threatens to further strangle the economy. Labor shortages are a contributing factor, including a lack of truck drivers to help unload ships and transport goods (see the above point about workers not accepting available jobs).
And energy prices continue to rise, helping to drive mounting inflation and hurting Americans—especially those with moderate or low incomes—at a time when the economy should be hitting its stride coming out of the pandemic lockdowns.
It is on the costs of energy where Biden’s failures are most starkly visible.
On his very first day in office, Biden scrapped the Keystone XL pipeline, killing 11,000 jobs in the process and making good on his campaign promise to be hostile to the fossil fuel industry.
Continuing his assault on natural resource development, Biden suspended oil and natural gas leases in Alaska.
Former President Donald Trump had propelled America to energy independence, but Biden has purposely squandered it. His policies are designed to reduce domestic production of petroleum, meaning we have become necessarily more reliant on foreign sources.
Biden’s approach has been an economic disaster.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the price of crude oil has jumped by 64% to a seven-year high. The cost of natural gas has doubled in just six months. Heating oil is more expensive by 68%, just in time for winter. And gasoline is over $3 per gallon on the national average, up by almost a dollar over the past year.
Energy costs are one driver of inflation, which is already a concern and could get worse.
The situation he created has led Biden into embarrassing situations where he has been forced to plead for rescue.
Over the summer, his administration begged OPEC to increase oil production to combat rising gasoline prices. It refused.
This month, Reuters reported that the Biden White House has approached domestic oil and gas producers, asking for help. These are the very companies that Biden has been demonizing and now he wants them to save him from himself.
Anne Bradbury, the chief executive officer of the American Exploration and Production Council, explained who the culprit is.
“By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” she said.
But never fear, White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated that the higher prices just mean that Biden’s policies are going according to plan.
“Certainly, we all want to keep gasoline prices low, but the threat of the crisis—the climate crisis—certainly can’t wait any longer,” she said on Oct. 6.
One week later, Psaki appeared to soften the message somewhat, in recognition of how higher energy bills affect people, but attempted to mislead about the scope of the problem.
“[T]he American people are, of course, impacted by rising prices of gas in some parts of the country—not all,” she said.
This, of course, is not true. Gas prices are higher in all 50 states.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain then underscored the indifference of the Biden administration to the concerns of regular Americans by approving of a tweet from Harvard economist Jason Furman, who labeled “economic problems we’re facing,” such as “inflation, supply chains, etc.,” as merely “high-class problems.”
Klain quote-tweeted Furman and enthusiastically agreed, posting “This,” with two hand emojis pointing to Furman’s original post.
For Americans still struggling, it must be jarring that the White House chief of staff thinks rising grocery bills—driven by fuel prices and inflation—are “high-class problems.”
Such a callous dismissal of real-world issues, the endorsement of an Ivy League elitist view that working people are just imagining things, simply feeds the prevailing belief that Biden simply is bad at his job.
But rather than face reporters or describe to Americans what he’s doing to combat these severe economic problems—and all of the other crises he’s inflicted on the country—Biden has almost entirely avoided taking questions.
On the rare occasions that he comes to the cameras to deliver remarks, most often he finishes speaking, turns around abruptly, and returns to the recesses of the White House.
It’s an apt image presented by an administration that is usually very concerned about visuals and symbolism.
Biden is leaving the lasting impression that, as he does to members of the press, he is simply turning his back on the American people.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/18/biden-on-energy-crisis-begging-others-to-save-him-from-himself
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UK: Green banks: They may claim to grow savings with a clear conscience - but is it just posturing?
The idea of making money while also saving the planet is appealing to many savers. So it’s no surprise the Duke and Duchess of Sussex leapt at the opportunity last week to plunge their fortunes into the sustainable investment firm Ethic. ‘When we invest in each other we change the world,’ the couple said in a typically verbose statement.
Harry and Meghan are the latest in a long line of celebrities, politicians and businesses to talk about ‘ESG’ — which stands for ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’.
And the trend is filtering down to the High Street banks. The amount of money spent on ‘ethical banking’ more than doubled to £196.65 million between 2010 and 2019, according to research and campaign organisation Ethical Consumer.
From launching recycled debit cards to boosting women onto their boards, firms are eager to show customers they are the most socially responsible place to look after your money.
But can banking ever be ethical and lucrative? You don’t have to delve deep into the murky world of ESG for the threads of these claims to unravel.
Traditionally, these types of accounts meant banks would not invest your money in the likes of weapons, alcohol, tobacco, fossil fuels or fur.
However, firms are increasingly coming under fire over ‘greenwashing’ — the practice of overstating how sustainable a product really is.
There is no better evidence of this than Ethic — which the Daily Mail revealed at the weekend had invested millions of dollars in a wide range of unethical practices, such as fracking.
This trend is not exclusive to wealthy investment funds, however — it trickles right down to ethical accounts being offered by High Street banks.
‘Often we see banks just rebrand accounts overnight with the term “ESG”,’ says Gareth Griffiths, head of retail banking at green firm Triodos. ‘There is minimal accountability.’
And for customers, it can be almost impossible to work out which firms genuinely do good and which are simply virtue signalling.
In recent years, everything from meat consumption to air travel has come under scrutiny as the UK moves towards net zero.
But according to Make My Money Matter, making your pension green is 21 times more effective at reducing your carbon footprint than giving up flying, going vegetarian and switching energy provider combined.
And customers are wising up. Figures from investment data firm Morningstar show around £27 billion was poured into ethical investment funds in the first three months of 2020 alone.
Triodos bank, which often tops ethical banking polls, saw its customer base grow by 10 per cent in the first six months of this year. That follows a 20 per cent growth in 2020.
As interest grows, banks want to cater to new demands. But this can be difficult to balance with their core aim of making money.
And under pressure to be seen as more sustainable, banks are tempted to overstate how green their practices truly are.
For example, Barclays claims to work for the ‘common good’ under a section on its website titled ‘our approach’.
‘It is our fundamental belief that we can and must do business in a way that does good,’ it reads.
Yet one look at Barclays’ Climate Related Financial Disclosures reveals that the bank continues to invest in aviation, coal mining and oil and gas.
Greenwashing has become so widespread that City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) sent a letter to chief executives this year warning them that funds proclaiming to be concerned with ESG were not of an acceptable standard.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/greeninvesting/article-10108339/Green-banks-claim-grow-savings-clear-conscience.html
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Why Australia is foolish to embrace net zero emissions
Senator Matt Canavan
Australia is lagging the rest of the world. Just as we are set to sign up to a net zero emissions target, everyone is in a desperate rush to get more coal, oil and gas.
In the UK, they have reopened coal power stations because there has been a wind drought, and Vladimir Putin is not sending them as much gas as he used to.
The US has asked Middle Eastern countries to increase oil production because the woke Wall Street bankers are no longer financing fracking in Texas.
In China, Premier Li said this month that “coal supply is crucial to people’s lives” and that he would review China’s emissions targets in light of their recent energy crisis. He stressed that energy security was China’s priority.
India has demanded that all coal power stations use at least 10 per cent imported coal so they can boost their fuel security.
This is all happening because of Europe’s ill-fated attempt to reach net zero. The failure of Europe to develop their own fossil fuel resources has led to a cascading effect through world energy markets. The price of coal and gas are at record highs, which is good for Australia given we are the world’s largest exporter of both of these things.
But we are set to look this gift horse in the mouth by signing up to a net zero emissions target. A “net” zero emissions target means that any new coal mine or gas field in Australia would need to “net” off its emissions by purchasing carbon credits. These credits cost money and will, in effect, tax the creation of working class Australian jobs.
Over 1 million Australians work in the mining industry alone but these requirements will also impact agriculture, manufacturing and construction jobs too. A net zero target will be the first time that an Australian Government has adopted a policy to make us poorer.
How much will these carbon credits cost? UK Government modelling shows that the carbon price will have to be A$295 per tonne to reach net zero. Julia Gillard’s $20 carbon tax increased electricity prices by 10 per cent. Electricity bills are already skyrocketing in the UK under their net zero plans, and they have a lot higher to go.
But there will be some winners. The banks are happy with this outcome because they will trade the carbon credits. Banks are some of the biggest supporters of net zero emissions. My rule of thumb is that if something is good for the banks, it is probably bad for me.
Turning our back on our domestic supplies of coal and gas will also mean that we will become reliant on China for our energy needs, as that is where our wind turbines and solar panels are made. All of this just as we learn that China has invented a hypersonic, nuclear capable missile that can land anywhere on earth and avoid existing missile defence systems.
China now has space nukes but they can’t match us on plans to reach net zero.
At the last election, Scott Morrison rightly warned of the dangers of cutting our emissions by too much. He called Labor’s proposed 45 per cent reduction in emissions a “wrecking ball through the Australian economy.”
The working men and women of Australia agreed, and rewarded the Liberal and National parties with an unexpected victory. If we turn our backs on their jobs, the Quiet Australians will become loud and angry.
These Australians don’t care what world leaders think of them. They just want their government to create jobs, keep living costs down and make Australia stronger.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/matt-canavan-why-australia-is-foolish-to-embrace-net-zero-emissions/news-story/68bbdfe74836698b9b72b1f4a5178e40
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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 October, 2021
Price spike highlights how switching to greener energy will be a dirty job
The world is living through the first major energy crisis of the clean-power transition. It won't be the last. The shortages jolting natural gas and electricity markets from the UK to China are unfolding just as demand roars back from the pandemic.
But the planet has faced volatile energy markets and supply squeezes for decades. What’s different now is that the richest economies are also undergoing one of the most ambitious overhauls of their power systems since the dawn of the electric age — with no easy way to store the energy generated from renewable sources.
The transition to cleaner energy is designed to make those systems more resilient, not less. But the actual switch will take decades, during which the world will still rely on fossil fuels even as major producers are now drastically shifting their output strategies.
One of the biggest obstacles ahead will be storing power generated by intermittent wind and water sources. Solutions do exist, but it will be years before we have them at the scale on which they’re needed
“It is a cautionary message about how complex the energy transition is going to be,” said Daniel Yergin, one of the world's foremost energy analysts and author of The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations. In the throes of fundamental change, the world’s energy system has become strikingly more fragile and easier to shock.
Take the turmoil in Europe. After a colder-than-normal winter depleted natural gas inventories, gas and electricity prices soared as demand from rebounding economies surged too fast for supplies to match. Something similar probably would have happened had Covid-19 struck 20 years ago.
But now, the UK and Europe rely on a very different mix of energy sources. Coal has been cut back drastically, replaced in many instances by cleaner-burning gas. But surging global demand this year has left gas supplies scarce.
At the same time, two other sources of power – wind and water – have had unusually low output, thanks to unexpectedly slower wind speeds and low rainfall in areas including Norway. In other words: a strained global gas market triggered Europe's record-setting spike for electricity prices — and the transition amplified it.
The pain hitting Europe is an ominous sign of the types of shocks that could strike more of the globe. Even as solar and wind power become increasingly plentiful and cheap, many parts of the world will for decades still depend on natural gas and other fossil fuels as backups. And yet, investor and company interest in producing more of them is waning.
That’s a good recipe for volatility, Nikos Tsafos, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a recent analysis. “You're definitely moving into a system that’s more vulnerable,” Tsafos, the centre’s James R Schlesinger chair for energy and geopolitics, said in an interview.
To be clear, the transition itself – imperative for the planet – didn't cause the squeeze. But any big, complex system can become more fragile when it's undergoing major change.
All this is happening at a time when power consumption is projected to increase 60 per cent by 2050, according to Bloomberg NEF, as the world phases out fossil fuels and switches to cars, stoves and heating systems that run on electricity.
Continued economic and population growth will also drive consumption higher. And as the world moves even more into all things digital, it will mean that this heightened vulnerability comes at a time when people need reliable power more than ever.
The surge in electricity demand combined with fuel-price volatility means the world could be in a for a rocky few decades
The surge in electricity demand combined with fuel-price volatility means the world could be in a for a rocky few decades. The consequences will likely range from periods of energy-driven inflation, exacerbating income inequalities, to the looming threat of power outages and lost economic growth and production.
The planet's energy systems are interconnected, so the crisis and its spill over are being felt across the world. The crunch has had knock-on effects across industries, obstructing silicon production, disrupting food supplies and snarling supply chains.
In the US, natural gas futures have already more than doubled this year, before the peak demand that comes with the winter cold. With 40 per cent of the country’s electricity now generated by burning gas, those higher prices will inevitably push up electricity and heating bills.
In China, even as the government pushes to ramp up renewable power, the industrial economy still relies heavily on fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil. And when its factories started humming again during the pandemic rebound, the country simply didn’t have enough fuel.
Chinese manufacturing contracted in September for the first time in 19 months, suggesting that soaring energy costs have become the biggest shock to strike the economy since the beginning of the pandemic.
China's government is now vowing to stabilise the situation by procuring more overseas coal and liquefied natural gas. That puts the nation in direct competition with Europe, threatening to starve the continent of fuel and worsen that crisis. There will be an inevitable fight over what exports are available, leaving some developing countries such as India and Pakistan worried they can’t compete.
As major western producers from BP to Royal Dutch Shell work to reduce emissions and America’s shale drillers take a step back from expansion, the finite amount of exportable supplies is growing tighter. Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, points to underinvestment in fossil fuels as a big part of the problem.
Investors seeking the big returns that come from new businesses have been pouring money into alternative energy stocks rather than fossil fuel companies. Others are actively dumping coal and oil stocks, seeing them as a risk while the energy transition accelerates.
The current price spike has served as a reminder that even as the world is trying to build a new energy system, it’s still reliant on the old one
And some fossil fuel companies have themselves started directing investments into the low-carbon future rather than focusing solely on their old role of finding, pumping and delivering more oil and gas.
“In many parts of the world, you’ve overbuilt wind, you’ve overbuilt solar,” Currie said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “The new economy is over-invested and the old economy is starved.”
Wind and solar power production have soared in the past decade. But both renewable sources are notoriously fickle – available at some times and not at others. And electricity, unlike gas or coal, is difficult to store in meaningful quantities.
That’s a problem, because on the electrical grid, supply and demand must be constantly, perfectly balanced. Throw that balance out of whack, and blackouts result. So far, natural gas plants have served as the stable backup that wind and solar power need. That interdependence works fine, so long as gas prices aren’t going through the roof.
One of the biggest obstacles ahead will be storing power generated by intermittent wind and water sources. Solutions do exist, but it will be years before we have them at the scale on which they’re needed. “The transition is both the challenge and the opportunity,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, managing director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University.
Australia and California are plugging massive batteries into the grid to keep power supplies steady when the sun sets on solar plants. That deployment is just in nascent stages, and the batteries themselves are limited, usually supplying electricity for about four hours at a time.
Many countries and companies have pinned their hopes on hydrogen, seeing it both as a way to store energy and as a fuel for transportation and industry. Hydrogen can be split from water using machines called electrolysers powered by renewable energy, whenever it’s abundant. The process produces no greenhouse gases.
The hydrogen can then be burned in a turbine or fed through a fuel cell to generate electricity – all without carbon emissions. And unlike oil, gas and coal, such “green hydrogen” can be produced almost anywhere where there’s water and strong sun or wind.
The first wave of green hydrogen plants is still in planning stages. Many of the potential users – heavy industries and utility companies – are still studying whether the solution will work for them. The point at which hydrogen could underpin our global energy system, if it arrives, is likely years away.
In the short term, a warm winter across the northern hemisphere would bring gas prices down and allow storage fields to fill back up. But the current price spike has served as a reminder that even as the world is trying to build a new energy system, it’s still reliant on the old one.
“It’s not just about capacity of the amount of power we can get onto the network, it’s about the flexibility and the ability to deliver that power at the right time,” said James Basden, founder and director of Zenobe Energy Ltd., which is building Europe’s biggest battery.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/price-spike-highlights-how-switching-to-greener-energy-will-be-a-dirty-job/ar-AAPBFgG
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Poland seeks EU climate policy rethink amid high energy prices
Poland on Monday called for the European Union to cancel or delay parts of its plan to tackle climate change ahead of a summit at which EU leaders will wrangle over their response to surging gas and electricity prices.
EU country leaders, who meet on Thursday and Friday, are divided over whether short-term national measures like tax cuts are sufficient to address the recent energy price spike, or whether deeper reforms of EU energy regulation are needed.
In a paper circulated to other countries ahead of the EU summit, Poland said Brussels should change or delay parts of its planned climate policies, warning that if an "excessive burden" is put on consumers, they may reject the EU's climate aims.
"We should analyse in detail all elements of the Fit for 55 package that can have a negative impact on the energy price and consider their revision or postponement," the paper said.
"Fit for 55" refers to the EU policy package to cut emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030.
The paper, seen by Reuters, singled out the EU's plan to launch a carbon market for transport and buildings, which has faced resistance from some countries over concerns it could increase consumer bills. The European Commission has said a new multi-billion-euro EU fund would shield vulnerable consumers from any price increase.
Poland also said the EU should maintain its current minimum energy tax rates. Brussels wants to overhaul the system to end tax exemptions for kerosene - a move supported by countries including the Netherlands and France - and increase rates on other polluting fuels.
EU tax changes require unanimous approval, meaning one country can block them.
While other states have warned that high energy prices could erode support for ambitious climate policies, Poland's demands are likely to face opposition from countries which say the recent gas price spike should encourage Europe to accelerate its green shift away from volatile fossil fuel prices.
Meeting the EU's legally binding climate targets will require huge investments. Brussels says this will create jobs and economic growth in green industries, while the cost of not tackling climate change would be far higher, in the form of devastating floods, droughts and wildfires.
Poland also called for the EU to create new financial mechanisms to reduce energy poverty, limit speculators' participation in the EU carbon market and introduce a gas storage obligation for each EU country.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/poland-seeks-eu-climate-policy-rethink-amid-high-energy-prices/ar-AAPFdzI
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UK: New plans for net zero are unrealistic at best, irresponsible at worst
Boris Johnson’s net zero strategy fails to address the concerns that the available technologies are either too expensive or cannot be delivered at scale
Yesterday, months behind schedule, the government’s strategy for decarbonising the nation’s homes finally appeared. The long wait is understandable though - it is widely recognised that bringing the UK’s housing stock to net zero carbon emissions will be difficult and eye-wateringly expensive.
That’s because the only relevant net zero technology that is at hand is the electric heat pump, which carries a price tag of well over £10,000 once you have added in the bill for installation and the necessary upgrades to plumbing and radiators.
On top of that, most homes will also need much higher standards of insulation, adding thousands of pounds more. It’s little wonder that some estimates of the cost to the country run into the trillions of pounds.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-plans-for-net-zero-are-unrealistic-at-best-irresponsible-at-worst-k5z0zpnlg
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Greenhouse gas dispute in Australia
On Sunday, the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reductions Angus Taylor presented the Nationals with the government’s plan to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the compounds such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide which contribute to global warming and help trigger climate change.
Under the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, Australia promised to reduce emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030.
There were two main components to the government’s plan on Sunday – bringing emissions to net zero by 2050, and increasing our 2030 target.
While there were hopes the Sunday meeting would complete negotiations, after four hours this proved not to be the case, with the Nationals presenting a host of objections.
On Tuesday the Prime Minister told parliament Australia would not be updating its 2030 emissions goal.
He has also said the 2050 net zero goal will become a decision for national cabinet, rather than the Coalition party room.
The Nationals expressed a range of objections, chiefly about the impact of net zero policies on the regions and wanting increased support for existing high-emitting fossil fuel industries such as coal and gas.
A number of Nationals also want the government to explore the possibility of Australia developing nuclear power.
There is also an historical element to the Nationals’ discontent. When John Howard signed the Kyoto Protocol (the forerunner to the Paris Agreement) in 1997, it prompted state and territory governments to ban land clearing.
This measure is regarded as the primary factor that’s enabled Australia to reduce its emissions by around 20 per cent already, as the uncleared land effectively retains carbon in vegetation, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
But many farmers say clearing bans have prevented them from making a decent profit from their land, so there is a sentiment that people in the regions should not be further burdened by further emissions cuts.
There are huge divisions. Some MPs, such as former leader Michael McCormack and Darren Chester, now cautiously support net zero as a global economic and environmental necessity (Mr McCormack was previously opposed).
Agriculture Minister David Littleproud sees himself as something of a centrist on the issue, telling reporters this week that “zealots from both sides need to bugger off”.
Queensland Senator Matt Canavan is perhaps the most hard line opponent, and has threatened to cross the floor if any net zero legislation is to come before parliament.
He has also raised concerns about the lack of detail in the government’s modelling and called for it to be made public. “We’re getting very little details about this and I’m in a position of being asked to marry a girl I haven’t met. That’s not how the Nationals party room works,” he said this week.
Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has himself been a fierce critic of net zero in the past but has cast himself as a broker. On Tuesday he said he would be seeking further input from Nationals MPs over coming days, and he would communicate them to the Prime Minister.
The latest quarterly figures from the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory show Australia has reduced its emissions by just over 20 per cent on 2005 levels.
Mr Taylor has said on current projections, Australia could actually end up cutting emissions by around 32-35 per cent by 2030.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/nats-and-net-zero-why-its-so-complicated/news-story/c72b2c2d3bdbebbfbfbc92e930017d5f
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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19 October, 2021
UN Climate Change Funding to Feed Corruption Gravy Train of Developing World
The U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow (COP26) is great news for corrupt governments in the developing world because it looks set to transfer huge sums of money into their hands.
Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist, has long warned the West against sending aid to Africa because of the corruption it creates.
Moyo’s book “Dead Aid” explained how foreign aid produces terrible outcomes in the developing world, such as economic laziness, cultures of dependence, and rampant corruption. She argued aid was killing Africa.
Warnings by Moyo, and others, have helped reduce the flows of foreign aid to third world governments know to be kleptocracies. But that has simply meant corrupt governments have had to work harder to get the West to send them money.
How have they done this? The method that has been widely used is playing the guilt card or the victim card.
The guilt card tells Westerners they should feel guilty because European empires and colonialism allegedly exploited the third world. But, unfortunately, the Left has so widely propagated this anticolonial mythology that it is becoming almost impossible to have a sensible discussion about the age of imperialism.
The victim card tells Westerners that the developing world is full of poor and starving people because villainous Western capitalists exploit them. Unfortunately, this socialist myth has been sold to many well-meaning but naïve, liberals through journalists and celebrities, or by screening heart-wrenching and sensationalist television images.
Since well-meaning liberals lack personal experience of the third world, they have no reality against which to measure the myths fed to them by left-leaning media and educators.
Playing the guilt and victims cards have also been routinely used by leaders of multilateral organizations like the U.N. and WHO.
More recently, we have also witnessed third world leaders increasingly using China’s Belt and Road initiative to turn the foreign aid tap back on. Today’s version of great power competition has seen Western countries handing out aid to try and stop developing countries from aligning with China.
Sadly, this sort of aid is especially likely to lead to corruption—just as it did during the Cold War.
But now we are facing a new explosion of third world corruption, caused this time by the way Greens have successfully mobilized the politics of climate change. If governments in Africa and Asia get their way, the Glasgow conference on climate change will transfer huge amounts of money into their hands.
With the Glasgow summit in mind, the South African government (known for its corruption) has promised to go beyond its Paris greenhouse gas targets.
But there is a catch—along with other third world elites, South Africa expects taxpayers in the West to pay them to implement their targets.
So we see the South African government, a well-known kleptocrat regime, brazenly asking the developed world to hand over to them $269 billion to pay for proposed decarbonization projects. The South African document lodged with the U.N. said “substantial multilateral support” would be required for measures such as “a very ambitious power sector investment plan.”
So Glasgow funds will be used to fix South Africa’s broken Eskom electricity supply system, plus fix the country’s catastrophic debt-repayment problem created by Eskom’s corruption and maladministration. Eskom has been unable to supply the country with enough electricity since 2007.
Further, ending the country’s energy crisis by building giant new power plants at Medupi and Kusile failed because of corruption, looting, and planning incompetence. Glasgow funds could fix all these problems, but it would also provide new corruption opportunities.
Effectively, the developing world is putting forward yet another neo-socialist wealth transfer scheme, but this one is dressed up in the language of saving the planet from climate change.
But the developing world says they will only help save the planet on condition that Western governments help them meet their Glasgow promises by transferring billions (if not trillions) of dollars from Western taxpayers to developing world elites so they can meet over-blown targets.
There are two problems with this. Firstly, the developing world has a record of poor governance, meaning these governments can seldom deliver on promises or targets. Even worse, developing world elites generally spend the foreign aid monies they receive to enrich themselves rather than to actually build the intended projects.
So the reality is, the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow looks set to become just another mechanism to feed the corrupt gravy train that third world elites have been running for decades. Far from paying for green decarbonization projects, any wealth transfers flowing from Glasgow are more likely to end up buying four-wheel drives for the children of the third world elites.
To understand what is likely to happen to the $269 billion for climate change projects asked for by the South Africans, one only needs to look at what happened to their $4.3 billion COVID-19 relief funding from the IMF. One corrupt government Minister alone was involved in COVID-19 fraud valued at $10 million, while other politicians and African National Congress-aligned cronies looted another $700 million out of PPE funds.
If South Africa’s elite were even prepared to steal from funds geared to saving lives by fixing a health system shattered by COVID-19, imagine what they would do with climate change aid (where no lives are at stake).
By bringing together third world elites carrying begging bowls with Western greens which are willing to be taken advantage of, the U.N. climate change summit seems almost certain to deliver a bonanza for all those corrupt elites with a legacy of running gravy trains.
But this still begs the question; will Western governments ever learn?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/un-climate-change-funding-to-feed-corruption-gravy-train-of-developing-world_4050207.html
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California environmental regulations behind shipping backlog
The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards. As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports. This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port. Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up. THIS is the central issue.
On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:
2020 SAN FRANCISCO – “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced settlements with three interstate trucking companies imposing $417,000 in penalties for violating the California Air Resources Board’s federally enforceable Truck and Bus Regulation, Drayage Truck Regulation and Transport Refrigeration Unit Regulation.
“As trucks are one of the largest sources of air pollution in California, EPA will continue to ensure these heavy-duty vehicles have the needed pollution-control equipment and operate in compliance with the rules,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. “These companies have agreed to bring their trucks into compliance and operate more cleanly in all communities they serve.”
Transportation is a primary contributor to the high levels of air pollutants in Southern California and the Central Valley. Diesel emissions from trucks are one of the state’s largest sources of fine particle pollution, or soot, which is linked to health issues including asthma, impaired lung development in children, and cardiovascular effects in adults. Many of these trucks are older models and emit high amounts of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
[…] California Truck and Bus Regulation and Drayage Truck Regulation have been essential parts of the state’s federally enforceable plan to attain cleaner air. California requires trucking companies to upgrade vehicles they own to meet specific NOx and PM performance standards and to verify compliance of vehicles they hire or dispatch. Heavy-duty diesel trucks in California must meet 2010 engine emissions standards or use diesel particulate filters to reduce the diesel particulates emissions into the atmosphere by 85% or more. (read more)
In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/14/the-california-version-of-the-green-new-deal-and-an-october-16-2020-epa-settlement-with-transportation-is-whats-creating-the-container-shipping-backlog-working-ca-ports-24-7-will-not-help-here/
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Are reusable cotton tote bags really good for the environment?
Long hailed by brands as the eco-friendly solution to single-use plastic bags, cotton totes have ironically become part of the problem.
According to a 2020 study by Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, reusing a cotton bag 50 times had over 10 times the global warming potential compared to reusable plastic bags that were reused the same number of times.
That means a single cotton tote has to be used hundreds of times before they are considered a more eco-friendly alternative over single-use or reusable plastic bags.
Bigger environmental footprint
The study also showed that cotton totes have relatively bigger environmental footprints compared to their plastic counterparts because of the eco-toxicity potential in their production.
According to a 2018 study by Danish authorities, a single organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times – or used daily for 54 years — to offset its overall impact of production.
Cotton production is resource-intensive – staggeringly large amounts of water is needed to grow the fibres. Some 10,000 to 20,000 litres are required to produce just 1kg of cotton, which is the rough equivalent of one T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
It is also associated with allegations of forced labour in Xinjiang, China, which produces 20 per cent of the global cotton supply and supplies most Western fashion brands.
Even recycling a cotton tote is not as environmentally friendly as perceived.
Experts have said that even if these bags are sent for recycling, logos or messages have to be cut out of the cloth, wasting an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of cotton received by a single recycling firm. Most dyes used to print designs on the cotton totes are PVC-based, therefore not biodegradable and unrecyclable.
What can you do?
Think twice the next time you accept the offer of a free tote by brands – not every product needs to be bagged.
By all means, accept a free tote if you need it, but make sure you use it as often as possible.
https://au.yahoo.com/news/reusable-cotton-tote-bags-really-good-environment-143713273.html
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From green euphoria to global energy crisis
“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.” So declared Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian oil minister who shot to global prominence during the oil shocks of the 1970s. In his view, the age of fossil fuels would draw to a close as superior technologies and cleaner fuels prevailed in the marketplace. The inevitable corollary of this argument was that vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas would remain untapped as stranded assets in the ground.
For a time, it seemed as though his vision was coming to pass. A confluence of clean-energy innovation and concern about climate change created a euphoric green moment in energy markets. Solar and wind generation costs plunged dramatically, to the point that new renewable power plants became cheaper than new coal or gas plants in most parts of the world. With help from Californian investment and innovation and Chinese subsidies and scaling, electric cars started to give petrol-fired ones their first real run for the money since Thomas Edison and Henry Ford championed them over a century ago.
And global concern about global warming produced a rising tide of government action to cope with the rising tides of the oceans. Next month world leaders will assemble in Glasgow for the UN’s COP26 climate summit. They are expected to unveil national plans ahead of the summit that put teeth into pledges to rein in extreme climate change made at a similar shindig in Paris six years ago. Excitement about the forthcoming summit gave a dramatic boost to clean energy and climate innovation. Some even imagined that the talks would sound the death knell for fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases produced by them.
Alas, there is now a rather large and dirty spanner in the works. Far from fading quietly into the night, fossil-fuel use is rising on the back of strong economic demand. But because investment in fossil energy production has plunged of late—in part because investors concerned about future regulatory action against carbon-spewers have been dumping shares of oil and gas firms—there is short-term scarcity. Europe has very low stocks of natural gas, for example, and if this winter proves especially bitter it will run out of the stuff. The demand for fossil fuels is partly the result of shortfalls in renewable sources such as hydroelectric power and wind in various parts of the world.
This looks to be the first great shock of the global energy transition. Policymakers are likely to respond either by slamming on the brakes, seeing greenery as a threat to energy security and reliability, or by stepping on the accelerator, seeing today’s disruptions as short-term distractions in the urgent fight against climate change. But what they really need to do is rethink the policies and reform the markets of the energy transition. That could prove as difficult as fixing a flat tyre while going full speed ahead.
The Economist: noreply@e.economist.com
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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 October, 2021
‘Insurrection’? Climate Change Protesters Attempt to Storm Interior Department Building
The Jan. 6 Capitol incursion was not an insurrection, as many left-wing politicians and pundits have claimed. Sure, some of those present during the incursion were rioters who broke the law. They should be punished accordingly.
But the idea that the events of Jan. 6 constituted some sort of domestic terror attack is nothing but a calculated narrative developed by establishment elites in their attempts to garner more power.
Leftists know this. Otherwise, they would apply the “domestic terrorism” label to other attempts to storm federal buildings.
On Thursday, a large group of climate change protesters tried to enter the Department of the Interior, according to Ellie Silverman, a reporter for The Washington Post.
“Climate protesters are now rallying outside the Department of the Interior. They’re trying to get inside but police are blocking the entrance. I can see a few Indigenous women through the doorway who are sitting on the floor inside the building and linking arms,” Silverman tweeted.
She further noted that “protesters are remaining on the steps and won’t move out of the doorway where several police are blocking passage into the building.”
As you might have guessed, the establishment media hasn’t been so eager to cover this story. Most likely because it totally debunks the left’s Jan. 6 propaganda.
If these activists happened to be conservatives protesting against vaccine mandates or Bidenflation, the media would be covering it ad nauseam.
Panicky headlines declaring the return of the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists” would spread like wildfire across social media.
But instead, since the protesters happen to be supporting a cause backed by the establishment elite, the media has remained largely silent.
The rioters who illegally stormed the Capitol in January should be condemned for their actions, just as these activists should be condemned for theirs. This isn’t how anyone should peacefully protest.
That being said, neither group is made up of “domestic terrorists” or “insurrectionists.”
Anyone who tells you as much is simply pushing a partisan agenda.
https://flagandcross.com/insurrection-climate-change-protesters-attempt-to-storm-interior-department-building/
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Xi Jinping 'set to miss climate summit'
Boris Johnson has reportedly been told the Chinese president will not attend, in a setback for the summit's ambitions
President Xi Jinping is set to miss the Cop26 climate conference in Scotland this month, according to a report.
The Chinese president is not expected to travel to Glasgow for the summit in a blow for world leaders hoping to set ambitious new climate targets, including limiting global warming to 1.5C.
China's emissions exceed all of the world's developed nations combined and Mr Xi's absence comes amid growing concern that the Cop26 summit will not be a success.
According to The Times, Boris Johnson has been informed that Mr Xi will not be attending.
The source told the newspaper: “It is now pretty clear that Xi is not going to turn up and the PM has been told that.”
“What we don’t know is what stance the Chinese are going to take. They could go to the G20 [summit in Rome on October 30-31] with new commitments but that is now looking less likely.
“The truth is that unless China comes with new commitments, we’re not going to be able to keep 1.5 degrees alive.”
The UN conference runs between Oct 31 and Nov 12. Organisers hope that countries will agree on key climate change pledges as part of a co-ordinated global effort to prevent environmental disaster.
Countries are expected to publish targets, known as nationally defined contributions, before the summit. However, only half of the G20 countries have put forward their plans, The Times reported.
Australia's prime minister on Friday withdrew a threat to boycott the summit, describing the meeting as “an important event”.
“I confirmed my attendance at the Glasgow Summit, which I'm looking forward to attending,” Scott Morrison told journalists.
A number of world leaders will miss the event, however. Vladimir Putin might not attend due to fears about coronavirus and Pope Francis is also expected to be absent.
Joe Biden, the US president, has confirmed he will be in Glasgow, but American climate envoy John Kerry on Thursday expressed pessimism about the summit's prospects: “It would be wonderful if everybody came and everybody hit the 1.5 degrees mark now,” he said. “That would be terrific. But some countries just don’t have the energy mix yet that allows them to do that.”
The Queen will attend a reception at Cop26, joined by the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/15/cop26-xi-jinping-set-miss-climate-summit/
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Clintel proposes a new way to analyze climate data
In his lengthy video presentation, CLINTEL President Guus Berkhout proposes creation of a new analytical facility — the Laboratory of Climate Imaging, Int. — to look at climate data in a new way. He calls it “Climate Imaging”, but it is not about pictures. It is a combination of data mapping, transformation and visualization. He also uses the additive Int to make clear that LCI is not an Intergovernmental, but an International organization.
Here is how Professor Berkhout explains it: “Imaging is much more than making pictures. Imaging is information extraction from observations (‘data’) without the ambition (yet) to explain how the extracted information is generated by nature. Having this information, and making an insightful visualization, it may improve our understanding significantly and it is often enough to make important policy decisions. His slogan is: “Let us think differently, let us think the imaging way.”
The core idea is that the climate debate is primarily focused on global averages – already for forty years – but global averaging minimizes the amount of information in the analysis. Huge amounts of detailed climate data disappear, being compressed into a single number, such as average global temperature over one, or even a few years.
Friends of Science
Professor Berkhout proposes to reverse this process, which he calls unfolding the averages. It is only in this detailed data that the causes of climate change can be determined.
But the issues are global, so climate imaging means looking globally at detailed data. For example, when and where is warming happening? This is explained at considerable length. In fact the LCI solution is only introduced around minute 42 in the video, after he goes through the global imaging concept.
The current climate models will also need to be tested against the global imaging data. What do their global images look like? For example, if a lot of the Arctic is warming, while the tropics are stable and Antarctica cools, do the models capture that big fact? If not then there is a lot of modeling work to get done. Likewise, if all those local differences in warming and cooling are observed and the increase of CO2 is almost equal at all those places, how does that fit with the AGW theory?
In fact, the specifics of where and when climate change is occurring could be extremely important. After all, science is all about specifics, not gross generalities like global averages. That gross averages are “information killers” is a central theme of the video. He says: “Information on causality does not come from trend data, but from variabilities. Don’t treat this priceless information as noise.”
In fact Professor Berkhout argues that the focus on data-starved averages is why there has been so little progress in climate science, despite 40 years of effort. The science has not properly considered the data.
He even proposes a standard approach to mapping the global data. This is in bands of constant longitude as well as bands of constant latitude. Producing these bands for temperature, solar irradiation, CO2 concentration, humidity, cloud properties etc. will be a central task of the Climate Imaging Laboratory. Next, relationships will be determined between these data volumes. Professor Berkhout expects that these relationships will be key in the long-waited progress in climate science.
Pioneering and demonstrating climate imaging will be a central mission of LCI Int. That it is an international mission is also important because data analysis today is dominated by national efforts which tend to respond to national policies. In addition, LCI will make clear that it is critical to make a clear difference between environmental pollution and climate change: decouple environmental and climate policies.
Note that there is also a wide-ranging Q & A discussion after the LCI presentation. The webcast was the annual science event of the Friends of Science in Alberta Canada. The 45-minute Q&A features a very useful discussion between Professor Berkhout and FOS’s Michelle Stirling, who has done a lot of videos on climate science issues.
At this point the Climate Imaging Laboratory Int is just an important concept. Planning is underway to make it a reality. As the title of Professor Berkhout’s presentations says “Let The Data Speak”.
https://clintel.org/clintel-proposes-a-new-way-to-analyze-climate-data/
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Australia: Appeal to overturn naturali gas project approval dismissed
A NSW court has dismissed a legal challenge seeking to stop energy giant Santos from developing a $3.6 billion coal-seam gas project at Narrabri in the state’s north.
An opponent, the Mullaley Gas and Pipeline Accord, which represents about 100 residents and businesses, launched an appeal against the Independent Planning Commission’s decision last year to grant approval for the controversial proposal to build up to 850 gas wells across 95,000 hectares in the area.
The IPC gave the project “phased approval” in September last year provided a slew of what it described as 134 “stringent conditions” were met. At the time, the IPC said following detailed deliberations, which included 23,000 submissions, most of which opposed the gas field, the commissioners concluded the project was in the public interest and that negative impacts could be mitigated with strict conditions.
The accord argued in the NSW Land and Environment Court that the independent umpire should have been forced to consider not only emissions caused by drilling wells, but also the emissions generated from the end use of the Narrabri gas by Santos’ customers, known as Scope 3 emissions.
It also wanted further consideration of the environmental impacts of building an external pipeline to deliver gas from the site to the east coast markets.
In his findings, environment court Chief Judge Brian Preston dismissed the appeal, saying: “MGPA has not established any of the grounds of review of the IPC’s decision to grant development consent to the project.”
Santos on Monday said it welcomed the court’s decision to uphold the project’s approval, and looked forward to “getting on with our work in regional NSW” to create jobs, drive investment and deliver long-term energy security.
Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher said: “We are seeing play out in real time around the world what happens if you do not have domestic energy security.??
Around the world, prices for oil, gas and coal are skyrocketing, as supplies fail to keep pace with rising demand from economies recovering from the COVID-19 downturn, threatening the ability of countries including China and India to keep the lights on.
“On the east coast of Australia, regulators continue to warn about an increasingly tight market in the future,” Mr Gallagher said. “A shortage of supply means only one thing and that is higher prices for NSW households and businesses.??
Santos said Narrabri gas could supply up to half of NSW’s gas needs, and has committed to reserving 100 per cent of Narrabri gas for the domestic market.
The legal challenge in the Land and Environment Court caused a 12-month blow-out to Santos’ targeted timeframe for giving Narrabri the financial go-ahead. Santos will still need to carry out 12 to 18 months of appraisal drilling before the phased development can proceed.
Justice Preston said he would not order MGPA to pay Santos’ legal fees unless the company requested the group to do so.
Santos is expected to seek costs.
Narrabri has been at the front line in a years-long struggle between the gas sector and residents worried about the impact of gas drilling on the environment and the climate. The Santos project has faced years of delays and thousands of objections over feared impacts to groundwater, damage to the Pilliga state forest and its contribution to global warming.
‘Transition’ fuel
Supporters of gas promote it as the necessary “transition” fuel required to smooth the path from coal-fired power to more intermittent wind and solar energy sources, as well as a critical raw material in a range of manufacturing and industrial processes. Climate advocates say it remains a significant source of emissions that must be phased out, not expanded, to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
MGPA spokesperson and Mullaley beef farmer Margaret Fleck said the group was disappointed with the result.
Their lawyers, Environmental Defenders Office, will review the judgment in the coming days.
“If the project goes ahead, the impacts of its greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate, and the people and environment of NSW, will be substantial,” said EDO managing lawyer of safe climate corporate and gas Brendan Dobbie. “At a time when the world is preparing to meet in Glasgow to discuss action to reduce emissions to avoid further catastrophic climate change, it is disheartening that those impacts are now one step closer to fruition.”
Lock the Gate Alliance NSW spokesperson Georgina Woods said despite the decision, the group would continue to oppose the project.
“Farmers and communities in north-west NSW are already suffering the destructive impacts of the climate crisis, and this project will make it worse,” she said. “The Narrabri CSG project would also have a severe impact on the underground water farmers surrounding Narrabri rely on for their businesses, and it would wreak havoc on the Pilliga forest, which is held sacred by Gomeroi people.
“Today’s ruling is devastating, but it’s not the end of the battle. Santos will never build its gasfield at Narrabri. The community does not support it and it has no social licence to proceed.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/appeal-to-overturn-narrabri-gas-project-approval-dismissed-20211018-p590ug.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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17 October, 2021
Polar bears could vanish by the end of the century, scientists predict
This old chestnut again. Warmists have been desperate to find the bears in trouble but their overall numbers have in fact been increasing
Arctic sea ice has been steadily decreasing since the beginning of satellite records in 1979, but a new study comes with a chilling (or perhaps, warming) prediction: By the end of this century, Arctic sea ice may disappear during the summer, which could drive polar bears and other ice-dependent species to extinction.
The "Last Ice Area" is a region containing the oldest, thickest Arctic ice. It spans an area of more than 380,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) from the western coast of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to Greenland's northern coast. When scientists named the 13-foot-thick (4 meters) ice region, they thought it would last for decades.
But now, under both the most optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for warming linked to climate change, the sea ice will dramatically thin by 2050. The most optimistic scenario, in which carbon emissions are immediately and drastically curbed to prevent the worst warming, could result in a limited portion of the ice surviving in the region. In the most pessimistic scenario, in which emissions continue at their current rate of increase, the summer ice — and the polar bears and seals that live on it — could disappear by 2100, researchers reported in a new study.
"Unfortunately, this is a massive experiment we're doing," study co-author Robert Newton, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement. "If the year-round ice goes away, entire ice-dependent ecosystems will collapse, and something new will begin."
Worse still, the NSIDC reports that the amount of older, thicker Arctic ice that has survived at least one melt season is at a record low, around a quarter of the total recorded by the first satellite surveys 40 years ago.
A more dramatic decrease in ice coverage could have a crippling effect on the lives of the animals that dwell on, or under, the shifting ice network, including photosynthetic algae, tiny crustaceans, fish, seals, narwhals, bowhead whales and polar bears.
"Ringed seals and polar bears, for example, have relied on their dens in the ridged and corrugated sea-ice surface to stay approximately in one place," the researchers wrote.
Because they are specialized predators, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) would be especially vulnerable to extinction if the ice were to disappear. Adapted to lurk atop sea ice, the Arctic bears hunt by snatching unfortunate seals that come to the surface to breathe. Polar bears have jaws adapted for consuming soft blubber and meat; and though the bears have been seen shifting their diet to seabird eggs and caribou while on land, a 2015 study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment found that the calories they gain from these sources do not balance out those the bears burn from foraging for these animals, Live Science previously reported.
This rapid habitat shift could cause polar bears to become extinct or lead to more extensive interbreeding with grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis), whose ranges are expanding northward as the climate warms, Live Science previously reported. This process could eventually replace polar bears with hybrid "pizzly" bears. Nonetheless, in the more pessimistic, increasing-emission scenario, the researchers expect the summer ice and the ice-dependent ecosystem to disappear.
"This is not to say it will be a barren, lifeless environment," Newton said. "New things will emerge, but it may take some time for new creatures to invade." The researchers suggested that fish and photosynthetic algae may make their way northward from the North Atlantic, although they are uncertain if the new habitat would be stable enough to support those organisms year-round, especially during the long, sunless Arctic winter.
Even a partially melted Arctic could also create a positive feedback loop: The water's surface is darker and more efficient at absorbing sunlight, meaning the melt would accelerate the overall rate of warming, in a vicious cycle.
On Aug. 9, a landmark report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a stark warning that Earth is expected to reach a critical threshold: a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) due to climate change within the next 20 years. A draft third section of the IPCC report leaked to the Spanish publication CTXT warned that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years if global heating is to remain within 1.5 C.
The researchers published their findings Sept. 2 in the journal Earth's Future.
https://www.livescience.com/arctic-sea-ice-polar-bear-extinction-warning
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Environmental Activist Project Threatens Military Readiness
In an apparent effort to rally the base, House Leadership has jammed an environmental activist project, the PFAS Action Act of 2021, into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- a move that threatens military readiness and supply chains.
The bill “establishes requirements and incentives to limit the use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to as PFAS, and remediate PFAS in the environment.”
PFAS can be found in a wide variety of products like non-stick pans, weatherproof clothing, carpets, belts, food packaging and various other usages. Without PFAS chemicals we wouldn’t have smartphones since they help stabilize them and help cool data centers for cloud computing.
Perhaps most importantly for the military, PFAS has been commonly used in Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) since the late 1960s. It’s the best tool to extinguish “Class Bravo” fires of fuel oil, greases, paints, solvents and other flammable substances commonly found aboard ship. The horrific lesson learned from the fire aboard USS Forrestal (CV-59) led to the manufacture of AFFF and its reliable use ever since.
Recognizing the impracticality of including this in the NDAA, the Biden administration has quietly pushed back on House Leadership. Buried back on page four, paragraph four of the Sept. 2021 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Statement of Administration Policy in response to the House version of the NDAA, the Biden Administration offered House Leadership:
“(the NDAA as written) would prohibit DoD from procuring a wide range of items that may contain PFAS. If implemented in its current form, it would not be feasible for DoD to test all of these items to determine if they contain PFAS. In addition, some of these products may not have PFAS-free alternatives available.”
The NDAA was selected as a vehicle for this bill because it’s a “must-pass” piece of legislation, consuming over 50 percent of the discretionary portion of the annual budget. Must-pass bills become magnets for everything House Leadership can add to them. This is because these “Christmas Trees” form the basis of the only legislation which House Leadership is certain to take up.
Nationally, PFAS has been phased out of production for years and replaced with substitute compounds. But since the Defense Department operates globally with nearly 3 million service members and civilians working and living in over 160 countries, Congressional passage of such broad PFAS regulations and restrictions would practically paralyze the military supply system.
And the PFAS issue is much larger than DoD.
Over the years, Congress has supported multiple studies by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies aimed at prohibition and also clean-up of contamination sites (largely local water supplies). The danger of compounds containing PFAS is still not completely understood but the potential for long-term harm was high enough that universal agreement for eliminating PFAS compounds in both the private and public sector was enthusiastically reached.
Yet instead of allowing the EPA to finish its work and promulgate regulations concerning continued clean-up of affected watersheds and further remediation, Congress is ignoring the science and seeking to require expensive and unmanageable timelines for work already in progress.
https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelflanagan/2021/10/16/environmental-activist-project-threatens-military-readiness-via-ndaa-n2597447
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Idiots: WH Begs for Cheaper Fuel only Days After Biden Brags About Suspending Drilling
The White House has confirmed that they are trying to work with oil and gas producers in order to lower gas prices....ironically, this comes just days after President Joe bragged about suspending the drilling in Alaska.
Are we living in the Twilight zone??
“Alaska is pretty big. There’s an awful lot we need to protect,” Biden declared on Friday. “That’s why I’m refusing to sell out the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil and gas drilling.”
Breitbart reports:
In June, Biden suspended oil leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after President Donald Trump opened the area up to drilling in 2017.
Biden also halted new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on federal lands in January.
The price of U.S. crude oil hit $80 a barrel this month, a seven-year high. This year oil production remains about two million barrels a day lower than the nearly 13 million barrels per day produced by the United States in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
The United States government announced Wednesday that households could see heating bills jump as much as 54 percent.
A 54% increase?? Are you kidding me?? Many people prefer gas heat and appliances because it is generally less expensive than electric. Those people will be seriously screwed over this winter if the prices jump. With inflation of groceries prices and everything else right now too, it could cause some people to struggle with making ends meet.
https://dailypatriotreport.com/idiots-wh-begs-for-cheaper-fuel-days-after-biden-brags-about-suspending-drilling/
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How Australians could become mega-rich by investing in these companies
This is a classic mistake often made by amateur investors. Because something is popular or in big demand, the assumption is that shares in it with be a good buy. They rarely are.
The big peril is over-entry. Suppliers see a goldmine and rush in to supply the assumed demand. But the increased supply cuts the price and most of the new suppliers will go bust.
And there are other perils. China is already an efficient producer of lithium and could increase their supply to the market any time -- thus undercutting and bankrupting other suppliers.
Mining shares of any kind are risky and lithium is one of the riskiest. A cautious investor buys nothing unless it has a solid track record
Australian share market investors are perfectly positioned to benefit from the transition to net zero carbon emissions despite the nation being a major coal exporter to China.
The International Monetary Fund said the surging demand for renewable energy in the coming decades would be good for Australia because the nation has plentiful supplies of lithium, cobalt and nickel.
The minerals are particularly important for battery storage power that will underpin the success of solar and wind energy eventually replacing coal-fired power stations.
In a new report on the World Economic Outlook, the IMF singled out Australia for special mention along with Chile, and to a lesser extent Peru, Russia, Indonesia, and South Africa.
'Countries that stand out in production and reserves include Australia for lithium, cobalt, and nickel,' it said.
Bell Direct senior market analyst Jessica Amir said now was the time to consider investing in lithium miners before more governments around the world, including Australia, introduced more substantial electric vehicle subsidies.
'This is a huge investment opportunity and this will be the hot investment opportunity for the next decade,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'Thirty per cent of an EV car is the battery and there's a huge lack of supply of lithium and then you've got the world pivoting and pushing to being carbon neutral.
'Clean energy must have a place in investors' portfolios because we're going to see a huge amount of government stimulus going to it, we're going to see a huge uptick in consumer demand.
'You have to remember the basics of investing: a company is based on its future earnings potential, this means that companies that are in this area, they're going to see future earnings growth and share price growth.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10086555/How-Australia-perfectly-poised-benefit-net-zero-carbon-emissions-bonanza.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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15 October, 2021
UK: Electric trains ditched for diesel as green power costs skyrocket 200%
ELECTRIC trains are being ditched for diesel alternatives as the price to power them is said to have skyrocketed 200 percent in a worrying step backwards during a global energy crisis.
Rail freight operators are now reportedly being forced to halt their electric locomotives and revert back to diesel trains in a move set to increase carbon emissions and journey times. Logistic firms have said soaring wholesale energy prices and a boost to track access charges has made electric, low-carbon trains impossible to run at an affordable cost.
The move comes as the COP26 climate summit approaches where world leaders will meet to discuss their climate goals, and it is likely to put Britain in a weaker position.
The Rail Freight Group, the industry voice for the sector said: “Some operators have had to take the regrettable decision to temporarily move back to diesel locomotives."
It comes after electricity prices triples as the UK tumbles into an energy crisis, with gas prices rising to record highs too.
The crisis has pushed some energy firms over the edge, with Pure Planet, which is backed by oil giant BP, and Colorado joining the list of energy firms recently going bust.
Pure Planet supplies gas and electricity to around 235,000 domestic customers, while Colorado Energy has around 15,000 domestic customers.
Other companies to go bust include Avro Energy, People's Energy and Green Supplier Limited.
Their collapses came as rising prices sent shocks to supply chains.
But while electricity prices soar and diesel makes a comeback, Rail Freight Group pointed out that only emitted over three-quarters less carbon than road haulage even when using diesel locomotives.
A Rail Freight Group spokesperson said: “The current significant increase in the wholesale cost of electricity for haulage means that some operators have had to take the regrettable decision to temporarily move back to diesel locomotives.
“A 200 percent increase in electricity costs for each train cannot be absorbed by the operators, or customers, and so necessary action is being taken to ensure that trains can continue to operate delivering vital goods across the country.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1505800/uk-energy-crisis-electric-trains-diesel-gas-electricity-prices-cop26-climate-change
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China goes rogue on energy - threatens to humiliate UK at COP26
China has announced plans to increase its reliance on coal as the energy crisis deepens, threatening a huge blow to the UK's ambitions for a landmark global agreement on phasing out the resource at COP26 climate change summit later this month. China has been hit hard by the energy crisis currently gripping the planet, with thousands of homes and factories plunged into darkness in rolling blackouts over recent weeks.
Now, Beijing has said it will ramp up coal use, hinting at a rethink of its timetable to slash emissions.
In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply.
As many as 20 Chinese provinces are believed to be experiencing the crisis to some degree, with factories temporarily closed, shops lit with candlelight and reports of mobile networks failing after a three-day outage hit the northeast.
China is already the world's largest consumer of coal, relying on the resource for 56 percent of its power. China had previously published plans to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reduce emissions to become carbon neutral by 2060.
Analysts have said that for China to reach the 2060 goal, some 600 coal-fired power plants would have to shut.
In the statement announcing the new coal plants, there appeared a hint at a change in the plan, saying the crisis had led the Communist party to rethink the timing of this ambition, with a new “phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”.
The statement said: "Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced.
“Given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs, and continue to phase out outdated coal plants in an orderly fashion.
The statement added: "Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.”
This renewed reliance on coal appears at odds with President X Jinping's recent pledges to stop building coal plants abroad.
The announcement will be causing serious concern in the UK ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and could derail a key focus.
Alok Sharma, the UK’s president-designate of COP26, has said an agreement to phase out coal power is a key aim of the summit.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1505981/china-energy-coal-power-uk-cop26-evg
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Biden Administration Announces 'Ambitious' Offshore Wind Plan
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the administration is moving forward with an "ambitious" plan to develop large-scale wind farms “along nearly the entire coastline of the United States,” according to The New York Times.
“The Interior Department is laying out an ambitious roadmap as we advance the Administration’s plans to confront climate change, create good-paying jobs, and accelerate the nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future,” said Haaland.
To meet the administration’s wind energy goal by 2030, Haaland said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could hold up to seven new offshore lease sales in the next four years in the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, Central Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and offshore the Carolinas, California, and Oregon.
“This timetable provides two crucial ingredients for success: increased certainty and transparency. Together, we will meet our clean energy goals while addressing the needs of other ocean users and potentially impacted communities. We have big goals to achieve a clean energy economy and Interior is meeting the moment," she added.
Still, there is no guarantee that companies will lease space in the federal waters and build wind farms. Once the offshore areas are identified, they will be subject to lengthy federal, state and local reviews. If the potential sites could harm endangered species, conflict with military activity, damage underwater archaeological sites, or harm local industries such as tourism, the federal government could deem them unsuitable for leasing.
As they have in response to other offshore wind farms, commercial fishing groups and coastal landowners will likely try to stop the projects. In the Gulf of Mexico, where oil and gas exploration is a major part of the economy, fossil fuel companies could fight the development of wind energy as a threat to not only their local operations but their entire business model.
“To be making these announcements, and making them in ways that are very political, without looking at what that means, what area, when we still don’t know what the effects are going to be of these projects is really problematic,” said Anne Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups. “In an ideal world, when you welcome a new industry, you do it in phases, not all at once.” (NYT)
While progressives praised the announcement, others pointed out why it's a misguided approach.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/10/14/biden-administration-wind-farm-plans-n2597431
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Australian regulators investigate greenwashing climate change claims
Corporate Australia is on notice that glib promises to address climate change no longer cut it as so-called ‘greenwashing’ claims hit the courts.
Global regulators and major investors are joining shareholder activists in driving the nation’s corporate sector to deliver credible plans to hit net zero by 2050.
Plans rather than generic pledges are now required. They also need to include short and medium term targets and measurement methodologies.
Major emitters including AGL, BHP, Rio Tinto and Santo have all pledged to hit net zero by 2050 or before.
That has not stopped them from facing growing shareholder backlashes – and even legal challenges – amid criticism their emission reduction strategies will fail to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.
The nation’s regulators, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, have also made it clear they will be increasing their oversight of climate change reporting.
ASIC in July warned company directors they could face misleading and deceptive conduct charges should they overstate the environmental credentials of their operations.
It recently rapped outback gas explorer Tamboran Resources over the knuckles for its claim it would be a net zero emissions producer from first production.
The corporate cop is also reviewing whether superannuation funds which promote their investments as green, clean and ethical actually stack up.
Claims of greenwashing – overstating the environmental benefits of an organisation’s products or environmental footprint – are now hitting the courts.
Oil and gas producer Santos is being sued by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility for allegedly engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct by claiming gas provides “clean energy” and saying it has a “clear and credible” pathway to net zero by 2040.
ACCR climate and environment director Dan Gocher said while climate change had moved firmly onto the radar of major corporations, too many companies were still not being bold enough in their pledges.
“There is a lot of green washing around net zero,” Mr Gocher said.
“Companies come out and commit to net zero but they don’t provide a lot of substance or their 2025 or 2030 targets are fairly weak. That is a big problem because we know we need to take action now.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/asic-and-apra-investigate-greenwashing-climate-change-claims/news-story/b6d29ced89ecc86eee54ca6656e36362
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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14 October, 2021
Solar trade woes cast a pall over Biden’s climate goals
President Joe Biden’s climate goals are conflicting with his aim to bolster American manufacturing of solar panels — an industry the U.S. largely lost to China when he was vice president and one that can’t be rebuilt quickly.
The White House is counting on solar to play a vital role in Biden’s goal to rapidly eliminate carbon emissions from electricity production. The Energy Department says solar could provide up to 40 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2035, up from only 4 percent in 2021.
But the American companies that install and bring solar projects online are warning that a trio of tariff petitions filed by U.S. panel makers, under consideration by the Commerce Department, could derail those plans, forcing developers to abandon or renegotiate pricing on a huge chunk of their projects.
The trade dilemma presents Biden with the difficult choice of either making good on his promises to prop up domestic manufacturing, including good-paying jobs making solar panels, or his other campaign pledge to go full speed ahead on moving the United States' energy away from fossil fuels.
Even the mere prospect of new trade restrictions has prompted solar installers, who are already facing supply issues and higher labor costs, to pull back on some projects. At the same time, Biden wants to avoid being seen to be weak on China — another centerpiece of his campaign pitch and early policy agenda.
The conflict pits parts of the solar industry against each other. American solar panel manufacturers are petitioning to expand existing tariffs on Chinese products to those coming from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Backers of the tariffs and trade restrictions say they would allow panel makers in the U.S. to expand production. Added duties would also accomplish another of Biden’s goals: punishing China over the use of forced labor.
But the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents developers that install panels and build solar projects, says imposing tariffs on those three nations would hit more than three-fourths of imports and about half of the total solar panel supply in the U.S. “That would have a pretty devastating impact on the solar industry,” said Abby Hopper, CEO of the trade group.
The trade association says if the new duties on panels from the Southeast Asian nations are approved, it could slash the rollout of solar in the U.S. by nearly a third over the next two years. The move would also slash jobs for solar project developments by 45,000 from where they would otherwise be in 2023.
Duties on the three additional countries would be “absolute industry killers,” warned Ben Catt, CEO of Pine Gate Renewables, a North Carolina-based solar project developer. “If you were to put those tariffs on any of the projects we are doing right now, I just think the pricing structure gets thrown out the window.”
Commerce must decide by Thursday whether it will dismiss the Southeast Asian solar petitions or open an investigation that could result in tariffs. If Commerce finds that importers are avoiding tariffs on solar panels by simply rerouting their goods through the Southeast Asian nations, by law it must impose duties.
That’s what the petitioners say is happening. They also argue that Biden’s lofty climate aspirations are “outside the scope of the case,” said Tim Brightbill, an international trade partner at Wiley Rein LLP, who is representing the petitioners. He also dismissed the dire employment and solar deployment figures predictions presented by the developers.
"This administration’s goals of climate action are wholly consistent with the goals of building the solar supply chain and returning it to the United States," said Brightbill, noting that solar deployment continued to grow in the U.S. after the Obama administration imposed import tariffs in 2012.
Commerce and the administration have wiggle room to cushion the impact of any tariffs. When panels or components are shipped from China to the Southeast Asian nations, they typically undergo some sort of assembly or modification. U.S. solar panel makers complain that work is too minor to allow them to avoid the tariffs on Chinese panels, but Commerce staff could reject that argument for some or all of the companies named in the petitions. The administration could also apply lower tariff rates than those currently in effect for Chinese imports.
Solar developers say they have had discussions with Biden administration climate officials about the potential for tariffs and trade restrictions to slow solar growth stateside. The White House did not make anyone available to comment despite repeated requests.
China tariffs, trade restrictions add anxiety
Other trade issues before the administration could also hamper solar build-out. Commerce is weighing whether to extend separate Trump-era tariffs on Chinese solar for another four years, and the Department of Homeland Security is considering whether to increase trade restrictions on Chinese panel components, like it did this summer.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/28/biden-solar-manufacturing-climate-dilemma-514428
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It Looks Like America's Energy Future Is Still Going to Be a Gas
The battle over President Joe Biden’s sweeping clean energy plan isn’t over, but there already appears to be a winner – natural gas.
The fossil fuel will likely remain a mainstay of America’s electrical grid for some time, according to energy experts and lawmakers. That’s a big disappointment to liberal Democrats and environmentalists. In protests in cities and campuses nationwide, one of them fronted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, they made natural gas the new climate villain, replacing coal, the dirtier fossil fuel that’s fading in the states.
Climate activists had pinned their hopes on the administration’s proposal to remake the energy industry at breakneck speed. It gives financial incentives to utilities to ramp up the deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar and would slow if not stop the expansion of gas-fired power plants.
But Sen. Joe Manchin, who controls climate policy as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in early September that he would block Biden’s ambitious plan and seek a middle ground. The West Virginian’s insistence that any climate policy must leave plenty of room for natural gas was criticized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among other progressives, as a favor to the fossil fuel industry, which has a large footprint in his home state.
As Manchin tells it, hitting the brakes on natural gas is a risk he’s not willing to take. Although such a move would reduce carbon emissions – a goal the senator shares – it makes the nation’s aging and feeble grid more vulnerable to dangerous blackouts as wind and solar energy play a larger role. They don’t supply power when the wind stops blowing and the sun is down. So natural gas plants, which have contributed to the closing of hundreds of coal burners, need to anchor the grid until viable clean substitutes come of age.
“The United States leads the world in emissions reductions and that’s largely because of the increased utilization of natural gas,” says Anne Bradbury, CEO of the gas and oil trade group American Exploration & Production Council. “It seems extremely shortsighted to be demonizing the use of natural gas.”
The prospect that the fossil fuel will have more staying power than opponents had hoped is an early signpost of America’s energy future
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/29/it_looks_like_americas_energy_future_is_still_going_to_be_a_gas_796510.html
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Clean Electricity Performance Program A Corporatist Takeover
Part 1 of this story introduced the proposed Clean Energy Performance Program or CEPP. The central idea is for the Federal Government (that is, taxpayers) to pay electric power suppliers billions of dollars as a reward for adding ever increasing amounts of mostly renewable juice to what they sell. The rewards kick in whenever a supplier sells 4% more green juice than they did the year before. If they do not make the 4% threshold they are penalized accordingly.
The problem is that this creates a powerful drive for suppliers to add as much green power as they can, as fast as they can. The potential for destabilizing the grid, or the industry, is great.
Clean Energy Performance Program
I have now done a bit of research and come up with some interesting numbers, including a very big missing number. These are summarized below.
Budget Unlimited?
The draft CEPP bill begins by appropriating the necessary funding. Except it doesn’t in a very important way. The first paragraph funds the administrative side of the program, which runs until Sept 30, 2031 and is administered by the Energy Department. This number is very big, which indicates how complex the program is. There are over 3,000 electric power suppliers, each of which is either rewarded or penalized ever year. Here is the CEPP text:
“(a) APPROPRIATION.— (1) ADMINISTRATION.—In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is appropriated to the Secretary of Energy for fiscal year 2022, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $250,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2031 (except that no funds shall be disbursed after September 30, 2031), for the administrative expenses of carrying out section 224 of the Federal Power Act (as added by this section).”
The sum of $250 million is a heck of a lot of admin money, even spread over 9 years. It might fund something like 500 people, in effect making a new CEPP Agency.
But then it gets really interesting. Reports on the CEPP have consistently said it was a 150 billion dollar program, so that is what I too said in Part 1. But the actual text says the funding is unlimited. I am not making this up. Here is the text (emphasis added):
“(2) GRANTS.—In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is appropriated to the Secretary of Energy for each of fiscal years 2023 through 2031, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such sums as are necessary to issue grants under section 224 of the Federal Power Act (as added by this section) (except that no funds shall be disbursed after September 30, 2031).“
The amount “such sums as are necessary” is whatever they need! Perhaps this is just a place holder. The CEPP is going to be just a small part of the mammoth $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill so maybe we are waiting for that. Or maybe this just says the appropriate appropriation will happen each year, whatever that means. Or something?
Big Numbers — Wind & Solar in Progress
As I pointed out in Part 1, people seem to think this is a mandate for suppliers to add just 4% to their green juice supply every year. In reality the reward of $150 per MWh if you meet that standard should drive suppliers to add as much as they can. So I took a look to see what is in the offing by way of new green generating capacity. It is a great deal more than 4% per year. Here are some basic round numbers from the American Public Power Association:
Present generating capacity:
Wind 120,000 MW
Solar 52,000 MW
New capacity already under construction and percentage increase:
Wind 22,000 MW (18%)
Solar 18,000 MW (35%)
Assuming the capacity factors of the new iron are the same as the existing stuff, these are the percentage increases in supply that are under construction. Even if it takes a couple of years to bring it all online this is way over 4%.
Beyond that we have the new capacity that has its permits but is not yet under construction. CEPP could bring it on fast.
Permitted capacity not yet under construction and percentage increase over present:
Wind: 8,000 MW (7%)
Solar: 19,000 MW (37%)
Also well over 4% and when you add them together it is 25% for wind and a whopping 72% for solar.
Major Complexities
Clearly, the suppliers might have no problem increasing their green juice supply to way over 4%. However it is not nearly that simple.
In fact, the 4% threshold is not based just on wind and solar. It is based on all the generating technologies with no CO2 emissions, which basically means nuclear, hydro, wind and solar. And, since we are not about to build a bunch of new nukes and big dams, it is up to wind and solar to cover the required increase from all these sources.
These big four technologies together produce about 40% of our power, while wind and solar only produce about 12%. So, wind and solar together will have to increase by something like 13% a year in order to meet the 4% increase. Even that looks easy given the new capacity in the pipeline, but maybe not.
There are a couple of nasty wrinkles, that I will just mention in passing. First, any supplier that presently provides a high percentage of nuclear or hydro generation is going to have a very high 4% threshold. Note, too, that the 4% compounds annually. Getting enough wind and solar could be a big challenge.
Second, will co-ops and municipal systems get hammered? There are roughly 2,000 rural electric co-op suppliers and about 1,000 municipal suppliers. Many are small and most buy a lot of their juice from the big local investor owned utility or IOU as they are called. That IOU is also a supplier under the Clean Electricity Performance Program, with its own retail customers.
Why should the IOU sell green juice wholesale to the co-ops and municipals when it can get the luscious $150/MWh reward by selling that juice to its own customers? There is an enormous conflict of interest here. The IOUs could force the co-ops and municipals into deep noncompliance with CEPP.
There are a lot of other nasty wrinkles to this seemingly simple program. Throwing untold billions of free dollars at the electric power industry is a very dangerous game. There will be big winners and big losers.
https://naturalgasnow.org/clean-electricity-performance-program-a-corporatist-takeover/
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Australia: Extraordinary moment prominent conservative columnist slams boss Rupert Murdoch for publishing '16 pages of propaganda' about climate change
News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt has used his Sky News show to slam his employer for its U-turn on global warming, calling it 'propaganda' and 'rubbish' and saying it will delight Scott Morrison.
The controversial commentator's intervention was prompted by the Murdoch Australian tabloids' new campaign backing action to do more to tackle climate change.
'Millions of Australian readers would have got a shock this morning when they picked up their Murdoch newspapers around the country,' an angry Bolt told his TV audience after the company's metropolitan dailies published lengthy newspaper wraparounds.
'Sixteen pages of News Corp's global warming propaganda, telling them why Australia should cut its emissions now to net-zero, telling them it will be good for us. And that is a shock,' he said.
Rupert Murdoch's Australian branch launched its new environmental project Mission Zero this week, saying it aims to 'inform Australians about the key environmental and climate issues of our time' in support of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The campaign is backed by business leaders and environmental campaigners but has come as a shock to many Australians - not least some of the company's in-house climate change sceptics.
Bolt said the Murdoch papers' seeming change of heart on the need to do something to curb global warming is hypocritical given how they had previously relentlessly attacked the Labor Party and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull for their stances on the issue.
He said Prime Minister Scott Morrison will 'actually be delighted because he can now have the Malcolm Turnbull-type policy that he wants - net-zero emissions - and take it to the next big global warming conference in Glasgow in November, knowing that he has the backing of the Murdoch media.'
Bolt - who seemed floored by News Corp's move - added that people 'should worry' when big business, big media and big government' all seem to agree with action on the climate.
He said the tabloids' coverage urged readers to 'forget all that stuff we used to say' and that they were now expected to prepare for government action on the issue.
Bolt said he discussed the issue with his News Corp editors and was assured the company still believes in debate. 'I am still free to say exactly what I think and that is the only reason I'm still here,' he said, adding that 'It's rubbish. I don't buy it.'
Not everyone was buying News Corp's supposed change of mind, though, with former prime minister Kevin Rudd tweeting 'Murdoch is today predicting an investment bonanza for agriculture under a decarbonised economy.
'I wonder what's changed since they joined with the Liberal (Party) to criticise climate action under Labor as a "lunchbox tax",' he wrote, going on to repeat his call for a Royal Commission into the power and influence of the Murdoch newspapers.
When News Corp initially flagged its intent to embrace action on climate change last month, Bolt said he had lost the battle over global warming.
'My whole company's against me. I know that against these huge players, all the big political parties, my own employer, all the media and big media outlets, what am I? Just someone on the sidelines. Someone just howling on the sidelines, but telling you the truth,' Bolt said.
Mr Turnbull said last year that News Corp's 'campaign on climate denial' had done 'enormous damage to the world' and had left a 'shocking legacy' of inaction.
Michael Miller, the executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, said commentators such as Bolt would not be 'muzzled' on the issue of global warming.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10086551/News-Corps-Andrew-Bolt-slams-Rupert-Murdoch-newspapers-climate-change-campaign.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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13 October, 2021
The Hill Is Wrong, Climate Change Is Grossly Overemphasized as a Factor Causing Wildfires
Near the top of a Google news search for the phrase “climate change” today turns up a story in The Hill claiming the media is failing to properly place the blame for wildfires on climate change. This is false. Hundreds of stories over the past two years alone have blamed climate change for wildfires. To be accurate, they are all wrong. Data do not show a significant increase in the number of wildfires or the acreage burned by them. As a result, rather than underrepresenting climate change as a cause of wildfires, the mainstream media is, in fact, giving misplaced emphasis on climate change as a factor in wildfires.
In The Hill story, “Media coverage of wildfires omits one key element: Humanity’s role,” the author writes:
Global media outlets cover [large wildfires] like the disasters they are, but too few point out that human-driven climate change is their shared accelerant. … We are burning our own house down. If we’re to survive, we need to acknowledge our pyromaniacal role now.
While wildfires occur every year and are an important element of functioning ecosystems, the scale of 2021 fires naturally raises questions about their relationship to climate change.
Since June of 2019, at the beginning of the first wildfire season for which Climate Realism was in existence, Climate Realism has refuted more than 46 news stories, for instance, here, here, here, here, here, and here, claiming supposed human caused climate change was causing more frequent and more severe wildfires. The data does not support these stories’ claims. Yet each of the false wildfire stories Climate Realism refuted, or versions thereof, have been published and republished in hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and science journals over the past two years.
Contrary to false news stories, 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.
Also, as reported in Climate at a Glance: Wildfires, U.S. acres burned each year are much fewer now – even in our worst years – than was the case in the early 20th century. This is an inconvenient scientific fact that the United States government has since sought unsuccessfully to erase.
While media outlets like The Hill may choose to push false climate alarm about human climate change causing wildfires, and claim that the media underreports on this, the facts show just the opposite. Because the data show wildfires are not increasing in number or intensity, any story that reports otherwise is one too many.
https://climaterealism.com/2021/10/the-hill-is-wrong-climate-change-is-grossly-overemphasized-as-a-factor-causing-wildfires/
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Carbon taxes advance liberal policies without helping climate
Lurking inside the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation package working its way through Capitol Hill is a series of carbon tax proposals advanced by political figures who invoke climate change as a rationale for higher energy costs.
Democrats operating in partnership with the Biden White House have refused to move forward with the $1 trillion infrastructure bill unless their progressive policy priorities are passed as part of the reconciliation process.
While details remain vague about the climate change initiatives included as extra spending with reconciliation, a leaked list of what Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee call “carbon pricing” gives some indication of what this agenda will cost families and businesses. Apparently, the senators are eyeballing “a per-ton tax on carbon dioxide of leading fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, natural gas) upon extraction, starting at $15 per ton and escalating over time,” a “tax per ton of carbon dioxide emissions assessed on major industrial emitters (e.g. steel, cement chemicals),” and “a per-barrel tax on crude oil,” according to the document.
The American Energy Alliance, a free market-oriented consumer advocacy nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., has produced an analysis of the proposals that concludes carbon taxes would boost energy prices for families and businesses. Since fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas, and coal, make up almost 80% of America’s energy mix, it’s not hard to understand why.
“A carbon tax will drive up costs for transportation, electricity, industry, commercial activity, and everything else that relies upon oil, natural gas, or coal to deliver goods or services,” AEA explained in its analysis. “To put this into everyday terms, a 15-dollar tax on oil translates loosely to a 15-cent increase in the price of gasoline per gallon.”
But what about climate change? Is it worth raising the price of carbon in the short term in exchange for long-term climate benefits as federal lawmakers seem to suggest?
Not according to the CO2 Coalition , a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that includes dozens of scientists devoted to highlighting the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions.
“More carbon dioxide levels will help everyone, including future generations of our families. CO2 is the essential food for land-based plants,” the coalition says on its website . “The Earth’s biosphere has experienced a relative CO2 famine for millions of years, and the recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life. Future CO2 increases will boost farm productivity, improve drought resistance, bolster food security and help create a greener, lusher planet.”
The coalition has also called attention to the failure of climate models to forecast the actual level of global warming, which has been much more modest than what has been observed. Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist who serves as executive director of the coalition, has made this point while offering testimony in Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf has advanced regulations that would enable the commonwealth to join a “cap and trade” multistate climate change agreement known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Wrightstone described the initiative as a “carbon taxation scheme” that would devastate Pennsylvania’s economy without producing any discernible benefits.
What’s true at the state level is also applicable at the national level. In their examination of a proposed “cap and trade” plan from the Obama years, researchers with the Heritage Foundation found that if the United States halted all economic activity and somehow cut all carbon emissions, this effort would reduce average temperatures “by no more than 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.” That’s so small to the point that it’s immeasurable.
The reconciliation package also reportedly calls for a “carbon border tax” that would impose fees raising the cost of goods coming into the U.S. Team Biden is of the view that this will discourage carbon emissions in foreign countries while giving certain U.S. companies a competitive boost.
But the real losers will be consumers who will pay taxes on imported items such as food, clothing, construction materials, electronics, cars, and other everyday items. The economic pain will be particularly acute for those on fixed incomes who will pay a higher percentage of that income on energy costs.
Anti-carbon initiatives may not do much for the climate, but they offer an ideal avenue for progressive politicians to exert greater government control.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/carbon-taxes-advance-liberal-policies-without-helping-climate
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New Credit Card Cuts Off Spending Once You Hit Your CO2 Max
Doconomy’s ‘premium’ DO Black card goes beyond tracking the CO2 emissions of your purchases — it stops from you spending as soon as you reach your monthly, UN-determined CO2 limit.
The company that created a credit card to track your purchases’ CO2 emissions is set to launch a “premium” version of the card that cuts off your spending as soon as you hit your “carbon max.”
This is the latest of many schemes to force major changes in human behaviour to allegedly lessen global warming. Social scientist and author Steven Mosher has called the global warming movement a “giant propaganda effort” and “the biggest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the family of man.”
Doconomy has partnered with Mastercard and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to create technology for the everyday consumer that “connects the purchase price of a product with the effect on the planet measured in Kg CO2, and then recommends the amount to offset – practically putting a price on carbon,” as the Doconomy website explains.
The DO credit card works hand-in-hand with a phone app, launched in April 2019, that quantifies the CO? emissions generated from each credit card transaction. The website introduces the card with video footage of whitewashed, typical consumer goods floating, like trash, as if through space, each labeled with a carbon emissions number.
The back of the card reads underneath the signature authorization area, “I’m taking responsibility for every transaction I make to help protect our planet.”
Doconomy will soon release a “premium” version of the credit card, called DO Black, touting it as “the first credit card ever to stop you from overspending.”
Measured against the UN goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030, DO Black “comes with a monthly tCO2e limit, ensuring that we stick to the UN-2030-recommended cuts in carbon,” the website reads.
“Instead of introducing a premium credit card with benefits that typically encourages further consumption, Do Black only has one essential feature – a carbon limit. The core purpose is the ability, not only to measure the impact of your consumption, but also to bring it to a direct halt,” the company stated.
The website currently features a sneak peek of the message the card user will be met with as soon as they hit their carbon max, complete with a red exclamation point warning: “Transaction denied! Carbon limit reached.”
Nathalie Green, the CEO and co-founder of Doconomy, views the card as a critical need: “We all need to come to terms with the urgency of the situation and rapidly move towards more responsible consumption. With Do Black there is no more excuses. Through our collaboration with UNFCCC and Mastercard, Do will enable people to do their part to contribute to the carbon reduction goals of 2030 and onwards,” she said.
The company revealed that they have partnered with the UN to participate in five “carbon dioxide reducing efforts,” or CO2 “offset” projects. Doconomy’s “climate smart savings account” also currently has a half-percent interest rate where “0.4 goes to our economy and 0.1 goes to the planet,” as “compensation” for the carbon impact.
As a company, Doconomy doesn’t limit itself to the creation of the DO credit cards but provides tools, using their “Åland Index,” to help other financial service providers and companies assess the “climate impact” of digital financial transactions, particular products, and even entire personal “lifestyles.”
Their goal is ambitious: “bring about structural change by rewiring the financial system,” as their website reads. Their services are already being used by the bank Klarna, which is providing “carbon impact calculations on all transactions by all users” through Doconomy’s Åland Index. This is being described as “the largest initiative ever taken by a bank in educating its users on the impact of consumption.”
While the card is currently being advertised for voluntary use, Marc Morano, founder and executive editor of what leftists call the “climate change denial” website Climate Depot, has predicted that this voluntary phase will have its own expiration date:
“This CO2 monitoring credit card will begin as a ‘voluntary’ measure with no ‘mandate.’ But how long until this CO2 card will be mandated by big corporations in collusion with governments? Given how the climate activists are aping the COVID lockdowns, expect this credit card to be mandatory under a ‘climate emergency.’”
Morano has noted that the DO card “follows on the heels” of an August 2021 Nature study “calling for ‘carbon allowances’ that would monitor individuals’ CO2 emissions through smart meters and tracking apps.”
He warned readers, “Get ready for a Chinese-style social credit system scoring when it comes to your personal spending habits.”
In response to a college professor’s “radical” proposal, shared by NPR, that people need to have fewer children because of the “prospect of climate catastrophe,” and that we need to decentivize procreation with a “carbon tax” on children in wealthy nations, Morano commented:
“U.S. environmentalists are taking a page from China’s mandatory one-child policy even as China abandons the policy. If these wacky climate activists believed their own literature they would realize that ‘global warming’ may lead to less kids!”
Steven Mosher agrees that the ultimate goal of global warmists is to dramatically decrease the world’s population. “They cheered China’s one-child policy from the very beginning,” he noted.
https://principia-scientific.com/new-credit-card-cuts-off-spending-once-you-hit-your-co2-max/
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Finkel defends huge Chinese CO2 emissions
Dr Alan Finkel was Australia’s Chief Scientist for five years until the end of last year. He was then appointed Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Low Emissions Technology
The fact that China had a net zero target for 2060 when the developed world had a target date of 2050 was “partly fairness and partly reality,” Dr Alan Finkel said.
The former Chief Scientist, speaking in a live forum with Joe Hildebrand, said China was bringing millions of people out of poverty, “and they deserve to improve their lifestyle”.
As a manufacturing powerhouse for the world, China’s ability to decarbonise was limited compared to some other countries, Dr Finkel said.
“They can do nothing immediately, or in percentage terms as rapidly, as the more developed countries,” he said.
Dr Finkel said it was true that China’s emissions were “huge and getting bigger”.
“They want to know that everybody’s pitching in. Everyone has to contribute,” he said.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/mission-zero-dr-alan-finkel-answers-your-climate-questions/news-story/e37e2c7ea5733b6d72b62fd2ba9b189c
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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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12 October, 2021
Could a gas that leaks through steel be our new energy store?
Hydrogen is being touted as the solution to our energy woes. How did that happen, and why?
“It’s really been because of the global move toward decarbonisation,” Hydrogen Council CEO Dr Fiona Simon said.
“It’s time has really arrived because of the need for us as a global economy to move from the existing way that we use energy. Hydrogen has characteristics that we can value more than we could before.”
Australia’s CSIRO has been working on the industrial applications of hydrogen for at least a decade, but its big breakthrough came in 2017, when it developed a metal membrane that enabled the element to be separated from ammonia. This global first was critical because ammonia is much easier to transport than hydrogen.
The next year the CSIRO signed a deal with Fortescue Metals to help commercialise hydrogen technologies. Company chair Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest described hydrogen as “the low emission fuel of the future” and likened the moment to the beginning of an energy revolution.
Developments have come rapidly ever since.
The federal government co-funded one hydrogen export pilot project in its 2020 Budget, and added another four this year.
The CSIRO now lists 74 large-scale, demonstration and pilot projects using hydrogen across the country.
In May this year the organisation launched its Hydrogen Industry Mission, with a goal of driving the cost of production down to under $2 per kilogram.
Hydrogen sounds great. what’s the catch?
Cost. Hydrogen will not be competitive until it can be produced at under $2 per kilogram, with the Australian industry hoping to achieve that benchmark by 2030. As the element is highly flammable, and is so small it can even escape through steel, critics say retrofitting existing infrastructure for hydrogen is also likely to be extremely expensive. Others say the water needed to create green hydrogen needs to be of such high purity that will also be a massive cost hurdle.
Hydrogen holds a lot of promise, but it needs the right policy settings to encourage investment, Dr Simon said.
“Hydrogen is competing with an existing industry with existing economies of scale and existing subsidies,” she said. “So much of [hydrogen’s potential] relies on the right policy settings, that we don’t have.”
Some have suggested hydrogen will not live up to the hype, but Dr Simon said it will fulfil its potential: it’s just a question of how much.
“It’s gone past the point where it could fall over. Hydrogen is a thing, it’s real, the question is do we put enough gusto in to make it real, to see it meets its full potential. That’s an open question,” she said.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/mission-zero-what-is-hydrogen-power-and-how-does-it-work/news-story/cdc2312c4b92b3311614361827481199
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Biden’s Plan: Slash US Fossil Fuels, Rely on China for Renewables
Obsessed with manmade climate change, the Biden administration claims natural forces no longer play any role and blames every temperature change, hurricane, tornado, flood, drought and wildfire on fossil fuel emissions. It ignores forest mismanagement, the vital roles fossil fuels play in our lives, and the enormous ecological impacts that any Green New Deal would inflict.
Team Biden is determined to eliminate oil, natural gas and coal in US energy – and mandate wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and backup battery systems, while building no new nuclear power plants or allowing any US mining for the metals and minerals essential for those new technologies.
We only have to look in two directions to see where this will take us.
To the West, where China says it won’t be bullied into committing economic suicide by ending fossil fuel use. It won’t begin cutting fossil fuel consumption until 2030 or reach “net-zero” before 2060. It won’t even engage in further discussions unless the US stops complaining about Honk Kong, Taiwan, Uighur slave labor and lax environmental rules.
In fact, China already emits 27 percent of all global greenhouse gases. It is 85 percent reliant on fossil fuels and just announced plans to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new coal-fired blast furnaces. It recently said it would stop financing and building poor country coal-fired power plants, and support only wind and solar projects, though that new policy could well sunset after the COP-26 climate confab.
China’s “peak carbon” plan is to install as much fossil fuel power as possible by 2030 – and use that cheap, reliable energy to manufacture wind, solar and battery technologies for sale to the USA, Europe, Australia and Canada, bankrupting Western industries in the process. Its “green energy” plan is to rake in as many greenbacks as possible from these sales.
China also intends to dominate global mining and processing for lithium, cobalt, rare earths and other raw materials required for “renewable” energy, defense, aerospace, communication and other high-tech applications. Ongoing discussions with the Taliban could soon give it access to the Bagram airfield and trillions of dollars in critical mineral deposits beneath Afghanistan’s rugged mountains.
President Biden seems content with this, just as he was with approving the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, giving Russia domination over European energy, while blocking the US-Canada Keystone XL pipeline and saying OPEC needs to sell us more oil.
Then look East, where Vladimir Putin is already squeezing Europe’s supplies, sending wholesale gas prices up 280 percent so far this year. Citigroup says EU gas prices could hit $100 per mcf (million Btu) if this winter is particularly cold and more Gulf of Mexico hurricanes disrupt supplies.
That’s 25 times this July’s Henry Hub US price ($4.07) and seven times the highest ever US price ($13.42 in Oct 2005, before fracking). It’s equal to $580 per barrel for oil! EU electricity is four to 10 times more expensive than the 13-cent US average.
Countless British and European companies and families face bankruptcy and mass layoffs. Tens of thousands of elderly face death from hypothermia because they cannot afford adequate heat. Recent headlines underscore the looming disasters.
- “Putin’s iron grip on energy leaves Europe increasingly vulnerable.”
- “Vestas closes wind turbine factories in Europe, as manufacturing moves to Asia.”
- “Energy companies supplying six million UK homes face collapse.”
- “UK energy minister admits ‘very difficult winter’ ahead, amid fear of blackouts and food shortages, as gas prices soar.”
- “Elder care homes warn crippling energy bills could force closures.”
- “This energy crisis is a mere harbinger of the candle-lit future that awaits us.”
- “Green energy transition will cost debt-ridden Italy €650 billion” [$760 billion].
- “If Boris thinks Brits are going to pay through the nose for green boilers and electric cars, while the Chinese are burning coal like there's no tomorrow, he’s signing his own death warrant.”
- “Why is Britain facing an energy crisis when we’re sitting on a gold mine [of natural gas that we refuse to frack]?”
This is what the United States faces if it continues down the “green energy” primrose path. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are playing a brilliant chess game, while Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and other Western leaders play doddering checkers, with the West’s energy, economic and national security at stake.
Where are Republicans who say they want America to remain energy independent, competitive and free? Or Democrats who claim they care deeply about poor, minority and elderly families?
https://townhall.com/columnists/craigrucker/2021/10/11/bidens-plan-slash-us-fossil-fuels-rely-on-china-for-renewables-n2597100
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Chilling truth about the Insulate Britain founder who said I will be 'hanged for climate crimes'
Some of those Insulate Britain climate-change protesters, whose motorway sit-downs are as infuriating as they are pointless, have been exposed as hypocrites.
One, Liam Norton, admitted he had failed to insulate his own flat in London and stormed out of a radio interview when tested on this point.
Another, Cameron Ford, who spent his 31st birthday in a police cell after being dragged off the M25 by police officers, was embarrassed when it emerged that in 2020 he had toured across Europe in a diesel van (he had unwisely posted lots of pictures of his travels).
But at least these hypocrites had also put themselves in the line of fire. However inconsiderate their actions, it takes a certain courage to glue yourself to a motorway and face the fury of road users, some of the more muscular of whom (to general public rejoicing) have wrenched the demonstrators off the road.
Callous
Yet the actual founder of Insulate Britain has not put himself out in this way. This is Roger Hallam, who has been telling his acolytes what to do either from his partner's South London flat or from his ten-acre farm in Wales.
He gravitates between these two places, though how these frequent trips are made, in terms of road or rail use, is not known. (Five diesel-powered vehicles have been seen parked on his farm, but he insists none is his.)
The 55-year-old did once spend time in prison on remand: we can take it he did not find it such a pleasant experience that he wished to repeat it.
He has, however, been willing to enter the broadcasting studios to defend the blocking of motorways, notably after one woman was filmed pleading with Insulate Britain protesters to move because she was desperate to see her mother, who had been taken by ambulance to hospital.
Asked about that incident and whether he would have refused to move if there was someone dying in an ambulance, Hallam replied simply: 'Yes.'
So you see, while he claims to be acting in the interests of suffering humanity, Mr Hallam is a callous man, and one who seems to obtain satisfaction in the contemplation of violence (performed by others, not himself, naturally).
A year ago, he was recorded telling his followers that the 'people who run society, run big business' whom he judged 'culpable … for the climate catastrophe …maybe you should put a bullet through their head'.
One woman was filmed pleading with Insulate Britain to move from the Blackwall Tunnel because she was desperate to see her mother, who had been taken by ambulance to hospital
One woman was filmed pleading with Insulate Britain to move from the Blackwall Tunnel because she was desperate to see her mother, who had been taken by ambulance to hospital
I am on his list of those apparently destined for execution. In July, after I wrote a column referring to him as 'just a nasty piece of work', he put up a film on YouTube under the title 'Dominic Lawson will be Hanged for Climate Crimes'.
The film amounted to his case for the prosecution. Having some idea of criminal law in terms of incitement to violence, Hallam carefully added the words that he was merely predicting my execution, not advocating it.
He was less careful in the past. Two years ago, he was dumped by his German publishers after he told an interviewer for Die Zeit that the Holocaust was 'just another f***ery in human history', and by not recognising this, Germans were somehow prevented from correctly appreciating what he considered the much more significant threat to human lives from climate change.
He argued that, in this context, the Holocaust (in which two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population were deliberately exterminated by the then German government) was 'almost a normal event'.
As a result of this interview, Hallam was largely disowned — and financially cut off — by Extinction Rebellion (which he had co-founded). Insulate Britain is his attempt to regain his leadership of the climate-change protest movement.
Insulate Britain protestors are dragged off the road by drivers at Wandsworth Bridge
Insulate Britain protestors are dragged off the road by drivers at Wandsworth Bridge
If you look at the material it puts out to justify its behaviour (probably written by Hallam), you will see that Insulate Britain claims its disruption to people's lives is in the tradition of the U.S. civil rights movement, Gandhi in India and those, such as the Suffragettes, who demanded the vote in this country before the universal franchise.
Contempt
This is, in its own way, offensive. We are not like pre-independence India. Not only do we have a democratically elected parliament, it is one that has legislated for a faster move to 'net-zero emissions' than any other large, developed nation.
The truth is Hallam has a contempt for the democracy that the Suffragettes campaigned for, or at least argues that elected politicians should be forced to agree to his own agenda. Insulate Britain says it won't stop blocking the roads until that happens.
When Hallam has tried his hand at democratic means, the result has been abject failure. Standing in the 2019 European Parliament election in the London constituency, he won 924 of the 2,241,681 votes cast — 0.04 per cent of the total.
Since then, he has set up a political party called Burning Pink. In the 2021 London mayoralty election, its candidate came 20th out of 20. Even Count Binface (of the Count Binface party) won five times as many votes.
The effect of Hallam's latest venture will be to render him and his ideas still more risible to the British voter.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10078657/DOMINIC-LAWSON-Truth-Insulate-Britain-founder-said-hanged-climate-crimes.html
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Australia won't tighten carbon emissions targets for polluters
Australia's energy minister on Monday rejected a call from the lobby group for the country's biggest companies to set stricter emissions limits on polluters but gave no indication what targets the government may announce ahead of UN climate talks this month.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is working on securing support from the Liberal party's rural partner, the Nationals, to back a target of net zero by 2050 and possibly a more ambitious target for 2030 than Australia's existing pledge to cut emissions by 26-28% from 2005 levels, ahead of the UN climate conference in Glasgow.
Yet, the Business Council of Australia - which represents the country's biggest companies including miners, gas and power producers - said over the weekend that emissions reductions of up to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 could be achieved with big benefits for the economy.
Addressing an energy and climate conference on Monday, Energy Minister Angus Taylor swiftly shot down the council's recommendation that the government beef up its "Safeguard Mechanism" by requiring businesses that emit more than 25 million tonnes a year to buy carbon offsets, compared with the current threshold of 100 million tonnes a year.
The Safeguard Mechanism and the carbon offset market sets Australia's carbon price, which last week rocketed to a record high, but was still less than one-third the carbon price in the European Union, which has much stricter emission limits.
"A substantial tightening of the Safeguard Mechanism is a backdoor carbon tax consumers will ultimately have to pay for, and that's not acceptable," Taylor said at conference organised by the Australian Financial Review.
Australia is the world's fourth largest energy exporter, and Taylor said the government's main goal was to protect key industries, including gas, coal, heavy manufacturing and agriculture, while also promoting hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and soil carbon to cut emissions.
The government would stick to providing incentives to cut emissions rather than punishing polluters, he said.
"That means avoiding explicit carbon taxes or backdoor pathways to a carbon tax - sneaky carbon taxes."
Taylor's speech came the same day that Australian billionaire Twiggy Forrest, an outspoken critic of the government's energy policies, announced he would build the world's biggest electrolyser factory in Australia to further his ambition to produce green hydrogen.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/australia-won-t-tighten-carbon-emissions-targets-for-polluters/ar-AAPmh7b
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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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11 October, 2021
Mainstream Media Hypes False Claims Climate Change is Killing Coral
A search of Google news for the term “climate change” turns up dozens of stories in the mainstream media covering a report which claims global warming has killed 14 percent of the world’s corals in the last decade. This is false. The cause of coral deaths in the past decade are multifaceted with most being the result of coastal pollution from various sources as well as a known sensitivity to sunscreen used by reef snorkelers.
Coral can only exist in warm waters and data show as the world’s equatorial oceans have warmed modestly, corals reefs expanded their range. In instances where temperature spikes have contributed to coral bleaching, most of the corals have recovered.
The New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post were among the dozens of mainstream media outlets publishing alarming stories about a new report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN).
“Rising ocean temperatures killed about 14 percent of the world’s coral reefs in just under a decade, according to a new analysis from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network,” wrote NPR.
The first corals arose during the Cambrian Period about 535 million years ago and the number and type corals increased dramatically more than 400 million years ago, coming into existence when global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations were much higher than at present. Coral have proved adaptable, expanding their range and evolving and thriving through periods of higher and lower temperatures than the Earth is either currently experiencing or reasonably expected to experience in the foreseeable future.
As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs, coral thrive in warm water, not cold water, and recent warming has allowed coral to expand their range poleward, while still thriving near the equator.
Recent peer-reviewed research described in a Phys.org article, titled “Half a trillion corals: World-first coral count prompts rethink of extinction risks,” should serve to calm any concern for the continued survival and flourishing of corals. The study cited places the number of corals in the Pacific Ocean alone at more than half a trillion. There are likely trillions more worldwide.
The scientists involved in the research say the sheer number of corals and coral species means the risk of extinction due to climate change is vastly lower than previously claimed.
“In the Pacific, we estimate there are roughly half a trillion corals,’ said the study lead author, Dr. Andy Dietzel from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University,” writes Phys.org. “This is about the same number of trees in the Amazon, or birds in the world.”
“Dr. Dietzel said the eight most common coral species in the region each have a population size greater than the 7.8 billion people on Earth,” says Phys.org, continuing, “The findings suggest that while a local loss of coral can be devastating to coral reefs, the global extinction risk of most coral species is lower than previously estimated.”
This research points out that 12 of the 80 coral species the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists as having an elevated extinction risk, have estimated population sizes of more than one billion colonies.
NPR says the GCRMN’s “report … found that warming caused by climate change, overfishing, coastal development, and declining water quality has placed coral reefs around the world under ‘relentless stress.’”
Coral reefs do face many stressors, but the best available evidence suggests warmer waters is a factor they can adapt to.
Previous posts on Climate Realism, for example, here, here, here, and here, show local conditions, like runoff from beach front development and agriculture, and pollution tied to sun block used by swimmers, not warmer temperatures or ocean acidification, pose the biggest threat to coral reefs. But even these threats are highly localized and often temporary, with many coral reefs recovering within a few seasons after bleaching events.
Science has multiple studies showing corals can and do adapt to the gradual long-term pace of global warming.
Most portions of coral reefs around the world that have bleached and been declared dead or permanently damaged over the past two decades have, in fact, recovered. Whether the 14 percent of corals identified GCRMN as being dead will eventually recover is unknown. What is clear from history and the available evidence is there are trillions of corals in the world, many unaccounted for, and to the extent they are threatened with harm, various types of pollution are the primary cause, not warmer waters.
https://climaterealism.com/2021/10/mainstream-media-hypes-false-claims-climate-change-is-killing-coral/
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Among Europe’s dirtiest: ‘Green’ biomass power plant in Yorkshire burning ‘renewable’ wood emits MORE CO2 than UK’s coal – report
A supposedly “carbon neutral” Drax biomass power plant is the UK’s leading source of CO2 emissions, and belches out more harmful carbon and particulate matter than some of Europe’s dirtiest coal plants, according to a new report.
Renewable energy firm Drax describes its plant in North Yorkshire as a “purely renewable” facility, boasting that it has slashed its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 90% since 2012. The plant burns biomass – pellets of compressed wood – and received £832 million ($1.13 billion) in direct government subsidies last year, on top of an estimated £258 million ($351 million) in carbon tax breaks.
Yet the energy generated at Drax is far from green, a new report by environmental think tank Ember claims. While the UK and EU consider biomass power “carbon neutral,” this assessment is based on the assumption that biomass emissions are offset by the planting of new trees.
This forest regrowth takes time, and the European Academies’ Sciences Advisory Council (EASAC) reported earlier this year that switching plants from coal to biomass – as was the case at Drax’ Yorkshire facility – would not cause any drop in emissions for at least three to five decades.
“Such technology is not effective in mitigating climate change and may even increase the risk of dangerous climate change,” the EASAC stated.
In the UK, wood burning plants like Drax’ currently spew out more CO2 than coal plants, including coal used in steel production. Drax is the country’s top emitter, releasing 13.3 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year, compared to the entire coal sector’s yearly emissions of 10 million tons.
Data shows that Drax is Europe’s third-worst emitter of CO2, behind Germany's Neurath and Poland’s Be?chatów coal plants. It is also Europe’s fourth-worst emitter of PM10 particulate matter, coming in behind three coal plants in Poland and Romania. It is the only biomass facility to rank in Europe’s top ten CO2 and PM10 emissions lists.
A Drax spokesman responded to Ember’s report by describing the think tank’s figures as “inaccurate and completely at odds with what the world’s leading climate scientists at the UN IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] say about sustainable biomass being crucial to delivering global climate targets.” The company says that its carbon emissions are “biologically sequestered,” meaning they are technically counted as zero under the previously-mentioned EU and UK assumptions of forest regrowth.
However, critics suggest that the scientific consensus on “sustainable” biomass may soon change.
“Recent science demonstrates that burning forest biomass for power is unlikely to be carbon neutral – and there’s a real risk that it’s responsible for significant emissions,” Ember Chief Operating Officer Phil MacDonald stated. “Before the government spends more taxpayer money on biomass, we should make sure we know we’re getting the emissions reductions that we’re paying for.”
https://www.rt.com/uk/537069-carbon-neutral-biomass-emissions-drax/
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NBC Sounds Sea Level Alarm at Navy Base – With No Sea Level Acceleration
NBC News local affiliate WAVY channel 10 in Virginia’s Portsmouth-Norfolk-Hampton viewing market published an article this past week blaming global warming for local sea-level rise that allegedly threatens naval facilities. In reality, objective tidal gauge records in the Norfolk region show no acceleration of sea level rise.
The WAVY article is titled, “Preparing for Battle: Naval Station Norfolk engages with the forces of climate change to keep troops ready, jobs intact.” The article claims, “The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that impacts from climate change are happening at a pace far more rapid than originally estimated.” The article then documents ways in which the Navy is adapting to sea-level rise.
In reality, the only thing happening “at a pace far more rapid than originally estimated” is alarmist misinformation in the news media.
While WAVY is quick to link sea-level rise to global warming, the WAVY article leaves out a very important fact – there has been no acceleration in sea-level rise in the region. How can climate change be causing accelerating sea-level rise if there is no acceleration in sea-level rise?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has maintained a tidal gauge at Sewell’s Point in Norfolk since the 1920’s. The tidal records, as shown in the NOAA graph below, show the pace of sea-level rise remains the same now as it was 100 years ago – when there was minimal human-emitted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
NOAA has maintained three other tidal gauges in the Norfolk region, dating back to the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s, respectively. None of the other three show any acceleration, either.
Despite the claims of WAVY and climate alarmists that the U.S. Navy and everybody else is having to cope with rapidly accelerating sea-level rise due to global warming, the objective facts show no acceleration at all. And if there has been no acceleration despite more than a century of global warming, by what theoretical mechanism will rapid acceleration suddenly kick in now – after an unexplained century-long delay?
The fact is global warming is not causing, and will not cause, a rapid acceleration in sea-level rise. For more than a century, humans have handily managed modestly rising seas. Managing that same pace of sea-level rise will be even easier with modern and future technologies.
https://climaterealism.com/2021/10/nbc-sounds-sea-level-alarm-at-navy-base-with-no-sea-level-acceleration/
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Amid Energy Crisis, UK Refuses To Develop North Sea Natural Gas Field
According to media reports, the UK government’s Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) had refused permission for Royal Dutch Shell to further develop the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea.
Government has yet to issue a statement and it is not clear why OPRED rejected Royal Dutch Shell’s proposal on the Jackdaw field, which could have supplied up to 10% of the annual consumption of natural gas in the UK. This would be equal to about 15% of consumption by UK households.
It is suspected that the UK government was reluctant to be seen consenting to fossil fuels in the run-up to COP 26, the UN climate conference to be held in Glasgow this November, and which the UK is chairing.
The refusal of the Shell Jackdaw proposal is all the more confusing since natural gas is an essential component in the government’s Net Zero proposals.
Natural gas guarantees the security of supply on the electricity grid during periods of low wind and solar output.
It is also the source of the about 80% of the hydrogen that government requires to decarbonize otherwise impossible sectors such as marine transport, Heavy Goods Vehicles, agricultural traction, and crucial elements of domestic heating in the drive for Net Zero (See GWPF’s paper on Hydrogen: The Once and Future Fuel for details of the government plans).
Since natural gas is so important to the government’s very own policy goals it is essential that UK national resources should be developed to prevent the over-dependence on international markets that is driving the current gas crisis.
This entails facilitating further development in the North Sea, amongst other sources.
Dr. John Constable, GWPF’s energy editor said:
“Refusing permission for national gas production in the middle of gas import crisis is a bizarre decision, and seems to be driven by the short-term optics of COP26 rather than the public interest and a rational approach to low-cost decarbonization. Energy policy is too important to be distorted by virtue signaling. Natural gas is essential from many perspectives, and domestic natural gas production should be strongly encouraged.”
Dr. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said:
“In face of a worsening energy crisis, Boris Johnson should encourage, as a matter of urgency, the exploration and further development of Britain’s vast natural gas resources, including shale gas, which would bring down energy costs and enhance energy security significantly.”
https://climatechangedispatch.com/amid-energy-crisis-uk-refuses-to-develop-north-sea-natural-gas-field/
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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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10 October, 2021
Research seeks to determine how much extra carbon dioxide can trees absorb to reduce greenhouse emissions
The doubts expressed about this experiment are absurd. They pretend that we don't know what plants use CO2 for. But we know that perfectly well. They use it to build up theirown structure. They turn it into wood etc. So they will STORE in their own tissues the extra CO2 that they take in
The University of Oxford has erected towers in an old oak forest and then bathed the 175-year-old trees with carbon dioxide to mirror what CO2 levels will be like in 2050.
When they measured the amount of photosynthesis that was occurring, it had increased by 30 per cent.
Trees absorb CO2 and give out oxygen, so their ability to manage rising CO2 levels is critical to human survival on a warming planet.
According to Professor Rob MacKenzie, it is a promising result, founding Director of Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR).
"We are sure now that the old trees are responding to future carbon dioxide levels."
"How the entire forest ecosystem responds is a much bigger question."
The research was carried out at the Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) facility of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), and together with a similar project run by the Western Sydney University, they are the world's two largest experiments looking at the effect of climate change on nature.
Australian researcher Professor David Ellsworth thinks the results are significant. "The temperate zone is where a lot of the CO2 occurs, up in the northern hemisphere, and we need to know the trajectory of the uptake into the future to know what's going to happen with atmospheric CO2."
"They could be really important sinks for the CO2 into the future or perhaps they're already saturated; they take up more, but they don't store more."
When a similar experiment was conducted on a red gum forest in Australia in 2019, the trees photosynthesised just 20 per cent more CO2, so the UK result surprised Professor Ellsworth.
"That's quite a bit higher than our eucalyptus forests, and that was quite a surprise."
"Our eucalyptus trees have very high rates of photosynthesis … but they don't end up storing very much of that, so the CO2 goes back out into the atmosphere.
Researchers in the UK are now looking at the leaves, wood, roots, and soil in their old oak forest to find out where the extra carbon captured ends up and for how long it stays locked up.
"The CO2 being taken up by the trees is a good thing, but if it is taken up by the trees, metabolised internally and then shot back out to the atmosphere, then there really isn't any net storage or net savings of CO2 in that system," Professor Ellsworth said.
Other results from the UK experiment show that the increase in photosynthesis was greatest in strong sunlight.
The overall balance of key nutrient elements carbon and nitrogen did not change in the leaves, and keeping the carbon to nitrogen ratio constant suggests that the old trees have found ways of redirecting their elements or found ways of bringing more nitrogen in from the soil to balance the carbon they are gaining from the air.
The research will help governments work on how to respond to climate change and how to manage the existing forests.
"Old trees account for the vast majority of the land base in Australia, so we need to understand how much are they taking up now, how much are they going to take up in the future.
"Not only are they taking up CO2 in the present day, but if we cut them down, something happens with all the carbon that's been bound up in them, and we don't want that to go back up in the atmosphere."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-10-10/oak-trees-soak-up-extra-carbon-emissions/100527448
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California Energy Decision Rewards Poor Planning
California’s grid is vulnerable, and high temperatures this past summer have clearly demonstrated its weaknesses. Between brownouts and calls on citizens to voluntarily reduce their use of electricity during peak demand, the fragility of the states’ power supply was clear.
State governments are far more involved in their states’ electricity markets than they should be, and none shows the folly of centralized control more than California.
California’s convoluted workaround for its power supply woes takes the form of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision that would allow the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) to use power intended for other states in an emergency.
The ruling changes tariff rules for CAISO and allows it to block energy destined for other states from crossing its border and then repurchase this power for its own uses in a grid emergency.
One source that would be impacted by this is hydroelectric power from Oregon that has already been purchased by Arizona, and for which the state has transmission agreements with CAISO.
This decision could have serious consequences for grid reliability in other parts of the West because the power that comes through California can no longer be counted on in a situation where there is high energy demand.
This means that states that use energy transmitted through California can no longer count on that capacity in planning for peak load. Because it can no longer be counted on in a crisis, this capacity can no longer be factored into calculations for worst-case scenarios.
The same conditions, namely major heat waves, that would cause California to keep back this energy for its own use would be those in which Arizona needed it the most. Instead of allowing energy to be bought and sold in a fair and open market, California is struggling to secure scarce power that has already been bought for itself. This situation provides a great lesson against state governments messing around with energy markets.
While the tariff changes were still under consideration, utilities from Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon filed petitions requesting that FERC reject the provisions that would allow CAISO to prioritize California load over transmission to other states, even when that power has already been purchased by the receiving state. To be clear, this is energy that is not generated in California, and for which CAISO already has transmission agreements in place.
The Arizona utilities said in their response to the proposal that it, “unfairly prioritizes transmission service for CAISO over transmission service used for the export of power and wheel-through of power to other utilities across the western United States and thus improperly jeopardizes the Arizona Utilities’ ability to serve their load with firm purchases that they have already made.”
On June 25th, FERC accepted CAISO’s tariff revisions, officially granting it the ability to intercept power destined for other states in an emergency.
The Arizona Corporation Commission was understandably chagrined by the FERC decision, Chairwoman Lea Márquez Peterson said in a press release: “This decision is problematic for many Western states, including Arizona.”
She went on to emphasize the disparity in energy planning between the two states.
“Our electric utilities did the right thing and planned ahead, securing pre-negotiated contracts with utilities in the Pacific Northwest to ensure that critical hydropower would be available to Arizonans when it would be needed the most which would be delivered across transmission lines through the state of California.”
CAISO is supposed to provide “open” and “fair” access to its transmission services, treating power destined for other states the same way that it treats native load. While the FERC decision claims that this change in tariff rules does not impede this, it is clear that this decision treats transmission to other states unfairly in relation to its treatment of native load.
This decision will have major repercussions for Western states as they can no longer rely on power transmitted through California not being intercepted on its way to purchasing utilities.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/10/01/california-poor-planning/
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Reasons that people ditch electric vehicles show 'revolution' will be slow and rocky
For over a decade, policy and industry have tried to make electric vehicles more widely available and get people to buy them. Previous research on how to do this has largely focused on examining early adopters of plug-in electric vehicles and surveying urban residents' stated preferences for these vehicles.
Until recently, no one had asked what would make those who adopted electric vehicles decide to switch back to a conventional gasoline vehicle. A new study does just that, reflecting that the same factors that led people to adopt electric vehicles leads drivers to ditch them if their experiences with those factors are negative.
Bradley Lane, associate professor of public affairs & administration at the University of Kansas, wrote a research review in the journal Nature Energy of a study conducted by Scott Hardman and Gil Tal of the University of California Davis that examined the factors that lead people to ditch electric vehicles. The study found that in a survey of a few thousand California residents who were early adopters of either battery-powered electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, about 20% switched back to gas vehicles.
For his part, Lane—an expert in transportation policy, travel behavior and planning issues in urban transportation—sifted through what the findings might mean for the future of electric vehicles themselves. Lane's own work has examined attitudes toward autonomous vehicles and interest in electric vehicles.
"About one-fifth of people who adopted electric vehicles ditched them. That seems like a lot to me," Lane said, "especially given that these were the people most likely and most incentivized to adopt them. Of course, you could also argue that 80 of people kept their EV or got a new one. But interestingly, the same things that predicted if people adopted them, if they were dissatisfied with those things, they abandoned their EV.
"There's a real user experience factor at play here."
Two factors predicted whether people would abandon both battery and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Users were dissatisfied with the convenience of battery charging, and they relied on them for their primary mode of transportation. Previous research has shown that people who have adopted the vehicles thought they would be able to charge them conveniently and wanted the vehicle as their primary mode of transportation, often to save money on gas. Otherwise, there were differences in reasons for discontinuance among battery-powered vs. hybrid electric vehicles.
Owners who abandoned their battery-powered EVs reported they were most likely dissatisfied with home charging capability, especially with the ability to rapidly charge at home. Plug-in owners reported they were dissatisfied with the charging costs or that they were not saving as much on fuel costs as they thought they would. They also reported dissatisfaction with their perception of charging access or that there were not as many charging stations available as they thought there would be. Demographically, homes with people who ditched either type were more likely to be smaller and younger, with fewer vehicles, lower incomes and fewer men living in them.
"My hunch is that people who ditched battery electric vehicles are not classic first adopters. What we sometimes think of as the typical American household with multiple vehicles and thought an EV would save them money, and it just didn't do it enough for them," Lane said. "That sends signals that these might continue to have a rocky time diffusing into the population without continued improvements in cost and charging access, particularly for multi-family housing structures."
Another major indicator of the findings is that negative experiences were very influential, perhaps more so than positive experiences. Lane emphasized that the findings cannot be extrapolated for the entire United States, as all respondents were from California, which is the state with the most incentives for electric vehicle ownership, a wealthy population, bad urban air pollution and the highest gas prices in the nation. This makes their residents the most likely to adopt the vehicles in the U.S., so the fact that nearly 20% of respondents in the most favorable environment for EVs switched back to conventional gasoline vehicles indicates these vehicles will not take over American roadways in the near future, even if more locations become as favorable as California.
Further research could also explore why people keep the vehicles or get a new one, he added.
Electric vehicles are widely viewed in transportation research circles as one of three revolutions in transportation, along with autonomous vehicles and shared mobility. The findings lend weight to the school of thought that these revolutions will not happen overnight.
"Hardman and Tal's study instead gives strong evidence that initial adoption does not necessarily mean a permanent switch and that the three revolutions of transportation may well look more like revolutions often do—rocky, drawn out and with lots of starts and stops before there is lasting change," Lane wrote
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-10-people-ditch-electric-vehicles-revolution.html
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International farm subsidies the next target in Australian plan on carbon
Clever. If other countries in the developed world accuse Australia of not doing enough carbon reduction, Australia can embarrass them by pointing to an area where they could do much more. The upshot could be an informal agreement not to criticize one-another's CO2 emissions
Australia will back a push to slash farm subsidies overseas worth $740 billion a year in the hope of achieving deeper cuts to carbon emissions at the upcoming United Nations climate summit, declaring the payments encourage waste and hurt the environment.
The federal government is joining other big countries in vowing to tackle the subsidies after UN agencies said the spending could balloon to $2.5 trillion and undermine the Paris target to cut greenhouse emissions by 2030.
The campaign promises benefits for Australian farmers who suffer from their competitors being paid mammoth subsidies in the European Union and the United States, helping Prime Minister Scott Morrison seek a climate deal with the Nationals as soon as next week.
The Australian position, put by Trade Minister Dan Tehan in talks in Europe on Friday, joins calls from Brazil and Indonesia for cuts to subsidies that offer the biggest payments to farmers in wealthy countries and do the most harm to those in the developing world.
Mr Tehan raised the issue with US climate envoy John Kerry in a step toward getting the US, EU and the World Trade Organisation to acknowledge the problem and put it on the agenda at the climate summit that begins in Glasgow on November 1.
“If countries are serious about addressing climate change they have to address all aspects of reducing emissions,” Mr Tehan said in an interview.
“We cannot leave an issue untouched when it ultimately accounts for 25 per cent of emission reduction. “We’re looking at this and other countries need to do the same.”
Mr Tehan spoke to US trade representative Katherine Tai, European Commission Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and World Trade Organisation Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala about setting up a climate group to pursue the issue in trade talks after the Glasgow summit.
Australian governments have long opposed the scale of the US and EU subsidies on the grounds they punish food producers elsewhere, but the climate talks build a stronger case to unwind decades of payments that encourage over-production.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation and other UN agencies estimated last month the subsidies cost $US540 billion ($740 billion) this year and would rise to $US1.8 trillion ($2.5 trillion) by 2030, hurting efforts on climate change.
“These are inefficient, distort food prices, hurt people’s health, degrade the environment, and are often inequitable,” they said.
The EU is promising to reform its subsidies as part of its action on climate change, given agriculture accounts for about 10 per cent of EU emissions.
Agriculture accounts for about 13 per cent of Australian emissions but has been a big source of carbon reductions since 2005, leading Nationals deputy leader and Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to warn that the sector cannot do as much “heavy lifting” in the future.
Mr Tehan acknowledged the campaign on farm subsidies meant Australia would have to accept concerns about fossil fuel subsidies from other countries when Mr Morrison and the federal government are being accused of doing too little to cut emissions.
“If questions are going to be asked about fossil fuel subsidies, which they are, then what we need to be saying is: OK, if we need to take action against fossil fuel subsidies – and the Australian government acknowledges that this is an area that there needs to have action on – then why not do the same on agricultural subsidies?” he said.
The Trade Minister also noted this in remarks to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting on the “green economy” in Paris on Thursday, attended by Mr Kerry, before heading to a meeting of G20 trade ministers in Rome.
The value of the fossil fuel help is forecast to be much more than the farm assistance, the International Monetary Fund estimating last month fossil fuel subsidies are worth about $US6 trillion a year, with 70 per cent made up of “undercharging” for environmental costs.
Mr Tehan expects to raise the subsidy campaign with his Indonesian counterpart, Muhammad Lutfi, in the G20 talks in Rome in the belief developing nations also want the issue on the agenda in Glasgow.
“What this would do is enable developing countries, and countries like Australia, to be able to transition in a way which would help us set ambitious targets when it comes to emission reduction,” he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-farm-subsidies-the-next-target-in-australian-plan-on-carbon-20211008-p58ygx.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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8 October, 2021
China calls for huge boost in coal output at Inner Mongolia mines to fight power crunch
What about global warming?
Chinese officials have ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to ramp up coal production by nearly 100 million tonnes as the country battles its worst power crunch and coal shortage in years.
Record-high prices and shortages of electricity have prompted power rationing across the country, crippling industrial output.
The proposed increase would make up nearly 3 per cent of China's total thermal coal consumption.
In an urgent notice dated October 7, the Inner Mongolia regional energy department asked the cities of Wuhai, Ordos and Hulunbuir, as well as Xilingol League, or prefecture, to notify 72 mines that they could operate at stipulated higher capacities immediately, provided they ensured safe production.
An official with the region's energy bureau confirmed the notice but declined to say how long the production boost would be allowed to last.
The state-run Inner Mongolia Daily reported the notice followed a meeting on the same day that regional authorities mapped out measures for winter energy supplies in response to mandates from China's State Council, or Cabinet.
"The [government's] coal task force shall urge miners to raise output with no compromise, while the power task team shall have the generating firms guarantee meeting the winter electricity and heating demand," the newspaper said.
"This demonstrates the government is serious about raising local coal production to ease the shortage," said a Beijing-based trader, who estimated the production boost would take two to three months to materialise.
The 72 mines listed by the Inner Mongolia energy bureau, most of which are open pits, previously had authorised annual capacity of 178.45 million tonnes.
The notice proposed they increase their production capacity by 98.35 million tonnes combined, according to Reuters calculations.
"It will help alleviate the coal shortage but cannot eliminate the issue," IHS Markit senior director Lara Dong said.
"The government will still need to apply power rationing to ensure the balancing of the coal and power markets over the winter."
China's Zhengzhou thermal coal futures briefly slumped 6 per cent on Friday morning after opening up nearly 3 per cent. The contract was down 3.2 per cent at 1,287 yuan ($274) per tonne.
Authorities increase imports
Inner Mongolia is China's second-biggest coal-producing region, churning out just over 1 billion tonnes in 2020 and accounting for more than a quarter of the national total, official data shows.
But that output was down 8 per cent in 2020 and was falling every month from April through July this year, partly due to an anti-corruption probe initiated last year by Beijing targeting the coal sector, which led to lower production as miners were banned from producing more than was allowed.
Neighbouring Shanxi province, China's biggest coal region, had to close 27 coal mines this week due to flooding.
Coal inventories at major Chinese ports were at 52.34 million tonnes in late September before a week-long national holiday that started on October 1, down 18 per cent from the same period last year, data compiled by China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association showed.
Meanwhile, coal consumption is climbing as north-eastern China enters the winter heating season, with major power plants having stockpiles for about 10 days of use, down from more than 20 days last year.
To ensure power and heating supply to residential users, China has reopened dozens of other mines and approved several new ones.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-08/china-calls-for-boost-in-coal-output-to-fight-power-crunch/100526158
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In One Place, For One Fish, Climate Change May be a Boon
In the past Greenies have agonized about global warming cutting salmon numbers
On a mid-july afternoon, when the tide was starting to come in on the Naknek River, the Bandle family’s commercial fishing nets lay stretched across the beach, waiting for the water to rise. With the fishing crew on break, Sharon Bandle emerged from a tar-paper-sided cabin that serves as kitchen and bunkhouse with a plate of tempura salmon and a bowl of cocktail sauce. Everyone dug in.
Here in southwestern Alaska’s Bristol Bay, the Bandle family has fished by setnet for nearly 40 years, anchoring nets hundreds of feet long on the beach, then stretching them perpendicularly into the river’s current. The webbing hangs like a curtain from a line of softball-size corks, intercepting sockeye salmon as they swim upstream to their spawning grounds. Crews of two or three in small aluminum skiffs pick the salmon from the nets; processing plants on the far side of the river head and gut the catch, then ship the bulk of it to China and elsewhere for additional processing.
Bristol Bay’s sockeye harvest has long made up about half of the global catch of this species, in a seasonal blitz as short as it is enormous: The fishery lasts a mere six weeks. Each summer, 15,000 seafood processors, boat-based fishermen, and setnetters—including families such as the Bandles—gather here to support an industry worth more than $2 billion in 2019. Some fishermen will net enough cash to live on until the fish come back the next year. And this year, Bristol Bay outdid itself, notching the largest sockeye run in the region’s recorded history with an astonishing 66 million returning fish. Even more astonishing, this season capped nearly a decade of extraordinarily high salmon returns in Bristol Bay, where sockeye harvests have reached more than 50 percent above the most recent 20-year average.
https://www.perishablenews.com/seafood/in-one-place-for-one-fish-climate-change-may-be-a-boon
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Facebook launched a Climate Science Information Center last year
The platform steers users to the site when they search climate related terms, and in countries where it is not available, the site directs users to the United Nations Environmental Programme website.
In February, the social media giant added a section aimed at 'debunking myths' about climate change, in consultation with experts from George Mason, Yale and the University of Cambridge.
The social network also debuted a program in the UK that starts adding labels to some users' posts on climate, which would steer them to the Center.
'We want to expose people to information that helps them interpret and react to common myths around climate change they may encounter,' Edward Palmieri, Facebook's sustainability director told Axios at the the time.
John Cook, a George Mason expert in climate communication, also said research shows that simply telling people they are wrong is not enough, 'You also have to explain why or how it is wrong,' he said of the idea of the Climate Science Information Center.
'That is important from a psychological point of view.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10070335/Google-YouTube-ban-climate-change-deniers-monetizing-content-platforms.html
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Australia: Kimberley fracking project's exemption from gas export ban sparks Conservation Council fears
Introduced last year, the change to WA's domestic gas policy prevents gas extracted onshore from being sent to the eastern states or overseas.
The only other exemption to the policy was given to the Kerry Stokes-backed Waitsia project, with Premier Mark McGowan defending the move on the grounds Waitsia was a "shovel ready" development that would deliver hundreds of jobs.
At the time the policy was changed, the Valhalla project being developed by Bennett Resources had been submitted to WA's Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), with plans for six wells on Noonkanbah Station, near Fitzroy Crossing.
But a recent announcement by Texas-based Black Mountain, which owns Bennett Resources, revealed it had now been granted an exemption from the export restrictions.
It was the first application for a fracking project since the state government lifted a ban on the practice in 2018.
The latest EPA document, released on August 4, reveals Bennett Resources now plans to build up to 20 "exploration and appraisal wells" at 10 sites.
The exemption has upset the WA Conservation Council, with the group saying it went against what was promised when the moratorium on fracking ended.
"It was lifted after an inquiry found that any gas fracking would likely be only small scale and only for the domestic market, and therefore have very limited environmental impact because the size of those developments would be very small," Council director Piers Verstegen said.
"We raised concerns about that at the time and said that we didn't think that was accurate and that those fracking companies would be trying to build very large fracking projects to access the export market. "That appears to be exactly what's happening now."
Minister for State Development, Jobs and Trade, Roger Cook, said the exemption was granted because the project would help build gas pipelines to connect the area to the broader WA network.
"We've said to [Black Mountain] … if they need to export a portion of their initial off-take in relation to this in order to make the project successful, then we would be prepared to consider that," he told ABC Goldfields.
"But we've also said that that would be on the basis that they commit in the long-term to domestic gas agreements, but also that they build pipeline infrastructure to make sure that the rest of the Kimberley benefits from this particular development."
The government said the project would still need to obtain all relevant approvals, including environmental, before going ahead.
Black Mountain president Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes said the company had been negotiating with the WA government since the export ban was put in place last year.
"All parties came to the conclusion that to get this project up and running, we'd need access to a pipeline and would inevitably need to export at least a portion of the gas, " she told ABC Kimberley.
She said the company was still in negotiations over just how much of the gas extracted from the project would be reserved for the WA market.
With local and statewide environmental groups already gearing up to campaign against the project, Ms Zumwalt-Forbes said the company would be fully compliant with all state environmental requirements.
"Give us an opportunity to prove ourselves, prove that we're good operators and we are good stewards of the environment," she said. "We plan on doing right by the community, and certainly following and exceeding all requirements.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-07/kimberley-fracking-project-granted-wa-gas-export-ban-exemption/100520190
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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7 October, 2021
Nobel Prize has committed suicide
Says physicist Lubos Motl
So far, the hard scientific prizes, and especially the Nobel Prize in Physics, were largely shielded from toxic worthless garbage. This is over because the other one-half of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann
"for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming".
Wow, just wow. You may click at the names to confirm the expectation that these men did some influential early work on climate modeling. And I think that these men aren't even the most radical activists who would love to exaggerate the projections more than others.
But don't make a mistake about it. The climate modeling hasn't led to any new yet reliable insights. In those 50 years, while the short-term weather models have made some progress, the long-term models have made virtually none and it is especially the case of the question about the magnitude of the influence of CO2 on the climate. All the relevant quantities (like the climate sensitivity) remained about as uncertain as when these modelling efforts were launched and the claim about the "reliable prediction of global warming" is a pure lie.
So there is no reason for a Nobel Prize, especially not one that would go to somewhat random "physicists of the climate".
But even if the two men deserved such an award, which they don't, it is absolutely unforgivable how the prize was justified. It was justified by buzzwords (I especially mean the nonsensical superstitious phrase "global warming") that are almost identical like those in the justification of the Nobel Prize in Peace for pure scammers such as Al Gore.
In this way, the Nobel Prize has committed suicide and I don't want to hear about it again. The political motivation of this prize is 100% obvious. These people have been picked to steal a part of the credit accumulated by physics, the hardest discipline of sciences, and give it to one of the worst pseudoscientific superstitions of the contemporary era.
I reserve the right to ban any commenter who mentions the Nobel Prize in a positive sense.
It is no coincidence that my 2011 blog post which included the quote (about the order and chaos) from Feynman's book was discussing an insane UN climate conference that looked maximally similar to the conference that drove Feynman up the wall. This link between "complexity" and "global warming" – which was made very explicit in the Nobel Prize today – has never been a coincidence.
As I mentioned in numerous blog posts including very recent ones, the worshiping of complexity and muddy thinking has been one one of the key pillars underlying the climate religion. The deceitful statements about the climate change are driven by people with a muddy thinking and the shortage of integrity who love to hide in the chaos. They know that whenever things are done properly or there are real scientific expectations, they lose any influence because they suck as thinkers, especially as honest or accurate thinkers.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2021/10/global-warming-nobel-prize-in-physics.html
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Nevada Lithium Mine, Key To “Green” Energy, Opposed By Greens
In a drama involving two conflicting goals of the environmental movement and the Biden administration – “saving” the planet from climate change and “saving” an endangered species — a proposed lithium mine on federal land in western Nevada may be brought low by – of all things — buckwheat.
Two international companies – Australia’s ioneer Ltd. and South Africa’s Sibanye-Stillwater – want to exploit a site on Rhyolite Ridge in Esmeralda County, Nevada, which they say holds the largest deposits of lithium and boron in North America.
The mine would be “the most advanced lithium project in the U.S., and will become a major domestic supplier of refined lithium products, with enough supply of lithium materials for 400,000 electric vehicles a year for another quarter of a century,” ioneer executive chairman James Calaway said in a press call (Washington Times, Sept. 21).
Electric vehicles (EVs) are one of the pillars of the push by the Biden administration and governments of other industrialized nations to decarbonize their sources and use of energy in the name of combatting climate change. About 230,000 EVs were sold in the U.S. in 2020, accounting for two percent of new vehicle sales. As demand for EVs powered by lithium-ion batteries grows, so, too, will the global appetite for lithium.
Currently, the U.S. has only one active lithium mine, Silver Peak, located in Nevada, even though the country is thought to have 10 percent of the world’s estimated 80 million tons lithium reserves.
The proposed mine on Rhyolite Ridge looks like a bonanza. But standing in its way is the Tiehm’s buckwheat, a flowering plant whose entire habitat is a 10-acre stretch of land located right where the new lithium mine would be operating.
Responding to a 2019 petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on June 3 proposed protecting the Tiehm’s buckwheat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The FWS will undertake a 12-month review to determine whether the buckwheat will be listed as threatened or endangered.
Regardless of which designation the FWS decides on, the mining project is facing headwinds. In addition to seeking an ESA listing, CBD is also suing to stop the mine, a process that could tie up the project for years. Furthermore, many Tiehm’s buckwheat plants were recently destroyed by rodents, further imperiling the species’ chances of survival.
Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director for the CBD left little doubt about his group’s position on the matter. “There’s only one way forward, and that’s to protect Tiehm’s buckwheat and stop this destructive mine from driving a species to extinction,” he said in a statement.
Even more ominous for the developers is a finding by the FWS that “dust deposition, generated from increased vehicle traffic associated with mine operations, may also negatively affect the overall health and physiological processes of the subpopulations remaining after full implementation of the project.”
Shaky Lithium Supply Chain
Approval of the Nevada mine project would enable the Biden White House to say the U.S. is fully participating in the global lithium supply chain, a major step on the way to replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs. But the mine’s dubious prospects are only one of the problems undermining a smooth transition to an all-electric future.
Lithium, the linchpin in the transition to green energy, is in short supply. And as automakers, utilities, and the public they serve become increasingly dependent on this soft, silvery-white alkali metal, the shortage will become even more acute, and the metal’s price will rise accordingly.
As the Macquarie Group, an Australian financial services company, recently noted: “In the longer term, we believe the lithium market is likely to be in a perpetual deficit. As a result, lithium prices are expected to continue to rise, moving to an incentive price by 2024.”
A July 2021 article in Forbes highlighted a Credit Suisse prediction that that lithium demand could triple well before 2025, with higher prices required to “provoke the required supply response.”
And where will all this lithium come from? “Most of the world’s dominant lithium suppliers are aligned with hostile powers – such as China/Mongolia, Congo, Bolivia … and, now, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where China is expected to win an estimated $1 trillion in lithium mining contracts,” notes Lee Bellinger in the September issue of Off-Grid Confidential.
Bellinger points to a recent, little-noticed 287-page International Energy Agency (IEA) report on what the shift from fossil fuels to metal-dependent renewable energy will entail. “Lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths face a huge demand curve rise of 4,200 percent for lithium, 2,500 percent for graphite, 1,900 percent for nickel, and 700 percent for are earths,” he points out. IEA found that all-electric cars require six-times the minerals of a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle.
All these materials will have to be mined in support of intermittent wind and solar power, which will put huge strains on an already rickety electric grid that will not be able to supply reliable and affordable power, no matter how much Wall Street investors pour into green energy.
Biden and his handlers, the same wizards who masterminded the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, are trading American energy independence from the Middle East for energy dependence on China, our chief geopolitical rival. And the energy we get in this bargain, assuming we get any, will never suffice to power a highly developed nation of over 330 million inhabitants.
https://principia-scientific.com/nevada-lithium-mine-key-to-green-energy-opposed-by-greens/
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Greenies waking up to the limits of "sustainability"
Sustainable development is a priority for anyone genuinely concerned about the environment. Unless we as a society rethink our use of global resources, life, as we know it, will one day cease to exist.
The United Nations has made this an international imperative, setting out a series of 17 broad sustainability goals which it hopes can be met by 2030.
The corporate world has also come on board, with an ever-growing number of companies developing their own green reporting standards and committing to a sustainable future. Meeting those objectives is now a trillion-dollar industry.
The UN set out the Sustainable Development Goals "to achieve a better and more sustainable future."(Getty Images: SOPA)
The problem is, there's no consensus about what "sustainable development" actually means and how it should be measured.
Some researchers believe it's little more than corporate "greenwashing."
While others see it as a misplaced ideal that could exacerbate — rather than avert — social and environmental destruction.
Is sustainability even possible?
Academic Christopher Barnatt, from the website ExplainingTheFuture.com, describes sustainability as a "dangerous" concept.
"It gives the impression that we could all go on living exactly as we live today but sustainably — with this sort of magic thing wrapped around it," he tells ABC RN's Future Tense.
Sustainable development may be "politically convenient", he argues, but it has no real meaning in a world driven by exponential consumption and powered by unlimited extraction.
"As a physical concept, [sustainability] is impossible. Life itself is a physically consumptive process.
"The only way we can actually preserve things for the future and look after the environment is to change how we live, to use fewer resources, to value things in another way."
Climatologist Chirag Dhara agrees. While a focus on reducing fossil fuel use is laudable, he says, we have to be careful not to ignore the greater threat posed by the exponential consumption of resources.
"Our economy is highly extractive, whether it's agriculture [or] manufacturing. What's happening is our use of the raw materials, our material footprint, is growing in lockstep with the growth of GDP, our economic growth."
And that, says Professor Dhara, an assistant professor at Krea University in India, can't continue forever.
Even renewable energy technologies eventually need to be replaced, he points out. While they might be better for the environment, they're not cost neutral. They consume resources over the course of their lifespan and through the systems constructed to distribute the energy they generate.
"All of this technology is made possible through principles of physics and chemistry and mathematics that allows them to happen, but the same principles inevitably limit them.
"That means that if we want to preserve the current paradise of limitless economic growth," he says, "it has to be completely decoupled from the use of material resources."
And under the current system of global consumer capitalism, he warns, that's never going to happen.
An instrument of division
For Melissa Checker, the term sustainable development conjures up very different thoughts – ones of displacement and social inequality.
"The way it's playing out, it's undermining its stated intention," she says. And there are contradictions in its application.
Building a perfect Green Star-rated building loses all sustainable credentials, she says, if the land it's built on is a converted wetland.
An associate professor of urban studies at City University of New York, Dr Checker believes true sustainability and environmental justice are incompatible with dominant forms of urban development.
"Sustainability became a very useful concept in an effort to market New York city to more affluent residents and to promote the redevelopment needed to attract those upscale residents."
But, time and again, says Dr Checker, the end result has been a rise in property values which, in turn, has forced residents from lower socio-economic groups out of their homes and neighbourhoods.
It's also led to growing inequality in the provision of services and opportunities, she contends. "As some neighbourhoods are being greened, other neighbourhoods are becoming more brown.
"Neighbourhoods that are not slated for gentrification or redevelopment are getting more toxic facilities, more industrial facilities and no green amenities. They are being sacrificed for the sake of redevelopment in these other places."
No consistent measurements
Dr Checker argues the concept of sustainable development has been hijacked by corporate interests. In the case of New York, she cites the powerful real estate and development sectors.
Her suspicions chime with recent research from Renard Siew, a climate change advisor with the Centre for Governance and Political Studies, headquartered in Malaysia.
Dr Siew, who also advises the World Economic Forum, says a lack of global consistency in the way sustainability standards are measured has allowed companies to game the system by picking and choosing the assessment tools that best suit their corporate interests.
"It's not surprising to see common indicators, common criteria such as carbon emissions reported differently. Which means it's very difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison."
A lack of standardisation, Dr Siew says, is also an issue with the rating systems used to assess the eco-credentials of new and refurbished buildings. But at the heart of the problem, he says, is the voluntary nature of reporting.
"It should be made mandatory, with really detailed requirements of what is expected in terms of certain criteria, to avoid situations where a company can cherry-pick indicators that they want to report on to put them in a good light."
He notes that both the European Union and the UN are now making moves toward compulsory sustainability reporting measures. But progress is slow.
Back to the future
Design expert Stuart Walker from Lancaster University advocates a return to the original concept of sustainable development.
The UN's Brundtland Commission developed the term as a way of structuring international assistance to the developing world. It provided a framework to ensure future development in countries didn't inadvertently destroy people's livelihoods and the environment.
It was a multi-faceted approach, says Dr Checker.
"They called for prioritising of ecological, economic and social sustainability.
"European cities really took it on. Also environmental justice activists really embraced the term as a way to think about the kind of calls they were issuing for racial justice and social justice along with environmental justice."
But, according to Professor Walker, the embrace of the sustainability ethos was soon corrupted and is now predominantly viewed through the lens of business and finance.
"It's very easy to create a nice, green annual report about all the environmental things a company might be doing – but what is that in proportion to the whole of their operation?" he says. "If you separate them out, you're not getting that holistic picture."
For Christopher Barnatt, the elephant in the room is modern capitalism and the theory of planned obsolescence, where objects are deliberately manufactured to be disposable in order to maximise the potential for future sales.
"Economics basically tells us to consume as much as we want and it doesn't cost-in the consequences: recognising there isn't an infinite supply of resources and that there are implications for the planet and the environment."
The answer, he says, is not only to consume less but to value more. "We don't have to go back that far to find generations of people who saved up to purchase objects which they kept, in many cases, for a lifetime. They valued the things they had."
"Consuming less doesn't necessarily mean having a less material world," says Dr Barnatt. "It just has to be a material world in which we have the things we have for a longer period of time."
A world where disposability is once again considered a waste, not a virtue.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-07/the-myth-of-sustainable-development/100504448
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Corals Appear Bleached From A Distance, Not Close-Up
Written by Jennifer Marohasy
I lent my underwater camera (Olympus TG-6) to a dear friend who recently visited Lady Elliot Island at the Great Barrier Reef. She came over last Sunday to return the camera, and to show me some of her photographs.
My favourite is of the Parrot fish just beyond the magenta-coloured corals, shared above. Over the ledge the water is deeper, and the corals have a blue haze. This is because wavelengths in the blue part of the visible light spectrum penetrate water to some few metres, while all the wavelengths in the red part of the spectrum are absorbed by 5 metres under the water.
For those who have never snorkelled or scuba-dived, and who like to lament the dying Great Barrier Reef, the corals beyond the parrot fish in Jessica’s picture might all look bleached. But that is how corals look in the distance when visibility is good, because the water is so clear. It is only when you swim up to them, when you are nearer to the corals, that you can see their real colour.
When I see photographs online and in newspapers of corals described as bleached, I often wonder how the photograph was taken – at what depth and whether it was colour corrected. I wrote to a journalist, Michael Foley from the Sydney Morning Herald, back in April about a picture purportedly showing bleached coral.
Hi Michael
I’m really impressed with your interview with Terry Hughes and particularly how much online media has republished your article ‘Reef on path to destruction and clever science can’t fix it’ and that photograph.
I was curious about the image of the bleached corals. Where it was taken, and how it was colour adjusted. I sent an email via the Catlin Seaview Survey contact page, asking for this information last Tuesday (13th April) and to Sara Naylor at UQ. The email to Sara bounced, Catlin hasn’t replied.
What I would really like is the original full resolution raw image. Could you please send me this?
Also, where was the image taken/which reef, and when/which year?
If it was taken back in 2015 or 2016 or 2017 it would be important to know the state of that coral now?
Michael Foley never replied.
There is a wonderful library on Lady Elliot Island, at the resort in a room tucked behind the museum. I spent some time there most evening when I was on the island for a week back in May. I found a photograph very similar to the one I queried Michael Foley about. It is in a book entitled ‘Coral Whisperers’ by Irus Braverman published by the University of California Press in October 2018.
The caption to this photograph provides a lot more information than the Sydney Morning Herald article by Michael Foley published on 8th April this year (2021). So, the photograph used in the article by Michael Foley was perhaps taken at Heron Island and back in February 2016.
It would seem somewhat disingenuous for a news story published on 8th April 2021 to be accompanied by a photograph from 2016 but without including this important information: that the photograph is five years old. It would also be useful if the publisher explained that visible light of a blue wavelength penetrates water, while red is absorbed, so corals even just a few metres away can have a blue haze and even appear bleached.
Also, if the Sydney Morning Herald are going to include a photograph from five years ago in a news story, why don’t they also show a more recent photograph – so we have some idea whether the coral is still there, or not?
Of course, beige is the most common colour of corals at reefs around the world, as I explained in my short documentary film ‘Beige Reef’, that you can watch on YouTube.
Update
Much thanks to Steve Messer for finding a higher resolution image of the ‘bleached corals’ here:
It is apparent that the branches are a dark tan in colour with white axial corallites and/or white tentacles extended from the corallites. This coral is not bleached at all.
The Sydney Morning Herald/ Catlin Seaview Survey photograph with the coral changed to beige by my friend Michael who first alerted me to this photograph and how easy it was for him to ‘fix’ what he described as the ‘blue cast’.
So, if we could lift this coral to the surface the stems would perhaps be orange/beige and covered in white corallites with white tentacles extended.
https://principia-scientific.com/corals-appear-bleached-from-a-distance-not-close-up/
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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6 October, 2021
Natural gas shortages threaten governments' green goals.
Another crucial global market has gone from excess to great scarcity. Last September in Europe it cost 119 euros ($ 139) to buy enough gas to heat an average home for a year, and the continent's gas storage facilities were full. Today it costs 738 euros and stocks are scarce. America, which has an abundance of shale gas, has also seen prices more than double, albeit from a much lower level, and could see further increases if winter is cold.
Deficiency has many causes. A cold European spring and a hot Asian summer have increased the demand for energy. The rebound in industrial production has increased the global appetite for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Russia has piped less gas into European reserves. Hawks suspect it is trying to scare the market and make sure its new Nord Stream 2 pipeline is approved. But it has also faced disruptions, including a fire at a processing plant in Siberia – writes The Economist .
Gas has filled gaps in energy production from other sources. The wind didn't blow much in Europe this summer, while the drought interfered with the production of hydroelectricity. The rising price of permits needed to emit carbon in the EU has made coal expensive. So there are few alternatives to gas combustion for electricity and home heating.
While the other bottlenecks in the world economy – for container ships and microchips – have sparked a boom in capital spending, investments in fossil fuels are in long-term decline. American shale can only help up to a point, because gas markets are imperfectly connected via LNG. High prices, when they hit, will mainly serve to ration the limited supply. But it takes big price movements to curb demand. If the coming months are cold, energy in Europe may have to become extremely expensive to convince businesses and households to use less.
Solving this problem requires an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong. Governments have not sufficiently taken into account the intermittency of renewable energies. The world has too little nuclear power – a low-carbon energy source that is always on. Gas interventions and subsidies will only make matters worse. Expensive energy angers voters and hurts the poor. But subsidizing energy in a squeeze, as Italy is doing, or limiting prices, as Britain does, will exacerbate shortages and make policymakers' commitment to green seem hollow. Governments should use the welfare system to support household incomes, if necessary, while helping energy markets to function efficiently.
The long-term challenge is to smooth out volatility as the shift to renewable energy continues. Eventually, low-cost battery storage could solve the intermittency problem; at this time, even more gas storage would help. Meanwhile, changes in the market could make things better.
In Britain, many small energy suppliers that offer, for example, one-year fixed-price contracts to consumers, but buy energy at variable rates, will soon go bankrupt. Getting companies that sell at fixed rates to hedge against wholesale price increases should encourage more physical gas storage. Another idea is to invest more in connecting networks (a link between Britain and France has recently failed) and natural gas infrastructure, so that arbitrage exchanges can level the disparities in the global supply of power.
Dirty power sources should be expensive. But without reliable alternatives, rising prices increase inflation, lower living standards and make environmentalism unpopular. If governments do not manage the energy transition more carefully, today's crisis will be the first of many that threaten the vital transition to a stable climate.
https://www.vogon.today/startmag/natural-gas-shortages-threaten-governments-green-goals-economist-report/2021/09/26/
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A worldwide energy shortage
Across the world, an energy shortage drags on. In Britain petrol stations are running dry. In Europe governments are introducing emergency measures, such as such as the capping of energy prices in Italy, as they worry about the surging cost of natural gas. At least 19 of China’s provinces, including many of its industrial heartlands, have suffered power shortages in recent weeks. About a tenth of India’s power plants have no coal left in storage. Since the end of August prices have surged. Crude oil is up by a fifth, coal has jumped by half and liquefied natural gas rose by four-fifths. Most analysts think the energy crunch will not be resolved until after winter. And if that is particularly cold, prices could soar higher still.
The energy shortage has many factors. Analysts cannot help but describe it as a “perfect storm”. Its causes include supply disruptions, such as fires at natural gas plants in Russia, and outages because of covid-delayed maintenance. At the same time energy demand has increased over the past year thanks to a rapid economic recovery, an unusually warm summer in Asia and an unusually cool winter in Europe.
In some places regulation aimed at slowing global warming has compounded the problem. In Europe when gas prices surge, utilities switch to using more coal. But because the cost of emitting carbon in Europe is at a record high, less switching is taking place than previously. That has pushed gas prices up further. Meanwhile, in China environmentally friendly policies have limited the amount of electricity factories can source from coal-fired power plants.
The shortage also highlights how ill-prepared the world is for the energy transition. In northern Europe unusually calm conditions in September meant a decline in wind generation, which provides about a fifth of power used in Germany and Britain. More investment in power storage, such as utility-scale batteries, would have eased such intermittency problems. As we argued in last week, the energy transition is likely to lead to volatile power prices and, if it is poorly managed, that could make environmentalism unpopular.
The timing of the shortfall is unfortunate. COP26, the UN’s climate conference, kicks off at the end of October. The summit is particularly important because it is the deadline for countries to announce their updated climate plans. The hope is that these plans are more ambitious than those announced after the Paris agreement in 2015 and that the sum of the emissions cuts helps to slow global warming. Some analysts fear that the energy shortage will cast a shadow over negotiations. It may, for instance, discourage countries, such as China and India, from making strong commitments to reduce their future coal consumption. Green groups had already been worrying about a list of factors that could derail the conference, from fraying Sino-American relations to the uneven distribution of covid-19 vaccines. The energy shortage has become yet another concern.
Email from The Economist
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Citizens Organizing to Block Offshore Wind Projects
The Biden administration’s plans to erect a string of giant offshore wind-energy projects off the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts is encountering stiff headwinds from local residents who will have to deal with the economic and ecological consequences of the ruling class’s embrace of renewable energy.
On Nantucket Island, Massachusetts – not far from tony Martha’s Vineyard – residents have filed suit challenging the pre-construction environmental review for the of proposed Vineyard Wind project, which would install 100 giant turbines 14 miles offshore. Plans are already in place, however, to expand to adjoining lease areas and install a total of 600, 650-foot-high turbines in the region’s offshore waters. The Nantucket residents join groups forming from North Carolina to New England and along the Great Lakes seeking to protect their communities and wildlife from the damages they fear will be inflicted once the turbines’ rotors start spinning.
On Nantucket, citizens have formed the group ACK Rats, playing off the code name for the local airport, ACK, with Rats standing for “Residents Against Turbines.”
“Some people oppose the offshore wind development because it will harm their ocean view. Some people oppose it because it will result in higher electricity rates. Some people oppose it will hurt commercial fishing,” said Val Oliver, co-founder of ACK Rats, in a statement.
“While these are all valid and true concerns, what motivates us in our opposition to the industrial offshore development is the fact that it will result in the destruction of our ocean floor, its ecosystem, and will have a deadly impact on countless birds, bugs, bats, fish, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. Saving these species, especially the critically endangered Right Whale, is why we are here today.”
Environmental Damage
The ACK Rats’ suit says the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and in a supplement to the EIS, failed to take the requisite “hard look” at Vineyard Wind’s impact on whales and other sea mammals, fish, birds, sea turtles, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, cultural resources, aesthetics, and other resource categories.
The lawsuit also say BOEM’s two 1970National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents also failed to examine a legally adequate range of alternatives, and failed to mitigate the project’s impacts, along with grossly underreporting the project’s cumulative impacts.
Meanwhile, The Jefferson Journal reports that a broad coalition of multi-state offshore wind opponents is prepared to combat the well-funded and well-subsidized wind energy industry. They call themselves “Coalition for Ocean Protection and Safety.”
One of the coalition’s leaders is David Stephenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware. Stephenson, Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (publisher of The Jefferson Journal), and others are keeping a close eye on the ACK Rats’ suit. If BOEM’s EIS for Vineyard Wind can be struck down in court, they hope this will send a shot across the bow of a similar proposed project off the Virginia coast.
Wind Off Virginia’s Shores
Dominion Energy, a Richmond-based utility, is behind the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which will be located 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. In its first phase, Dominion says the project will have the capacity to deliver 2,600 megawatts of power. The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) estimates the total consumer cost of the Dominion project at $37 billion by 2030, because the power provided will come from unreliable wind.
Currently, the U.S. has only one offshore wind project “in operation,” the five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island. Block Island went into operation in 2016 but now lies still. Four of its turbines aren’t working due to stress fractures, a problem that has plagued offshore wind turbines in Europe.
Rapid Loss of Efficiency
Advocates of wind power – offshore and onshore – proudly tout their projects’ “capacity” to produce a certain amount of power.
But capacity should not be confused with actual production.
Even though the wind blows more consistently offshore than on land, seaborne wind turbines start losing their efficiency as soon as they go into operation, and their efficiency deteriorates from year to year. By the time they reach the end of their life cycles – about 20 years – their production is far below what was originally advertised.
Replacing dead offshore wind turbines is an expensive proposition, with the costs passed on to ratepayers. And the new turbines that replace the old ones are subject to the same ever-decreasing efficiency.
Offshore wind is snake oil in its purest form. Keep it away from your beach
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2021/10/citizens-organizing-to-block-offshore-wind-projects/
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Sorry, Idaho County Free Press, Climate Change Is Not Disrupting Idaho Agriculture
A generally accurate story in the Idaho County Free Press (ICFP) numbers increasingly extreme weather due to climate change among the challenges facing agriculture in the state, resulting in a decline in farmers. This is false. Data prove climate change is not causing greater instances of extreme weather and, indeed, farm yields have increased fairly consistently during the recent period of modest warming. This being the case, climate change cannot be a factor leading to falling numbers of farmers.
The ICFP story, titled “Idaho’s economy fifth most dependent on agriculture,” notes there are many reasons the number of people farming for a living in Idaho are declining, from farm consolidation, COVID induced supply chain problems, to trade policy, to government regulations and beyond. But one factor the story lists as putting farmers behind the eight ball is climate change, and that is not true.
“The past few years have been challenging ones for the agriculture industry,” says ICFP. “The threat of global climate change has continued to produce warmer temperatures and more extreme weather events that threaten crops and livestock, and this summer, the U.S. is currently experiencing serious drought in some of its key agricultural regions ….”
As Climate at a Glance: Drought points out, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.
Focusing just on the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports the United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history without at least 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. Note also the peaks in drought around 1978, 1954, 1930, and 1900 are much larger than what the U.S. experienced in the 21st century and the late 20th century. Indeed, as recently as 2017 and 2019, the United States registered its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history.
Idaho is currently in the midst of a drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor currently list 100 percent of the state as experiencing at least moderate drought or worse. Just a year ago, however, less than 18 percent of the state was experiencing moderate drought conditions or worse. Drought is a weather event and, as everyone knows, the weather can change quickly.
Idaho, like much of the Western United States, has periodically experienced drought throughout its history. The last time Idaho experienced a drier March through July was in 1924, 100 years of global warming ago, when average temperatures were cooler. Records indicate Idaho’s current dry cycle is the fifth driest on record, since such records were routinely recorded by the government. Idaho experienced worse or drier “water years”—October to September— in 1924, 1931, 1977, and 1994 with three of the four worse water years than at present occurring during a time when many scientists were worried about falling temperatures and warning of a coming ice age.
Just as there is no evidence indicating climate change is causing worsening droughts across the U.S. in general or Idaho in particular, there is also no evidence other extreme weather events likely to impact Idaho, such as heatwaves or flooding have worsened. The IPCC admits having “low confidence” in any climate change impact regarding the frequency or severity of floods.
Going further, the IPCC says it has “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—in other words, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe.
Concerning extreme heat or extended heat waves, data from NOAA, indicate heatwaves remain far less frequent and severe since 2000, than was the case during the 1930s – nearly 100 years of global warming ago.
A majority of each state’s all-time high temperature records were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of “global warming” ago.
Because climate change is not causing more extreme weather in Idaho, it also cannot be impacting crop production. The records show that during the recent period of modest warming, even as the number of farmers has declined, yields of Idaho’s major crops have consistently increased.
Idaho is the nation’s largest producer of potatoes and barley, and the second largest producer of sugar beets. The United States Department of Agriculture reports that between 2010 and 2019:
Idaho’s sugar beet production has increased by more than 22 percent and its yield per acre has grown by nearly 26 percent.
At the conclusion of ICFP’s article it reports on this good news, stating, “[b]y the measure of total factor productivity — essentially a ratio of agricultural inputs like land, labor, capital, and materials to outputs of crops and livestock — farms today are far more productive than they have ever been, part of a long-running trend dating back to at least the late 1940s.”
In a misguided effort to stoke climate alarm, the ICFP buried the lead, that Idaho’s farm productivity is higher than ever. Shame on them for doing so.
https://climaterealism.com/2021/10/sorry-idaho-county-free-press-climate-change-is-not-disrupting-idaho-agriculture/
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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5 October, 2021
Boris Johnson to use conference speech to reveal that ALL of the UK’s electricity will come from green sources by 2035
Where is it going to come from on nights when the wind isn't blowing? Offshore wind farms seem to be the hope but doldrums are not confined to the tropics
Boris Johnson is set to announce all of Britain’s electricity will come from green sources by 2035, it emerged last night.
The Prime Minister will reportedly reveal the new policy this week as he seeks to reduce the country’s dependence on gas and other fossil fuels.
He will use his conference speech to commit the Conservatives to plans to invest significantly in renewable and nuclear energy, The Times reported.
Mr Johnson is expected to say that sourcing all electricity from renewables would be a clear step towards the Government’s ambition to hit net zero emissions by 2050.
It would also reduce the country’s dependence on gas, the surging price of which has left Britons facing an energy crisis and soaring bills.
Green sources generated 43 per cent of Britain’s electricity last year, while gas, oil and coal produced around 40 per cent. The rest of the country’s needs were filled by nuclear sources.
The new 2035 target will mean a significant growth in offshore wind generation as well as in nuclear capacity to provide a ‘baseload’ of electricity which will met variable supply and demand.
It will require, over the coming decade, a minimum quadrupling of offshore wind from the current level.
Joss Garman, UK director of the European Climate Foundation, said: ‘This will go a very long way to putting Britain on track to net zero, and it will help to end the exposure of millions of households to volatile gas prices.
‘Coming on top of a matching pledge from President Biden and prime minister Trudeau, this will give a boost to prospects for Cop26.’
It comes after Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng ruled out future fracking in the UK yesterday amid warnings that the Government would need to raise taxes on gas.
The minister said that too many communities would be disrupted in England and said nuclear and renewables was the answer to the energy crisis.
Kwarteng told Conservative Home that he was previously ‘very pro-fracking’.
But he added that while he was an energy minister he discovered that fracking was far more disruptive than had been predicted.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10055755/Boris-Johnson-speech-reveal-UK-electricity-come-green-sources-2035.html
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UK: The plot against fracking: How cheap energy was killed by Green lies and Russian propaganda
Environmentalists have hit upon another money spinner: opposition to fracking. When the shale gas revolution first came along, some environmentalists welcomed it, and rightly so. It “creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a twenty-first-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources, and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas,” wrote Senator Tim Wirth, a prominent environmentalist. And so it has proved: the country that adopted shale gas first and most — the United States — is the country that lowered its carbon dioxide emissions first and most, because gas displaced coal, a much higher-carbon fuel.
But then the vested interests got to work. Renewable energy promoters panicked at the thought of cheap and abundant gas. Their business model was predicated on the alleged certainty that prices would rise as fossil fuels ran out, making subsidised wind and solar power look comparatively cheap. David Cameron’s coalition government produced three projections about what might happen to gas prices: that they would rise fast, medium or slow. In fact they fell, a possibility the government had entirely ignored.
It is hard to recall now just how sure almost everybody was in 2008 that natural gas was running out. Its price had risen as gas fields in North America and the North Sea began to run dry. Peak gas was coming even sooner than peak oil or peak coal. Yet in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, something was stirring. Engineer Nick Steinsberger, working for a company called Mitchell Energy, tried different ways to fracture shale rocks deep underground so that the gas would flow. Hydraulic fracturing had been invented the 1940s, generally using petroleum gels, but it did not work in shale, which contained an enormous amount of gas and oil. Nobody much minded you pumping gels down into rocks in those days. After all, the rocks themselves are — by definition — already soaked in toxic mixtures of oil and gas.
Steinsberger noticed water worked a bit better than gel. In 1998, he tried sending water down first, then some sand to prop open the cracks and — whoosh! — out came a lot of gas. And it kept on coming. “Slick-water fracking” had been invented, using far fewer chemicals than previous methods, allowing vast shale reserves around the world to be exploited.
Most experts said shale gas was a flash in the pan and would not much affect global supplies. They were wrong. By 2011 America’s declining gas output shot up and oil soon followed suit. The US has now overtaken Russia as the biggest gas producer in the world, and Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer. Cheap gas brought a stream of chemical companies rushing back from Europe and the Persian Gulf to manufacture in America. Gas import terminals were rebuilt as gas export terminals. The Permian basin in Texas alone now produces as much oil as the whole of the US did in 2008, and more than any Opec country except Iran and Saudi Arabia. This — not wind and solar which still provide only 2 per cent of world primary energy — is the big energy story of the past decade.
One country that should have taken sharp notice is Britain. As late as 2004 Britain was a gas exporter, but as North Sea production declined it rapidly became a big net importer, dependent on Norway, Qatar or Russia. As Britain was paying far more for its gas than America, that meant that our huge chemical industry was gradually moving out.
Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”
Fortunately, it then emerged that Britain has one of the richest and thickest seams of shale: the Bowland shale across Lancashire and Yorkshire contains many decades of supply. Fracking it would mean drilling small holes down about one mile, then cracking the rocks with millimetre-wide fractures and catching the gas as it flowed out over the next few decades. Experience in America showed this could be done without any risk of contaminating ground water, which is near the surface, or threatening buildings. The seismic tremors that have caused all the trouble are so slight they could not possibly do damage and were generally far smaller than those from mining, construction or transport. The well pads would be hundreds of times smaller than the concrete bases of wind farms producing comparable amounts of energy.
Still, friends of the earth, which is effectively a multinational environmental business, spotted a chance to make hay. Despite being told by the Advertising Standards Authority to withdraw misleading claims about shale gas, it kept up a relentless campaign of misinformation, demanding more delay and red tape from all-too-willing civil servants. The industry, with Cuadrilla fated to play the part of Monsanto, agreed to ridiculously unrealistic limits on what kinds of tremors they were allowed after being promised by the government that the limits would be changed later — a promise since broken. Such limits would stop most other industries, even road haulage, in their tracks.
The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.
The Centre for European Studies found that the Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs campaigning against shale gas. Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”. The US Director of National Intelligence stated that “RT runs anti-fracking programming … reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.” Pro-Russian politicians such as Lord Truscott (married to a Russian army colonel’s daughter) made speeches in parliament against fracking.
As night follows day, Tory politicians lost courage and slipped into neutrality then opposition
No scare story was too far-fetched to be taken up and amplified. Tap water would catch fire (no: though it’s a natural phenomenon in some places in America where gas naturally contaminates ground water). There would be significant gas leaks (no: there are more gas leaks from natural sources and pipelines). The water that comes out of the well is dangerously radioactive (no: it is not). Fracking uses a lot of water (a lot less than farming). And so on. The unelected quangocracy that runs these things on behalf of taxpayers, mainly in the form of the Environment Agency, appeared at times to be taking its instructions directly from Friends of the Earth. So, of course, did the BBC.
The endless delays imposed by regulators played into the hands of shale gas’s opponents, giving them time to organise more and more protests, which were themselves ways of getting on the news and hence getting more donations. Never mind that few locals in Lancashire wanted to join the protests: plenty of upper-middle class types could be bussed in from the south.
As night follows day, Tory politicians lost courage and slipped into neutrality then opposition, worrying about what posh greens might think, rather than working-class bill-payers and job-seekers. A golden opportunity was squandered for Britain to get hold of home-grown, secure, cheap and relatively clean energy. We don’t need fossil fuels, the politicians thought, we’re going for net zero in 2050! But read the small print, chaps: the only way to have zero-emission transport and heating, so says the Committee on Climate Change, is to use lots of hydrogen. And how do they say most of the hydrogen is to be made? From gas.
After genetically modified crops and fracking, what innovation will be next to get stopped in its tracks by vested interests? Vaping, I reckon. It’s an open secret that the pharmaceutical industry pours money into anti-vaping campaigns because the technology is a threat to their lucrative nicotine patches and gums, which they have been getting doctors to prescribe to smokers trying to quit for years. Unlike e-cigarettes, which are the most effective aids to quitting yet found, Big Pharma’s products don’t work very well. So they are worried. Next time you hear somebody arguing that e-cigarettes (like coffee) burn the blood, dry the kidneys and attract the lymph, ask who benefits.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/the-plot-against-fracking/
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Vermont does something right about solar
[Thomas Hand] took an option on a plot of land on a road near the town of Manchester, and began drawing up plans for a 500 kilowatt solar array on the eight-acre parcel, not far from a group of homes. “We knew folks wouldn’t want to see it, so we offered to screen it from the start,” he said. He spent $20,000 hiring an “aesthetics expert” and coming up with the plan for plantings—three hundred trees and bushes. Those didn’t placate the neighbors, but after six public meetings over the course of a year the town granted it the necessary permits, at which point Hand applied to the state’s Public Utilities Commission for a “certificate of public good.”
And that’s where the process went off the rails.
With the state now in charge, the neighbors issued a reprise of their objections. Their letters are listed in the record: “this is unfair to property owners who will see property devaluation and suffer detraction to their daily life.” “This solar array will detract from their view and their pocketbooks due to the decrease in property value. In turn this will drop prices for property and every homeowner.”“It will change the feel of our neighborhood and it will decrease the value of our property. In my opinion, there is no place for it.”
And fair enough. These are not millionaire second-home owners (of which Manchester has its share); these are just normal people. No one likes change, and solar arrays are not, in and of themselves, beautiful. I have two of them in the backyard—they dominate the view to the north, about twenty feet from the porch. They’re ungainly racks of steel and glass; I’ve left a beachball-sized wasp nest hanging from the bottom of one, both because it means they won’t build in the same spot next year and because it makes it look a bit less sterile.
But as Hand points out, the Manchester land is zoned “mixed use.” Any developer could buildt dozens of condos on the site, or a warehouse, “or a paddle tennis court with 16-foot-high lights.” (There’s a warehouse down the road.) And if those had been proposed, the state’s public utility commission would not have been in a position to do what they did in this case: turn down Hand’s proposal, entirely and explicitly on aesthetic grounds.
Indeed, the sole and only quibble that the state’s hearing examiner raised concerned the appearance of the arrays. And here he had to overrule not only the aesthetics expert that Hand had hired, but also the aesthetics expert designated by the state’s own Department of Public Service, who had given his official blessing:
“the limited views where the Project will be visible are mitigated by the proposed landscape mitigation plan in conjunction with existing mitigating factors like the relatively short duration of view and highly limited viewshed area. In addition, the Project fits with existing land uses.”
Against all that, the commission and their hearing officer ruled instead that because some of the screening trees would be deciduous, views might not be fully blocked in winter; that (like most spots in the Green Mountain State) there was a mountain—in this case Mt. Equinox—in the '“viewshed;” that the color scheme of solar panels (“dark or galvanized steel in color”) is “out of context with the area;” and that in sum the project would be “offensive or shocking to the average person.” Because the screening trees would take several seasons to fully grow, the commissioners opined, “all residents of the subdivision would see the Project as they enter and exit.”
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-thing-so-shocking-and-offensive
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Australia: Bald Hills Wind Farm cover-up exposed
IT’S a wind farm, not a mushroom farm.
But as the Supreme Court of Victoria heard last week, that old adage about keeping them in the dark and feeding them on horse manure, certainly applies to the relationship between the operators of the Bald Hills Wind Farm and neighbouring farmers.
What can only be described as an extensive cover-up to hide such things as evidence of the highly irritating noise coming from faulty turbine gearboxes, came to light during a searching cross-examination of key Infrastructure Capital Group (ICG) employee, James Arthur.
It revealed, among other things, how the owner-operator of the Bald Hills Wind Farm, the IC Group, tried to remove, avoid or hide evidence of non-compliance, even to the point of accepting “liquidated damages” payments because of “tonal audibility defects” with a majority of the Senvion turbine gearboxes, while at the same time denying the complaints of neighbours about exactly that issue and pursuing the State Government for compliance approval.
In a feature of Day 9 at the Supreme Court hearing last Friday, Georgina Costello, barrister for the plaintiffs, local landowners, John Zakula and Noel Uren, demonstrated how ICG had known about the “special audible characteristics” coming from the faulty turbine gearboxes, not only from the complainants, but also from Marshall Day Acoustics, their own acoustic experts, and the turbine manufacturers Senvion Australia, as early as April 2017, but by 2021, the problem has still not been rectified.
Since the demise of Senvion in May 2019, ICG has been working with Vestas Australian Wind Technology Pty to try to fix the problem which may ultimately require the replacement of the gearboxes in most, if not all 52 turbines.
In August 2020, Vestas provided a condition report to ICG which included the following details:
“The Bald Hills Wind Farm, completed in 2015, consists of 52 Senvion MM92 wind turbines. Since commissioning, Senvion had been working with the owner, Infrastructure Capital Group, ICG, to resolve a gearbox tonality issue present in the majority of the turbines which breached Senvion’s contractual noise warranty and generated noise complaints from the community.”
Ms Costello pursed Mr Arthur over Vestas’ statement:
“There’s still a tonal problem affecting the turbines today, isn’t there?” Ms Costello asked Mr Arthur.
Mr Arthur: “That’s correct, yes.”
Ms Costello had earlier demonstrated that by April 2017, Marshall Day Acoustics had also told the Bald Hills Wind Farm operators that there was a tonal noise issue with the gearboxes in the turbines.
It was around the same time as Mr Arthur acknowledged reading letters from John Zakula complaining “the noise was causing him considerable disturbance and seriously affecting his sleep” as well as “affecting his health, causing anxiety, stress, headaches and other issues”.
Mr Zakula said: “The noise is severe and at its worst at night and it’s continuous through the entire nights and days… exceeding night-time levels as specified in the planning permit,”
And he also specifically reported, in October 2016 and November 2016, that “there are significantly notable special audible characteristics”.
Ms Costello went on to say that while the operators of the wind farm claimed to have successfully implemented a curtailment program, to reduce noise levels under certain conditions, it hadn’t been operating successfully in 2015, 2016 and 2017 when neighbours started complaining about the noise.
Ms Costello also demonstrated how uncertain wind speed measurement, due to interference from surrounding turbines, meant some turbines continued to operate in unrestricted mode, and are still making excessive noise.
Ms Costello went on to describe how the Wind Farm operators had changed its complaints’ handling process without telling the neighbours, effectively allowing them to ignore any repeated issues.
A company secretary for ICG said in an email (May 12, 2017): “We don’t want to engage with the complainants until the Marshall Day report confirming that the wind farm noise is compliant with the regulations is confirmed by the EPA”.
Mr Arthur agreed, that in consultation with “the relevant government department” and “the National Wind Farm Commissioner”, they didn’t believe they had to investigate repeat complaints and the policy was changed in 2018 without telling the neighbours until 2020.
Ms Costello: “So you didn’t tell the plaintiffs – Mr Uren or Mr Zakula – that you were going to change the complaints handling process so that you weren’t going to investigate repeat complaints, did you, until much later? That’s right, isn’t it?”
Mr Arthur: “That’s right, we didn’t tell them at the time, that’s correct.”
Ms Costello: “And poor old Mr Zakula kept writing to you, didn’t he, before you told him that you weren’t going to bother investigating repeat complaints. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr Arthur?”
Mr Arthur: “Yes, Mr Zakula was still writing, I believe, yes.”
https://stopthesethings.com/2021/09/28/wind-farm-noise-nuisance-case-uncovers-wind-industrys-culture-of-lies-deceit/
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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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4 October, 2021
China's slave labor, coal-fired, mass-subsidized solar panels dominate the planet
China's "successful" foray into renewable energy has only been made possible by slave labor and massive government subsidies - which are not typically good indicators of a flourishing business endeavor.
Over the last half-century-plus, the US has signed a great many anti-US trade deals.
What would appear to be antithetical to…everything? Makes perfect sense once one learns who funds politicians’ campaigns - and hires ex-politicians.
Then-candidate Donald Trump was rich enough to end-run for president - around this vicious anti-US cabal. So he could campaign on the emperor being naked - and promise US trade deals that made some semblance of sense for the US.
And then Trump won. And the trade reforms Trump emplaced - are all much better for the US.
Most unfortunately, Trump’s addled, anti-US successor Joe Biden is now charged with ensuring they continue to benefit the US.
Meanwhile, everyone’s attempts to rip-off the US live on.
Since “green energy” is itself, in its entirety a rip-off - this is hardly surprising….
US Govt Asked to Review Chinese Solar Companies Allegedly Circumventing Antidumping Duties:
“A new group called the American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention (A-SMACC), represented by D.C. law firm Wiley, has filed a petition with the Department of Commerce, asking the department to investigate Chinese silicon solar panel manufacturing companies working in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as a way to avoid antidumping and countervailing (AD/CV) duties.”
Why are the Communist Chinese being charged extra duties?
China Dominates the Solar Industry:
“Chinese entrepreneurs started making their own solar products, destined for places like Europe, where governments were subsidizing the installation of solar power. They benefited from the same strategies that made China so successful at manufacturing in general….
“Building up the solar manufacturing industry – at many points along the supply chain – became a national priority. The Chinese government funded research labs at solar companies and promoted upstream production of polysilicon, one of the key raw materials for solar panels.
“Also, according to Chen Gang, ‘the government gives a lot of subsidies to the energy, because this industry needs a lot of energy, and also cheap land, and bank loans. They all help Chinese industry to gain competitiveness.’ Much of the support came from local governments, about which he says little is known.…
“Some government support is alleged to have been more covert.
“In 2014, a grand jury indicted five hackers working for China’s military with hacking the solar technology of U.S. companies and then sharing it with Chinese companies.
“In 2020, prosecutors charged another group of hackers with working with China’s Ministry of State Security to steal industrial intellectual property, including around solar.
“Widmer of First Solar said the government support, in all its forms, helped Chinese companies elbow out the competition.
“‘They subsidize industries, highly motivate them to create overcapacity, which then creates pricing power. They export that product into international markets with predatory pricing behavior and squash all competition,’ he said.”
None of that smacks of free trade, does it. Well then you’ll love this….
China Helped Make Solar Power Cheap Through Subsidies, Coal And Allegedly, Forced Labor
I would have skipped the word “allegedly” - but it ain’t my article….:
“In recent years Chinese manufacturers have come to dominate world output in solar panels and components. The conventional wisdom within the renewable energy sector, until recently, was that China had taken over the market because its companies were more efficient, with better automation and more reliable supply chains.
“But events over the last few months make clear that there have been some other factors working in China’s favor: cheap coal, heavy Chinese government subsidies allowing for the dumping of solar panels on foreign markets, and the use of forced labor in conditions described as ‘genocide’ and ‘slavery.’”
The slavery is real - and an abomination.
So too is the irony of China using cheap, real energy coal - to make expensive, “green energy” solar panels cheaper.
And then China further subsidizes the heck out of the panels - to further undercut everyone everywhere else.
In response to all of this fake “free trade” behavior - we impose extra import duties.
Which China then circumvents - by running their slave-labor, coal-fired, “green energy” solar panels through nearby countries they can bully into letting them do whatever they wish.
The Biden Administration is being asked to impose the China tariffs on these Chinese products - regardless of what pass-through countries they use to get them here. Which the law requires they do:
“If Commerce finds that importers are avoiding duties by rerouting their solar panels through the Southeast Asian nations, then by law the department must impose duties.”
But adherence to the law is not something to which the Biden Administration has demonstrated a whole lot of fealty.
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/chinas-slave-labor-coal-fired-mass-subsidized-solar-panels-dominate-the-planet
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Online debates over the environmental impact of eating meat are getting heated
Ten years ago, when we ranked the most controversial articles on Wikipedia, George W. Bush was at the top of the list with global warming at number five. The article on global warming has now been re-titled as climate change, but this remains among the most polarising issues of our time – and one frequently debated on social media.
This might seem like it’s due to the way climate change is often presented primarily as a political issue: something you can choose whether or not to support. But perhaps it’s as much a result of the way social media works. Our recent research shows that polarisation on social media is mathematically inevitable.
What’s more, this polarisation is allowing online discussions about climate change to be overridden by culturally-focused arguments about things like diet. This appears to be further cementing the idea that climate change is a matter of ideology, making it harder to convince people to support action to tackle it.
The fact that it’s so easy to unfriend or unfollow people you disagree with on social media has accelerated the formation of online echo chambers to the extent that even an algorithmic tool designed to break the bubbles won’t be able to help.
Get news that’s free, independent and based on evidence.
Don’t get us wrong: we’re big fans of social media and most likely have already tweeted this article by the time you read it. Social media can be seen as a marketplace of ideas, providing an open forum to exchange facts and opinions and, importantly for scientists, to inform the public about their research. But polarisation can ruin it for everyone.
An example of this relates to the UK bakery chain Greggs’ vegan sausage roll, which ignited days of social media turmoil when it was introduced to the UK in January 2019 to coincide with Veganuary, a month-long UK-based charity campaign designed to encourage veganism. Veganuary-oriented social media discussions that year were dominated by arguments over the sausage roll’s relative merits.
To understand the extent of this interference, we analysed about half a million tweets posted between 28 December 2018 and 28 January 2019 containing any of the hashtags “#vegan”, “#veganuary” and “#veganuary2019” to map out the prevalence of extreme opinions among the tweets.
Around 30% of the tweets we analysed were firmly pro-vegan, while 20% of tweets used Veganuary-related hashtags to express their protest against veganism. More importantly, many Twitter users who tweeted about Veganuary explicitly said if it wasn’t for the Greggs story, they wouldn’t have gotten involved.
On one hand, bringing extra attention to the campaign might be considered a blessing. On the other, the polarised nature of online arguments disproportionately focused on the issue of the vegan sausage roll.
This shifted what could have been a fruitful and logical discussion around the pros and cons of veganism towards unproductive fights centred around perceived threats to people’s identities tied up with what they do or don’t eat and what that means. Many quickly took sides, refusing to engage in conversation and instead attacking the personal qualities or intelligence of the “other side”.
This conflict surfaced again on social media a few months later, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-endorsed organisation, published its Special Report on Climate Change and Land in August 2019. In order to gauge the level of public engagement with the report, we collected all tweets sent in August 2019 which contained the phrase “IPCC”. We then used software to analyse the content of some 6,000 tweets in English in order to extract the main topics of discussion.
We found that not only were a large portion of the tweets in response to the IPCC report specifically about diet, but these tweets contained the most toxic and polarised language in the sample. This is even more surprising when considering that diet was only mentioned briefly in the original IPCC report, without any explicit recommendations about meat or dairy consumption.
Evidence like this suggests that diet and cooking are now forming the core of a new culture war around climate.
This could be catastrophic for climate action. Politicians and policy makers traditionally tend to avoid issues that are culturally controversial, and polarisation of public opinion has been shown to weaken politicians’ accountability when it comes to making major decisions.
Our work recently published in Climatic Change shows how tools such as computational topic modelling and sentiment analysis can be used to monitor public discourse about topics like climate events, diet and climate policies. This could help policymakers plan more engaging communication strategies: in other words, to help them read the room.
Both scientists and science communicators who discuss reports like that produced by the IPCC must understand, and anticipate, the likelihood of emotionally charged, potentially negative responses to such polarising issues as climate change – as well as specific areas of polarisation, such as diet, that are currently more popular. This way, they can work to communicate key information in ways that allow readers to focus on what really matters.
https://theconversation.com/social-media-is-reducing-climate-change-debates-to-your-views-on-veganism-167931
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Australian energy giant seeks carbon credits for plan to bury emissions underground
Gas giant Santos could have one of the world’s biggest carbon capture and storage projects operational in South Australia by 2024 after the federal government made the technology eligible for carbon credits intended to drive industrial emissions cuts.
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor’s announcement that carbon capture and storage (CCS) had been added to the list of approved technologies under the Emissions Reduction Fund has cleared the last major hurdle for Santos to green-light the $210 million project at the Cooper Basin’s Moomba gas plant.
Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher.
Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher.CREDIT:TREVOR COLLENS
Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher said the company had begun the process of applying to register the Moomba project with the Clean Energy Regulator to access Australian Carbon Credit Units.
“Once the project has been registered, we will be in a position to make a final investment decision to proceed,” Mr Gallagher said.
“The Australian government’s focus on CCS and other low-emission technologies sets Australia up to capitalise on our natural assets and become a carbon storage superpower, building on the position we have established as an energy superpower over more than half a century.”
CCS – which traps carbon dioxide emissions produced by factories or power plants before they are emitted into the atmosphere and injects them underground – has been a divisive area of climate policy, but is being targeted as a priority for the federal government’s emissions-reduction road map.
The Greens and environmental advocates oppose the inclusion of CCS in the Emissions Reduction Scheme, which awards credits to entities that cut pollution by employing one of the approved techniques, as it would direct taxpayer dollars to fossil fuel companies and potentially delay the massive research and development push needed to switch heavy industry to clean fuel sources.
There are also fresh questions about the technology’s prospects of functioning at scale after Chevron’s giant Gorgon CCS project in Western Australia this year failed to meet a crucial target of capturing and burying at least 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide released from its gas reservoirs, despite several years of work and spending more than $3 billion.
Supporters of CCS argue it is a necessary and unavoidable component of the world’s decarbonisation goals to avoid the worst and most immediate impacts of global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency say carbon capture is needed now to start reducing the pollution from difficult-to-abate industrial processes like cement production.
If it proceeds, Moomba could eventually have the capacity to stash as much as 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Gordon Ramsay, a Sydney-based energy analyst with the Royal Bank of Canada, said Moomba was expected to be a low-cost CCS project due to Santos’s position as a leading operator in the mature Cooper Basin.
“Santos has existing CO2-separation equipment at Moomba that is already being used to meet Australian domestic gas pipeline gas specifications,” Mr Ramsay said. “Santos also has a number of existing wells that can be repurposed for CO2 injection, and it has depleted reservoirs with proven rock seal in which it can safely store hydrocarbons.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/santos-seeks-carbon-credits-for-plan-to-bury-emissions-underground-20211001-p58we1.html
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South-east Asia resisting climate action
Singapore: South-east Asia risks being ravaged by worsening natural disasters, according to a new report that warns the region is jeopardising the global push for carbon neutrality.
World leaders will gather in Glasgow in early November for the COP26 summit, regarded as vital for a consensus to be reached on emission reductions that could limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
But only two ASEAN countries - Indonesia and Laos - have set firm targets for net-zero emissions and the region risks “being left behind if we do not act now”, says a report by Bain and Co, Microsoft and Singapore’s Temasek on south-east Asia’s green economy.
“Put simply, the world cannot achieve net zero without SEA coming along on the journey,” the report said.
“Compared with global benchmarks, SEA’s climate ambitions appear modest. Most of SEA’s latest NDC [Nationally Determined Contributions] targets lead to an increase in annual emissions by 2030 in absolute terms.”
Home to more than 650 million people and 15 per cent of the world’s rainforests, south-east Asia is already on the frontline of the climate crisis, with elevated exposure to cyclones, tsunamis, floods and volcanic eruptions.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in August predicated dire consequences in the region if warming rose beyond 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels, as scientists fear it will do by the early 2030s, with rising sea levels, heat waves, drought and flooding threatening greater devastation.
The new report, pitched at multinationals’ supply chains and investors as well as governments, says regional economies will be hit hard in the future by climate shocks “unless it takes decisive and timely action”.
It credits recent announcements including Indonesia bringing forward its net-zero goal from 2070 to 2060, the Philippines stopping new coal power plants being built and the likes of Singapore and Thailand outlining national green plans.
“However, SEA is not on track, and there is a lot of work to do,” it says, calling for the transition from fossil fuels to green energy to be sped up and urging transformation of the food sector.
The report says $US2 trillion ($A2.8 trillion) of investment in clean energy over the next decade is required for south-east Asia to properly tackle its reliance on natural resources, with only $US9 billion ($A12.5 billion) in capital channelled into renewable energy businesses and assets in 2020.
Indonesia, the world’s second biggest coal exporter, eighth largest carbon emitter and the defacto leader of the ASEAN bloc, shapes as the key player in intensifying efforts.
President Joko Widodo, who has ambitious plans to shift Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to Borneo because of the metropolis’s vulnerability to rising sea levels, has flagged making the green economy a priority when the country takes over the G20 presidency next year.
Joko’s crackdown on logging and new palm oil plantations has reduced forest fires and rates of deforestation - the top contributor to Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions - and his government has also proposed a new carbon tax.
However, Indonesia doesn’t plan on phasing out coal-powered plants until the 2050s, even if China’s decision last week to stop financing new coal projects abroad looms as a global game changer.
Joko’s government in September also terminated an agreement with Norway, which had struck an incentive-based deal to pay Indonesia $US1 billion ($A1.4 billion) a year to protect its rainforests to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Norway’s failure to stump up the cash was given as the reason for the agreement being ripped up but the Indonesian government said it would not change its commitment to bring down emissions.
“Indonesia has recorded significant progress and achievements to fulfil its obligation under the Paris Agreement, which has been ratified,” Indonesia’s foreign ministry said as the ending of the deal was announced.
“Indonesia’s achievement can also be seen, among others, on the lowest rate of deforestation in the past 20 years, including the significant reduction on forest fires.”
Malaysia, which alongside Indonesia produces more than 80 per cent of the world’s palm oil, said this week it was committing to being carbon neutral “by 2050 at the earliest”.
Thailand is aiming to be net zero by 2065 to 2070.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/on-the-frontline-of-global-warming-south-east-asia-s-dawdling-jeopardises-net-zero-20210930-p58w29.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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3 October, 2021
"Fossil" Fuels Are Back — Everywhere Except The U.S.A.
While the greens in America, including their champion zealot, Joe Biden, howl their primal screams over climate change, the rest of the world is turning to coal. The dark stuff. The satanic fuel. But it’s back big time across the globe.
So is old-fashioned petroleum.
Bloomberg reported last week that because of high natural gas prices due to a reduced supply from the United States, Europe is “snapping up coal.” It’s cheaper now and unlike wind and solar is a much more reliable source of power.
Euroland is also starting to give up on the green energy dreams that are still alive and well in the minds of American pols in Washington, D.C.
Great Britain and Germany have experienced soaring energy prices at the gas pump and in electric utility costs for homes, factories, and businesses.
Some relief will come from natural gas that will eventually be supplied to Europe via a gas pipeline from Siberia, Russia. Don’t forget, Biden greenlighted that pipeline just a few weeks after killing the Keystone XL pipeline and thousands of jobs here at home.
Meanwhile, the nation with three times the population of the U.S. and the world’s largest energy consumer, China, is all-in on coal. The Daily Mail reported that China’s 1,000 coal plants “make a mockery” of any promises by Beijing that China will move to renewable energy.
Coal is by far the largest source of energy in China, and new plants are being built every week. This is, as the Telegraph put it, “Beijing’s dirtiest little secret.”
Despite those solemn pledges for China to clean up its air, the Chinese emit three to four times more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year than the U.S.
Then there is the situation with oil. The price has been rising as demand remains steady. The Wall Street Journal reported that OPEC nations predict that demand for their oil will at least double over the coming decades. That doesn’t sound like a fuel source that is going out of fashion.
This is all happening just at the very moment that Democrats in Congress are about to pass green energy bills that will cripple our fossil fuel industry. These fuels could make America the energy powerhouse of the 21st century.
It’s hard to see how dismantling U.S. oil, gas, and coal will stop the rise of the oceans when the rest of the world’s addiction seems incurable.
Last month, Biden went to the United Nations and lectured the world about an international partnership to combat climate change. You could almost hear the snickering in the audience of foreign diplomats.
It is a foreign and economic policy driven not by realism but fantasy. Biden sees the world as he wants it to be, not as it is.
He reminds me of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain circa 1939, who believed Hitler’s promises of “peace in our time,” up to the moment the bombs started falling like rain on London.
The shame of all this is that when Trump left office, America was all but energy self-sufficient and even an energy exporter.
Thanks to the shale oil and gas revolution, the U.S. has access to more oil and gas (and coal) than any other nation. We have many hundreds of years of energy supply.
Now that the rest of the world is thirsting for U.S. oil, gas, and coal, the Left wants to shut down all domestic production by 2035, even though our fossil fuels are the cleanest.
So, instead of the world’s energy coming from the U.S., it will come from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the OPEC nations.
To borrow a Trumpism: Those nations are now laughing behind our backs.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/fossil-fuels-are-back-everywhere-except-the-u-s-a/
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Don’t Waste Time Or Money On ‘Silent Earth’
Book reviews usually tell people, buy this new hardback. This article advises, don’t bother reading "Silent Earth," much less purchasing a copy; it’s mostly a junk-science, anti-technology screed.
Dave Goulson’s book expands on "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson’s polemic against pesticides that helped rid Europe and the USA of deadly malaria, and now protect crops that require so much land, water, work, fertilizer and energy to grow and harvest that we dare not sacrifice them to hordes of hungry insects.
Carson falsely blamed DDT for her cancer – and launched the practice of using conjecture, poetic prose, hyperbole and even fraud, instead of evidence-based science, to advance environmentalist agendas. The Environmental Defense Fund used her book to drive its campaign to ban DDT and give environmentalists “a level of authority they never had before.”
The EPA ban led to the deaths of millions of Africans and Asians from malaria, which could have been reduced dramatically by using this powerful spatial repellant in conjunction with modern insecticides and anti-malarial drugs. (See here, here, here and here.)
Relying mostly on inventive speculation, Goulson claims a silent spring devoid of chirping birds could soon become a silent planet devoid of insects that pollinate flowers and crops, and feed birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and (if former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has his way) billions of us humans.
It would take another book to address all the new book’s errors and problems, but here are a few.
Goulson transforms the supposed “bee-pocalypse” of a few years ago into a global apocalypse for all insects, and potentially all life on Earth. He blames modern agriculture, “greedy corporations,” free-market/personal-choice capitalism, too many humans who eat too much and live too well, urban light pollution and o course manmade climate change. Above all, he blames modern synthetic pesticides, though he does recognize that many “natural” “organic” chemicals are toxic to insects, wildlife and even humans.
Honeybee populations have been on a happy rebound for several years now, after being hit hard by Varroa destructor mites, Nosema, and other bee parasites and diseases. They were also harmed by beekeepers who tried to address these problems, but sometimes misused or overused mitacides. US Department of Agriculture surveys now show there are now over 150,000 more beehives than in 1995.
Studies in actual farmers’ fields have consistently shown no adverse effects on honeybees at the colony level from realistic exposures to neonicotinoid insecticides, one of Goulson’s primary scapegoats. In fact, bees thrive in and around neonic-treated canola, corn and other crops in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. As to wild bees,98% don’t even pollinate agricultural crops – and the species that do are thriving, even though they have the greatest contact with neonics. That shouldn’t be surprising.
Neonicotinoids are used primarily to coat seeds. They are systemic pesticides that become part of the plant tissue and target only pests that actually feed on the crops, particularly during early growth stages. Sulfloxaflor is similar in that regard. Both are far safer for general insect populations than older pesticides or organic farming chemicals that are applied by air, hand or truck across entire fields – and often beyond.
Goulson ignores all this and advances his central claim that populations of all insects are in precipitous decline globally. He bases that largely on a 2017 study by him and several colleagues. They assert that insect populations plummeted by over 75% during a 25-year period in several German nature reserves – then extrapolate that and a few other studies to the entire planet.
But their study didn’t track the same areas from year to year and employed traps that capture insects only while they’re flying. That misses non-flying insects and is heavily dependent on rainfall and other weather.
There’s simply no reliable evidence of a general insect decline. Indeed, some 900,000 insect species have been identified around the world, though total estimates range from 2 million to 30 million species. That and extremely limited monitoring programs make it impossible to calculate global insect population trends. Moreover, an extensive insect population study published in 2020 found no overall decline in North America, with declines in some US areas offset by increases elsewhere. The verdict is still out.
Goulson also claims modern pesticides are vastly more toxic than their predecessors. However, an Agriculture Department analysis concluded that, between 1968 and 2008, overall US pesticide toxicity plunged by 98%– while the amount of pesticides (insecticides and herbicides) applied per acre declined by 60% and pesticide persistence in soils and waters was cut in half, as farmers used different, better, more-targeted pesticides more carefully and judiciously, and employed other measures to control pests.
He pillories glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, claiming the chemical is harmful to bees, has been linked to other insect and even bird declines, and causes cancer in humans. For evidence he cites the International Agency on Research and Cancer.
But as I explain in a medical journal paper, IARC has strong ties to American trial lawyers who have filed multiple lawsuits over glyphosate – and the agency’s claims have been roundly contradicted by a decades-long US National Cancer Institute Agricultural Health Study – and by more than 3,300 studies around the world that support glyphosate safety. Reliance on IARC puts Goulson on very thin ice.
He’s against synthetic fertilizers that help us grow far more food from much less land – because they can allegedly reduce floral diversity, make other plants less palatable for insects, pollute aquatic systems and contribute to climate change. He wants children to learn more about ecology and nature in school (presumably only his lesson plans) – and applauds the UK’s Extinction Rebellion lunatics.
These errors, omissions, exaggerations, falsifications and biases shouldn’t be surprising. A widely published biology professor, Goulson is also a trustee for Pesticide Action Network, an ideologically driven anti-pesticide organization.
Goulson’s proffered solutions to his imagined insect Armageddon are equally fanciful. While acknowledging that organic farming uses nasty chemicals and produces 80-90% lower yields than conventional modern agriculture, he wants still more organic farms – even though plowing billions more acres for the same overall crop yields would have horrific impacts on insects and wildlife.
With millions of jobs disappearing, he says the newly unemployed could work on organic farms, in backyard plots and in urban community gardens (doing stoop labor, pulling weeds and picking bugs off vegetables). Ruling elites wouldn’t do such work, of course, but we commoners should.
Amid his concerns about climate change, the author likewise ignores how industrial-scale wind turbines would splatter birds and insects, solar panels would obliterate habitats, and converting forests into wood pellets for “biofuel” electricity generation would destroy still more habitats.Mining and processing for Green New Deal metals and minerals would drastically harm people, insects and planet.
Ultimately, Goulson concludes, we need fewer people, who eat less and “switch to a predominantly vegetable diet, supplemented by small amounts of sustainably-harvested fish and grass-fed meat” (and bugs). Ruling elites once again likely exempted.
It all looks lie part of the Green warriors’ mission to stamp out prosperity as we know it.
"Silent Earth" will undoubtedly get rave reviews from environmentalists, leftist journalists, Big Tech, teachers unions, and the rest of the Cancel Culture. The insanity will get foisted on our children. Parents and policymakers should be wary.
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2021/10/02/dont-waste-time-or-money-on-silent-earth-n2596837
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Senate Confirms Eco-Terrorist to Top Environmental Post
The Senate confirmed another one of President Joe Biden’s nominees on Thursday night, after a controversial confirmation process with bipartisan hesitation. Despite being credibly accused of eco-terrorism and lying to the Senate, Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Senate Republicans urged Democrats to oppose Stone-Manning's confirmation, on account of her troubling history and lies to the Senate, unsuccessfully.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/10/01/tracy-stone-manning-n2596813
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Hack Attack: The Major Problem With EVs No One Is Talking About
When GM earlier this year started recalling Bolts, it issued a warning to owners of the EV: don’t charge your car battery to 100 percent. Normally, this would be easy enough to do. But what if your charger got hacked?
Last year, researchers from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas successfully hacked the most popular charging system used in North America. The hack limited the charging rate, then blocked charging, and then overcharged the battery.
The reason for the hack:
“This was an initiative designed to identify potential threats in common charging hardware as we prepare for widespread adoption of electric vehicles in the coming decade,” according to lead researcher Austin Dodson.
Mission accomplished.
Earlier this month, UK cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners said that it had found cyber vulnerabilities in six home EV chargers and a large public charging network.
Some of the vulnerabilities were no small potatoes.
Among the findings of Pen Test Partners were a vulnerability that could potentially make possible the hacking of millions of EV chargers simultaneously and another that exposed user and charger data for the hacker to use.
Perhaps the most dangerous vulnerability that the cybersecurity experts uncovered, however, was the possibility for a hacker to take control over millions of chargers.
“As one could potentially switch all chargers on and off synchronously, there is potential to cause stability problems for the power grid, owing to the large swings in power demand as reserve capacity struggles to maintain grid frequency,” the firm said.
EVs have been touted as the future of transportation. Governments in Europe and North America are allocating billions in financing that focus precisely on public charging networks.
Yet, there is little talk about the cybersecurity implications of having a huge network of hundreds of chargers that can be hacked.
Public chargers are the riskiest, it seems. While one could hack a home charger, they would only gain access to that device and possibly the home network of that household.
If they hack a public charger, they could gain access to the whole network, explains Baksheesh Singh Ghuman, Senior Director of Product and GTM Strategy at Finite State, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in connected devices.
Gaining access to data is one risk associated with the vulnerabilities of EV chargers. Another is even more straightforward: electricity theft. If a hacker breaches a public charger, they could siphon electricity off it and make someone else pay, says Singh Ghuman.
Attacks on home chargers can be serious, too, despite their much more limited focus. Since both EVs and EV chargers are connected devices, hacking the charger could grant the attacker access to things like passwords and other credentials.
And that’s not even the worst that can happen.
“Threat actors can also gain control of the electric vehicles themselves, which includes control over steering, brakes, acceleration, and other functions which could result in an accident,” Singh Ghuman told Oilprice.
“They would have the ability to listen in on phone conversations held within the car and steal personal data from the vehicle’s connected network too.”
Everything is hackable, cybersecurity experts have warned repeatedly, from a corporate computer system to a pacemaker. And cybercriminals are often ahead of their opponents in the game of cat and mouse, forcing governments and cybersecurity service providers to often catch up.
Luckily, in the wake of the latest massive hack attacks in the U.S., action is being taken. A recent executive order by President Biden will oblige manufacturers of hackable equipment to start implementing more stringent cybersecurity standards, Singh Ghuman says.
It is important to act preemptively and remove as many vulnerabilities as possible as early as possible.
A lot of hopes are being pinned on electric vehicles as a crucial element of the low-carbon economy of the future. Automakers are spending billions on their shift to EVs, and one could only hope some of that money is being spent on guaranteeing the cybersecurity of the vehicles. It should be, given how much is at stake.
And with carmakers already aware of the challenges they face in promoting their EV models as the better cars, they need to be exceptionally wary of the possibility that the hackability of an EV could very well become a monumental issue alongside range anxiety.
Chargers are even more important. If a hacker can make several hundred chargers switch on and off when the hacker tells them to, that becomes a problem for the grid. And if a larger-scale attack can be launched, the situation would become a lot more serious.
There are already concerns about the addition of millions of EVs to city grids that were not built for this sort of electricity demand. Investments in the upgrade of grids so it can take the additional demand are seen at between $1,630 and $5,380 per EV, according to Boston Consulting Group.
And that’s for EV penetration rates of 10-20 percent. The more EVs are added, the more money will need to be spent to keep the grid stable.
The EV revolution is becoming a challenging endeavor in more aspects than one. The cybersecurity theme needs to be at the center of the EV discourse. The threats might be potential for now but let’s remember: everything can be hacked
https://climatechangedispatch.com/hack-attack-the-major-problem-with-evs-no-one-is-talking-about/
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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1 October, 2021
Special Interests are Again Pushing for Biofuel Subsidies
New legislation to benefit biofuel production may soon be forthcoming, according to recent reporting by Reuters.
One proposal would use federal dollars to build new high-blend ethanol fuel pumps while another would provide tax credits for more biofuel-friendly vehicles. These policies would be harmful to consumers and prop up an uneconomic industry.
Farm-belt Senators including Sen. Amy Klobuchar D-MN, Rep. Cheri Bustos R-IL, and Rep. Cindy Axne D-IA are leading the biofuels push, according to Reuters sources. This should come as no surprise, as the biofuel discussion has long been backed by members of Congress from highly agricultural districts.
The two proposals to benefit biofuel producers will be introduced by farm-state representatives in the near future. There is also a possibility that these bills will be rolled into a large spending bill in the fall containing all of the Biden priorities that don’t make it into the final version of the infrastructure bill.
Under the first proposal, $2 billion would be spent subsidizing the construction of new focused infrastructure, including gas pumps that use higher biofuel blends. The money would be spent through a 5 cent-per-gallon tax credit which would be available to gas stations that offer E15, a 15 percent ethanol fuel blend. The other proposal is a tax credit for manufacturers of “flex-fuel” vehicles, which run on a wider range of gasoline/ethanol mixtures than other vehicles. The credit would be for $200.
Both of these proposals would be an attempt by the government to increase the usage of an unpopular and uneconomical fuel source. Despite decades of government subsidies and requirements, it has failed to gain mainstream momentum on its own. Ethanol and other biofuels consume massive amounts of land, put upward pressure on global food prices, and, depending on the way they are produced, biofuels can create similar or even more emissions than their fossil fuel counterparts. It’s all well and good if consumers would prefer to use ethanol in their vehicles, but as the market has continually shown, this is not the case.
There could not be a worse time to push for more ethanol usage, as both the U.S. and Brazil—the world’s largest users of ethanol—are scaling back production due to the rising demand and price of the corn and sugarcane necessary to manufacture biofuel. This demand shift towards using the inputs as food shows that they’re more necessary there than as ethanol, and a subsidy only obfuscates that price signal. It would be illogical to subsidize the increased use of ethanol at the expense of a higher-order market preference for the allocation of its inputs.
Additionally, biofuel subsidies have been taken up by both the Senate and the Biden Administration. President Biden’s budget proposal for the fiscal year 2022 includes hefty subsidies for aviation biofuels. The sustainable aviation fuel tax incentives would cost more than $6.6 billion between 2022-2031. The Clean Energy for America Act, which was recently passed out of the Senate Finance Committee and is awaiting consideration by the full Senate, contained an amendment that added biofuels onto the list of energy tax credits that would be extended by the bill.
In their analysis of both proposals, Taxpayers for Common Sense provided a cost-per-gallon breakdown of what these proposals would mean for taxpayers.
“Continuing to subsidize biofuels—whether for ethanol blender pumps or aviation fuel—will lead to sky-high taxpayer costs. With a sustainable aviation fuel credit of up to $2 per gallon, as passed out of the Senate Finance Committee, or up to $1.75 per gallon in the President’s budget request, taxpayers would be on the hook for subsidies twice as expensive (per gallon anyway) as of current law.”
In a country with more than $28 trillion in national debt, the subsidization of inferior fuel products serves special interests in the farm belt without providing the substantial environmental benefit is folly.
Although Ethanol and other biofuels may burn slightly cleaner than other fuels, they have serious problems as well, including land use, fertilizer requirements, and the energy requirements of growing its feedstock. Hopefully, none of these ill-considered biofuel proposals are eventually adopted, either stand-alone legislation or as part of a larger action.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/09/22/biofuel-subsidies-biofuels/
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The Legal Doctrine of “Carbon Crimes”—Torturing Law and Reason to Rid the Planet of Climate-Change Deniers
The climate movement has discovered criminal law as a tool for conducting climate politics. To complement civil lawsuits against states and corporations, the movement’s activists intend to invoke torture and a newly proposed crime of “ecocide” to target corporate executives, politicians, and others who stand in the way of their preferred policies. In pushing their agenda, these activists receive assistance from the judiciary—specifically, the European Court of Human Rights.
The use of criminal law to pursue climate politics is a further step in the radicalization of the climate movement and poses a threat to economic and political freedoms, the rule of law, and democracy. If the movement is able to realize its plans, all those who do not support ambitious climate policies would have to fear prosecution and imprisonment. Conversely, threatening criminal sanctions against politicians and corporate executives will create powerful incentives to adopt ambitious climate policies and the dominant pro-climate narrative.
Lucas Bergkamp explains how criminal law, in the climate movement’s vision, should supplement civil and administrative law to eliminate any and all opposition to its plans for the realization of a climate utopia.
European government of judges
Over several decades, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has evolved into a European government in itself. Based on doctrines designed to enable it to expand its powers at its discretion, the Court has enacted a series of mandates for new laws and policies for Europe. There is little democratic control over the Court’s role in advancing progressive politics. Once the Court has spoken, national parliaments are unable to undo its pontification because a human right trumps national law; national judiciaries are compelled to execute the Court’s judgments, even if their own national law provides otherwise.
While imposing its high moral demands on executive governments, the Court believes itself to be quite exempt from any moral or legal constraints. In a previous contribution, I discussed how climate-change litigation before the Court has undermined the rule of law, the separation of powers, and democracy. In this article, I focus on the Court’s role in criminalizing the climate debate. Its reckless disregard of judicial impartiality, the right to a fair trial, and judicial restraint is another manifestation of the Court’s support for the progressive movement.
Criminalizing “climate denial”
A decade ago, an American lawyer argued that climate denial is arguably punishable as criminal deception and fraud under existing law. In 2015, Al Gore said that “climate-change deniers should be punished.” President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement was viewed as a crime against humanity: “This is murder.”
A recent book, Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes, describes “what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the U.S. government, and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming.” On UNESCO’s website, a prominent feature article advocates that “climate crimes must be brought to justice” and that “states and corporations must be held accountable for their actions or inaction regarding climate change.”
The rationale supporting criminalization
The argument for criminalizing “climate denial” typically boils down to the following argument articulated by Jeremy Williams:
Given what we know and have known for decades about climate change, to deny the science, deceive the public, and willfully obstruct any serious response to the climate catastrophe is to allow entire countries and cultures to disappear. It is to rob … the poorest and most vulnerable on the planet of their land, their homes, their livelihoods, even their lives—and their children’s lives, and their children’s children’s lives. For profit. And for , power…. These are crimes. They are crimes against the earth, and they are crimes against humanity.
This emotional outcry is not only an impenetrable amalgamation of factual and moral reasoning but also assumes what must be proved. To prevent disaster, rationality needs to be brought back into the analysis. Unfortunately, as the ECHR demonstrates, we cannot rely on the judiciary to do so.
The “European Climate-Change Court”
In 2020, the ECHR signaled to the human rights community that it was open to receiving applications from climate activists. The Court and the Council of Europe held a conference, “Human Rights for the Planet,” in which several judges, including the Court’s president, played key roles. The speeches delivered by the Court’s judges were rightly perceived as an open invitation to activists.
Several climate cases are now pending before the Court. As expected, climate-emergency rhetoric dominates the arguments presented by the plaintiffs. The Court has already demonstrated how far it is willing to go to rewrite the law to save the planet.
“Climate emergency”
The European Court of Human Rights, to which its president refers as the “European Climate Change Court,” has used the opportunity presented by the climate litigation that it invited to take the lead in criminalizing the climate debate. It has done so in a number of ways. First, the Court’s president and one of its vice presidents have declared publicly that “we are facing a dire emergency that requires concerted action by all of humanity” and that “we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security.” Thus, the Court’s leaders have openly and unreservedly endorsed the climate movement’s alarmist rhetoric. They have done so not based on science but on alarmist declarations by Sir David Attenborough, a well-known biologist and climate activist.
Second, to prevent any argument on the facts, the judges added: “No one can legitimately call into question that we are facing a dire emergency that requires concerted action by all of humanity.” They also committed the Court to the cause: “For its part, the European Court of Human Rights will play its role within the boundaries of its competences as a court of law, forever mindful that Convention guarantees must be effective and real, not illusory.”
No right to a fair trial for deniers
By issuing these warnings, the Court effectively closed down any debate on climate change and climate science before any trial has even begun. In doing so, it deprived defendant states of an important argument to defend themselves against allegations that their climate policies are inadequate to fight the alleged climate crisis. Before they could present the relevant scientific evidence showing that there is no such thing as climate emergency or climate crisis, the Court’s leading judges told the defendant states that they should not dare to deny.
By labeling any argument that there is no climate crisis “illegitimate,” these leading European judges, who should serve as examples of judicial impartiality, have endorsed the climate movement’s climate-denier rhetoric. This rhetoric is an inappropriate, unethical play on Holocaust denial. Simultaneously, and directly relevant to this contribution’s subject, the Court’s “illegitimacy” label also raises the specter of criminal prosecution.
There is no climate crisis
It is hard to think of any judicial conduct that shows greater partisanship and disregard for the principle of judicial impartiality than the conduct of these European human rights judges. The right to a fair trial, guaranteed by article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, has effectively been set aside for climate deniers. The question should be asked whether, given the opinions expressed by its leaders, the ECHR can legitimately rule in any climate case.
The Court’s denial of justice is all the more shocking in light of the science, which does not support the proposition that there is a climate crisis. The European Commission has stated: “The term ‘climate emergency’ expresses the political will to fulfil the obligations under the Paris Agreement.” In almost 4,000 pages, the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report does not once employ the terms “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” because these terms do not belong to the scientific terminology (they occur only in a descriptive section on communication). Rather, they are political slogans, as the Commission suggested. To the point, the undefined “climate emergency” is an invention by activists.
Torture
Remarkably, even the finger-pointing at perceived climate denial was not sufficient for the ECHR. In the first climate case pending before it, the Court decided, on its own volition, to add “torture” to the charges against 33 states that allegedly do not do enough to combat climate change, as required by the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The Court suggests that these states may have committed “torture” by adopting “inadequate climate policies.”
Torture, of course, is a serious crime. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) provides that torture, “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack,” is a crime against humanity. Consequently, not implementing adequate climate policy would be a crime against humanity that can be prosecuted by the ICC. What would the victims of actual torture think of the Court’s misuse of this term for political reasons?
Judicial threats
Corporate executives of companies deemed to be responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, politicians that do not support ambitious climate policies, and everyone else who advocates against the climate movement’s agenda would be exposed to criminal prosecution and imprisonment of up to 30 years. This is not a far-fetched interpretation of the relevant law but, as explained below, a fairly straightforward application. Obviously, the ECHR was well aware of what it was doing by slipping in “torture,” but it nevertheless felt comfortable proceeding in this manner.
Needless to say, the threat of life imprisonment is a very powerful disincentive. As an academic author for UNESCO put it:
Criminal sanctions are the most potent tools we have to mark out conduct that lies beyond all limits of toleration. Criminal conduct violates basic rights and destroys human security. We reserve the hard treatment of punishment for conduct that damages the things we hold most fundamentally valuable. Climate change is causing precisely such damage.
This seems to be exactly what the judges on the ECHR believe. Corporate executives will have to think twice about corporate climate policies and will be inclined to cave in to activists’ demands. Likewise, politicians skeptical of the current climate policies may feel compelled to give up their resistance. All other dissenters may also be inclined to choose personal security over honesty. Economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech would be obliterated. Is this what the Court’s president means when he says that the European Convention guarantees must be “effective and real, not illusory”? The Court’s inexplicable decision to add torture to the charges in the first climate case only adds to the concern that human rights protect only those who endorse progressive causes, not those who have other political preferences.
Ecocide
By invoking the crime of torture in the climate debate, the ECHR may also have intended to assist the efforts to get ecocide recognized as a crime. “Ecocide” refers to the “devastation and destruction of the environment,” but no official legal definition yet exists. For decades, greens have been trying to get ecocide recognized as an international crime—but so far, to no avail. In the last two years, however, due to the rise of the climate-crisis narrative, they have made significant progress. There now is much activity aimed at persuading international organizations to legislate on ecocide.
In May 2021, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a global organization that claims to empower national parliamentarians to promote, inter alia, sustainable development, adopted a resolution calling on all “[m]ember Parliaments to reinforce criminal law to prevent and punish widespread, long-term and severe damage to the environment” and “to examine the possibility of recognizing the crime of ecocide to prevent the threats and conflicts resulting from climate-related disasters and their consequences”
In June 2021, an expert panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation published a definition of “ecocide” intended to serve as the basis for an amendment to the Rome Statute of the ICC. Once the Rome Statute is amended to include ecocide, individuals suspected of having committed ecocide can be tried before the ICC.
The amendment’s breadth
With this amendment, the prohibition of climate denial becomes redundant because the Rome Statute threatens imprisonment against not only those who commit a crime but also anyone who “induces the commission of such a crime,” “aids, abets or otherwise assists in its commission or its attempted commission,” or “in any other way contributes to the commission or attempted commission of such a crime by a group of persons.” Moreover, the Rome Statute applies equally to all persons, without any distinction based on official capacity; specifically, elected representatives and government officials are not exempt from criminal responsibility.
Thus, politicians, corporate executives, thought leaders, and anyone else can be subject to criminal prosecution if they express an opinion or pursue a policy deemed to be “anti-climate” that therefore may result in ecocide. In the fight against climate denial, this tool would be of incalculable value.
European Union “leadership”
The European Parliament has referred to ecocide in two recent reports and expressed the wish to recognize ecocide under EU law and diplomacy. To prepare the adoption of an EU directive on ecocide, the European Law Institute launched a project on ecocide. Taking advantage of the momentum, even before this project is finished, the ecocide movement is now pushing to get ecocide included in the EU Environmental Crimes Directive, which is currently being revised.
EU member states control a significant portion of the votes necessary for an amendment of the Rome Statute and can provide incentives to secure the additional votes necessary to get the crime of ecocide adopted. The consequences of such an amendment could be enormous if the ICC follows the example of the ECHR and jumps onto the climate activists’ bandwagon.
Climate change is ecocide
Make no mistake: while the definition of ecocide is broad and vague, the primary target of the ecocide movement is climate change. Civil liability law and human rights law give climate activists the tools to force governments and companies to comply with their demands, but this kind of litigation is expensive and takes time. The new crime of ecocide would give them a powerful instrument to shortcut the process by threatening criminal sanctions against corporate directors and officers, as well as reluctant politicians and opinion leaders, and to force them to change their ways.
Climate activists also believe that the term “ecocide” will have an emotive and stigmatizing effect that “causing climate change” does not have. As one author puts it:
The term “ecocide” sounds dramatic. It is more emotive than “contributing to pollution” or “increasing greenhouse gas emissions” or “investing in fossil fuels.” It communicates the gravity and urgency of the irreversible destruction being inflicted on the environment. It unambiguously casts major polluters as “villains,” perpetrators of a crime (emphasis added).
No protection
National laws do not protect the suspects. Under the proposed definition of the international panel, ecocide means “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” Note that “unlawful,” which is broader than “illegal,” is the gateway to disregarding permits for emissions and compliance of activities and products with national laws.
The main trick is that this definition does not require any actual damage; knowledge of likely damage in the future is enough—which is a given, in light of the “settled science” set forth in the IPCC reports. Fundamental principles of criminal law are merely an afterthought, if they are on the radar screen at all.
https://clintel.org/the-legal-doctrine-of-carbon-crimes-torturing-law-and-reason-to-rid-the-planet-of-climate-change-deniers/
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Root of UK energy crisis is climate policy’
Had it not been so exceptionally calm in the run up to this autumn equinox, one could call the energy crisis a perfect storm. Wind farms stand idle for days on end, a fire interrupts a vital cable from France, a combination of post-Covid economic recovery and Russia tightening supply means the gas price has shot through the roof – and so the market price of both home heating and electricity is rocketing.
But the root of the crisis lies in the monomaniacal way in which this government and its recent predecessors have pursued decarbonisation at the expense of other priorities including reliability and affordability of energy.
It is almost tragi-comic that this crisis is happening while Boris Johnson is in New York, futilely trying to persuade an incredulous world to join us in committing eco self-harm by adopting a rigid policy of net zero by 2050 – a target that is almost certainly not achievable without deeply hurting the British economy and the lives of ordinary people, and which will only make the slightest difference to the climate anyway, given that the UK produces a meagre 1 per cent of global emissions.
As for the middle-class Extinction Rebellion poseurs and their road-closing chums from Insult Britain, sorry Insulate Britain, they are basing their apocalyptic predictions of ‘catastrophe’ and billions of deaths on gross exaggerations.
And while preventing working people earning a livelihood may make them feel good, it does nothing to solve the real problem of climate change.
Yet this crisis is a mere harbinger of the candle-lit future that awaits us if we do not change course.
It comes upon us when we have barely started ripping out our gas boilers to make way for the expensive and inefficient heat pumps the Government is telling us to buy, or building the costly new power stations that will be needed to charge the electric cars we will all soon require.
When David Cameron’s energy bill was being discussed in Parliament in 2013, the word on everybody’s lips was ‘trilemma’: how to ensure that energy was affordable, reliable and low-carbon. Everybody knew then that renewables were unreliable: that wind power fully works less than one-third of the time, and that solar power is unavailable at night (of course) and less efficient on cloudy winter days.
Yet whenever we troublemakers raised this issue, we were told not to worry – it would resolve itself, they said, either because wind is usually blowing somewhere, or through the development of electricity storage in giant battery farms.
This was plain wrong. The task of balancing the grid and maintaining electrical frequency has grown dangerously the more reliant on wind power we have become – as demonstrated by the widespread power cuts of August 2019. The cost of grid management has soared to nearly £2billion a year in the last two decades.
As for the middle-class Extinction Rebellion poseurs and their road-closing chums from Insult Britain, sorry Insulate Britain, they are basing their apocalyptic predictions of ‘catastrophe’ and billions of deaths on gross exaggerations
Wind can indeed be light everywhere and the grid still needs vast extra investment to transfer wind power from northern Scotland to southern England. One of the cables built at huge expense to do just that has failed multiple times and Scottish wind farms are frequently paid extra to switch off because there’s not enough capacity in the cables.
As for batteries,it would take billions of pounds to build ones that could keep the lights on for a few hours let alone a week.
So the only way to make renewables reliable is to back them up, expensively, with some other power source, responding to fluctuations in demand and supply.
Nuclear is no good at that: its operations are slow to start and stop. So, ironically, renewables have only hastened the decline of nuclear power, their even lower-carbon rival (remember it takes 150 tonnes of coal to make a wind turbine).
And in any case, an inflexible approach to regulation has caused the cost of new nuclear to balloon – despite it being perhaps the most obvious solution to our long-term energy needs.
Coal – the cheapest option and the only energy source with low-cost storage in the shape of a big heap of the stuff – was ruled out as too carbon-rich, even though countries such as China are currently building scores of new coal-fired plants.
Unlike those countries, the UK Government has rushed to close its remaining coal power stations – and banned the opening of a opencast coalmine at Highthorn on the Northumberland coast last year, despite it winning the support of the county council, the planning inspector and the courts when the Government appealed.
Ministers decided they would rather throw hundreds of Northern workers out of a job, turn down hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and rely instead – for the five million tonnes of coal per year gap that we still need for industry – on energy imports from those famously reliable partners, Russia and Venezuela.
To add insult to injury, the Government has been handing out hefty subsidies to a coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, Drax, to burn wood instead of coal, imported from American forests, even though burning wood generates more emissions than coal per unit of electricity generated.
The excuse is that trees regrow, so it’s ‘renewable’, which makes zero sense then you think it through (trees take decades to grow – and then we cut them down again anyway).
So that leaves gas with the task of keeping the lights on.
Coal – the cheapest option and the only energy source with low-cost storage in the shape of a big heap of the stuff – was ruled out as too carbon-rich, even though countries such as China are currently building scores of new coal-fired plants
Gas turbines are fairly flexible to switch on and off as wind varies, they’re relatively cheap, highly efficient and much lower in emissions than wood, coal or oil.
But until 2009, the conventional wisdom was that gas was going to run out soon.
Then came the shale gas revolution, pioneered in Texas. A flash in the pan, I was told by energy experts in this country: and ‘could never happen here anyway’. So Britain – whose North Sea gas was running out – watched on in snobbish disdain as America shot back up to become the world’s largest gas producer, with their gas prices one-quarter of ours, resulting in a gold-rush of industry and collapsing emissions as a result of a vast, home-grown supply of reliable, low-carbon energy.
We, meanwhile, decided to kowtow to organisations like Friends of the Earth, which despite being told by the Advertising Standards Authority to withdraw misleading claims about the extraction of shale gas, embarked on a campaign of misinformation, demanding ever more regulatory hurdles from an all-too-willing civil service.
Nobody was more delighted than Vladimir Putin, who poured scorn on shale gas in interviews, and poured money into western environmentalists’ campaigns against it. The secretary general of Nato confirmed that Russia ‘engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas’.
By 2019, shale gas exploration in Britain was effectively dead, despite one of the biggest discoveries of gas-rich rocks yet found: the Bowland shale, a mile beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Just imagine if we had stood up to the eco-bullies over shale gas. Northern England would now be as brimming with home-grown gas as parts of Pennsylvania and Texas. We would have lower energy prices than Europe, not higher, a rush of manufacturing jobs in areas such as Teesside and Cheshire, rocketing wealth, healthy export earnings, no reliance on Russian whims (they control the reliability of supply and the price we pay for imported electricity, as we are experiencing right now) – and no fear of the lights going out.
But in lieu of that, we could at least invest in gas-storage facilities, to cushion against the Moscow threat and any potential disruptions to supply.
But no, we chose to close the biggest of them, Rough, off East Yorkshire, in 2017 and run down our gas storage to just under 2 per cent of annual demand, far lower than Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands.
Why? Presumably because the only forms of energy that ministers and civil servants respect are wind and solar. Gas is so last-century, you know!
Yet your electricity bill is loaded with ‘green levies’ that in part go to reward the crony capitalists who operate wind farms to the tune of around £10billion a year and rising.
Because energy is a bigger part of the household budget of poorer people than richer people, this is a regressive tax.
Because of the price cap on domestic bills, these levies hit industrial users even harder than domestic, and thus put up the prices of products in shops and deter investment in jobs too.
In the past, coal gave Britain an affordable supply of electricity that was also reliable so long as the miners’ union allowed it to be.
The market mechanisms introduced by Nigel Lawson in the 1980s gave us greater efficiency, the dash for gas, cheaper electricity, a highly reliable supply and falling emissions.
The central planning of the 2010s has given us among the most expensive energy on the planet, futile price caps, bankrupt energy suppliers, import dependence, rising worries about the reliability of supply and – because of the fading influence of nuclear power – not much prospect of further falls in emissions.
So, it’s time to tear up the failed policies of today. What would I do? Take a leaf out of Canada’s book and reform the regulation of nuclear power so that it favours newer, cheaper and even safer designs built in modular form on production lines rather than huge behemoths built like Egyptian pyramids by Chinese investors.
Look to America’s example and restart the shale gas industry fast. Do everything to encourage fusion, the almost infinitely productive technology that looks ready to go by 2040. And call the bluff of the inefficient wind and solar industries by ceasing to subsidise them.
Energy is not just another product: it’s what makes civilisation possible.
https://clintel.org/root-of-energy-crisis-is-climate-policy/
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